Statement by Apple  —  By early last year, Apple's cash balance had built to a point beyond what we needed to run our business and maintain flexibility to take advantage of strategic opportunities, so we announced a plan to return $45 billion to shareholders over three years.

Microsoft's new Xbox will include improved Siri-like speech recognition  —  DON'T MISS ANY STORIES FOLLOW THE VERGE  —  Microsoft will greatly improve its speech recognition technology inside the next Xbox, The Verge has learned.  Sources familiar with Microsoft's Xbox plans have revealed that Durango …

Inbox Unchained: Mailbox just fixed email on the iPhone  —  How a startup outdid both Apple and Google in one fell swoop  —  Gentry Underwood had a feeling that his startup might be making some users depressed.  Orchestra was Apple's Productivity App of the Year 2011, but users were leaving after a few months using the service.

Silicon Valley job growth has reached dot-com boom levels, report says  —  Silicon Valley's job growth has returned to dot-com boom levels and San Francisco has emerged as a major new tech hub.  But good times have not returned for all area residents and ethnic groups.

Facebook deleted all EU facial recognition data, regulators confirm  —  Both the Irish data protection commissioner and a German regulator confirmed Facebook deleted the data  —  Facebook has deleted all European facial recognition data, the Irish data protection commissioner …

Suicide Girls founder launches mobile-first dating app Let's Date in the US, backed by Science Inc.  —  Last October, Los Angles-based Science Inc. launched its newest company, Let's Date, a service focused on being your social dating identity.  Founded by Sean Suhl, Steve Simitzis …

Facebook Deal to Buy Microsoft's Atlas Coming As Early As Next Week  —  Social Network Is Building An Ad Stack to Rival Google  —  Microsoft's attempt to find a new home for its Atlas ad-serving business may finally be coming to an end.  The company is expected to announce a deal to sell …

800 million Android smartphones, 300 million iPhones in active use by December 2013, study says  —  By the end of this current year, 1.4 billion smartphones will be in use: 798 million of them will run Android, 294 million will run Apple's iOS, and 45 million will run Windows Phone, according to a new study by ABI Research.

CoTweet founders launch Seesaw for iPhone, an app that gets your friends' opinion when you need it  —  The last time Aaron Gotwalt, Jesse Engle, and Kyle Sollenberger worked together was when they founded the social media marketing platform CoTweet.  It eventually was acquired by email service provider Exact Target.

Microsoft's ‘Blue’ wave is coming to more than just Windows  —  Summary: Blue isn't just the codename of the next version of Windows.  It also is the codename for updates to Windows Phone, Windows Server and Windows Services, I'm hearing.  —  As we've known for a few months …

Microsoft Attacks Gmail Over Privacy In Latest “Scroogled” Campaign  —  If at first you don't succeed, get negative once again, seems to be the game plan at Microsoft.  Having attacked Google Shopping with a “Scroogled” campaign last November, Microsoft is back again.

FreedomPop Raises Another $4.3 Million In Funding, Finally Lets Users Share Their Data  —  Freemium wireless service provider FreedomPop has been pumping out its fair share of hardware lately, and its momentum seems to have been received favorably by its backers.

Rabbit: A Video Sharing and Chat Service Launching on the Mac Only  —  At one point in internet history, desktop instant messaging was likely the fastest growing segment of communication technologies.  In 2002, even Apple introduced its own messaging client called iChat that was bundled …

NBC closes hyperlocal, data-driven publishing pioneer EveryBlock  —  NBC News has shut down EveryBlock, one of the early pioneers of data-driven hyperlocal community news and information.  —  The decision took effect today.  Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and chief digital officer of NBC News …

Here's our pick of the most promising companies from 500 Startups' fifth batch  —  500 Startups is hosting its latest session of Demo Day this week, and TNW was there to watch the proceedings in Mountain View on Wednesday.  That's the first port of call before the startups and their pitches …

37 Percent of PC Users Migrate Activities to Mobile Devices, According to The NPD Group  —  Content that was once primarily accessed by consumers on their PCs, is shifting to mobile devices.  According to the Connected Intelligence Application and Convergence Report from global information company …

The LinkedIn Rampage Will Be Tested Today  —  On the surface, today's LinkedIn earnings report is about revenue and profits, like any other quarterly filing.  At bottom, though, investors are looking for the answer to a question that gets well beyond accounting: Can the market support a second social network roughly as big as Facebook?

Facebook isn't making its own phone, but it's pre-loading its software into millions of devices  —  Facebook wants to ensure that billions of people in emerging markets have access to its mobile apps when they buy their first phones.  The social networking giant found an easy solution to that problem …

Online learning goes official as five Coursera courses get approved by the American Council on Education  —  Coursera announced a big milestone today: the first big step towards credit options.  The American Council on Education's College Credit Recommendation Service (ACE CREDIT) …

Confirmed: BlackBerry to Stop Selling Smartphones in Japan  —  Looks like the global rollout of BlackBerry's new flagship smartphones will not extend to the entire globe.  Certainly it won't include Japan.  —  Confirming news first reported by the Nikkei a BlackBerry spokeswoman told AllThingsD Thursday …

Sprint Q4: Loss widens, 1 million subscribers jump ship  —  Summary: The cellular giant saw its quarterly loss widen as more than 1 million subscribers left the company, thanks to the Nextel side of the business.  —  Zack Whittaker  —  Continuing its running streak of weak performance …

Evernote rolls out Evernote Business to 26 new markets in Europe and names new COO to oversee growth  —  Evernote has expanded its Evernote Business product in Europe, adding 26 new markets where companies can now leverage the cumulative knowledge and contribution of every employee.

iPads (Thanks To The Mini) Were 1 In 6 ‘PCs’ Shipped, Tablets One-Third, And Windows RT Didn't Even Break 1M: Canalys  —  The PC market is fast shifting into a touchscreen world, and Apple is leading the charge.  Some new numbers from the analysts at Canalys note that in Q4 of 2012 …