Apple considering making iPhone in the US

iPhones may soon be made in US as Apple has asked Foxconn and Pegatron to look into this possibility, reports said. According to Nikkei Asian Review, key Apple assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn Technology Group, has been studying the possibility of moving iPhone production to the US.“Apple asked both Foxconn and Pegatron,the two iPhone assemblers, in June to look into making iPhones in the US Foxconn complied, while Pegatron declined to formulate such a plan due to cost concerns,” sources said.
But the sources have said that making of iPhones in the US will cost will more than double. The general perception among Americans that they are losing manufacturing jobs to other countries overlaps the Apple’s ‘rumoured’ prospect move.
President-elect Donald Trump referred to Apple multiple times during his campaign and vowed to slap a 45 per cent tariff on goods made in China. “We’re going to get Apple to build their damn computers and things in this country instead of in other countries,” Trump said at Liberty University in Virginia in January. Apple’s Chief Executive Tim Cook was quoted by CBS’ 60 Minutes programme in December 2015 that America simply did not have enough skilled workers for the production of iPhones.
To make iPhones, there will need to be a cluster of suppliers in the same place, which the US does not have at the moment. Even if Trump imposes a 45 per cent tariff, it is still possible that manufacturers will decide to continue production overseas as long as the costs together with the tariffs are lower than the amount they need to spend on building and running production lines in the US,” sources familiar with the iPhone production process were quoted by Nikkei Asian Review.
Sources said that to make iPhones, America will need US government to subsidise local companies for domestic productions.

WhatsApp launch video call on Android, iOS and Windows 10 platform

WhatsApp has just announced video calling for all users starting November 15.The feature will roll out to all users over the next few days. WhatsApp was launched in 2009 as a rich messaging service and is now one of the world’s largest OTT messaging platforms with over 1 billion users,. It added voice calls in early 2015.Here is how the new video calling feature works. The Video calling will work on all devices with Android4.1 and above. The rollout is happening at the same time for iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices, thus covering the top mobile operating systems across the world. Users will need to upgrade their app for the feature to show show up. When you click on the call button, you will start getting a new video calls options along with the existing voice calls.
Once the call connects, you will be able to choose either from or back camera of the phone for the video. You will be able to choose if the preview of you video is the main image or the incoming video. Also, the location of the smaller window can be moved to anywhere on the screen.
WhatsApp says it does not assume anything about the quality of the network from which the video call is being made. So the video call quality will improve as the system recognises that the network quality is good. The video calling feature has keep kept really simple so that engages everyone without confusing them. The one additional feature is the ability to multi-task by minimising the video and using other apps on the phone. User will be able to return to the call by tapping on the green band that appears across apps.
At the moment the video calling feature can be used synchronously between two users and not to whole group.

Google: Two Billion Chrome Installed

Google announced a new milestone for its Chrome browser today:2 billion active installs between desktop and mobile since its September 2008 release. The news was made public onstage at the Chrome Dev Summit conference by Chrome Engineering VP Darin Fisher. Of course, this stat differs from active use — just because you installed Chrome doesn’t mean it’s your primary daily browser. That’s especially true of mobile, where a company like Apple makes it easer to use its built-in Safari browser even after you’ve defaulted to mobile Chrome.
Still, 2 billion installs is a first for a Google product. The company announced last year during its I/O developer conference that it has more than 1 billion users of Android, Chrome, YouTube, and search. And last April, Chrome passed the 1 billion active user mark on mobile. That means, between its active install pass and growing mobile presence, Chrome could be the first Google product to hit the 2 billion user mark.
Though it is of course contending with Android. As of last September, Google’s mobile operating system was installed on1.4 billion active smartphones around the world. So for Google, it looks like a never-ending race with itself.

Apple accounted for 103.6 per cent of smartphone profit

While there is a lot of talk about how Apple’s momentum is slowing down, there seems to be one area where it is way ahead of the competition and that is profits. In fact, one analyst thinks Apple has more than 100 per cent of smartphone industry profits in Q3.As per BMO Capital Markets analyst Tim Long, Apple accounted for 103.6 per cent of all smartphone industry operating profits in Q3. The number is above cent per cent because other vendors are losing money.
Thus Apple ends up with “more smartphone profit than the industry netted overall”. For the year-earlier period, Apple grabbed 90 per cent of smartphone profits, Long said, highlighting how others had fallen of the cliff when it came to profits.
In fact, the number 2 in profits is Korean tech giant Samsung with a mere 0.9 per cent share. Long said everyone from LG to HTC had lost money in the quarter. The analyst was of the opinion that Samsung, which had lost some market share because of the Note 7 fiasco, will end up ceding more ground to Apple in the near future.
However, according to BMO estimates, Samsung still had 21.7 per cent of the smartphone market based on units sold in Q3, followed by Apple (13.2 per cent) and Huawei(9.7 per cent). Apple launched the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus in September this year at a crucial time for the company when its overall revenue has fallen thanks to slowing iPhone sales, which has become the star product in its portfolio. However, most analysts expect the iPhone 8 to come with major design changes and spark better upgrade than the 7 series.

Apple Patent hint Bendable, Foldable iPhone

Apple iPhone 8 is set to launch next, and reports suggest that Cupertino giant is expected to bring about a radical change for it as 2017 is the 10th year anniversary for Apple’s iPhone. Now a patent, filed in 2014, has been granted and published online by the US Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) reveal Apple is working on overhauling the very base of iPhone. Going by the patent, Apple could soon introduce an iPhone with flexible screen. According to the patent, it talks of ‘polymer materials in the flexible structure may be molded to form bends.’The text in the patent reads,“An electronic device has structures such as substrates and internal housing structures.
The substrates may be rigid substrates such as rigid printed circuit boards and flexible substrates such as flexible printed circuits, flexible touch sensor substrates, and flexible display substrates.
Carbon nanotubes may be patterned to form carbon nanotube signal paths on the substrates. The signal paths may resist cracking when bent. A flexible structure such as a flexible printed circuit may have carbon nanotube signal paths interposed between polymer layers. Openings in a polymer layer may expose metal solder pads on the carbon nanotube signal paths. A stiffener may be provided under the metal solder pads.
Polymer materials in the flexible structure may be molded to form bends. Bends may be formed along edges of a touch sensor or display or maybe formed in a flexible printed circuit.”A figure posted on USPTO shows a smartphone that has a foldable hinge, running vertically along the device. The device, in the image, opens up like a rectangular notebook.
The image caption read, “FIG. 2 is a perspective view of an illustrative electronic device that bends along a flexible portion such as a flexible seam associated with a hinge in accordance with an embodiment.”Clearly, such an iPhone sounds vastly different from the current iPhone 7 series. The latest patent update is only going to raise expectations for this device, which a couple of months away from an official launch.

iPhone 8 to feature all Glass

With the launch of the iPhone 7 now, we already boarded the hype train for iPhone 8 and now with all these new leaks and rumours, we can say that we are slowly getting closer to the destination. We have been hearing a lot about this new iPhone which is supposed to be called the iPhone 8. If you didn’t know already, then this is also going to be the 10-year anniversary edition of the smartphone and hence we are expecting some radical design change here. But this new rumour is something we have never heard about. According to the source, the company might be looking to launch a new iPhones of different sizes varying from 4.7″ display size to 5″ and a 5.5″ as well. Yes, we were surprised to see them launching 2 different iPhones with the iPhone 6 and now with the rumours of the 3 different sizes, things get a little bit clumsy. Also, there are reports claiming that the new iPhones will have glass on both front and the back and it will be held together by a metal frame. This design is something very similar to what we see with the Samsung devices mostly.
The glass panels will be provided by Chinese companies Biel Crystal Manufactory and Lens Technology. And the metal frame to hold them together is supposed to be delivered by China’s Foxconn, Catcher Technology, and U.S.-based company Jabil. It is also expected that only the bigger variant i.e. the 5.5″ variant will come with the new alleged OLED panel and the other two versions will come with the same low-temperature polysilicon technology, which is used i current edition. This is not surprising at all since we already know that the company pushes new technology with the bigger variant just like they did with the new iPhone 7 Plus this year.
Now talking about the new rumours of 3 different sizes, it is highly unlikely to happen because it doesn’t make any sense for them to launch a 4.7″ display alongside a 5″ one. Considering the fact that the difference is very less here, we believe that they would stick to only 2 variant and maybe the 5″ model is something that they will separately or maybe it is special edition smartphone which they will be launching for 10-year anniversary occasion. However, all these are just early speculation and we don’t have any confirmation on any of this info.
Well, talking about the iPhones, if you are in the market for a new iPhone then you can buy the latest ones being the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus. And as far as the iPhone 8 rumours are concerned, we suggest you take them with a pinch of salt and wait for more info in the future.

ApplePay live in Japan

The release of iOS 10.1 has brought with it support for ApplePay in Japan, one of Apple's largest markets and a country where mobile payments have been commonplace for well over a decade. The expansion into Japan required significant work from Apple to get its payment system working on the existing infrastructure.
In Japan, Apple Pay is actually more like two systems. There's the system that works like it does everywhere else, where you add a card from a supported bank and pay at the register by authenticating your fingerprint with Touch ID. But Japan is still a largely cash-based society when it comes to typical store payments — many places don't take credit cards at all. It's the second system that will prove more useful for most Japanese iPhone users: Suica. Suica is more useful than credit card support in Japan
Suica is a contactless card that is most often used on Japanese public transport; you charge it with money at a ticket machine, then tap the gates at any train station or the readers inside buses and taxis. It's based on Felica technology, an early form of NFC developed by Sony, and is also widely supported by vending machines, convenience stores, and other retailers. With today's launch of Apple Pay, Japanese iPhone users can create a virtual card in a new Suica app, charge it (either through Apple Pay or another method), and add it to Apple Wallet. The Suica app can also be used to buy reserved tickets for services like the shinkansen bullet train and store them in Wallet.
Touch ID is turned off by default for transit use, so as not to hold up other commuters when passing through busy stations; the regular cards work more or less instantly. Security for Suica cards is less of an issue than it is with credit cards, since they can only be charged with up to 20,000 yen (about $192) and essentially function as electronic cash.
Once created, a virtual Suica card can be added to the Apple Watch, though this removes it from the iPhone — Suica cards can't be cloned. (You can just make separate cards for each device, though.)While Apple Pay works with the iPhone 6 and later as well as the original Apple Watch, you'll need an iPhone 7 or Apple Watch Series 2 bought in Japan to use it there; Apple had to create special Japan-specific models with Felica chips inside to work with existing readers.

Samsung to rebound from the Galaxy Note 7 disaster

Samsung is still in the midst of an unprecedented tech disaster with its Galaxy Note 7, despite officially burying the smartphone earlier this week. While some have speculated the South Korean giant will respond to the loss in profits and consumer confidence by releasing the Galaxy S8 earlier or with ground breaking specs, it turns out a much simpler tactic could be utilised.
According to a leak picked up by Trusted Reviews, Samsung may be planning to launch a 'Blue Coral' version of its non-explosive Galaxy S7 Edge- likely in an effort to draw attention away from the Note 7.
Perhaps the fact the colour was the most popular one for the failed smartphone is just coincidence, but it would make sense to block out public memory of the device by applying its trademark finish to a successful model.
The leak above not only shows off the potentially fresh colour, it also etches in the branding of carrier Verizon- something which suggests it could be in line for a US or exclusive option. Boo.
The move, if it does turn out to be legit, would also replicate a similar tactic by rival Apple. With the iPhone 7 featuring minimal upgrades from its predecessor, the company managed to distract everyone with two new black colourways - one of these crucially being shiny and ultra-pretty. As always, it's best to take these kinds of leaks with a reasonable dose of salt.
After all, we won't know for sure until any official confirmation from Samsung.