King of streaming music, Spotify, has released their quarterly earnings, and while there are things to be happy about, the financial figures are still underwhelming.
The company revealed that they've passed 108 million Premium subscribers, and are currently at a total of 232 million subscribers when you count the free tier, ad-supported customers.
This, however, hasn't skyrocketed the company's profitability. Spotify's revenue rose 31% year-over-year (10% QoQ) to 1.67 billion euros (around $1.84 billion) but profit was once again evading them.
Spotify has been struggling to get to green, and it only briefly managed to post a operating profit in the last quarter of 2018 only to fall into red right after.
Operating loss was recorded at only 3 million euros (net loss at 76 million), when last quarter it was 47 million and last year's Q2 90 million euros.
While only 46 percent of listeners are Premium subscribers, nearly 90 percent of the revenue is created from those users' payments.
Google has updated their web browser with a new version that brings along a few significant changes and feature updates.
One of the more important changes in Chrome 76 is the improved Incognito Mode, which now is said to be properly private. Previously websites have been able to check whether the user is using the Incognito Mode, but no longer is it visible to the outsiders.
Many websites, most importantly perhaps new sites, have used this trick to block people from accessing their content. These soft paywalls often rely on counting how many articles have been read in any given time frame, and Incognito circumvents it.
From now on these websites have to rely on different kind of strategy to lock users out.
While changes to the Incognito Mode are perhaps the most significant, there are other smaller updates too. For example, Flash has now been blocked by default. You can still enable it from the settings, but it's clear that Google considers it obsolete enough that you can live without it.
This is due to the fact that next year Google intends to remove the Flash support from Chrome altogether. Naturally they are following the Flash developer Adobe, who no longer update or distribute Flash Player at the end of 2020.
Alongside Apple, Samsung has also posted their quarterly earnings. Like Apple, the company's smartphone division has problems maintaining the sales figures, but unlike Apple, there was really no division to mend it.
We already had an inkling of Samsung's not-so-great quarter, after the company issued their own estimate. Now that the April to June quarterly report has been officially released, we've got the actual figures, and the report alongside it, to figure out what happened.
Overall, the revenue of Samsung Electronics as a whole was down around 4% and operating profit more than halved year-over-year. Display Panel Business and IT & Mobile Communications were the ones that managed a upward trend compared to last years Q2, although the former was said to have benefited from a one-off gain.
The sharpest decline year-over-year was with Semiconductor Business but the company is happy about the rebound that it has made recently. In fact, alongside semiconductors every single division within Samsung Electronics, except for IT & Mobile Communications, increased revenue from previous quarter.
The company report said that high-end smartphones like Galaxy S10 didn't sell as well, while more mass market phones like the new Galaxy A series devices had stronger shipments.
Last night Apple revealed the latest quarterly results to the public, and we should expect by now, there are some all-time records involved.
While iPhone, Apple's money making machine, lost quite a bit of its attraction, the company as a whole rallied to another positive quarter.
Services were up 13 percent to a new record, the same 13 percent that the company lost on iPhone revenue. All in all, revenue increased one percent between April and June to $53.8 billion.
Now only did Services bridge the gap iPhones created but also wearables, which includes the likes of AirPods, as well as recoveries made by Mac and iPad sales, were significant factors in managing to post increase in revenue, according to CEO Tim Cook.
The company beat estimates, and Cook and co. were happy about the quarter especially with the rough trade relations between China and the US hanging over their head.
In remains to be seems whether Apple can manage to get iPhone to bounce back and get it to climb again, or whether the company has to work towards services and wearables replacing much of lost revenue by iPhone in the future as well.
In our article series, we're digging into AfterDawn's news archive and looking what happened exactly 20 years ago. This article series also celebrates AfterDawn's 20th anniversary.
So, lets see what kinds of news we wrote back in July, 1999. I'd like to remind you, our readers, that back then, AfterDawn was strictly focused on digital audio and video technologies and reporting events in those genres. More generic "all about tech" arrived to our site much later.
Software update: Winamp
One of our core news reporting areas back in the day was to report about major a/v software updates. And one of the most note-worthy of those was definitely Winamp and its Winamp v2.24 update back in July, 1999.
Back then, Winamp was - by far - the most popular music player software in the world. It was light-weight, supported all the music formats available back then and most of all, it was extremely customizable.
But Winamp's story from those haydays to the modern times has been a bumpy, interesting - and bit sad. Software was originally developed by a small company called Nullsoft and, originally, by its founder, Justin Frankel. Entire Nullsoft was sold to AOL at the beginning of June, 1999 - just before AfterDawn was launched - for a whopping $400 million.
Even though Huawei got awful news in May when Trump administration decided to add the company to a black list, effectively banning any US company to cooperate with them, the Chinese powerhouse has kept on going.
In fact, so little damage seems to have been dealt, at least of yet, that the company has managed to increase their revenue in the past quarter. Between April and June, Huawei generated just over $32 billion in revenue, an increase of 23 percent over the first quarter of the year.
When it comes to smartphones, the first quarter had a 24 percent increase, and the growth continued up until May. However, Huawei hasn't revealed figures after that. It seems clear that there's a definite slump that hasn't been addressed.
The company also admits that there are some serious challenges ahead, even though currently the ban is not in effect. They, however, do believe in investing for the long haul.
While R&D efforts in the US are reportedly going to decrease, the overall R&D investments will remain according to plans.
Google has decided this year to take a page from OnePlus' book of revealing new products. The search giant is giving away small tidbits of information about their upcoming flagship phones along the way to the actual unveiling.
We've previously seen some teaser pictures, and now they've released a video, and a blog post, that shows some of Pixel 4's new features.
More specifically the upcoming phones will have a feature called Face Unlock, which is essentially a copy of Apple's Face ID. Not only is it a unlocking mechanism which uses facial recognition, but it also uses similar array of sensors as Apple's biometric feature.
In addition, Google is set to add a new motion-sensing radar function to Pixel 4 phones. With the radar, users can interact with the phone without touching it. Motion Sense feature allows gesture-based controls for example to mute the device or skip a song.
More about the Motion Sense feature as well as the new Face Unlock cameras are revealed in a recent post on the official Google blog.
The first publicly available Android ROM for Nintendo Switch has been released by developers at XDA.
The unofficial firmware is based on LineageOS 15.1 (Android 8.1 Oreo) and works with compatible Switch models only. For this to work, you would need to be able to boot into hekate, which newer Switch models probably won't be. Since the firmware is based Nvidia Shield TV trees, Tegra-exclusives like Borderlands and Half Life 2 should run.
Given it is the first release, there are some known and significant bugs of course. Battery life is not great due to a deep sleep issue. Auto-rotation isn't working since the developers haven't figured out how to "talk" to the sensor yet. The console charges but the charging itself isn't detected. Some apps cannot take input from the Joy-cons yet and so on.
There is a full list of features and bugs on the dedicated thread at XDA-Developers. It also walks you through the process of installing the custom ROM on your SD card and running it on the Switch. Additionally, there is a helpful Q&A and a changelog that you should keep an eye on.
Last week, Bethesda dropped the three original Doom titles on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, Android and iOS but faced backlash over a login requirement.
Doom, Doom II, and Doom III ports arrived for the PS4, Xbox One and Switch last week. The first two titles are also available for iOS and Android, but not Doom III for now. The arrival of the classics was a welcome announcement, though it had been leaked beforehand accidentally by Nintendo's eShop.
However, the released faced some backlash from gamers almost immediately when he became clear you needed a BethesdaNet account to login in order to get started. Effectively, this meant that to play the old classic games which emerged when Internet access was far less prevalent, you needed to be online.
Bethesda responded quickly to the complaints and explained that the login requirement was included for the Slayers Club, to reward members for playing the classic DOOM games.
"The login should be optional, and we are working on changing the requirement to optional now," Bethesda announced on social media. "We will update everyone when a fix is ready."
There was also a few complaints related to some graphical changes made to the ports and problems with the music tempo on Switch.
A researcher who is credited with impeding the spread of WannaCry ransomware in 2017 has been spared imprisonment for involvement in banking malware.
WannaCry was used in a worldwide cyberattack in May 2017. It has been blamed on the North Korean regime and relied on an NSA-developed exploit called EternalBlue. The exploit had been leaked online by a group called the Shadow Brokers in the months before WannaCry emerged. It targeted a vulnerability present in older and unpatched versions of Microsoft Windows.
As a result of its spread, governmental organizations and private institutions were hit with damages estimated in the hundreds of millions, to billions of dollars. In the UK for example, the National Health Service (NHS) was hit with outages that caused the cancellation of appointments and procedures for patients.
In response to WannaCry, Microsoft issued emergency patches for end-of-life products like Windows XP to stop the spread of the infection. However, a Kill Switch was also discovered that would prevent newly-infected computers from spreading WannaCry any further. Researcher Marcus Hutchins discovered the kill switch in WannaCry, finding that it only encrypted files on an infected system and propagated further if it was unable to connect to a specific domain.
A teaser trailer has dropped for the hotly anticipated Amazon Prime Video exclusive Jack Ryan's second season, hinting at more action for the protagonist.
The Amazon Prime Video exclusive follows titular protagonist Jack Ryan, a CIA agent created by Tom Clancy and depicted by John Krasinski, along with other characters from Clancy's Ryanverse. In Season 1, Ryan is elevated from his cozy desk job into the field when he sees banking activity related to an extremist called Suleiman, kicking off a series of events in the middle east and in the United States.
In the second season of the well-received TV adaption, Jack Ryan finds himself up against forces in power in a dangerous, declining region of South America. The first teaser for Jack Ryan season 2 was released by Amazon this weekend and it promises more action to test our protagonist.
The teaser is short, but still manages to show us an airborne insertion and Ryan having to grapple with the aftermath of an improvided explosive device (IED). There is also a clearly political element to the second season in the teaser.
There is no release date or time frame attached to the teaser right now, but it's still worth a watch to see what we can look forward to.
All-electric car maker will bring Netflix and YouTube video streaming to its vehicles soon, Elon Musk confirms.
Tesla's cars have large screens on the dash that you can use to control pretty much everything about the vehicle. The screens can also be used to access easter eggs and extra features, and even to play video games that have been ported to the OS.
This is particularly useful when a driver is sat at a charging station waiting for their EV to get its juice.
Soon Tesla will also add YouTube and Netflix functionality to its vehicles, providing more content for when a car is charging up. When it first arrives, the streaming will only be available when a vehicle is completely stopped.
However, Tesla chief Elon Musk said that eventually the car will support streaming content when regulators approve self-driving capabilities, turning a Tesla vehicle into a moving entertainment center that ferries you around.
Ability to stream YouTube & Netflix when car is stopped coming to your Tesla soon! Has an amazingly immersive, cinematic feel due to the comfy seats & surround sound audio.
Samsung has revealed that it is preparing to launch the Galaxy Fold, its first foldable smartphone, in the coming months.
The launch of the almost $2,000 foldable smartphone was delayed after reviewers experience serious problems with the device. Some experienced screen damage after moderate use while others said the hinges that enabled the folding of the device failed.
Samsung has strengthened the hinges and worked on the screen issues and is currently conducting final tests ahead of a planned launch in September. In the first year, it intends to make around 1 million units of the high-end smartphone.
The South Korean giant hopes that the foldable device and future derivatives of it may revive slowing smartphone sales across the world. It had hoped that the Fold would provide an early boost in revenue during the summer season, but April's problems forced the company to hold back.
Given the early issues with the device, the launch may struggle to convince prospective buyers to be early adopters, rather than waiting to see if the issues have been really fixed.
The Washington Post reports that under-fire Chinese electronics firm Huawei had secretly worked with the North Korean regime to build the country's wireless network.
It has received documents from a former Huawei employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, that shows a secret partnership between Huawei and Panda International Information Technology Co. Ltd., which is NK's state-owned firm. They show that Huawei aided in building the country's commercial wireless network.
The Washington Post also received materials from other sources related to the activity.
Already subject to a blacklist due to its links to the Chinese communist government and potentially being excluded from 5G rollouts in Western countries, Huawei will now be under-fire for potentially violating U.S. export controls. The firm uses American technology in its components and North Korea is subject to U.S. sanctions due to its nuclear program.
In a statement to the Washington Post, Huawei denied it has any business presence in North Korea and said it was "fully committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries and regions where we operate, including all export control and sanction laws and regulations", of the UN, US and EU.
OpenAI and Microsoft will work together to develop new Azure AI supercomputing technologies in pursuit of artificial general intelligence.
OpenAI was originally co-founded by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk in late 2015, but he later departed the group to work with NeuraLink. Its goal was to create safe, ethical general-purpose AI that can serve the needs of the general public, and alleviate concerns about existential risks associated with super-intelligent machines.
In the meantime, OpenAI has made some news headlines for developing artificial intelligence that can best human gamers in certain games.
With Microsoft's investment, the two companies will focus on building a computational platform in Azure of unprecedented scale, which will train and run increasingly advanced AI models, include hardware technologies that build on Microsoft's supercomputing technology.
Microsoft will become OpenAI's preferred partner for commercializing new AI technologies.
"AI is one of the most transformative technologies of our time and has the potential to help solve many of our world's most pressing challenges," said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft.
"By bringing together OpenAI's breakthrough technology with new Azure AI supercomputing technologies, our ambition is to democratize AI -- while always keeping AI safety front and center -- so everyone can benefit."
King of streaming music, Spotify, has released their quarterly earnings, and while there are things to be happy about, the financial figures are still underwhelming.
Google has updated their web browser with a new version that brings along a few significant changes and feature updates.
Alongside Apple, Samsung has also posted their quarterly earnings. Like Apple, the company's smartphone division has problems maintaining the sales figures, but unlike Apple, there was really no division to mend it.
