Apple  overtook Nokia in the third quarter as the cellphone maker generating the highest total operating profit in the industry, research firm Strategy Analytics said.

Stocks tumbled Friday, giving back all of the gains from the prior session, as worries about the recovery escalated after a pair of reports on the consumer and as the dollar rallied. The Dow shed 250 points, or 2.5 percent, but finished flat for the month.

Stocks tumbled Friday, giving back all of the gains from the prior session, as worries about the recovery escalated after a pair of reports on the consumer.

Stocks opened lower Friday after reports showed consumer sentiment and spending have declined.

Futures indicated a lower open for Wall Street on Friday, the last trading day of October, after the Dow experienced its best day in 3 months Thursday after GDP data showed the world's biggest economy exited recession in the third quarter.

Since 1996, Microsoft has been writing operating systems for little computers to carry in your pocket. It was a lonely business until the company’s perennial rival, Apple, introduced the Web-browsing, music-playing iPhone. But now that smartphones are popular, Microsoft’s operating system, Windows Mobile, is foundering.

The world can be a rough place for independent inventors. They can often find themselves in court, battling big corporations, spending piles of money on lawyers and leaving it up to judges and juries to determine the value of their hard-won patents.

The cellphone industry looks a lot like the movie industry nowadays. Some highly anticipated phones — including the Palm Pre, an updated iPhone and new phones using the Android operating system from Google — have focused the industry’s efforts on the crucial months between Memorial Day and Labor Day.