Business Articles

The EliteBook 850 G8 is the latest business laptop from HP. It features a 1000-nit screen, 5G modem, smart card reader and an NFC chip. The HP laptop looks and feels very premium.

The ViewSonic VP2756-2K and VP2756-4K are two Pantone validated monitors with multiple display inputs and USB connectivity. The pair also feature two speakers and low Delta E deviations.

A new market analysis report shows that Sony retained the greatest share of the CMOS image sensor market in 2020, while Samsung came in second. Then again, the latter OEM's actual sales were seen to rise compared to 2019, whereas those of Sony dropped slightly year-on-year. This was due to a formerly major player virtually dropping out of the smartphone market.

Xiaomi has now continued its war against leaks by slamming a media company with a huge US$155k fine for leaking the Mi Mix 4 before launch last week. This comes after similar moves by Samsung and Apple to restrict an industry that has become the bread and butter of tech journalism over the years.

TCL, a maker of display panels and products, has released its financial performance figures for the first half of 2021 (1H2021). It claims to have made approximately US$1.426 billion. About 71% of that figure was made by its screen technology specialist division CSOT. The OEM asserts that all aspects of its business has posted "significant" growth and has surpassed its estimates for the half-year.

Panasonic has launched a new version of its rugged Toughbook 55 laptop with updated specs and I/O. They include 11th-gen Intel CPUs - which also of course makes one of its ports Thunderbolt 4. However, the PC is still fully compatible with the user-swappable xPAK modules that can customize a unit to a customer's specific professional or public service needs.

Sources familiar with the matter have told a Chinese news outlet that Intel is one of the first customers for TSMC's 3nm node. The Taiwanese chipmaker has earmarked an entirely new factory for the task, which will churn out Intel server processors and graphics cards. Mass production is expected to start sometime in H2, 2022.

Cable Matters' latest USB type-C dongle is rated to connect an up-to-Thunderbolt 4/USB4 PC to an 8K monitor via HDMI 2.1. It has 2 variants: one with a DisplayPort and an 8K-capable HDMI port, and another with dual HDMIs for 1 8K monitor or 2 at 4K. Therefore, the OEM touts its new portable accessory as ideal for both remote work and gaming.

GoPro has announced that it has made no less than US$250 million in revenue for the second quarter of 2021 (or 2Q2021). The action-cam company has also reported it has amassed 211% more subscribers compared to 2Q2020. It has also made a net gain for this quarter, as opposed to the sizeable net loss posted for the same quarter of the last year.

Honor was formed as a high-value, budget sub-brand by Huawei, but was sold last year in an attempt to disassociate the brand from Huawei and its troubles with the US government. That move may prove to have been worthless soon, though, as a group of fourteen US politicians are reportedly lobbying for Honor to be added to the US's Entity List.

A Western Digital earnings call has revealed the positive effect the Chia cryptocurrency farming trend has had on the company. Chia crypto farming requires proof of space, which is provided by large-capacity hard drives. Naturally, additional sales of WD HDDs that fulfill this requirement have added considerably to the corporation’s coffers.

It's a tradeoff between fan noise and performance, but the reduction in noise will likely far outweigh the performance deficit that entails for most office users.

The dazzling annual salary of the Tesla and SpaceX founder easily surpasses the compensation of the second-placed CEO who earns his money in the health sector. Meanwhile, another well-known leading executive in the tech industry has only made it to eighth place on this year's list of the highest paid CEOs in the USA.

There is a clear distinction in Lenovo's ThinkPad lineup as to which series is more premium: The ThinkPad T-series ranks ahead of the ThinkPad L-series. Nevertheless, there's one area where the ThinkPad L-series scores better, because the Lenovo ThinkPad L14 Gen 2 AMD can be upgraded more than all other current 14-inch ThinkPads.

The latest market research indicates that the brand Realme has passed an important milestone: 100 million units sold worldwide. Furthermore, it has broken the record for the time taken to sell this many devices. Realme is now in the top 10 smartphone OEMs worldwide.

After leapfrogging Apple to become the second-biggest smartphone brand in the world in Q2 '21, it appears Xiaomi temporarily sat at the top of the charts. A new report by Counterpoint reveals that the Chinese company was actually the best-selling smartphone company in the world in June.

Lenovo is releasing a second generation of the Lenovo ThinkPad T15p, which is mostly a straightforward CPU update. There are a few additional features though. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 is probably the most important aside from the better FHD screens.

Nvidia’s plans to acquire UK-based chip designer Arm in a deal worth US$40 billion looks like it could be unraveling. A security assessment undertaken by the UK government has raised national security concerns. This follows suggestions that other regulators, including the European Commission could also terminate the deal.

Striking fan-made concept renders of a BlackBerry Passport 2 smartphone have been shared online, and they include the always familiar physical QWERTY keyboard but also offer a couple of surprises. However, the design of the BlackBerry Passport 2 seems to be trapped in 2014 nostalgia rather than emulating 2021’s Android champions.

Fast-food behemoth McDonald's has developed a curious DualSense controller covered in a Big Mac and fries livery. Apparently, Sony was unimpressed by the custom PlayStation 5 controller, because it has prevented the controller from being released.

Apple has announced that it has reduced prices in the App Store within the European Union for all apps and in-app purchases, but not for automatically renewed subscriptions. Comparable price reductions also apply in South Africa and the UK.

LG has finally brought the UltraFine OLED Pro to market, the world's first 32-inch OLED monitor. The 32EP950 is cheaper than expected too, coming in at €750 less than LG originally stated it would launch for.

A physical job application filled out by Steve Jobs has been sold for a huge amount at a recent auction. The physical form was sold alongside an NFT (digital) version of Jobs’ job application, although the former sold for a much higher sum – in fact enough to buy six fully specced Apple Mac Pro computers and have change left over for half-a-dozen wheel kits.

Samsung sales are declining. The company has recorded mostly negative sales metrics this year, and a new report estimates that the Galaxy S21 series has sold rather poorly, showing a 20% drop versus the S20 lineup, and a massive 47% decline when compared to the Galaxy S10 series.

While Samsung recorded a 7 percent drop over last year's second quarter, Xiaomi managed to achieve a solid climb of over 67 percent in the European market. This allowed the Chinese OEM to come first with 12.7 million units shipped in Q2 2021, while Samsung only shipped 12 million handsets in the region.

Google's new custom-made chipset, Tensor, will power the Pixel 6 series. Not much was revealed about the manufacturing behind Tensor, but a new report indicates that it's built on Samsung's 5 nm node. The Snapdragon 888 also is, and has gained a reputation for overheating.

While Samsung retains its traditional place as the king of the hill, the company saw a significant decline in quarterly sales, with Xiaomi, on the other hand, recording a mind-boggling 98% rise in YoY shipments on its way to toppling Apple from just beneath Samsung—all thanks to strong Redmi Note 10 and Mi 11 sales.

OnePlus has released its shipment stats for the first half of 2021 (1H2021). The OEM claims that they have increased by 428% in the US, a greater amount of growth compared to all other brands in that market. This success is based on sales of the Nord N100 and N200 as well as the flagship 9 series.

Micron has put its latest kind of flash storage for mobile devices into production. It has the OEM's state-of-the-art 176-layer NAND technology, as well as the most up-to-date UFS 3.1 read and write speeds. The brand Honor has lost no time in announcing that its upcoming Magic3 flagship series will debut with this spec.

A new book by a well-known author unveils an absurd conversation between Tim Cook and Elon Musk that allegedly took place five years ago. In it, the eccentric founder of Tesla supposedly tried to snatch the CEO position of the world's most valuable company.

The incident supposedly did not have a noticeable negative effect on the production of the microchips for the upcoming generation of iPhones, but considering the tense situation on the semiconductor market, even small delays could eventually have major repercussions.

MediaTek is set to deliver the first 4 nm chipset on the market later this year. The company will use TSMC's new 4 nm node in a bid to deliver its first truly flagship SoC, keeping it a step ahead of Qualcomm and its upcoming Snapdragon 898.

Nvidia is hoping to finalize the ARM acquisition by March 2022, but, as of this moment, it still has not received any approval from regulators across the world. Additionally, Team Green needs to apply for a European Commission review, and this could delay things even further, eventually forcing Softbank to opt for an ARM initial public offering.

An industry blog asserts that display panels capable of ultra-high 480Hz refresh rates are now in the works. They will allegedly come courtesy of AU Optronics (or AUO) and LG Display, and may go into production at these companies by 2022. Therefore, monitors that can blow the fastest 1080p models of today out of the water might be on the way.

The start-up OnwardMobility announced that it had secured the classic BlackBerry mobile device brand back in 2020, then unveiled plans to make such a phone with 5G. However, the company has gone very quiet on the subject since then. Now, however, it is back with an invitation to join a community that will apparently help the device's development with feedback and exclusive previews.

The number of fraudulent reviews on the websites of the world's biggest online retailer is rapidly increasing, a fact which Amazon has now underlined with a mind-boggling statistic. Because deleting the fake reviews is not enough, Amazon is putting its focus on the manipulators that create a majority of these deceitful reviews.

The United States' Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced a crackdown on practices that make it harder for citizens or even organizations to fix electronics themselves or seek alternatives to first-party services. The Commission asserts that these new measures will benefit businesses and consumers alike.

Tired of having manufacturers decide for you what ports you want or don't want? The Framework Laptop lets you choose exactly what you want and how many you want at up to four individual ports.

The idea of a new top-end 1TB SKU in the next-gen iPhone series has been raised and then shot down again in leaks emanating from market analysts trying to assess the new devices' specs and success ahead of their launch. However, the latest such tip asserts that this new option will indeed be announced by Apple during its upcoming product event.

Pokémon Go continues to pull in the bucks. After hitting US$5 billion in lifetime revenue earlier this year, this past weekend's Pokémon Go Fest 2021 pulled in over $21 million over just two days. The event also saw a flurry of activity from budding mobile Pokémon Masters.

The Flip CX5400 is powered by Intel's i7-1160G7 low-voltage processor that allows for a totally silent design. It also integrates 16 GB of LPDDR4x RAM, a 512 GB NVMe SSD, and 2x Thunderbolt 4 connectors plus it features a high-quality 14-inch touchscreen with 1080p resolution and 100% sRGB color gamut. It will be available soon at just above $1,000.

After the South Korean corporation quit the smartphone business due to lackluster sales numbers, LG is now collaborating with one of its biggest competitors to compensate for some of the loss that the mobile division has caused.