As smartphone screens have grown larger, Apple, the no. 2 phone seller in the world, has resisted selling very big phones—until now. Apple is expected to announce two new iPhones next week, both larger than current 4-inch models, and one reportedly with a 5.5-inch screen. (That’s big.)
More than two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese. Half don’t exercise regularly. Yet Apple, the biggest tech company in the world, thinks it can sell a wearable device that’s supposedly designed—at least, in part—to help people track their health and fitness.
Despite a lot of investment and even more hype, mobile payments haven’t really taken off. While the idea of using a mobile phone or other device to quickly and securely pay for things sounds appealing, only between 3% and 7% of consumers in the US and Europe use their phones to buy coffee, books, or other physical goods in stores, according to Bain (pdf).
The so-called “iWatch” is supposedly real. Apple “plans to unveil a new wearable” device alongside two new iPhones at an event on Sept. 9, Re/code’s plugged-in John Paczkowski reports. While Apple has been widely reported to be working on some sort of new wearable gadget, surprisingly few details have leaked—including its expected arrival date.
Microsoft’s mobile comeback—at least how the company had intended—isn’t happening.
Amazon and Google, having evolved well beyond their respective beginnings as on online bookstore and a web search engine, are now expanding in ways that bring them closer to becoming direct competitors.
Mobile apps have skyrocketed in popularity and utility since Apple introduced the iPhone App Store in the summer of 2008. Apps now represent 52% of time spent with digital media in the US, according to comScore, up from 40% in early 2013. Apple boasted 75 billion all-time App Store downloads at its developers conference in June, and followed up by declaring July the best month ever for App Store revenue, with a record number of people downloading apps.
Perhaps you’ve heard: Walmart has “slashed” Apple’s iPhone 5C down to $0.97, Mashable reports, down from its previous price of $29.
In its latest mobile app report, comScore tracks the 25 most popular apps in the US. This is an interesting slice of the App Store, as it highlights active usage, not just one-time downloads or recent popularity.
One of the promises of the “internet of things” is that it will connect the real-world with the virtual. Low-energy Bluetooth beacons are emerging as one of its stronger early technologies.
Many Twitter users have noticed that Twitter is now inserting tweets into their timelines that seemingly don’t belong. This is not an accident. Twitter has updated its help document, “What’s a Twitter timeline?”
Google went public 10 years ago today.
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo promised many product “experiments” on the company’s most recent earnings call, and the company has started to deliver: Many users are starting to notice tweets that don’t normally belong in their feeds. This is a significant shift in how Twitter works—and how it might work in the future.
When Apple launched the iPhone 5C and 5S last September, it was the first time the company had released two new iPhone models simultaneously. (It may do this again in a few weeks.) The 5C, with a colorful, plastic case, was slower and less expensive. The 5S, featuring a fingerprint-scanning security system and an improved camera, was Apple’s first phone available in gold.
Apple is expected to unveil its new iPhone on Sept. 9, with sales likely to begin on Sept. 19. This is an important launch for Apple, which has seen its growth slow over the past year.
Shares of King Digital—maker of the wildly popular mobile game Candy Crush Saga—are down more than 20% in after-hours trading, following weak second-quarter results. King also announced a surprise, $150 million special dividend, which seems unusual for a company that went public less than six months ago—and perhaps an admission of long-term trouble ahead.
One of the most memorable slides from Steve Jobs’ iPhone unveiling in 2007 was this “before” look at the smartphone industry he was about to disrupt.
As the mobile internet has boomed, operators have tried to move their customers from unlimited-access data plans to consumption-based plans, where people pay based on how much mobile data they’re using. This push has been largely successful. For example, AT&T—the largest US operator—said last month that more than 80% of its smartphone customers, excluding prepaid, have usage-based data plans. That’s up from 45% three years ago.
One of our favorite all-time tech charts depicts the uncanny correlation of Americans subscribing to Netflix—arguably the perfect accessory to broadband internet access—as they left AOL’s dialup service. Using those services as proxies, the broadband era is now much bigger than the dialup era: Netflix has 10 million more subscribers—36.2 million at the end of June—than AOL did when it peaked in 2002.
AOL has spent the last decade—since the broadband era really took off—trying to build a business around online advertising. But its legacy dialup internet subscription business is still generating a big portion of its sales—and most of its profits.
Apple’s new iPhone is on schedule: The company will hold a press event on Sept. 9 to unveil its new model, Re/code’s well-sourced John Paczkowski reports. This is in line with previous years, when Apple also revealed its new phone in early- to mid-September.
Kickstarter was caught off-guard this summer by a gag crowdfunding project that took off and attracted a mix of delight and mockery: “Potato Salad” by Zack Brown, which raised $55,492 to make… potato salad. But the company has made the best of the situation, analyzing its success in a smart post, Potato Salad: By the Numbers.
Amazon’s first phone—the Fire Phone—is not a hit with critics, who have mostly panned its interface and app selection. But it is finding some sort of audience: The standard-issue Fire Phone has been Amazon’s top-selling mobile phone all week.
Microsoft has long dominated the corporate-software market, and its new CEO Satya Nadella has set his sights on owning all things related to productivity and the cloud. But Google—fueled by its search-advertising business and consumer popularity—has been coming on strong for years with lower-priced, cloud-based services such as email and calendars, productivity apps, video hangouts, and storage. And among certain types of customers, it is succeeding.
