By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) - IBM Corp has been sued by a shareholder who accused it of concealing how its ties to what became a major U.S. spying scandal reduced business in China and ultimately caused its market value to plunge more than $12 billion. IBM lobbied Congress hard to pass a law letting it share personal data of customers in China and elsewhere with the U.S. National Security Agency in a bid to protect its intellectual property rights, according to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The plaintiff in the complaint, Louisiana Sheriffs' Pension & Relief Fund, said this threatened IBM hardware sales in China, particularly given a program known as Prism that let the NSA spy on that country through technology companies such as IBM. The Baton Rouge pension fund said the revelation of Prism and related disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden caused Chinese businesses and China's government to abruptly cut ties with the world's largest technology services provider.

(Reuters) - Chipmaker Qualcomm Inc said Chief Operating Officer Steve Mollenkopf will become chief executive in March, replacing Paul Jacobs who will become executive chairman. Bloomberg News reported on Thursday that Microsoft Corp was considering Mollenkopf as a candidate for chief executive as it reaches the final stages of a process to find a replacement for retiring Steve Ballmer.

(Reuters) - British chip designer ARM Holdings Plc's shares rose as much as 5.5 percent after a media report that Google Inc was considering using ARM's chips to design its own server processors. By using its own designs, Google could better manage the interactions between hardware and software, Bloomberg reported, citing a source with direct knowledge of the matter. ARM, whose chips are heavily used in smartphones and tablets, declined to comment on the report. Google was not immediately available for comment. ...

By Michael Martina BEIJING (Reuters) - China's top economic planning agency has "substantial evidence" against chipmaker Qualcomm Inc in an antitrust probe, state media on Thursday quoted a senior official at the price regulator as saying. The official English-language China Daily attributed the comment to Xu Kunlin, head of the National Development and Reform Commission's (NDRC) anti-price-fixing bureau, in the agency's first public comment on the case. Qualcomm, the world's biggest maker of cellphone chips, said it believed its business practices were "lawful and pro-competitive". The company will continue to cooperate fully with the NDRC and is looking forward to a first meeting with the agency, Christine Trimble, Qualcomm's vice president for public affairs said in an emailed statement.

By Gerry Shih SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Twitter Inc was forced to nix a change to its "block" feature on Thursday after attracting a wave of protest from users who said the new policy empowered perpetrators of online abuse. The humbling reversal on one of the most sensitive policy issues facing the social network came as Twitter encountered user revolt for the first time as a public company. Under the short-lived change on Thursday, a blocked Twitter user could view or tweet at the person who blocked him or her, but that activity would have been rendered invisible to the victim as if the offending account did not exist. Before it backtracked, Twitter had said Thursday that the change was meant to protect victims of harassment who wanted to filter out abusive messages but feared that the act of blocking a user would prompt retaliation.

Microsoft Corp is considering Qualcomm Inc Chief Operating Officer Steve Mollenkopf as a candidate for its new chief executive officer, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, as it reaches the final stages of a four-month search process. The world's biggest software company is down to a "handful" of candidates with no clear leader, including a hitherto unconsidered technology executive, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters this week. In the past few months, most attention has focused on Ford Motor Co CEO Alan Mulally, a friend of Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's current CEO who announced his plans to retire earlier this year. Microsoft declined comment on its CEO search, and Qualcomm declined comment on Mollenkopf's potential candidacy.

Welcome to episode 105 of The Vergecast, a weekly discussion of all things relevant and irreverent in the worlds of art, culture, science, and technology. In this episode, Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller, and Dieter Bohn discuss Instagram's new direct messaging features, the head-scratching notion of a Nexus TV, and Spotify's expansion into new territories. Audio:

As Nokia prepares to pass the torch to Microsoft and exit the handset business, the struggling smartphone maker is finally gaining some momentum. Lumia smartphone shipments grew 19% on-year in Nokia’s most recent quarter, thanks largely to volume growth among Nokia’s low-end smartphones geared toward emerging markets. But things are also getting interesting elsewhere for Nokia. The company’s latest marketing push focused once again on high-quality cameras but this time around, it finally seems to be resonating with some consumers. The Lumia 1020, after all, is easily the best camera phone on the planet. Considering cameras are key to Nokia’s (and soon Microsoft’s) ability to differeniate in the crowded smartphone market, some potentially terrible news emerged for the companies on

Yesterday, Steve Mollenkopf was rumored as a potential candidate to take over as CEO of a big technology company and today's news is that he will indeed do so — only the company he'll lead won't be Microsoft as speculated, but the one he already works for, Qualcomm. With almost 20 years at the company, the last two of which were as Chief Operating Officer, Mollenkopf will step up to the position of Qualcomm CEO from March 4th next year. Mollenkopf is joining Qualcomm's board today and will carry on in his role as company president. Qualcomm's board approved Mollenkopf's selection unanimously, describing it as "a smooth transition to a proven executive."

You weren't the only person to waste a lot of time on YouTube this year. In March, the video giant reached 1 billion monthly unique visitors. Altogether, over 6 billion hours of video -- a 50 percent increase over 2012 -- were watched each month. But what exactly entertained us during all those late nights in front of the computer? To cap off the year, YouTube released a tribute video (above) to its viral stars -- including Mystery Guitar Man, Overly Attached Girlfriend, Annoying Orange, and a herd of stampeding goats -- and ran down the year's most popular videos.

Despite both Sony and Microsoft reporting similar new consoles sales numbers so far, AllThingsD says citing a new NPD Group report that the PlayStation 4 outsold the Xbox One in the U.S. in November – or at least it sort of did. The PS4 registered “the highest first month sales of a hardware platform on record,” according to the report, although the console was available in stores for a week longer than the Xbox One. Citing the same report, Microsoft’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb tweeted that the “Xbox One was the fastest selling console in North America [in November] averaging 101,000 units sold per day,” sportively adding that “both next generation platforms are off to a great start” in a following tweet.

We’ve already published our WTF of the week this week, but one report that ties Apple to the price of precious metals is definitely in the running for a close second. Money Morning’s Peter Krauth reports that “Apple is giving us some surprising indications that the demand for silver is much higher than its current price would have us believe.” Of course, there are plenty of factors that contribute to the price of silver at any given time, but Krauth believes that one of the first signs that demand is being misrepresented by price was the delay of the 27-inch iMac in January. Apple never said what caused the delay, but one popular rumor was that there was a shortage of industrial silver

While Amazon has no shortage of rivals, it's now reportedly gearing up to take on big players in the warehouse store business, like Costco. According to USA Today's anonymous sources, Amazon is prepping the launch of an online ...

The last two specs that have any meaning left on a smartphone's spec sheet are the camera and the battery. Recognizing the importance of imaging to its phone line — and the complementary need for connectivity in modern cameras — Samsung has decided to combine its Digital Imaging and Mobile Communications businesses into one. The impact of this reorganization isn't yet clear, and might not be felt for a while to come, but it does reiterate Samsung's interest in hybrid devices like the Galaxy S4 Zoom. Bringing the camera and phone designers closer together should also result in tighter collaboration between their teams.