 | Good afternoon |  |  | Broader bargain hunting driven by budgetary fears may depress overall holiday spending, mitigating any hefty gains retailers reaped from long lines of shoppers snaked around malls across the U.S.
While Black Friday has been the busiest day for years in terms of traffic at stores, it does not always mean that sales will soar for the season. Despite brisk sales right after Thanksgiving, total holiday season sales fell in both 2008 and 2009 when the recession took its hold on America's wallets.
Shopper-related injuries were popular topics on social networks such as Twitter. A shopper at a Los Angeles-area Walmart used pepper spray on a throng of shoppers and there was a shooting in a Walmart parking lot in the Oakland area.
Apple is well ahead of rivals in building brand loyalty among its users in a mobile market where the key brands are rushing to build as large a foothold as possible, a study by research firm GfK showed. Some 84 percent of iPhone users said they would pick iPhone also when they replace their cellphone, while 60 percent of consumers who use smartphones running Google's Android said they would stick with phones using the same software.
The Department of Justice and Immigration and Customs Enforcement resumed "Operation In Our Sites", seizing over 100 domain names in a bid to crack down on online piracy and counterfeiting, BitTorrent blog TorrentFreak writes.
Compared to previous seizure rounds, there are also some notable differences to report. This time the action appears to be limited to sites that directly charge visitors for their services. Most of the domains are linked to the selling of counterfeit clothing (e.g. 17nflshop.com), and at least one (autocd.com) sold pirated auto software.
Unnerved by a second profit warning in a month, investors sent HTC shares tumbling for a second straight day on concern the world's No.4 smartphone maker may be running out of ideas in an increasingly competitive market. Sales at HTC -- whose models include Desire, Sensation, Wildfire, Rhyme and ChaCha -- grew four-fold in a year and a half, and in the third quarter of this year it sold more smartphones in the U.S. than any of its rivals. But its cracking performance is sputtering as it fails to bring out new products to rival the iPhone and Galaxy in the high-end smartphone market. | | | Elpida to sell unit stake to Taiwan partner: report | | November 25, 2011 02:50 PM ET | | (Reuters) - Elpida Memory Inc, Japan's biggest maker of DRAM chips, agreed to sell preferred stock in its unit EBS Inc to Taiwanese semiconductor company Walton Advanced Engineering Inc for 3.75 billion yen ($48.27 million), the Nikkei said. | Full Article | | Ex-Olympus CEO says willing but not begging to return | | November 25, 2011 04:38 PM ET | | TOKYO (Reuters) - The British ex-CEO of Japan's Olympus Corp emerged from a frosty meeting of directors on Friday convinced its board would eventually quit over an accounting scandal engulfing the firm, but he said he wasn't "begging" to return and clean up the mess. | Full Article | | Patent firm IPCom says to stop HTC German sales | | November 25, 2011 02:52 PM ET | | (Reuters) - German patent firm IPCom plans to halt as quickly as possible the sale of all HTC smartphones in Germany, another blow to the Taiwanese firm just two days after it shocked markets by cutting its fourth-quarter outlook. | Full Article | | | BUSINESS NEWS
| | Bond market hammers Italy, Spain ponders outside help | | November 25, 2011 04:37 PM ET | | ROME/MADRID (Reuters) - Italy's borrowing costs soared to their highest levels since Rome joined the euro on Friday, piling pressure on the newly installed government of Mario Monti at the end of a week in which the euro zone crisis tainted even safe haven Germany. | Full Article | | S&P downgrades Belgium to AA on funding pressures | | November 25, 2011 02:55 PM ET | | NEW YORK (Reuters) - Standard & Poor's downgraded Belgium's credit rating to AA from AA-plus on Friday, saying funding and market risk pressures are raising the chances the country's financial sector will need more support. | 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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