Category: Biz Tech

|By TAP Staff| Just over a year ago, China's Xiaomi was little more than a mid-sized smartphone-maker with an odd name (Xiaomi means "millet"), trailing household brands such as Samsung, Lenovo, Coolpad and others. During the first six months of 2014, however, this four-year old company sold 26m smartphones, propelling it to pole position in the Chinese market. Next year, Lei Jun, its founder and CEO, expects sales to rise to 100m, bringing in revenues of Rmb100bn (US$16bn). But as

Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s prospects seem a lot brighter than they were the last time Tim Cook introduced an iPhone. When Chief Executive Officer Cook unveiled two new smartphone models 12 months ago, Apple’s stock was slumping and the company was losing market share to Samsung Electronics Co. and low-cost manufacturers such as Xiaomi Corp. Questions abounded about whether Apple could keep innovating without co-founder Steve Jobs. Fast forward to a year later and the company’s stock is flirting with a record high.

By Leila Abboud PARIS Mon Sep 8, 2014 12:50pm IST A computer user poses in front of a Google search page in this photo illustration taken in Brussels May 30, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Francois Lenoir/Files A panel appointed by search engine Google will hold the first of a series of meetings on Tuesday to debate the balance between privacy and the free flow of information after a May court ruling reinforced Europeans' "right to be forgotten", Reuters reported.   The event in Madrid will be the first

By Paul Carsten BEIJING Mon Sep 8, 2014 11:12am IST A picture illustration shows a WeChat app icon in Beijing, December 5, 2013. Credit: Reuters/Petar Kujundzic/Files BEIJING (Reuters) - Apple Inc has a lot for which to thank people like Deng. A Beijing-based quality analyst, she gave only her surname as she's embarrassed by how much money she spends playing mobile games on WeChat, a hugely popular messaging app developed by Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. "The most expensive time was when I spent

By Ben Klayman DETROIT Mon Sep 8, 2014 8:27am IST The General Motors logo is seen outside its headquarters at the Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan August 25, 2009. Credit: Reuters/Jeff Kowalsky/Files DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Co will introduce in two years its first car that can communicate with other vehicles to help avoid accidents and ease traffic congestion, Chief Executive Mary Barra said on Sunday. In the same time frame, GM also will introduce more advanced technology allowing hands-free driving in some

By Christina Farr SAN FRANCISCO Sat Sep 6, 2014 6:41pm IST The leaf on the Apple symbol is tinted green at the Apple flagship store on 5th Ave in New York April 22, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid/Files SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc has invited top fashion editors and bloggers in unprecedented numbers to its Tuesday launch gala, further evidence that the iPhone maker is preparing to take the wraps off a smartwatch. Apple is forging closer ties to the fashion world as it

By Casey Sullivan Sat Sep 6, 2014 6:33am IST People walk at the headquarters of Alibaba in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, April 23, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Chance Chan/Files   Alibaba Group Holding Ltd disclosed on Friday that it would pay $15.8 million in legal fees to law firm Simpson Thacher and other attorneys who advised the Chinese e-commerce giant on its upcoming IPO, six times what Facebook paid its counsel two years ago.   Alibaba, which is seeking to raise as much as $21 billion in an IPO expected

By Liana B. Baker, Avik Das and Soham Chatterjee Sat Sep 6, 2014 5:31am IST People play in a hall inside Alibaba's headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, April 23, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Chance Chan/Files REUTERS - Alibaba Group Holding Ltd seeks to raise more than $21 billion in an IPO that will value the Chinese e-commerce giant at up to $163 billion and rank as the largest-ever technology debut in the United States. Alibaba expects to price its initial public offering between $60 and $66

By Noel Randewich and Diane Bartz SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON Fri Sep 5, 2014 9:21am IST Visitors walk past the Qualcomm stand at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 24, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Albert Gea/Files SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nvidia Corp has sued rival chipmakers Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics, accusing both companies of infringing its patents on graphics processing technology. The U.S. chipmaker vies with Qualcomm in the business of providing chips for smartphones and tablets. It said on Thursday that Qualcomm and Samsung had used

BEIJING Fri Sep 5, 2014 8:51am IST A man walks past a logo during the presentation the Huawei's new smartphone, the Ascend P7, launched by China's Huawei Technologies in Paris, May 7, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Philippe Wojazer/Files Related Topics Stocks     Snapshots from Australian PM Tony Abbott's tour of India.  Photos  BEIJING (Reuters) - Huawei Technologies Co Ltd unveiled on Friday a slate of new devices meant to showcase the Chinese company's hardware technology, just days before Apple Inc releases its highly-anticipated iPhone 6 on Sept

By Edwin Chan SAN FRANCISCO Wed Sep 3, 2014 12:21pm IST The Apple logo is pictured inside the newly opened Omotesando Apple store at a shopping district in Tokyo June 26, 2014. Picture taken June 26. Credit: Reuters/Yuya Shino/Files SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The week before a crucial launch of its new iPhone, Apple Inc said intimate photos of celebrities including Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence were leaked online through the apparent hacking of individual iCloud accounts. Apple rushed to restore confidence in its systems' security,

By Nivedita Bhattacharjee MUMBAI Wed Sep 3, 2014 11:01am IST Android mascots are lined up in the demonstration area at the Google I/O Developers Conference in the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, May 10, 2011. Credit: Reuters/Beck Diefenbach/Files MUMBAI (Reuters) - Google Inc's (GOOGL.O) partnership with three Indian phone makers is set to rev up fast-growing demand for lower priced smartphones, and spell more trouble for Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) which is rapidly losing share in emerging markets. Micromax Infomatics Ltd, Karbonn Mobiles and

By Christina Farr and Edwin Chan SAN FRANCISCO Wed Sep 3, 2014 7:44am IST The Apple logo is pictured at a retail store in the Marina neighborhood in San Francisco, California April 23, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Robert Galbraith/Files SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has often displayed uncanny timing, with its well-orchestrated end-of-year iPhone releases. But the leak of racy celebrity photos in the past few days put the company in the unusual position of having to mend its image just days before

Two weeks, three continents, and 100 meetings. That -- and founder Jack Ma celebrating his 50th birthday on the road -- is what it will take for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to pull off the largest initial public offering in U.S. history. The Chinese e-commerce company is weighing a plan to start marketing the share sale to investors on Sept. 3, with management traveling across Asia, Europe and the U.S. before an initial public offering in the middle of the month,

|By TAP Staff| A Dubai-based company has launched the UAE’s first offline business directory for Smart phones, named Call UAE, which can work without an internet connection or a mobile network. With over 400,000 listings and more than 5,000 search categories, Call UAE is claimed to be the only “patented” offline Search Engine for Business Data in the UAE. can work without an internet connection or a mobile network. Search categories include Emergency Services, Classifieds, Tourist Places, Entertainment, Company listings, Helpline, RTA Fine

|Dianne Depra|Tech Times| A couple of days shy of closing its acquisition of the company, Apple is reportedly laying off 200 employees from Beats Electronics. Job cuts are standard in mergers and it looks like Apple is not taking a different route. In the latest round of tech company layoffs, Apple will be doing some restructuring and 200 positions are in its line of sight. Like any effort to streamline a business, the company will be laying off employees whose job roles overlap. Affected

Samsung Electronics, the global leader in mobile-phone sales, is being outflanked in the two biggest markets by newcomers catering to domestic tastes. Xiaomi Corp. became the largest smartphone vendor in China during the second quarter, while Micromax Informatics Ltd. topped Indian mobile-phone shipments, according to data from research firms this week. In both cases, Samsung fell to No. 2. Earnings and shipments at Samsung are shrinking as consumers increasingly look past its Galaxy devices to local makers selling inexpensive phones. Xiaomi keeps

The Arabian Post will report directly from CeBIT Eurasia to be held from 11 September to 14 September 2014 at the Istanbul Expo Centre. Arabian Post will have its own representative at the prestigious ICT event, rated to be the No 1 technology show in Eurasia, to report on deliberations during the four-day event. CeBIT Eurasia will bring ICT companies, government and media in the Eurasian region together to deliberate on all kinds of technology issues , apart from many vertical

BlackBerry Ltd said on Thursday its popular messaging system BBM, or BlackBerry Messenger, would now be open to those using the Windows phone platform, a move that potentially makes the messaging service more appealing to its enterprise clients. BlackBerry, which is seeking to reinvent itself as a more software and services driven company as its smartphone market share has dwindled, has been lately touting new BBM features in a bid to make it a more viable messaging tool for clients such

(Bloomberg) Snapchat Inc., the company that makes a mobile application for disappearing photo messages, is in talks with investors including Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA) for a round of financing that may value the company at $10 billion, people with knowledge of the situation said. The talks are ongoing and the terms of the funding may change, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. If the funding is completed, Snapchat would join a small group

Apple Inc on Monday took the wraps off mobile applications that pool and analyze health and home data, kicking off an annual developers' conference lacking in big surprises, despite hopes the iPhone maker would offer a glimpse into its secretive pipeline of products. Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook and software-engineering boss Craig Federighi told several thousand developers about new features that come with the latest "Yosemite" Mac platform and iOS8, the software that powers the iPhone and iPad. Apple shares slid 0.7

Google Inc is building cars that don't have steering wheels, accelerator pedals or brake pedals, in an ambitious expansion of the Internet company's efforts to develop self-driving cars. The small electric cars, which seat two passengers, are currently prototypes that Google has been building through partnerships with automotive suppliers and manufacturers, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said at the Code conference in Southern California on Tuesday. Google aims to build up to 200 such cars in the near term and hopes the vehicles

|By TAP Staff| Ooredoo has announced a new collaboration with the world-renowned MIT Media Lab, in order to drive cutting-edge ICT innovation and research. Since 1985, the MIT Media Lab has pioneered unconventional research in the ICT sector to radically improve people's daily lives. Ooredoo joins the MIT Media Lab as a Consortium Lab Member. Dr. Nasser Marafih, Group CEO, Ooredoo, said: "ICT is rapidly converging, and our customers in emerging markets are quickly adopting mobile devices and integrating ICT into every

|Nicole Arce| Facebook is at the front and center of what could turn out to be an ugly legal battle after ZeniMax Media, parent company of Id Software, sent the social network a legal notice claiming at least part of the intellectual property rights to Rift, a virtual reality headset developed by Oculus VR. In March of this year, Facebook shook up the technology industry by announcing its plans to spend $2 billion to acquire Oculus, a virtual reality company that rapidly

It looks sleek, thin and premium, but its price is anything but the latter. OnePlus One smartphone is creating a buzz online as a budget smartphone killer since it was rolled out on April 23, and people are definitely hungry for it. During its first launch, One smartphone was initially available in countries such as Austria, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Hong Kong, U.S and UK. Earlier, it was reported that the product is

|Andy Greenberg| Just as antivirus researchers congratulated Apple for keeping the iPhone free of nasty apps five full years after its release, spammers seem to have finally tarnished that spotless record. Antivirus researchers at Kaspersky say they’ve spotted an app known as “Find and Call” in both the iPhone App Store and Google’s Play market that secretly uploads all of a user’s contacts to a remote server and then sends text message and email spam to every number and email address listed in his

SAN FRANCISCO — Trying to become even bigger — and make more money — Facebook will allow users to reveal a little less. The social network announced on Wednesday that when its 1.3 billion users log in to other websites or mobile apps through their Facebook identities, they will be able to limit what they reveal to the site or app to just their email addresses and public profile information, like name and gender. Before, depending on the app or site, the

With its $2 billion purchase of Oculus Rift, Facebook has made its second bold acquisition of a rising technology star, little more than a month after its $19 billion mega deal with WhatsApp. This time it’s not the price tag surprising everyone, but the strategy. Does Mark Zuckerberg envision a future where strapping a headset to our faces becomes the default route to going on Facebook? It’s left many scratching their heads. Zuckerberg, criticized at one time for being too slow to move Facebook onto mobile, explained

The gaming gods must have gone crazy |Nicole Arce| A new game that combines the mechanics of "Flappy Bird" with a weird "2048" bent is fast becoming one of the most addictive mashup games of this season. The free game, aptly named "Flappy48," challenges players to work their way as a tile with the number 2 through a "Flappy Bird"-esque series of gaps. For each gap they successfully hurdle, they are presented with a tile they can either collect or ignore. If they

| Joseph Mayton | Wearable technology looks likely to be heading through Google, after Nike announced it would be moving away from wearable tech and more into the software development sector. It comes after repeated rumors that the massive apparel corporation was dropping its Fuelband. It appears that the company isn't giving up entirely and will be leaving the hardware business behind to focus more on the software side of things. This doesn't mean that Nike is leaving wearable tech altogether, but

[caption id="attachment_5126" align="alignleft" width="210"] Microsoft Rushes To Fix Major Internet Explorer Security Flaw[/caption] Reuters | Jim Finkle - BOSTON, April 27 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is rushing to fix a bug in its widely used Internet Explorer web browser after a computer security firm disclosed the flaw over the weekend, saying hackers have already exploited it in attacks on some U.S. companies. PCs running Windows XP will not receive any updates fixing that bug when they are released, however, because Microsoft stopped supporting

AP | New York | Microsoft Corporation unveiled a new virtual assistant for Windows Phone devices Wednesday as it seeks to gain traction in a highly competitive and lucrative market for smartphones. The assistant, Cortana, is named after an artificial-intelligence character in the company's ''Halo'' video games. Cortana tries to be chatty like Apple's Siri, while anticipating information you might want, like Google Now. Cortana is among the new features coming to a Windows Phone update called 8.1. The updated operating system will come

Microsoft Corp's new Chief Executive Officer, Satya Nadella, finally unveiled Office for Apple Inc's iPad in a polished debut that set him apart from his energetic predecessor while signaling his plans to make mobile apps the top priority at the world's largest software company. At a news conference Thursday, executives demonstrated a new "touch-first" version of Office crafted for the iPad, available for download as a free app, though a subscription is needed to let users create or edit documents rather

The U.S. National Security Agency has infiltrated servers in the headquarters of Chinese telecommunications and internet giant Huawei Technologies Co, obtaining sensitive information and monitoring the communications of top executives, the New York Times reported on Saturday. The newspaper said its report on the operation, code-named "Shotgiant," was based on NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden, the former agency contractor who since last year has leaked data revealing sweeping U.S. surveillance activities. The German magazine Der Spiegel also reported on the