Business Articles

Last year, the EU ruled that Apple had been illegally avoiding paying taxes by splitting profit from subsidiary companies and re-routing them to a "head office" in Ireland which was not subject to tax. The Commissioner gave Ireland four months to collect the roughly US $14.5 billion in taxes, but nothing has been recovered as of yet.

Nintendo hit it big this holiday season with Pokemon Sun and Moon, while Wii U sales continued to falter. Smartphone app sales were mixed.

While their wallet devices will still operate, all app and support services will shut down at the end of next month.

The media streaming service Plex will bring reliable news streaming into the mix with the acquisition of Watchup.

The Founder and CEO of NAMCO brought joy to millions with arcade hits like Pac-Man, Galaxian, and Pole Position.

A study that appears overly optimistic at this stage shows that almost 11 percent of Japan's population will buy the Nintendo Switch console, which means over 12 million units.

Profits are down 10 percent YoY to 10.3 billion USD despite a revenue jump of 7 percent.

The Nextbit team, developers of the Robin cloud-based smartphone project, have been acquired by Singaporean gaming hardware company Razer.

The makers of the ultra-secure Blackphone have released an update to Silent OS that prevents the operating system from running on phones "identified as unlicensed."

Despite recent acquisitions, the fitness company and missed Q4 and FY 2016 growth expectations by about 22% and 10%, respectively. This will result in the termination of 6% of their global workforce.

Starbucks has updated their app to include a virtual assistant. Users can now use the app to place orders using either voice commands or a chat interface. The app will also integrate with Alexa.

The rumors about the launch of Comcast's wireless phone service were confirmed back in September 2016, and now more details surface. The service would use both Comcast WiFi hotspots and Verizon's LTE network, being expected to launch in stages, starting this summer.

A graph revealed by the Redmond giant showing the install base of the Windows operating systems still supported by Microsoft reveals that Windows 10 has been leading the market since last November.

Both Lenovo and LG are no longer two of the top five largest smartphone manufacturers while Samsung and Apple continue to dominate the market with over 38 percent of worldwide shipments.

Office 365 continues to pay off for the Redmond tech giant as cloud services were the greatest contributor to revenue.

Due to the cost overruns expected to reach several billion dollars incurred by its US nuclear business, the Japanese company is spinning off part of its flash memory division and selling a stake in the resulting business.

In addition to the tools for drivers, commuters, and pedestrians available until now, Google Maps now shows parking difficulty icons based on previous and historical parking data.

Not long after switching from swiping to "stories," dating app Hinge aims to add a personal assistant who automatically sends messages to matches and schedules dates. Rumors mention a $99 USD/month price for the upcoming service.

The rafre KYV40 smartphone will be available via KDDI Corporation and is the successor of the world's first "hand-soap-washable smartphone," namely DIGNO rafre. It comes with Nougat on board, as well as a hand gesture-operated cooking app.

Intel has revealed its plans to pilot 7-nm semiconductor fabrication technologies. The pilot plant will work on perfecting the process over the next few years, and then replicate the process at its plants worldwide.

Windows Phone may be on its last legs, but Microsoft isn't giving up on smartphones just yet. The upcoming Surface Phone represents all of the company's hopes and dreams when it comes to the mobile market.

LG smartphone revenue increased by 15 percent QoQ due to strong sales of the V20, but YoY results have fallen dramatically. Sales of OLED and UHD TVs, however, have been keeping the company afloat.

Apple has been in talk with the Indian government regarding moving manufacturing to the populous South-Asian country. Apple is reported asking for a number of tax exceptions and concessions from the government to seal the deal, but it's not clear how far the government is willing to bend.

From the monstrous Predator 21 X gaming notebook to the Chromebook 11 N7, Acer has a wide range of laptops coming this year looking to capitalize on a few specific markets that have become the primary drivers of the PC market as consumer demand slows.

A cheaper flexible touchscreen display has just been introduced by Japan Display, who decided to use the older (and cheaper) LCD panel instead of the more expensive OLED technology.

The successor of the first P8 Lite handset, simply known as P8 Lite (2017), is expected to debut in the UK next Wednesday. Priced at almost $235 USD without a contract, this smartphone will also be available with a contract.

A growing Asia-Pacific market and strong sales of high-end notebooks in North America and Western Europe together have driven the PC market's stellar performance.

Industry sources that Samsung is hording the majority of the Snapdragon 835 SoCs to itself, causing other companies to have to use older, less desirable chipsets. The 835 is Qualcomm's design, but is being made using Samsung's 10nm manufacturing technology.

The new devices are targeting business consumers looking for a durable thin-and-light notebook.

The PC manufacturer is recalling laptop batteries once again. This time, the Palo Alto based company recalls 101,000 batteries, the recall from last summer included less then half of that amount.

The coming months are full of interesting events - MWC 2017 kicks off in about a month, followed by Google's annual developer conference that is scheduled to take place take place in California from May 17-19.

Samsung may have struck a limited time exclusivity deal with Qualcomm to prevent smartphones other than the Galaxy series from utilizing the upcoming flagship Snapdragon 835 SoC.

Market is expected to grow by as much as 6 percent compound annual growth rate through 2019.

The HTC U Ultra Sapphire edition with 128 GB will hit Taiwan for around $922 USD, and shipments are expected to begin by the end of February. The regular U Ultra with 64 GB of storage, on the other hand, would carry a price tag of almost $750 USD.

This deal is valued at no less than $3.7 billion and aims to give Cisco a broader reach in analytics, as well as an increased impact on the software market. In the future, Cisco plans to provide a comprehensive suite of monitoring tools thanks to the technology that comes with AppDynamics.

This new convertible comes with military-grade durability and extra features that make it a perfect classroom companion, such as the Wacom EMR technology and stylus that provide an easy way to write and draw directly on the screen.

This new high-performance, luxury handset promises to hit the stores in less than a month, offering dual-SIM with support for 34 international bands and protocols, a 5.5-inch WQHD AMOLED display with sixth generation sapphire crystal protection, and more.

The Communist Party of China has decided to crack down further on their control of the internet, targeting VPNs. The new law would make "unauthorized" VPNs illegal, and would require the companies to obtain government approval in order to operate. It is unclear what is involved in the "approval" process.

Several business devices are getting bumped to Kaby Lake over the next month.

The purchase will help bolster the startup, whose AI technology is focused on analyzing medical research to pinpoint helpful information for healthcare professionals.

An unconfirmed report from South Korea claims that Samsung plans to begin producing 7 nm chipsets in early 2018, but until then the company has to work on stabilizing the 14 nm production process as well.

One phone does not make a company. Despite setback with the Galaxy Note 7, Samsung recorded a massive jump in profits for FY 2016.

The N300 high-reliability hard drives feature a generous 128 MB data buffer, offering a sustained data transfer rate of more than 200 MB/s. The 6 TB model has a 4 TB sibling as well.

The first flash sale offering the new Xiaomi handset to Indian customers turned out to be a major success, the whole stock of 250,000 units vanishing in just 10 minutes. The second batch arrives next week.

As a result of this deal, the music streaming service now reaches Sprint's 45 million prepaid and post-paid customers, while the Marcelo Claure, Sprint's CEO, joins Tidal's board of directors.

Acer's TravelMate line gains a new member: the Spin B1 is a convertible notebook with a 360-degree hinge. Targeted at education markets, the Spin B1 promises long battery life and a durable design.

The whole Galaxy Note 7 saga seems to have reached its final page - the results of the official investigation are now public and they hold no surprise - the fires were caused by faulty batteries coming from two different suppliers.

Due to the refocus of its Hardware Systems business, Oracle is now laying off employees who mainly work in the SPARC department, most of them as software and hardware developers.

Since the Note 7 troubles were caused by the batteries (now this is finally official), Samsung has decided to improve the testing of this essential hardware part. As a direct consequence, it looks like the next Galaxy flagship will miss this year's Mobile World Congress.