Business Articles

Telegram was #9 on SensorTower's list of most downloaded (non-game) mobile app in December 2020. Fast forward one month, however, and it had jumped up to #1. WhatsApp and Instagram were #3 and #4 at the end of 2020, but fell to #5 and #6 respectively at the start of 2021.

The Galaxy F62 is the rumored re-brand of the Galaxy M62 smartphone said to be exclusive to India. Samsung has reportedly unveiled its marketing campaign for this device on Flipkart. It seeks to hold consumer attention until February 8, 2021, whereupon the phone might either be launched or leaked officially in more detail.

The Motorola Edge S is the first smartphone with Qualcomm's 'new' Snapdragon 870 chipset, effectively a repackaged Snapdragon 865. Nonetheless, Edge S' price and performance have attracted people in China, where it sold over 10,000 units in under two minutes of going on sale.

POCO's Indian division has announced that it has now sold 1 million units from its X series. It is also marking its first anniversary of "independence" from its original parent Xiaomi with a sale on Flipkart. This event involves deals such as 25% off a new C3, and runs until February 7, 2021.

Eve Devices originally pitched the Spectrum as the ideal display for enthusiasts - then pushed its delivery date back until well into 2021. However, it is still posting updates to its community website as a sign it is working on getting the product to the shipping stage. The latest one claims it is crossing things off a long list of desired features, which include VRR and an inbuilt frame-rate counter.

The Galaxy Tab S7 and S7+ (or Plus) are 2020 premium tablets launched by Samsung in the same "Mystic" color options as their nearest phone equivalent, the Note 20 Ultra. Now, however, the OEM also offers the slates in its newer S21-series Phantom Navy shade. They will also reportedly have a new 512GB internal storage top end soon.

The latest 13.3-inch business laptops from Fujitsu are among the thinnest and lightest on the market, with profiles close to 0.60 inches and weights of at most 1 Kg. Both models feature Intel's Tiger Lake-U CPUs, with the U9311X sporting a 360-degree touchscreen and pen, and the U9311 coming in the traditional clamshell design that weighs only 884 grams.

Xiaomi launched a 65-watt (W) power brick in late 2020. Now, it has submitted a newer one rated for slightly faster 67W charging to the TUV safety-testing authority. This has led to speculation that it is intended to accompany the global version of the new Mi 11 flagship phone on its February 8, 2021 launch.

Gone are the days when Apple would give developers an iMac to return a Developer Transition Kit (DTK). Instead, the company now expects developers to return its latest DTK for a US$200 coupon off an M1 Mac, the cheapest of which retails for US$699.

Chinese tipster @YuuKi_AnS released what appear to be the first leaked images of Intel's upcoming Sapphire Rapids Xeon server processor. Featuring up to 56 Golden Cove cores, Sapphire Rapids would be Intel's first server processor built on 10nm lithography.

Apple has accepted a ruling from South Korea's national Fair Trade Commission that it has abused its dominance of the smartphone market in that country to skew conditions in its favor when it came to selling and supporting iPhones through carriers. Therefore, Apple has "volunteered" to fund facilities and education for small business in the IT sector.

Google launched a new smart screen interface in 2020, which it may intend to roll out across all devices that run its UI going forward. A new software update may bring that to fruition, with a new look for Android TVs that bring features like that found on the new Chromecast dongle.

The Mi 11 will make the trip from China to the global market on February 8, and it appears that the most important question about that launch event has now been answered. Going by new information, the Mi 11 could launch in Europe with a base price tag of €799, just like the Mi 10.

The ScreenBar Plus is BenQ's most expensive computer monitor light, retailing at US$129 in the US or £119 in the UK. The ScreenBar Plus has a desktop dial, is USB powered and supports auto-dimming, along with a Hue adjustment.

The Xiaomi Mi 10i is proving popular in India, where it has already been purchased almost 200,000 times. The Mi 10i starts at INR 20,999 (~US$288), for which Xiaomi includes 6 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage to complement the device's 108 MP primary camera and 120 Hz display.

The list of products that IKEA designed in collaboration with Republic of Gamers, the well-known Asus sub-brand, includes over 30 products, including gaming desks and chairs, a drawer unit, as well as various small accessories such a mug holder, a mouse bungee, a ring light, and so on. Global sales will start later this year.

Apple is currently rumored to be involved in the design of its own-brand electric cars to rival other brands such as Tesla. This might now be bolstered with reports that the Cupertino giant has invested ~US$3.6 billion in Kia, a subsidiary of Hyundai known to be involved in the production of those kinds of automobiles.

The Summit E15 is supposed to make life difficult for the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme and Dell XPS 15 top dogs. To do this, MSI uses the most current technology: Tiger Lake, Turing, USB 4.0, Thunderbolt 4, and PCI Express 4.

Someone has got their hands on the Pixel 2 XL 'muskie', the cancelled version of Google's flagship smartphone of 2017. Produced by HTC, the muskie went big on bezels, so it is no wonder that Google eventually went with LG for the Pixel 2 XL, instead.

Sony has released its financial performance report for October to December 2020. They show that the company shipped approximately 4.5 million PS5 units during that time, compared to about 1 million phones. It also posted 208% greater operating profits year-on-year (YoY), even though there were also 2% less sales for this quarter.

Even though certain investors continue to pressure Intel into spinning off its fabs, the new CEO is adamant that the company will continue to function as an IDM and only outsource select lineups to third-party foundries when needed. This is a good approach for a short-term plan, but Intel may look into acquiring certain external foundries and then spinning off the merged fabs if it intends to stay competitive in the long-term.

A Counterpoints Research study has determined that TSMC has 28% of the market share in matured nodes (40nm and below), making it the world leader in the global semiconductor manufacturing market. UMC, SMIC and Samsung take second, third and fourth place with market shares of 13%, 11% and 10%, respectively.

Fortune magazine has published its “World’s Most Admired Companies” list and it is headed by Apple. Tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Cisco, and Samsung all find places as the #1 ranked firm in their industry. Well-known names from China such as Tencent Holdings and Alibaba are also included.

The Dimensity 1100 is an SoC MediaTek has introduced as a one-step-down option from its new flagship, the 1200. The OEM Vivo is rumored to be one of the first, if not the first, to produce a phone based on it. According to a new leak, it is called the S9 and will debut on March 6, 2021.

Sony loves its limited edition colourways of Xperia smartphones, as the Frost Black and Mirror Lake Green versions of the Xperia 1 II have shown. The company has now brought a pink version of the Xperia 5 II to Europe, which is available from €799. The smartphone comes with a pair of WF-1000XM3 earbuds, too.

People have discovered a new issue affecting Cyberpunk 2077, and it is one that could allow the execution of malicious code on your PC. CDPR blames external DLLs and claims that it will fix the problem soon. However, people apparently warned CDPR of the issue before it released Hotfix 1.11. Cyberpunk Engine Tweaks has reputedly already addressed the vulnerability, though.

Google Stadia has already proven itself as a video game streaming service, with triple-A titles like Cyberpunk 2077 having made the jump to the platform. However, its big breakthrough remains a long way off, and the closure of the in-house Stadia Games & Entertainment points to a re-focusing of Stadia just 14 months after its launch.

The ThinkPad X1 series has already been updated by Lenovo, but not the regular T & X series ThinkPad laptops. A listing at the TCO certification site reveals the first details about the upcoming ThinkPads: The X13 Gen 2 adopts the taller 16:10 aspect ratio, like the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. The bigger T series meanwhile continues to use wider 16:9 screens.

The brand POCO has certified a new device with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a number of other regulators. There is some evidence that this phone will be revealed as the Pro version of the X3 on its launch. To date, most of its specs remain a mystery, however, although its leaks point to NFC support, at least.

Microsoft has now confirmed that stock levels of its next-generation Xbox consoles will not be getting better anytime soon. According to the company, it will be at least June before the Series S, and Series X are easier to purchase through official retail channels.

Stealth has unveiled its latest robust machine, which is also waterproof. The WPC-905 mini-PC runs silently too and comes in four processor configurations. The Stealth WPC-905 starts at US$3,195, which is extraordinarily expensive by mini-PC standards.

Sales of the Nintendo Switch family are close to eclipsing the lifetime sales of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with 79.87 million Switch consoles having been sold since March 2017. Sadly, Nintendo has confirmed that it does not plan to announce a new Switch model 'anytime soon'.

MediaTek has posted an arguable win by securing a contract with Apple to supply it with components for next-gen audio accessories. Then again, these products are not future AirPods, but those of the Beats series instead. This would be the first incidence of this product line not being made with completely in-house hardware.

A new leak pertaining to AMD's upcoming EPYC Milan server lineup has revealed more information about the processor's naming scheme and also a list of SKUs that are like to launch in the coming weeks. The Milan lineup will start with the 8C/16T EPYC 72F3 and tops-out with the EPYC 7763 featuring 64 cores and 128 threads.

The POCO M3 is the global version of the impressively successful Redmi Note 9 4G/LTE that launched in China in 2020. Now, it is finally coming to India, and in its 6GB RAM flavor no less, whereas it sells as a 4GB phone in some other markets. It will launch via Flipkart in February 2020.

A PlayStation 5 restock and sale in a Tokyo retailer has ended in disappointment for many as crowd disturbance forced police to shut down the event. Sales figures for the PS5 in Japan have been reported at being over 44 times greater than those for the Xbox Series X|S, although both pale into comparison with the Nintendo Switch.

Samsung's Display division recently held its earnings call for the last quarter of 2020 (4Q2020), which apparently involved profits that grew nearly 800% year-on-year and revenues equivalent to about US$8.9 billion. It also announced that it would indeed get into emerging panel types, including rollable ones, so as to stay competitive in 2021 and beyond.

The Wi-Fi Alliance has only just begun to validate hardware with the newest 6E wireless-data standard. This is good news for MediaTek, which has had its latest access point and client-side wireless solutions picked up for use in this official body's new test bed. Therefore, the company might now find it easier to pitch these components to OEMs who make routers, broadband equipment or PCs.

Xiaomi has lodged a complaint with a US court against the same country's government for placing it on an investment blacklist earlier in 2021. The company asserts that the action against it is unwarranted, as it is based on an association with the Chinese military which (according to Xiaomi) does not in fact exist. This, in turn, has apparently affected its ability to do business in the electronics market as usual.

Microsoft recently opened up a 90,000 square feet IDC (India Development Center) in Delhi. The new location is set to a hub for AI and cloud computing research and highlights the increasing relevance of India-based R&D efforts for Microsoft and other multinationals.

An AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U and Ryzen 5 PRO 5650U have made their first appearances thanks to a benchmark and a manufacturer. The Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U was spotted in an EliteBook 845 G8 laptop on UserBenchmark while it seems HP managed to unveil the AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 5650U via a prematurely published support page.

Supply shortages for desktop CPUs, GPUs, and game consoles such as the Sony PS5 and Xbox Series X/S are likely to continue up to 2H 2021, according to AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su. Dr. Su expects gaming hardware and low-cost PCs to have supply issues while higher-margin hardware is more likely to be available at retail.

Intel's Raja Koduri showed off a die shot of the 2-tile Ponte Vecchio Xe HPC GPU, which is said to feature seven advanced silicon technologies including the 16 compute units that are fabbed on Intel's own 7 nm process. The other key technologies in Xe HPC include Xe Link I/O, HBM2 VRAM, Rambo Cache, EMIB, 10 nm Enhanced SuperFin, and Foveros 3D packaging technology.

The latest market research report from Canalys shows that the PC market enjoyed success not seen in years during 2020. It posted shipment volumes not seen since 2015, hitting 143.7 million units (a 35% year-on-year (YoY) increase) in the last quarter (4Q2020). Tablet and Chromebook shipments also saw record increases, with the latter doubling in number compared to 2019.

The new US administration has only been in office for nine days, but it is apparently already reconsidering Huawei's position on its economic blacklist. The Chinese company may still be prevented from accessing US telecommunications networks, though.

Xiaomi has just gone public with its working prototype of groundbreaking over-the-air (or remote) wireless charging. However, it seems Motorola is hot on its heels with its own take on this "Mi Air Charge". A YouTube demonstration appears to show it working with 2 modified smartphones placed at 0.8 and 1 meter away from a single transmitter.

Apple ended 2020 on a historic high by shipping over 90 million smartphones in the quarter. That achievement—an all-time record—saw the American company overthrow Samsung to become the number one smartphone maker in the world across the quarter.

The thinnest ThinkPad laptop ever is available for purchase: The ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga is orderable in the USA since yesterday. The mark-up for early adopters is hefty however, as the 3:2 convertible with its Titanium top cover costs nearly $3,000.