Daily Tech Headlines – February 2, 2018
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| Daily Tech Headlines – February 2, 2018 | |
| Number | 430 |
| Broadcast Date | FEBRUARY 2, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 4:12 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt |
Apple does OK on slowing iPhone sales, Amazon knocks it out of the park and Alphabet has mixed results.
Headlines
- Apple reported it sold 77.3 million iPhones in its last quarter down 1% year over year, though revenue rose as average selling price rose to $796. iPad sales rose 1% to 13.2 million. Wearables revenue rose 70% and watch sales rose 50%. Macs were down 5% and services revenue rose 18% to $8.5 billion. China revenue rose 11%. Overall revenue set a record at $88.3 billion up 14% on the year.
- Overall smartphone sales were slow in the holiday quarter according to IDC and Strategy Analytics. IDC showed 403.5 million units shipped down from 430.7 million the year before. And for the year overall smartphone volume dropped 0.1 percent according to IDC although Strategy Analytics showed a 1% rise Apple took the top spot away from Samsung for the quarter, although Samsung was still the top vendor for the year. Xiaomi climbed back into the top 5 smartphone vendors for the year, bumping out Vivo.
- YouTube TV announced its app is now available for Apple TV with subscriptions available as an in-app purchase. YouTube TV arrived for Roku Thursday morning.
- Sony announced that Kaz Hirai will step down as CEO of Sony but remain as chairman. CFO Kenichiro Yoshida will become CEO April 1. The image sensor company reported a quadrupling of operating profit in the third quarter, its highest Q3 profit yet. Sony raised its profit forecast for the year ending March to 720 billion yen from 630 billion yen, its best in its 72-year history.
- Amazon reported a 38.2 percent jump in fourth-quarter revenue due to holiday shopping and cloud services. Amazon reported earnings per share at $3.75, more than double the $1.85 that analysts expected. Net sales rose to $60.45 billion in the reported quarter from $43.74 billion a year earlier. Revenue from Amazon Web Services surged 44.6 percent to $5.11 billion.
- Alphabet passed $100 billion in yearly revenue on rising ad sales but a Q4 loss of $9.9 billion due to a one-time tax charge. Fourth-quarter revenue rose about 24% to $32.32 billion. But the numbers still missed expectations and showed increasing costs for its traffic acquisition as a percentage. Growth in its “other revenues” and “other bets” continues to rise year-over-year. Alphabet also named John Hennessy as board chairman to replace Eric Schmidt who departed in December.
- Bloomberg reports Intel will sell a majority stake in its augmented reality business. It aims to offer smart glasses that connect with phones by Bluetooth later this year. Taiwan’s Quanta Computer is making the product under contract. Intel wants investors with strong sales channels, or design expertise.
- Microsoft introduced a new Surface Laptop for $799 Friday. The new model has a Core m3 processor, 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage. Microsoft also introduced a new variant of its 13.5-inch Surface Book 2 at $1199 with an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. This is down from the $1499 model which had 256 GB of storage.
- IQVIA is launching a digital healthcare platform across Africa and the Middle East, starting in Nigeria. IQVIA HCPSpace will connect Doctors, Pharmacists, Nurses, Medical Laboratory Scientists, and other Healthcare Professionals with each other to share information. The app will be free for Android and iOS.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – February 1, 2018" |
Daily Tech Headlines – February 2, 2018 |
Followed by: "Daily Tech Headlines – February 5, 2018" |