Category: Biz Tech

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump waits to speak at a campaign town hall in Davenport, Iowa January 30, 2016. Reuters/Rick Wilking NEW YORK The millions of Twitter users following Donald Trump shouldn't expect a "follow back" from the Republican presidential front-runner anytime soon.Trump's campaign account @realDonaldTrump has nearly 6 million Twitter followers, the most of any candidate running for president. But he is picky about who he follows, with just 49 accounts listed as of Friday. That means he has

A Samsung Electronics laptop computer is displayed at a shop in Samsung's main office building in central Seoul in this July 23, 2013 file phboto. Reuters/Lee Jae-Won/Files SEOUL Tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd on Thursday warned of possible weaker earnings this year due to softer sales of gadgets such as smartphones, a trend that is also hurting rival Apple Inc and major chipmakers.The South Korean firm's warning came a day after Apple shares fell more than 6.5 percent, the biggest

A 3D plastic cut-out of the Facebook logo is seen in this illustration in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, May 13, 2015. Reuters/Dado Ruvic Facebook Inc (FB.O) smashed investors' expectations with a 52-percent jump in quarterly revenue as it sold more ads targeted at a fast-growing number of mobile users, sending its shares sharply higher after hours.The world's biggest online social network bucked the trend of underwhelming tech results from Apple Inc and eBay Inc, in the face of economic uncertainty around

An Apple logo is seen at the Apple store in Munich, Germany, January 27, 2016. Reuters/Michaela Rehle Apple Inc (AAPL.O) shares fell more than 6.5 percent on Wednesday, the biggest percentage drop in two years, after the company reported its slowest-ever rise in iPhone shipments and forecast that quarterly sales for the current period would post the first drop in 13 years.At least 16 analysts cut their price targets on the stock. The median price target is $135, according to Reuters

Lei Jun, founder and chief executive officer of Xiaomi, attends a session of the second annual World Internet Conference in Wuzhen town of Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, China, December 16, 2015. Reuters/Aly Song HONG KONG/ BEIJING Xiaomi Inc, China's second-biggest smartphone vendor, more than doubled Internet services revenue in 2015 to about $564 million, an internal document reviewed by Reuters showed, but still fell well short of an internal target of $1 billion.Lei Jun, founder and chief executive of China's most valuable

SAN FRANCISCO/MUMBAI As China sales show signs of cooling, Apple Inc(AAPL.O) is touting India's appetite for iPhones, betting that rising wages and an expanding middle class will pull consumers away from the cheap alternatives that currently dominate the market.In an earnings call in which the company reported meagre iPhone growth and forecast its first revenue drop in 13 years, the Indian market stood out as a rare bright spot for Apple.Sales of the company's flagship smartphone climbed 76 percent

A remote-controlled Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 Quadricopter is seen during a flight demonstration at the Google I/O Conference at Moscone Center in San Francisco, California June 28, 2012. Reuters/Stephen Lam/Files SAN FRANCISCO Google's secretive drone delivery project could include a component designed to store packages securely.A patent filed Tuesday in the United States by the company, a unit of Alphabet Inc, describes a "delivery receptacle" designed to take packages from an "aerial delivery device" for deposit to a secure location.The receptacle would

People holding mobile phones are silhouetted against a backdrop projected with the Twitter logo in this illustration picture taken in Warsaw September 27, 2013. Reuters/Kacper Pempel/FilesAn exodus of top Twitter Inc executives has raised concerns about the company's plans to win more users.Media head Katie Jacobs Stanton, product head Kevin Weil, the head of the engineering division, Alex Roetter and HR head Brian "Skip" Schipper will all leave the company, Chief Executive Jack Dorsey tweeted on Sunday night.At least one of

A logo is pictured at Google's European Engineering Center in Zurich April16, 2015. Reuters/Arnd Wiegmann/Files LONDON A British parliamentary committee will ask Google to testify about a back tax deal under which it will pay 130 million pounds ($185 million) to settle claims covering a 10-year period -- an amount the opposition Labour party has described as derisory.Meg Hillier, the Labour party chairwoman of parliament's Public Accounts Committee, tweeted at the weekend she would call Google, now part of holding company

A man opens the shutter of a shop painted with an advertisement of Reliance Communications in Mumbai, India, November 3, 2015. Reuters/Shailesh Andrade/FilesMUMBAI India's Reliance Communications Ltd (RCom) expects to reach a deal to sell its mobile phone masts business to a group of companies led by buyout firm TPG Capital Management LP in the next two weeks, its chief executive said on Monday.RCom last month signed a non-binding pact to sell the business to TPG and Tillman Global Holdings LLC,

Reuters/Daniel Munoz/Files BEIJING China will maintain plans to gradually phase out subsidies for green energy vehicles until they are fully eliminated in 2021 and allow the market to determine the direction of green car development, Finance Minister Lou Jiwei said on Saturday. But auto executives speaking alongside Lou at an industry conference in Beijing laid out differing visions as to which technology the market will favor: Tesla-style pure electrics or plug-in hybrid cars currently favored by Volkswagen AG and others. Green car sales

Reuters/Stephen Lam (Corrects spelling of Prem Sikka) By Tom Bergin LONDON Google has agreed to pay 130 million pounds ($185 million) in back taxes to Britain, prompting criticism from opposition lawmakers and campaigners who said the "derisory" figure smacked of a "sweetheart deal". Google, now part of Alphabet Inc, has been under pressure in recent years over its practice of channelling most profits from European clients through Ireland to Bermuda, where it pays no tax on them. In 2013, the company faced a UK parliamentary

BEIJING Chinese authorities are planning to tighten regulation of its fast-growing internet finance industry and crack down on illicit transactions, state media reported on Saturday, as the country works to rein in fraud on its online lending platforms.China's unregulated online peer-to-peer (P2P) industry has been dogged by reports of fraud in recent years, underscoring growing financial risks and increasing the potential for social unrest.More than 1,200 P2P firms operating in the sector are in trouble, either running away with investors'

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asks a question during the II CEO Summit of the Americas on the sidelines of the VII Summit of the Americas in Panama City April 10, 2015. Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Files NEW YORK Mark Zuckerberg wants to build an artificially intelligent assistant in 2016 to help run his home and assist him at work, the Facebook Inc founder and chief executive said on Sunday.Zuckerberg, who commits to a new personal challenge every year, revealed his plan in a

A Samsung logo is seen at Samsung Electronics' headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, December 18, 2015. Picture taken on December 18, 2015. Reuters/Kim Hong-JiSEOUL South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said it expects a difficult business environment in 2016 due to weak global economic conditions and heightened competition in key businesses including memory chips and smartphones.In a statement on Monday, Samsung said Chief Executive Kwon Oh-hyun told employees in a New Year's address that low global growth will persist

Russia's Telecoms Minister Nikolai Nikiforov attends an interview with Reuters at his office in Moscow December 9, 2013. Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin/FilesMOSCOW A social network account of Russia's communications minister was temporarily blocked on Sunday in a cyberattack carried out by hackers presenting themselves as a Turkish activist group and parading images of a warplane and Turkish flags.Russia's ties with Turkey suffered a severe blow when a Turkish fighter shot down a Russian bomber near the Turkish-Syrian border in November, a move described

 WhatsApp, a messaging service owned by Facebook Inc (FB.O), said some users were still facing issues while accessing its messaging service. The problems were primarily centered in the UK and Western Europe, according to DownDetector, a website that provides realtime overview of Internet and mobile services. "We appear to be having issues again," a WhatsApp spokesman told Reuters. The company had earlier said it had completely restored the service. WhatsApp, however, did not provide any details on what led to the outage, which began

LONDON The BBC's [TBBC.UL] online services, including its news website and iPlayer catch-up TV platform, were taken down on Thursday by a large web attack, the British broadcaster reported.The BBC's sites, which rank only behind Google and Facebook in visitor numbers in Britain, according to Internet analytics firm comScore, were hit from 0700 GMT, with many users receiving an error message rather than content.The broadcaster itself reported it had been hit by a "distributed denial of service (DDoS)" attack, citing

 MUMBAI/NEW DELHI India has become a battleground over the right to unrestricted Internet access, with local tech start-ups joining the front line against Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg and his plan to roll out free Internet to the country's masses. The Indian government has ordered Facebook's Free Basics plan to be put on hold while it decides what to do. The program, launched in around three dozen developing countries, offers pared-down web services on mobile phones, along with access to Facebook's own

The Cisco Systems logo is seen as part of a display at a technology conference in Chicago, Illinois, May 4, 2015. Reuters/Jim Young NEW YORK Cisco Systems Inc did not infringe a patent holding company's wifi technology, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Monday, reversing a near $64-million judgment against the networking equipment maker in the long-running patent dispute.After eight years of litigation that also included a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, the decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals

Construction sites and buildings are pictured amid heavy smog, on the third day after China's capital Beijing issued its second ever ''red alert'' for air pollution, in Beijing, China, in this December 21, 2015 photo. Reuters/Jason Lee BEIJING Air pollution in China could be big business.Two of the world's largest technology firms, IBM and Microsoft, are vying to tap the nascent, fast-growing market for forecasting air quality in the world's top carbon emitters.Bouts of acrid smog enveloping Beijing prompted authorities in

MUMBAI Online marketplace Snapdeal, backed by Japan's SoftBank Group Corp and others, will spend more on logistics and technology to better compete with Flipkart and Amazon's (AMZN.O) Indian unit, its co-founder said on Monday.Shopping online is becoming more popular in India due to the rising use of cheaper smartphones and e-commerce firms are struggling to cope with the growing demand and make faster deliveries in different parts of the country.The e-commerce market in India is expected to grow to

The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at the company's headquarters in Seoul July 6, 2012. Reuters/Lee Jae-Won/FilesSEOUL Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the world's top smartphone maker, plans an initial production run of about 5 million of its upcoming Galaxy S7 smartphones, South Korea's Electronic Times reported on Monday, citing unnamed sources.The paper said Samsung is planning to launch two different versions of its new flagship smartphone: a 5.2-inch flat-screen version, and a 5.5-inch, curved-screen version that will be called the

A North Korean operating system is seen in this screen shot taken in Seoul December 23, 2015. Reuters/James Pearson SINGAPORE/SEOUL North Korea's homegrown computer operating system mirrors its political one, according to two German researchers who have delved into the code: a go-it-alone approach, a high degree of paranoia and invasive snooping on users.Their research, the deepest yet into the secretive state's Red Star OS, illustrates the challenges Pyongyang faces in trying to embrace the benefits of computing and the internet while keeping

A map of China is seen through a magnifying glass on a computer screen showing binary digits in Singapore in this January 2, 2014 photo illustration. Reuters/Edgar Su/Files BEIJING China's parliament passed a controversial new anti-terrorism law on Sunday that requires technology firms to hand over sensitive information such as encryption keys to the government and allows the military to venture overseas on counter-terror operations.Chinese officials say their country faces a growing threat from militants and separatists, especially in its unruly

Vamien McKalin/Flying cars - it is something we view as more interesting than driverless cars. Who want cars driving us around when we can get in a car capable of  flying us from one destination to the next?Terrafugia is working to make this a possibility in the coming years. Recently, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved Terrafugia's plan to test its flying cars in U.S. airspace. If everything goes according to plan, the world could be on the brink of

A Samsung logo is seen at Samsung Electronics' headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, December 18, 2015. Picture taken on December 18, 2015. Reuters/Kim Hong-JiSEOUL Tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd will start making new chips for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc next year, South Korea's Electronic Times reported on Tuesday citing unnamed sources.The paper said Samsung's foundry business and Globalfoundries will jointly start producing a central processing chip as well as a graphics processing chip for AMD next year using their

Sanrio, the Japanese owner of the Hello Kitty brand, on Monday said it was investigating a report that its database was hacked and private information on 3.3 million users was exposed.The leaked data from the fan site of the Japanese toy company includes information like users' full names, email addresses and encrypted passwords, according to the report by security website CSOonline.com, which cited researcher Chris Vickery."The alleged security breach of the SanrioTown site is currently under investigation. Information will be

The Cisco Systems logo is seen as part of a display at the Microsoft Ignite technology conference in Chicago, Illinois, May 4, 2015. Reuters/Jim Young BOSTON Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc said on Monday it has launched a product review to look for tampering after rival Juniper Networks Inc's disclosure found code in firewall software that made it vulnerable to cyber attacks.Juniper warned customers on Thursday that it had uncovered "unauthorized code" in its firewall software, saying it could be

STOCKHOLM Swedish mobile telecom gear maker Ericsson announced it had signed a patent licence deal with Apple Inc, ending a year-long dispute and sending its shares up 7 percent on Monday.Ericsson did not specify how much it would earn from the deal but estimated overall revenue from intellectual property rights in 2015 would hit 13 to 14 billion crowns ($1.52-$1.64 billion), including positive effects from the settlement with Apple, up from 9.9 billion crowns in 2014.Investment bank ABG Sundal Collier

Reuters/Abhishek N. Chinnappa/FilesMUMBAI Flipkart on Monday denied a newspaper report that said venture capital firm Accel Partners had sold a small stake in India's biggest online marketplace to sovereign wealth fund Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) for $100 million."This information is incorrect. There has been no such transaction," a Flipkart spokesman told Reuters in an emailed statement.The Economic Times newspaper earlier on Monday reported the deal, citing two people aware of the transaction, and said the deal valued the Indian online

TOKYO Japan's Toshiba Corp (6502.T) said on Monday it will cut nearly 7,000 consumer electronics jobs after a $1.3 billion accounting scandal, in an overhaul that will streamline the sprawling conglomerate into a company focused on chips and nuclear energy.Toshiba also said it would sell its television manufacturing plant in Indonesia, and that eventual job cuts spanning the entire PC-to-nuclear company could be over 10,000 including previously announced cuts and those seeking voluntary early retirement.Due to restructuring costs, which

The logo of car-sharing service app Uber on a smartphone over a reserved lane for taxis in a street is seen in this file photo illustration taken in Madrid on December 10, 2014. Reuters/Sergio Perez/Files SAN FRANCISCO The U.S. Department of Justice is pursuing a criminal investigation of a May 2014 data breach at ride service Uber [UBER.UL], including an examination of whether any employees at competitor Lyft were involved in the episode, sources familiar with the situation said.Earlier this year,

The sign outside the Target store is seen in Arvada, Colorado in this January 10, 2014 file photo. Reuters/Rick Wilking/Files Target Corp (TGT.N) is in the early stages of developing its own mobile wallet, three people familiar with the matter said, joining Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) in posing a threat to recent entrants like Apple Pay.The fourth-largest U.S. retailer has not committed to launch the product, which would allow customers to pay for goods using an app on their mobile phones.