this is business live from bbc news with alice baxter and david eades. another record quarter for apple, but is the silicon valley giant still on track to become the world's first trillion dollar company? live from london, that's our top story apple reports another bumper set of numbers — but is the winning streak set to continue despite a drop in iphone sales? and the uk government hails a successful trip to china, but at home the prime minister faces some tough questions. we'll hear from theresa may later in the programme. european shares have opened flat to slightly lower following a mixed session in asia. it's been another roller—coaster week for bitcoin. we'll guide you through the highs and lows with our technology guru rory—cellan jones.

today, we want to know — as the premier league football tv rights auction looms once more — would you pay more to keep watching the footie? let us know. just use the #bbcbizlive. we start in silicon valley where the giants of the technology world have been reporting their latest results. the biggest of them all — apple — has been hailing its best ever quarter. that mean‘s it's edging ever closer to becoming the world's first trillion dollar tech company by stock market value. let's show you the numbers because they are staggering. apple made revenues of more than $88 billion in the three months to the end of december, the all important holiday shopping season. 20 billion of that was profit. that was up 12.6% on the previous year — setting a new earnings record for the firm. apple sold 77.3 million iphones in the quarter. that was down slightly on last year —

raising concerns the iphone‘s popularity is waning. but remember — many sales were of the more expensive and profitable iphone x and we should put this in context — according to research just out, global sales of all smartphones were down 9% in the quarter — the biggest fall ever — as the market gets saturated. revenues are up 13% because the iphone tent is more expensive. some analysts might be worried the iphone which is two thirds of the revenue could be stalling. if that keeps going up, the company remained strong. in terms of selling the hardware, there is a saturation point being breached and it is worse for other mobile phone makers. that does drive apple towards having to depend on its services. it has to make this work. services

was 10% of revenue, usually a larger proportion. this quarter it is high because of christmas. apple is building its services business with 230 million active sub —— subscribers. if there is a risk, where is it? where do they think we have to watch that over the horizon? apple is the biggest smartphone maker by revenues, the biggest risk is augmented reality, things like google glass, a pair of glasses with artificial intelligence, you can voice activate it. it is a smartphone in your head. if apple do not invest heavily to become a leader in augmented reality, it could fall, just as nokia did with touch screens. the race to the $1 trillion value mark, what about apple versus

amazon? amazon are flying at the moment. it is 850 billion now. alphabet and google aren't far behind, neither microsoft. because they have all the characteristics that give them the strength to grow in five years, that is because if you look at the tech themes, boys, cloud, artificial intelligence, automation, you need a certain number of characteristics to be successful. cloud infrastructure, a high number of users, they each have 800,000. and you need cash to invest. they all have it. thank you very

much indeed. let's take a look at some of the other stories making the news. japan's financial regulator has raided the offices of the crypto—currency exchange coincheck. they say they were checking their systems following last week's cyber attack which saw the firm lose more than $500 million of virtual assets. the regulator said security gaps in coincheck‘s systems were among the reasons it didn't have approval to operate. shares in the toymaker mattel have fallen sharply after it reported a surprise loss of $252 million in the last three months of 2017 which includes the all—important holiday season. sales of its best known brand barbie were up. however, overall sales fell because of children's growing preference for video games and electronics over traditional toys. europe's biggest investment bank deutsche bank has reported a loss of almost $1.7 billion in the last

three months of last year. the bank says it was heavily affected by donald trump's us tax reforms and actually made a pre—tax profit of more than $1.6 billion for the year as a whole. it's been trying to restructure itself after years of losses. the british prime minister is concluding her three—day visit to china where the uk has signed trade deals worth around $13 billion and reportedly creating around 2,500 jobs. at home, though, she's coming under increasing pressure over brexit. 0ur political editor laura kuenssberg spoke to her in shanghai and asked her about britain's relationship with europe and the world. my choice is very simple. we take back control of our money, we take back control of our borders, we take back control of our laws. we want that free trade agreement — we negotiate a free trade agreement with the european union. we want that to be on as tariff—free and frictionless a basis as possible. that will be good forjobs the uk,

but that also gives us the freedom to negotiate and to sign up trade deals around the rest of the world, and that's good for prosperity and jobs and people in britain too. that was theresa may speaking to our political editor laura kuenssberg at the end of her three day visit to china. the two countries have pledged to intensify a "golden era" in relations between london and beijing. robin brant is in shanghai. if you look at the figures in terms of trade, still more of a bronze era and a golden era. china seems to be the world's biggest economy. only the uk's eighth biggest export market, so there is a huge room for improvement. a nation of 1.4 billion

people, and ever growing middle class, the potential is huge. the uk and thinks it is impossible from an economic point of view to avoid that. she has come here on this trip and will be content heading home. trade deals of $13 billion from companies like bp, aston martin. she has had reassurances from china whatever happens with brexit, they believed the relationship with the uk and china will not change. for china, there is an eye on deepening the strategic longer term plans. asian markets swung around on friday with some recovering from early losses but traders remaining on edge as us treasury yields rise to four—year highs. in particular, tokyo stocks closed lower on worries over the us economy as investors dabbled in a bit of profit taking amid a number of corporate earnings and mindful

of some upcoming usjobs data. this comes after equity traders around the world having been firing on all cylinders in recent months, sending markets to record or multi—year highs. so a slight cooling off on global markets now in evidence. all eyes will be on the jobs numbers today as the labour department will release its employment report. in december the number of newjobs created had come in well below forecast, but injanuary it is expected to have risen to 180,000. the unemployment rate is not likely to have changed. it's expected to remain at 4.1%. this it's held at that level since october, the lowest it's been in 17 years.

the commerce department will release data for factory orders in december, and those are expected to have gone up compared to a month earlier. in corporate earnings, major companies from the energy sector will be reporting results. profits at oil producer exxon mobile are expected to have gone up by 18% in the last quarter of 2017. chevron is also likely to post a strong performance. lawrence gosling is editor in chief of investment week magazine. is good to see you. another big market story, the head of the us federal reserve, officially her last day in office. as i said, equity markets have been running at a pace, the uk economy has been doing very well. donald trump has been taking credit. if you had to share the

awards, what would you say? donald trump has been in for only 12 months, but she has headed the federal reserve for a lot longer. what has driven things is quantitative easing. she has been an architect of that and if you go back to the lehmans brothers crisis, it would be fair to say the second half of this bid she has done a good job steadying the markets. arguably the job growth we have seen is down to her policies. donald trump is claiming credit but probably hasn't contributed much. choppy waters all the time, we are back on that deadline for the us budget. will they be thrown back into chaos? the markets, note the conciliation

in the state of the nation. the senseisit in the state of the nation. the sense is it will be easier to get a solution this time around. thank you. still to come. this week, we've seen a drop in user numbers for facebook, and the price of bitcoin has yet again taken a tumble. later in the programme we'll get a review of the week with our tech guru rory cellan—jones. you're with business live from bbc news. amid all this tech news, telecoms giant bt has also published its results, reporting a 3% drop in sales in the third quarter, although pre—tax profits were up. our own theo leggett is here to tell us more. what should we make of these figures from bt? they are disappointing but not

dreadful. pre—tax profits were up by 2596, dreadful. pre—tax profits were up by 25%, that sounds great but compare it with the same quarter last year, that was when beattie was grappling with the outcome of a major accounting scandal at its italian unitand accounting scandal at its italian unit and had to make big payments. take the adjusted earnings figure, sales fell 3%, adjusted earnings dropped down to £1.8 billion. that is not dreadful. the company says it is not dreadful. the company says it isa is not dreadful. the company says it is a lot to do with investment in mobile, trying to pay off pensions deficits. shares this morning down about 2.8%. this company has big challenges. the pensions deficit is rather large, £8 billion. the company is looking at ways to deal with it and it is reported at some

point it will have to get rid of its final salary pension scheme. lots of changes going on at bt at recently — the channel—sharing deal with sky and the 0penreach superfast broadband roll—out. what impact will these have on the business? last year, it agreed to legally separate 0penreach and turn it into a stand—alone unit. 0penreach at the moment is ploughing forward with an ambitious programme to bring ultrafast broadband to 10 million homes by 2025, as opposed to superfast broadband which is in 95% of homes but not that fast by modern standards. the channel sharing deal with sky looks good, they will carry each other‘s channels. it brings bt sport toa other‘s channels. it brings bt sport to a wider audience and those channels are gathering viewers fast. thank you. much more on the bbc

website and much more online so had their for more. thank you, theo leggett. you're watching business live. our top story — apple has reported record sales figures for the latest quarter. the company sold slightly fewer iphones compared to the same time last year, yet apple was still able to post a 12% increase in revenue. earlier we spoke about apple and amazon, but earlier in the week facebook also reported its latest set of financial results. and elsewhere in the world of tech, it's been an eventful week for cryptocurrency investors. 0ne one of which joins us one of whichjoins us in one of which joins us in the studio! here's our technology correspondent, rory cellan—jones. idid buy

i did buy a tiny amount about 18 months ago when i did a story about bitcoin, forgot about it, then found out it was worth more than $1500, and sold a chunk of it, i have to say, and i have been watching it obviously very closely over recent weeks. the big story right now this weeks. the big story right now this week is a growing realisation that the sheer extent of fraud around this whole cryptocurrency area, we said earlier it was like the wild west, but no, the wild west had more rules and regulations are available than in the cryptocurrency world. two major things this week. the japanese financial regulators raided a cryptocurrency exchange, coin check, which revealed a few days ago it had been subject to what looked like the biggest bank raid in history, $530 million stolen by hackers. regulators are finding out they are not very carefully

regulated, safeguarded, those assets, and there is also a huge amount of fraud. i read a report just out on, and this is somehow the cybercriminals' new area of expertise and adventure, they are doing e—mails to encourage you to get into these things, pump and dump exercises, where they ramp up the value of a currency using fake news, then spread that over a social media very quickly and then get out before the price plunges, saw a lot of concerns and from there. you couldn't paint a bleak picture really, with bitcoin and cryptocurrency, so what do you think is the way ahead? they have to have a future somewhere. everybody says the basic idea, and perhaps the underlying technology, which has got a huge amount of enthusiasm around it, is interesting and that there will be winners eventually. it's just that it is so beset with

fraud, so beset with every kind of haque merchant at the moment that you have to say to people, just be very careful out there —— every hike merchant. and you're not one of them! laughter you're not surprised by the big drop off we have seen injanuary you're not surprised by the big drop off we have seen in january at the start of this year? what we saw the bitcoin last year was this huge acceleration up to nearly $20,000, thenit acceleration up to nearly $20,000, then it came back down to around $10,000 to $15,000 to the month of january, and we now seem to be seeing another acceleration downwards, trading around $8,000 at the moment. it is looking the classic bubble pattern, but the question is is this the end of the bubble or will we see another spate? also on the subject of facebook —— will we see another spike? yes, we have been talking about the tech giants, google, amazon, apple, they all have enormous power and all

heading for this trillion dollar evaluation you have been talking about. facebook managed an extraordinary feat the other night, going into their conference call their shares had started to dip and people were worried about this and then somehow listening to mark zuckerberg for and our convinced the a nalysts zuckerberg for and our convinced the analysts and they went back up again. why was that? what was he saying? he's talking a good game, frankly, saying it is all part of the strategy. they have at this changing strategy where they are going to put less news into the news feed and make it more about your friends and family, baby pictures, where i have been on holiday, less about, you know, is the pope catholic and other strange stories, and that's a bit of an experiment. every time they change their news feed it is an experiment. i think there was one worrying figure, a figure that suggested in america obviously their core market usage was getting a bit, and it's sort of begs the question, is this an

eternal upwards path? that is her these pictures have always been priced... is less more? looking at them out of users... yes, a tiny amount, but what will worry some investors is whether that is the beginning of a trend where that is the sort of gold mine about that, but we shouldn't forget, they haven't just got but we shouldn't forget, they haven'tjust got facebook, they've got instagram, they've got what's app, huge unsuccessful company with all sorts of strings to its bowl. we're not talking about the demise of facebook yet. —— strings to its bow. in a moment we'll take a look through the business pages but first here's a quick reminder of how to get in touch with us.

stay up—to—date with all the day's business news as it happens on the bbc‘s business live page. there is insight and analysis from our team of editors right around the globe. and we want to hear from you. get involved on the bbc‘s business live web page at bbc.com/business. on twitter, we're @bbcbusiness. and you can find us on facebook, at bbc money. business live, on tv and online — what you need to know, when you need to know. what other business stories has the media been taking an interest in? lawrence gosling is editor—in—chief of investment week magazine and isjoining us again to discuss. let's start on a subject close to your heart of course. it is footie and was a huge amount of money. we have the option for the premier league, tv rights, and that will go up league, tv rights, and that will go up again. it is bound to. just to remind people of the number, £5.1 billion was the price played last time around, largely by sky and bt, andi time around, largely by sky and bt, and i think what is fascinating

people now, who else will come in to try to push up the value of the rights which is clearly what the premier league wants, so we have seen amazon take on sky on atp tennis. facebook? talking about them earlier, and there has been some chatter as well about whether someone chatter as well about whether someone like netflix, were clearly content is there a driving force, whether they will come in. when you look at the bidding rights, what is really fascinating, it is the overseas rights which is where the premier league have done really well in attracting more revenue from other parts of the world. but they could be doing so much better, presumably? without a doubt. when you think of the size of china, for example, with the prime minister has returned from, the appetite for football there is extraordinary and the premier league are beginning to do bespoke rights. at the beginning of the programme we asked people to tweet in on whether potentially they would be willing to pay more to watch football. some responses. ben is not prepared to pay more. "ticket

prices are in for the premier league fixtures. if you put prices up for tv coverage fans will be taken away from football. without fans football is nothing." another one, mike has cancelled both sky sports and bt sports. it is becoming stupidly expensive. alice nails it. no, overpaid, overrated. but if you follow the premier league you're probably prepared to keep paying, for the moment. most fans are not going to want to lose what is such a now that part of your social life, isn't it? i think the premier league isn't it? i think the premier league is very aware there is a threshold for everybody. we have seen quite a lot of talking over the last 12 months about ticket prices at matches, as one of your contributors... and they are aware they can't make the product too expensive for the core audience in the uk, so in terms of the price that, say, whoever gets the uk rates, maybe close to the threshold so rates, maybe close to the threshold

so that 5.1 million may not go up perhaps as much as a different last run. you have a sport that hasn't quite caught on... yes, a bit more ofa quite caught on... yes, a bit more of a level playing field. the story about elon musk, who knew he had yet anotherfinger in about elon musk, who knew he had yet another finger in yet another pie, just selling flame—throwers, and making $10 million. the thought of selling flame—throwers as an alternative sport is a bit extraordinary and extraordinary that the company sells things like this alongside baseball caps. the company is probably a bit of a misnomer in terms of what they do but the home office in this country has pointed out it is illegal to buy a flame—thrower. out it is illegal to buy a flame-thrower. what is it? a flame—thrower. flame-thrower. what is it? a flame-thrower. never quite got into the market here. lawrence, thank you. enjoy your weekend. that's it from business live today. there will be more business news throughout the day on the bbc live

web page and on world business report. keep those tweets coming in as well and we will be monitoring them as we go. goodbye. hello once again. quite a windy day, to see the very least, on thursday and coming from a pretty cold direction for the north and north—west, the wind probably the strongest across parts of scotland, especially western shores. some disruption on the ferries, and the only thing about the wind on friday, there will be less of it. bar is a little further apart. may not seem so little further apart. may not seem so at first but on the eastern shores of england a combination of a stiff northwestern and westerly breeze and quite a supply of showers as well, tending to lose their oomph through the day. out towards the west, some of the showers in western

wales and the south—west will also lose their intensity. elsewhere, a really decent day. plenty of sunshine but again not overly warm if you are exposed to that breeze. temperatures tipping away under the clear skies until we bring in clouds associated with the weather front from the atlantic. this will be a major feature of interest from the meteorological point of view on saturday if all because we're not sure how far east it will. someone is to come this way, some this way and other portions may go around as it forms a little low centre somewhere around its length, and where it stops going eastward is quite important because if you don't get all of the weather on this front you will end up with a dry day, maybe even a bit of sunshine. but on its eastern flank because of the so—called demonstrable turn to snow, particularly over higher ground —— may because of the tendency to turn to snow. the more westerly fixtures

for the football here affected by the rain, possibly some sleet and snow over the pennines and the east and textures in scotland again, and i'm not promising everyone will stay dry by any means at all —— fixtures in scotland. sunday, there will be some snow showers coming down on this noticeable north—easterly wind into the far south—east. best of the sunshine in scotland and into northern ireland. if you're heading as far as italy for england's fixture on sunday, well, they're really wa nt fixture on sunday, well, they're really want to be many issues with the weather there we suspect. —— there really won't be many issues. the rain and snow on sunday will eventually ease, but it will remain cloudy and there will be that cold wind. monday, very much more straightforward until we bring more moisture from the atlantic, and tuesday's weather will be tricky because there could be quite significant amounts of snow right across the heart of the british isles. stay up—to—date with your forecast for that one. hello.

it's friday, it's nine o'clock, i'm chloe tilley. welcome to the programme the number of men dying in britain from prostate cancer has overtaken the number of women killed by breast cancer for the first time. it really is time to get behind this and realise that we need to get on top of it now because it's just going to become more common and kill more men if we aren't able to do that. we'll be speaking to two men who have the disease and also talk to an expert who will tell us what symptoms men should be looking out for. theresa may is on her way back from her trade trip to china. she is under ever increasing pressure from her own party to do a much better job of leading. we will be speaking to tory mps. i'm not a quitter — i'm in this because there is a job to be done and that's delivering for the british people and