Software giant SAP said Tuesday that Brexit and geopolitical upheaval would boost rather than hinder future growth as it upped sales and profit targets for the next few years.

The world's biggest smartphone maker Samsung blamed faulty batteries on Monday for the fires that hit its flagship Galaxy Note 7 device last year, as it sought to draw a line under the humiliating recall.

Samsung Electronics was forced to discontinue the smartphone, originally intended to compete with Apple's iPhone, after a chaotic recall that saw replacement devices also catching fire.

The number of internet users in China -- already the world's highest -- reached 731 million in December, authorities said, as e-commerce drives consumer demand across the Asian giant. 

Total internet users rose 6.2 percent from the end of December 2015 and equals the entire population of Europe, the government-linked China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) said in a statement Sunday on its website.

In the darkened offices of a tech start-up, a handful of computer engineers sifts through a mountain of intelligence data that would normally be the work of a small army of Indian security agents.

Facebook launched its first ever startup support program in Paris Tuesday, in a massive tech incubator funded by a French telecoms billionaire.

App stores in China must register with the state from Monday, a government statement said, as China tightens its control over the internet.

China plans to develop a prototype exascale computer by the end of the year, state media said Tuesday, as it seeks to win a global race to be the first to build a machine capable of a billion, billion calculations per second.

If successful, the achievement would cement its place as a leading power in the world of supercomputing.

Social media giant Facebook has announced that it will introduce new measures to combat fake news in Germany, as Europe's largest economy and most populous nation enters an election year.

Nintendo on Friday unveiled its new Switch game console, which works both at home and on-the-go, as it looks to offset disappointing Wii U sales and go head to head with rival Sony's hugely popular PlayStation 4.

The inaugural United Nations World Data Forum, taking place in Cape Town, South Africa, on 15-18 January 2017, is set to kick off with an ambitious and innovative program and roster of over 300 speakers from across the data community.

The Forum is hosted by the Government of South Africa and Statistics South Africa, with support from the Statistics Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. A number of partners– including governments, the World Bank, UNICEF, and several civil society organizations and research institutes– are collaborating in the organization of the Forum.