This week Asia’s internet was rocked by an earthquake and the gang accused of the world’s biggest identity theft landed in court.
The region’s subsea cable sector, still reeling from last week’s typhoon, was hit by a 6.5 earthquake off Taiwan that cut access to foreign websites for net users on both sides of the strait.
Experts said the damage was as extensive as the catastrophic Boxing Day quake in 2006, but this time most services were restored within two days.
The US Justice Department prosecuted a 28-year-old Miami man and two Russian co-conspirators for making off with 130 million credit and debit card numbers – the biggest identity theft in history.
HP’s profit fell 19% and CEO Mark Hurd said he did not see an upturn. China Mobile’s interim net increased just 1.4% as it felt the effects of stronger competition.
ZTE posted a 41% boost in profit thanks to China’s 3G construction boom, and is about to supplant Nokia Siemens as the world’s third largest GSM vendor. KDDI tapped Motorola to help build a trial LTE network.
Unicom denied it had clinched an iPhone deal with Apple, but photos on a government website pointed to an imminent debut of the device in China.
Dell entered the mobile phone business with a 2G device customized for China Mobile. Qualcomm won a stake in Korean handset firm Pantech in exchange for $76 million in unpaid royalties.
iTunes now accounts for a quarter of all US music sales, a market research firm concluded. MySpace bought popular online music app iLike for $20 million.
Tycoon Li Ka-shing took a stake in music streaming service Spotify. His son Richard Li lost what could be his final court battle
over the PCCW privatization scheme.
Mobile subs in southeast Asia are tipped to rise18% this year. Bing clawed another half a point off Google in the search engine market.
Security firm Symantec listed the top 100 “dirtiest” websites, each containing an average 18,000 nasties.
Telstra copped a A$100,000 ($84,000) fine for violating the “do not call” register.
Embattled Sony cut the price of the PS3 – but it is still twice as expensive as the cheapest Xbox 360.
Employers are increasingly checking up on job candidates’ social media profiles.
An NGO created a web tool to track election violence and fraud in Afghanistan.
And a 12-year-old boy won a bravery award after photographing and sending an MMS of the thug who assaulted his dad.