President Barack Obama has been spending considerable time on East-West trade agreements while in Asia, but for one chip maker, the negotiations between China and Taiwan are even more important.

The two countries are slowly moving toward a formalized trade agreement, called the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, or ECFA, that will address how their economies relate to each another. Its first iteration isn’t expected until early 2010, but Taiwan-based tech companies are already hoping to gain entry to China’s massive consumer market.

That’s especially true for Via Technologies, a chip maker running a distant third behind industry heavyweights Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). The company, founded in 1987, made a name for itself working on an underdeveloped part of the market: small, low-power chips.

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The rush by Asian liquid-crystal-display makers to ramp up production at home and to invest in new plants threatens to curtail the nascent recovery in the flat-panel market.

LCD makers in Asia have just started to see their earnings recover in the second quarter after prices began to rise thanks to production cuts made last year, component shortages and strong demand from China. But another supply glut could be looming as soon as the current quarter as companies such as Sharp Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., LG Display Co. and AU Optronics Corp. ramp up production from new lines.

“With the glass shortage diminishing in Taiwan, and [eighth-generation plants] ramping up in Korea, supply is growing faster than demand,” said Paul Semenza, senior vice president at U.S. market research firm DisplaySearch.

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Consumers are helping pull the technology sector out of one of its worst-ever slumps, and optimism is building that businesses may also start switching on their spending soon.

That upbeat picture emerged as some bellwether technology suppliers issued numbers that were stronger than Wall Street expected, though still reflecting the recession’s harsh effects. Their announcements point to improved demand for products such as laptop computers and flat-panel televisions–particularly in Asia, where the Chinese government’s stimulus spending appears to be sparking sales.

The latest evidence came from Intel Corp. (INTC), which supplies the chips that serve as electronic brains in PCs. On Friday, the Silicon Valley giant–which earlier this year pointed to signs of recovery–boosted its third-quarter revenue forecast by 6 percent.

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Asia’s share of the world’s online population will swell to 43 percent in four years, while North America will represent just 13 percent of Internet users, according to a new report by Forrester Research (FORR).

The total world-wide population of active Internet users (defined as those who have been online at least once in the past month) will be about 2.17 billion in 2014, up from 1.46 billion last year, Forrester says.

Faster adoption in Asia will lead to a widening gap in the global distribution of users. The continent will represent 43 percent of the world’s online population by 2013, up from 38 percent in 2008.

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There’s considerable doom and gloom hanging over this week’s Semicon West trade show in San Francisco. The event hosts suppliers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment and materials, one of the hardest-hit sectors in technology. Globalfoundries is one of few bright spots.

The new chip-manufacturing service, recently spun out from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), is breaking ground this month on a $4.2 billion factory in New York state that marks a shift from a long-term pattern of moves by chip producers to Asia.

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Are things picking up at Nokia (NOK)?

Maybe… or at least, they seem to be getting worse at a decelerating rate.

RBC Capital’s Mark Sue this morning repeated his Outperform rating on the stock and lifted his price target to $16, from $12, asserting that the company’s operating margins in mobile device many have bottomed. He also contends the company will see some benefits in the first quarter from inventory restocking, lifting his unit forecast for the quarter to 90 million from 87 million. “It’s been the most volatile global handset quarter since we can remember, yet the shock to the system seems to be dissipating,” he writes. Sue still expects global units to be down 15 percent this year, but asserts that the rate of decline appears to be slowing.

Sue adds that “it’s bad out there, but not as bad as feared, implying the multiple [on NOK shares] may expand from trough levels.” He says the company is seeing “encouraging trends” in Asia, in particular in China and India, while Europe “seems to be stabilizing.”

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It’s been clear for a couple of months now that few people are buying PCs–and that those who are buying are extremely cheap. On Monday, a report from Morgan Stanley gave the latest estimate of how declining prices and frugal consumers will affect the industry over the next couple of years. The findings aren’t encouraging.

After a visit to Asia to assess the industry, a group of Morgan Stanley analysts led by Kathryn Huberty concluded that the PC market is worse than they initially thought. They lowered their estimate for 2009 and 2010 PC sales. Earlier, Ms. Huberty had predicted that global PC sales would drop 10 percent this year from last year; now, she’s estimating PC revenue to decline by 24 percent.

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Piper Jaffray analyst Jesse Pichel this morning cut his rating on Evergreen Solar (ESLR) to Neutral from Buy, chopping his target price in half to $2.50, from $5. The move follows the company’s release after the close yesterday of disappointing Q4 results.

Pichel offered three reasons for his more cautious approach to the stock:

• He contends the company is “rapidly losing its polysilicon cost advantage” as the price of polysilicon approaches $100/kg and as “competition intensifies in an over-supplied environment.”
• Pichel says he has “little visibility” into the company’s new strategy to outsource production in Asia.
• The company’s balance sheet “leaves little flexibility for pursuing alternative expansion strategies in Asia.”

He says the stock at $2 “represents an option on solar’s growth in the U.S.,” but that “future growth and profitability prospects have become murkier in the last two months in an intensely competitive environment.”

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Cisco (CSCO) is apparently following through on its plan to reduce hiring.

Aaron Rakers, an analyst at Wachovia Capital Markets, does a weekly check on job listings for the companies he covers, and this week came across a “startling reduction in listings” by Cisco. In a research note this morning, he points out that the total number of listings has dropped 93 percent in the last week, from 1,830 openings a week ago to only 128 today. He notes that there were 2,678 jobs listed at the beginning of October. Listings for jobs in the U.S. and Canada fell to 52, from 675 a week ago. European listings dropped to 28, from 311. Asia/Pacific jobs fell to nine, from 162. Emerging markets openings fell to 36, from 643.

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Marvell (MVRL) shares are down sharply again today, pressured this morning by Deutsche Bank analyst Arnab Chanda, who cut his rating on the stock to Hold from Buy. He cut his target price on the stock to $15 from $20.

“Following checks with industry contacts, we believe Marvell is not likely to see significant upside in the next six months, both due to weakness in Europe and Asia, as well as slower-than-expected product ramps” at Research In Motion (RIMM) and Seagate (STX), he wrote in a research note. “While we recognize that the company detailed some of these issues in their recent conference call, we still believe that it is prudent to move to the sidelines, given estimates could get cut” into fiscal Q4.

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This morning, the market is suffering in Dell (DELL) hell.

Last night, the company posted results for its fiscal second quarter ended July, which beat the Street impressively on the top line, but at the cost of lower-than-expected gross margins, resulting in a miss at the EPS level. The Street commentary this morning is mixed: Quite a few analysts contend this is a temporary issue, that the company knows it got overly aggressive on pricing in Europe generally–on notebooks in particular–and can fix the issue quickly. But others contend that Dell’s turnaround has taken a giant step backward. They worry that there is more trouble ahead and note the company’s warning that IT spending is showing signs of slowing not only in the U.S. but also in Europe and some countries in Asia. The results didn’t change a lot of minds on the stock overall; the one downgrade of the stock I spotted came from Standard & Poor’s analyst Tom Smith, who cut his rating to Hold from Buy, asserting that with “unsteady margin patterns” likely to continue, it is time to “take a less aggressive stance.”

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Microchip (MCHP) shares are headed lower in early trading after J.P. Morgan semiconductor analyst Christopher Danely cut his rating on the stock to Neutral from Overweight.

In a research note, Danely says that the move reflects “a slowdown in the Chinese consumer end market and the stock’s high valuation.” Danely said that during a trip to Asia this week, almost every company he met with said they are seeing slowing Chinese consumer end market demand due to the earthquake in Szechwan province. He writes that most companies are hopeful that end demand will stabilize and improve just before the Olympics in late July and early August.

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EMI, one of the global music majors, is shutting down some of its offices in Asia. Offices in Thailand and Singapore have already been shuttered, while regional headquarters in Hong Kong are ready for the grim reaper. All of this is part of the right-sizing moves EMI has been making; it had earlier announced plans to cut thousands of jobs worldwide.

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