Apple has been accused of using the iPhone to build a monopoly that pushed up prices for users and crushed competition, in a lawsuit filed by the US justice department. The lawsuit alleges that Apple, the world’s second-most-valuable company after Microsoft, reached its “astronomical valuation” by “making it harder or more expensive for its users…

Almost half of British teenagers say they feel addicted to social media, according to the Millennium Cohort Study published last month. The findings come amid growing calls for Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), Twitter/X and TikTok to be held accountable for the negative impact their platforms can have on young users. Last week the…

Apple has been fined €1.8 billion (£1.54 billion) by European regulators for squeezing competition from its music streaming rivals. The fine, the third biggest ever issued by the European Commission, represents a big victory for Spotify in its long-running dispute with Apple over rules within its App Store that banned it from promoting offers about…

Global stocks fell sharply after downbeat economic data reignited concerns about the fragility of growth in the United States. Wall Street’s S&P 500 index had its steepest daily fall in a month on Tuesday and the sell-off spread to Asia in overnight trading and European stock markets on Wednesday morning. Traders were unsettled by data…

Snap missed Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue last night, as the Snapchat owner struggled to compete against larger rivals for digital advertising revenue, sending its shares sharply lower. The photo-messaging app, which faces stiff competition from much larger rivals such as Facebook-owner Meta Platforms and Alphabet, the owner of Google, reported revenue in the…

Physics GCSE is “dull as dishwater” and needs an overhaul to make it exciting to children, an academic says. Professor Mark Fromhold has written to exam boards suggesting quantum physics be incorporated into the qualification so that more pupils stick with the subject. He says cutting-edge technology and discoveries from the last few years could…

Wearing a brown blazer and open-necked black shirt, a youthful-looking Elon Musk was bubbling with excitement as he took delivery of his McLaren F1 supercar in 1999. Musk had just sold his first company, an online city guide called Zip2, for $22 million and decided to splurge $1 million of the proceeds on a McLaren…

If generative AI is going to transform our lives in the way experts predict, what skills will be needed to thrive in this new world? Will it be “hard” technology skills or “soft” people and communications skills? The answer is not obvious, judging by a session I chaired at a recent conference. “Engineering, mathematical, computer-driven…

Inflation is on course to rise over the rest of the year, forcing the Bank of England into incremental interest rate cuts of 0.1 percentage points over the next year, according to the British Chambers of Commerce. In its latest quarterly forecasts for the UK, the BCC said that consumer price inflation would rise steadily…