China's GDP increased 9.6% on year in the third quarter, slowing from 10.3% in the second quarter

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

Toshiba's operating profits for the April-September period is set to come to more than 100 billion yen (US$1.2 billion), beating the company's forecast of 70 billion yen, according to the Nikkei business daily. Booming global sales of smartphones have boosted demand for the company's flash memory chips and small LCD panels.

Programmable chipmaker Altera has forecast its sales would grow in the fourth quarter as China expands its wireless telephone infrastructure but some analysts warned that revenues could slow next year.

"This month, for the first time ever, Android revenue exceeded iPhone-only revenue amidst strong raw iOS impression growth," according to Millenial's Oct 19 report.

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.

HP has announced the imminent release of webOS 2.0 and Palm Pre 2. webOS 2.0 is both the first major update to the webOS smartphone platform, and the first major webOS release by HP since the company bought Palm in April this year.

A vigorous post-Labor Day Democratic offensive has failed to diminish the resurgent Republicans' lead among likely voters, leaving the GOP poised for major gains in congressional elections two weeks away, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

The patents are related to Motorola's key products which include Droid, Droid2, Droid X, Cliq, Cliq XT, Back Flip, Devour A555, i1 and Charm. Motorola Mobility claims that a controversy over the patents-in-suit exists between the parties but also claimed that it has not infringed on any of the patents.

China's central bank said Tuesday it will raise its benchmark deposit and lending rates by 0.25 percentage point for the first time since an increase in December 2007. The latest move represents the strongest effort yet by Beijing to withdraw its monetary policy stimulus introduced during the global financial crisis and comes amid rising inflationary pressures. Some emerging-market currencies fell immediately after the move.

Here is a selection of the most poignant quotes from Jobs on the call, organized into the five main topics:

"We are pleased to be working with the TRA, Etisalat and Du on this important initiative to support mobile innovation across the Middle East. We are excited to build on our success in the region and to deepen our commitment to delivering industry leading products and services...," said Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of RIM.

The Finnish giant is hoping its new flagship N8 smartphone will help it fight back, but PV World remains unconvinced and listed the reasons why Symbian sucks.

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.