Business, Financial & Legal - Page 93

Apple has built up even more courage leading up to the holidays, releasing a new $299 book that has 450 photos of Apple products - announcing the book 'Designed by Apple in California' on Apple.com, and select Apple retail stores.

There are two books available, with a $199 book that is a smaller 10.2-inch x 12.75-inch book, while the larger 13-inch x 16.25-inch book sells for $299. All of the photos were snapped by Andrew Zuckerman, showing off 20 years of Apple design "in a deliberately spare style".

Apple's chief designer and slow talker of courage, Jony Ive, explains the book as "a gentle gathering of many of the products the team has designed over the years", hoping that the book will be a "resource for students of all design disciplines".

You've probably checked your calendar to see if it's April 1st already, but it's not - so let's blow your mind by telling you that The Little Las Vegas Chapel has had quite the unusual ceremony, by marrying a man and his iPhone.

Aaron Chervenak had a commitment ceremony to "marry" his iPhone, with chapel owner Michael Kelly saying he has hosted other ceremonies with pets "getting married" or "weed weddings" where people profess their love for some 420, but the "iPhone marriage" was meant to be a statement on our dependence on mobile devices.

Kelly said: "[While] we really don't have many people [come in here] that marry inanimate objects. I think he wanted to explore [the question] 'can technology become human?' People are so connected to their phones ... and they live with them all the time. They're with them 24 hours a day. They go to sleep with their cell phone. They wake up with their cell phone, sometimes it's the first thing that they check".

NVIDIA beat analyst expectations with their recent earnings expectations, smashing the market with VR, consumer graphics cards, cloud services, driverless cars, deep learning, and more. This led NVIDIA to post its largest sales growth in six years, quite the result - and 24 hours later, NVIDIA stock is up by a huge 29.7% to $87.92 - a record high for the company.

Looking back at NVIDIA's stock market performance for the last 12 months, we can see that the build up after the May reveal of the GeForce GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 just didn't stop - NVIDIA stock was sitting at around $35 per share at the time of the GTX 10 series unveiling, to $41 per share on May 13 - and it didn't stop there. But the massive increase overnight of 29% is a massive deal, and I'm sure NVIDIA is popping champagne bottles open everywhere.

The 5-year graph is very interesting, as you can see that NVIDIA has been killing it throughout 2016 - at an unstoppable rate, too.

NVIDIA has had a massive 2016, and now they're reaping those rewards with Q3 2016 results that have blown analysts expectations away.

Analysts expected NVIDIA to hit $1.69 billion for the three-month period, but the company instead reached $2 billion - quite the difference. NVIDIA's gaming sector saw the biggest increase in revenue, especially compared to last quarter - with NVIDIA posting a huge 63% increase to $1.244 billion for the gaming sector.

Patrick Moorhead from Moor Insights & Strategy said: "NVIDIA had a stellar quarter and the company is hitting on all cylinders. GPUs and Tegra were up a combined 54% YoY driven by huge increases in gaming, datacenter and automotive with steady progress from pro graphics. It's hard to spot a hole right now in their lineup and as self-driving cars and machine learning become more popular, I believe NVIDIA will just keep improving".

Amidst the rubble of the 2016 presidential election, comes an interesting nugget of information from popular YouTuber Philip DeFranco. DeFranco was asked why he was not a part of the 2016 YouTube Rewind, and his answer might surprise you.

DeFranco said that the company that was behind YouTube Rewind, was the same company that offered him money to make a video supporting Hillary Clinton. The company in question is Portal A Interactive, and they state on their Facebook page that they collaborate with Hillary and the top YouTubers in order to hit the millennial voters.

I remember the day the biggest vlogger in the world uploaded a video to YouTube... when Casey Neistat came out in an utter surprise video that smelt, looked like, and now looks like was in fact, a paid advertisement by Hillary Clinton.

I don't know how it could get worse for Samsung after their Note 7 fiasco, but now the South Korean electronics giant is recalling 2.8 million top-loading washing machines in the US over a "risk of impact injuries" - yeah, Samsung washing machines could explode.

Samsung's top-loading washing machines are prone to detaching from the chassis during use, "posing a risk of injury from impact", according to Samsung and the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission. This detachment from the chassis could happen when the high-speed spin cycle is used, with Samsung receiving 733 reports of washing machines with excessive vibrations, or the top detaching.

Senior VP and GM of Samsung Electronics America's home appliances division John Herrington said in a statement: "Our priority is to reduce any safety risks in the home and to provide our customers with easy and simple choices in response to the recall. We are moving quickly and in partnership with the CPSC to ensure consumers know the options available to them and that any disruption in the home is minimized".

In the past quarter, Facebook generated revenue of $7 billion, 56% more than the year before. During the same period, their profit tripled, thanks to strong growth in advertising.

According to a business report, Facebook's net profit reached $2.4 billion in Q3, which is 166% more than in the same quarter last year.

The advertising revenues, which make up most of Facebook revenues, rose 58% to $6.82 billion.

Google's Android operating system is a big winner in the Q3 2016. A market research firm Strategy Analytics published a report stating the Android OS has captured a record of 88 percent global market share.

Global shipments hit 375 million units in the third quarter of 2016. Out of 375 million smartphones, 328.6 million were Android phones.

Linda Sui, Director at Strategy Analytics, said in an official statement.

I can't believe that I'm writing this article, a major milestone not just for me personally, but professionally. This post is my 15,000th article that I've written for TweakTown, a massive journey that started in 2010. But where did I come from?

We're told throughout life that we need to finish school, go into further study, and spend our 20s 'finding ourselves' and trying out different jobs. Well, I've always been someone who doesn't want to do things the way everyone else does it - and this is how I've approached most of my life, including my career.

I was never someone who spent much time thinking about my career when I was a teenager and went from a factory/laboring job directly into IT retail for just under 10 years. I worked at a small IT retailer in South Australia called Getright Computers, right up until the end of the world - 12/21/12... the end of the Mayan calendar, 21st December, 2012 - the day I quit my day job and started writing for TweakTown full-time.

CenturyLink is set to acquire fellow international ISP and telecommunications company Level 3 Communications for a staggering $34 billion. The deal means CenturyLink has followed suit with other internet giants Verizon and Yahoo, and AT&T and Time Warner, who also combined forces in recent times.

Combined, CenturyLink and Level 3 will operate in over 60 countries and bolster their now collective reputation as some of the largest companies of their kind as well as expand the former company's network by 200,000 miles of fiber.

Once the transaction is complete, CenturyLink will own approximately 51 percent of Level 3, the latter of which will relocate to Monroe, Louisiana from Broomfield, Colorado. CenturyLink CEO Glen Post will remain in his position, while Level 3's CFO and CenturyLink's chairmain of the board.

Tesla Motors published its third-quarter earning report, and for the first time in three years, they have made a profit. Last time they reported a quarterly net profit was is the first quarter of 2013, three years after the company went public.

For the last quarter, Q3 2016, they recorded net income of $21.9 million, or 14 cents per share. A year earlier, they announced a loss of $229.9 million, or $1.78 per share.

Total revenue more than doubled compared to the same quarter last year and is now $2.3 billion.

Verizon has announced it is acquiring subscription video service Vessel, but it's the swift closure of Vessel that is surprising.

Vessel worked with YouTube giants and other video creators in its first few months on the block, offering early access to their videos for $2.99 per month. The company raised over $130 million from investors, too. Jason Kilar was Hulu's former CEO before he founded Vessel with Richard Tom, who was Vessel's CTO - Tom will stay with Verizon/Vessel, but Kilar won't be around after the transition of the acquisition later this year.

In a blog post, the Vessel founders said: "At the heart of this transaction is the Vessel technology, product and team that we have built. These three things will be married with Verizon's ambitions in online video. Though the team and the actual tech + product will live on at Verizon in ways that will become apparent in the months and years ahead, sadly we will be sunsetting the Vessel service at the end of this month (October 31)".

According to the newest report from IDC, the worldwide smartwatch market experienced a round of growing pains in the third quarter of 2016, resulting in a "year-over-year decline in shipment volumes." To put that in numbers, the sales dropped by 51.6 percent, aka from 5.6 million sold last year in this quarter to 2.7 million this year.

It is noted that Apple had the biggest drop - almost 72 percent, although they still maintained their position as the overall leader of the worldwide smartwatch market. Interestingly, the highest growth among the leading companies was Garmin, who has tripled its sales to 600,000 watches in 3Q 2016.

However, we also have to have in mind that last year we had more new smartwatches in the market. In the Q3 2015, Apple's Watch had widespread retail availability after a limited online launch. Meanwhile, the second generation Apple Watch was only available in the last two weeks of 3Q16. Samsung has yet to release their Gear S3, and Pebble 2 sales started in September.

AT&T has struck a deal to acquire Time Warner, with the merger mounting towards over $80 billion. The news has been reported by the likes of The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Bloomberg, and has the deal reportedly ballooning out to $85 billion, once it's all done and dusted.

If the deal is inked, AT&T will find itself owning HBO, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and CNN - these companies own some of the biggest entertainment and media companies under their respective umbrellas. HBO has the rights to shows like Game of Thrones, while Warner Bros. has Batman, Superman, the upcoming Wonder Woman and Justice League movies, and so much more. Now AT&T will own them, so could we expect some big changes in the way AT&T stream media to their wireless customers?

What I'd like to be right now: a fly on the wall of the likes of Netflix, and AT&T's competitors - as well as other media and entertainment companies. This $80 billion deal is mammoth, and it'll have big waves for the entire industry.

AMD has posted their Q3 earnings, reporting revenues of $1.3 billion for the quarter, beating analysts expectations of $1.21 billion for the three-month period.

AMD is riding record semi-custom SoC designs that made it into Microsoft's new Xbox One S, as well as their upcoming Xbox Scorpio console, and Sony's new PS4 and PS4 Pro consoles. The company also reported higher GPU and mobile APU sales, but were partially offset by client desktop processor and chipset sales.

Lisa Su, AMD's president and CEO said in a statement: "Our third quarter financial results highlight the progress we are making across our business. We now expect to deliver higher 2016 annual revenue based on stronger demand for AMD semi-custom solutions and Polaris GPUs. This positions us well to accelerate our growth in 2017 as we introduce new high-performance computing and graphics products".

Xiaomi is the fourth biggest phone manufacturer in the world, and their phones regularly get positive consumer response.

Now, Xiaomi has announced that they sold one million phones in India, which is one of their most important markets, in only 18 days.

"When we entered India, there was extremely fierce competition. We have achieved such extraordinary growth in India firstly because of our vision to bring innovation to everyone with our high-quality products at incredible prices", said the company's CEO Lei Jun.

Five years ago, we lost two people who had an enormous impact on the IT industry. On October 5th, 2011 Steve Jobs, the man whose vision and determination are responsible for a revolution in the industry of personal computers, music, tablets, mobile phones, animated movies, had died.

Just a week later, on this day in 2011, the world lost a true legend, a man to who we owe everything we know about modern computing, a man who isn't as nearly as praised as he should be - Dennis Ritchie.

Ritchie was an American computer scientist who received the Turing Award in 1983 for his accomplishments. And there are quite a few things we owe to this great man.

While Samsung is trying to forget the Note7 ever happened after the second global recall and the end of production of the device, Apple has reasons to celebrate. Not only did they lose their main competitor to their new iPhone 7, but their stock jumped by 2.3 percent, reaching highest point since last year's December. Part of this can be attributed to the fact that many analysts expect that Apple will gain some sales of their controversial new iPhone even though it was panned by many critics for not having a headphone jack.

Apple's stock was up $2.66 on Tuesday, while at the same time Samsung's dropped by 5%. Samsung is experiencing a major crisis after the decision to permanently end the production of the Galaxy Note7 was made.

On the other hand, Apple is doing pretty well. Although its shares hit a very low point in May, when rumors about "weak and boring" new iPhone started to float around, Apple's new iPhone is in high demand, and the rise of their stock value confirms it.

While it was predicted that the first recall of the Note7 devices could cost Samsung up to a billion dollars, the predictions for the second withdrawal of this device from the market are much worse. Analysts say the amount could climb to as much as $17 billion dollars, according to Reuters.

In early September, Samsung announced a global recall of 2.5 million Note7 devices due to faulty batteries that cause the phone to ignite, and on Tuesday the crisis took even worse proportions.

Samsung has instructed users to return all the Note7 devices, including replacement ones, and global operators to stop selling the Note7.

Cable and internet giant Comcast has agreed to pay $2.3 million to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to settle an investigation that accused it of mischarging customers for services and equipment they never requested.

The FCC began the investigation nearly two years ago after noticing a potentially consistent pattern of mischarges.

In addition to the fine, Comcast is required to implement a five-year compliance plan that will ensure it follows the law to the letter by training employees better, offering customers the ability to block changes to their account without consent, designing a program that deals with disputes efficiently, and more.