China Telecom Corp plans to offer its 106 million subscribers the Apple Inc iPhone by year's-end, sources said, making it the second operator to do so in the world's largest mobile phone market. China Telecom operates the country's largest fixed-line network and is a relative newcomer to the mobile market. The move would help China Telecom, the smallest of the country's three telecommunications operators, cement more high-end 3G users in a competitive market. China has 896 million mobile phone users -- bigger than the entire population of Europe. Its three telecommunications operators are China Mobile Ltd, China Unicom …

Foursquare check-ins will help determine your Klout score. The San Francisco-based start-up has just added Foursquare to its scoring system, which already factors in Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to measure the online influence of social media users. Klout has gained some momentum recently, when it started figuring in users' LinkedIn activity in June after many users requested LinkedIn integration. Also, brands have began offering perks to people with high Klout scores.

Yell has acquired Znode, an ecommere software development company, in a deal valued at $19 million. Znode will become part of Yell Group's new consumer division, Yell Connect. Znode's technology will serve as an ecommerce platform for the UK-based Yellow Pages publisher. Yell Group also named Richard Hanscott as the CEO of Yell UK. Ecommerce is part of Yell's new strategy to connect small businesses with consumers on a local level. Znode will provide various digital services, including turnkey mobile apps that work across iPhone, iPad, and Android based phones, ecommerce, and mobile technology that enables storefronts to …

Quest Software's preliminary second-quarter results missed estimates, and the company cut fiscal 2011 revenue growth forecast, hurt by lower-than-anticipated return on higher investments in business and acquisitions. The enterprise systems management software maker now predicts Q2 revs at $201-$204 million and pro forma earnings at 22-24 cents a share. The company, which competes with CA Inc and Symantec Corp , has lowered its revenue growth for this year. It initially predicted 16%; now it expects revenue growth to be 11% to 12%. Analysts were expecting annual revenue of $862.9 million.

A subsidiary of AT&T, best known for its yellow-pages products, is launching a mobile ad network that will target consumers based on their location. The network will compete with Apple's iAd and Google's AdMob networks, and is available to iPhone and Android developers and publishers looking to monetize their games or applications through advertising. Because it taps into AT&T's thousands of local salespeople, who work directly with local pizza places, dry cleaners, movie theaters and restaurants across the country, it could be a sales powerhouse. The mobile ad network joins AT&T Interactive's existing properties, including search on the Web …

Swype, the company best known for an on-screen keyboard that lets users trace entire words, has scooped up an additional $2.5 million in funding. CEO Mike McSherry said that Swype has turned profitable in recent quarters, but added the new funding will help the company continue to bulk up in its effort to bring its virtual keyboard to more places. The new funding is from existing investors including the venture capital arms of Samsung, Nokia and DoCoMo and completes a round that began with $3.5 million in new money form Ignition Partners-an investment disclosed back in March. The …

Hot on the heels of reports that claim Apple is gearing up to launch a new iPad model this fall, Digitimes reports that Apple will be adding a second manufacture -- either Pegatron or Quanta Computers -- to augment the tablet's current manufacturing from Foxconn. Foxconn is currently Apple's exclusive contractor for iPad 2 production and since the plant's devastating incident in May and with a new tablet right around the corner, Apple is looking for a second manufacture to build their popular tablets. With Apple reportedly gearing up to launch a new iPad 2 model -- now is …

An intensifying quarrel between Samsung and Apple is triggering expectations that some of the pairs' $5 billion-plus relationship may be up for grabs. With the electronics titans squaring off over smartphones and tablets patents, any worsening in their supply relationship could mean more business for Toshiba Corp, Micron, Hynix Semiconductor, Intel and TSMC. Samsung makes parts central to Apple's mobile devices, but Apple in April accused the "They have become more competitors and less partners and so I think Apple will definitely not be looking to Samsung as its go-to partner-of-choice for NAND flash," said Brian Marshall, an analyst …

How much is social worth to Google? Investors added $20 billion to Google's market cap the first week after the launch of Google+ on June 28. A Morgan Stanley downgraded it on Friday, which brought the total down to $15.8 billion over concerns the search giant could capitalize on new products such as Google+. But how much did the market think Google is worth than before the launch of Google+? On June 27 (the day before the announcement), the stock closed at $482.80. It rose to a high of $546.60 on July 7, for a $20.6 billion gain …

Mark Suster of GRP Partners is doubling down on Twitter by investing in DataSift, one of two companies with rights to re-syndicate Twitter's fire hose of more than 200 million Tweets a day. (The other one is Gnip.) GRP and IA Ventures are investing $6 million in DataSift in a Series A. DataSift's investors are betting Twitter won't enter this data syndication market. Instead, DataSift is trying to build a basis for a real-time data mining and business intelligence business. It sees opportunities for products built on top of DataSift for financial services (realtime investing signals), marketing (sentiment …