Business Articles

Sony's new flagships are finally hitting the US. The devices, the Xperia XZ2 and XZ2 Compact are now on sale on Best Buy. Potential buyers can now pre-order, with shipping estimated for April 20. The flagships will make their way to brick-and-mortar stores by May 6.

Xiaomi has a terrible history with releasing kernel sources—a direct violation of the General Public License. The company looks to have seen the light, with a company spokesperson declaring that devices will now have their sources released to the public, albeit with a slight caveat.

A report from Kotaku about the video-game company Hangar 13 has mentioned the development of a new BioShock game. BioShock Infinite was the last release in the popular series from 2K Games, and that title came out in 2013. There has been no official announcement about the game yet, which is apparently codenamed “Parkside.”

An internal memo warning Apple employees about the consequences of leaking information has been leaked. The tech giant has suffered from a considerable number of leaks in the past, and the memo warns that leakers face losing their jobs and may be fined and even imprisoned. Apparently, the Cupertino-based firm caught 29 leakers in 2017.

Less than a month since it managed to reach 200 million users within a 30-day period, Telegram Messenger has to take a serious blow as the Russian authorities decide to ban its use in the country. The reason for this decision is the company's unwillingness to provide the keys required by the Federal Security Service to decrypt the users' messages.

Bitcoin’s price rocketed for a short period on April 12, soaring from US$6,852 to US$7,834 in the space of barely two hours. The virtual currency’s value has been dropping consistently since December 2017, when it enjoyed record prices of over US$19,000. The latest close for the famous digital coin was US$7,819.

Sales of desktop PCs and laptops are continuing their downward trend into the new year according to Gartner. While EMEA is seeing a slight uptick, the sharper declines in other regions worldwide paint a more pessimistic picture. This latest quarter marks the fourteenth in a row of slowing PC sales. Note that the data does not include iPads or Android tablets.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has published a patent application for “Luminescence shock avoidance in display devices” that was filed by Apple in December 2017. Luminescence shock occurs when a device is turned on in a dark environment and the brightness of the display temporarily impairs the user’s vision.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has held its annual award ceremony for the video-game industry. The 2018 event was a great success for Nintendo, which took home three prizes, and for the dark fantasy action game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which scooped up five of the prestigious awards. The Best Game category was won by What Remains of Edith Finch.

Chris Hook had been with ATI and then AMD for almost 20 years. The former AMD Senior Director of Marketing could be joining Intel in order to help the company launch its latest discrete GPU, first one in 20 years. AMD promptly found a suitable replacement, announcing that Hook's position will be occupied by Sasa Marinkovic.

A report from Bloomberg has stated that Apple has had to cut manufacturing orders with Inventec in regard to the HomePod. Apparently, the smart speaker has not been selling in huge numbers and Apple workers have commented that store inventories are simply piling up with the device. A number of factors are being accused for the HomePod's sluggish sales, including the relatively high price of US$349.

In a statement made yesterday, the Federal Trade Commision stated that it had sent warnings to six major manufacturers of cars, mobile phones, or video game consoles. The warning stated that policies requiring users to repair their products via a preset list of vendors or replacement parts in order to maintain a product's warranty is, in fact, illegal.

Market intelligence provider IDC has released a report detailing the state of the worldwide traditional PC market for the first quarter of 2018 (1Q18). According to the data, both Dell and HP have seen increases in market share in comparison to the first quarter of 2017 (1Q17). However, the total of global PC shipments for the quarter has experienced a flat year-on-year growth.

The American video-game developer behind Destiny 2, Bungie, has announced the release date for the second expansion to the online first-person shooter. Warmind will be released on May 8, at the same time as the start of Season Three of the game, and a reveal stream on Twitch will begin on April 24. Destiny 2 was released in September 2017 and the first expansion, Curse of Osiris, was released shortly afterwards.

The well-known video-game tracking website Steam Spy will be shutting down after Valve announced changes to Steam’s privacy settings. The specific change that has affected Steam Spy’s operations is the default hiding of a user’s game library. Steam Spy scraped data from public profiles on the software distribution platform to estimate overall game sales.

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which revealed one of the worst abuses of personal information by a corporation in history, trust in Facebook's handling of private information has plummeted. This is evidenced by a new survey run by Recode and SurveyMonkey, where 56% of those surveyed stated they trusted Facebook the least. The next choice was Google at a mere 5%.

According to PCPowerPlay, Dell's marketing for its new laptops in China involves hailing the ability of the devices to enhance cheating in PUBG. Players in the region have become notorious for their blackhat gameplay, so this isn't surprising. Update: Dell has issued an official statement on the issue.

HP has refreshed the Pavilion and Pavilion x360 lineup with modern thin bezel designs, borrowing many cues from the premium Envy series. Both the Pavilion and the Pavilion x360 come in 14 and 15-inch versions and come in a range of configuration options and price points.

HP has announced a revamp to its Pavilion Power Desktop lineup. The new generation is christened Pavilion Gaming and comes in two chassis options with options of the latest Intel 8th generation hexa-core 'Coffee Lake-H- series or AMD 2nd generation Ryzen CPUs along with options of a GeForce GTX 1060/GTX 1080 or a Radeon RX 580 GPU. These PCs are aimed at those who value both content creation and gaming on a budget and feature a stand-out design language.

A new trailer has been released for Overkill’s The Walking Dead and it certainly looks impressive. The cinematic clip focuses on Maya, who will be one of the playable characters in the game. Overkill Software announced the title back in 2014 and it was originally scheduled to appear in 2016. The current release date for the first-person shooter is fall 2018.

There have been rumors in regard to Sony releasing the PlayStation 5 either later this year or in 2019. However, a number of sources speaking to Jason Schreier of Kotaku have poured cold water on the idea of a PS5 console being available within the rumored timeframe. More conservative suggestions have focused on a release date for the much-awaited device occurring in 2020.

Images of BlackBerry’s Athena phone have surfaced online, via the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China (SIPO). The device has a good-looking mechanical QWERTY keyboard beneath a large screen, and it offers dual-camera functionality on its rear. The Athena is expected to be the successor to 2017’s BlackBerry KEYone.

Samsung may still be the world’s largest smartphone vendor but the South Korean company is struggling to make an impact in the important Chinese market. The smartphone market in China is currently dominated by domestic brands, with Apple also managing a small slice of the pie. It has been reported that Samsung’s share dropped to 0.8% in the fourth quarter of 2017, putting the company in 12th position for that particular market.

A new desktop thin client and two new notebook thin clients from Fujitsu offer compact computing for businesses who use a centralized access server to protect company data and improve security. These thin clients run low-powered hardware but offer fast networking connections. The operating systems supported are eLux RP6 or Windows 10 IoT Enterprise.

Huawei has sent out invites for an event where the upcoming Honor 10 will be officially unveiled. Not much is known about the device itself but it will be powered by a Kirin 970, and could sport a notched 5.8-inch FHD+ display.

Images of a concept phone from ZTE called the Iceberg have appeared on the iF World Design Guide website. The smartphone utilizes a glass unibody, showing off transparent glass corners that give it a unique look. However, haters of the controversial notch design will despair at the Iceberg’s most obvious feature: A second notch!

Apple has announced the impending release of the Product Red Special Edition iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. The devices will be available to order from April 10 and physical units will start appearing in Apple stores in some countries on April 13. The Special Edition smartphones will come in an eye-catching red finish. Part of the money made from selling these devices goes to The Global Fund financing organization.

Apple has published a press release today claiming that the company is now 100% powered by renewable energy. The tech giant has heavily invested in a number of sustainable energy projects such as wind farms and solar power production. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, has called the news a “significant milestone” and insists that the company will continue to be committed to a cleaner environment.

Three South Korean video-game developers have been severely punished by the country’s Fair Trade Commission in regard to the use of loot boxes in some of their games. Nexon, Netmarble, and NextFloor are the companies facing fines totaling the equivalent of US$945,000. The fines were imposed because of an apparent lack of information offered by the firms involved.

HMD Global soon plans to manufacture its components in India to avoid import duties and ride along the smartphone wave in the country. The Finnish company, which has license to use the Nokia brand, is in talks with Foxconn to setup surface-mount technology lines and other component manufacturing.

According to supposedly reliable sources, Xiaomi and Google are working together on a smartphone for the US market. This device is said to be neither an Android One smartphone nor a Pixel, which leaves us a bit stumped as to what both companies have in the works.

The Nokia 6 (2018) was launched in China months ago. The device, one of the few to be launched with a 16:9 aspect ratio this year, has finally gone on sale in India. It can be purchased at Nokia’s online store for a token of INR 16,999.

As part of a feature upgrade to Outlook.com and OneDrive, Microsoft is adding security and privacy features to help users protect their synced files and sent emails. These include password protected sharing, optional end-to-end email encryption, attachment encryption, and forwarding-prevention measures.

The Essential PH-1's camera has been panned by both critics and users for being a major letdown. While the company has attempted to fix things with software updates, the camera still doesn't hold up to those on its flagship rivals.

Xiaomi has taken its exceptional form of 2017 into the new year. The company has apparently averaged over 10 million smartphone shipments over the first three months of the year. The company leapfrogged Vivo to become the fifth-largest smartphone brand in the world by the end of Q4 2017. If current sales numbers remain steady, Xiaomi could go fourth.

GPU prices dropped considerably throughout the month of March due to a series of factors that include: Amazon and Newegg refreshing their supplies more often, rumors about a possible July launch of the GTX 11 series and a late 2018 AMD Navi launch, plus Bitmain's announcement of the E3 Ethereum ASIC that could spell the end of GPU-based cryptomining.

Huawei's new Mate RS features technology that hasn't been seen on smartphones before, which is about par considering its hefty $2000 price tag. The device also uses OLED panels made by LG—particularly noteworthy after the issues with the LG V30 and Pixel 2 XL's displays.

The newly announced HP ZBook Studio x360 G5 is a creator and designer focused convertible that packs workstation class Intel Xeon and Nvidia Quadro hardware into a flexible device. It features a screen that meets 100% of the AdobeRGB color standard and a pen with 4000 levels of sensitivity. HP claims it is the most powerful convertible notebook in the world, placing it ahead of the Microsoft Surface Book 2 and new Dell XPS 15 9575

Blizzard Entertainment has announced a launch date for the next World of Warcraft expansion, Battle for Azeroth. The expansion will be released on August 14 and is currently available for pre-order. The standard edition of the latest WoW title is priced at US$49.99 and there is also a digital deluxe edition available for US$69.99.

Among HP's refreshed ZBook line of portable workstations is the ZBook 15V, which HP is aiming squarely at a broader consumer market. The workstation, which starts at USD $950, can be specced with up to an Intel Core i7-8750H or Xeon E-2176M CPU and quite a few other powerful components.

The Honor V10 was launched globally months back in December. The device has taken its sweet time to make its way across the pond, though, going on sale via Honor's website a while ago. Potential buyers who prefer doing their shopping on Amazon can finally rest easy, with the device getting listed.

Massive Entertainment, the Swedish video-game developer behind Tom Clancy’s The Division, may be working on a new battle royale game. It has been reported that the Ubisoft-owned subsidiary has been tasked by the French gaming giant to come up with something in this massively popular genre that could challenge titles such as Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.