beijing

0

By Matthew Miller and Paul Carsten BEIJING (Reuters) – Facebook's co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg met China's propaganda tsar Liu Yunshan in Beijing on Saturday as part of a charm offensive in one of the few markets where the social network cannot be accessed. The rare meeting, reported by China's state news agency Xinhua, suggests warming relations between Facebook and the Chinese government, even as Beijing steps up censorship of and control over the Internet.

0

Apple Inc is expected to report a 1.3 percent increase in iPhone sales in the holiday quarter, its slowest ever and a far cry from the double-digit growth investors have come to expect. Apple sold 75.5 million iPhones in the October-December quarter, according to research firm FactSet StreetAccount, 1 million more than what was sold in the year-ago quarter. Shares of Apple, which will announce earnings after markets close on Tuesday, were trading up 0.3 percent at $99.76, after dipping to $98.07 in morning trading.

0

The stock briefly traded as low as $99.87, its lowest level since Aug. 24, a day when the entire stock market suffered a brief 'flash crash.' Apple shares traded as low as $92 that day. Apple stock closed down nearly 2 percent at $100.70 on Nasdaq on Wednesday, amid a broadly lower stock market. The stock's decline comes as a growing number of analysts are trimming their estimates for iPhone sales – the bedrock of Apple's business – with some predicting sales this year will decline on an annual basis for the first time since the phone was introduced.

0

By Julia Love, Siddharth Cavale and Pauline Askin SAN FRANCISCO/SYDNEY (Reuters) – The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus hit stores around the world on Friday, at the start of what is expected to be a record weekend for sales of Apple Inc's marquee product. Eager buyers – joined by at least one robot – flocked to Apple stores from Sydney to New York, itching to get their hands on new models boasting a 3D touch feature and an improved camera. “The first thing I'm going to do is take a picture,” said Lithuanian student Justina Siciunaite, 25, the first of hundreds to emerge with an iPhone 6s from Apple's flagship store on New York's Fifth Avenue.

0

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) – U.S. tech firm Disconnect has filed a complaint to EU antitrust regulators against Google's ban on its privacy app, accusing the Silicon Valley giant of abusing its dominant market position. Disconnect, set up four years ago by former Google engineers, says its app protects users of the Android operating system from invisible tracking and malware distributed through advertisements. It said Google had abused its position by blocking the app from the Google Play store last year, and had gained an unfair advantage over competitors by integrating its own privacy and security services into its own products.

0

By Dan Levine and Lawrence Hurley SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration has been locked in internal wrangling over what position to take in high profile litigation between two American technology giants, Google and Oracle, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions. It faces an end-of-May deadline to decide whether to take sides in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that will have wide implications for the technology industry.     The case involves how much copyright protection should extend to the Java programing language. Oracle won a federal appeals court ruling last year that allows it to copyright parts of Java, while Google argues it should be free to use Java without paying a licensing fee. Google, which used Java to design its Android smartphone operating system, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

0

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.

0

Fresh off a $532.9 million jury win against Apple Inc, a Texas company is again suing the tech giant, this time over the same patents' use in devices introduced after the original case was underway. Smartflash LLC aims to make Apple pay for using the patent licensing firm's technology without permission in devices not be included in the previous case, such as the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and the iPad Air 2. The trial covered older Apple devices. On Tuesday, a jury in federal court in Tyler, Texas found that Apple willfully violated three Smartflash patents with devices that use its iTunes software.

0

Chinese internet heavyweight Tencent Holdings Ltd apologized on Monday for rewarding WeChat app users who sent a message with the English phrase “civil rights” with a screen full of fluttering U.S. flags. The animation was intended to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, and was only meant to be available to WeChat users in that country, wrote Tencent's WeChat team on their official microblog. A technical error allowed users elsewhere to see the U.S. flags on their screen, including in China

0

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Fast-growing Chinese tech firm Xiaomi Technology Ltd Co booked 74.3 billion yuan ($11.97 billion) in pre-tax sales last year, up 135 percent from 2013, the firm's chief executive Lei Jun said on his official microblog account on Sunday.