Business Articles

Samsung was nabbed slowing down devices with its software updates and has been hit with a $5.7m fine in Italy. This comes after Apple was caught doing the same thing earlier in the year, although the American company did have plausible reasons—unlike Samsung.

OnePlus may not be a big player in the global smartphone market but the company has continued its dominance over the premium segment of the Indian smartphone market, with the OnePlus 6 being the best-selling premium phone in India in Q3.

Anker's Nebula Capsule is a 720p portable cinema projector that could put your streamed or saved movies on any flat surface. Now, the company is back with the Nebula Capsule II. This Android-powered projector has raised just about US$650,000 on Kickstarter so far.

Yesterday, we reported on a catastrophic failure related to a setting in the UEFI-firmware of recent ThinkPads. Essentially, if the users changed a certain setting in the UEFI of their ThinkPad, there is a good chance that the machines is bricked in the process. Now, a user of an affected machine has managed to repair it. Doing so does however require some know-how, as well as the right tools.

A press release from Epic Games has announced that the company has managed to raise US$1.25 billion from a group of investors. Undoubtedly, the massive global impact of Fortnite will have contributed to the success Epic has had in securing such a large investment amount. A separate report has valued the creators of the Unreal Engine at nearly US$15 billion.

The Santa Clara giant reported the best quarter in its entire 50-year history, even though the company was not able to meet the outstanding market demand. The 14 nm shortages will continue throughout the rest of the year and Intel expects this situation to worsen, as it is slowly shifting focus to the 10 nm node.

Western Digital just announced the largest mechanical hard drive in the industry, a 15TB helium-sealed monster. Designed for data centers and cloud storage services, the 15TB HDD is intended for enterprise customers in need of densely compacted, reliable storage. Pricing and availability haven't been announced, but don't expect the drives to come cheap.

As online streaming becomes more popular, the need for specific hardware is also rising. Twitch partner Streamlabs and Intel have joined forces with mini PC OEMs like Shuttle, SimplyNUC, Zotac and Acer to bring streaming-ready systems for aspiring influencers and pro gamers. First streaming-ready concept system will be showcased by Acer at TwitchCon this weekend.

Samsung and India's Department of Telecommunications teamed up to conduct the first large-scale 5G trial in the country, which is scheduled to take place in the first quarter of 2019 if everything works as planned. Samsung made the announcement at the India Mobile Congress 2018 earlier this week.

Although LG Electronics has reported a profit of almost US$668 million for the third quarter of 2018, the LG Mobile Communications Company had to face a weakening demand and increasing competition and reported an operating loss of roughly US$130 million. However, LG mobile branch seems to be on the right path.

AMD is now feeling the full hit of the GPU-based crypto mining decline that started back in Q1. Instead of a projected US$50 million downturn in GPU sales, the red team reported losses of US$150 million, thus triggering a share drop of 24%. On the other hand, CPU sales are stronger than ever.

After years of users complaining about spam and irrelevant ads, Google will finally shut down the Nearby Notifications system on December 6th. Google said that the service did not meet the "high bar" the company holds to when delivering a user experience and will be shuttering the feature this winter.

HP's best 12.5-inch convertible will be taking a hiatus in order to focus on the 13.3-inch EliteBook x360 1030 series. All of its features will be integrated into the EliteBook x360 1030 including Sure View and its super-bright backlight for outdoor viewing. HP says its 13.3-inch offering is small enough to fully replace the 12.5-inch model for the time being.

A leak on Weibo claims that the Galaxy S10 lineup will consist of 4 versions of the phone rather than the usual 2. One of these will be a 5G variant - with 12GB RAM. The Weibo poster also believes that the Huawei P30 Pro will have this spec.

With less than a week to go until its next major launch event, it appears that OnePlus has gained what could be a significant advantage for its next phone, the 6T, in the United States. The company has reportedly succeeded in its application for Verizon LTE certification.

Most people who own connected devices appear not to need them in their everyday lives. This is one of the findings of a new study into IoT use in the home and similar settings. 29% of these users were unsure of how their data was used across all their devices.

Some modern ThinkPad laptops apparently have an issue with the UEFI-BIOS. When a certain setting is activated, this action can potentially brick the laptop. The only fix in this situation: Exchanging the motherboard.

Lyft, the second most popular ride-sharing business, announced its first acquisition centered around autonomous cars. The company will purchase Blue Vision Labs, an AR startup, for US $72 million (with an additional $30 million option). This marks Lyft's first major push into self-driving cars, a space currently ruled by juggernauts Uber, Tesla, GM, and Ford.

Web service provider Yahoo has agreed to pay out US$50 million in damages in response to the huge data breaches the company suffered from in 2013 and 2014. Once the settlement has been legally approved, Yahoo accountholders affected by the breaches will be able to make financial claims against the company and gain free access to a credit-monitoring service.

Although both were supposed to enter production in the second half of this year, it looks like the next-gen UFS storage solutions and LPDDR5 will not hit the market as soon as expected. While the UFS 3.0 memory will arrive in the first half of next year, the LPDDR5 DRAM chips will only roll out — if everything works as planned, obviously — in 2020.

The 10 nm process gave Intel quite a bit of a headache in the past few years. It was supposed to arrive in 2017 initially, but the fabrication process had to be delayed because of design problems, and it looks like Intel may not be able to launch the 10 nm CPUs come 2H 2019 in large amounts either.

HP says it will be the smallest and lightest 14-inch business convertible with a quad-core processor and also the world's first with gigabit 4G LTE for its class. The convertible is set to directly supplant the Elitebook Folio 1040 G4 with many new features inspired by the successful 13.3-inch EliteBook x360 1030 G1.

Since most major brands should be working on their first 5G handsets already, the fact that Carl Pei has recently confirmed that OnePlus is also set to release its first 5G phone next year is not a surprise. However, the co-founder of this popular brand is apparently not sure if the device will be ready in time for the first 5G wave.

The new 14-inch systems are notable for their updated CPUs and lighter designs that won't impact MIL-STD-810G performance. Expect to drop at least $1400 USD for the entry-level 5420 or upwards of $3500 USD for the flagship 7424.

Companies such as Qualcomm and Samsung may believe that devices like the Galaxy Book 2 are the immediate future of the laptop. This is because they can leverage the power of 5G for data transfer and cloud functions. However, some company representatives believe that 5G can supplant even more aspects of computing.

Google and Apple can celebrate because the Huawei Mate 20 Pro and its non-Pro sibling will not give them a hard time in the US. Unfortunately for Huawei's US fans, the Chinese company has just confirmed that these two devices will not be available locally. However, European and Asian variants might be imported.

Supermicro has sent out a letter to its customers to reassure them that the tech company will be carrying out a thorough internal review of its hardware in regard to allegations made by a Bloomberg article. The news item argued that products from Supermicro had been compromised by tiny spy chips, supposedly planted by Chinese intelligence officers.

Google Chrome users who run the browser on Qualcomm Snapdragon-driven Windows 10 ARM laptops are facing performance problems due to the fact that these machines have to emulate this piece of code. Qualcomm has confirmed that an ARM port of Chrome is in the making, but it might take almost a year until it becomes available.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 is still competitive at the sub-US$400 price bracket. It was originally released with 6GB of GDDR5 memory. A change to its product page on its maker's website now suggests that there are GDDR5X versions of the card.

At first glance, the Dell XPS 15 9570 is a good choice for those who are looking for a powerful yet portable machine to use for music production. Sadly, a DPC latency issue makes it unsuitable for this task, but Frank Azor has just confirmed that the company is working on fixing this issue, so it should be patched soon.

The second installment of Red Dead Redemption has been announced as launching soon. However, this news is not great for PC gamers, as the game is thought to be only available for consoles. A recent listing by an e-tailer appears to have given some hopes that this may be wrong, then snatched it away again.

OnePlus had announced some time ago that its next product launch would take place in New York on October 30th. However, Apple has just taken that same date to release the new Macs and iPad Pro. The Chinese company has responded by moving its own event up by one day.

The new device-as-a-service program from HP is limited to select customers for the time being and it targets creative professionals like photographers, video editors, graphic designers, and CG artists. Each professional group gets a specific hardware bundle with included accessories and a monthly "rent," plus access to the 24/7 Concierge program for streamlined setup.

As if the various taxes already in place are not enough, Android users in the EU will end up paying more for their phones starting next year due to the licensing fees that Google will start charging for devices that are activated starting on February 1. These fees will start at US$2.5 per device and can hit US$40, depending on the pixel density and market.

During the Mate 20 Pro launch event, Huawei's CEO was asked about foldable handsets. Richard Yu confirmed that the company is working on foldable phones, also adding that these handsets feature 5G connectivity. Sadly, he did not reveal any other technical details or a launch date, but previous reports mentioned June 2019.

The brand once owned by Nokia is back with the Vertu Aster P, a luxury handset that is all about status. Available in China for a bit over US$5,000, this handset is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor and does not even have a dual camera setup on the back, but nobody buys Verty handsets for their specs, right?

In a first-ever move, Frank Azor has just disclosed data related to the Dell and Alienware's gaming business and it is more than good. According to him, the gaming business that involves these two iconic brands is worth US$3 billion, which makes them the leaders of the market by a very large margin.

Asus has announced two new smartphones in the ZenFone lineup — the ZenFone Lite (L1) and the ZenFone Max (M1). Both these phones are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 SoC and target budget smartphone buyers. In India, these phones will be available exclusively via Flipkart at discounted prices during the launch offer period.

A report from Bloomberg has stated that Essential Products has cut its workforce by about 30%. An email received by the media outlet from the Palo Alto-based technology company mentioned that regardless of the cutbacks, the firm still intends to develop a “game changing consumer product.” It is believed the layoffs will mostly affect the hardware and sales divisions.

Intel is splitting its manufacturing segment into 3 new categories, each of which will be managed by a different staff member. These new divisions will handle various aspects of the chip-making side of the Intel business. They will also be directed by an executive who came to the company from Qualcomm.

Gigabyte had released a promotional Halloween-season banner including the words "AORUS RTX 2070 Ti/2070 Graphics card". This was enough for some to run with the rumor that the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 was getting its own Ti variant. However, Gigabyte has taken to Reddit to squash this speculation once and for all.

Google has lost out in an anti-trust hearing conducted by the European Commission. As a result, the company have been fined US$5 billion, although it is currently appealing this decision. In the meantime, the requirements for Android phones in the EEA to ship with certain Google apps will be lifted - for a price.

Samsung continues its quest for supremacy in the AI and 5G fields with the acquisition of Zhilabs, a company known for its expertise in the field of AI-based network and service analytics. After the deal gets the needed approvals, Zhilabs will operate independently under its own management as a fully-owned Samsung subsidiary.

ZTE, a few days ago, finally released Android Oreo for the Axon 7. The update is an Android 8.0 one that also doubles up as the July security patch, both of which are only the first in a long line of things wrong with the OS update.

A luxury customization company called Brikk has created a solid gold Apple iPhone XS Max that costs US$94,995. The device features 313 g (11.08 oz) of 22K gold and is appropriately part of the firm's Ingot Collection. Brikk has also developed a gold DualShock 4 controller, featuring diamond-studded buttons, available for US$13,995. A rather opulent set of AirPods with a whole carat of diamonds on each bud can be snapped up for US$9,995.