By Ben Hirschler LONDON | Thu Dec 6, 2012 7:36am EST LONDON (Reuters) - Shirley Silvers thinks the "virtual doctor" who monitors her chronic lung condition via mobile phone is wonderful. "It is like having my doctor sitting on my sofa," said the 64-year-old from Stoke-on-Trent in central England, explaining how her temperature, oxygen levels and ...

By Lee Chyen Yee HONG KONG | Thu Dec 6, 2012 6:50am EST HONG KONG (Reuters) - Apple Inc's rank in China's smartphone market, which is set to become the world's largest this year, fell to No.6 in the third quarter as it faced tough competition from Chinese brands, research firm IDC said on Thursday. IDC's announcement comes a day after Apple's sha...

Thu Dec 6, 2012 6:46am EST (Reuters) - Lawyers for Samsung Electronics Co Ltd filed a redacted copy of a 10-year patent licensing agreement between Apple Inc and Taiwan's HTC Corp in a U.S. court late on Wednesday following a judge's order. The Korean electronics company had earlier filed a motion to compel Apple -- with which it is waging a bitter legal battle o...

By Ryan Vlastelica and Poornima Gupta NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:10pm EST NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc shares tumbled more than 6 percent on Wednesday, chalking up their biggest single-day loss in four years as fears grow about intensifying competition in the mobile device market. The sell-off, fueled by a forecast...

By Suzanne Barlyn Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:57pm EST (Reuters) - A spike in website names related to crowdfunding suggests an upcoming wave of websites through which small businesses and entrepreneurs could raise investments using the online strategy, state securities regulators said on Wednesday. The website names have soared to 8,800 from fewer than 900 in Janu...

By Alexei Oreskovic and Gerry Shih SAN FRANCISCO | Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:55pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc's recently acquired photo-sharing service Instagram removed a key element of its integration with Twitter, signaling a deepening rift between two of the Web's dominant social media companies. Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom...

By Dave Graham MEXICO CITY | Wed Dec 5, 2012 4:10pm EST MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A plaintiff in a case against Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) in which a Mexico City civil court made a $2.7 billion preliminary judgment against the U.S. firm said on Wednesday he and his partners were willing to accept a legal settlement for less. The ruling by the 49th Civil Co...

By Matt Cowan PARIS | Wed Dec 5, 2012 3:51pm EST PARIS (Reuters) - Instagram's youthful Chief Executive Kevin Systrom allowed himself a luxury at a Paris technology conference that he never feels comfortable doing in San Francisco: wearing a tie. The founder of the popular photo-sharing app, now owned by Facebook, looks less comfortable when aske...

By Claire Davenport BRUSSELS | Wed Dec 5, 2012 3:11pm EST BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Internet users in Europe may be allowed to copy parts of some copyrighted files legally under reforms to outdated rules governing the murky world of online piracy, EU officials said on Wednesday. Entertainment and software companies, who say they are losing billions of...

By Matt Smith DUBAI | Wed Dec 5, 2012 2:50pm EST DUBAI (Reuters) - Inter-governmental regulation of the Internet could deter investment, raise costs for consumers and hinder online access, a U.S. diplomat said on Wednesday. The United States has been leading efforts to stop a United Nations body from extending its authority into cyberspace.U.S. A...

By Alexandra Alper MEXICO CITY | Wed Dec 5, 2012 12:47pm EST MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc has until mid-January to appeal a Mexican civil court's $2.7 billion judgment against it, an official at the court told Reuters on Wednesday. The ruling, which perplexed the tech world, was issued on Friday. It involves allegations of breach of contract...

Wed Dec 5, 2012 9:13am EST (Reuters) - Apple Inc's iPad and iPad mini tablets would lose some market share to devices running on Google Inc's Android platform for the full year, research firm International Data Corp (IDC) said. Apple's worldwide tablet market share would slip to 53.8 percent in 2012 from 56.3 percent in 2011, while Android products would increase...

BRUSSELS | Wed Dec 5, 2012 7:19am EST BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU antitrust regulators have not yet made a decision in their case against Google and talks are proceeding with the Internet search firm to resolve complaints that it used its clout to block rivals, the EU's competition chief said. "We are in the process of conversation with Google to try to reac...

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS | Wed Dec 5, 2012 7:01am EST BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Philips, LG Electronics, Samsung SDI and three other firms were fined a record 1.47 billion euros ($1.92 billion) by EU antitrust regulators for fixing prices of TV and monitor cathode-ray tubes for nearly a decade. The European Commission slapped the biggest penalty, of 3...

By Jussi Rosendahl HELSINKI | Wed Dec 5, 2012 6:14am EST HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia is to partner with China Mobile, the world's biggest operator, to launch a version of its flagship Lumia smartphone tailored for the world's largest market. China Mobile, which has more than 700 million subscribers but no contract to sell iPhones, will start selli...

FRANKFURT | Wed Dec 5, 2012 5:29am EST FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Nokia Siemens Networks confirmed on Wednesday it would close its loss-making German services company, part of a broader revamp at the telecoms equipment joint venture. On Tuesday, people familiar with the matter already said the unit, which provides network operations and management services an...

TAIPEI | Wed Dec 5, 2012 5:11am EST TAIPEI (Reuters) - Qualcomm's tie-up with Sharp Corp will not affect Hon Hai Precision's talks with the Japanese firm to become its biggest shareholder and the deadline to reach a decision by next March still stands, a Taiwan newspaper reported on Wednesday, quoting Hon Hai's chairman. Terry Gou, chairman of Hon Hai Pr...

By Miyoung Kim SEOUL | Wed Dec 5, 2012 3:24am EST SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co pushed the anointed heir of the company Chairman closer to the top job on Wednesday as the it cemented a global lead in smartphones with a stock price that is close to record highs. The promotion of the snappily-dressed and bespectacled Jay Y. Lee, aged 44,...

By Sofia Menchu GUATEMALA CITY | Tue Dec 4, 2012 7:13pm EST GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - U.S. anti-virus software guru John McAfee, who is on the run from police in Belize seeking to question him in a murder probe, has crossed into Guatemala and said on Tuesday he will seek political asylum there. M...

By Diane Bartz WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 4, 2012 6:18pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Republican law professor nominated to the Federal Trade Commission said on Tuesday he would recuse himself from the agency's investigations into Google for two years to avoid any possible conflicts of interest. The FTC is investigating Google for allegedly breaking an...

By Matt Smith and Joseph Menn DUBAI/SAN FRANCISCO | Tue Dec 4, 2012 5:49pm EST DUBAI/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. and Canadian proposal to protect the Internet from new international regulation has failed to win prompt backing from other countries, setting up potentially tough negotiations to rewrite a telecom treaty. The idea, also supported...

By Noel Randewich SAN FRANCISCO | Tue Dec 4, 2012 5:17pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Intel Corp shares jumped more than 2 percent on Tuesday as the top chipmaker sold $6 billion in bonds to fund stock buybacks and other business activities. Intel sold the bonds in a range of maturities from five years to 30 years, according to IFR, a Thomson Re...

WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 4, 2012 1:49pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday upheld a 2011 rule that requires mobile data providers to offer roaming agreements to their competitors, rejecting a challenge brought by Verizon Wireless. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had sufficient authority to issue the rule, and the rule does...

FRANKFURT/HELSINKI | Tue Dec 4, 2012 1:45pm EST FRANKFURT/HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia Siemens Networks' (NSN) German services unit faces closure and 1,000 jobs are at risk as Nokia and Siemens shake up the joint venture, two sources said. One of the people familiar with the situation said the closure would be effective by the end of 2013 and will be annou...

By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO | Tue Dec 4, 2012 1:37pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc said it acquired a five-person video chat company on Tuesday, the second deal by new Chief Executive Marissa Mayer to bolster Yahoo's mobile capabilities. Yahoo did not disclose the financial terms of its acquisition of OnTheAir, but said the team w...

By Jonathan Stempel and Nate Raymond NEW YORK | Tue Dec 4, 2012 12:48pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Chinese computer programmer was spared prison time and sentenced to six months of house arrest on Tuesday after he admitted to stealing millions of dollars of software code from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Bo Zhang, 33, had pleaded guilty ...

Tue Dec 4, 2012 12:47pm EST (Reuters) - EMC Corp, the world's leading maker of corporate data storage equipment, and its publicly-traded subsidiary, software maker VMware Inc, are planning to merge their data analytics and cloud application assets, EMC said on its website. EMC said on Tuesday the companies expect to combine a number of divisions into the new grou...

NEW YORK | Tue Dec 4, 2012 11:56am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Verizon Communications, majority owner of the biggest U.S. mobile service, is not interested in buying spectrum from Dish Network and does not plan to make any big acquisitions, its top executive said on Tuesday. While investors have been speculating that Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen could make a...

TOKYO | Tue Dec 4, 2012 8:36am EST TOKYO (Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc will invest as much as $120 million in Sharp Corp, a cash injection likely to make it the struggling Japanese TV maker's biggest shareholder, and to boost Sharp's efforts to remain viable. As part of the agreement Qualcomm, through its Pixtronix subsidiary, will work with Sharp - which sup...

By Georgina Prodhan VIENNA | Tue Dec 4, 2012 8:10am EST VIENNA (Reuters) - An Austrian student group plans to go to court in a bid to make Facebook Inc, the world's biggest social network, do more to protect the privacy of its hundreds of millions of members. Campaign group europe-v-facebook, which has been lobbying for better data protection by ...

By Mark Hosenball ZURICH | Tue Dec 4, 2012 7:31am EST ZURICH (Reuters) - Secret information on counter-terrorism shared by foreign governments may have been compromised by a massive data theft by a senior IT technician for the NDB, Switzerland's intelligence service, European national security sources said. Intelligence agencies in the United Sta...

TOKYO | Mon Dec 3, 2012 7:37pm EST TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese struggling display panel maker Sharp Corp and U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm Inc have agreed to jointly develop next-generation displays, two sources familiar with matter said on Tuesday. The two are in talks for Qualcomm to invest as much as 10 billion yen ($121.5 million) in debt-laden Sharp, the s...

FRANKFURT | Mon Dec 3, 2012 7:03pm EST FRANKFURT (Reuters) - A service unit of Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) in Germany faces closure after losing a contract with its biggest customer, German daily newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported. The newspaper cited company sources as saying workers at NSN Services would be told in a meeting on Wednesday that Deu...

By Noel Randewich SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Dec 3, 2012 6:58pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Oracle Corp said it would give over $800 million back to shareholders, joining a growing number of companies accelerating dividend payments or declaring special dividends because of uncertainty surrounding the U.S. government's fiscal plans. About $600 billion ...

By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Dec 3, 2012 6:33pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc believes it has "numerous" grounds to appeal a Mexico City civil court's $2.7 billion preliminary judgment against the company, including both errors in procedure and in application of law, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday. T...

MEXICO CITY | Mon Dec 3, 2012 5:54pm EST MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - U.S. anti-virus software guru John McAfee said on Monday he has left the tropical paradise of Belize, where police want to question him in connection with his neighbor's murder. McAfee has been in hiding since police said they wanted to question him as "a person of interest" about the murde...

By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Dec 3, 2012 5:15pm EST SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc opened the polls on Monday for its roughly 1 billion users to vote on a variety of changes to the social network's policies, including a proposal to scrap the user voting system that Facebook introduced in 2009. Facebook also said it had "clarifi...

By Diksha Madhok KOCHI, India | Mon Dec 3, 2012 4:21pm EST KOCHI, India (Reuters) - Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of Indian information technology giant Infosys, stares out from a wall-to-wall poster in a modern office building near Kochi, in the southern state of Kerala. A caption reads: "We started Infosys in a room about this size; it's your...

STOCKHOLM | Mon Dec 3, 2012 12:14pm EST STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish telecoms gear maker Ericsson has filed a request with the U.S. International Trade Commission to ban U.S. imports of products made by South Korean group Samsung, The request from Ericsson, which said on Monday the products infringe on its patents, came after it sued Samsung for patent ...

By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY | Mon Dec 3, 2012 9:04am EST VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The secret's out. Pope Benedict's new handle on Twitter will be @pontifex, beating out other contenders that had been considered to showcase the thoughts of one of the world's most visible leaders. Benedict already has 1.2 billion "followers" in the standard sen...