Speaking at his company's shareholders meeting on Thursday, Pegatron CEO T.H. Tung made some interesting comments on Apple's often rumored 'budget iPhone.' He said don't expect the handset to be inexpensive, as the "price [on it] is still high."
For those unfamiliar with Pegatron, it's a manufacturing company and one of Foxconn's biggest rivals. The CEO's comments seem to confirm earlier reports that Apple has chosen the company, over Foxconn, as its primary budget iPhone maker...
Aside from its iPhone sales, and total iOS device sales, another stat Apple likes to tout is its number of iTunes accounts. At the beginning of the company's WWDC keynote earlier this week, Tim Cook announced that there are now more than 575 million registered iTunes users.
Cook claims that iTunes is the largest online service with credit cards connected, which is pretty impressive. But perhaps even more impressive is its staggering growth rate. A new report from expert number-cruncher Horace Dediu claims Apple is adding 500k accounts per day...
An Israeli newspaper is reporting today that Google has won the bidding war for the popular crowd-sourced navigation app Waze. The two companies are in the process of finalizing an acquisition deal said to be worth $1.3 billion.
The report comes after several months of speculation that Waze was in buyout talks with a number of tech giants including Apple, and more recently Facebook—all with price tags in the neighborhood of a billion dollars...
Apple has today agreed to settle a long-standing class-action lawsuit with consumers over its AppleCare warranty service for the sum of $53 million. The suit, which was filed back in 2010, has to do with the company's policy on servicing liquid-damaged products.
In the filing, consumers claimed that the LCIs (liquid contact indicators) in older iOS devices were faulty, causing them to falsely signal that a gadget had been damaged by water. And Apple would deny customer warranty claims based on these defective indicators...
Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, ahead of a high-profile congressional hearing accused Apple of seeking “the Holy Grail of tax avoidance” by creating “offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars, while claiming to be tax resident nowhere.”
Needless to say, click-hungry media came all guns blazing in support for the government's stance. But not so fast, cautions former U.S. Senator John E. Sununu (Republican, New Hampshire), who points the finger at the United States government over instituting tax laws that discourage corporations like Apple from repatriating its $40 billion in overseas cash...
Apple finds itself in unfamiliar territory. Accustom to acting behind the scenes and producing gadgets with overwhelming appeal, the iPhone maker and its CEO Tim Cook are front-and-center in a debate over corporate taxes and how some companies navigate loopholes in the laws to keep billions from the IRS.
In a sign of how concerned Apple is about changing the U.S. tax landscape, it in 2013 may spend nearly $4 million on lobbying Congress - double the amount of just a year ago. Meanwhile, European leaders are asking tech giants to play by the rules...
By now, most of you have likely heard that Apple will be going to trial with the U.S. Justice Department next month. The iPad-maker is set to defend itself against charges that it conspired with book publishers to raise e-book prices.
According to U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, it doesn't look good. In a rather unusual pretrial move, the presiding Judge offered up her tentative view on the case. And she thinks it's likely that the court will find Apple guilty...
Apple CEO Tim Cook, along with the company's finance boss Peter Oppenheimer and Tax Operations head Phillip Bullock, earlier this morning took the witness table at a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill to face U.S. senators who grilled the three men on Apple's offshore tax practices.
This also means today was the day many Apple bloggers got to become experts on tax reform. We live-blogged the whole thing, but if you had better things to do than sift through the back and forth between Apple execs and senators John McCain and Carl Levin, Apple's got you covered.
Right on cure, the Cupertino firm has published Cook and Oppenheimer’s opening statements that detail its now widely reported stance on a comprehensive U.S. corporate tax code reform...
Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has been summoned to testify in a Senate hearing on offshore tax practices, now has to do something no other Apple CEO did before him: take the witness table at a congressional hearing on Capitol Hill.
Apple ahead of the hearing published a 17-page written testimony which details its push for a fair tax reform: it should be revenue neutral, Apple writes, eliminate all corporate tax expenditures, lower corporate income tax rates and implement a reasonable tax on foreign earnings that allows free movement of capital back to the U.S.
It's not clear why the U.S. Senators singled out Apple as many other companies don't repatriate the money earned overseas due to the steep 35 percent tax. It's important to note that what Apple and others are doing isn't illegal. Moreover, Apple is compelled to do what is in both their and their shareholders' best interest.
Anyway, you've hopefully grabbed your popcorn because things are about to get quite interesting if not downright messy. Go past the fold for a blow by blow...
Tomorrow will be a pretty big day for Apple CEO Tim Cook, finance boss Peter Oppenheimer and Tax Operations head Phillip Bullock as the three men are scheduled to appear in front of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation and give testimony regarding the company's creative approach to tax avoidance.
Apple ahead of the hearing published a lengthy document on its web site which pushes for tax reform on argument that America's tax system undermines the nation's competitiveness in the "digital economy" because the current tax code was written for the "industrial era." As expected, some U.S. senators beg to differ and think Apple is just being creative in its tax avoidance strategy.
This is bound to get more complicated when Tim Cook & Co. find themselves in hot water explaining to U.S. Senators how the company sidesteps U.S. taxes. Get your popcorn out...
Ahead of Tim Cook's appearance in front of the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation tomorrow, Apple has released a lengthy statement regarding its company tax practices and other items that will be used in its testimony.
Remember, last week we told you that Cook was expected to testify at a senate hearing this Tuesday on "offshore profit shifting," following Apple's move to take on domestic debt, rather than use its offshore cash, to avoid $9 billion in taxes...
Yesterday, word got out that Tim Cook would be testifying at a senate hearing next week over Apple's tax practices. The hearing was called after the iPad-maker took on billions in debt to fund its shareholder return plan, rather than paying taxes on its offshore cash.
The move reportedly saved the Cupertino company around $9 billion in various tax charges, bringing it to the forefront of an ongoing debate about the legality of offshore tax evasion. But in a recent interview, Tim Cook says that Apple isn't doing anything wrong...