Business Articles

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.

The OEM OnePlus had previously announced that it would release a 5G phone this year. Today (February 11, 2019), the company has apparently released a confirmation that this device would feature at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year. It will showcase the device at Qualcomm's booth during the event.

While the global smartphone market is slowing down, the volume of smartphone sales in India continues to grow and it soon might leave the US behind. According to Canalys, Xiaomi shipped 41 million handsets in 2018 — 29.9 percent of the Indian market, up from 25.7 million and 20.6 percent during the previous year.

Working with all major internet providers in the country, Russian authorities are planning an interesting - and quite disturbing - experiment that involves disconnecting all local users from the internet. The purpose of this experiment is to get feedback and maybe provide modifications to a law proposed back in December 2018.

Market intelligence analyst Sensor Tower has estimated that Fortnite has amassed over US$500 million in revenue in less than a year on iOS alone. The battle royale smash hit from Epic Games has been making about US$1.53 million a day since it was released on the App Store. Android gamers have contributed another US$100 million on top of that.

A new piece in Bloomberg has cited sources allegedly close enough to Activision Blizzard to allege that the gaming company will let "hundreds" of staff go. The firm is apparently taking this action to maximise profits and to "centralize functions". An announcement to this effect is expected on February 12, 2019.

A Redditor claims to have access to a Canadian database in which the upcoming LG G8 ThinQ is shown alongside the number 1199. Assuming this figure is its price in the country, this means the phone could cost about US$900 at launch. Considering LG's typical release strategies for its mobile devices, this is more or less plausible.

Dell has had to recall certain versions of its portable charging device, the Hybrid Adapter + Power Bank, because of the risk of electric shock. Apparently, the casing of the black adapter part of the accessory can break, which in turn exposes metal components that could pose a hazard. Dell has already received 11 reports of this occurring.

The medals awarded at the 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games being held in Tokyo, Japan will be made of recycled electronics, including old laptops and smartphones. The project to collect the required metal for gold, silver, and bronze medals commenced in 2017, and organizers have stated that they are well on course to hit the necessary targets.

AMD has released its final financial report for 2018. It shows that the company had made nearly US$6.5 billion for this year, which is a 23% increase compared to 2017. The company also claims to have posted a net income of $337 million, whereas it had made a net loss the previous year. Analysis has also shown that AMD has increased its share of server and PC markets.

Thanks to the votes of The Steam Community members, PUBG is now holding the Game of the Year Award for 2018. However, CD PROJEKT RED, the Polish company behind the successful Witcher franchise, was crowned as The Best Developer. PUBG competed for this prize against Monster Hunter World, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Hitman 2, and Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.

The American telecommunications company Sprint has filed a lawsuit against AT&T in relation to the latter’s use of the term “5G Evolution”. Obviously, there is a lot of excitement about 5G connectivity and major brands are naturally trying to take advantage of consumer interest. Sprint believes AT&T is involved in outright deception.

Respawn Entertainment’s Vince Zampella has posted some news on the Electronic Arts website to share information about how the new battle royale game Apex Legends is doing. Apparently, over 10 million people have now tried the game within its first 72 hours of release. Apex Legends is set in the Titanfall universe.

Recently, Facebook had gone public with its intentions to merge user data from its own Messenger app with that of WhatsApp and Instagram. Yesterday, the German federal corporate trust-monitoring office ruled against Facebook's license to do so in the country. It cited the fact that Facebook can only pool data as it wishes if the user of each respective app consents to this activity.

Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's chief executive officer (CEO), will deliver the keynote speech at this year's GPU Technology Conference (GTC). This event will take place in several locations in San José, California, from March 17 to 21, 2019. Huang will present on his company's recent breakthroughs in AI, robotics and self-driving tech during his speech.

Previous rumors about launch supplies of 5,000 units might not be too far off, as new sources cite very limited Radeon VII availability at least for Europe. Overclockers UK cite 100 units available for Great Britain, while France and Spain would be getting only 20 units each. The reasons for reduced allocations seem to be the Lunar Year celebration in China and AIB partners not having enough time to come up with custom cards.

Microsoft has announced in a blog post that the Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop 2, and Surface Studio 2 devices are now launching in 20 more markets worldwide. The tech giant also revealed that its Surface Headphones will be coming to eight new markets starting in March, including Canada, New Zealand, and Germany.

The year 2019 brings us a new generation of business laptops. One of the first specimens of this new wave has made it to our testing-labs: The Lenovo ThinkPad L390, an affordable ThinkPad laptop for companies and students.

Last December, the steep depreciation of Nvidia's stock complicated the company's predicament to the point where its largest investor threatened to sell its entire stake. It looks like the green team could not convince the investor to keep its stake, and SoftBank went ahead completing the sale of shares worth US$3.6 billion in January.