Apple reports $14.1 billion profit on $62.9 billion revenue in FY Q4 2018, will stop reporting iPhone, iPad and Mac unit sales

Apple has reported quarterly revenue of $62.9 billion, up 20% over last year with a net profit of $14.1 billion, up 32% YoY or earnings per share of $2.91, an increase of 41% over last year in their earnings for the financial year Q4 2018 that ended September 29, 2018. During earnings call Tim Cook said that the company produced record results from iPhone, services, and wearables that drove our momentum and it produced strong double-digit revenue growth in all of the geographic segments. iPhone revenue grew 29% with growth of more than 20% in every geographic segment. iPhone ASP was $793 compared to $618 a year ago, driven by strong performance of iPhone X, 8 and 8 Plus, as well as the successful launch of iPhone XS and XS Max in the September quarter Services was best quarter ever in total and virtually in every market around the world, with revenue of $10 billion. Services growth in Q4 this year was 27%. Sevices sector also reached new all-time quarterly revenue records for many services categories, and will achieve goal to double our fiscal 2016 services revenue by 2020. There are now 330 million paid subscriptions on Apple platform, an increase of ...

Google to end support for old Google Contacts app on February 12, 2019

Google recently replaced old Google Contacts app with a new version that has a material design. The company launched new contacts in 2015 to provide a modern, smart, and quick contact management experience. With the recent launch of new contacts, it now has many comparable features from old Contacts and more. This is why Google announced to replace the older version, and it will be the only Google Contacts version after February 12, 2019. The replacement process will take place in three stages; 1: New admin-controlled defaults and user options. On November 28, 2018, Google will change the Admin console setting that controls new Contacts. If you currently have new Contacts preview enabled, new Contacts will be the default and there will be no change for your users. Your users will stay using new Contacts with the option to revert to old Contacts. If they previously opted out of new Contacts preview, they’ll remain opted out. If you don’t currently have new Contacts preview enabled, old Contacts will be the default but users will get a new option to try new Contacts. You can find and change the setting in the Admin console at Apps > G Suite > Directory > Sharing settings > Contacts Preview. In Stage 2, ...

Instagram confirms it is working on new ad type “Promote” for Stories, launches Analytics in beta

Instagram is working on a new ad type called "Promote" for Stories to allow business pages to show their slideshows to more users without doing much work. Admins can choose to auto-target users similar to their followers, people in a certain location, or use all of Instagram’s targeting parameters. Facebook confirms that the 'Promote' for Stories works similarly to Facebook’s Boost option that lets them pay to instantly show their feed posts to more users. An Instagram spokesperson in a statement said: “I can confirm that we are testing this feature globally. We don’t have an immediate timeline for 100 percent rollout, but will keep you posted.” Instagram already has 2 million active advertisers, compared to Facebook’s 6 million. Promote offers an easy way to turn their existing Stories into ads. This also allows Facebook to unlock more revenue growth which is slowly declining. It dropped from 59% in Q3 2016 to 49% in Q3 2017 to 33% in Q3 2018. The company has also launched Instagram Analytics in beta as part of Facebook Analytics. The tool goes beyond Instagram’s existing Insights tool as it includes new followers, website clicks, post impressions, and Story exists. With Instagram Analytics, business accounts can track lifetime ...

LG said to introduce new rollable OLED TV at the CES 2019

While CES 2019 is still months away, we started hearing reports about what's coming. One among the tech that LG is planning on introducing a new rollable OLED TV. According to the internal documents highlighting intended topics for the presentation, and it appears that the prototypes we've seen in past years from LG Display are ready to take center stage. Perhaps the new technology might launch as a real product. What's interesting in the documents are plans to showcase a foldable phone, as pointed by Evan Blass a couple of days ago. However, it is unclear what form the foldable phone will take. With Samsung and Huawei already working on foldable smartphones, the competition is becoming heated. As you would expect, LG will showcase products ranging from washing machines to robots, as we've seen in past years and these will be a part of its ThinQ AI plans. Stay tuned as we will keep you posted about any developments. Source

Instagram Stories gets Shazam integration

Apple-owned Shazam has announced a new partnership with Instagram that will allow its users to share Shazams onto their Insta stories. The new feature is already available for iOS users who download the latest versions of both apps. Android users will be able to access the new functionality soon. Right inside the Shazam app when a user opens to discover a song, they will see a button that will allow them to directly share it to an Instagram story. Followers of the account who view the story can click the button that says “More On Shazam,” which will open the Shazam app to the song’s page. This isn't the first integration inside Instagram. In the past several months, Spotify, Eventbrite and, SoundCloud have all announced functionalities with Instagram to allow users to share songs and buy tickets from within Instagram. You can download the Shazam app from App Store here.

Twitter adds new floating compose button for iOS

Twitter has added a new compose button to its official iOS mobile app that is designed for one-handed scrolling and tweet composing. Pressing and hold the icon gives you access to drafts, photos, and the GIF gallery. It is present on the bottom, it can be tapped to start composing a tweet.  We've got a shiny, new compose button to unveil on Twitter for iOS! Easier than ever to use, the floating icon is prominently displayed and perfect for one-handed scrolling and Tweet composing. Pro tip: Press and hold the icon to access your drafts, photos, and the GIF gallery. — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) October 31, 2018 Twitter says that the new floating compose button is “perfect for one-handed scrolling and tweet composing.” A single tap on the button reveals the standard compose window, but if you press and hold on the button, you’ll see an array of options for accessing drafts, uploading photos, and viewing the GIF gallery. Additionally, the company also announced new tools for reporting spam. Now, when you go to report a tweet, you will see; the account tweeting this is fake, includes a link to a potentially harmful, malicious, or phishing site, the hashtags included seem unrelated, uses the reply function to spam, and ...

Flickr to replace free 1TB plan with just 1000 photos from January 8th 2019

Flickr for quite sometime offered free 1TB storage to users after SmugMug acquired the service from Yahoo back in April, the company today announced it will be reducing the free tier to just 1000 photos and bringing improvements to its paid Flickr Pro. The company shared that Flickr Free accounts will now reduce the free storage to 1,000 photos of any size from the previous 1TB limit. Users who are currently on the free plan will have time until January 8th to download their photos or choose to upgrade to the Pro plan. After January 8, members over the limit will no longer be able to upload new photos to Flickr. As for Flickr Pro, it includes unlimited storage of photos and videos and more. Improvements to Flickr Pro include Ad-free browsing, advanced stats, premier product support, new 5K photo size, increased video playback, and more partner discounts. The Flickr Pro is priced at $50/year and the company is offering 30% off for Flickr users who upgrade from a free account before November 30. SmugMug also announced that it working on denting the spam on the platform, new simple login with customized credentials,  it is also working on moving Flickr out of Yahoo’s data centers and into an extremely ...

Global smartphone shipments down 6% in Q3 2018, Samsung leads with 72.2 million, Huawei posts 32.9% YoY growth

According to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, smartphone vendors shipped a total of 355.2 million units during the Q3 2018; this is a 6% decline year-over-year.  This was the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year declines for the global smartphone market. Samsung accounted for 20.3% of shipments in Q3 2018 with 72.2 million units shipped, which is a 13.4% decline year-over-year. China, which is the largest market for smartphones, accounted for roughly one-third of global shipments. Even the China market is down for the sixth consecutive quarter. Samsung seems to be facing the heat coming especially from Huawei who is inching closer to the top after its second consecutive quarter as the number two vendor. Even in growing markets like India, Samsung seems to be losing its position, thanks to the rapid growth of Chinese brands like Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo. Meanwhile, China’s domestic market, which represents roughly one-third of all smartphones, has been in decline since the second quarter of 2017, and Q32018 is the sixth consecutive quarter where the market sees contraction. China was down 11% in the first half of 2018, and the challenges continued into Q3 2018. Huawei once again managed to move past Apple into the second ...

Fujifilm instax SHARE SP-2 Smartphone Printer, SQUARE SQ6 and SQUARE Film Taylor Swift Edition launched in India

Fujifilm has launched new instax SHARE Smartphone Printer SP-2, which can print high-quality credit-card sized instant photos in just 10 seconds, Instax SQUARE SQ6 Taylor Swift Edition and Instax SQUARE Film Taylor Swift Edition for instax lovers. The Instax SHARE Smartphone Printer SP-2 enables users to print instant photos easily anywhere and anytime. When users send an image to the Instax SHARE Smartphone Printer SP-2” via wireless LAN, they can get photos in just 10 seconds. Instax SHARE Smartphone Printer SP-2” gives high-resolution prints with pixels of 800 x 600 dots and 320 dpi. It comes with a new laser exposure system and enables faster printing with lesser noise and makes printing experience. It records through 3-color exposure with OLED. It has a capacity of 10 photos per pack and takes Approx. 90 minutes to charge. It also comes in with different filters and templates to make printing more fun. Another inclusion is the Instax SQUARE SQ6 Taylor Swift Edition and Instax SQUARE Film Taylor Swift Edition which have been designed by Instax global partner Taylor Swift. These two new additions to the Instax lineup allow users to shoot and enjoy on-the-spot photo printing in square format. The Instax SQUARE SQ6 Taylor Swift Edition features a gold-colored newspaper pattern on a ...

Honor Watch Magic with 1.2-inch AMOLED display, Swimproof design, Heart rate monitor, GPS announced

Huawei's Honor Brand, along with the Honor Magic 2 also introduced the Honor Watch Magic smartwatch, which is similar to Huawei Watch GT that was introduced recently, but with a slightly smaller display. It sports a 1.2-inch (390 x 390 pixels) AMOLED color display with 326 PPI pixel density and incorporates a dual-crown design with 9.8mm stainless steel case. It has a heart rate sensor on the back. The body is made of 316L cold forged stainless steel and Black and Red, two-tone finish on its silicone strap. There is also a Silver version with Italian leather. It can simultaneously tap into GPS, GLONASS, and GALILEO, three of the major satellite positioning systems, for precise positioning. It also supports all-round sports activity tracking including indoor exercises, outdoor running, mountain climbing, cycling, and open water swimming. It comes with TruSeen 3.0 heart rate monitoring technology tracks the user’s active and resting heart rate. Combining innovative PPG optical and hardware design and AI algorithms, the solution can monitor the heart rate of users in real time with high precision. The TruRelax Technology analyses heart rate variability and accesses your stress status. Honor Watch Magic specifications 1.2-inch (390 x 390 pixels) AMOLED touch display, 326 PPI ARM M4 SoC with 16MB RAM and 128MB storage Bluetooth ...