A whole bunch of companies involved in the use of LEDs and laser diodes in mobile phones, high-def players, and data storage devices are currently facing an investigation by the U.S. International Trade Commission on charges of patent infringement. More in the full article.

Earlier today, Nintendo left Panasonic maker Matsushita in the dust as the company driven by its dual-screen handheld and waving sticks closed the gap against competitor Sony.

Ninty increased its market capitalisation to ¥6.30 trillion, running past Matsushita's 6.23 trillion and nearing Sony's 6.64 trillion. These world leaders in electronics have sales eight times bigger than Nintendo, but the Wii and DS are obviously enough to stay on track.

During the last couple of years, the folks responsible for the PS3 earned 72% increase in shares. It fades in comparison to Nintendo, which experienced shares growth four-fold during the same period.

KBC Securities analyst Hiroshi Kamide comments:

Nintendo is a market leader in everything it does now, which is basically the handheld as well as console gaming market. We haven't seen Nintendo being a market leader in both products for over a decade. It shows what a fantastic market position Nintendo has at the moment in its industry.

Sounds good, considering that the GameCube failed hard last consoles race. Not saying that Sony is having a hard time, but let's hope everyone learns from Ninty's model which appears to be very effective. Affordable and fun games for everyone? We're in!

Holding your breath for the winner in the Blu-ray vs HD DVD War? Hold it a little longer. The next-gen DVD format war has been reset to sometime 2007 due to the shortage of blue laser diodes needed by the optical drives for both systems.

According to DigiTimes sources, manufacturers of the blue laser diodes admitted they are way behind. This prompted Sony to suspend shipping its own blue laser diodes to other customers. Instead, it is diverting them to its PS3 production line. Sony pledged to ship 4 million (or 2 million, depending on who's doing the PR circuit) PS3 units by the end of this year.

Philips, Sony, Matsushita, Hitachi, Ben-Q and other CE players already announced their HD DVD or Blu-ray drives, but according to DigiTimes only Pioneer, Plextor and possibly Toshiba are likely to meet their roll out dates.

Despite consumer demands, the race for the next-gen DVD format is still doing warm-up rounds for now and until blue laser diodes supply pick up around first quarter 2007.