The users of millions of faulty Samsung Galaxy Note7s, already turned in, face a bigger potential dilemma than whether the devices might blow up: The fate of their personal data on the devices.Many of the users of some 3 million Note7 devices sold were told by Samsung and government officials to immediately stop using the devices. They most likely didn't have time to thoroughly wipe sensitive personal data like credit card numbers or medical information.Samsung hasn't divulged what it plans to do with the Note7s that were turned in, and didn't respond this week to a query about how it plans to ensure customer data is kept confidential.The company said earlier this week that it is reviewing options for environmentally disposing of the Note7 phones after Greenpeace demanded Samsung find ways to reuse rare materials in the phones, such as gold and tungsten.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Analysts disagree drastically over the health of the smartwatch market. Some say the market is tanking. Others say there are favorable signs and predict healthy smartwatch shipments and sales in coming years.In late October, market research firm IDC said smartwatch shipments in the third quarter declined by 51% from the same quarter of 2015. The total shipped in the third quarter was 2.7 million, IDC said.By comparison, research firm Canalys on Thursday said smartwatch shipments were up 60% for the third quarter of 2016 compared with the same quarter a year ago. That resulted in 6.1 million units shipped in the latest quarter, Canalys said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Web traffic from smartphones will make up 43% of all web traffic next year and will reach 52% globally in 2019, according to research firm Forrester.The implications of such mobile web growth are profound, especially for e-businesses trying to effectively reach their customers and partners.Such widespread reliance on mobile devices instead of desktops means that enterprises next year should begin a dramatic shift to in-house mobile developer teams, Forrester said in a new report, Mobile is the face of digital.Beginning next year, there will also be a robust focus on other ways, besides apps, for mobile users to connect to businesses. Already, some consumer transactions and communications to companies via mobile are done through third-party software, such as Facebook Messenger, Amazon Alexa, and Apple's iMessage or Siri, Forrester said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last week’s massive distributed denial-of-service attack has prompted an urgent focus on the need for industry-led cybersecurity standards for internet of things devices.U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, (D-Va.) said Thursday that he favors an industry-based approach before seeking some form of government regulation of IoT security.“Last week’s attack does reveal a new level of vulnerability, and I’m trying to make it clear ... that this is not a problem that the government ought to be the first actor in solving,” he said in a telephone interview.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last week’s massive distributed denial-of-service attack has prompted an urgent focus on the need for industry-led cybersecurity standards for internet of things devices.U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, (D-Va.) said Thursday that he favors an industry-based approach before seeking some form of government regulation of IoT security.“Last week’s attack does reveal a new level of vulnerability, and I’m trying to make it clear ... that this is not a problem that the government ought to be the first actor in solving,” he said in a telephone interview.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Prominent U.S. politicians quickly raised concerns about the proposed $85.4 billion merger of AT&T and Time Warner, but some analysts expect it to pass regulatory muster after a lengthy review."The big question is how a new presidential administration will try to make a mark with its handling of the deal, but I expect whoever is elected will essentially wave [in approval] as it goes by," said Bill Menezes, an analyst at Gartner.Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, both voiced concerns about the deal, while a Senate Judiciary subcommittee has already vowed to hold a hearing on the matter in November.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple Pay marks its two-year anniversary this week, and while it supposedly helped spark a revolution for in-store mobile payments, there's not much celebrating by Apple or its payments rivals.
While Apple, Samsung Pay, Android Pay and many others keep adding users, the rate of adoption is far below what was expected when Apple Pay arrived on Oct. 20, 2014.
More worrisome is the low repeat-user rate. Many consumers will sign up for a payment app and try it out with contactless technology like Near Field Communications (NFC) on a smartphone once to buy something in a store. After that, many don't bother to do it a second time, because it is just too easy to use a credit or debit card -- or even cash, according to a recent survey.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
There's a lot of clap-trap going around about what could be wrong with the lithium-ion batteries in the dozens of Note7s that overheated, smoked, and even caught fire in original and replacement units.The truth is that the public doesn't know -- yet. Many analysts are questioning whether Samsung knows and just hasn't said.Samsung killed production of the Note7 and stopped sales and exchanges yesterday, less than two months after the South Korean giant started shipping the original device in the U.S. on Aug. 19. It's not clear what the company plans to do next to recover.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Samsung formally stopped production, sales and exchanges of its Note7 smartphones early Tuesday, after several weeks of reports that the devices -- and even their replacements -- overheated, smoked and caught fire.The death of the Note7 will be costly, according to many analysts.Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy has pegged the overall cost to Samsung at $5 billion to $7.5 billion, not including the hard-to-estimate impact on the Samsung brand. Some analysts, including Credit Suisse, said the lost sales on up to 19 million Note7 phones is about $17 billion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The White House last week announced $80 million in new federal funds for its ongoing Smart Cities Initiative while doubling the number of participating U.S. cities to more than 70.
The funding is meant to spur development of technologies and programs in four primary areas: to reduce energy usage; improve urban transportation with connected and autonomous vehicles; beef up public safety and disaster response; and transform city services such as outreach to the homeless.
The funding is partly a response to a comprehensive report from presidential advisors in February recommending ways to maximize technology innovation in cities. Dozens of experts worked on the report, including Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, and Eric Lander, president of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Verizon should push for a big discount off its pending $4.8 billion deal to buy Yahoo, given Yahoo’s recent data breach and reported questionable security practices, several analysts said Friday.“Verizon should certainly pay less for Yahoo at this point,” said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “Unfortunately, the property is damaged goods, particularly after the acknowledged security breach.”A report on Thursday in the New York Post, quoting unnamed sources, said Verizon pushed Yahoo for a $1 billion discount on the purchase deal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Verizon should push for a big discount off its pending $4.8 billion deal to buy Yahoo, given Yahoo’s recent data breach and reported questionable security practices, several analysts said Friday.“Verizon should certainly pay less for Yahoo at this point,” said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “Unfortunately, the property is damaged goods, particularly after the acknowledged security breach.”A report on Thursday in the New York Post, quoting unnamed sources, said Verizon pushed Yahoo for a $1 billion discount on the purchase deal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Weather disasters like Hurricane Matthew are pushing wireless carriers to test drones and other unmanned aircraft that can act as wireless hot spots for 4G LTE connections to help emergency responders.
Verizon announced Thursday it had just completed a simulation in Cape May, N.J., using unmanned planes to act as flying hot spots for 4G LTE connections. First responders could use those hot spots to communicate in remote places where wireless antennas were lost or unavailable.
[Here's a video of the AT&T test.]To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google Fiber's strategy to use wireless technology to supplant its fiber optic cable installations came into sharper focus Monday with Google's purchase of Webpass.Google Fiber President Dennis Kish, in a blog post on the deal, noted that Webpass helps Google Fiber with its strategy "going forward [with] a hybrid approach with wireless playing an integral part."Webpass has proven that point-to-point wireless is a reliable way to connect more people to high-speed Internet in a densely populated environment by setting up wireless transmission links between buildings," Kish added.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Banks and financial markets are adopting blockchain distributed database software for their payments and lending services at a pace faster than once expected, according to a survey of 400 such businesses globally.Blockchain software is the basis of bitcoin, first developed in 2009, and acts as an automatic public ledger for transactions, primarily financial transactions.The survey, conducted by a research division of IBM, found that 15% of the banks and 14% of financial market institutions intend to implement full-scale, commercial blockchain-based services in 2017.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google Fiber won a victory in Nashville as the city's Metro Council approved an ordinance called “One Touch Make Ready,” that would speed up the company's fiber-optic cable installations.The ordinance, passed Wednesday night by a voice vote, gives Google Fiber and other ISPs quicker access to utility poles for deploying fast broadband with fiber-optic cable.Without the measure, each ISP has had to send out a separate crew to a utility pole to move its own line to make room for a new one. The ordinance would permit a single company to make the wire adjustments on a pole instead of waiting for existing providers — competitors like Comcast or AT&T-- to make the changes, which could take months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google Fiber won a victory in Nashville as the city's Metro Council approved an ordinance called “One Touch Make Ready,” that would speed up the company's fiber-optic cable installations.The ordinance, passed Wednesday night by a voice vote, gives Google Fiber and other ISPs quicker access to utility poles for deploying fast broadband with fiber-optic cable.Without the measure, each ISP has had to send out a separate crew to a utility pole to move its own line to make room for a new one. The ordinance would permit a single company to make the wire adjustments on a pole instead of waiting for existing providers — competitors like Comcast or AT&T-- to make the changes, which could take months.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CSPC) late Thursday issued an official recall of 1 million Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones.
Samsung had issued its own recall Sept. 2, but there was no formal recall in cooperation with the CPSC until now.
The recall is necessary because the Note 7 "presents such a fire hazard," Elliot Kaye, the CPSC chairman, said in a news conference.
Kaye said customers subject to the recall have two options: either to seek a replacement or a refund, "which is the choice of the customer and the customer alone."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple Pay on websites launched on Tuesday with the release of iOS 10 for the iPhone and iPad -- and will hit Mac desktops when macOS Sierra launches next Tuesday.More than 200,000 websites -- including small and large retailers -- plan to support Apple Pay on their sites in coming weeks, Apple said Tuesday. Many of the sites include online retailers using e-commerce platforms run by Shopify, Demandware and IBM.The move means that online shoppers with iPhones, iPads and Macs updated with the latest operating systems can save time when finishing an online purchase through the Apple's Safari browser. Retailers that have signed up for the service are expected to see an uptick in the number of customers that finish a web purchase, instead of giving up because typing in credit information was considered too complicated, awkward or time-consuming.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple Pay on websites launched on Tuesday with the release of iOS 10 for the iPhone and iPad -- and will hit Mac desktops when macOS Sierra launches next Tuesday.More than 200,000 websites -- including small and large retailers -- plan to support Apple Pay on their sites in coming weeks, Apple said Tuesday. Many of the sites include online retailers using e-commerce platforms run by Shopify, Demandware and IBM.The move means that online shoppers with iPhones, iPads and Macs updated with the latest operating systems can save time when finishing an online purchase through the Apple's Safari browser. Retailers that have signed up for the service are expected to see an uptick in the number of customers that finish a web purchase, instead of giving up because typing in credit information was considered too complicated, awkward or time-consuming.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Matt Hamblen