China, Gadgets | 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.

Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest contract electronics maker, has acknowledged hiring teenagers as young as 14 in a Chinese factory, in breach of national law, in a case that raises further questions over its student intern program.

Apple has paid $60 million to settle a dispute in China over ownership of the iPad name, a court announced Monday, removing a potential obstacle to sales of the popular tablet computer in the key Chinese market.

Working conditions at Foxconn's gargantuan Chinese factories that assemble Apple Inc's slick gadgets have barely improved despite pledges this year to halt labor violations, workers' rights activists and employees said on Thursday.

Workers at a Chinese factory owned by Foxconn, Apple Inc's main manufacturer, threatened to jump off the roof of a building in a protest over wages just a month after the two firms announced a landmark agreement on improving working conditions.

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.

Foxconn, a leader in electronics manufacturing, said it will sharply curtail working hours and increase wages after a monitoring group found widespread problems in its labor practices.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, who has been in China this week, continued his trip with a stop at a Foxconn Technology manufacturing plant, a key supplier that has been under scrutiny for work conditions.

Mike Daisey, the off-Broadway performer who admitted that he made up parts of his one-man show about Apple products being made in Chinese sweatshops, has cut questionable sections from the monologue and added a prologue explaining the controversy.

The show says it was misled by Mike Daisey, whose one-man show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" was the basis of a program that aired in January. Mr. Daisey responded, "I stand by my work."