LG, Sharp, and Chunghwa Picture Tube agreed Wednesday to plead guilty to price fixing in the market for LCD displays and will pay $585 million in fines, the U.S. Justice Department announced.

CNet News.com notes that Sharp's role in the matter affected Apple from September 2005 to December 2006, when it supplied Apple with displays for iPods.

"Although Sharp admits to engaging in price fixing with Apple's iPod screens in the 2005 to 2006 period, it remains unclear whether other vendors may have engaged in a similar behavior with Apple back in 2002," the report states.

"That's when Apple was hit with a component shortage of 15-inch LCD panels for its newly introduced all-in-one flat panel iMacs. As a result, Apple suffered a shortage of iMacs after introducing and touting its sleek iMac."

Intel said Wednesday that fourth-quarter business will be below the company's previous outlook. The world's largest chipmaker now expects fourth-quarter revenue to be $9 billion, plus or minus $300 million, lower than the previous expectation of between $10.1 billion and $10.9 billion.

Revenue is being affected by significantly weaker than expected demand in all geographies and market segments, the company said. In addition, the PC supply chain is aggressively reducing component inventories.

Intel's expectation for fourth-quarter gross margin is now 55 percent plus or minus a couple of points, lower than the previous expectation of 59 percent plus or minus a couple of points, primarily due to lower revenue and other charges associated with the weaker-than-expected demand environment.

Spending (R&D plus MG&A) is expected to be approximately $2.8 billion in the fourth quarter, lower than the previous expectation of approximately $2.9 billion, primarily due to lower revenue- and profit-related spending. For the full year, spending is expected to be approximately $11.4 billion, lower than the previous expectation of approximately $11.5 billion.

All other expectations are unchanged.

Apple will open its 43rd retail store in its home state of California on Friday at Vintage Faire Mall in Modesto.

Dubbed the Apple Store Vintage Faire, the shop will open to the public on November 14, 2008 at 6:00 p.m. PST.

Customers seeking additional information can contact the store at 209.342.1500.

Apple announced Tuesday that the Apple Store Dadeland will open to the public on Saturday, November 8, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. EST.

The new location will be Miami's third, joining locations at 136th Street and Lincoln Road in Miami beach.

Customers seeking additional information can contact the store at  (408) 862-9300.

Apple is expanding its international retail presence in force this coming weekend with all but one of six new stores opening outside of the US over the course of the next several days.

Switzerland is first and will see its two inaugural Apple stores open within a day of each other. Geneva's Rue de Rive will open its doors at 5PM local time on Thursday the 25th, while Zurich's Glattzentrum opens at 10AM the following day. Both will allow users to try iPhone 3Gs in store.

In Canada, Calgary's first store at Market Mall and Toronto's fourth at Fairview will both start business at 9:30AM on Saturday.

The home of trip-hop music in the UK, Bristol, gets its own store at Cabot Circus on Thursday the 25th with an unusual mid-day, 12:30PM opening. The store is the 19th in the country.

Lastly, a lone American store gets its debut on Saturday when the Royal Hawaiian opens its doors on Saturday at 10AM. It's the third in the island state and has earned minor infamy for a delay in getting rocks from the same Hawaiian island for its front face. Local legends forbid transporting rocks from other islands.

Germany is next in line to get a more complete iTunes video service, the national newspaper Wirtschaftswoche said in an article published this weekend.

As interpreted by Ars Technica, the paper cites unnamed sources which allege that Apple is building up a collection of movies for a launch within a few weeks that would have approximately the same purchase and rental privileges as customers in Canada, the UK and the US. This would include HD-quality videos where applicable.

The launch would be the first for movie service in a non-English country; Germany and France already have video but are so far limited to local TV shows in their own languages, where subtitles aren't necessary.

Canadians hoping to grab a 16GB iPod nano could be out of luck for nearly a month, unless they live near one of Apple's few retail outlets in the country.

According to the product listings for both Best Buy Canada and its sibling Future Shop, all but one color of the larger-capacity models aren't due to ship until October 17th -- more than a month after they were first announced.

Some other models aren't scheduled to appear until September 25th.

The wide gap between the unveiling and release reinforces beliefs that Apple was caught unawares by the Zune 16GB announcement, with 8GB iPod nanos well into production while 16GB models have been delayed by at least a week in some circumstances.

The listings also confirm next-week availability of Apple's unofficial 4GB models: limited quantities of the devices should be available by Monday in the retail chains.

In a relatively rare appearance outside of company events, Apple chief Steve Jobs has attended a European Union roundtable discussing the legal hurdles to pan-European online retailing.

The continent-wide governmental body didn't outline Jobs' particular reason for being at the event, though the question of online music stores is known to be one of the key issues; the European Commission has criticized both Apple and major labels such as EMI, which also attended the event, for unfair iTunes pricing that charges residents of some countries more for the same content.

All of the involved parties were asked to submit comments on an EU paper discussing the issues before October 15th, 2009.

Besides EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes, those at the roundtable included Rolling Stones lead singer Sir Mick Jagger and the heads of other major technology firms, including Alcatel-Lucent and eBay. However, it wasn't difficult to determine which one was Jobs -- he was the only one wearing a black mock turtleneck instead of a suit.

This Saturday promises to be a big weekend for Apple Retail, with four new stores holding their grand opening ahead of the 2008 holiday shopping season, including one in Pennsylvania, one in Colorado, and two in California.

A complete list of store opening times and links to their respective Apple Retail pages (not yet live at press time) are as follows:

The Apple Store Hillsdale in San Mateo, California will open to the public on Saturday, September 20, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. PDT.

The Apple Store North County in Escondido, California will open to the public on Saturday, September 20, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. PDT.

The Apple Store The Promenade Shops at Briargate in Colorado Springs, Colorado will open to the public on Saturday, September 20, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. MDT.

The Apple Store Park City in Lancaster, Pennsylvania will open to the public on Saturday, September 20, 2008 at 9:00 a.m. EDT.

Original iPod touch owners on Tuesday night got first crack at the 2.1 feature set with Apple's promised firmware update for first-generation players.

The update is available through iTunes and adds many of the new features present in the second-generation iPod touch that aren't dictated by hardware choices.

This includes the Genius feature for automatically creating a playlist of related music, software-related optimizations to battery life, and a host of additional fixes and other adjustments.

Apple hasn't posted a full list of updates.

As promised, the software is a free upgrade for any iPod touch owner already using version 2.0 firmware or later; those using any version 1 software must pay $9.99 to unlock and download the 2.1 update.

The version 2.1 update for iPhone and iPhone 3G users will be free but will appear slightly later, launching on Friday.