Apple owes France $6.5 million in unpaid taxes

Apple appears to be delinquent on a hefty tax payment in France.SACEM, a French society that controls royalties paid to authors, composers, and publishers, said on Friday that Apple owes 5 million euros ($6.5 million) in royalty taxes from iPads sold in France in 2011. The tax, known in France as a copie privee, is levied against all vendors of digital devices that use copyrighted content, according to French blog site The Rude Baguette.That tax then goes to SACEM, which divvies out the money among the various authors, producers, and other creative folks.Apple passed on the extra tax to iPad buyers, SACEM said, but failed to pay out the tax itself. As a result, the Grand Instance Court of Paris has issued a judgment against the company asking it to pay up.This marks the second time in recent weeks that Apple has been on the hot seat over taxes. CEO Tim Cook faced a grilling in Washington, D.C., on May 21 over allegations that Apple exploited tax loopholes to avoid paying its fair share to the government.

Apple outshines Samsung on mobile ad network

The iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, and Amazon's Kindle Fire were the top three tablets recorded by Millennial Media and were nestled among the top 20 of all mobile devices. A full 95 percent of all tablet impressions came over Wi-Fi connections.Related storiesApple's iPhone dominates mobile ad impressions in Q1Amazon Kindle Fire lights up mobile ad networkAndroid easily outpaces iOS on mobile ad networkAndroid's lead over iOS hits 2x mark on mobile ad networkFinally, smartphones scored 74 percent of all ad impressions, a healthy rise from the 66 percent found in last year's second quarter. Feature phones continued their downward spiral, accounting for only 7 percent of all impressions, down from 17 percent a year ago.Millennial Media compiles data from its mobile ad platform and records "tens of billions of monthly ad requests," according to the company.