By Julie Bort


While Amazon has introduced a lot of cool gadgetry for consumers with its new Fire smartphone, it certainly didn't ignore business users.

Amazon has a surprisingly robust list of features for work, including some things that will make enterprise IT professionals happy.

1. Microsoft Outlook email, calendar, contacts. The Fire can link to a corporate Microsoft Exchange email system using Microsoft's ActiveSync tool. Not only will that sync your data, but it also makes sure the phone meets corporate security policies. IT should be pleased.

2. View Microsoft Office Files. The phone includes an OfficeSuite Viewer app so you can look at files like spreadsheets or PowerPoints, if not create them, right on your Amazon Fire.

3. Encryption. Fire can be set up to encrypt the data on the phone so that if it gets lost, hacked or stolen, no one can read your files.


4. Support for enterprise security software known as Mobile Device Management. This is super important to IT professionals. With mobile device management (MDM), IT can locate phones, remotely wipe them, add corporate apps and enforce security policies, such as passwords.

5. Files from the corporate network. Amazon promises that you can access your corporate network on your Fire phone via your user name and password.

6. Coming soon: support for the secure corporate network or VPN (virtual private network). Some companies require extra passwords and security to access files and apps. Amazon says it's working on baking this feature into Fire. In the meantime, it is offering a selection of VPN apps from its app store.

7. Easier corporate passwords, also coming. That's a feature known as "single sign-on" where you use one password to access all things on the corporate network that requires a password. Amazon says this is also coming soon to Fire.

8. Enterprise app store. Amazon offers something called "Whispercast" as a tool businesses can use to manage the Fire phone, Kindle Fire tablet and other Kindle devices. They can use this to add and remove books, files, and apps like a private app store.

9. Apps. Most importantly, Amazon says it's working on getting popular business apps into its app store. This includes apps to take notes, scan documents, prepare invoices, and remote desktop from your tablet. Free apps like Skype and GoToMeeting are available, too.

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By Alyssa Bereznak, Tech Columnist

Getting lost just got a little bit harder.

Google Maps is rolling out new features to its mobile Android and iOS apps that are meant to improve commuting by automobile, train, and even the Uber car service. The company announced the slew of updates meant to prevent "life's everyday hiccups" Tuesday morning in a blog post.

Here are five of its most notable features and how to use them:

1. When receiving driving instructions, the app will now tell you which lane to stay in or switch to.


One of the worst parts about early-day GPS was how little warning you got that it was time to exit. I can't count how many times I've been instructed by Maps to take a last-minute exit and missed it because it was too dangerous to swerve across three lanes in 45 seconds.

This new feature eliminates those frustrations and will make it both safer and easier to receive on-the-road instructions. There's no need to enable it. Simply search for directions from one location to the next, tap on the car icon, and the guiding slides will pop up.

On each leg of the trip, there will be a small white box in the upper-left corner of the screen, as you can see below.


It shows how many lanes are on the road, whether they're turn only, and — most importantly — which one you need to be in.

This may save all of us a little road rage.

2. You can save and search for certain areas of maps to access offline.


Technically you were able to do this prior to the update, but now the feature has been more prominently integrated into the design and made easier to use. You can also now label and store your maps in a designated location, so you can search for them while you're on the move.

To use this feature, search for a general location you plan to visit. It could be a entire city like "San Francisco," but it's probably better to choose a specific neighborhood of an area you're visiting.

Once the search loads, swipe up from the bottom of the screen to show the area's "location card."


From there, you'll see some basic info about the area, including the option to go straight into Street View. Beneath that you'll see a white box that says Save map to use offline. Tap it.


You'll be shown the map again. This time you can choose to pan around the area by dragging your finger on the screen, or zoom in and out by pinching. When you're all done, tap the Save button at the bottom.


From there, you can name the map or just go with Google's helpful automated suggestion. Then tap Save.


You may have to wait a few seconds for it to store the image, depending on how large the area is that you want saved.

If you want to access the map again, go to your main home screen, make sure your search bar is clear, and tap the person icon in the top right.


You'll see your Maps profile page, which includes your Home and Work locations, including locations you've saved, and recent searches. Scroll all the way down. At the very bottom you'll find your offline maps.


3. You can specify your departure and arrival times for public transit.


Anyone who regularly relies on a train or bus for transportation knows that service varies according to the time of day. Now you can search for specific arrival and departure times that fit your schedule. The app will take into account any timing factors and even let you know when the very last train or bus on a line is for that night.

To use it, search for public transportation directions as you usually would. When the routes come up, tap the small gray box at the top of the screen that says Depart at….


A box will pop up at the bottom of the page. From there you can choose the date and time. You can also specify if you want to depart or arrive at a certain time. Or simply pick Last to find out when the very final train on that route will come. Then press Done.


Notice that it'll specify the wait time between trains for the time of day you're searching.


Pretty helpful for any sort of late-night public transportation!

4. You can order an Uber ride from the app if that's your fastest option.


Sometimes the chance of catching a train is hopeless, there's not a cab to be seen, and you just need to get a car to pick you up. This is when the black-car service Uber can come in handy. In addition to being able to compare travel times among walking, transit, and cabbing, you can now see how long it'll take for an Uber to drive to the destination of your choice.

To use it, search for directions as usual. At the bottom of all your options, there'll be an one to Get an Uber. On the right of the box, you'll see the time it'll take for the Uber to get you to where you're going (no sign if this also incorporates the amount of time it takes for an Uber to reach you). The time will appear in green if it's faster that the route you searched for. It'll appear in orange if it's not as fast.


With a tap on the box, you'll be brought to your Uber app. Your current location will also be transferred.


5. You can search for businesses by filter.


Looking for a place to eat or drink on the go can be frustrating, because you're never sure about its pricing, whether it's disgusting, and if it's even open. Now you can search for locations around you with filters that include hours, rating, and price.

Just search for a "restaurant," "cafe," or whatever other thing you need to find near you. When the results populate the map, tap the three-lined symbol on the right of your search bar.


You'll be brought to a page of your search results. Tap Filter in the upper-right corner of the screen.


A page of controls will pop up, which allow you to look for businesses according to their rating and price. You can also choose options like Open now or From your circles, which mines suggestions from your Google+ friends' recommendations. When you're done adjusting the settings, tap Apply.


It's a cool feature, but it doesn't always have results to return.


This is particularly helpful if you just so happen to be out late and need to find the least-sketchy place nearby that serves tacos. Just sayin'.

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By Saundra Amrhein

SARASOTA, Florida (Reuters) - Dressed casually in a T-shirt, calf-length cargo pants and flip-flops, Nik Wallenda looks no different from many of the hundreds of spectators who have turned out in recent days to watch him practice for his next high-wire act.

There are no pretentious airs about him, and no spangled outfits.

"Hey, how ya doing, man?" he asked while stopping to shake the hand of a man trying to take his picture with an iPad and then pausing to high-five a few kids.

But what Wallenda is preparing for is anything but routine.

For two weeks in his hometown of Sarasota, Florida, the aerialist and holder of half a dozen world records has been practicing for what will be his biggest feat yet - a quarter-mile (400-metre) walk across the Grand Canyon on a steel cable with nothing but the Little Colorado River 1,500 feet below.

With no tethers or safety nets, the walk will be the highest tightrope attempt ever for the 34-year-old, at a height taller than the Empire State Building. It is scheduled to be shown live on June 23 on the Discovery Channel.

Last year, Wallenda, a seventh-generation member of the "Flying Wallendas" family of acrobats, became the only person to walk a wire over the brink of Niagara Falls.

Wallenda and his team are focused on creating the conditions he'll likely face at the Grand Canyon. The Florida heat, while humid as opposed to arid, cooperates, with temperatures rising through the 80s (27-32 C) by mid-morning.

But the winds that whip up and around the Grand Canyon walls pose another challenge. Wallenda recently faced heavy winds during a test run and practiced as Tropical Storm Andrea barreled onshore along the Gulf Coast.

To ramp up conditions without a storm, his team one day set up air boats in the water alongside the steel cable he uses to practice on, pushing winds in updrafts to 91 mph.

The canyon's winds won't bother him, he said.

"I'm not scared of them," he said while gliding along the cable, his flip-flops replaced by black moccasins specially made by his mother.

REAL DANGERS

As he walked and spoke, spectators watched from behind metal parade barricades. "I have to respect it, but I would never do what I do if I was scared," he said.

Wallenda regularly emphasizes mental concentration and positive thinking as the secrets to his success.

Since he started walking on a wire at age 2, he has been stung by a bee and had birds land on his balancing pole during performances.

He told reporters that he has no superstitions or rituals before his walks. He prays - his Christian faith plays a big part in his new book "Balance" - and hugs his wife and three children, telling them he'll see them in a few minutes.

With spectators' eyed glued on him, Wallenda and his balancing pole made one trip along the 1,200-foot (366-metre) cable and back, projecting the image of a body builder and a ballet dancer combined. Then he sat down - on the cable.

"Does anyone have any questions?" he asked the crowd, his legs dangling from his perch.

They did. How heavy is the balancing pole? Forty-three pounds (20 kg). Does he work out? Yes, at the gym. How long will it take him to cross the Grand Canyon? Twenty to thirty minutes.

Wallenda spoke openly about the reality of the dangers - including the ones that claimed his great-grandfather, Karl Wallenda, a great inspiration to him.

In 1978, the legendary sky walker fell to his death during a high-wire walk in Puerto Rico, a tragedy that Wallenda said studies showed was caused by a combination of bad rigging and his great-grandfather's age and recent injuries that left him too weak to hold on to the wire.

"There's a time to retire," he said.

But Wallenda is not there yet, as he readies to embark on what has been a dream for years.

It's a dream with a 1,500-foot drop below him, which will be "extremely mentally draining," he said.

(Editing by Kevin Gray and Eric Walsh)

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By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics scored a point on Tuesday over global rival Apple Inc in their long-running battle over mobile device patents.

A U.S. trade body found the Silicon Valley giant had infringed on a patent owned by the Korean company and slapped a ban on the sale of certain older iPhone and iPad models sold by AT&T Inc.

The U.S. International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency, issued a limited order stopping all imports and sales for AT&T models of the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G. The versions targeted are more than a year old but are still solid sellers.

All such exclusion orders are sent to President Barack Obama, who has 60 days to review them. If he does not veto the order, it goes into effect.

"We are disappointed that the commission has overturned an earlier ruling and we plan to appeal. Today's decision has no impact on the availability of Apple products in the United States," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said in a statement.

Designed to be a trade panel, the ITC has become a popular venue for patent lawsuits because it acts relatively quickly and it can order import bans, which are more difficult to get from district courts.

Samsung said in a statement that the ITC decision "confirmed Apple's history of free-riding on Samsung's technological innovations."

"Our decades of research and development in mobile technologies will continue and we will continue to offer innovative products to consumers in the United States," it said.

Tuesday's ruling overturned a decision by ITC Judge James Gildea, who ruled in September that Apple did not violate patents at issue in the case, which was filed in mid-2011.

Apple was found to infringe on a patent that relates to 3G wireless technology and the ability to transmit multiple services simultaneously and correctly. It is essential to ensuring that the devices are interoperable.

The U.S. Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the Patent and Trademark Office have all said that infringement of these "standard essential patents" should mostly be punished by monetary charges, not sales bans.

An exception would be in the rare instances where the infringer refuses to negotiate a license or to pay.

The usual expectation among companies has been that standard essential patents will be inexpensively licensed to anyone.

Samsung, which is battling Apple in court in some 10 countries, had also accused Apple of infringing on three other patents, but the ITC found that Apple did not infringe these.

Apple has a parallel complaint filed against Samsung at the ITC, accusing Samsung, an Apple chip provider, of blatantly copying its iPhones and iPads. An ITC judge in that case found that Samsung had violated one patent but not a second one. A final decision is due in August.

Apple has waged an international patent war since 2010 as it seeks to limit the growth of Google's Android system. The fight has embroiled Samsung, HTC and others that use Android.

The ITC's decision came on the same day that President Barack Obama weighed in on curbing a totally different type of patent lawsuit - those brought by companies called "patent trolls." The disparaging name is because these companies make or sell nothing, but they specialize in suing others for infringement. Obama asked for new federal regulations on these concerns and action from Congress.

The offensive - announced before Obama makes a fundraising trip this week to California's Silicon Valley - came as U.S. lawmakers and courts are seeking ways to reduce the number of unwarranted patent lawsuits.

Samsung did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The case at the International Trade Commission is No. 337-794.

(Additional reporting by Poornima Gupta in San Francisco.; Editing by Ros Krasny, Bob Burgdorfer and Christopher Wilson)

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By Padraic Halpin and Conor Humphries

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland is preparing to officially reject accusations by U.S. Senators this week that it acts as a tax haven for large multinationals and launch a diplomatic offensive to repair the damage done to its reputation abroad.

Ireland has been forced to defend its low corporate tax rate after the Senate said last week that iPhone and iPad maker Apple paid little or no tax on tens of billions of dollars in profits channeled through Irish subsidiaries and that it had effectively negotiated a special corporate tax rate of less than 2 percent.

Irish ministers and officials have lined up to insist that their tax system is transparent and that other countries were responsible if Apple paid tax at such low rates. Finance Minister Michael Noonan said Ireland would not be the "whipping boy" for the Senate subcommittee.

The government will likely put its response on the record this week, two government sources said, and will tell the committee led by veteran tax sleuth Senator Carl Levin that Ireland is not a tax haven, nor did it cut Apple a special tax deal.

"Undoubtedly there's a risk of reputational damage if we don't defend our corner and set out the facts, so of course that's happening," Ireland's European Affairs Minister Lucinda Creighton told Reuters, referring to the response being drafted.

"I've no doubt there will be a strong response, and we will strongly defend Ireland as a safe, a legally sound and a good place to do business. What you see is what you get, and that is why so many global companies are headquartered in Ireland."

Creighton was speaking from Dublin airport ahead of a four-day trip to Washington and New York where she will meet business leaders and politicians and address the prestigious Columbia University.

While the trade mission was planned long before last week's revelations on Capitol Hill, Creighton said she and her fellow ministers would use every opportunity to put right the "misinformation" heard in the Senate last week.

Ireland has a network in place to quickly spread that message. After it took a financial bailout in late 2010, Dublin set up its Economic Messaging Unit to coordinate communications between all government agencies, departments and embassies.

Irish embassies from Beijing to Buenos Aires were issued rebuttal points last week, a normal practice for major stories, while Ireland's ambassador in Washington held a conference call with government departments and the state agency charged with attracting investment into Ireland to discuss the next steps.

DINNER JOKES IN BRUSSELS

Within weeks of coming to office in 2011, Prime Minister Enda Kenny summoned all the country's ambassadors to Dublin to brief them on how best to restore a reputation he said was in tatters.

The fresh assault will be similar, one diplomatic source said, adding that the key focus would be liaising with a strong network of contacts in the U.S. Administration and on Capitol Hill, where the leaders of Ireland and the United States traditionally meet for lunch to mark St. Patrick's Day.

While Dublin was able to call on ex-President Bill Clinton to tell U.S. companies last year that they would be "nuts" not to invest in Ireland, the task could be trickier this time with the criticism emanating from its normally friendly ally.

"That was a blindside for Ireland Inc. because we always thought we were on the same page as Anglo-American capitalism. We thought it would stick up for us," said Hugo Brady, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform in Brussels.

"The PR side of it is really bad for Ireland because Ireland and tax haven are going together in mainstream conversation in Brussels. It hasn't done our image much good when people start making dinner jokes about Apple being an Irish company."

While Ireland will concentrate its energy in the United States to keep attracting jobs from the likes of Apple, Google and Pfizer, it will also need to keep an eye out for any backlash in Europe where its low corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent has drawn criticism in the past.

One influential member of the European Parliament said that while Dublin should be given time to adjust, it should adopt a standardized European Union tax system and ultimately a minimum rate of corporation tax.

"Ireland should take its hands out of other countries' pockets. Ireland's tax system is designed to tax income other people have earned," Sven Giegold told Reuters, underscoring how emotive the issue will be in elections in his native Germany.

"If you want to heat up a room in an election meeting in Germany, you have to talk about tax avoidance. It has become one of the most emotional topics. People are outraged."

(Additional reporting by John O'Donnell in Brussels; Editing by Will Waterman)

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon is once again shaking up traditional publishing models. This time, it's giving fans a chance to add their own personal touches to their favorite fiction - and get paid in the process.

This week, Amazon.com Inc announced "Kindle Worlds," which offers aspiring writers an opportunity to pen their own takes on franchises in books, TV, movies, even games and comics. The world's largest Internet retailer plans to license content, then accept submissions online that may then be sold through its Kindle ebook store.

Things will kick off with Amazon licensing three teen TV series - "Gossip Girl", "Pretty Little Liars" and "The Vampire Diaries" - from Warner Bros Television Group's Alloy Entertainment, Amazon said on its website. More content deals will be announced in coming weeks.

Amazon has in the past decade emerged as the most disruptive force in publishing. It popularized digital books with its Kindle store and e-reader, contributing to the demise of traditional bookstores such as Borders.

In its effort to legitimize fan fiction, the company is establishing a model under which it acts as publisher and pays fan-writers between 20 and 35 percent of sales, depending on length.

"There's probably not an author/fangirl alive who hasn't fantasized about being able to write about her favorite show," budding novelist Trish Milburn enthused on Amazon's website. "The fact that you can earn royalties doing so makes it even better."

(Reporting by Edwin Chan; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

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By Poornima Gupta and Padraic Halpin

SAN FRANCISCO/DUBLIN (Reuters) - Apple has operated almost tax-free in Ireland since 1980, welcomed by a government keen to bring jobs to what was then one of Europe's poorest countries, former company executives and Irish officials have said.

Chief Executive Tim Cook faced criticism from a Senate subcommittee in Washington on Tuesday over the iPad and iPhone maker's tax practices, which had been shrouded from full view behind secretive tax-exempt Irish-based corporate entities.

Apple, one of Ireland's top multinational employers, denied avoiding billions of dollars in U.S. taxes and said its arrangements helped fund research jobs in the United States.

The committee revealed that Apple's Irish companies, some of which are not tax resident in any jurisdiction, allowed the group to pay no tax on much of its overseas earnings in recent years.

Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the subcommittee, said Apple had sought "the Holy Grail of tax avoidance".

A former company executive and Irish officials told Reuters the almost tax-free status dates all the way back to Apple's arrival in County Cork 32 years ago.

Apple must have seemed attractive to Ireland and to Cork. Amid a generally moribund Irish economy, Cork had been hard hit by the closure of its shipyards and a Ford car plant, and in 1986 nearly one in four were out of work in the city.

In the early days, Apple's staff sat down to meals together. Now the company employs 4,000 in Ireland.

"There were tax concessions for us to go there," said Del Yocam, who was Vice President of manufacturing at Apple in the early 1980s. "It was a big concession."

In fact, the deal was about as good as a company can get.

"We had a tax holiday for the first 10 years in Ireland. We paid no taxes to the Irish government," one former finance executive, who asked not to be named, said.

Apple wasn't an exception, although it was among the last to enjoy such favorable treatment. From 1956 to 1980, Ireland attracted foreign companies by offering a zero rate of tax, according to the Irish government's website. Eligible companies arriving in 1980 were given holidays until 1990.

"Any multinational attracted into Ireland that was focusing on the export market paid zero percent corporation tax," said Barry O'Leary, CEO of IDA Ireland, which is charged with attracting investment into Ireland.

Apple said it pays all the tax due in every country where it operates. It declined to comment on the tax treatment it received in the 1980s.

As part of Ireland's accession to the European Economic Community, precursor to the European Union, in 1973, it was forced to stop offering tax holidays to exporters.

From 1981, companies arriving in Ireland had to pay tax, albeit at a low 10 percent rate, providing they qualified for manufacturing status.

ECONOMIC COUP

Apple's investment was a major coup for Ireland. At the time, the country was struggling with high and rising unemployment, double-digit inflation and a brain drain of the young and educated through emigration.

"We were the first technology company to establish a manufacturing operation in Ireland," recalled John Sculley, Apple's CEO from 1983 to 1993. He said government subsidies had also played a role in deciding to set up a base in Ireland.

Ireland also offered low wage rates - a big attraction when it came to hiring hundreds of people for the relatively low-skilled work of assembling electronic equipment.

Apple told the subcommittee it could not answer questions about why it chose Ireland as a base since it had lost the paperwork from the period.

The operation in Cork built the company's Apple II computer and would later build disc drives, Mac' computers and others. These would be sold in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

But having a tax holiday in Ireland would not, in itself, have allowed Apple to operate tax free in these markets.

Equipment assembly is not the kind of activity that economists or tax authorities usually credit with generating a large share of a technology company's profits.

More value has been associated with generating the intellectual property behind the technology - which Apple did in the United States - and with the selling of goods, which was to be done on the ground in France, Britain and India.

But none of these countries offered the tax advantages Ireland did. The key to minimizing Apple's tax bill was maximizing the amount of profit that could be ascribed to Apple's Irish operations.

THE ARCHITECT

This task fell to Mike Rashkin, Apple's first tax director, two executives from the period said. One called him "the father of it all".

Rashkin arrived at Apple in 1980, from computer pioneer Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) in Massachusetts, where he had learnt about tax-efficient corporate structuring in tech companies.

Apple had already decided to establish its base in Ireland when Rashkin moved to Silicon Valley, but he used his experience at DEC to set up a tax structure that took advantage of Apple's base in the country, the executives said. Rashkin declined to comment.

The Senate subcommittee's report reveals how the arrangement was structured. In 1980, Apple entered into a deal with its Irish operation, whereby the latter would share the cost of funding Apple's research and development. In return, the Irish unit would be able to enjoy rights to Apple's intellectual property for goods sold outside the Americas.

Apple secured the blessing of the U.S. tax authority, the Internal Revenue Service, for the deal, one executive said. The IRS gave Apple an advance pricing agreement, or APA, an agreement which establishes how the IRS will treat a transaction between affiliates for tax purposes, before it is entered into.

Many countries' tax authorities offer APAs, and companies say they are necessary to facilitate international trade and investment. Tax campaigners say tax authorities have been too ready to accept the pricing proposed by companies which apply for APAs.

The New York Times reported last year that Apple's low taxes were at least in part due to the confidential technology transfer arrangement.

The terms of the deal and subsequent cost-sharing deals were favorable for Apple's Irish unit. In effect, the Irish unit paid much less to its U.S. parent for the use of Apple intellectual property than it made from selling that property on to affiliates.

"Apple's cost sharing agreement (CSA) with its offshore affiliates in Ireland is primarily a conduit for shifting billions of dollars in income from the United States to a low tax jurisdiction," the subcommittee's report said.

Meanwhile, Apple also constructed a system whereby the affiliates which were actually selling the finished equipment would earn minimal profits.

The techniques Apple used over the years included selling goods to affiliates at prices which generated little profit at the retail level, or by paying sales affiliates commissions which are just about enough to cover their operating costs.

Rashkin's work and Ireland's accommodating approach had the desired result for Apple.

"We're very, very pleased," Apple's then-President A.C. Mike' Markulla said in 1981. "The Irish have really lived up to their promises."

Indeed, the accounts for Apple's main Irish unit, then known as Apple Computer Inc. Ltd, for 1989, the earliest year for which detailed accounts were filed, show exactly how effective the arrangement was.

The subsidiary paid $500,000 in income tax on profits of $317 million, a rate of 0.2 percent.

END OF THE HOLIDAY

In 1990, Apple's tax holiday came to an end, and in that year, the Irish operation's tax rate hit 4 percent, accounts from the period show.

At the same time, Apple's Irish manufacturing activities came under question as the company looked to cut costs by outsourcing. In 1992, the company announced plans to cut hundreds of jobs after deciding to shift some work to Singapore, which at this time was attracting increasing investment by offering tax holidays.

"They nearly left Ireland altogether," O'Leary said.

By this stage, the European Community had banned tax holidays of the kind given to Apple, so the company and Dublin negotiated an arrangement which had a similar outcome but fell within European rules.

The precise details of the arrangement were not disclosed, but Phillip Bullock, Apple's head of tax operations, indicated that it was linked to minimizing taxable profit.

"Since the early 1990s, the Government of Ireland has calculated Apple's taxable income in such a way as to produce an effective rate in the low single digits," he told the subcommittee.

The deal didn't stop Apple from shifting manufacturing work to Asia, but in the years that followed new jobs were created in Cork, in sales and administrative support for the European operation, the accounts of the Irish units show. Some manufacturing remains in Ireland, the subcommittee said.

An Irish government spokesman declined to even confirm it held discussions with Apple regarding tax, citing rules on taxpayer confidentiality.

From 1996 Ireland phased in a 12.5 percent tax on all corporate trading income, although foreign companies often pay effective rates lower than this by shifting money into tax havens such as Bermuda.

Apple's Cook told the Senate panel on Tuesday that Apple does not hold money on a Caribbean island or divert profits from sales to U.S. customers to other jurisdictions to avoid U.S. taxes.

(Writing by Tom Bergin; Additional reporting by Conor Humphries in Dublin, Jonathan Weber and Peter Henderson in San Francisco, and Tom Bergin in London; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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By Miyoung Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) - Overtaking Apple Inc as the world's leading maker of smartphones has stretched Samsung Electronics Co's in-house supply lines, and the South Korean firm is now courting some of its rival's main parts suppliers.

After costly courtroom battles over technology patents, the two gadget giants are now going head-to-head over securing the best supply of parts as they jostle to rule the $253 billion smartphone market. The two took 100 percent of the industry's profit in January-March, Canaccord Genuity data show.

Trampling on Apple's supply patch could make life tough for the U.S. firm as it prepares for its next product line-up including a cheaper iPhone for emerging markets such as China. Having Samsung muscle in on its suppliers could drive up costs and lead to component bottlenecks, disrupting product launches.

Samsung's huge in-house supply chain - providing parts from displays and powerful processors to memory chips and batteries - has been a core strength in its war for smartphone supremacy. As it now looks to widen its lead with products spanning both the high and cheap-and-cheerful ends of the market, Samsung's supplies have become stretched, prompting it to hunt elsewhere to ensure it isn't caught short.

"The next round of the post-patent battle for them will be over component supplies," said Lee Sun-tae, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities. "Who wins access to the best performing components in class in large quantity - that's the key ... and explains why Samsung is shopping for components more than ever."

SHARP AND SOUR?

Samsung has made overtures to traditional Apple partners such as Japanese display maker Sharp Corp and South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix. Samsung, which buys most of its mobile screens from its Samsung Display unit, last year placed orders with Sharp for high-resolution LCD screens for its popular Galaxy range of products, though it later canceled the order, said two people familiar with the matter, asking not to be named as the negotiations were confidential.

Sharp, in which Samsung bought a 3 percent stake earlier this year for $110 million, said this week it was seeking to boost sales to the Korean firm, potentially souring the Japanese company's ties with Cupertino, California-based Apple.

Samsung is also using more chips made by Qualcomm, another major Apple supplier, in its flagship Galaxy S, which went on sale late last month.

Some other suppliers who provide parts to both Apple and Samsung include Toshiba Corp in NAND memory chips, Sony Corp, in image sensors, and Corning Inc for its Gorilla Glass used in iPhones, iPads and Galaxy products, industry data show.

STMicroelectronics and Bosch, the only mass producers of pressure sensors used in navigation features, supply those parts for the Galaxy range, and could be tapped by Apple for future products, according to research firm iSuppli.

TINY OVERLAP, BIG IMPACT

For sure, Samsung still buys the majority of its components in-house, and the overlap with Apple on external suppliers is, so far, limited. BNP Paribas estimates that more than 80 percent of component profits generated by Galaxy S4 sales go to Samsung itself and its units.

But even a tiny overlap can be damaging as smartphones are constantly upgraded to more powerful computing and media devices - allowing users to take pictures, shoot video, play music, game online, watch TV and navigate - raising the need for more and smarter components.

"Any disruption in even small parts that you wouldn't think are really core, say headphones, can affect product launches," said Lee at NH Investment & Securities.

For example, Taiwan's HTC Corp, which has slipped out of the top-10 smartphone makers, reported a record-low quarterly profit last month after delaying the full launch of its flagship model due to a shortage of cameras.

"Having a single supplier carries a lot of risk. Bearing that in mind, Samsung may even consider using LCD along with OLED in its signature Galaxy S range to reduce its total reliance on Samsung Display," said Song Jong-ho, an analyst at KDB Daewoo Securities.

Samsung Display doesn't produce LCDs for smartphones so as it boosts sales at the lower end of market it needs to outsource LCDs. The Korean firm uses the more expensive OLED display only on its high-end models.

NOT SO DIFFERENT

Outsourcing more components could mean Samsung will lose some of its hardware differentiation - a big selling point for the Galaxy range - and be seen as just selling generic phones, say some analysts.

The Exynos 5 Octa processor, which Samsung touted as having 8 brains designed to maximize energy efficiency while multi-tasking, is not used in the S4 models sold in the United States. Instead, Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips will power the phone in that crucial market, with Exynos chips used in select markets such as South Korea and some European countries.

"Given that Qualcomm chips are also found in rival products, and the much-heralded launch of smartphones with flexible display appears to be delayed, I'm worried Samsung is losing its hardware differentiator," said BNP Paribas analyst Peter Yu.

Samsung says both Qualcomm and its own chips have passed its rigorous quality standards and both will provide satisfactory user experience. "We'll continue to resort to multi vendors to ensure smooth supply," Kim Hyunjoon, vice president of Samsung's mobile business, told analysts on a recent earnings call.

Samsung's Exynos processors accounted for around 30 percent of the S3, but that is likely to fall to around 10 percent in the S4, analysts said.

"Qualcomm's latest chips are getting good reviews from carriers, which I think forced Samsung to switch in favor of Qualcomm from Exynos in the S4," said KDB Daewoo's Song. "There's even a possibility Apple may drop its own processor and go for Qualcomm chips in some future devices."

FLEXI-TIME?

Losing some of its hardware appeal and taking longer than expected to come up with innovative products such as flexible or wearable devices are additional challenges for Samsung, which is getting only mixed reviews for its efforts to improve software capability to integrate better with hardware.

In a recent review of the S4, Walt Mossberg, a gadget expert for the Wall Street Journal, said Samsung's software was "often gimmicky, duplicative of standard Android apps, or, in some cases, only intermittently functional.

Despite the lukewarm reviews, consumers keep snapping up the S4, according to carriers. For the first time in at least three years, Samsung last year spent more on marketing than on research and development, seeking to pick up market share in the absence of new, competing models from Apple. And Samsung's operating profit is seen topping Apple's this quarter for the first time in years, J.P. Morgan analysts predict.

"There's not much left in terms of what you can do to really differentiate your product as everybody's thinking something similar - flexible or wearable," said NH Investment & Securities' Lee.

In late 2011, Samsung told analysts it planned to introduce flexible displays on handsets "some time in 2012, hopefully the earlier part than later", but a year later it said the technology was still "under development." It again demonstrated prototypes of flexible phones earlier this year, but executives now say they can't disclose the timing of flexible smartphones.

Rivals are also moving fast. LG Electronics Inc, the third-biggest smartphone maker in January-March on strong sales of its high-end Optimus G model, said last month it planned to introduce an unbreakable smartphone by the year-end.

(Additional reporting by Mari Saito and Reiji Murai in TOKYO; Graphic by Catherine Trevethan; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

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By Patrick Temple-West and Kevin Drawbaugh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook made no apology on Tuesday for the iPad maker saving billions of dollars in U.S. taxes through Irish subsidiaries and told lawmakers that his company backs corporate tax reform, even though it may end up paying more.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has found that Apple in 2012 alone avoided paying $9 billion in U.S. taxes, using a strategy involving three offshore units with no discernible tax home, or "residence."

Cook, in his first congressional testimony since becoming Apple CEO in 2011, said his company is a major taxpayer, handing over nearly $6 billion in cash to the U.S. government in 2012.

"We expect to pay even more this year," Cook said. "We pay all the taxes we owe."

But Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the subcommittee and a veteran tax sleuth, said Apple had sought "the Holy Grail of tax avoidance," creating one Irish unit that paid no income taxes to any national tax authority for the past five years.

Levin said Apple used Ireland as a base for a web of offshore holding companies and negotiated a deal with the Irish government for a tax rate of less than 2 percent. The top U.S. corporate tax rate is 35 percent, one of the world's highest.

Cook said Apple did not depend on tax gimmicks. "We don't move intellectual property offshore and use it to sell our products back to the United States to avoid taxes. We don't stash money on some Caribbean island," he said.

In Ireland, where low corporate taxes have been an economic development tool for many years, the government said it had not made a special tax deal with Apple. If Apple's tax rate was too low, it was the fault of other countries, deputy prime minister Eamon Gilmore told national broadcaster RTE on Tuesday.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Tuesday that President Barack Obama "thinks it is inexplicable that our tax code would actually be written in a way that rewards companies for taking jobs and profits offshore."

HP, MICROSOFT PRECEDED APPLE

Subcommittee staffers said on Monday that Apple was not breaking any laws and had cooperated fully with the inquiry.

Levin's panel has previously examined what it called tax avoidance by other U.S. technology giants, including Hewlett-Packard Co and Microsoft Corp. The senator said Apple has used similar tax avoidance strategies.

Senator John McCain praised Apple as a success story, but he said the company's tax strategy reflected a "flawed" tax system.

"For years, Apple has opted to forego fully contributing to the U.S. Treasury and to American society by shifting profits and circumventing U.S. taxes," McCain said.

Cook said Apple agreed with those in Congress who want to reform corporate taxes and called for changes that include lower corporate income tax rates and a reasonable tax on foreign earnings.

"Apple recognizes these and other improvements in the U.S. corporate tax system may increase the company's taxes," he said in prepared testimony.

Many U.S. multinationals take advantage of a tax law that allows profits earned abroad to be tax-free as long as they are not brought into the United States, or "repatriated." Total U.S. corporate profits parked offshore rose 15 percent to $1.9 trillion last year, according to research firm Audit Analytics.

Taking advantage of this law and others, the offshore earnings of U.S. companies have risen 70 percent in the past five years, Audit Analytics said two weeks ago.

"The baldness of the Apple strategy surprises me more than anything else," said University of Southern California Law Professor Edward Kleinbard. "European member states are going to be very angry with Apple and very angry with Ireland."

OFFSHORE MANEUVERS

Offshore profits are typically taxed by the countries in which they are earned, but companies work hard to move offshore profits into countries with lower tax rates, like Ireland.

One way this is done is through "transfer pricing," or the management of moving goods and services across international borders from one corporate unit to another. Sometimes companies move valuable intellectual property to a low-tax country, then bring profits derived from its use into that country through royalty payments and other structures.

Levin's panel said Apple used a cost-sharing agreement "to transfer valuable intellectual property assets offshore and shift the resulting profits to a tax haven jurisdiction."

Assessing taxes on these arrangements is one of the biggest challenges facing U.S. tax collectors, said Mark Mazur, assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury Department, who testified after Cook.

The panel also said Apple took advantage of loopholes in tax law and regulations known as "check the box" and "look through" that let some offshore units be disregarded for tax purposes, sheltering substantial profits from taxation.

Levin has unsuccessfully called for closing the "check the box" and "look through" provisions of the tax code.

The Levin inquiry comes at a turbulent time in tax circles, with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service under investigation because of the way agents handled conservative political groups' applications for tax-exempt status.

It is not clear, however, whether that controversy and Levin's allegations will lead to an overhaul of the U.S. tax code. Tax law writers in Congress had been inching forward on such a project before the IRS scandal erupted earlier this month. Levin's inquiry has been under way for months.

Shares of Apple closed down 0.7 percent at $439.66 on Tuesday.

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton in Washington, Tom Bergin in London, Conor Humphries in Cork, Padraic Halpin in Dublin; Writing by Kevin Drawbaugh; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Tim Dobbyn)

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By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google staged four discussions expounding on the finer points of its "Glass" wearable computer during this week's developer conference. Missing from the agenda, however, was a session on etiquette when using the recording-capable gadget, which some attendees faithfully wore everywhere - including to the crowded bathrooms.

Google Glass, a cross between a mobile computer and eyeglasses that can both record video and surf the Internet, is now available to a select few but is already among the year's most buzz-worthy new gadgets. The device has geeks all aflutter but is unnerving everyone from lawmakers to casino operators worried about the potential for hitherto unimagined privacy and policy violations.

"I had a friend and we're sitting at dinner and about 30 minutes into it she said, 'You know those things freak me out,'" said Allen Firstenberg, a technology consultant at the Google developers conference. He has been wearing Glass for about a week but offered to take them off for the comfort of his dinner companion.

On another occasion, Firstenberg admitted to walking into a bathroom wearing his Glass without realizing it.

"Most of the day I totally forget it's there," he said.

Many believe wearable computers represent the next big shift in technology, just as smartphones evolved from personal computers. Apple and Samsung are said to be working on other forms of wearable technology.

The test version of Glass looks like a clear pair of eyeglasses with a hefty slab along the right side. Since it began shipping to a couple thousand carefully selected early adopters who paid about $1,500 for the device, it has inspired a bit of ridicule - from a parody on "Saturday Night Live" to a popular blog poking fun at its users.

Other industry experts take a more serious tack, pointing out the potential for misuse because Glass can record video far less conspicuously than a handheld device.

Glass also has won many fans. Google and some early users maintain that privacy fears are overblown. As with traditional video cameras, a tiny light blinks on to let people know when it is recording.

Several Glass wearers at the developers conference said they whip the device off in inappropriate situations, such as in gym locker rooms or work meetings. Michael Evans, a Web developer from Washington, D.C., attending the Google conference, said he removed his Glass when he went to the movies, even though the device would be ill-suited for recording a feature-length film.

"I just figured I don't want to be the first guy kicked out of the movies," he said.

NO GLASS ALLOWED

A stamp-sized electronic screen mounted on the left side of a pair of eyeglass frames, Glass can record video, access email, provide turn-by-turn driving directions and retrieve info from the Web by connecting wirelessly to a user's cell phone.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt dismissed concerns about the brave new world of wearable computers during a talk at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in April.

"Criticisms are inevitably from people who are afraid of change or who have not figured out that there will be an adaptation of society to it," he said.

Schmidt acknowledged that there are certain places where Glass will not be appropriate but that he believed new rules of social etiquette will coalesce over time. Firstenberg said it will take time for all sides to get comfortable with the new technology.

"I don't think we should go into the conversation assuming that Glass is bad," he said.

Indeed, previous technology innovations such as mobile phones and wireless headsets that initially raised concerns are now subject to tacit rules of etiquette, such as not talking loudly on the bus and turning a ringer off in a meeting.

Still, some have decided to leave nothing to chance.

Casino operator Caesar's Entertainment recently announced that Glass is not permitted while gambling or when in showrooms, though guests can wear it in other areas. In March, Seattle's Five Point Cafe made headlines for becoming the first bar to ban Glass. "Respect our customers privacy as we'd expect them to respect yours," says a statement on the caf 's website.

The California Highway Patrol says there is no law that explicitly forbids a driver from wearing Glass while driving in the state. But according to Officer Elon Steers, if a driver appears to be distracted as a result of the device, an officer can take enforcement action.

PRIVACY TRACK RECORD

Lawmakers are beginning to consider Glass.

On Thursday, eight members of the U.S. Congress sent a letter to Google Chief Executive Larry Page, asking for details about how Glass handles various privacy issues, including whether it is capable of facial recognition.

According to Google, there are no facial recognition technologies built into the device and it has no plans to do so "unless we have strong privacy protections in place."

During one of this week's conference sessions - an open discussion about Glass - members of the Glass team answered a question about privacy by noting that social implications and etiquette have been a big area of focus during the development of the product, which is still a test version.

Some of the Glass-phobia may stem from Google's own track record on privacy. In 2010, Google revealed that its fleet of Street View cars, which criss-cross the globe taking panoramic photos for the Google Maps product, also had captured personal information such as emails and web pages that were transmitted over unencrypted home wireless networks.

"The fact that it's Google offering the service, as opposed to say Brookstone, raises privacy issues," said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a non-profit privacy advocacy group, citing Google's history and its scale in Internet advertising.

Rotenberg says his main concern centers on the stream of data collected by the devices - everything from audio and video to a user's location data - going to Google's data centers.

Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law professor who specializes in privacy and technology, said Glass is not very different from other technologies available today, whether it is a smartphone or "spy" pens that secretly record audio. But Glass is on people's faces, so it feels different.

"The face is a really intimate place and to have a piece of technology on it is unsettling," Calo said. "Much as a drone is unsettling because we have some ideas of war."

For all the hand-wringing, some early adopters are sold.

Ryan Warner, who recently graduated from college and who has developed a recipe app for Glass with Evans, said he was surprised by the reaction he got when he went to a bar.

"I was like, I don't know if I should have it on or not.' I was kind of in that phase," he said, "and the bouncer was like, Oh, my god, is that Google Glass?' He was excited."

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic, with additional reporting by Susan Zeidler in Los Angeles and Aaron Pressman in Boston; Editing by Bill Trott)

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By Radu Marinas

VASLUI, Romania (Reuters) - Valentin Boanta, sitting in his jail cell, proudly explains the device he has invented which, he says, could make the world's ATMs impregnable even to tech-savvy criminals like himself.

Boanta, 33, is six months into a five-year sentence for supplying gadgets an organized crime gang used to conceal ATM skimmers, which can copy data from an unsuspecting ATM user's card so a clone can be created.

He said he had started to make the devices for the sheer excitement of it and denies ever planning to use them himself, saying he only sold them to others.

Boanta says his arrest in 2009 and trial brought contrition, as he realized the impact of his actions and felt an urge to make amends. It also brought the former industrial design student a flash of technical inspiration.

"When I got caught I became happy. This liberation opened the way to working for the good side," Boanta said.

"Crime was like a drug for me. After I was caught, I was happy I escaped from this adrenaline addiction," he said. "So that the other part, in which I started to develop security solutions, started to emerge."

It was during his trial that he got down to work. The stage for Boanta's product pitch these days is the book-lined cell in the northeastern Romanian town of Vaslui he shares with five pickpockets and burglars.

"All ATMs have ageing designs so they are prone to vulnerability, they are a very weak side of the banking industry," he said.

"Every ATM can be penetrated through a skimming crime. My security solution, SRS, makes an ATM unbreachable."

Boanta says his "Secure Revolving System-SRS" can be installed in any ATM. It allows the bank card to be inserted longer side first and then rotates it to prevent skimmers being able to lock on to the magnetic data strip. The system returns the card to its user with a reverse rotation.

Outwardly it is a trapezoidal metallic box around 6 inches long with the card slot in the middle.

The SRS, funded and developed by a technology firm near Bucharest called MB Telecom, is patented and won an award this year at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva. The inventor and company are not yet saying how much it will cost, but insist it will be available soon.

"He fully deserves such recognition," said SRS co-inventor and MB Telecom president Mircea Tudor. "He's taking part in improving Romania's image abroad and he'll surely join our team when released."

Romania has a deep well of technical expertise stemming from the time of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who backed computer research and technical education.

Digital piracy flourished after his violent overthrow in 1989, as people who could not afford proprietary products bought cheap copies instead.

Romanian hackers stole about $1 billion from U.S. accounts in 2012, according to the U.S. embassy in Bucharest. A report by Verizon said Romania was the world's second-biggest hacking centre after China. The FBI has even set up an office in Romania and helped to train specialist police agents.

(Additional reporting by Ioana Patran in Bucharest; Editing by Andrew Roche and Louise Ireland)

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Google is digging deeper into its technology toolkit to turn its social networking service into a more formidable threat to Facebook, sprucing up its photo features at a time when sharing snapshots online and on mobile gadgets is growing more popular.

Many of the 41 new features being added to Google Plus beginning Wednesday will draw upon the computing power, machine learning, algorithms, semantics analysis and other innovations that established Google's search engine as the most influential force on the Internet.

"All of these features collectively put more of 'the Google' into Google Plus," said Vic Gundotra, Google's senior vice president of engineering, in an interview. "This will give people a powerful reason to come to Google Plus."

But the most compelling new attraction may be a new photo-management tool that promises to test how much control people want to cede to computers. It will also further blur the lines between a real moment in time and augmented reality.

Google promises the feature will pick out the best shots from a wide assortment of photos. The automatic photo selection is done by calling upon Google's knowledge of the elements that make up a visually pleasing picture, coupled with facial recognition technology and a vast database that helps tie together the relationships of people appearing in a photo. Google says its computers will recognize the best photos featuring family members or close friends of a person who uploads a bunch of pictures to Plus.

"You have amazing images of the most precious image of your life," Gundotra told a software developers conference Wednesday as he discussed the additions to Google Plus. "But if we are honest with each other photos are very labor intensive."

If the photos don't look quite right, Google is promising to enhance them, taking over a job that typically requires people to buy and master special photo editing software such as Adobe System Inc.'s Photoshop, Apple's iPhoto or Google's Picasa. Computer-controlled editing tools will automatically remove red eyes, soften skin tones, sharpen colors and adjust contrast. Google offers something similar through an "I'm Feeling Lucky" button on Picasa.

In an effort to get more photos onto the Plus network, Google is offering to back up all pictures taken on a mobile device, as soon as they're snapped. To accommodate the increased volume, Google Plus will now provide each account holder with up to 15 gigabytes of storage for full-resolution photos.

Gundotra believes Plus' management tools will be compelling because they are designed to save people the time and trouble of choosing and editing photos. Google Plus users will be able to compare all original photos with the versions altered by computers. The auto-enhancement tool can also be turned off.

Another new photo feature promises to stitch together a sequence of photos taken of the same group of people or a panoramic scene. This stitching system can be used to create a single photo that pulls the best shots of everyone featured in a series of pictures. It will also produce an animated clip featuring the motions of people captured in a succession of photos taken against the same background.

By appealing to people's photo fondness, Google is hoping to make Plus a more useful and fun place to hang out than Facebook. But Google Plus still hasn't proven it can become as much of a magnet as Facebook, largely because people had already established their online social circles at Facebook.

Google Plus has built up a broad swath of accountholders since its introduction nearly two years ago, mainly because so many people already had set up Google logins while using the company's Gmail or other services. Gundotra announced Wednesday that Google Plus now has 190 million users who interact on the service each month, up from 135 million in late December. About 390 million people log in to Google Plus each month, but that includes a large number who have tied their Gmail accounts to the social networking service. Facebook says it has about 1.1 billion active users.

As such, Google has a long way to go. Facebook has claimed the title of being the world's largest photo-sharing site for years, and with last year's purchase of Instagram only propelled it further ahead. Instagram has 100 million monthly active users, up from 22 million when Facebook agreed to buy it last spring.

Rather than offer powerful editing tools or high-quality pictures, Facebook became the most popular way to share the photos online simply because it is the most popular place to hang out online. Today, users upload more than 350 million photos to Facebook each day.

Over the years, it enhanced the quality of the photos displayed, too, and has recently redesigned its site to make photos more pronounced. Instagram, meanwhile, offers an easy-to-use mobile app and playful filters users can apply to snapshots of friends, quirky buildings or plates of food.

Google Plus is getting a new look just two months after Facebook spruced up its news feed the centerpiece of its service to feature photos more prominently and generally make posts look more like articles in a magazine or newspaper. Unlike Facebook, Google says there are no current plans to show ads on the revamped Plus.

In another change aimed at attracting more traffic, Google Plus will start to display automatic hash tags to identify the main topic being discussed in a post or featured in a photo. Google is using its understanding of semantics and photo-scanning technology to figure out what is going on. Individuals will still have an option of editing or forbidding a hash tag from appearing if they don't agree with Google's automatic selection. Clicking on the hashtag will take Google Plus users to other posts and pictures bearing the same marker. Similar content being shared by family and friend is supposed to show up first, thanks to the same ranking system that Google's search engine uses to pick out the most relevant results.

Facebook doesn't currently use hash tags, though there have been reports that it is working on incorporating them to its site, just as Twitter and Instagram already do.

__

AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report from New York.

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By Cameron French

TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto's main stock index rose on Tuesday, as energy and industrial stocks rose in tandem with gains in U.S. stocks, more than offsetting pullbacks in key stocks such as BlackBerry and Bombardier Inc .

Energy stocks, which suffered steep losses in April, rose 0.67 percent despite a retreat in the price of oil, helped by the continued momentum in U.S. stock indexes.

Husky Energy gained 2.2 percent to C$30.60, while sector heavy weight Suncor Energy rose 1.2 percent to C$32.42.

The smaller industrials subgroup charged ahead 1.83 percent, led by airlines and railroads. Westjet Airlines Ltd surged 4.9 percent to C$21.77, while Canadian Pacific Railway jumped 4.4 percent to C$136.91.

The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index rose 47.50 points, or 0.38 percent, to 12,577.05. Seven of the index's 10 main subgroups rose during the session.

U.S. stocks extended gains, and the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial touched new intraday highs .

The TSX has underperformed U.S. stock over the past year due in part to the Canadian index's much higher weighting of commodities. But since mid April, the TSX has followed the U.S. indexes higher.

"I think that there could be a help from the U.S. ... but I think it's also maybe a little bit of a 'enough's enough' in some of these stocks," said John Kinsey, a portfolio manager at Caldwell Securities.

The information technology group sank 0.63 percent, weighed down by BlackBerry. The smartphone maker dropped 3.1 percent to C$15.55 as the company unveiled a new mid-tier smartphone.

Bombardier slid 1.7 percent to C$4.55, falling hard for a second straight day, though the stock had risen 15 percent last week on optimism about the company's new CSeries jetliner.

Rona Inc , Canada's top home improvement retailer and distributor, dropped 4.8 percent to C$10.12 after posting a deeper quarterly loss as it grappled with restructuring charges and difficult market conditions.

(Reporting by Cameron French; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) Research In Motion unveiled a lower-cost BlackBerry aimed at consumers in emerging markets on Tuesday, stepping up its efforts to regain market share lost to Apple's iPhone and Android devices powered by Google's software.

The lower-cost gadget, called the Q5, is the company's third smartphone to run the new BlackBerry 10 system. It will have a physical keyboard, something that sets RIM's devices apart from Apple's iPhone and most Android phones.

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said the "slim, sleek" device will be available in red, black, white and pink. He announced the phone to a packed ballroom to open RIM's annual three-day conference in Orlando, Florida.

The device will be available in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia (including the Asia Pacific region), and Latin America beginning in July. The Q5 isn't expected to be released in North America for now. The company did not disclose prices for the new phone.

RIM's higher-tier Q10 has been released in most markets, but delays have meant that U.S. carriers aren't likely to have it until June. The U.S. delays complicate RIM's effort to hang on to customers tempted by Apple's iPhone and a range of Android smartphones. Even as the BlackBerry has fallen behind rivals in recent years, many users have remained loyal because they prefer a physical keyboard over the touch screen found on other devices.

The Q5 differs only slightly from the Q10. Both have 2GB of RAM, though the Q5 has only 8GB of flash memory compared to 16 for the Q10. Both have 2 megapixel front-facing cameras, but the Q5's rear-facing camera is only 5 megapixels, compared to the Q10 which has 8 megapixels and also records high-definition video.

Also, the Q5 has a 3.1-inch LCD display, while the Q10 is 3.1 inches and LED.

RIM unveiled new BlackBerrys this year after delays allowed Apple and others to continue their global advance.

RIM's iconic BlackBerry device, introduced in 1999, was the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people and consumers for nearly a decade. But rivals came out with a new generation of phones that could do more than just email and messaging, starting with the iPhone in 2007 and followed by devices running Google's Android system. Suddenly, the BlackBerry looked ancient.

According to research firm IDC, shipments of BlackBerry phones plummeted from 46 percent of the U.S. market in 2008 to 2 percent in 2012.

Though RIM continues to do well in many overseas markets, the company faced numerous delays modernizing its operating system in an effort to compete with the iPhone and smartphones running Google's Android operating system.

Heins, who became RIM's CEO in January 2012, said the company has made a lot of progress in a short period of time.

He restated BlackBerry's committed to "mobile first" and took a subtle jab at industry predictions that he might not make it to this year's conference as CEO because of the competitive mobile landscape.

"I'm happy to say they were wrong," Heins said. "We are not only still here. We are firing on all cylinders as a company."

RIM's stock fell 63 cents, or 3.8 percent, to $15.25 in afternoon trading Tuesday.

RIM also said it will offer its once-popular BlackBerry Messenger service on iPhones and devices running Google's Android software.

Heins said iPhone and Android versions of the BlackBerry Messenger app will be available for free, subject to approval by Google Play and the Apple App Store.

"It's time to bring BBM to a greater audience," Heins said. "I cannot wait for the day when all of our BlackBerry fans can send BBM invites to all their friends on other platforms. They have asked us for this for years."

The BBM service was once a reason for BlackBerry users not to defect to other smartphones. Now, there are many rival messaging services. Still, there are more than 60 million BBM users worldwide.

BBM works like text messaging but doesn't incur extra fees.

Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners, said offering BBM on rival platforms is a good move because closed ecosystems don't work anymore. He said the company was forced to do it but said it might be too late.

"BBM is a communication network and it's only as powerful as people who are on it," Gillis said.

Heins said RIM is "definitely in the race" and that he is excited about the company's outlook, predicting the most successful year for BlackBerry.

"What I can say is that 12 months ago I was told we would be out of business in two quarters, and that we could burn through our cash within two quarters. It didn't happen. We are confident in the future of BlackBerry 10."

Asked about a move away from tablet technology, Heins said that the future is in mobile and that BlackBerry's new initiatives are to target a consumer it thinks will rely on one mobile device for all communications within seven years.

RIM's tablet, the Playbook, has not sold well.

"You will always have people that are in a very limited view (asking questions) like 'when are you going to take on Apple?'" Heins said. "That's not the way I'm thinking about this."

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Gillies reported from Toronto.

Follow Kyle Hightower on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/khightower

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By Clare Jim

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd , the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer, faces growing competition from cross-town rival Pegatron Corp , a company that is just a quarter of its size by revenue.

Hon Hai, better known by its trading name Foxconn, draws an estimated 60 to 70 percent of its revenue from assembling gadgets and other work for Apple Inc . But it has been struggling to grow in a smartphone market increasingly dominated by Samsung Electronics Co Ltd .

Fellow Taiwanese manufacturer Pegatron wants to grab more orders to assemble the fast-selling iPhone and iPad from the California-based tech giant. Analysts say Pegatron offers more competitive pricing - at the expense of lower margins - and appears to be succeeding in pulling in more orders from Apple.

Pegatron's announcement last week that it would increase its number of workers in China by up to 40 percent in the second half of the year fuelled market speculation that it would be the sole assembler for a widely expected cheaper iPhone.

"Pegatron posts a long-term risk to Hon Hai because as it catches up on margins by supplying more components, it can provide more aggressive pricing," Daiwa Capital analyst Birdy Lu said. "Hon Hai's margin uptrend is not a guarantee."

Hon Hai is expected to post a net profit of T$18.76 billion ($638.24 million) in the first quarter, according to 13 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Results are due to be released early this week.

This would be 26 percent higher than a net profit of T$14.92 billion in the same period a year earlier, before the company adopted a new accounting standard, but only around half of the record T$36.97 billion in the previous quarter.

The company, which has come under fire for labor conditions in its factories supplying Apple, has raised wages and improved amenities. But rising labor costs erode margins, and it has been moving manufacturing to China's cheaper inland provinces.

MARGINS NARROW

Apple, along with its suppliers, relies heavily on new product launches to drive revenue growth. Apple's Chief Executive Tim Cook told analysts last month that "some really great stuff" would come in late 2013 and 2014, suggesting it would be a few more months before the company has any new products.

Samsung, by contrast, recently launched its newest Galaxy S4 smartphone to strong demand. Samsung relies on its own in-house supplies for the majority of components in its smartphones.

Apple posted its first quarterly profit decline in more than a decade in the March quarter, and forecast revenue of $33.5 billion to $35.5 billion this quarter, compared with $43.6 billion in the previous quarter.

Despite rising profit, Hon Hai recorded a revenue slide of 19.2 percent in the January-March period.

Pegatron's revenue grew 29 percent in the same period from a year ago, while its net profit surged 81 percent to T$2.31 billion ($78.59 million).

Pegatron currently makes older models for Apple, including the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, It also manufactures the iPad mini.

"Hon Hai would see a flat revenue this year at best... while Pegatron has great growth potentials because it is going from nothing to something," said HSBC analyst Jenny Lai. "But Hon Hai's margins would improve, benefitting from getting more component orders.

Foxconn Technology Group, Hon Hai's holding company, has been trying to turn itself into a high-margin purveyor of sophisticated components to escape from the ever decreasing margins in its traditional business.

"I think it'd be a misconception to label Foxconn as just an assembly line manufacturer," group spokesman Louis Woo told Reuters late last year in an interview. "From glass to cable connectors, we're playing a critical part in components."

In the fourth quarter, Hon Hai's operating margin climbed 3 basis points to 3.7 percent, compared with the previous three months, while Pegatron's operating margin improved by 2 basis points to 0.3 percent. In the March quarter, Pegatron's operating margin increased by 5 basis points to 0.8 percent.

"Pegatron's margins are still a lot lower than Hon Hai's. This is because Pegatron's offering very competitive pricing and that's how it wins orders," said Lai.

($1 = 29.3935 Taiwan dollars)

(Reporting by Clare Jim; Editing by Emily Kaiser)

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LOS ANGELES (AP) Every time Los Angeles exhales, odd-looking gadgets anchored in the mountains above the city trace the invisible puffs of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases that waft skyward.

Halfway around the globe, similar contraptions atop the Eiffel Tower and elsewhere around Paris keep a pulse on emissions from smokestacks and automobile tailpipes. And there is talk of outfitting Sao Paulo, Brazil, with sensors that sniff the byproducts of burning fossil fuels.

It's part of a budding effort to track the carbon footprints of megacities, urban hubs with over 10 million people that are increasingly responsible for human-caused global warming.

For years, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse pollutants have been closely monitored around the planet by stations on the ground and in space. Last week, worldwide levels of carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million at a Hawaii station that sets the global benchmark a concentration not seen in millions of years.

Now, some scientists are eyeing large cities with LA and Paris as guinea pigs and aiming to observe emissions in the atmosphere as a first step toward independently verifying whether local and often lofty climate goals are being met.

For the past year, a high-tech sensor poking out from a converted shipping container has stared at the Los Angeles basin from its mile-high perch on Mount Wilson, a peak in the San Gabriel Mountains that's home to a famous observatory and communication towers.

Like a satellite gazing down on Earth, it scans more than two dozen points from the inland desert to the coast. Every few minutes, it rumbles to life as it automatically sweeps the horizon, measuring sunlight bouncing off the surface for the unique fingerprint of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

In a storage room next door, commercially available instruments that typically monitor air quality double as climate sniffers. And in nearby Pasadena, a refurbished vintage solar telescope on the roof of a laboratory on the California Institute of Technology campus captures sunlight and sends it down a shaft 60 feet below where a prism-like instrument separates out carbon dioxide molecules.

On a recent April afternoon atop Mount Wilson, a brown haze hung over the city, the accumulation of dust and smoke particles in the atmosphere.

"There are some days where we can see 150 miles way out to the Channel Islands and there are some days where we have trouble even seeing what's down here in the foreground," said Stanley Sander, a senior research scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

What Sander and others are after are the mostly invisible greenhouse gases spewing from factories and freeways below.

There are plans to expand the network. This summer, technicians will install commercial gas analyzers at a dozen more rooftops around the greater LA region. Scientists also plan to drive around the city in a Prius outfitted with a portable emission-measuring device and fly a research aircraft to pinpoint methane hotspots from the sky (A well-known natural source is the La Brea Tar Pits in the heart of LA where underground bacteria burp bubbles of methane gas to the surface.)

Six years ago, elected officials vowed to reduce emissions to 35 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 by shifting to renewable energy and weaning the city's dependence on out-of-state coal-fired plants, greening the twin port complex and airports and retrofitting city buildings.

It's impractical to blanket the city with instruments so scientists rely on a handful of sensors and use computer models to work backward to determine the sources of the emissions and whether they're increasing. They won't be able to zero in on an offending street or a landfill, but they hope to be able to tell whether switching buses from diesel to alternative fuel has made a dent.

Project manager Riley Duren of JPL said it'll take several years of monitoring to know whether LA is on track to reach its goal.

Scientists not involved with the project say it makes sense to dissect emissions on a city level to confirm whether certain strategies to curb greenhouse gases are working. But they're divided about the focus.

Allen Robinson, an air quality expert at Carnegie Mellon University, said he prefers more attention paid to measuring a city's methane emissions since scientists know less about them than carbon dioxide release.

Nearly 58 percent of California's carbon dioxide emissions in 2010 came from gasoline-powered vehicles, according to the U.S. Energy Department's latest figures.

In much of the country, coal usually as fuel for electric power is a major source of carbon dioxide pollution. But in California, it's responsible for a tad more than 1 percent of the state's carbon dioxide emissions. Natural gas, considered a cleaner fuel, spews one third of the state's carbon dioxide.

Overall, California in 2010 released about 408 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air. The state's carbon dioxide pollution is greater than all but 20 countries and is just ahead of Spain's emissions. In 2010, California put nearly 11 tons of carbon dioxide into the air for every person, which is lower than the national average of 20 tons per person.

Gregg Marland, an Appalachian State University professor who has tracked worldwide emissions for the Energy Department, said there's value in learning about a city's emissions and testing techniques.

"I don't think we need to try this in many places, but we have to try some to see what works and what we can do," he said.

Launching the monitoring project came with the usual growing pains. In Paris, a carbon sniffer originally tucked away in the Eiffel Tower's observation deck had to be moved to a higher floor that's off-limits to the public after tourists' exhaling interfered with the data.

So far, $3 million have been spent on the U.S. effort with funding from federal, state and private groups. The French, backed by different sponsors, have spent roughly the same.

Scientists hope to strengthen their ground measurements with upcoming launches of Earth satellites designed to track carbon dioxide from orbit. The field experiment does not yet extend to China, by far the world's biggest carbon dioxide polluter. But it's a start, experts say.

With the focus on megacities, others have worked to decipher the carbon footprint of smaller places like Indianapolis, Boston and Oakland, where University of California, Berkeley researchers have taken a different tack and blanketed school rooftops with relatively inexpensive sensors.

"We are at a very early stage of knowing the best strategy, and need to learn the pros and cons of different approaches," said Inez Fung, a professor of atmospheric science at Berkeley who has no role in the various projects.

___

Follow Alicia Chang at http://twitter.com/SciWriAlicia

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TOKYO (Reuters) - Panasonic Corp forecast its operating profit will rise 55 percent in the year to March 31 as it steps back from struggling operations in TVs and other consumer gadgets in favor of selling machinery, components and electronic equipment to other businesses.

The company expects operating profit to rise to 250 billion yen ($2.52 billion) in the current business year from last year's 160.9 billion yen. That compares with an average 241 billion yen forecast from 18 analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S before the company released its latest earnings figures on Friday.

Panasonic's CEO, Kazuhiko Tsuga has promised to weed out within two years any loss-making or low-profitability units that fall short of a 5 percent annual operating margin threshold. Further restructuring, however, could add to costs and squeeze its bottom line.

Panasonic's strategy to pull away from consumer electronics contrasts with domestic rival Sony Corp, which is doubling down on mobile phones, cameras and game consoles in a bid to revive the fortunes of its core consumer electronics business, which still accounts for more than half of revenue.

At Tsuga's company, TVs, DVD players and other home entertainment gadgets represent less than one-fifth of sales, leaving it more options to pursue profits elsewhere. Panasonic's biggest earning segments are appliances, such as washing machines and refrigerators, and the division it dubs "eco solutions", which makes light fixtures, toilets, ceiling fans and other household fittings that hark back to the company's beginnings in 1908 making electrical extension sockets.

In October, Tsuga bit the bullet on non-performing businesses by writing down billions of yen in tax-deferred assets and goodwill related to its businesses making mobile phones, solar panels and small lithium batteries. The result was a net loss of 754.25 billion yen last business year, nearly matching the prior year's record 772.17 billion yen loss.

Like Sony, however, the company is relying on asset sales to underpin its finances as it tries to revive profit growth, pledging to keep annual free cashflow above 200 billion yen. Its disposals have included a Tokyo office building and $1 billion worth of stocks in companies such as Toyota Motor Corp.

The value of the company's assets fell to 5.4 trillion yen at the end of the latest business year from 6.6 trillion a year earlier, as a result of asset disposals and writeoffs.

Over the next two years, Panasonic, which has seen its sales shrink by one-fifth from a peak of $92 billion six years ago, plans to spend $2.5 billion to revamp its businesses.

It has yet to announce additional staff cuts, after shedding 40,000 jobs over the past two years. With 300,000 workers it remains one of Japan's biggest employers.

Since the start of the year, the company's shares have gained 43 percent, keeping pace with a 40 percent rally in the benchmark Nikkei average as weakness in the yen boosted the outlook for exporters. Panasonic's shares rose 3.7 percent on Friday to close at 749 yen before it released its latest earnings figures.

($1 = 99.3050 Japanese yen)

(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

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