 | Good afternoon |  |  | Huawei, China's largest maker of telecommunications gear, unveiled the "Ascend" smartphone, touting as the slimmest on the market as it moves to boost its share on the global consumer market. Huawei unveiled the Ascend smartphones - available in black, white and pink - at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The 6.68-mm thin phone will be available in April 2012 in markets from North America, Europe to Asia and will cost roughly $400, but the final price was not been set., the company said.
AT&T announced plans to launch seven new smartphones and a tablet computer early this year for a new wireless network it is building. The product line-up will include a phone with a 16 megapixel camera from HTC using Microsoft software along with Microsoft-based smartphone from Nokia. AT&T said it will also sell three new high-speed smartphones from Samsung as well as a high-speed phone from Sony and Pantech. In an unusual pricing move, AT&T also announced that it would sell Pantech Element, a waterproof tablet based on Google Android software with a smartphone, the Pantech Burst, for a combined price of $249.
Olympus sued its current president and three ex-directors for several million dollars in compensation, sources told Reuters, as the company seeks to draw a line under one of the nation's worst accounting scandals. The company filed suit against its president, Shuichi Takayama, with the Tokyo district court on Sunday, along with three former executives identified by investigators as having engineered or helped cover up a $1.7 billion fraud at the firm, the sources said.
Netflix launched in Britain and Ireland, taking on BSkyB's premium drama and movies offerings and prompting Amazon-owned rival Lovefilm to offer a new cut-price service. Lovefilm, which has 2 million customers in its core British market, immediately announced Lovefilm Instant -- an Internet streaming-only offer to undercut Netflix -- in addition to its current offer that combines streaming and DVD rental by post.
Deutsche Telekom is overhauling its strategy for its U.S. wireless unit T-Mobile USA after AT&T last month dropped its planned $39 billion takeover of the unit, a person familiar with the strategy planning said, adding that no date had been set to unveil the plan but it would certainly not be before 2011 results are published on February 23. The company's Chief Financial Officer Tim Hoettges said one of the first steps could be to sell and lease-back the company's mobile phone masts.
A group of Chinese authors sued Apple for 11.9 million yuan ($1.9 million) in compensation for allegedly providing copyright-infringing books for download through its online store, Chinese financial magazine Caixin reported. The group of nine authors, under the mantle of the China Written Works Copyright Society (CWWCS), sued Apple in Beijing's No. 2 Intermediate People's Court for copyright infringement of 37 works, Caixin reported on Friday. | | | LATEST NEWS | | Apple's Siri puts voice-enabled search in spotlight | | January 09, 2012 04:20 PM ET | | Las Vegas (Reuters) - Apple Inc will again dominate conversations at CES, the world's biggest technology showcase. Only this time, the talk is extending beyond iPad and iPhone chatter to include "Siri," the voice app that is capturing consumers' imagination. | Full Article | | Intel readies Ultrabook marketing barrage | | January 09, 2012 04:19 PM ET | | LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Intel plans to make its biggest marketing push since 2003 for a new, super-thin category of laptops it has dubbed "ultrabooks," hoping to fend off major strides made by Apple Inc and its MacBook Air into the high-end personal computing market. | Full Article | | Facebook's newest frontier: inside the car | | January 09, 2012 04:34 PM ET | | SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - At restaurants, at movies and at the office, checking Facebook has become a regular habit for many of the Internet social network's more than 800 million users. | Full Article | | Authorities probe U.S.-China commission email hack | | January 09, 2012 04:53 PM ET | | (Reuters) - U.S. authorities are investigating allegations that an Indian government spy unit hacked into emails of an official U.S. commission that monitors economic and security relations between the United States and China, including cyber-security issues. | Full Article | | | BUSINESS NEWS
| | Alcoa posts Q4 loss on low metal price, weak market | | January 09, 2012 04:29 PM ET | | (Reuters) - Alcoa Inc , the largest U.S. aluminum producer, posted a fourth-quarter loss on Monday as slumping metal prices forced it to take a charge for cutting back production and market weakness continued, particularly in construction and packaging. | Full Article | | Swiss central bank chief quits over wife's currency deal | | January 09, 2012 02:12 PM ET | | BERNE (Reuters) - Swiss National Bank Chairman Philipp Hildebrand resigned with immediate effect on Monday, saying he could not prove he had been unaware of a currency trade made by his wife and wanted to protect the integrity of the central bank. | Full Article | | November consumer credit surges by most since 2001 | | January 09, 2012 04:29 PM ET | | WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Consumer credit surged in November by the most since October 2001, rising 10.0 percent on higher credit card debt and more student loans doled out by the government , a Federal Reserve report showed on Monday. | Full Article | | | | U.S. TOP NEWS | | | | | RELATED VIDEO | | |  |  | | A daily digest of breaking business news, coverage of the US economy, major corporate news and the financial markets. Register Today. |  | | Your daily briefing on the latest tech developments from around the world from Reuters expert tech correspondents. Register Today. |  | | The latest Reuters articles on M&A, IPOs, private equity, hedge funds and regulatory updates delivered to your inbox each day.. Register Today. | | | » MORE NEWSLETTERS | | | ODDLY ENOUGH | | | | | | |
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