Apple has reportedly negotiated with developers in Chengdu, China to establish its first retail stores in the city, with two locations already earmarked to become the first stores to open in the region. According to sources, Chengdu Mixc City and Raffles Square will become locations for Apple Stores, with officials in talks with Apple to help the company open more stores in the China, currently the world’s second largest economy....

Applemay have purchased the domain name iCloud.com for $4.5 million,according to Om MalikofGigaOm. iCloud.com was a cloud storage service owned byXcerion, and recently rebranded the product as CloudMe.com. Malik’s source claims that Xcerion sold the domain to Apple for $4.5 million. Xcerion’s cloud product rebranding occurred on the 5th of April. With rumors that have circulated for years regarding Apple’s cloud music service coming to a head, this is one more piece of evidence causing speculation that such a launch is imminent — perhaps before or at this year’s WWDC....

As Apple’s iPhone event approaches,it looks like we’re getting an iPhone 4Sinstead of an iPhone 5 but there are plenty of other as-yet uncertain details. One of these is whether iTunes’ cloud-based features will be available outside the USA. The Guardian reportstoday that its sources state that ‘iTunes in the Cloud’ has been cleared for launch in Europe, with the UK set to be the first country to see the feature that lets users redownload already purchased music as they require it, rather than having to carry all their music at all times....

Apple is currently in early talks regarding making an offer to purchase Hulu saysBloomberg, who cites two people ‘with knowledge’ of this pending move. The talks are apparently in early stages thatmaylead to an acquisition of the Los Angeles based media streaming company Hulu by Apple, themselves an online media powerhouse, although not focused on streaming. These kinds of rumors about ‘early talks’ should always be taken with skepticism, because in the financial world ‘early talks’ could mean as little as a lunch meeting....

Apple isreportedly in talkswith major record companies to start offering unlimited music downloads of purchased music, enabling iTunes customers to sync their music libraries across different Apple devices. Bloomberg reports that the Cupertino-based company is negotiating with Vivendi SA, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Group, to remove restrictions on purchased music, allowing for greater flexibility in how tracks are accessed. With iTunes by far the most popular digital music download service, both Apple and the music labels are hoping to maintain demand whilst offering customers more control over the content they buy....