Japanese electronics giant Sony said it has stopped producing its PlayStation 2 consoles in Japan, fueling online rumors a PlayStation 4 is in the pipeline.

Since launching in 2000 the PlayStation 2 (PS2), which has a Blu-ray player, has sold more than 150 million units worldwide, making it the best selling console of all time and was so popular it outsold the its replacement for the first three years.

South Korea's high-tech sector won't be taking the spotlight at Taiwan's biggest annual extravaganza.

The New Year's fireworks display at Taipei 101 has long been among the world's most spectacular. This year, South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. reportedly had offered 40 million New Taiwan dollars ($1.4 million) to light the building's top stories with the Samsung name and logo after the fireworks.

Iranian forces have carried out what they called cyber warfare tactics for the first time as the Islamic republic's naval units staged manoeuvres in the key Strait of Hormuz, media reports said on Monday.

The navy "launched a cyber attack against the computer network of the defensive forces in order to infiltrate the network and hack information or spread virus," the English-language Iran daily reported, quoting Rear Admiral Amir Rastegari.

Entrepreneurs in China's southwest are dreaming of turning the city of Chengdu into the world's next Silicon Valley as the government encourages more investment outside the booming coastal regions.

Small startups as well as big-name western companies have flocked to the metropolis of 14 million people, attracted by cheap labor costs and favorable government investment policies and hoping to tap into China's rapidly expanding consumer market.

China has launched commercial and public services across the Asia-Pacific region on its domestic satellite navigation network built to rival the U.S. global positioning system.

The Beidou, or Compass, system started providing services to civilians in the region on Thursday and is expected to provide global coverage by 2020, state media reported.

Facebook shares fell Friday after a report said its photo-sharing app Instagram had lost millions of users following the release of planned policy changes since dropped on an outcry from users.

According to audience tracker AppData.com, over the past week the number of daily Instagram users fell by 3.5 million to an average of 12.4 million users per day.

Apple has agreed to drop its patent claims against Samsung's Galaxy S III Mini after the South Korean rival said it would not sell the gadget in the United States, a court filing showed Friday.

The announcement is the latest twist in a patent battle between the two tech titans.

Pakistan briefly unblocked access to the popular video sharing website YouTube on Saturday before Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf ordered the plug be pulled again.

Ashraf had in September blocked the website after it refused to heed the government's call to remove a controversial anti-Islam video, and earlier Saturday the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) notified all Internet companies to "immediately unblock/restore" until further orders were given.

A Chinese court has ordered Apple Inc. to pay 1.03 million yuan ($165,000) to eight Chinese writers and two companies who say unlicensed copies of their work were distributed through Apple's online store.

The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court ruled Thursday that Apple violated the writers' copyrights by allowing applications containing their work to be distributed through its App Store, according to an official who answered the phone at the court and said he was the judge in the case. He refused to give his name, as is common among Chinese officials.

China's government tightened controls on Internet users Friday by enacting rules requiring them to register their names. The new rules follow online postings about graft and abuses that rattled the ruling party.

The country's rubber-stamp legislature approved the Internet measures at a closing meeting of a five-day session.