HP extends laptop warranties for Chinese consumers

In today's podcast: HP extends laptop warranties for Chinese consumers; Dell sues LCD makers for collusion; and Twitter promises to release a Chinese version, someday.

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Hewlett-Packard extended the warranties on motherboards in certain laptops in China as it came under increasing criticism there for problems including overheating in some of its computers. HP is also working with a Chinese government agency to resolve issues that customers have raised. Its statement came one day after China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said it had received a complaint about quality problems in HP laptops, filed by a lawyer on behalf of 60 consumers. The agency is organizing an investigation, it said on its Web site.

Dell has filed a lawsuit against five LCD makers that charges them with colluding to fix prices for products, a Dell spokesman said Monday. The suit was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Epson, Hitachi, Sharp, Toshiba and HannStar. Dell is seeking to recover money collected for LCD panels that were purchased at artificially inflated prices. Dell hasn't specified how much money it hopes to be awarded in the case.

During a New York panel discussion on social media and digital activism held Monday, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei secured a promise from Twitter creator Jack Dorsey that his company will offer a Chinese version of its social networking service. Though Dorsey quickly qualified his response by noting that it may be some time yet before the service will be available for the country, due to technical and legal hurdles.

Google has high hopes for the potential of the mobile market, executives said on Monday during an investor webcast. Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for Google's mobile group, and two of his colleagues shared some general data about mobile traffic to Google services but stuck with the company line on potentially controversial subjects like Android in China and Apple's lawsuit against HTC. In the past two years, Google has seen mobile-search traffic grow by five times, he said.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.