Iphone, Asia | featured news

Apple's China sales rose at a healthy clip in its latest quarter, but the numbers belied growing concerns as the bonanza in high-end smartphones started winding down.

Thousands of workers went on strike Friday at a Foxconn plant in China that makes Apple Inc's iPhone 5, paralyzing production of the smartphone, rights advocate China Labor Watch reported.

Five people in China have been charged with intentional injury after a 17-year-old sold one of his kidneys to pay for an iPad and an iPhone, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Apple's iPhone was a hot seller in the company's first fiscal quarter of 2012, but that's nothing compared to what one analyst predicts we could see in just a couple of years' time. Morgan Stanley thinks Apple's efforts in China could pay big dividends by 2013.

Angry customers and gangs of scalpers threw eggs at Apple Inc.'s Beijing store Friday after the iPhone 4S launch there was canceled due to concerns over the crowd's size. Apple reacted to the outburst by postponing iPhone 4S sales in its mainland China stores to protect customers and employees. The phone still will be sold online and through its local carrier.

Acclaimed South Korean film director Park Chan-wook is wielding a new cinematic tool: the iPhone.

East Asia is the world's electronics factory, yet unless they are Japanese, producers are largely anonymous. Now HTC Corp., a Taiwanese maker of smart phones, is moving out of the shadows and trying to establish its own brand name as it competes with Apple's iPhone.

Foxconn, one of Apple's Chinese manufacturers, is asking its employees to sign a pledge that they will not kill themselves as the company tries to control the damage from a spate of suicides.

Chinese worker Sun Danyong was responsible for handling the prototypes of one of the world's hottest products — the iPhone. When one of the gadgets went missing and his company began investigating him, he jumped off his apartment building and killed himself.