Vendor News

Services Drive Apple Q2 Results

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The Apple financial report for fiscal Q2 2019 marks a shift in priorities for the company-- it makes no mention of iPhone sales, instead concentrating on the growth of the company's services wing.

Apple financialAs such, Apple revenues for the quarter total $58 billion, a decline of -5% Y-o-Y, with profits reaching $11.6bn. Gross margin clocks at 37.6%, compared to 38.3% in Q1 2018, and international sales account for 61% of revenue. The company gives no iPhone or iPad sales number, instead simply stating services revenues (covering App Store, iCloud, Apple Pay and AppleCare, among others) reach an all-time high of $11.5bn.

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Apple and Qualcomm Kiss and Make Up

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The legal battle over patent licensing going on between Apple and Qualcomm since January 2017 comes to a close, as the two companies drop all litigation in favour of a 6-year license agreement and a "multi-year" supply of wireless chips.

QualcommThe two companies do not reveal what brought the sudden end to the bitter feud, especially since yet another round of court litigation had just started earlier this week. It is probable both Apple and Qualcomm simply tired of spending on corporate and legal maneuvering, as until now neither of the two budged on their position on iPhone patent royalties.

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Samsung Faces Lowest Quarterly Results Yet

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Samsung is heading towards the lowest quarterly profit in over 2 years, as drops in memory prices and display panel sales, not to mention smartphone woes, lead to operating profits sliding by -60% Y-o-Y in Q1 2019.

Samsung resultsThe S. Korean giant predicts Q1 2019 revenues will reach 51-53 trillion Korean won ($44.87-$46.63 billion), a drop of around -15% Y-o-Y. In turn, profit is forecast to reach around 6.2tr won ($5.5bn), missing analyst estimates of 6.8tr won. The company had already warned of disappointing results for the quarter, the result of falling memory prices and slowing demand for display panels.

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Angela Ahrendts Leaves Apple

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Apple gets a change in leadership as senior retail VP of retail Angela Ahrendts announces her departure from the iPhone maker after 5 years for, as she puts it, "new personal and professional pursuits."

Deirdre obrien“The last 5 years have been the most stimulating, challenging and fulfilling of my career. Through the teams’ collective efforts, Retail has never been stronger or better positioned to make an even greater contribution for Apple,” Ahrendts says. “I feel there is no better time to pass the baton to Deirdre, one of Apple’s strongest executives. I look forward to watching how this amazing team, under her leadership, will continue to change the world one person and one community at a time.”

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Google Celebrates 20th Anniversary With Hardware

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The next company with an October hardware event is, of course, Google-- and the search giant looks to celebrate its 20th birthday with a slew of products, namely the Pixel 3 smartphone, Pixel Slate tablet and the Echo Show-style Home Hub.

Google hardwareThe next flagship Android phone, the Pixel 3 comes in two variants, the 5.3-inch regular and 6.3-inch XL. Both feature the Snapdragon 845 SoC with 4GB RAM inside a matte glass body comlete with notch for the front-facing dual-lens 12MP camera array. Such a camera should allow for better selfies, since one of the lenses offers a wider field of view. Interestingly the rear-facing camera is a single-lens affair, if one beefed up with cloud-powered AI smarts and a "Visual Core" co-processor developed with Intel.

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