This week Apple and AT&T showed off their iPhone profits while tech leaders forecast tough times ahead.
After shipping nearly 7 million iPhones for the quarter, Apple boosted net income 26% to $1.14 billion. It has already sold 13 million devices for the year, well ahead of its 10 million target.
AT&T sold 2.4 million iPhones for the quarter, but paid $900 million in subsidies that it warned would take two points off its margin. Wireless revenue was 15.5% higher and wireless data revenue rose 50.5%.
Microsoft posted a 9% hike in quarterly revenues, but cut its full-year sales and profit guidance.
Sun foreshadowed a loss of 25 to 35 cents a share, well below the 1 cent loss forecast. EMC posted double-digit growth but forecast a slowdown in 2009.
Amazon boosted its 3Q profit by 48%, but its stock was marked down because of lower full-year sales guidance.
Sony slashed its profit forecast by 38%, citing the strong yen and weak economy.
Yahoo, who let go 1000 staff in January, is offloading another 1500, or 10% of its workforce.
TI will shed 650 employees from its cellphone chip unit, which it now plans to sell off. Australian telco Optus will cut 800 management jobs.
Ericsson broke the 100 Mbps speed barrier in an LTE field trial.
Intel will add HSPA connectivity to its new Moorestown chipsets, to be embedded in mobile net devices from 2010. Motorola is planning a social networking phone based on Android.
Samsung took its $5.9 billion offer for flash memory maker Sandisk off the table, citing the company's declining value.
Baidu, the biggest Chinese search engine, almost doubled its quarterly profit and expects sales to grow 80% in the final quarter.
Microsoft rushed out an emergency security patch - its first outside the regular update cycle in 18 months. Chinese PC users were outraged after Microsoft turned their screens to black for using pirate software.
LinkedIn, the social network for business types, raised another $22.7 million from SAP, Goldman Sachs and McGraw Hill.
Telstra attracted an all-time record of more than 50,000 complaints over the past year, more than double those of its rival Optus, the telecom ombudsman reported.
Lengthy mobile phone use can affect men's sperm count, a survey suggested.
Australians are the world's biggest online pirates per capita. The incidence of unlicensed downloads up threefold in eight years, a study found.
And a Japanese woman killed the avatar of her former online husband after he divorced her.