(AFP/File) - China Unicom is likely to start selling Apple’s iPad tablet computer (pictured) in the world’s largest Internet market in mid to late-September, state-run media said. China is the world’s largest mobile market, with more than 800 million subscribers as of the end of June, according to official data.(AFP/File/Ben Stansall)

(AFP) - A Chinese vendor smiles under a Lenovo sign at a computer center in Shanghai. Lenovo Group, China’s biggest personal computer maker, said Thursday it swung back to profit on a rebound in global demand, while it also broke into double-digit market share for the first time.(AFP/Philippe Lopez)

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan’s Panasonic Corp will expand the capacity of its plasma display panel plant in China by nearly five times by the financial year to March 2013 in a bid to meet strong demand in the country, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Friday.

Panasonic will achieve a 42-inch panel production capacity of over 120,000 units a month, up from 25,000 units now, at its Shanghai plant, which currently cannot meet demand in the growing Chinese market, the newspaper said.

The Osaka-based firm is currently exporting from a facility in Japan to compensate for the local supply shortage and aims to cut the cost of products by an estimated 30 percent by replacing these exports with the expanded local production, the Yomiuri said.

A Panasonic spokesman said the company would announce plans for its China and Japan plants at the "proper time."

Shares of Panasonic fell 1.9 percent to 1,073 yen in early trade on Friday, underperforming the Nikkei stock average which shed 1.6 percent.

(Reporting by Yumiko Nishitani; Editing by Joseph Radford)

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(AFP/File) - Internet sales in China, the world’s biggest web market, soared 60 percent on year in the first half, as more consumers and businesses went shopping online, state media said Wednesday.(AFP/File/Frederic J. Brown)

The national flag of China flies in front of the former headquarters of Google in Beijing, July 1, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Jason Lee

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc said its earlier report that Internet search services in China were being fully blocked could have been the result of a technical glitch that overstated the problem.

Google shares pared losses to 1 percent from a 1.6 percent decline earlier on Thursday after the company said on its website that its Internet search, mobile and advertising services could not be accessed in China.

The sell-off underscored investors’ ongoing concerns about the fragility of Google’s position in the country, after the company had a very public dispute with Beijing over Internet censorship earlier in the year.

However, some Internet users in the country reported no problems accessing the Chinese-language search page Google.cn.

Google later said in an emailed statement, "Because of the way we measure accessibility in China, it’s possible that our machines can overestimate the level of blockage."

"That appears to be what happened last night when there was a relatively small blockage. It appears now that users in China are accessing our properties normally," the company added.

The world’s No. 1 Internet search engine has been reporting sporadic disruptions to its mainland China services since it threatened in January to pull out of the country because of its Internet censorship practices and after a cyber-attack.

Google provides public updates about the availability of its services in China through a special website, here

Google generates a tiny portion of its nearly $24 billion in annual revenue in China, where the company lags home-grown search powerhouse Baidu Inc.

But China, the world’s largest Internet market by users, represents an important growth opportunity for Google, which has seen its growth slow in mature markets like the United States and Western Europe.

Access to Google’s various online services have long been spotty in China. In recent months, Google has reported partial blocking of access to its search, mobile and news services on many occasions.

"The last two or three months what we are seeing is nothing but posturing. It’s posturing by Google and it’s posturing by the local regulators there," said Caris & Co analyst Sandeep Aggarwal.

"Google is a truly global company and if you’re a global company you cannot not operate in the world’s largest Internet population," he said.

(Additional reporting by Paul Thomasch, Yinka Adegoke, Alex Dobuzinskis, Leah Schnurr and Melanie Lee; Editing by Tim Dobbyn, Tiffany Wu and Richard Chang)

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