Oct. 20--Texas Instruments Inc. said Monday that its financial results in the third quarter were better than expected, as customers started to ramp up their orders.

The positive news is the latest sign that the technology industry is starting to crawl out of the recession.

Dallas-based TI had third-quarter sales of $2.88 billion and a profit of $538 million, or 42 cents a share.

Those numbers are lower than they were in the third quarter of 2008, but up from the second quarter of this year and higher than analysts had expected and than TI predicted several weeks ago.

Much of the growth came from a 20 percent jump in sales of analog chips for cellphones and other consumer and industrial gadgets.

But Kevin March, senior vice president and chief financial officer at TI, said it's not yet clear whether TI's customers overreacted to the recession and are boosting their buying now to correct for that or whether demand is actually increasing as people start buying cellphones and other tech products again.

Moreover, the recovery is in different stages in different parts of the world.

"It's a mixed story," March said. "You can't make a global statement. Certainly in the Western economies, with unemployment continuing to work its way up a little bit, even if everybody else spends the way they were, you've got less spending overall because you've got less people working."

China, though, seems to be coming out of the slowdown at a faster pace because of larger government stimulus programs, March said.

Still, March said, widespread job cuts in the industry seem to be tapering off.

TI announced about 3,400 job cuts at the beginning of the year, and the process is now largely complete.

And the company is prepared if demand does ramp up quicker than expected.

TI said last month that it would start operations at its long-dormant chip plant in Richardson and has begun hiring the first few hundred workers for that facility.

While full-scale production isn't scheduled at that plant for a few years, the timetable could be accelerated if need be, March said.

For the fourth quarter, Texas Instruments expects revenue to fall in a range of $2.78 billion to $3.02 billion, with earnings per share ranging from 42 cents to 50 cents.

Shares of TI gained 77 cents to close at $23.52 before the quarterly results were released.

Shares rose 67 cents in after-hours trading.

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