TECHNOLOGY

Apple is returning another $100bn (£73bn) to shareholders from its huge cash pile as solid iPhone sales helped revenues rise 16% to just over $61bn. The company sold 52.2 million iPhones in the three months to March – only a touch below expectations, despite waning global demand for smart phones. Revenues at Apple’s services business that includes Apple Music and ...

WhatsApp chief executive Jan Koum is to quit the popular messaging service he co-founded. In post on Facebook, he said he was “taking some time off to do things I enjoy outside of technology”. However, according to a Washington Post report earlier on Monday, Mr Koum had clashed with parent company Facebook over Whatsapp’s strategy. He also objected to Facebook ...

Samsung announced on April 30 that it’s releasing both 128GB and 256GB versions of its Galaxy S9 and S9 Plus in the US. Preorders open May 1st on Samsung.com with the devices actually coming out on May 18th. (They’ll only be for sale through the company’s website.) The new storage options will be available in all three of the phones’ ...

One thing the latest holiday sales season made crystal clear is that mobile commerce is on the rise. On Cyber Monday — which set an all-time-high overall sales record of US$6.6 billion — mobile shopping totaled 47.4 percent of visits to retailers’ websites, according to Adobe, which analyzed 1 trillion visits to more than 4,500 retail sites. Revenue from purchases ...

1. He nearly worked for Microsoft. When he was a senior in high school he co-created an app called Synapse Media Player, an MP3 player that kept track of the user’s favorite songs and made playlists based on their choices, essentially an early Spotify or Pandora. Microsoft sought to acquire the company and its founders, but instead of working for ...

I’m not making a prediction here — I’m pondering a possibility. I spent a day with BlackBerry last week and it brought back memories of how Apple displaced the company around a decade ago. I, like a lot of folks at the time, thought what Apple was attempting was impossible. However, after the fact, it didn’t even look difficult. BlackBerry ...

The Time’s Up Movement has pledged support for the #MuteRKelly campaign after sexual misconduct accusations, some decades-old, against the RnB star. The decision, led by the Women of Colour (WOC) group, includes director Ava Duvernay and singer Janelle Monae. Labels, businesses and music venues promoting Kelly are to be targeted. He denies all the allegations. A statement urged women to ...

Logan Paul – one of YouTube’s most popular and controversial video-makers – has announced he will no longer release material on a “daily” basis. The 23-year-old began his Daily Vlogs series in September 2016, and has since built up an audience of 17 million subscribers. He said that his channel would survive, but that he wanted “to exercise [my] creativity ...

Facebook is now testing its “downvote” button in New Zealand, following a similar trial which took place in the US in February. The tool, which appears on some public posts, will let people hide comments and provide feedback about them. The BBC understands that there are no immediate plans to roll it out across the social network. Discussion site Reddit ...

The French government is being sued over the way it has sought to take over the France.com web domain. In 2015, France started legal action against Frenchman Jean-Noel Frydman, who had registered France.com in 1994. Two years later, a French court ruled in France’s favour and the government began to lobby domain host web.com to take control away from Mr ...