Western Digital has sought to reassure investors about the slowing hard-drive business, as the advent of tablet computers eats into computer demand.

RIM retaliates on Steve Job's recent knock on the Blackberry maker."For those of us who live outside of Apple's distortion field, we know that 7-inch tablets will be a big portion of the market and we know that Adobe Flash support matters to customers who want a real web experience," said RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie.

Shares of Seagate Technology soared 21% in pre-market trading Friday after the hard disk drive maker revealed it has received interest in being taken private.

"With the Embedded Initiative, Altera is enabling designers in markets such as automotive, industrial, military and wireless to easily leverage a rich ecosystem of processor, OS and IP support all through a single design flow, and to reduce overall system cost..."

One report, based on interviews with over 1,700 workers by 20 universities in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan, criticized Hon Hai for long working hours, a "militaristic" work culture and mass employment of low-wage vocational college students and interns on production lines to cut costs

Samsung Electronics, Asia's biggest maker of semiconductors, flat screens and mobile phones, reported profit that missed analysts' estimates, fueling concern the global recovery in demand for electronics is stalling.