Category: Biz Tech

Xbox One may already be cementing its position as the best-selling console in the United States after consistently beating PlayStation 4 in the past four months. This is considered the longest Xbox One dominance in the history of the consoles' rivalry since they were both launched in November 2013. Xbox One October Sales The information is based on data gathered by The NPD Group and GfK Entertainment and was promptly shared by Microsoft. It found that in October, Xbox One outsold the

Findings of a new study now offer a hint on how the universe will eventually come to an end. The scenario involves dark energy causing the universe to rip itself apart until such time that there will be nothing left. What Is Dark Energy? Dark energy is an unseen force believed to accelerate the expansion of the universe. Study researcher Mariam Bouhmadi-López, from the Technical University of Lisbon in Portugal, said that it appears the distribution of dark energy favors a gradual ripping

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been relatively quiet on the topic of his own personal political inclination in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But the unprecedented win of Republican candidate Donald Trump after such a tumultuous campaign has now prompted Cook to address his employees and the entire company in an effort to unite the people. How To Conduct Business After 2016 U.S. Elections Cook wrote in an email to employees in U.S. and addressed how Apple will conduct business after

The Android 7.1-based CyanogenMod 14.1 (CM14.1) nightlies have landed. Technically, CM14.1, the latest version of the community-built Android distribution was already launched a few days ago with an experimental build roll out for the OnePlus 3. Now, more devices can get a taste of CyanogenMod 14.1 as handful of nightly builds get pushed out. In a blog post Tuesday, Nov. 8, CyanogenMod project founder Steve Kondik announced a number of handhelds that are getting CM14.1 nightly builds. The list includes the Nexus

Representatives from Breakthrough Listen launched Nov. 7 the Parkes Radio Telescope, a $100 million project that had been going on for a decade, in the attempt to seek extraterrestrial life. The telescope is currently looking for proof in the vicinity of Proxima Centauri after the discovery of a possibly habitable planet in August 2016. Humanity's interest in discovering alien life has gained traction along with the technological advancements. Since the beginning of the 20th century, when radio technology was discovered, the

Apple will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of iPhones in 2017. The company is said to skip the iPhone 7s name and call its anniversary model iPhone 8. The rumor mill of the next iPhone has already started and undoubtedly it will be an upgraded version of the current-gen iPhone 7. Here is a comparison of Apple's current and upcoming flagship smartphone. Design Rumors claim that Apple will bring radical changes to the design of iPhone 8. The smartphone may have thinner bezels

With retailers like Best Buy and GameStop not offering preorders for Nintendo's NES Classic console, the battle to find one on its November 11 launch day has become all the more competitive. Many gamers are looking to Amazon for a chance to snag one of the retro consoles, and now we have more details on exactly when the machines will go on sale. Go ahead and set your alarm: the NES Classic will go on sale on Amazon starting at 2

Staples is looking to cash in on some Black Friday 2016, and it aims to do that with some smashing deals. Folks who are looking to pick up a new Surface laptop and or other Windows 10 devices should be pleased by what Staples is offering. We know of what Staples is planning because of a recently leaked advertisement. From what we can tell, these deals are more than just cutting the cost of items but shipping as well. The ad claims

The model numbers for Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S8 series and Galaxy Note 8 have leaked. According to a reliable source, the SM-G950 and SM-G955 will make up the Galaxy S8 series, while SM-N950 has been reserved for the Galaxy Note 8. Samsung and wireless carriers who sold the Galaxy Note 7 have been urging Note 7 owners to exchange the defective smartphone, but as we saw in the comments section of a recently published article, many Note 7 users are refusing to

By Catherine Cadell | SHENZHEN, ChinaSHENZHEN, China Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said it racked up more than $5 billion in transactions in the first hour of its annual 'Singles' Day' sales blitz on Friday - a third more than in the first hour of last year's spree.The 24-hour event held annually on Nov. 11 offers a benchmark for Alibaba's performance and an insight into China's swing to online shopping, especially via smartphones. Launched in 2009, Alibaba's version

By Makiko Yamazaki | TOKYOTOKYO Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp swung to an operating profit in the July-September quarter, driven by strong demand for NAND flash memory chips from Chinese smartphone makers.That boom in demand has been a blessing for Toshiba, which is seeking to recover from a $1.3 billion accounting scandal by turning itself into a company more focused on chips, nuclear energy and social infrastructure while getting rid of unprofitable businesses.Toshiba posted an operating profit of 76.7 billion yen

By Jonathan StempelA federal judge on Thursday directed Amazon.com Inc to set up a year-long process to reimburse parents whose children made in-app purchases without permission, but rejected a U.S. regulator's request for a $26.5 million lump-sum payout.U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, in Amazon's hometown of Seattle, issued his order more than six months after finding the online retailer liable, in a case brought by the Federal Trade Commission.The FTC in July 2014 accused Amazon of making it too easy

Wearable camera maker GoPro Inc said on Tuesday it would recall about 2,500 of its recently introduced Karma drones because they lost power during use.GoPro's shares were down 4.7 percent at $10.35 in extended trading.The recall comes less than a week after GoPro downgraded holiday forecasts to $600 million to $650 million in revenue for the fourth quarter, below analysts average estimate of $666.14 million due to production issues with the Hero 5 Ultra HD Action Camera."Management might be rushing

DUBLIN Ireland's government will this week formally submit its appeal against the European Commission's multi-billion-euro demand for back taxes from Apple (AAPL.O), Finance Minister Michael Noonan said on Tuesday.Ireland's cabinet agreed in September to join the iPhone maker in appealing the Commission's order that the U.S. tech giant pay up to 13 billion euros to Dublin after ruling the firm had received illegal state aid. [nL8N1BE1ZT]Dublin is seeking to protect a tax regime that has attracted many multinational employers. The

By Abhirup Roy | MUMBAIMUMBAI Ford Motor Co is investing 13 billion rupees ($195 million) over the next five years in a technology and business centre in the Indian city of Chennai to develop new products, design mobility solutions and provide business services.Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford, which has already invested over $2 billion in India till date, will hire 3,000 people and bring in 9,000 from other centres in the southern Indian city to staff the facility which will be operational

Facebook Inc said on Monday, it was testing a feature that would let page administrators create job postings and receive applications from candidates, a move that could pressure LinkedIn Corp's recruiting business. "Based on behaviour we've seen on Facebook, where many small businesses post about their job openings on their Page, we're running a test for Page admins to create job postings and receive applications from candidates," a company spokesman told Reuters.LinkedIn makes most of its revenue from job hunters

By Jack Kim and Ju-min Park | SEOULSEOUL South Korean prosecutors raided the offices of Samsung Electronics on Tuesday as part of a probe over a political scandal involving President Park Geun-hye and her friend who is alleged to have exerted improper influence in state affairs.A prosecution official told Reuters the search is related to the scandal involving the president's friend, Choi Soon-sil, but declined to comment further.South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported prosecutors are looking into whether Samsung improperly

By Julia Fioretti | BRUSSELSBRUSSELS Britain's privacy watchdog said on Monday that Facebook (FB.O) has agreed to suspend using data from UK users of its WhatsApp messaging app for advertisements or product-improvement purposes after the watchdog said consumers weren't properly protected.The watchdog said the social media giant faces action if it uses such data without valid consent.The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) had said in August that it would monitor WhatsApp's new privacy policy, after WhatsApp, acquired by Facebook in 2014,

By Marcin Goettig | WARSAWWARSAW Poland's digital economy minister accused Facebook FN.O of censorship on Monday after the company suspended some users' profiles for using a little-known far-right symbol.The Falanga symbol, depicting a stylised hand holding a sword, was used by a banned radical nationalist group in the 1930s but is legal in Poland and other countries. It now serves as the logo of a far-right Polish group called ONR.The row follows a wider global dispute over Facebook's standards for

Samsung discontinued its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone, which was prone to catching fire, last month. But the company’s safety problems have not ended: The manufacturer and a product safety regulator on Friday announced a recall for 2.8 million washing machines in the United States. The number of washing machines recalled, which includes 34 models of Samsung’s top-loading washers, exceeds the 1.9 million Galaxy Note smartphones that Samsung and the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled last month. The safety commission said

Carnegie Mellon University plans to announce on Wednesday that it will create a research center that focuses on the ethics of artificial intelligence. The ethics center, called the K&L Gates Endowment for Ethics and Computational Technologies, is being established at a time of growing international concern about the impact of A.I. technologies. That has already led to an array of academic, governmental and private efforts to explore a technology that until recently was largely the stuff of science fiction. In the last

By Naomi Tajitsu and Chang-Ran Kim | TOKYOTOKYO Toyota Motor Corp is looking at mass-producing long-range electric vehicles (EVs) that would hit the market around 2020, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Monday, in what would be a dramatic reversal of strategy for the world's top-selling automaker.Even as rivals such as Nissan Motor Co, Volkswagen AG and Tesla Motors have touted pure electric cars as the most viable zero-emission vehicles for the future, Toyota has said it would reserve EVs for

By Catherine Cadell | BEIJINGBEIJING A top Baidu Inc executive, widely seen as a potential successor to chief executive Robin Li, has resigned after an internal company probe found conflicts of interest involving another firm acquired by the Chinese search engine giant.Li Mingyuan, 32, known as the "prince" of Baidu within China's tech community, stepped down following the investigation, according to an internal email seen by Reuters and independently confirmed by two people at the firm.The memo, sent to Baidu

 Microsoft Corp said it will be increasing pricing for its enterprise software and cloud services in the UK in the wake of the sterling's plunge since Britons voted to leave the EU. The price increase, from Jan. 1 2017, will be 13 percent for its enterprise software and 22 percent for its enterprise cloud services, it said. Pricing changes will not apply to consumer software or consumer cloud services, the company said in a blog post. bit.ly/2e1NPPc The vote to leave the EU

 By Liana B. Baker Berkshire Partners LLC is nearing a deal to acquire cloud networking firm Masergy, currently owned by another private equity firm, ABRY Partners, for more than $900 million, including debt according to sources familiar with the matter. A deal could be announced as soon as this week, the people said on Sunday, asking not to be named because the matter is private. Berkshire Partners declined to comment. Masergy and ABRY could not immediately be reached for comment. Masergy, based in Plano,

By David Shepardson | WASHINGTONWASHINGTON AT&T Inc may bypass a powerful telecommunications regulator by offloading a Time Warner broadcast station, analysts say, as the telecommunications giant braces for what is expected to be a lengthy and tough antitrust review of its proposed $85.4 billion deal to buy Time Warner Inc.Dallas-based AT&T said late Saturday the deal would need approval of the U.S. Justice Department and the companies were determining which Time Warner U.S. Federal Communications Commission licenses, if any, would

 MUMBAI Samsung Electronics Co (005930.KS) on Friday offered alternative phones to its India customers who had pre-ordered its flagship Galaxy Note 7 devices, in a bid to appease loyal clients in one of its largest smartphone markets. The world's largest phone maker has been hit by an avalanche of negative publicity, after being forced to recall millions of the fire-prone Note 7 devices and later scrap the high-end phone altogether. India is one of the world's largest and fastest growing smartphone markets

By Sankalp Phartiyal and Anya George Tharakan | MUMBAI/BENGALURUMUMBAI/BENGALURU Infosys Ltd cut its annual revenue growth target for the second time in three months as India's software service exporters feel the pinch of major Western clients holding back on spending as they wait to see how November's U.S. presidential election and Europe's Brexit drama play out.While it reported second-quarter net profit grew 6.1 percent, the second-largest player in India's $150 billion-plus software services outsourcing industry said on Friday it now

By Mai Nguyen and My Pham | HANOIHANOI Samsung Vietnam will maintain its current staff numbers and its exports target this year, the firm said on Wednesday, despite the parent company scrapping its flagship Galaxy Note 7 phone following a series of battery fires.Samsung Electronics, which employs around 110,000 people in Vietnam, finally pulled the plug on the new Note 7 phone on Tuesday, less than two months after its launch, dealing a huge blow to the business as a

By Se Young Lee | SEOULSEOUL Samsung Electronics Co slashed its quarterly profit estimate by a third on Wednesday, soaking up a $2.3 billion hit from ditching its flagship smartphone in what could be one of the costliest product safety failures in tech history.Quantifying the financial pain of Tuesday's move to scrap the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone after a global recall and weeks of mounting problems, the world's top smartphone maker said it expects its July-September operating profit was 5.2

By Julia Love and Deborah M. ToddSamsung Electronics’s abandonment of the Galaxy Note 7 due to safety concerns will likely touch off a turf war among Android smartphone makers, analysts said, presenting them a rare opportunity to gain share but with less room for archrival Apple Inc.Consumers tend to commit to their choice between Apple's iOS operating system for smartphones and Google’s Android, leaving Samsung’s fellow Android manufacturers such as LG Electronics and Alphabet Inc's Google in prime position to

By Se Young Lee | SEOULSEOUL Samsung Electronics' (005930.KS) worst-ever recall could cost the company as much as $17 billion after it halted sales of its flagship Galaxy Note 7 for a second time, spelling an almost certain end for the ill-fated premium model.Samsung announced the recall of 2.5 million Note 7s in early September following numerous reports of the phones catching fire and on Tuesday the crisis deepened: The company told mobile carriers to stop sales or exchange of

By Greg Roumeliotis and Liana B. BakerSalesforce.com Inc (CRM.N) is still deliberating whether it should make an offer for Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) in the face of resistance from Salesforce shareholders over the strategic merits and valuation of such a deal, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.Twitter shares have lost as much as a third of their value since Oct. 5 on concerns the company has attracted less interest from potential acquirers than previously envisaged. It now has a

By Noel Randewich | SAN FRANCISCOSAN FRANCISCO Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) stock on Monday jumped 2.3 percent, reaching a high not seen since December, after rival Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) suspended production of its flagship Galaxy Note 7 smartphones following reports of fires in replacement devices.Fires in the smartphones that were meant to replace devices that had been recalled because of their propensity to explode could be a disaster for Samsung and a potential boon to Apple.Apple's stock was up