consumer electronics maker

While much attention on Sept. 29 was fixed on the failed bailout vote in Congress and its impact on the Dow Jones industrial average, tech stocks also came under pressure.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq dropped 199.61 points, or 9%, to 1983.73, the third-largest percentage decline ever. The Sept. 29 tech-stock rout was eclipsed only by the Black Monday crash on Oct. 19, 1987, when the Nasdaq plummeted more than 11%, and Apr. 14, 2000, when it tumbled 9.7%.

In Singapore, the Dutch consumer electronics maker Philips is designing a multimedia server to stream audio and video through the air, from the Internet to any device in the home. In Munich, a former unit of Siemens envisions a cordless phone that would double as a music player, wirelessly drawing music from home computers. In Japan, members of Sony's global "digital home team" are redesigning 90 percent of the company's home electronics components to connect wirelessly to the Internet by 2011.