Business Articles

OnePlus has returned to Germany, less than a week after Oppo and Nokia wrapped up their long-standing legal disputes. As part of the company's comeback, it has opened pre-orders for the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 12R, which join the OnePlus Open that is also now available.

The Samsung Galaxy S24 series has broken pre-order records in Korea by recording the most pre-launch unit sales in the history of the Samsung Galaxy S lineup. At this pace, the Galaxy S24 smartphones are poised to outperform the past four Galaxy S launches with annual sales predicted to cross 30 million units.

Last year's first Dojo supercomputer will not remain single for long, reveals Elon Musk. According to Tesla's founder and CEO, the company will spend well above the $1 billion threshold on both Nvidia (H100) and AMD (Instinct MI300) hardware to remain a leading force in the field of artificial intelligence.

Space X's Starlink satellite Internet service has been available for moving vehicles like RVs, trains, boats, and even planes as several airlines have signed up for the service. The commercial roaming tiers, however, are rather expensive and resellers now offer free service to juice demand.

Canadian company Blackberry was once the leading smartphone maker in the world. However, within the space of several years, the launch of the iPhone in 2007 and then Android put paid to that. In what must be like a recurring nightmare for the company, Apple and Google are coming for them again in a market where they currently enjoy success.

Fortnite has not been available in the Apple App Store for around 3 years now. Thanks to new regulations, this is set to change soon, but not entirely without resistance from Apple.

Freeaim has updated their Freeaim VR shoes with improved features. VR users can more confidently walk about in SteamVR worlds by taking steps in real life. Improved stability turning, sidestepping, and taking tiny steps allow beginner gamers to take baby steps on their way to utilizing the full power of these wheeled VR shoes.

The BenQ LH650 1080p projector has been officially announced. The new model has a laser light source with up to 4,000 lumens brightness and various energy-saving tools. Other features include a built-in speaker, support for HDR10 and multiple ports, including USB-C DP and HDMI 2.0.

Apple is not happy about it, but the company now allows EU users to sideload apps onto its iPhones. Apple announced changes to how it handles apps on iOS in order to align with the European Union's Digital Markets Act. It also announced new App Store pricing and an App Store Fee calculator, which has some developers concerned.

Rivian recently applied for a permit to use part of the Laguna Beach Main Beach Park to display six vehicles during a reveal event on March 7, 2024.

Development on the new Witcher game will finally pick up speed later this year, CD Projekt CEO Adam Badowski has confirmed. He also answers an important question that has been on the minds of fans since the announcement: Will the game be developed using AI?

Microsoft has joined Apple in the $3 trillion market valuation club after cracking the milestone on Wednesday. The share price surge has coincided with the company’s aggressive adoption of generative AI technologies.

In an interview with the head of Samsung's Mobile Digital Health division, a neck-and-neck race with Apple for supremacy in two important areas of health over the next few years is on the cards: Both the non-painful measurement of blood sugar and continuous blood pressure monitoring with individual risk analysis are said to be at the top of Samsung's to-do list. The newly teased Galaxy Ring is set to come onto the market in several variants.

From the peak of 1,864,421 concurrent players that was reached on January 23rd, the latest smashing hit of the gaming world, Palworld, is now above the 2,000,000 limit for the first time. However, more than 1,200,000 players still separate it from PUBG, which could lose the crown before the end of the month if Palworld continues its stellar climb.

Gigaset accounts itself Europe's "market leader" in DECT products - however, it is also in dire financial straits and in need of a life-line. Fortunately, it has now secured one in the form of a buy-out agreement with VTech, a big name in fixed-line phones (and also children's tech) in the US. The acquisition is touted to generally benefit the former while allowing the latter to move on with its corporate journey.

Oppo and Nokia has confirmed a resolution to their ongoing patent disputes. In a joint statement, the pair have outlined details of a multi-year licensing agreement that sees Oppo paying retrospective royalties, possibly with a view to re-entering more European markets alongside its subsidiary, OnePlus.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is planning to institute policies that will charge fees related to apps installed on an iPhone outside the App Store. These new policies would only apply in Europe, per the Journal, in response to the European Union's Digital Markets Act, which goes into effect in March.

A popular YouTuber has threatened to take action against Ubisoft for shutting down The Crew. While the game remains playable for now, Ubisoft plans to shutter The Crew in a few months' time.

With a new all-time peak value of 1,864,421 concurrent players, Palworld only needs to beat PUBG for the crown of most played game on Steam. However, while Counter-Strike 2 is less than 50,000 players behind, the difference between Palworld and PUBG is rouhgly 1,400,000, so beating it might take a while.

The first and only company to build a space-based cellular broadband network for regular smartphones, AST SpaceMobile announced a $155 million strategic investment from AT&T, Google and Vodafone. Alongside it, up to $51.5 million will come from AST SpaceMobile's existing senior secured credit facility.

The company confirmed on Tuesday that it is cutting 60 jobs, and did not provide a reason for the layoffs. Affected employees may apply to other available jobs at TikTok, where there are now over 120 job postings that are comparable.

Logitech was among the first companies to sound the alarm about the potential financial impact of the crisis. The company expects an impact of around 100 basis points on its profit margin from the extra transportation costs.

The maker of League of Legends has announced lay-offs that will affect 11% of its global workforce. Aside from offering a generous severance package, Riot is approaching the workforce reduction with a lot more candour and transparency than many other tech companies.

Currently conducting research in the battery field with a team of around 30 people, Varta's Graz site will expand later this year. The new facility will accommodate a team of 50 members in charge of developing post-lithium solutions for IoT applications, the automotive industry, and beyond.

HP CEO Enrique Lores has sought to justify the company’s controversial Dynamic Security feature, which disables any printer with a third-party cartridge installed, by stating that non-HP cartridges might be used to inject malware into the printer and, therefore, the network it’s on. Although HP cites a single research article to back this claim, several security experts have contradicted it, saying the risk is practically non-existent, and that HP could easily patch the threat through other means.

Tesla Model 3 buyers stand to save thousands by going for the Hyundai Ioniq 6 instead, as Hyundai is offering $7,500 off the Ioniq 6 in cash deals. With Tesla losing the Model 3's IRA tax incentive entirely, this puts the Ioniq 6 at over $4,000 cheaper.

LG has just announced new pricing and availability details for its latest range of smart monitors. The MyView range for the United States includes an entry-level 27-inch variant as well as the series' 32-inch 4K flagship. All three are touted to fit anywhere into the smart home or office with the "acclaimed" webOS UI.

Seagate has announced its trailblazing Exos 30 TB hard drive for the enterprise market. Breakthrough Mozaic3+ technologies are used in this drive to lower power consumption by 40% while increasing recording densities. This paves the way for future 50+ TB hard drives and enables datacenters to store more information.

With a peak value of 1,291,967 concurrent players so far, Palworld got the leading position on Steam for this weekend, ahead of Counter-Strike 2's 1,008,813. However, there are still four places left to conquer in the all-time ranking, where Dota 2 and Lost Ark are leading by less than 30,000 players.

The 7th generation of Lenovo's 14-inch flagship convertible has dropped to an incredibly low sale price of $688 as the Chinese PC manufacturer grants a gigantic $841 discount on a well-rounded Core i5 configuration of the ThinkPad X1 Yoga, which comes with 16GB of memory and a decent 1200p IPS display.

The registration of a new X/Twitter account with apparent direct links to the company may be connected to its owner Elon Musk's long-held aspirations of converting it into an "everything app". On that note, the same social media platform has also just enabled video and audio calling on Android, whereas the pay-walled feature had heretofore been exclusive to iOS.

CheckMag There used to be a time when a single payment would get you full access to Windows for the lifetime of that version. However, in recent times hardware and software all seem to require a subscription. While there might be some legitimacy for subscription models, some providers have taken this a step too far. Can Microsoft justify a Windows 12 subscription?

After Tesla caused a sensation with its humanoid robot Optimus and Hyundai teamed up with Boston Dynamics, which became famous for its robot dog Spot, BMW is now following suit: Robots with artificial intelligence are to be used in car production.

While it left Samsung behind in 2022, Xiaomi lost the Indian smartphone market crown to its South Korean rival last year. According to Canalys, Samsung shipped 7.6 million smartphones in India during last quarter of 2023 while Xiaomi was 400,000 units behind. Sadly, the Chinese brand also lost second place to Vivo for the entire year.

Pocketpair's latest creation, the crafting and survival title Palworld, launched with a bang, breaking the one million sales threshold in just eight hours. This open-world game is available on Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X | S consoles and can be played by up to 32 players per server.

Ubisoft's share price experienced a dramatic slump recently. Controversial statements made by Philippe Tremblay, who heads Ubisoft's gaming subscription service, are considered to have been a possible cause.

Insta360's AI Warp is a feature rated to "transform your footage into something extraordinary" based on the prompts it receives. It was exclusive to the latest Ace and Ace Pro action cameras from their launch - however, it is now officially compatible with more of the OEM's innovative lifestyle vlogging gadgets, the tiny GO 3, VR content-making X3 and modular Insta360 ONE RS included.

Sales of desktops, workstations and notebooks in the Christmas quarter of 2023 fell to an all-time low. Around 67 million PCs were shipped worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Amazon's AI and voice assistant Alexa is still in financial difficulties. As leaked information from internal Amazon documents suggests, Amazon is revamping its Alexa voice assistant into super Alexa, while Alexa Plus is set to launch as a new, paid subscription later this year.

Apple is now the most-sold smartphone brand globally, taking the top spot from Samsung. The place swap is largely due to a drop in sales for Samsung coupled with a growth in sales for Apple last year.

Japanese automaker plans to capitalize on the growing demand for hybrid vehicles and light trucks in the United States. This move comes after a successful year of meeting product demand and achieving strong recovery.

Being the first such ship built for the West Bengal region of India, the 24-meter-long Dheu electric ferry can accommodate up to 150 passengers and is the first step in a long-term initiative that aims to replace ferries driven by diesel engines with green counterparts that rely solely on battery and solar power.

The Ford F-150 Lightning Switchgear features "extreme chassis and suspension upgrades," and Ford envisions it as a test bed to demonstrate what its electric pickup truck is capable of — both off- and on-road.

Tesla Optimus appears to have evolved considerably, as Elon Musk shows in a recent video on X (formerly Twitter). However, an eagle-eyed viewer noticed that the demonstration of the humanoid robot's latest skills appeared to be cheated.

CheckMag The portable Starlink dish is actually coming and the question of "why pay over half a grand for bizarrely low connection speeds" is the first to come to mind. With average 2023 cellular connection speeds close to 200 Mbit/s, will a few megabits per second really make the customer happy? More importantly, will the technology still be able to deliver those few megabits per second once tens of thousands of people start using the kit on a daily basis?

Edmunds got to take the new Porsche Macan EV on a test drive and managed to get in an unofficial range test in. The Macan EV didn't disappoint, delivering almost 50 miles (80 km) more than the smaller Porsche Taycan EV, which only has a slightly smaller battery.

Acemagic has just responded to customer concerns following their discovery that a certain search engine could pre-install itself on some mini-PCs from the OEM with a potential solution. The issue affecting some of the brand's Intel-powered desktops allegedly originates from a third party, yet may now be fixed with new software direct from the company. In related news, Acemagic has released a new discount coupon as a gesture of goodwill.

Microsoft has attracted various customers with the free Copilot app and now is launching a paid version of the AI assistant that has more functions. Copilot Pro is aimed at consumers and small to medium-sized companies.

Solar modules using perovskite tandem solar cells are highly efficient, which is why they are of great interest to some of the world's largest solar companies as a renewable energy source for power generation. There have been problems with the instability of perovskites, but research is progressing rapidly and several start-ups are competing to bring them to market.