France has approved a digital services tax despite threats of retaliation by the US. The 3% tax will be levied on sales generated in France by multinational firms like Google and Facebook.

The Qualcomm 215 mobile chip designed for entry-level smartphones features a 64-bit CPU and dual-ISPs, and will power commercial devices slated for launch in the second half of 2019.

Cisco aims to increase both its revenues and profit margins in an optical networking market shifting to components with its $2.6 billion bid for Acacia Communications. The deal would put the Ethernet giant in the long-distance market for the first time and help it retain business from web giants who are increasingly buying optical modules directly from component makers.

HTC's share of the global smartphone market collapsed from 10.7% in 2011 to 0.05% in 2019. Current and former employees blame poor business decisions and a company culture that is impervious to criticism.

The expected decline in profit is due to the lower than expected sales of its OLED TVs and the continued losses from its mobile business.

South Korean president Moon Jae-in urged Japan to withdraw new restrictions on exports in his first public remarks on a dispute that erupted last week and has intensified animosity between the two countries.

By designing its own baseband chips, Apple could protect its margins and be less dependent on vendors such as Qualcomm.

Japan's tightening of controls on the export of semiconductor materials to South Korea could hit Samsung's production hard.

China continues to stress that the US must remove all the tariffs placed on Chinese goods as a condition for reaching a trade deal.

The Chinese government made just 689 requests to Apple to access information about Apple devices, but the requests pertain to a massive 137,595 devices - more than seven times the number of devices in US requests and way over half the worldwide total.

The US government said on Wednesday it was reviewing license requests from US companies seeking to export products to China's Huawei Technologies "under the highest national security scrutiny" since the company is still blacklisted.

The Chinese telecoms group is determined to accelerate efforts to become self-reliant.

Samsung Electronics is likely to say second-quarter profit more than halved when it reports preliminary earnings on Friday, data showed, as a drop in memory chip shipments to China's embattled Huawei exacerbated a price-squeezing supply glut.

"It was embarrassing. I pushed it through before it was ready," said Samsung Electronics CEO DJ Koh. "I do admit I missed something on the foldable phone, but we are in the process of recovery."

Samsung has already sacked 150-odd employees at its telecom networks division and will conclude the entire manpower rationalisation exercise by October.

Intel, in collaboration with 10 industry leaders in automotive and autonomous driving technology, has published "Safety First for Automated Driving," a framework for the design, development, verification and validation of safe automated passenger vehicles (AVs). The paper builds on Intel's model for safer AV decision-making known as Responsibility-Sensitive Safety (RSS).

For the global semiconductor industry, the just-revealed truce in the "trade war" between US President Donald Trump and China's president Xi Jinping is welcome news but hardly the end of a poorly scripted economic melodrama that continues to pose dire consequences for the American semiconductor market.

President Donald Trump's decision to allow US companies to continue selling to Huawei followed an extensive lobbying campaign by the US semiconductor industry that argued the ban could hurt America's economic and national security.

Ren Zhengfei, the billionaire founder of Huawei Technologies whose daughter's arrest in Vancouver triggered a diplomatic crisis between China and Canada, said the company still wants to make the country its "global center for theoretical research."

Trump said Saturday that "US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei," as long as the transactions won't present a "great, national emergency problem."

One of Huawei's biggest rivals - Nokia - has said the UK should be wary of using the Chinese firm's equipment. The Finnish company said Huawei's telecoms kit had vulnerabilities that meant it posed a risk to 5G networks.

Israeli startup NeuroBlade said on Wednesday it has completed a $23 million early funding round, led by Marius Nacht, co-founder of Check Point Software Technologies, with the participation of new investor Intel Capital.

Jony Ive, a close creative collaborator with Apple Inc co-founder Steve Jobs whose iPhone and other designs fueled Apple's rise to become a $1 trillion company, will leave later this year to form an independent design company.

The 120W Super FlashCharge tech is easily a highlight of MWC 2019 Shanghai, as it could help set new battery charging standards for mobile devices.

A U.S. jury on Wednesday cleared California semiconductor designer CNEX Labs of stealing trade secrets from Chinese electronics giant Huawei Technologies while awarding CNEX no damages on its own trade theft claims.

The US and China have tentatively agreed to another truce in their trade war in order to resume talks aimed at resolving the dispute, sources familiar with the situation said.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday the outlook for the U.S. economy has become cloudier since early May, with rising uncertainties over trade and global growth causing the central bank to reassess its next move on interest rates.

Mike Filippo joined Apple last month with the title Architect, according to his LinkedIn profile.

"She hates the United States perhaps worse than any person I've ever met," Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network in an apparent reference to EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

Researchers find thousands of exploitable vulnerabilities; findings bolster Trump administration's stance

EU antitrust regulators want U.S. chipmaker Broadcom to scrap its exclusivity clauses with TV and modem makers to avoid irreparable harm to the market while they investigate whether this tactic and others are designed to block rivals.

China's largest telecommunications operator China Mobile said on Tuesday it will set up a 30 billion yuan ($4.36 billion) 5G industry fund and has already raised the first installment of 7-10 billion yuan.

Apple is expected to replace Intel chips that typically power MacBooks with ARM-based creations of its own, and we keep seeing rumors pointing in that direction.

Apple plans to expand its presence in Seattle by adding 2,000 new jobs in the city over the next five years, double the number it originally planned to hire.

Mass layoffs were planned for this Friday

FedEx says it's not realistic to screen sealed packages for controlled tech.

Prime Day is back and will last a record 48 hours next month from July 15-16, when Prime members can shop for more than one million deals.

Qualcomm may have to pay a second big fine to the European Union over antitrust concerns for how it handled sales of 3G chips for mobile hotspot and dongles, just over a year after the chip maker was issued a $1.23 billion financial penalty for illegally shutting out modem rivals from supplying Apple.

Bill Gates has a resume of career highs, but he calls Microsoft's failure to become Apple's chief iOS rival his "greatest mistake."

It'll reportedly have a pair of 9-inch screens and come out in early 2020.