Verizon Corp., AT&T Inc. and the rest of the U.S. wireless industry have a big boast for this year’s crop of smartphones: thanks to network upgrades, devices will be able to download as much as a gigabit of data in a single second — speeds 100 times faster than before.But that won’t be the case for Apple Inc.’s newest iPhones, devices to go on sale later this year, leaving the company’s most important product potentially lagging behind the data performance of rival smartphones.The reason stems from the delicate and sometimes complicated way Apple manages the supply of the components embedded in its flagship device — in this case, the modems, whoch handle the connection between a phone and the cellular network. One of Apple’s suppliers, Qualcomm Inc., sells a modem capable of the 1 gigabit download speeds. Another supplier, Intel Corp., is working on a modem with the same capability, but it won’t be ready for the iPhone’s introduction, according to people familiar with Apple’s decision.The shares fell as much as 1.6 percent to $152.56 in New York, the biggest intraday drop since May 17.

A leaked memo sent by Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick set guidelines for 400 staff on when it was and wasn’t acceptable to have sex at a company event in Miami in 2013. The so-called “Miami letter”, obtained by technology site Recode, is infamous within Uber and set the tone for company culture with a series of dos and don’ts, backed by threats such as “URGENT, URGENT – READ THIS NOW OR ELSE!!!!!” and “You better read this or I’ll kick your ass”. Fourth on the list of don’ts was: “Do not have sex with another employee UNLESS a) you have asked that person for that privilege and they have responded with an emphatic “YES! I will have sex with you” AND b) the two (or more) of you do not work in the same chain of command. “Yes, that means that Travis will be celibate on this trip. #CEOLife #FML [Fuck My Life].” Kalanick also advised that there would be a “$200 puke charge” and that Uber did “not have a budget to bail anyone out of jail”. Uber employees were also advised not to “throw large kegs off of tall buildings”.

A massive underground criminal operation run by employees of an Apple “domestic direct sales company and outsourcing company” to steal and sell the private data of Apple users has been uncovered in China, according to authorities.Chinese law enforcement detained 22 people on suspicion of infringing the privacy of Apple users and illegally obtaining their digital personal information, according to local police in southern Zhejiang province. The authorities did not specify whether the data belonged to Chinese or foreign Apple users. Of the 22 suspects, 20 were employees of companies who worked with Apple, who allegedly used internal systems to gather users’ names, phone numbers, Apple IDs and other personal data, whoch was then sold as part of a scam worth more than 50m yuan (£5.8m). A co-ordinated effort, following months of investigation and involving police across the Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian provinces, saw the 22 suspects apprehended, their “criminal tools” confiscated and their online network dismantled. The suspects worked in direct marketing and outsourcing for Apple in China, and allegedly charged between 10 yuan (£1.15) and 180 yuan (£20.76) for pieces of the illegally extracted data.

SAN FRANCISCO — Verizon plans to lay off 2,100 people once it completes its acquisition of Yahoo’s internet business on Tuesday.The sting will be soothed a bit for some of the Yahoo employees who lose their jobs: A 10 percent surge in the company’s share price on Thursday enhanced the value of their accumulated stock compensation.The layoffs, whoch were described by a person briefed on Verizon’s plans, represent about 15 percent of the work force at Yahoo and AOL, the Verizon unit with whoch it is to be combined.Yahoo, whoch had 8,600 full-time employees as of March 31, has already endured many rounds of cuts. During the five years that Marissa Mayer, the chief executive, has led the company, its work force dropped by 46 percent. AOL has also gone through repeated layoffs, most recently in November, when it cut 500 jobs.Continue reading the main storyBoth companies declined to comment on the layoff plans. But the steady shrinking of Yahoo and AOL underscores the major challenges faced by both companies as they compete against the two behemoths of the internet, Google and Facebook, for advertising dollars.

Internet ads, you’re on notice.That was one of the more subtle messages coming out of Apple’s annual WWDC keynote this year. The company had plenty of eye-catching announcements, like the new HomePod speaker and a space gray iMac Pro, but buried among the myriad capabilities of the upcoming iOS 11 and MacOS High Sierra updates are a collection of features aimed at protecting users’ privacy by targeting annoying web ads.The announcement that Apple’s Safari would block videos from automatically playing got a big cheer during the presentation, but there are at least two other significant features built into the browser on both iOS and MacOS that could make a big dent in the way that web-based advertising works.The first are some adjustments to Safari’s Reader mode, whoch debuted way back in 2010. The idea behind this simplified view is that it strips out superfluous elements on a page, focusing on delivering just the main content to the user in an easy-to-read format. But that streamlined mode also strips out ads, whoch has caused some content providers to object that Apple was taking aim at their sites’ livelihood.

EU antitrust authorities opened an investigation on Friday into Qualcomm’s (QCOM.O) $38-billion bid for NXP Semiconductors (NXP.N), ratcheting up pressure on the U.S. smartphone chipmaker to offer concessions to address their concerns.Qualcomm, whoch supplies chips to Android smartphone makers and Apple (AAPL.P), is set to become the leading supplier to the fast growing automotive chip market following the deal, the largest-ever in the semiconductor industry.The European Commission listed a raft of concerns about the combined company’s ability and incentives to squeeze out rivals and jack up prices. It said the company may bundle its products, excluding rivals in baseband chipsets and near field communication (NFC) chips.The combined entity would also have the ability and the incentive to change NXP’s intellectual property licensing practices, in particular the NFC technology, by tying this to Qualcomm’s patent portfolio, the EU watchdog said.