Sony

The following is a round-up of news likely to affect stock prices today:

Toyota (TM) returned to profit -- of $1.7 billion -- in the latest quarter and raised its annual earnings forecast. For the first time the company gave an estimate for the cost of the global recall -- as much as $2 billion. It also acknowledged design problems with the brakes in the Prius. Analysts warn of a grim outlook as the automaker's reputation suffers. Shares declined over 1% in premarket trade.

Asian markets declined again Wednesday, but amid the gloom of falling share prices, Japan announced that its exports have risen for the first time in 15 months, posting a 12.1% increase in overseas shipments last month. The big surprise was that Japanese shipments to China have outpaced those to the U.S., making China the number one destination for Japanese products.

When Rich Becker plans what to watch on TV for the evening, he surfs his iTunes software program on his computer and downloads the content he wants to watch onto his Apple iPhone. He then hooks the phone up to his TV set. That may give us a clue as to where convergence is going.

Nintendo and Netflix (NFLX) are announcing Wednesday that the Wii game console will be able to stream movies from the video rental company. The Wii is the most popular of the current generation of consoles, which also includes the Microsoft (MSFT) Xbox 360 and Sony (SNE) PS3. Netflix already offers its streaming video service over both the Xbox and PS3, so adding the Wii gives the film-renting leader access to all of the most popular video-game systems.

Electronic Arts, the largest video game maker in the U.S., has released new guidance, and the numbers were awful. GAAP sales for its fiscal 2010, which ends in March, will be well below its November forecasts.

Consumers, propelled by the ease of buying digital songs piecemeal, have increasingly decided that the single unit of music is their unit of choice. But the music-buying audience is notoriously fickle: Just look at the momentary mania about ringtones.

Susan Boyle's debut album I Dreamed A Dream is now in its sixth week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 to become 2009's No. 2 top-selling album, after Taylor Swift's Fearless. The Boyle-Swift horse race was a bittersweet victory for the music industry, which stayed in the doldrums in 2009.

Sales of the Nintendo Wii console hit 3 million last month in U.S. compared with 2.14 million in the same month in 2008.

Beyond incessant Twittering and texting, what will 2010 bring? To find out, we're combining the insights of DailyFinance tech writers Alex Salkever and Sam Gustin. Here's what they see coming in the year ahead. Hint: Apple and Google loom large over the tech landscape in 2010.

Apple is just the latest in an expanding list of competitors taking aim at the future of televised media, and the combined assault could finally deliver a major blow to cable's immensely profitable business model.