Nepcon Japan is Asia’s largest electronics packaging trade show. The three-day trade show was held Jan. 14-16 at the Tokyo Big Sight convention center. Lighting Japan 2014 and Automotive World 2014 are two other trade shows held concurrently with Nepcon Japan.

SAN JOSE — The 90-day moving average orders at North America-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers rose 48.3% year-over-year in December. Manufacturers reported $1.38 billion in orders worldwide in December, the SEMI trade group announced today.

BANNOCKBURN, IL – Electronics manufacturing services and original design manufacturers worldwide will resume growth in 2014, after a decline of approximately 4.9% percent in 2013, according to a new survey-based report by IPC.

ATLANTA – UP Media Group Inc. today named Robin Foran sales director of CIRCUITS ASSEMBLY, effective immediately.Foran comes to UPMG from Penton Media, where she was a sales executive and sold advertising and exhibition space across the US.

MINNEAPOLIS – The Best of Conference and winner of the 3D track for the International Wafer-Level Packing Conference was Jessica Fredlund, Silex Microsystems. Coauthors of her paper, “Recent Results Using Met-Via TSV Interposer Technology as TMV Element in Wafer Level Through Mold Via Packaging of CMOS Biosensors,” include Toby Ebefors, Silex Microsystems, and Erik Jung and Tanja Braun, Ph.D., Fraunhofer IZM.

TAIPEI -- An investigation into alleged bribe-taking at Foxconn is underway, and the EMS giant says it will cooperate in full. Authorities are looking into the dealings of at least 10 company executives following reports last year that workers in its SMT group had been taking bribes from suppliers.

DUBLIN -- A new study of PCB, material and interconnect trends and needs for electronics assemblies for high-speed applications explores the implications for next-generation architectures and the supply chain as data rates increase.

GARDEN GROVE, CA -- Metcal today announced the schedule for its Advanced Package Rework and Repair seminars during the first half of 2014. The seminars will address the latest techniques to rework and repair a variety of applications.

NEW TAIPEI CITY, TAIWAN -- New Kinpo Group plans to invest some NT$3 billion (US$100 million) to expand production in Southeast Asia and Brazil. The investments will boost capacity for printers, hard disk drives and set-top boxes, company executives said.

JASPER, IN -- Kimball International plans to spin off its electronics manufacturing services business unit under a separate stock listing. The unit will be named Kimball Electronics, and will result in shareholders owning two standalone publicly traded companies.

CHENGDU, CHINA – Goepel Electronic has opened a subsidiary here to provide customer service and support for existing test systems and help in installing and running new equipment.

TOKYO -- Panasonic's cost-cutting will next hit its chip assembly unit as the company has a deal in place to sell three plants to United Test and Assembly Center, Reuters reported today. Panasonic is declining comment on the report, which claims a deal will be completed by early February.