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Shares of LinkedIn Corp, operator of the most popular social network for professionals, fell 20 percent in early trading on Friday, wiping out more than $6 billion of market value, after the company slashed its full-year forecast. LinkedIn reported on Thursday its slowest quarterly revenue growth since it went public four years ago. The surprisingly weak results followed Twitter Inc's on Tuesday. Twitter's stock fell by as much as 24 percent, slicing about $6 billion off its market value.

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By Matt Siegel SYDNEY (Reuters) – Early adopters of the Apple Watch, Apple Inc's first new product in five years, are complaining that a number of its key functions are disrupted by their tattoos. Owners of Apple Watch – including this reporter, who bought a 42mm version with stainless steel case and black classic buckle for A$1,029 ($822) – have found that their inked skin confuses the sensors on the underside of the device. Users of the watch, which went on sale last week, took to social media on Thursday under the hashtag #tattoogate to air their frustration with the flaw from Apple's renowned design house.

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By Bill Rigby SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple's large-screen iPhones are a big hit in China, taking market share from Samsung and selling at a pace that may make China a greater source of revenue than the Americas for Apple in coming years, analysts said. The world's most valuable consumer electronics company reported on Monday a 71 percent increase in sales in China to $16.8 billion, driven by its new, bigger iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. In the first three months of the year, for the first time, Apple sold more iPhones in China than in the United States. Consumer demand for the newest electronics pushed sales in China to 29 percent of total global sales for Apple in the first quarter, compared with 21 percent a year ago.

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Finland's Nokia denied reports in Chinese media that it planned to return to manufacturing phones. “Nokia notes recent news reports claiming the company communicated an intention to manufacture consumer handsets out of a R&D facility in China. These reports are false,” Nokia said in a statement posted on its website. “Nokia reiterates it currently has no plans to manufacture or sell consumer handsets.” However, Nokia has said it is looking into returning to the smartphones business by brand-licensing.

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Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and state-owned China Telecom Corp Ltd have tied up to sell inexpensive smartphones aimed at boosting mobile commerce in smaller cities and rural areas. The phones, dubbed “Tianyi Taobao Shopping Handsets”, will come installed with either an app for easy access to Alibaba's flagship Taobao online shopping platform or its home-grown YunOS mobile operating system, it said in a statement late on Friday. The partnership is a bid to deepen Alibaba's e-commerce base in less developed parts of the country and promote its mobile operating system in a shrinking, cut-throat handset market. Mobile Taobao is China's most popular mobile shopping app with more than 200 million monthly active users, it said.

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Genetic diseases can be one of the most destructive to humans, and they can be difficult to fight. Making adjustments to the human genome is not a simple procedure, there […]

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By Teppei Kasai TOKYO (Reuters) – The Apple Watch launched globally on Friday with a small queue of Japanese tech-addicts lining up in Tokyo for Apple Inc's first wearable gadget, but there was no sign of the excitement usually attached to the company's product rollouts. Buyers can take the smartwatch home from a handful of upscale boutiques and department stores, including The Corner in Berlin, Maxfield in Los Angeles and Dover Street Market in Tokyo and London, which Apple courted to help position the watch as a fashion item. About 50 people lined up to buy the watch at electronic store Bic Camera in Tokyo's Ginza district, while at the nearby Apple Store it was like any other Friday, according to Reuters reporters at the shops. “I buy one or two Apple products every time they release something new,” Chiu Long, a 40-year-old IT worker from Taiwan, told Reuters while queuing up at Bic Camera.

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Facebook has warned of heavy investments in 2015 as it steps up efforts to expand a collection of products that include messaging service WhatsApp, photo-sharing service Instagram and virtual reality headset maker Oculus Rift. As a result, Facebook's operating expenses rose 83 percent in the first quarter as R&D costs jumped 133 percent and marketing and sales spending nearly doubled. “The question is, can they keep costs under control and what will be the new revenue streams around video, Instagram and virtual reality around Oculus?” he said. Facebook's net income attributable to stockholders fell to $509 million, or 18 cents per share, in the three months ended March 31, from $639 million, or 25 cents per share, a year earlier.

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(Reuters) – International Business Machines Corp reported a 12 percent fall in first-quarter revenue as the technology company continues to shed unprofitable businesses to focus on cloud-computing initiatives. It was the 12th straight quarter that the Armonk, New York-based company reported a drop in quarterly revenue, including the effects of currency. IBM's revenue has been shrinking for three years now as the company sheds low-profit businesses such as cash registers, low-end servers and semiconductors and focuses on emerging areas such as security software and cloud services, but the new businesses have so far failed to make up for revenue lost to divestitures. Some top shareholders have sought help from activist investors to shake up the company, Reuters reported earlier this month IBM did say that it has generated $7.7 billion in total cloud revenue over the past 12 months, up sharply from the year before.

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China's e-commerce giant, Alibaba Group, has been fined 800,000 yuan ($129,000) by the price bureau in eastern Zhejiang province for violations by third-party sellers during promotions on its e-commerce platforms. Since Alibaba turned “Singles' Day”, a November 11 Chinese response to Valentine's Day, into an online shopping festival in 2009, the event has grown to similar proportions as Cyber Monday and Black Friday in the United States. “The company has been fined 500,000 yuan ($81,000) for matters related to Singles' Day pricing by third-party sellers on our Tmall marketplace in 2013 and 2014 and 300,000 yuan($48,000) for pricing in other promotions in 2013 and 2015,” Alibaba Group said in a statement on Friday. While pricing is handled by third parties, not directly by Alibaba, the group said, it would nevertheless reinforce pricing rules and regulations with sellers to protect consumers.