Latest News - Page 2998

There was a time when the Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone was the undisputed champion, overlooking the grassy knolls quietly whispering 'this changes everything, again' to itself, but those days are behind it thanks to huge competition coming in from what seems like all sides.

Well, Asia's more well-off consumers in Singapore and Hong Kong are slowly switching from iPhone's to the competition - something Reuters is reporting as 'iPhone fatigue'. The problem also comes from consumers wanting to try out other brands, such as South Korea-based Samsung's Galaxy range of devices, seriously chewing into Apple's market share.

Since 2010, Apple has been completely controlling Singapore in terms of market share, with more devices in Singapore running iOS per capita than anywhere else in the world. This is where StatCounter - gs.statcounter.com, who measure traffic collected from a network of 3 million websites, calculate Apple's share of mobile devices in Singapore.

The iPad maxing out at 64GB for internal storage really peeves some people, and having no options for expandable storage really stops the iPad from selling even more tablets.

But according to 9to5Mac, Apple is preparing to add another SKU to their fourth-generation iPad lineup, which will join the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models. 9to5Mac's news comes from a source at a well-known US retailer, who shares the devices' SKU information with the site, marked up with internal Apple terminology that described both Wi-Fi-only and cellular-capable devices in both black, and white colors.

The devices' description give it away, naming it with a tease of 'ultimate'. 9to5Mac can't confirm the description means a 128GB model is coming, but developers are also finding references to a 128GB iOS device in the iOS 6.1 beta code, as well as icons being found in iTunes 11, too.

NASA scientists are reporting that they've discovered the first clear evidence of energy transfer from our Sun's magnetic field to the solar atmosphere, or corona, a scientific theory that now has substantial backing.

The new findings come courtesy of NASA's suborbital telescope, the High Resolution Coronal Imager, which has captured the highest ever resolution images of the solar corona to date, sporting five times the amount of detail than previous tools used to study our closest star. The telecope launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico back in July of last year, and has already put smiles on scientists' faces.

The telescope's 10-minute flight had it take 165 images of a large, active region of the Sun's corona. These images showed the evolution of the magnetic field, as well as the releases of energy at temperatures of between a mind-boggling two million and four million degrees. Hi-C principal investigator, Jonathan Cirtain, a heliophysicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, says:

Last July, Samsung launched their Music Hub streaming service to their own branded devices, but at the time never said they wouldn't release the service to non-Samsung devices sometime in the future.

Well, it looks like those days are nearly upon us according to The Next Web, where they talked to Samsung's SVP for Media Services, TJ Kang, who confirmed that Samsung's goal is to eventually bring Music Hub to non-Samsung hardware, but didn't go as far as giving an ETA on when this might happen, or which devices would see the streaming service.

Kang explained that they want to get the service on more Samsung devices, including their smartphone and tablet range, as well as their Smart TVs. Samsung have only given US consumers access to the Music Hub on their Galaxy S III and Note II devices, so we should see more Samsung devices receive Music Hub before we see it spread out to non-Samsung devices.

The Register is reporting that Redmond-based software giant, Microsoft, is blaming OEMs for the slow sales of their Windows 8 operating system. Microsoft believes that vendors didn't adhere closely enough to their hardware recommendations, with manufacturers producing mostly non-touchscreen computers that didn't show off Windows 8's touchscreen side.

This information, as usual, comes from a "well-placed" source "familiar with the matter". Since Windows 8's launch on October 28, and the end of 2012, Microsoft claim to have sold around 60 million copies of Windows 8. Windows Vista took around six months to reach the same number, but statistics are only one side of the story.

Official numbers on Microsoft's sales of their tablet, Surface, have not been unveiled by the Redmond-based company. OEMs aren't sitting back taking all the heat, either, with some OEMs coming out and saying that Microsoft is to blame for the slow Windows 8 sales. The biggest reasons computer manufacturers didn't follow Microsoft's internal guidelines is that few companies were willing to spend the money on expensive, high-end devices that consumers weren't guaranteed to purchase - not every item can be an iPad, after all.

Aaron Swartz took his life a couple of weeks ago and we have now seen hacktivist collective Anonymous making a strategic move by hacking a US government website related to the justice system.

They posted on the site informing everyone they would begin leaking a cache of government documents if the justice system is not reformed. Anonymous hacked the website for the United States Sentencing Commission late Friday, where they posted a message about what they're calling "Operation Last Resort", which included a bunch of downloadable, but encrypted files that they say contain sensitive information.

Anonymous' statement reads:

Apple's recently released Supplier Responsibility Report covers the progress they're making for everything from empowering workers to labor and human right issues within their supply chain. The report highlighted results for 393 audits performed over the last twelve months, a 72% increase over the number of audits performed in 2011.

Apple have said that its worker empowerment program providing education on local laws and the company's supplier code of conduct was extended to 1.3 million employees last year. This is a 100% increase in the amount of workers trained in the program since 2008.

The report also had some information regarding a Chinese labor agency that had forged documents for underage employees to work within Apple-connected suppliers. After the company had discovered 74 cases of workers under the age of 16 during an audit of a circuit board supplier in January 2011, Apple cut all ties to their contract with the company and is now going after the agency who did the hiring. The report states:

Scientists have created a real-life 'tractor beam' which uses light to attract objects according to research published by Nature Photonics and led by the University of St Andrews. The researchers' hopes are it could eventually lead to medical applications where it would target and attract individual cells.

To us mere mortals, a tractor beam is usually thought of along side Star Trek, where the beam was used to move much bigger objects. Back in 2011, researchers out of China and Hong Kong showed how it could've been done with laser beams of a specific shape, and we've also had NASA funding a study which looked into how the technique might be used to manipulate samples in space.

The new study lead researcher, Dr Tomas Cizmar, research fellow in the School of Medicine at the University of St Andrews, said while the technique is new, it has huge potential. He continues:

I have multiple systems here in my home office, and every single one of them features an SSD or three. I can't stand to use mechanically-driven storage drives as my OS drives anymore, and with the price dropping almost on a weekly basis, most users are doing the same.

According to IHS analyst, Ryan Chien, the "fate of the SSD business is closely tied to the market for Ultrabooks and other ultra-thin PCs that use cache drives." The SSD market is set to really expand this year thanks to the push of Ultrabooks and other new form factors, such as SFF and Intel's NUC-type systems.

According to IHS' Storage Space Market Brief, worldwide shipments of SSDs will go from 39 million units in 2011 to 83 million units this year. By 2016, we should be in a world where 239 million SSDs are shipped, which will represent around 40% of the entire HDD market in that year. This is all thanks to the constantly declining price of SSDs, which is helping them get pushed into more and more systems and new form factors thanks to its low-power consumption, noise and heat.

Back in August we reported that MPEG had released a new draft for a video codec, H.265 - now, the video format has been approved by the ITU. This approval could eventually see Ultra HD 4K video to future networks, as well as making streaming HD video on low bandwidth mobile networks.

H.265 is known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) and is designed for high-quality streaming, even if it's on a low-bandwidth network. With all of the online streaming users do these days from their smart devices, this has been a long time coming. The new approved standard will give publishers the ability to stream 1080p video with around half of the required bits that is required today thanks to its improved compression abilities.

This should make HD streaming a reality for households, like mine, where you don't have an ultra-fast Internet connection. Better yet, on mobile connections it'll be a godsend. Being able to stream HD or Full HD video over your mobile network in better quality, while using less bandwidth (and hence, data) will be great.

Google's Project Glass is the next thing in tech, at least according to most analysts and tech enthusiasts. Google is hosting two Glass Developer Conferences, one in SF and one in NYC. For the rest of us who didn't put down $1,500 for an early pair of glasses, we're stuck scrounging around the web for coverage of the events.

Unfortunately for us, there won't be any as all the attendees of the events had to sign NDAs preventing them from talking about the event. ReadWrite managed to get a look at the NDA that was required to be signed and has paraphrased and reordered them in order to prevent Google from identifying who gave them the peek.

Only one part of the NDA actually gives us hope of actually starting to see more of Glass, and possibly not controlled by Google:

One woman isn't too happy with the date Match.com set her up with. It's an understandable position to take, as the man she met on the dating site stabbed her ten times in an ambush attack that took place in her garage. Because of this, she is suing Match.com for $10 million in compensation.

Mary Kay Beckman argues that Match.com misled her and failed to alert her of the potential dangers of online matchmaking. She met Wade Ridley in September 2010 via the service. Several online conversations took place and after 10 days of dating, she broke it off. The next day, Beckman alleges Ridley sent threatening text messages.

January 2011, he reportedly hid in her garage and stabbed her ten times. Beckman is looking for the $10 million as compensation for the multiple surgeries she underwent.

Just how much does Microsoft charge for a Windows Phone license? If you're Nokia, it's around $1 billion. In Nokia's earnings report, it announced that Microsoft will be getting a $1 billion payment in royalties for using Windows Phone. Previously, Microsoft had paid Nokia "platform support payments," amounting to $250 million each quarter, and this amount always exceeded how much Nokia had to pay Microsoft.

"To date the amount of platform support payments received by Nokia has exceeded the amount of minimum royalty commitment payments to Microsoft," Nokia wrote in its earnings report. "Thus for the remainder of the life of the agreement the total amount of the minimum software royalty commitment payments are expected to exceed the total amount of the platform support payments."

This should indicate that Nokia will be shipping more Windows Phone devices, likely through its popular and flagship line of Lumias. Nokia sold just 4.4 million Lumia devices in the last quarter of 2012, which is 4 times higher than it managed in 2011. Windows Phone continues to increase in popularity, which partially explains why Nokia can ship more devices.

Plenty of rumors have popped up regarding a cheaper Apple iPhone, with the rumors getting more frequent and in greater quantities as of late. The latest rumor out of the mill is that Apple may ditch the A6 processor and go with a cheaper alternative, such as a low-end Snapdragon, in order to maintain profit margins.

Analysts at the Detwiler Fenton firm predict the following:

The US government allows its citizens to petition the White House via an easy online form. Since responding to the Death Star petition, the government has increased the number of signatures required before a response must be issued to 100,000, which is still a pretty easy number to reach on anything worthwhile these days due to the power of the internet.

A while back, the Library of Congress decided that jailbreaking smartphones was legal, but jailbreaking tablets and unlocking wireless devices without the carrier's consent was illegal. A new petition has popped up on the White House petition site looking to force the Librarian of Congress to change his decision about the unlocking of smartphones.

"As of January 26, consumers will no longer be able unlock their phones for use on a different network without carrier permission, even after their contract has expired," reads the petition. "Consumers will be forced to pay exorbitant roaming fees to make calls while traveling abroad. It reduces consumer choice, and decreases the resale value of devices that consumers have paid for in full."

Acer has released information on its newest smartphone, the Liquid E1, an Android Jellybean powered mid-range smartphone. It features a dual-core 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage.

The Liquid E1 also features a 4.5-inch 960x540 screen, 5-megapixel rear camera and a 0.3-megapixel front facing camera. While the specs are solid, the new phone is not something that will pose much competition for the flagship phones currently sailing in the Android arena.

The fact that the new phone includes Jellybean does however make it a desirable phone for those looking for a more budget friendly smartphone that is up-to-date. Acer has not yet released any information on pricing, but we should know something before next month's Mobile World Congress.

Samsung enjoyed a stellar Q4 2012, where the South Korean company saw $52.04 billion in revenue for the three-month period, posting profits of $8.27 billion. This is nearly double what the company reported in the same period last year.

Samsung reported "strong" sales of their smart devices, where both the Galaxy S III and Note II have been mentioned specifically. Last we heard, the Galaxy S III had smashed through 30 million sales, and the Note II was enjoying 5 million sold. Samsung expects demand for replacements of those devices to be strong with the push of LTE connectivity, but the sales drop in Q1 will soon happen.

In the TV department, demand was flat from last year, but the push to LED models has provided Samsung with higher profits. The South Korean company sees the 60-inch and higher market growing this year, but Q1 sales - as we said before - are going to be slow before any new models are introduced. Weak demand for PC RAM was also discussed, but growth was seen in the server and mobile markets.

During an Interview with RT, Kim Dotcom talks of his problems over the past year or so, where the US government accuse the MegaUpload founder of being a 'mafia organization' and set up their Internet business, to be an organized crime network.

The US government had to say this, as it was the only way to try and extradite Dotcom to the US, as there are different extradition laws in New Zealand. These charges had to be thrown on top, or else the US government wouldn't have a leg to stand on. The goal was to take MegaUpload down, with Dotcom saying "it was their mission".

Dotcom talks about Aaron Swartz, the co-founder of Reddit, with RT asking what it's going to take for people to stand up and take action. Dotcom says the US government was exposed in this case, as they went in with all guns blazing, spying on citizens, illegal search warrants, and more. Dotcom says it was an urgent mission, they just wanted to take him down.

The brains behind Lost, Person of Interest and the latest two Star Trek movies, J.J. Abrams, will take the directors seat on Star Wars: Episode VII. Because of Abrams' work on Star Trek, it temporarily kicked him out of the race as director of the new Star Wars film.

But, obviously this has been pushed to the side, as Abrams was a fan favorite to direct the new Star Wars movie. During an interview last month, Abrams said that he was asked by Lucasfilm to direct the new Star Wars movie, but passed previously on it due to his loyalty to Star Trek, he elaborates:

Intel are set to build a new processor fabrication plant in Ireland, after they received permission from the Irish planning agency An Bord Pleanala. The Ireland fab plant will cost the chipmaker $4 billion, but the plant will be pumping out 14nm processors.

The only roadblock now is Intel management's final decision before construction plans begin. The Ireland fab plant will be a redevelopment of an existing facility in Country Kildare, and has been in the planning stages from as early as 2011. When construction is finished, which will take two years, it will give Intel 245,000 square meters to play with their next-generation 14nm-based processors.

The construction will employ close to 3,500 construction workers, and once the plant is complete, the plant itself will employ 800 full-time staff for chip production.