Apple, Electronics | featured news

Apple Inc and HTC Corp announced on Saturday a global patent settlement and 10-year licensing agreement that ends one of the first major conflagrations of the smartphone patent wars.

Samsung may have lost big to Apple in the courtroom, but it’s just scored a victory in the marketplace. The Samsung Galaxy S III has stolen the title of the world’s most popular smartphone from the iPhone for the third quarter of 2012, according to data from Strategy Analytics.

Shares of Apple Inc slid almost 4 percent on Wednesday to a five-month low, outpacing the U.S. stock market's post-U.S. election losses, and slipping into bearish territory.

Apple Inc said its sales of Wi-Fi only iPads had doubled from its last launch as it sold 3 million in the three days since the introduction of the two newest versions of its popular tablet computer.

Scott Forstall, who has run software development for Apple's iPad and iPhone products, and John Browett, the head of the company's retail operations, are leaving Apple, in a rare management reshuffling at the company.

Investors are sending Apple's stock below $600 for the first time in three months, after the consumer electronics behemoth reported earnings for its latest quarter that missed expectations and warned that profits in the holiday quarter would fall from last year....

Apple Inc. regained some momentum in its fourth quarter, selling more iPhones than expected while triggering some concerns about the iPad. But the results ratcheted up the pressure on the company for the current holiday quarter. The company is preparing to market a new set of products and is grappling with making enough iPhones.

Apple Inc's "iPad mini" will attract new customers but the higher-than-expected price will come as a relief to low-cost tablets such as Amazon.com Inc's Kindle, analysts said, in a muted reaction to the new tablet.

The full-sized iPad is like a hardback book. The new iPad Mini is the paperback version many tablet users have been waiting for.

The smaller device will officially be called the iPad Mini and be priced starting at $329, pricey when compared with popular 7-inch tablets like the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7, which start at $199. The iPad Mini will have a screen slightly smaller than 8 inches -- the original iPad has a screen just under 10 inches -- while having the same screen resolution of the larger version.