Business Articles

Apple is looking to enhance subsidies to Japanese carriers in order to boost sales of iPhone XR in the region, according to sources familiar with the matter. Apple is also expected to resume iPhone X production, partly to boost margins and partly due to the fact that Apple needs to buy the contracted number of OLED panels from Samsung SDI Co., given that the production of iPhone XS variants has been scaled down due to low market demand.

Apple’s stock price has suffered from further decline over recent days, with the current price reported by NASDAQ standing at US$176.78. Cautious investors are apparently biding their time to see what the Cupertino-based tech giant’s next move is going to be, and some analysts expect this to be a temporary downturn in the company’s fortunes.

Microsoft has been busy updating some of its global online stores and has been placing deep discounts on a number of its Xbox consoles in time for the Black Friday shopping event. Customers in the US could save between US$70 and US$100 depending on their choice of console, whilst potential buyers in Canada and Australia can also get their hands on a discounted Xbox One.

Lei Jun, Xiaomi's CEO, announced at a press conference that 43.9% of the company's revenues in the third quarter of 2018 had come from international markets. These overseas earnings had increased by over 100% compared to last year. This may be attributed to Xiaomi's by-now solid standing in Europe as an electronics provider.

Configure the laptop exactly the way you want it, request a quote, and then name your discount. The promotion will be for this weekend only and it will apply to all Eurocom laptops including gaming, workstations, Enterprise-class laptops, and mobile servers.

The recent 'crypto crash' may have resulted in a large-scale dumping of slightly older cards onto sites like eBay. Consequently, this may drive down the prices others with the same GPUs (e.g. gamers) can ask for their listings. In addition, this is the season to grab cash for upgrades.

Open Beta 7, the latest in a series of in-testing stock ROMs available to owners of the OnePlus 6 to test out, contains an interesting new feature. It is OnePlus Roaming, a SIM-independent form of access to the internet that can be purchased directly on the 6 - and only the 6 for now.

A Korean IT news outlet claims that Samsung is developing three-dimensional time-of-flight (3D TOF) modules for next year's phones. 3D TOF is linked to improved depth-sensing and AR capabilities. The Galaxy S10 line may be in line for these next-gen sensors.

Chinese officials, citing "massive evidence," have accused Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix of colluding and fixing the price of DRAM. If the allegations are true, the three largest DRAM manufacturers in the world would be directly responsible for the massive price increase for DRAM over the past few years. This isn't the first time these three companies have been accused of price-fixing. Back in 2005, all three pled guilty to similar charges levied by the US Department of Justice.

It looks like some media outlets have a bone to pick with Nvidia, blowing things out of proportion where it really is not the case. Yes, there are faulty RTX 2080 Ti cards out there and Nvidia admitted some cards did not go through the QA process, but the cards are out of stock now not because Nvidia was forced to delist them for too many manufacturing faults. The green team simply did not expect the demand for these cards to be so great.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and other leading cryptocurrencies have been experiencing sharp falls in their prices in the market recently. Bitcoin in particular has suffered a terrible week that will have owners feeling nervous about their digital currency holding. The well-known cryptocurrency has seen its price drop by over US$2,000 in less than seven days.

Valve quietly announced that once physical stock of the Steam Link streaming device sells out, they will no longer sell physical units. Instead, Valve will shift focus and support to the Steam Link mobile app, currently only available for Android. While the reasons for the discontinuation aren't entirely clear, it's likely that the Steam Link is no longer selling enough to warrant continued support.

Epic Games has announced that the Fortnite Winter Royale Qualifiers and Winter Royale Finals will feature a total of US$1 million in prizes. The qualifiers, which are open to all, begin on November 24. The Winter Royale tournament is a test event to help the company prepare for the Fortnite World Cup, which will take place in 2019.

Tumblr's disappearance from Apple's App Store finally has an official reason: what was first simply described as "an issue" was, in fact, child pornography that slipped through the filters — enough of it to make the app vanish. This is not the first time Tumblr has run into pornography-related problems — most likely not the last time, either.

According to a recent report by the analyst firm TrendForce, global laptop shipments have grown by 3.9% during the last quarter of this year. However, this number was projected to be 5 to 6% by now. This slowdown in the laptop market is attributed to Intel's current silicon drought.

Not satisfied with just offering hardware, Lenovo will now have a dedicated online storefront for PC games and closed betas. The store will be limited to gamers in the U.S. for now, but the manufacturer is promising exclusive deals and a tight screening process to weed out "half-finished, half-hearted" demos.

Since Apple Maps often gives the same directions to pedestrians and drivers, the company's pedestrian recon teams are now back on the streets of the United States. The individuals who are part of these teams are wearing backpacks apparently filled with the same cameras and sensors as those found on Apple Maps vehicles.

The OnePlus 6 is currently on sale with US$100 off its MSRP. A Snapdragon 845, 6 GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage, dual rear cameras, and a headphone jack is an incredible package for just US$429. Buyers in Canada also get 130 CAD shaved off the device's regular retail price.

Huawei introduced the tri-rear camera to the world earlier this year and has since been copied by Samsung and LG. No company has attempted to implement three selfie cameras, though, but we could see one such device in the near future, one produced by an unlikely OEM.

The new Apple store that opened its doors for the first time last Sunday in Paris is located on one of the most famous shopping streets in the world — the Champs-Élysées — and is entirely powered using renewable energy. Apple Champs-Élysées has over 100 employees that belong to 15 nationalities and speak 17 languages.

FSLogix is a next-gen app-provisioning platform that optimizes the ingredients — hardware resources, time, and human resources — needed to offer virtualization support when deploying and scaling Windows and Office on Azure. As usual, the financial details have been left out of the spotlight.

Another industry may soon be replaced by robots - IBM's Watson AI scripted a 60-second commercial for luxury car brand Lexus. Watson was fed 15 years worth of award-winning commercials and was able to outline and script the basis of the commercial. After a bit of editing by IBM researchers, Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald shot the commercial after being convinced by the "melodrama of the story."

Many Microsoft users will soon be able to make Skype calls over their Alexa-powered smart speakers. This feature is only available in select countries, however. Those living in them may be able to find the new function in the speakers' Settings menu.

According to some of its suppliers, Apple has cut orders for both the iPhone XS and iPhone XR. Citing a weak Chinese market and a slowdown in smartphone demand, Apple has had to pare back its supply of the new iPhones, a move that will inevitably reduce sales in the short term.

Defending Apple's decision for making Google the default search provider in Apple products, CEO Tim Cook said that Google's search is the best despite some lingering privacy concerns. Google is known to pay companies such as Apple and Samsung hefty amounts to make them set Google Search as the default search provider. Cook also touched upon other issues such as government regulations in user data privacy and gender disparity in Silicon Valley.

On Thursday, Nvidia released its Q3 earnings report, and as a result stocks plummeted nearly 20% thanks mainly to Nvidia's Q4 guidance, which were $700 million below the expectations of third party analysts who predicted Nvidia would achieve $3.4 billion in revenue. Nvidia claims the lack of crypto demand and surplus of Pascal supply are to blame.

During its earnings report call this Thursday, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang predicted a decline in revenue in Q4 owing to an inventory backlog of Pascal cards and the fact that cryptocurrency miners would be offloading their cards at much lower prices given that the boom has now ended. Huang expressed confidence that this 'crypto hangover' would pass but this could delay shipments of midrange Turing GPUs such as the RTX 2060.

The German federal authorities have dedicated the country's entire C-band (or frequencies from 3.4 to 3.8 GHz) to the provision of 5G. This move is being applauded as it may result in more efficient deployment of the new mobile-data standard; on the other hand, there are those that see it as a governmental cash-grab.

Huawei executive Walter Ji has teased the company's plans of launching a device with up to four rear cameras, and 10x zoom. The Huawei man also confirmed that the company has no plans of releasing an Android One phone, which means that Huawei fans will have to make do with EMUI for the foreseeable future.

The Mi Mix 3 was one of the most interesting device launches this year, with its manual slider possibly ushering in a new trend. The Xiaomi flagship has remained in China for the past couple of weeks but, if word on the grapevine is anything to go by, it could be coming to Europe on December 1.

T-Mobile looks like it has some great deals on some of the best smartphones released this year. Handsets like the iPhone XR and Galaxy S9 can be had for free, but reading the fine print shows a few caveats. In addition to activating two new lines and trading in an eligible device, the phones are only free because of a bill credit that is granted over a 36-month period, which effectively locks consumers into a three-year contract.

Samsung is one of the world leaders in curved display technology, and is to take flexible OLEDs even further with its upcoming foldable phone range. However, IceUniverse believes that the company has even more of the same up its sleeve; a 360-degree type of transparent display.

The first wave of EPYC 7000 CPUs were able to reach only 3.2 GHz on boost clocks, but with the new EPYC 7371, AMD pushes the envelope up to 3.8 GHz, which is quite high for server-grade processors that don't usually benefit from custom air coolers or water coolers. The EPYC 7371 is aimed at design automation and high-frequency trading tasks, supporting dual-socket setups for improved performance.

Although there are still some rumors involved — for example, that this handset will be a foldable one — at least Huawei has confirmed that its first 5G phone will be unveiled at MWC 2019, which is scheduled to take place in Barcelona, Spain on February 25-28. Other major brands will probably bring 5G phones at CES in January, but Huawei is not well received in the US nowadays.

As the studio winds up and begins liquidating assets, Telltale has apparently pulled some of its titles from Steam. Back to the Future and Jurassic Park (among others) are no longer available for purchase, though some of their bigger games like Game of Thrones can still be bought through Steam.

In an interview with Kotaku, Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime all but extinguished hopes for an N64 Classic release any time in the near future. He explained that while the NES Classic and SNES Classic were wildly successful, they were intended to be bridges between the dying Wii U and burgeoning Switch. As such, Nintendo has no intention to pursue the retro mini console business.

Yu Chendong, the consumer business division CEO at Huawei, has said that his company is aiming to take the smartphone-OEM crown from Samsung in under 2 years. It has already overtaken Apple as the #2 manufacturer in the world; now the CEO believes that they will be at least level with the Korean giant in 2019.

The small 11.6-inch Chromebook will have integrated LTE capabilities catered specifically for use on Sprint's 4G network. Instead of giving it away for free as an incentive for new customers, however, the carrier will charge upfront for the device on top of the $15 per month wireless plan required to use it.

Microsoft is offering a sneak peek at its Black Friday deals for 2018. They include US$330 off the Surface Pro 6 bundled with its Type cover (in any color so long as it's black) and $310 off the Surface Pro Core M. There is also a range of XBox offers, including a Game Pass for $1 to new users.

Asus claims its PC builder business (mainly the motherboard sales) has suffered due to Intel's 14 nm CPU shortages. Overall profits have seen a 39% year-over-year decline and the next few quarters will continue to hit Asus's profits, as the shortages are expected to last until Q2 2019. The gaming PC and server businesses are unaffected by these problems, however.

The year 2018 is coming to a close. Time for new ThinkPad laptops: With the ThinkPad E490 and the ThinkPad E590, the first models of the upcoming generation have surfaced on sites of Korean registration-offices.

Although Microsoft Translator supports over 60 languages and 12 speech languages, the next-gen Neural Machine Translation improvements are only available for Chinese and German from/to English translations for now. More languages will be supported by the new system — which brings an 11 percent in overall quality — starting in early 2019.

The British regulator Ofcom has announced that it has fined EE and Virgin Media £6.3 million (~ US$8.035 million) and £7 million (~ US$8.928 million) respectively. The regulator has fined the two companies principally for overcharging early-exit fees to hundreds of thousands of customers and for not explaining contractual terms clearly enough.

Sony has confirmed that it will not be part of the E3 2019 trade show. The organizer of the event, the Entertainment Software Association, has issued a press release to highlight which companies will be in attendance, including Sony’s console rivals Nintendo and Microsoft. According to a press statement, the PlayStation maker is apparently searching for new ways of engaging with its community.

Apple’s stock price seems to have stabilized and even briefly bounced back after days of steep decline. The NASDAQ community has offered a “bullish” rating for the stock, implying there is still plenty of optimism in the company’s recovery. However, it’s unlikely Mark Zuckerberg is going to be investing in the Cupertino-based firm any time soon.

SK Hynix has published a press release to announce the development of 16 Gb DDR5 DRAM, the first in the industry that meets JEDEC standards. The South Korean memory manufacturer has managed to lower the operating voltage for the DDR5 DRAM in comparison to DDR4. The new generation of DRAM is also considerably faster than its predecessor.

The United States and South Korea are the countries most strongly linked with the earliest widespread roll-outs of the new mobile data-transfer standard, 5G. AT&T is one of the US networks engaged in the upcoming national 5G distribution program. However, reps from the carrier have warned against getting too excited about it right now.

Intel has announced that it is opening a new development center in Hyderabad in the state of Telangana, India with a capacity to host about 1,500 staff. Raja Koduri, who is now leading Intel's graphics division, said that the upcoming India Development Center will help in augmenting its existing Indian sites in graphics hardware and software development efforts.

After this year's earlier AI-related acquisitions that involved Semantic Machines (May), Bonsai (July), and Lobe (September), Microsoft is up for another round. Its latest purchase is XOXCO, a software product design and development studio that has been developing conversational AI and bots so far.