By Rob Taylor CANBERRA | Mon Dec 10, 2012 6:25pm EST CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australian police have warned travellers off using Apple's troubled iPhone mapping software after several motorists became stuck in a snake-infested, desert corner of the country while using their phone for directions. Police in southeast Victoria state said they had been f...

By Ayesha Rascoe WASHINGTON | Mon Dec 10, 2012 6:14pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department will not give A123 Systems Inc. the balance of a $249 million grant, a department official said on Monday, a day after the bankrupt battery maker was bought by a Chinese company. The official, who asked not to be identified because the proc...

By Miyoung Kim SEOUL | Mon Dec 10, 2012 4:39pm EST SEOUL (Reuters) - Liquid-crystal display (LCD) screens were expected to slowly fade and die, giving way to lighter, thinner and tougher organic light-emitting diode (OLED) panels in everything from smartphones to televisions. But LCD is refusing to go quietly as its picture quality keeps getting ...

By Noel Randewich SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Dec 10, 2012 4:31pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Intel presented new manufacturing technology that it said keeps it on track to launch a new generation of chips for smartphones and tablets as it rushes to catch up with Qualcomm and other rivals in the fast-growing mobile market. The world's largest chipmaker...

BOSTON | Mon Dec 10, 2012 4:29pm EST BOSTON (Reuters) - Google Inc began selling basic laptop computers to schools at a price of $99, meeting a price point that prominent MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte famously held out in 2005 as key to bringing computing power to the masses. The Internet giant said on Monday that it will be offering the steep educat...

By Sarah McBride SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Dec 10, 2012 4:19pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - For the first time, individuals and companies that do not themselves make anything - commonly known as "patent trolls" - are bringing the majority of U.S. patent lawsuits, according to a study by a California law professor. The sharp increase in this type of la...

By Tim McLaughlin BOSTON | Mon Dec 10, 2012 3:10pm EST BOSTON (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs bankers failed to raise red flags about Lernout & Hauspie's accounting irregularities more than a decade ago, costing speech recognition software pioneers at Dragon Systems nearly all of their life's work and about $600 million, a lawyer told a jury on Mon...

By Kate Holton and Alexei Oreskovic LONDON/SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Dec 10, 2012 2:57pm EST LONDON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - British TV decoder maker Pace Plc said on Monday that it had made an early-stage proposal to Internet group Google Inc to acquire its set-top TV box maker Motorola Home. "Discussions with Google are currently at a preliminary st...

SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Dec 10, 2012 2:17pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Several Google Inc Web products, including the popular GMail service, appeared to go dark for users on several continents on Monday. Google confirmed that "service disruptions" had affected GMail and Google Drive, its online storage service. The two products are part of Google's Apps s...

By Tim Kelly TOKYO | Sun Dec 9, 2012 3:54pm EST TOKYO (Reuters) - Panasonic Corp, Japan's struggling maker of Viera brand TVs, owns more than 10 million square meters of office and factory space, dormitories for its workers and sports facilities for its rugby, baseball and women's athletics teams. As it battles for Christmas shoppers' wallets in ...

By Lomi Kriel GUATEMALA CITY | Sat Dec 8, 2012 4:42pm EST GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Software guru John McAfee, fighting deportation from Guatemala to Belize to face questions about the slaying of a neighbor, said on Saturday he wants to return to the United States. "My goal is to get back to America as soon as possible," McAfee, 67, said in a ph...

By Aruna Viswanatha and Sarah N. Lynch WASHINGTON | Fri Dec 7, 2012 5:51pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. regulatory probe of Netflix Inc over disclosures made on its chief executive's Facebook page could prove an important test of whether a rule designed to prevent leaks to analysts can translate to the social media age. The movie and TV stre...

By Jeremy Wagstaff and Miyoung Kim JAKARTA/SEOUL | Fri Dec 7, 2012 5:34pm EST JAKARTA/SEOUL (Reuters) - What a difference three months can make. At the end of August, Apple Inc seemed on top of the world. Fresh off a resounding $1.05 billion U.S. legal victory over arch-foe Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the company was gearing up to launch the fift...

By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO | Fri Dec 7, 2012 2:58pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc is replacing the head of its in-house mergers and acquisitions group, David Lawee, with one of its top lawyers, according to a person familiar with the matter. Don Harrison, a high-ranking lawyer at Google, will replace Lawee as head of the Interne...

By Nicola Leske NEW YORK | Fri Dec 7, 2012 12:11pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cisco Systems laid out its mid-term growth strategy on Friday, betting on increased demand for software, services and security as it strives to become the world's leading information technology company. Cisco, whose business roots in routers and switches that move Interne...

By Harro Ten Wolde BONN, Germany | Fri Dec 7, 2012 8:50am EST BONN, Germany (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom hopes major investments in Germany and the United States and a long-awaited iPhone deal will turn around its fortunes, compensating for the dividend cut it plans to pay for them. The company said it would increase investments by more than an a...

WARSAW | Fri Dec 7, 2012 8:10am EST WARSAW (Reuters) - France Telecom's Polish unit TPSA expects its home telecoms market, which it dominates, to shrink by over seven percent next year because of economic woes and further regulatory cuts in mobile charges, its top executive said. TPSA, the former state monopolist, already slashed its 2012 outlook and fut...

MILAN | Fri Dec 7, 2012 7:45am EST MILAN (Reuters) - Italian police have been carrying out checks at the Milan offices of Facebook to assess whether it regularly declared its income in Italy, an investigative source and the U.S. company said on Friday. Italian officials have stepped up their efforts to collect taxes in recent months and have already targ...

MOSCOW | Fri Dec 7, 2012 5:36am EST MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's deputy prime minister will meet the board of Rostelecom next week amid reports he may suggest replacing the management of the state-controlled telecoms operator after the house of its CEO was searched in a fraud probe. Aliya Samigullina, spokeswoman for Dvorkovich, told Reuters on Friday he ...

By Melanie Lee BEIJING | Fri Dec 7, 2012 5:16am EST BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Xiaomi Technology is a fairy tale for nerdy entrepreneurs. Less than three years after its founding, the smartphone maker is valued at $4 billion and evokes Apple-like adoration from its fans, some of whom are desperate enough to skip work for a shot at buying the lat...

By Tan Ee Lyn HONG KONG | Fri Dec 7, 2012 4:47am EST HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese labor arbitrators have ruled against the father of a Foxconn worker brain-damaged in a factory accident in southern China, in a case that puts more attention on the labor practices of Apple Inc's largest contract manufacturer. The case involves Zhang Tingzhen, a 26...

Fri Dec 7, 2012 12:02am EST (Reuters) - Four top U.S. mobile phone service companies have agreed to set up a service to allow people to send text messages to emergency aid call center 911, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) said. At present, emergency 911 services can be accessed only through a phone call. The change will particularly help people with hea...

By Edwin Chan and Nicola Leske SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK | Thu Dec 6, 2012 10:37pm EST SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc plans to move some production of Macintosh computers to the United States from China next year, Chief Executive Tim Cook said in remarks published on Thursday, in what could be a important test of the nascent comeback i...

By Sinead Carew NEW YORK | Thu Dec 6, 2012 10:21pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - T-Mobile USA said on Thursday it planned to stop subsidizing smartphones, the first major U.S. carrier to do so, in a move it hopes will cut costs and woo customers frustrated with restrictions on upgrades in longer-term contracts. T-Mobile USA also announced an agreement...

By Noel Randewich SAN JOSE, California | Thu Dec 6, 2012 9:15pm EST SAN JOSE, California (Reuters) - Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics squared off again in court on Thursday, as the iPhone maker tried to convince a U.S. district judge to ban sales of a number of the South Korean company's devices and defended its $1.05 billion jury award. Apple s...

By Nate Raymond NEW YORK | Thu Dec 6, 2012 6:37pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - A group of investors including state pension funds in North Carolina and Arkansas will be the lead plaintiffs in securities lawsuits arising out of Facebook Inc's $16 billion initial public offering, a U.S. judge ruled on Thursday. The investors, in a proposed class-action...

NEW YORK | Thu Dec 6, 2012 6:28pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Broadcom Corp said on Thursday it would provide sample chips supporting the latest high-speed wireless services to its top cellphone customers in 2013. This could help the company compete better with bigger rival Qualcomm Inc, which is years ahead of its peers in Long Term Evolution (LTE), the hi...

By Noel Randewich SAN JOSE | Thu Dec 6, 2012 6:25pm EST SAN JOSE (Reuters) - Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics squared off again in court on Thursday, as the iPhone maker prepares to convince a U.S. district judge to ban sales of a number of the Korean company's devices and defend a $1.05 billion jury award. Apple scored a sweeping legal victory ...

SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Dec 6, 2012 6:25pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Netflix Inc said securities regulators plan to take action against the company because of a Facebook post by Chief Executive Reed Hastings that allegedly violated public disclosure rules, even as Hastings dismissed the contention in a public letter to shareholders on Thursday. "We remai...

By Diane Bartz WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 6, 2012 6:04pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Critics of Google, fearing that an antitrust investigation into the search giant by the Federal Trade Commission will not produce a strong conclusion, may be ready to take their grievances next to the Justice Department. At least one Google adversary met with Justice De...

By Jed Horowitz NEW YORK | Thu Dec 6, 2012 5:50pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co and BlackRock Inc voiced concerns about Hewlett-Packard Co and Research In Motion Ltd this week, saying business and operational struggles may affect the reliability of two of the biggest technology service providers. "We are concerned about some of...

SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Dec 6, 2012 5:36pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Advanced Micro Devices will scale back on purchases from manufacturing partner GlobalFoundries Inc in 2013, helping the struggling microprocessor company conserve cash as the personal computer market continues to decelerate. A distant runner-up to Intel Corp, AMD is trying to raise capi...

SAN FRANCISCO | Thu Dec 6, 2012 2:32pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc is in negotiations with Microsoft Corp about acquiring advertising technology that could allow the social network displays ads on other websites, broadly expanding its advertising business, according to media reports on Thursday. Facebook is in "serious" discussions with Mi...

Thu Dec 6, 2012 9:59am EST (Reuters) - The board of U.S. satellite radio company Sirius XM Radio Inc approved a $2 billion common stock repurchase program and issued a special dividend, giving a big payout to its biggest shareholder, Liberty Media. Liberty Media, which owns about 49.8 percent of Sirius' stock and is trying ...

NEW YORK | Thu Dec 6, 2012 9:53am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT&T Inc and Akamai Technologies Inc said they have agreed to work together to work together on content delivery network (CDN) services, which deliver content faster by avoiding Internet congestion, sending Akamai's shares up 8 percent in early tra...

Thu Dec 6, 2012 9:51am EST (Reuters) - Solid-state drive maker Stec Inc should consider strategic alternatives including a sale, its biggest independent shareholder said in a letter to the company that expressed "serious concern" about its strategic direction. Balch Capital, which holds 9 percent of Stec, said the company's...

Thu Dec 6, 2012 9:20am EST (Reuters) - Canadian telecom network equipment maker DragonWave Inc cut its third-quarter revenue forecast as shipment of orders were delayed, sending its Nasdaq-listed shares down 14 percent before the bell. The company now expects revenue of about $39 million for the quarter ended November 30, down from its prior forecast range of $43...

Thu Dec 6, 2012 9:08am EST (Reuters) - Apple Inc is planning to bring back some of its production of Mac computers to the United States from China next year, Chief Executive Tim Cook said, according to a report published Thursday. The company will spend more than $100 million to build the computers in the United States, Cook was cited as saying in an interview wi...

SAO PAULO | Thu Dec 6, 2012 8:08am EST SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc both opened their digital bookstores in Brazil on Thursday, hot on the heels of e-book offerings by local booksellers in a fast-growing online retail market. The simultaneous introduction of the two services highlighted the wide-open nature of Brazil's $12 billion ...

By Clare Kane and Leila Abboud BARCELONA | Thu Dec 6, 2012 7:38am EST BARCELONA (Reuters) - In Barcelona's Hospital Del Mar, Telefonica is doing more than connecting phone lines - it is also developing a lucrative new business keeping patients' hearts in good shape. A heart-monitoring program put in place by Telefonica is just one kind of machine...