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It's Always Sunny in iOS
With rivals turning up the heat, will iOS 7 finally make Apple's smartphone smarter?
As the prevalence of Android malware grows, its sophistication is naturally growing as well. Kaspersky researcher Roman Unuchek writes that he and his team recently stumbled upon a new Android Trojan that he calls the most sophisticated one he’s ever seen. What makes this Trojan, dubbed “Backdoor.AndroidOS.Obad.a,” so bad? Unuchek says that it’s a “multi-functional Trojan” capable of “sending SMS to premium-rate numbers; downloading other malware programs, installing them on the infected device and/or sending them further via Bluetooth; and remotely performing commands in the console.” More →
BlueStacks, the Silicon Valley-based startup known for its Android app player for Mac and PC, recently announced a new gaming console that will launch later this year. GamePop is similar to the Ouya console and is designed to play Android games, however instead of paying for individual titles, BlueStacks charges a monthly subscription fee of $6.99 for access to a library of more than 500 titles. The company on Friday made the console even more appealing by announcing that it will support games designed for Apple’s iPhone and iPad in addition to Android games. BlueStacks will utilize a virtualization tool known as Looking Glass to enable iOS games to be played on TV screens. The GamePop console can be preordered now for $129 and is scheduled to be released later this year.
Google pulled out of China in 2010 as a result of numerous hacking attacks on the U.S. that originated from inside the country. Despite the fact that China has more than 560 million people who use the Internet, Google has no plans to return its services there. CNET reports that during Google’s annual shareholder meeting on Thursday, chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt said he was “troubled by continued reports of censorship and spying on people” by the Chinese government. He explained that until China changes the way it treats its citizens, Google has no plans to invest more resources into the country. Prior to pulling out of the country, Google’s search engine controlled 29% of the Chinese market. The company’s market share plummeted to just 5% in 2012, however.
A new study from Google suggests that the company can predict which new movies will be a hit up to four weeks before they reach theaters. The study, titled “Quantifying Movie Magic with Google Search,” found that by using data from Google’s search engine, the company can predict a film’s opening weekend box office results with 94% accuracy. Google examines the search volume for a movie’s trailer four weeks before the films hits theaters. As the release approaches, however, the company’s predictions become slightly less accurate. One week before the movie arrives in theaters, Google uses search volume for a film’s title rather than the trailer, and combines it with theater availability to make predictions that were found to be 92% accurate. Google notes that if a film receives at least 250,000 more searches than another film opening in the same week, it will make an average of $4.3 million more during its opening weekend.
Google has confirmed that beginning on June 26th it will offer “Google Editions” of some of the most popular Android smartphones in its Play store. The Galaxy S4 and HTC One have both been stripped of their respective skins and will be available running a stock version of Android. A new report suggests that the company plans to expand the program to more devices. According to Android Central, Google is preparing to release a stock version of the Xperia Z later this year. Sony’s flagship smartphone is equipped with a 5-inch full HD 1080p display, a quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor and a 13-megapixel camera. The device is both water proof and dust resistant, and also includes 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and a microSD slot. The Xperia Z Google Edition is said to be arriving in the Play store sometime this summer.
HTC came out of the gate swinging with its latest flagship smartphone. The HTC One has been well received by consumers and critics, recently racking up sales of 5 million units. HTC reported that revenue in May grew 48% sequentially as the HTC One helped sales reach their highest level in 11 months. In fact, Kevin Chang of Citigroup Global Markets believes that the HTC One accounted for half of the company’s sales, the Taipei Times reported. He estimates that shipments may have doubled from April to reach 1.2 million units. Sales of the smartphone are not expected to improve again this month, however. The analyst believes that shipments of the HTC One may have peaked and because sales of other models remain weak, and he notes that the company’s revenue is likely to be flat in June.
Japanese carrier SoftBank is reportedly interested in making a bid for T-Mobile as a potential backup plan in case its deal with Sprint falls through. SoftBank’s $20.1 billion bid for Sprint is being challenged by Dish. Reuters is reporting that SoftBank is in talks with Deutsche Telekom AG, the parent company of T-Mobile, about a possible deal to acquire the U.S. wireless provider. The talks between the two companies are said to have “intensified” in the weeks following Dish’s counteroffer for Sprint. Deutsche Telekom owns 74% of T-Mobile USA, which is said to be valued at $15 billion. The report comes shortly before Sprint shareholders are scheduled to approve or reject SoftBank’s offer on June 12th.
Everyone hoping to start off the new school year with a shiny new iPhone 5S may be in for a disappointment. Per Barron’s, Citigroup analyst Glen Yeung has published a new research note claiming that the iPhone 5S has been hit with production woes and likely won’t be ready by early September when Apple had originally hoped to announce the device. Yeung says that Apple’s newest smartphone will be delayed for between two to four weeks “likely due to display issues” and could launch in early October instead. Yeung also claims that production problems have also pushed back the Retina-equipped iPad mini release date to the fourth quarter of 2013, which is later than he’d previously projected.
Google planned to revolutionize the way we make payments with its mobile wallet service. Google Wallet has failed to find mainstream success, however, and has been downloaded from the Play store fewer than 10 million times since first launching in September 2011. According to a report from Bloomberg Businessweek, Google has invested more than $300 million to help develop the app and service, which remains a niche product that is actually losing money; Osama Bedier, the former head of Google Wallet, revealed that Google loses money on every transaction due to the high fees the company is forced to pay to credit card companies. All of the blame cannot be put on Google, though. Wallet has been blacklisted at Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, each of which have backed rival payment solution ISIS. Without support from the carriers, Google might never be able to turn Wallet around and its fate may already be decided.
Google shareholders and other individuals were in for a surprise when they arrived at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Thursday. Google, ironically, banned attendees from wearing the company’s own wearable computing device at the meeting. The company forbade people from using electronic devices such as smartphones, cameras and recording devices. The restriction infuriated the nonprofit watchdog organization Consumer Watchdog, which called out Google executives as hypocrites. More →
As someone who’s been a very happy Xbox 360 owner for the past six years, I was eagerly anticipating buying an Xbox One this coming holiday season as a sort of Christmas present to myself. The console’s specs look killer, its new TV set-top box features look like nice additions and its ability to make Skype calls through my television is a great touch. But then I read about Microsoft’s policies on both used games and Internet connectivity on Friday and I’ve concluded that, barring a significant change, I will not be buying an Xbox One. More →
Microsoft this week finally answered some key questions about how its Xbox One will handle issues such as Internet connectivity and the buying and selling of used games. In terms of used games, Microsoft says that you can buy and sell them through participating retailers or give them to someone who’s been your friend on Xbox Live for more than 30 days. Interestingly, Microsoft says that games may only be given to new users once so it seems that the game will stop working if your friend tries to give it to another friend. More →
According to Google’s DoubleClick ad planner, Wikipedia is the sixth largest website in the world with approximately 410 million monthly unique visitors. Founded in 2001, Wikipedia is a crowd-sourced encyclopedia operated by the Wikimedia Foundation with a noble goal: Free information by the people, for the people. As great as Wikipedia can be, though, the look of the site is a bit drab. As such, a number of third-party developers have set out over the years to build apps that make the site a bit more enjoyable to use. Some developers do a better job than others, but one app shines brighter than the rest. More →