Tech Roundup: Android 4.3, Facebook Q2 & More
[A recurring feature on the latest trends in Science & Technology.]
Wall Street finally impressed with Facebook; shares surge by over 30%:
After a disastrous IPO and endless struggles to grapple with a user base that's increasingly veering towards mobile, social network Facebook seems to have finally cracked it! Not only its revenue exceeded market expectations, a good chunk of it came through mobile advertising. Although Facebook's revenue strategy has doubtless succeeded at present, it remains to be seen if it would be able to sustain this momentum in the long run. Plus I wonder how many more ads will users have to put up with, after all it's just one website!
Samsung beats Apple to emerge the most profitable smartphone maker:
While Facebook stunned the Street, for tech giants Apple and Samsung it was an altogether different story. Apple iPhone sales were a staggering 31.2 million units, almost 20% more than what analysts had envisioned. Sales of iPad were down from previous quarter with the company facing an intense tablet battle with Amazon and Google, and the average selling price of iOS devices taking a hit in light of a healthy demand for its cheaper offerings like the iPad Mini and iPhone 4. Rumours are flying thick and fast about a budget iPhone - seen as Apple's attempt to penetrate developing markets like China, where its revenues have plummeted by almost 43%, and India - to be unveiled alongside the iPhone 5S this year.
Facing a weakened growth in the high-end smartphone market, Korean conglomerate Samsung missed estimates (like it had warned earlier) despite posting record profits of $8.5 billion. The dip in profits in the mobile sector was offset by improved semiconductor and display panel business, the company said. Samsung has however managed to usurp the most profitable smartphone maker title from Apple at least for now, capturing around 30% of the market share. Apple's 13%, on the other hand, is said to be at at its lowest since 2010. For LG, a strong demand for Nexus 4 and Optimus G devices helped propel sales to a record 12 million smartphones last quarter.
Google announces Android 4.3, new Nexus 7 tablet and Chromecast:
Search giant Google announced the next version of Android (4.3, still called Jelly Bean) at a breakfast event with Android and Chrome OS chief Sundar Pichai. The incremental update, demoed on the refreshed Nexus 7 tablet, adds support for restricted profiles (something akin to Kids Corner on Windows Phone), high quality graphics in games, simplified setup, Bluetooth Smart Ready, among other performance improvements.
Not much of a big overhaul in terms of the operating system, but the new Nexus 7, packing in a higher resolution screen and a better hardware than its predecessor, sounds like a very attractive alternative to the iPad Mini. The best part of the event was Chromecast, a USB dongle like thingy that allows you to stream videos from any device (Android/iOS/Chrome) - technically from any app that supports Chromecast - to your TV. Being super cheap ($35), can it finally achieve what Google TV couldn't?
Light stopped for a minute!
Light is the fastest thing known to us, traveling at a record-breaking 300 million meters per second. Now imagine stopping it for a period of 60 seconds, the time during which it could have travelled 18 million kilometers - suffice for about 20 round trips to the Moon! Well scientists at the University of Darmstadt in Germany have done just that. To stop light, they fired a control laser on a opaque crystal to turn it transparent, beamed a second light source onto the now-transparent crystal, then switched off the laser to make it opaque again, thus trapping the light from the second source inside. Though there were earlier successful attempts at stopping light, this one takes the cake for achieving it for the longest duration. A discovery which can pave the way for quantum memory no less!
In other news:
Wall Street finally impressed with Facebook; shares surge by over 30%:
After a disastrous IPO and endless struggles to grapple with a user base that's increasingly veering towards mobile, social network Facebook seems to have finally cracked it! Not only its revenue exceeded market expectations, a good chunk of it came through mobile advertising. Although Facebook's revenue strategy has doubtless succeeded at present, it remains to be seen if it would be able to sustain this momentum in the long run. Plus I wonder how many more ads will users have to put up with, after all it's just one website!
Samsung beats Apple to emerge the most profitable smartphone maker:
While Facebook stunned the Street, for tech giants Apple and Samsung it was an altogether different story. Apple iPhone sales were a staggering 31.2 million units, almost 20% more than what analysts had envisioned. Sales of iPad were down from previous quarter with the company facing an intense tablet battle with Amazon and Google, and the average selling price of iOS devices taking a hit in light of a healthy demand for its cheaper offerings like the iPad Mini and iPhone 4. Rumours are flying thick and fast about a budget iPhone - seen as Apple's attempt to penetrate developing markets like China, where its revenues have plummeted by almost 43%, and India - to be unveiled alongside the iPhone 5S this year.
Facing a weakened growth in the high-end smartphone market, Korean conglomerate Samsung missed estimates (like it had warned earlier) despite posting record profits of $8.5 billion. The dip in profits in the mobile sector was offset by improved semiconductor and display panel business, the company said. Samsung has however managed to usurp the most profitable smartphone maker title from Apple at least for now, capturing around 30% of the market share. Apple's 13%, on the other hand, is said to be at at its lowest since 2010. For LG, a strong demand for Nexus 4 and Optimus G devices helped propel sales to a record 12 million smartphones last quarter.
Google announces Android 4.3, new Nexus 7 tablet and Chromecast:
Search giant Google announced the next version of Android (4.3, still called Jelly Bean) at a breakfast event with Android and Chrome OS chief Sundar Pichai. The incremental update, demoed on the refreshed Nexus 7 tablet, adds support for restricted profiles (something akin to Kids Corner on Windows Phone), high quality graphics in games, simplified setup, Bluetooth Smart Ready, among other performance improvements.
Not much of a big overhaul in terms of the operating system, but the new Nexus 7, packing in a higher resolution screen and a better hardware than its predecessor, sounds like a very attractive alternative to the iPad Mini. The best part of the event was Chromecast, a USB dongle like thingy that allows you to stream videos from any device (Android/iOS/Chrome) - technically from any app that supports Chromecast - to your TV. Being super cheap ($35), can it finally achieve what Google TV couldn't?
Light stopped for a minute!
Light is the fastest thing known to us, traveling at a record-breaking 300 million meters per second. Now imagine stopping it for a period of 60 seconds, the time during which it could have travelled 18 million kilometers - suffice for about 20 round trips to the Moon! Well scientists at the University of Darmstadt in Germany have done just that. To stop light, they fired a control laser on a opaque crystal to turn it transparent, beamed a second light source onto the now-transparent crystal, then switched off the laser to make it opaque again, thus trapping the light from the second source inside. Though there were earlier successful attempts at stopping light, this one takes the cake for achieving it for the longest duration. A discovery which can pave the way for quantum memory no less!
In other news:
- African western black rhinoceros is now officially extinct, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
- NASA's Cassini spacecraft captures high-resolution photos of Earth and Moon from Saturn.
- Scientists successfully employ acoustic levitation using water droplets for the first time.
- Researchers develop an intelligent knife (called iKnife) that uses mass spectroscopy to differentiate between cancerous and healthy tissues.
- Google Play Store now has 1 million apps possibly beating Apple's App Store.
- GDR update for Windows Phone 8 devices adds CalDAV, CardDAV support.
- Apple's Development Center is back online after being taken down over a hacking attempt.
- Google begins showing highly relevant ads straight in your inbox (in Promotions tab, if tabbed inbox is enabled).
- Nokia unveils the biggest-ever Lumia smartphone, Lumia 625, for the budget conscious.
- Flipboard Magazines debut on the Web; full app experience coming soon.
- First ever porn movie is shot with Google Glass.
- Hippstamic Oggl app ends Instagram drought on Windows Phone 8.
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