Apple is in preliminary talks to sell the iPhone in Iran, if sanctions are eased on the Middle East nation, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Citing unnamed sources, the newspaper said Apple had begun talks with distributors to open official sales channels in Iran if authorized.

WhatsApp founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton received 116 million shares of Facebook stock currently worth nearly $9 billion when they sold their unprofitable messaging service to the social networking leader earlier this month.

The breakdown of the big winners in Facebook Inc.'s $22 billion acquisition emerged Wednesday in a regulatory filing.

Samsung Electronics Co. admitted erring in its smartphone strategy and vowed Thursday to overhaul its handset lineup after profit from those devices tumbled last quarter to the lowest in more than three years.

The South Korean company, which climbed from smartphone laggard to top seller in the past three years, had prided itself on responding quickly to market demand and ability to tailor handsets to the needs of users and mobile carriers around the world.

A pair of influential U.S. film industry organizations on Wednesday put out word that movie theaters should ban smart watches or eyewear that could be used to record movies.

The Motion Picture Association of America and the National Association of Theatre Owners updated a film-theft prevention policy to recommend zero-tolerance when it comes to movie goers wearing "intelligent" devices with video-recording capabilities.

Google is exploring a way to search inside people's bodies for early signs of deadly illnesses such as cancer or heart disease.

A Life Sciences team at the special projects Google X Lab are experimenting with having "nanoparticles" hunt for signs of medical trouble in bloodstreams and then essentially report findings to sensors people could wear.

North Korea attempted to hack tens of thousands of South Korean smartphones this year, using malware disguised in mobile gaming apps, the South's spy agency said in a report submitted to parliament this week.

The National Intelligence Service said more than 20,000 smartphones may have been infected by the apps that were posted on South Korean websites between May and September, an aide to lawmaker Lee Cheol-Woo of the ruling Saenuri Party told AFP on Wednesday.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said Apple's new mobile payment system had over 1 million activations in the first three days after it became available, and is now more widely used than any competing payment system.

"We're already No. 1. We're more than the total of the other guys," Cook boasted Monday during a tech industry conference, "and we've only been at it a week." He said Visa and MasterCard officials have told Apple that the Apple Pay system is already seeing more use than similar "contactless" methods of paying for purchases.

Japanese telecommunications company Softbank Corp. is investing nearly $840 million in two technology companies in India, eyeing what it sees as a lucrative market for growth.

Softbank said Tuesday it is investing $627 million and becoming the biggest shareholder in Snapdeal, the largest digital marketplace in India with 25 million users and 50,000 businesses. It brings together products from thousands of big and small brands.

Amazon on Monday unveiled a new media stick allowing users to stream content to television sets, challenging Google's Chromecast device released last year.

The plug-in Fire TV Stick, a device the size of a pack of gum, provides access to Amazon Instant Video as well as other services including Netflix, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN and NBA Game Time.

Mountains of discarded remote controls litter the warehouse floor. In a dimly-lit room, women on plastic stools pry open the devices, as if shucking oysters, to retrieve the circuitry inside.

In a narrow alley a few blocks over, a father and son from a distant province wash microchips in plastic buckets. Men haul old telephones and computer keyboards by the shovelful off a truck.