Rambus saw its results improve in the third quarter of 2010 thanks to a licensing deal signed earlier this year with former legal opponent Samsung Electronics. It is negotiating to renew deals with Toshiba and Renesas Electronics after their patent licenses expired.

Rare earth metals are sprinkled in a vast number of the things that make the modern world go round - from iPods to windturbines, electric car engines to flat-screen TVs and smart-bombs. The reason you'll hear a lot about them is 1) because China currently controls 93-97% of the world's production and 2) because China is enforcing strict new quotas on the exports of rare earths which is pushing up global prices sharply.

"New Product sales were led by particularly strong growth from the Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 FPGA families," said Moshe Gavrielov, Xilinx President and CEO. "Combined sales from these families more than doubled sequentially in the September quarter..."

The new operating system is a refreshing and complete break from the Windows Mobile OS of the past - Microsoft's failed attempt to transpose key elements of its PC operating system on to a smaller screen.

In Taiwan, where a problem with stray dogs has reached epic proportions, rescue workers have turned to smartphones to help them do their jobs. Besides collecting video testimony, they are used to show dogs to potential adopters or to let donors see how their money is being put to use.

The complete Spansion SPI product portfolio now spans densities from 4Mb through 256Mb.

Believe it or not, your phone battery's capacity to hold charge is just part of the problem -- a bigger monster lurks within the telecom operator, and the phone having to stay constantly in touch with it.

A summary on the recent exchange between Apple and RIM chiefs.

South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics has announced that it is working on a new joint software platform for its televisions and mobile phones. This is seen as a way of pushing developers to create apps for its platform, thus indirectly increasing the number of people who would want to buy its devices.

NOR flash supplier Spansion has named Saied Tehrani as senior vice president of research and development. Tehrani joins Spansion from Everspin Technologies, a supplier of MRAMs, where he was founder and chief operating officer.

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.