Apple had a great Q4 2014, but its mobile payment system, Apple Pay, likely didn't have a major impact on that success, analysts believe. Despite drawing tremendous interest from consumers looking to embrace mobile payment, Apple Pay - and rival platforms - simply haven't been able to compete against cash, debit and credit card payments.

"Apple Pay is not likely to be a material revenue stream on its own anytime soon," predicted Colin Gillis, analyst at BGC Partners, in a statement published by CNN Money.

However, a growing number of retailers are interested in adopting Apple Pay, and that will lead to future iPhone adoption - along with one day hopefully moving the needle. Most credit card companies charge 1.5 percent up to 3 percent per swipe, while Apple charges just 0.15 percent per transaction.

Disney's 2013 animated smash hit 'Frozen' continues to smash records, be it from the highest grossing animated motion picture of all time, to Academy Awards and now it can add highest selling Blu-ray to that list too.

According to aggregate Blu-ray sales tracking from The Numbers, 'Frozen' has sold just shy of 7.5 million copies in the United States alone, which equates to around $158 million in gross sales.

Frozen holds the record for the fifth highest grossing film worldwide, with a total of nearly $1.3 billion. Disney studios are hard at work on an unannounced sequel along with a short film 'Frozen Fever' which will be released next year.

The Oculus VR Story Studio, an in-house laboratory, will be focused on creating movies and other content designed specifically for VR. Facebook opened up the checkbook to acquire Oculus, and while VR continues to impress many consumers, the company understands there must be an incentive for users to adopt the Oculus Rift.

"Oculus is getting focused on films," said Edward Saatchi, producer for Story Studio, in a statement to the Wall Street Journal. "Story Studio is designed to inspire and educate - inspire by making awesome movies and educate by sharing our information with the community."

Story Studio consists of about 10 people, and includes Pixar Animation Studios and Lucasfilm veterans, to help streamline film production.

NVIDIA's 900 series has proven to be a big hit, but a recent issue with the GTX 970 has many users complaining. The problem with the 970 occurs when the GPU memory on the card is fully utilized. Once the 970's GPU memory is filled past 3.2 GiB the bandwidth drops below 20% of expected performance. The precipitous drop leads to speeds as low as 22 GBytes/s, which is much less than the 150 GBytes/s average.

This problem seems to be confined to the GTX 970; the 980 still performs within expectations when GPU memory is full. The net result is severe stuttering during gaming, and many users have taken to the NVIDIA forums to complain about the issue. NVIDIA has issued a statement that they are exploring the problem and will provide an update soon.

GPU memory architecture is somewhat similar to the overall design of all computer systems. The memory bus is a linearly scalable bus, which means all RAM components connected have to respond with the same latency and bandwidth, regardless of how much RAM is present. GPU's are also designed with the same approach, so the results are definitely not expected. The problem is most likely a firmware bug, in light of the fact that these memory subsystems are almost identical on the GTX 970 and GTX 980.

Ubisoft has taken the questionable action of banning gamers without warning over the last several weeks. The issue stems from Ubisoft's distaste for several services that sell game licenses at steep discounts.

The affected users have had their licenses for popular games, such as Far Cry 4 and AC: Unity, revoked without warning. The issue stems from the fact that these gamers purchased their keys from services such as G2A.com and Kinguin. G2A.com and Kinguin provide steep discounts for game licenses by purchasing license keys in countries with reduced prices, then making them available to anyone globally.

It's disconcerting to see Ubisoft targeting end users, instead of the companies undertaking the questionable buying/selling policies. It is certainly possible that many who purchase the games are simply unaware that these sites are redistributing game keys to disparate regions, or that there is an issue with the practice.

Netflix has been stepping up their efforts to combat piracy of their services, such as blocking VPN users, but it seems their largest threat comes from external competitors. Netflix recently sent a letter to their shareholders noting that piracy is one of their primary competitors, and specifically mentions the Popcorn Time app.

Popcorn time is an app that streamlines pirating a movie. It simply wraps the actual nuts-and-bolts of torrenting in an easy to use app, then streams the contents to the user. Instead of typical torrenting, where the user searches and then waits for the download, Popcorn Time starts streaming the torrent almost instantly. Popcorn Time is still just piracy in a slick wrapper, but the simplicity has made it a fearsome foe for Netflix.

Netflix cites a Google Trends graph that illustrates the growing popularity of Popcorn Time in the Netherlands. The results point to Popcorn Time gaining rapidly, surpassing such standard fare as HBO, and achieving parity with Netflix. On a global scale Popcorn Time is still a small player, so it is a bit puzzling that Netflix is so concerned about Popcorn Time's popularity in the Netherlands. However, for Netflix the trend highlights the overall growing threat from the piracy app, and in todays copy/paste app world there will likely soon be other apps that provide similar functionality.

The beleaguered Sony has announced a delay in reporting their third-quarter earnings. The delay comes as a result of the intense hacking attack suffered at the hands of the North Korean government, if you believe the FBI. The hack was purportedly undertaken as a means of punishing Sony Pictures for the forthcoming movie 'The Interview', which soundly blasts the benevolent Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jung-un.

Sony has requested an approval to delay their earnings report, chalking the issue up to damaged network hardware and the loss of a large amount of data. The reference to network hardware likely means their networked storage, such as HDDs in a SAN or NAS, as the bug wiped the drives clean once the hackers were done stealing data.

Sony continues to experience severe disruption of its internal computer systems in the wake of the attack. They initially shut down the entire system, but parts are now functioning again. However, crucial segments, such as financial and accounting applications, are shuttered until the middle of February.

The Apple Watch is expected to hit the market sometime this spring, and analysts believe it's going to be a major seller - quickly becoming the most popular smartwatch. More than 40 million smartwatches and fitness bands will be sold in 2015, according to CCS Insight, and that number is going to be boosted by the Watch's release.

Both smartwatches and fitness trackers may have received a lukewarm reception in 2014, and trying to keep people using their wearables will be a major challenge - but Apple will be ready to support app developers, hoping they make wearable-centric offerings.

"Apple has access to the best developers in the world, so they've given them all the tools they need to make apps for the Apple Watch, and they will now be having a beauty contest with all of those developers, saying come and show us what you've done," stated Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight. "Then out of those thousands of apps they can pick five knock-out ones that really make the Watch sing, and use them to bring it to life."

Xiaomi's estimated valuation could reach $100 billion due to increased interest from potential investors, according to billionaire investor Yuri Milner. The Chinese smartphone maker has seen a continued rise of its low-cost smartphones and tablets, while expanding in select markets outside of China.

"I was attracted by the size of the opportunity ahead of them," said Yuri Milner, a billionaire investor, in an interview with Bloomberg. "I don't think there's any company that has reached $1 billion in revenue as fast as Xiaomi. In every conceivable benchmark, it's almost unprecedented in terms of its speed of growth."

Xiaomi wants to become the first major global consumer brand from China, and while the company avoids the United States, will develop its business in China, Brazil, and other select nations.

All Google vs Bing jokes aside, Bing is now almost-everywhere and used by many different programs, social medias and applications for their translation and content services.

Twitter has followed Facebook in providing users with a translate function thanks to Bing. Unfortunately this new feature isn't quite as easy as seen on it's big blue brother - in Facebook all you have to do is click a little grey text link that automatically translates and displays the English version directly in front of your eyes. However with Twitter, it's a little harder of a task. A small globe will appear in non-English Tweets at the top right, once clicked it will take you to the 'details' tweet page, then once clicked again you'll be displayed with the English translation.

As you can see in the image above, we've been informed by the president of Mexico that he went to a cool meeting, or something. Although not as perfect as a real person, this translation tool is now available on web, iOS and Android platforms. However you must be logged in to access it, as we just found out.