Business Articles

Reuters has reported that the South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix is planning on investing 120 trillion won (~US$106.6 billion) on chip manufacturing plants. The company will also spend an additional 55 trillion won (US$49 billion) on two existing factories over the next 10 years. SK Hynix is the world’s third-largest semiconductor vendor by revenue.

Lenovo's ThinkPad division gets hit by another leak, as a reddit user has published data-sheets for most of the upcoming ThinkPad business laptops. Though there is no way to verify the specs at this point, the specs of the T490 do line up with the already announced special T490 Healthcare Edition.

Samsung also devoted some of its latest launch event to 5G and its potential in the future of telecommunicatons and online life in general. This led to the unveiling of the Galaxy S10 5G. It has an extra 3D-sensing module on its rear panel, in addition to the three cameras also found in the S10 and S10+.

Ever since the Chinese government started to investigate memory chip suppliers over suspicious price fixing schemes, DRAM module prices started to slowly decline, and it looks like prices could get reduced by 30% in Q2 2019. By the end of 2019 DDR4 DRAM modules may end up costing up to 50% less, and prices may flatten as the DDR5 standard becomes more popular.

Razer has had to cut around 2% of its workforce due to “realignment.” It’s believed many of the staff that have been let go were involved with the company’s smartphone products. The cuts could mean that any progress on the Razer Phone 3 device has been halted while the manufacturer streamlines its operations.

Today, (February 19, 2019) Qualcomm has launched its second modem for use with 5G-New Radio (5G-NR): the Snapdragon X55. It is rated to support download speeds of up to 7 gigabits per second (Gb/s) and upload speeds of up to 3 Gb/s. Unlike its predecessor, the X50, this modem is also compatible with 2G, 3G and 4G.

PlusUs has introduced its Xpad, a charging pad that measures only 2.2 millimeters in depth. This spec leads the start-up to assert that it is the thinnest product of its kind worldwide. It is available as a reward as part of an Indiegogo campaign, which aims to raise US$20,000.

The latest corporate acquisition in the AI field for Apple is San Francisco-based PullString, a company that was founded in 2011 by former Pixar executives and has been working on "shaping the future of voice applications" ever since. The value of the deal is rumored to be around US$30 million.

Xiaomi is set to unveil its newest flagship, the Mi 9, in a few days. The Mi 9 is said to feature wireless charging—the first time a Mi flagship will have that honor—and will further take things up a notch with 20 W wireless charging support. Wired fast charge comes in at a massive 27 W.

The Redmi Note 7 Pro is expected to feature a Snapdragon 675 and Sony's 48 MP IMX586 sensor, the same module used on the Honor View 20. Initial reports claimed the Note 7 Pro would be launched in February but that's looking increasingly unlikely, and new information touts a March release instead.

Polish e-retailer X-Kom ran a promotion this past weekend that offered a free copy of Fallout 76 with four sets of PlayStation 4 thumbstick covers, all for POL 19 zl (~US $5). This discount is not out of the norm for retailers selling Fallout 76, a title that has had trouble selling copies and satisfying gamers.

MyDrivers has reported that Xiaomi intends to announce a crowdfunding project for a new product: a smart sports watch. This device will apparently support real-time GPS tracking, so that a user can generate and maintain maps of their fitness-related activities (e.g. runing routes and so on).

The Realme 2 Pro is a phone directed at the younger market in a number of countries, including India. Here, the 2 Pro is available at Rs. 1000 (about US$14) less than usual. However, its better-spec'd SKUs are currently out of stock.

Watch a quick 5-minute video following the production, assembly, and diagnostics of the Gigabyte laptop from start to finish.

Razer is shutting down the Razer Game Store, its own online retail space for PC games. The store will close in the early morning of February 28th. Any games purchased through the Razer Game Store will continue to work, though keys purchased via the store will need to be redeemed before the end of February. Additionally, Razer will honor any pre-orders made through the Game Store and will continue its Razer Gold and Razer Silver rewards programs.

Apple does not quite match up to some other major software companies in terms of smart-home products. It has only one product dedicated to this market: the HomePod. The company may by trying to change this by hiring Sam Jadallah, an ex-Microsoft executive with experience in the smart-home space.

The Pocophone F1 has been lauded for the high price to performance ratio it brings to the table. Sadly, Xiaomi's high-value magnum opus isn't sold officially in the US. ZTE's Nubia is now offering something almost as good, and it's actually available in the US.

According to new reports, Huawei's upcoming flagships, the P30 and P30 Pro will feature 1080p displays. Both devices are expected to have some impressive specifications sheets, and the listed display resolutions are somewhat disappointing.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation opened its first shop earlier this month, at the Grand Arcade shopping center in Cambridge, England. The move to a brick-and-mortar presence for the previously online-only Raspberry Pi gives enthusiasts a chance to physically browse through the products the charity has been working on, including the Pi 3A+ and Pi 3B+.

Acer has released a report in which it puts its January 2019 revenues at about US$540 million. These figures have decreased by 23.7% compared to December 2018 and by 1.3% compared to January 2018. The company has cited the ongoing effects of the SoC shortage in explaining these changes.

According to data from Sensor Tower, Facebook was the top app publisher in the world for Q4 2018, with over 800 million app installations. It was also the number one publisher on Google Play, amassing nearly 700 million installs. The App Store champion publisher was Google, which managed close to 200 million installs for the quarter.

Apex Legends has now been played by over 25 million people in the first week of its release. There is a rumor that Tencent Holdings is interested in becoming the official distributor of the battle royale game in China. Tencent is already involved in similar genre titles such as Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

Nvidia's investors can now breathe easy, as the latest fiscal year report shows decent gains throughout 2018. Things are not looking good for gaming GPUs, though, since the report shows sales in this sector were almost halved compared to 2017. Nevertheless, Nvidia keeps an optimistic outlook for 2019, with RTX 2000-series GPUs expected to see increased adoption.

NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Huang, referenced both Unreal and Unity Engines in relation to ray-tracing during a company conference call about its fourth-quarter earnings conducted this week. That is odd, however, as only Unreal has ray-tracing support at present. Therefore, Huang may just have leaked Unity's imminent roll-out of similar capabilities.

Apple will release red versions of the iPhone XS and XS Max, but only in China. At least, this is what a new post on Weibo claims. It cites the OEM's declining fortunes in the country in this apparent marketing decision.

The LG K40 is one 2019 device that may launch at MWC 2019. However, this exciting attribute is somewhat tempered by its direction at the budget end of the OEM's business-to-business devices. Then again, it may be supported for 3 years under Google's Android Enterprise initiative.

Microsoft's Visual Studio 2019 will launch on April 2 during an all-day event and comes with quite a few changes. The most noticeable one is the new start screen that has been redesigned to work with Git repositories, but there are a lot of minor under-the-hood changes as well — mainly performance optimizations.

CNBC has reported that JPMorgan Chase has developed a new cryptocurrency that will be called JPM Coin. The digital currency will apparently be used in the banking company’s “wholesale payments business.” The JPM Coin will adopt the stablecoin concept, in that its price will not change as one JPM Coin will be worth one US dollar.

A popular dating app, Coffee Meets Bagel, has revealed that it has suffered from a major data breach. Apparently, over 6.1 million accounts were affected by the hacks, which took place in late 2017 and again in May 2018. Coffee Meets Bagel users were informed of the cyber attack on the worst day possible for those looking for love: Valentine’s Day.

Vox Media, the parent company of tech news outlet The Verge, has issued multiple copyright claims on videos criticizing its widely maligned PC building tutorial video. Using YouTube's copyright claim system, Vox lodged copyright strikes against several different channels that made criticism or parody videos of the tutorial. YouTube issued a copyright strike against some of the channels in question before reversing the decision, citing fair use under the DMCA.

Amazon has been the focus of considerable political opposition in the state of New York due to its plans to build one of its two new headquarters (HQ) in Long Island. New Yorkers have voiced their discontent with the proposals over the amount it would reportedly cost the state, among other issues. Amazon may now continue its HQ plans with other US locationa in mind.

A new report from the NBD Group shows that smartwatch sales in the US increased by 51% from November 2017 to November 2018. Wear OS only accounted for a maximum of 12% of all of these wearables sold. The rest of the sales were those from the top 3 in this market: Apple, Fitbit and Samsung.

Gamers that were rather reticent regarding the adoption of Nvidia's real-time ray tracing technology implemented in the latest RTX 2000-series GPUs may be interested to know that Epic Games is planning to make it easier for game developers to add ray tracing effects to existing and upcoming games with the release of Unreal Engine 4.22.

The new video streaming service will be officialized on March 25 and should be launched by summer. There will be some free content, some Apple-funded shows, the usual selection of movies and shows, plus the possibility to access content providers like Starz. Additionally, Apple is planning to release a sub-based news service.

The latest Nintendo Direct broadcast has revealed a treasure trove of games and plans that will keep even the fussiest Nintendo fan content. Among the games featured were Super Mario Maker 2, a battle royale version of Tetris called Tetris 99, and Dragon Quest XI. However, the presentation’s main event was clearly the introduction of the gorgeous-looking The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.

The latest layoffs should help the company refocus its strategies. CEO Bobby Kotick admitted that Activision Blizzard underperformed in Q4 2018 and a new business plan needs to be implemented for 2019. Thus, the company will try to focus more on its major franchises and bring in more developers to help with this endeavor.

SamMobile has caught Samsung France posting a page detailing the Galaxy S10 line in full on its own website. It lists SKU names discovered in previous leaks, the novel S10e model name included. However, it made no reference to the alleged 5G version of the imminent flagship.

Released more than a year ago, the Exynos 7870-powered Galaxy Tab Active 2 is now ready to hit India. This IP68- and MIL-STD 810G-certified rugged Android slate will be launched tomorrow during a special press event. In the US, this tablet retails for US$420 (WiFi only) and US$520 (carrier unlocked LTE).

Released a few months ago, the LiteOS-driven Huawei Watch GT is now finally available for purchase in the US. Listed by Amazon for a regular price of US$199.99, this smart wearable will start shipping on February 19. Its specs and features include continuous heart rate monitoring, built-in GPS, sleep tracking, and more.

Analysts for the financial services giant Goldman Sachs have estimated that Google paid Apple around US$9.5 billion over the calendar year 2018 to remain the default search engine on iOS-powered devices. Bankers are concerned that Apple, especially its Services division, is relying too heavily on this particular revenue source.

Samsung is offering a decent trade-in deal for those early birds who are willing to make a reservation for a qualifying Galaxy smartphone. The South Korean manufacturer will give up to US$550 in credit, depending on the valuation of your trade-in handset, towards the purchase of “Samsung’s next flagship Galaxy device”. Those who reserve during the qualifying period will also get US$50 of credit for accessories.

The Xiaomi M365 electric scooters is popular with ride-sharing companies such as Bird in the US. They can hire out such vehicles online thanks to the ability to remotely lock rental units as and when they need to. The research group Zimperium has claimed to be able to hi-jack this mechanism due to vulnerabilities found in Xiaomi's Bluetooth authentication procedure for the M365.

Reddit has just secured a large-scale investment in the form of round D funding to the tune of US$300 million. Tencent - a company whose home nation has blocked the social media platform - has contributed 50% of this figure. The move has sparked speculation that Reddit's new part-ownership may lead to adversity such as increased censorship on the popular website.

ZTE's sub-brand Nubia came out of the blue with a teaser for a flexible smartphone that will be unveiled at MWC 2019. Unfortunately, the "Flex Your Life" headline doesn't say much. While this can suggest something different than a foldable handset, most major brands are expected to unveil such a device later this month in Barcelona.

Lenovo has announced the first T series ThinkPad of 2019. The Lenovo ThinkPad T490, the "bread-and-butter" model of the series, has been announced today as a special edition for the healthcare sector.

Most major Chinese smartphone brands also have successful sub-brands: Huawei has Honor, Oppo's Realme is just one year old but already doing great, Xiaomi's POCO is also quite popular, and now the time has come for Vivo to create its own sub-brand. iQOO is now an official brand and the first smartphones to carry its name are expected to arrive pretty soon.

A press release from Dell published in early January stated that the Dell XPS 15, Alienware m15, and Dell G7 15 laptops would be offered with OLED panel options starting in March. Unfortunately for those waiting to snap up a Dell laptop with this type of display, company executive Frank Azor has now stated that April is the current target.

All Chinese communications devices are primed for a complete ban in the U.S. and if Trump gets his way, this could happen before MWC in late February. One of the reasons for this hastened ban is the alleged violation of the Iran sanctions committed by Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou. The European Union is also considering a ban on Chinese phone makers.