Business Articles

Apple has convinced its main manufacturing partners, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Foxconn, to makes its parts and/or devices using green energy by 2020. This achievement is a big part of the OEM's current drive towards making its business as sustainable as possible.

Any direct successor for the R17 is dead; long live Reno. This is the main message of an interview given by OPPO's CEO, Shen Yiren, that took place after the launch of the latter earlier this week. Accordingly, this new brand, in conjunction with the new Find Z, will pick up where the R-line left off.

The future of Microsoft PCs such as the Surface Pro may yet be Qualcomm-based. A new report on the development of Windows on ARM includes references to several prototypes from this line with Snapdragon processors rather than those from Intel. Therefore, this prospect may now be more feasible than ever.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, or PUBG for short, is one of the Korean studio Bluehole's biggest success stories. However, some state regulators seem not to like it as much as its millions of players do. Nepal is the latest country to ban the game, citing detrimental effects on children and teenagers.

According to a new report in the Korean media, those who have bought Samsung's 5G edition of the Galaxy S10 face a significant new issue with these devices. It seems that these phones fail to connect to 4G when the new radio bands are not available. As they have separate antennas for both kinds of mobile data, this should not be happening.

Realme has confirmed that its next device, the Realme 3 Pro, will be launched on April 22. The Realme 3 Pro is expected to contend against the Redmi Note 7 Pro, and apparently has hardware powerful enough to run Fortnite at 60fps.

The extreme edition Intel Core i9-9990XE is now available for direct sale, but it doesn’t come cheaply. German computer hardware specialist CaseKing.de has decided to make the powerful chip available to customers for a starting price of €2,999 (~US$3,384). If you want to buy a system that already has the chip installed, there is one currently available for €12,999.90 (~US$14,671).

Sales data from Mindfactory, a large German computer hardware retailer, has shown that CPUs from AMD are outselling Intel’s processors by more than two to one. Leading the charge for the red team are two CPUs from the Zen+ Pinnacle Ridge series: The mainstream Ryzen 5 2600 and the performance-orientated Ryzen 7 2700X.

Julian Assange has finally been arrested after spending seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The founder of WikiLeaks has been arrested for breaching bail conditions relating to allegations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden and for his part in WikiLeaks publishing material supplied by Chelsea Manning in 2010. Assange could face up to five years imprisonment in the US.

The new Disney+ streaming service will entail a mixture of old and new shows from all of the studios under its umbrella. This, therefore, includes Lucasfilm, 21st Century Fox, Pixar and Marvel. Therefore, Netflix may indeed forfeit several lucrative series-length titles as Disney parts company with it in 2019. This year should also see much more granular detail on what this new subscription has to offer.

The VAIO A12 is the latest convertible laptop from the Japanese OEM. The A12 offers a bevy of ports and decent specifications, but the high price (€2300/£2000) may be prohibitive to many consumers. The VAIO A12 is available in Europe and the United Kingdom.

Qualcomm and Swisscom have announced the implementation of Europe's first commercial 5G service. These telecommunication and technology corporations had set up a partnership to deliver this next-generation mobile data standard in Switzerland. This will also now enable other firms who operate in the same country to offer 5G products and hardware.

AnTuTu has taken to Weibo to present the first benchmark score derived from the newly-released OPPO Reno line. It is associated with the '10X Zoom' variant, which has a Snapdragon 855 processor and 6GB of RAM. This alleged super-camera-phone has returned a result of 369254, which is just about what is expected of its flagship SoC.

iTunes, the unified account by which Apple apps and services are accessed on devices such as Macs, seems to have been around forever. However, it also appears that this is no longer the case. A 9to5Mac contributor has confirmed rumors that the new protocol Marzipan is being used to make new apps (e.g. Apple TV) that do not require this old system on macOS.

After years of pleading, PlayStation users can now change their PSN IDs, a useful feature considering most users registered during their more juvenile ages and may have opted for obnoxious IDs. Like with all things Sony, however, the new feature comes with a few caveats.

Sharp has thrown its hat into the foldable-device ring by displaying its own device built around a flexible OLED panel. This screen will apparently measure 6.18-inches and have a 1440 x 3040 resolution when part of a finished product. Interestingly, it takes a clamshell form-factor and folding action, which is also associated with no companies besides Motorola at this point.

The action camera market is projected to be worth over $10 billion in 7 years. It has been found to be made up of the popular brands in this space, such as GoPro, Sony, Olympus, Garmin and others. This market is reportedly driven by increasing levels of disposable income and interest in relevant outdoor pursuits.

YouTube has amassed a 265 million-stong user based in the Indian market. Speaking at a recent Google conference, the service's CEO, Susan Wojcicki, projected that this number would grow further to 500 million by next year. The executive attributed this to the availability of 4G in this country.

Canon has launched the EOS Rebel SL3, the latest in this line of compact DLSRs. This model is capable of 4K reconding, a first for the EOS Rebel series. It does so with its 24.1 megapixel (MP) APS-C sensor, which is compatible with EF and EF-S lenses. The EOS Rebel is capable of various autofocus settings, and has a completely adjustable LCD touchscreen.

With the addition of parts of Austin, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco, and San Jose, AT&T is now the only US carrier to provide 5G mobile coverage in 19 cities in the US. Last month, AT&T became the first US carrier to surpass 1 Gigabit mobile speeds on a live 5G connection.

Earlier, it had been speculated that the update to the Galaxy Note series to be released later in 2019 would feature more than 1 version. Now, a Korean news agency claims that its sources have increased this potential number to 4. Samsung may be planning this deviation from the norm in order to accomodate the 5G-flagship trend that has already taken hold this year.

Google is currently testing its next devices, the Pixel 3a and 3a XL, in India. Interestingly, the two devices have import valuations that are less than what one would expect, which is, perhaps, a sign that they could sell for cheaper than most have claimed.

Realme released its first device just under a year ago as a means for OPPO to sell cheaper devices towards a younger demographic. Since then, the company has sold six million smartphone units and is celebrating that milestone with a number of discounts.

It is official: Samsung Display has begun to mass produce the foldable OLED panels for the high-end Galaxy Fold device. Samsung's Galaxy Fold is set to hit the market globally on April 26, but the 5G version is expected to hit South Korea in May — and the rest of the world at a later time, of course.

2019 is already shaping up to be a good year for AMD. The 7 nm chips are currently manufactured by TSMC on the new EUV lithography, and the red team has considerably increased its chip orders, as the launch dates are looming. Intel, on the other hand, is faced with weakened investor confidence and could lose important market share in the mainstream CPU and server sectors.

Apple may be obliged to delay its adoption of 5G until 2020 at the earliest. This is due to its ongoing feud with Qualcomm, who, as it is claimed, will not sell the necessary hardware to the Cupertino company. More recently, Huawei has said it may sell its own modems to Apple.

The March 2019 Steam Hardware & Software Survey has been posted by the software distribution platform, and as usual things look rosy for Nvidia in the video card usage category. Three of the top six places in terms of percentage increase over the month are occupied by GeForce RTX 20 series products, with last month’s missing RTX 2060 now taking the top spot.

If the (usually overpriced) Galaxy J series had any fans, they will definitely love the Galaxy A lineup because Samsung has just confirmed that "Galaxy J is now Galaxy A" in a YouTube video. The existing Samsung Galaxy A10, A20, A30, A50 and A70 will be joined by a few new models on April 10.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) vice-president of research Maria Zuber has stated that the university will discontinue its new and existing partnerships with the OEMs ZTE and Huawei. This decision is reportedly connected to suspicions that the two companies have violated US sanctions.

HTC is widely regarded as a smartphone OEM on the ropes. Now, AppBrain's data on the company has shown that it has taken 9 of its apps, including its in-house Sense launcher, off Google's Play Store between February and April 2019. This could be a bad sign, but may also mean that the company is simply re-designing or re-assigning them.

Although the foldable touchscreen display — and same can be said about the foldable handset concept as a whole — might need a few years to reach the mid-range area of the market, Gartner estimates that foldables will go up to reach 5 percent — or 30 million units — of the high-end smartphone market by 2023.

We have reviewed the Lenovo ThinkPad E485. Of this model, we received not only one, but two review samples. As in many cases, both review samples had different LCD panels. Unfortunately, one panel is much darker than the other one.

With YouTube Music now Google's primary streaming service, the Google Play Artist Hub is going to shut down at the end of April. Sadly, Google has no plans to offer a new direct portal for smaller artists, and all material that was uploaded through the Google Play Artist Hub will disappear from both the Google Play Store and Play Music.

According to a new report by DigiTimes, the uptake of 7nm chips from TSMC was at its lowest 2019 ebb in the first quarter of this year (1Q2019). However, the company expects its orders to push its relevant processes to their full capacity in 3Q2019. The firm has also started using the improved EUV method for the production of 7nm dies.

A blog called ServertheHome has drawn on the latest leaks and info on EPYC Rome to conclude that it could have between 128 and 160 PCIe lanes. By contrast, the competing Intel Xeon Platinum 9200 solution may have only 80. On top of that, the Xeon's lanes may be Gen3, whereas Rome is likely to have Gen4.

Huawei is set to release its latest power bank for sale for the first time in China. This will take place in the coming week (on April 11, 2019). The OEM alleges that this power bank is compatible with devices that can charge at 40 watts. This includes the P30 line of smartphones, as well as some Matebooks.

Front-facing cameras that are hidden inside the body of a phone, and can deploy at need, are gaining steam in 2019. They leave the display in question with an improved body-to-screen ratio, but also require extra moving parts. Redmi's general manager has reportedly rubbished speculation that this brand may adopt 'pop-up camera' technology.

MiLi is a company that integrates its Furniture Mate wireless-charging pad into any table-top. It aims this product at those in the service industry and also to those who want decor that can charge an increasing number of phones at home. MiLi also makes the Table Mate, a similar pad that can be attached to nearly any table.

XDA contributors have noticed that the latest update to the Android TV OS has resulted in the appearance of "sponsored content" on the launcher visible from several kinds of device. They include the Sony Bravia X900F, the Mi Box 3 and NVIDIA's Shield TV. At present, this can be circumvented by uninstalling the updates from a specific app.

Aukey, a common name in USB power and mobile-device accessories, has launched a new technology called Dynamic Detect. It allows a dual-port USB-Power Delivery (USB-PD) charger to recognize the number of devices connected to it and allocate its full wattage accordingly. This could allow an ultrabook to fast-charge at the full wattage it needs.

Xiaomi normally has a decent reputation for keeping its phones updated with new versions of MIUI, its version of Android. However, the OEM has recently announced that some Redmi phones from 2017 or earlier will no longer be receiving this support. It means that these devices will see no further software development, although they may still receive regular security updates.

Samsung's trade-in program for the new S10 flagships has been mostly limited to older Samsung flagships, with total trade-in value topping out at US$550. The company is eager to ship as many units of the S10 phones as possible, though, and is now allowing buyers to trade in any smartphone and get US$200 off. There are a few conditions, however.

Amazon seems to be determined to enter the ISP business with an impressive fleet of 3,236 satellites, as the company is ready to file the necessary files to the FCC and correspondent regulators across the world. Currently codenamed "Project Kuiper," this endeavor is looking to provide broadband Internet connections to "unserved and underserved communities around the world."

Initially scheduled for mid-2019, risk production for the upcoming 5 nm manufacturing process was already initiated at the end of March. TSMC also finalized the 5 nm design infrastructure and it is currently testing this process through multiple silicon test vehicles. Improvements over the current 7 nm process include 1.8X increased logic density and a 15% performance boost.

Xiaomi is said to be on the point of releasing a new product for 2019. This product is to be called the Star Trang telescope, and will be available for sale on April 9. It is set to cost about US$89, and is one of many gadgets the OEM may release for its "Fan Day" event in China.

Qualcomm has announced that George Davis, an executive who had served as the company's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for the past 6 years, has left the firm. His immediate successor is David Wise, who also acts as senior vice-president and treasurer for the chipmaking giant. However, Qualcomm is also looking for a new CFO to replace him in the long term.

Samsung Electronics has issued earnings guidance for the first quarter of 2019, and it shows that the tech giant’s operating profit has decreased dramatically from the first and last quarters of 2018. Issues such as the fall in memory chip prices and weaker demand for products like displays have affected the South Korean manufacturer’s financial performance.

Business news site Quartz has looked over a huge email chain leaked from Microsoft's offices that features numerous disturbing stories from female employees of the tech giant. Workers have shared their experiences with each other in the email chain, which shockingly includes episodes of sexual harassment.

Verizon has started generating 5G service, surprising many in the industry as its launch date had been set from about a week from now. On the other hand, it is only available in either Chicago or Minneapolis, and in restricted areas of these 2 cities. Nevertheless, it means that the Moto Z3 is technically the world's first 5G phone.