Gadgets, Billion | featured news

According to internal documents obtained by the website TechCrunch, Microsoft has offered $1 billion for the digital assets of Nook Media, Barnes & Noble's digital book venture. According to internal documents obtained by the website TechCrunch, Microsoft has offered $1 billion for the digital assets of Nook Media, Barnes & Noble's digital book venture.

Why would a company with $145 billion in cash even bother to issue debt? The answer has a lot to do with the frenzied state of the bond markets.

Apple is opening the doors to its bank vault, saying it will distribute $100 billion in cash to its shareholders by the end of 2015. At the same time, the company said revenue for the current quarter could fall from the year before, which would be the first decline in many years.

A federal judge on Friday slashed nearly half of the $1 billion damage award a jury ordered Samsung Electronics to pay Apple Inc. after a high-profile trial over the rights to the design and technology running some of the world's most popular smartphones and tablet computers. U.S. District Court Judge Lucy Koh lowered the damages awarded to Apple Inc. by $450.5 million for 14 Samsung products including some products in its hot-selling Galaxy lineup, saying jurors had not properly followed her instruction in calculating some of the damages.

Apple Inc lost a major ruling in its ongoing patent battle with Samsung Electronics on Friday, as a federal judge threw out part of a jury's $1.05 billion damages award against Samsung over a variety of phone products.

The world's leading chip gear maker ASML is buying U.S. group Cymer for 1.95 billion euros ($2.5 billion) to get control of a light-based technology crucial to making the smaller, smarter chips of the future.

The U.S. Justice Department is seeking a $1 billion criminal fine on Taiwan's AU Optronics for its participation in a scheme to fix prices on liquid-crystal-display panels.

Apple Inc. scored a sweeping legal victory over Samsung on Friday as a U.S. jury found the Korean company had copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone and iPad and awarded the U.S. company $1.051 billion in damages.

Best Buy Co Inc founder and former Chairman Richard Schulze offered to take the struggling electronics retailer private on Monday in a deal that values the company at between$8.16 billion to $8.84 billion.

On Tuesday, Apple is set to report financial results for the second quarter. Analysts are expecting net income of $9.8 billion. But whatever figure Apple reports won't reflect its true profit, because the company hides some of it with an unusual tax maneuver.