The CEO of JC Penney Ron Johnson sat with CBS “This Morning” to defend his company’s new spokesperson Ellen DeGeneres from attacks by the religious group One Million Moms that seeks to boycott the retailer if it did not axe DeGeneres over her sexual orientation. Putting the controversy aside, the interview (available on the CBS website and over at YouTube ) gets interesting at mark 3:50 when Johnson reflects on his long tenure as Apple’s Vice President of Retail. The “Steve Jobs of the retail industry,” as some have dubbed him, said retailing is anything but a walk in the park: Retailing is hard and that’s what Steve said when we started stores at Apple

Apple recently released its Supplier Responsibility Progress Report for 2012 and, for the first time, provided a list of 156 suppliers.

Slowly, but surely, Apple's plans to build a retail store in the Swiss city of Basel are beginning to shape up. As reported by ifoAppleStore, the site for the store was first spotted by Swiss bloggers almost two years ago. The bloggers at MacPrime.ch have now dug up blueprints confirming that Apple's architect has been busy revising plans to meet with city regulations.

If you're in the market for a cheap iPhone 4, you may want to call your local Radio Shack. A leaked document provided to 9to5Mac suggests the electronics retailer still has inventory of both the 8 GB and 16 GB models.

The PC market is in a serious decline both in the US and globally. According to Gartner , most manufacturers are struggling, except Apple which is on the rise. Gartner's latest figures show that worldwide PC shipment estimates for Q4 2011 fell 1.4 percent

Apple may be planning to open retail stores inside as many as 25 Target locations, according to recent rumors.

Best Buy on Friday reported weaker than expected revenue for the five weeks ended December 31st, 2011. The company noted $8.4 billion in revenue, which was flat compared to the same period last year but included a comparable store sales decline of 1.2%. The company’s international segment generated $1.9 billion in revenue, a 1.7% decrease and a 4.3% drop off in store sales

A one-day "Red Friday" sale on Apple's online store has hit several Asian countries in celebration of the Lunar New Year, including China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Discounts on the Hong Kong store are broadly similar to the modest discounts Apple offered during its Black Friday promotion, with one-day price reductions of no more than ten percent on Apple's own gear. Discounts on third-party accessories are a bit more generous, so if you're looking for a case or some other accessory for your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, the one-day Red Friday sale may be a great time to buy

Amazon’s new Kindle Fire was a hot item during the holiday shopping season, and one analyst believes the new Amazon tablet may have cost Apple well over $1 billion in holiday iPad sales. Morgan Keegan analyst

Research In Motion’s debut tablet has been something of a disappointment for the Waterloo, Ontario-based vendor.