Wall Street Journal

Don't be fooled by calls for Apple to declare a dividend

Apple's $76 billion cash stockpile is burning a hole in Wall Street's pockets

It happens every quarter. Apple (AAPL) reports blowout sales and earnings. Its holdings in cash and marketable securities swell by billions of dollars -- by $10.7 billion, to be specific, in the past 90 days. And analysts come out of the woodwork to demand that the company spend some of those billions buying back shares or issuing dividends MORE

Today in Tech: Google + tops 10 million users

Fortune's curated selection of the day's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day.

* One third-party reported it, but now it's official: Google+ grew to 10 million in two weeks, with users sharing more than 1 billion items being shared daily. "We're only at 1% of what's possible," Google CEO Larry Page said during this week's conference call. "Google's just getting MORE

Today in Tech: iPhone 5, iPad HD rumors

Fortune's curated selection of the day's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day.

* The Wall Street Journal reports that the next iPhone will indeed be thinner and lighter than the iPhone 4, but also reports that another, cheaper iPhone is in the works as well. Meanwhile next year, another iPhone model will supposedly feature "new ways of charging the phone." We MORE

Today in Tech: Startup perks!

Fortune's curated selection of the day's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day.

* During Facebook's big product launch event yesterday at its Palo Alto headquarters, Mark Zuckerberg announced some interesting new stats: users are sharing twice as much content now as they did the same time last year, with its 750 million users -- yes, 750 million -- sharing 4 billion items MORE

Today in Tech: Facebook-Skype announcement today?

Fortune's curated selection of the day's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day.

* The Wall Street Journal reports that Twitter is looking to raise a new round of private funding that would result an influx of hundreds of millions at a new valuation of $7 billion. The news comes just seven months after the social network raised $200 million at MORE

Report: Apple, too, has its eye on Nortel's patent portfolio

Said to join Google, Intel, Ericcson and RPX in a bid for 6,000 telephony patents

This was the week we found out how valuable telecommunications patents can be.

On Tuesday, Apple (AAPL) settled its long-running patent dispute with Nokia (NOK) for what analysts estimate could be as much as $1 billion in licensing fees.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple had joined the crowd of companies bidding for the telephony MORE

The man who built the Apple Stores leaves for J.C. Penney

Ron Johnson, who came to Apple from Target, is headed back to his retail roots

Among the senior vice presidents on whom Steve Jobs depends to run Apple (AAPL), three stand out: Tim Cook, the master of Apple's supply chain; Jony Ive, its genius designer; and Ron Johnson, the man who built the Apple Store.

Jobs is reportedly losing one of them today. According to the Wall Street Journal, J.C. Penney (JCP) MORE

Today in Tech: Google buys AdMeld

Fortune's curated selection of the day's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you every day.

* Google scooped up ad optimization platform AdMeld for some $400 million according to TechCrunch. The four-year-old company had just recently raised $30 million in venture capital from the Foundry Group, Spark Capital, and Norwest Venture Partners. (TechCrunch)

* Has texting peaked? That's what a recent story in The Wall Street Journal suggests, with a MORE

Chinese iPad plant reopens

Two weeks after a fatal explosion, it's business as usual at Foxconn's factory in Chengdu.

After an explosion in a Chinese factory that makes iPads for Apple (AAPL) killed three workers and injured 15 more, one analyst estimated that Apple's quarterly iPad production numbers might fall by as much as 2.8 million units -- speculation that helped drive the company's shares down more than 1.5% that day.

Two weeks later, it's clear MORE

The 20 biggest and most active Apple-trading hedge funds

Who's behind the weekly Max Pain phenomenon that has become the tail that wags the dog?

In our ongoing quest to understand what part the trade in weekly Apple (AAPL) options plays in keeping the company's stock price from reflecting its performance (see here, here and here), we had a chat the other day with Mark Sebastian, a former market maker at the Chicago Board Options Exchange who posts frequently on MORE