Martyn Williams

Representatives from 142 nations are expected to sit down in Doha, Qatar, next Friday for the World Trade Organization's (WTO) fourth Ministerial Conference, the first such high-level meeting of the group since its Seattle Ministerial Conference ended in chaos amid large-scale civil disturbance two years ago.

One of the computing world's newest networking standards, USB 2.0, will be battling for the attention of visitors at the upcoming Comdex Fall show with IEEE1394, an already established format that is spreading its wings to encompass a greater number of uses and a soon-to-come speed upgrade.

Toshiba Corp. announced its first-half financial results Friday and said the few bright spots it found in the first half are likely to dull in the coming six months.

Leaders from the 21-member APEC forum have endorsed a plan aimed at addressing the challenges presented by the new economy of online trade and services.

Slowing world economies and the knock-on effects of the September terrorist attacks in the U.S. could impact the PC business in the short-term, but long-term prospects are bright, said Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft Corp., speaking Tuesday in Tokyo.

Despite the hype and billions of dollars about to be spent on 3G (third-generation) networks around the world, shipments of 3G handsets are expected to make up less than a third of all phones shipped by Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB in 2005, the company's president said Tuesday.

Shipments of 3G handsets are expected to make up less than one-third of all phones shipped by Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications in 2005, says the firm

Sanyo Electric has taken the wraps off an updated prototype of its planned personal digital assistant which is based on Version 6.1 of the Symbian operating system.