Apple Inc.'s popular iPhone, a runaway hit in the U.S. and Europe, has encountered headwinds in emerging economies like China that are expected to provide the next leg of growth for the company's iconic smartphone. In India, where cell phones are often the first device a family buys, only 50,000 iPhones have sold since the local unit of Vodafone Group Plc. (VOD) and Bharti Airtel Ltd. (532454.BY) began offering the smartphone in August 2008. In Russia, where the iPhone went on sale last year, Apple's three partners had each expected to sell millions of handsets; as of May, roughly 400,000 had been sold.

Apple had its own E3 press conference at the beginning of the week, with its newest model in the iPhone line finally being unveiled to the world. The iPhone 3G S, while in some ways a modest upgrade, introduces significant improvements for gamers--some obvious, others not so much. Will it help even further cement their growing position in a handheld games market previously dominated by Nintendo and Sony? Read on.

Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference came and went this week and our live coverage of the keynote went extremely well. Since there were many announcements that were covered by Apple's team of execs, this week's top news stories round up the highlights. If you need to catch up on what's important, we have a cure for what ails you:

Apple has been desperately trying to turn Safari into a mainstream browser player. Unfortunately, its numbers simply don't compare to Firefox. Safari 4.0 notched 11 million downloads in just three days. While significant, this number is almost a rounding error compared with Firefox 3.0.11, which pulled down 150 million downloads in just 24 hours, as Mozilla's Asa Dotzler reports.

Apple has yet to prove that it can prosper in a post-Steve Jobs world, but this week's Worldwide Developer Conference brought the company closer to that goal. With Jobs seemingly poised to soon return from medical leave, the company he co-founded looks better positioned to live without him, when that time eventually comes.

By almost all parties’ admission, Apple’s App Store approval process is as arcane, inscrutable and vengeful as the dictates of a Loa-hearing voodoo priestess. Amongst other bizarre decisions undertaken by Apple, apps have been rejected for being too adult, too juvenille and for having icons too similar to Apple’s own. Now you can add another absurd and inscrutable reason to the list: Apple has just rejected a Bittorrent control application from the iTunes App Store because it could be used to circumvent copyright.

Apple has been a strong player in the education vertical for years via its Mac juggernaut. Now it appears that the iPhone and iPod touch has a shot at extending that dominance. News of the iPhone as tool have been springing up everywhere (Techmeme). The latest is that Missouri’s Journalism school is requiring students to acquire an iPod touch or iPhone. What’s notable is that Missouri is following the crowd—and the crowd has an iPod.

Amazon.com on Monday announced the launch of a Kindle Store optimized specifically for the Safari Web browser found on the iPhone. The store works hand-in-hand with the Kindle software that's been available for the iPhone since March. The Kindle is Amazon.com's e-book reader, a device that enables users to purchase and download books and periodicals and read them using an "e-paper" display that provides a more natural, book-like reading experience than reading content from a backlit LCD display. Content is delivered wirelessly and almost instantly using Amazon.com's "WhisperSync" technology.