Two years ago, Google made headlines when it acquired military robot maker Boston Dynamics. However, after receiving $42 million from the government to develop autonomous machine mules, the robotics group has failed to deliver anything the Marines can use and the Pentagon has ended further funding.
HP, the world's third largest PC and tablet maker in unit volumes behind Lenovo and Apple, is exiting the low-end tablet market to focus on smaller volumes of higher-end products priced similar to iPad.
Citing continued consumer demand for the latest models, IDC on Thursday said it expects Apple's iPhone shipments will post 17.3 percent growth across 2015 — nearly doubling the performance of the overall global smartphone market.
Apple remained the dominant platform for holiday mobile shoppers as iPad and iPhone users accounted for 78.3 percent of mobile e-commerce orders over Thanksgiving Day. Buyers using any device using some form of Android contributed only 21.5 percent of online orders.
An operations security manual developed to advise journalists and political activists on how to protect their identities is now being distributed by supporters of Islamic State terrorists. One of its recommendations is to use Apple's securely encrypted iMessage service.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered that half of the communications connections established by the top free Android apps are hidden to the user, and much of the data is being transmitted for unknown purposes.
A report examining smartphone brand loyalty found that buyers of higher end devices tend to prefer sticking to what they have, but that Apple has been very successful in inciting switchers to jump to iOS during its iPhone upgrade cycles.
Across Apple's fiscal 2015, annual iPad unit sales fell by an astounding 19 percent while iPad revenues fell 23 percent, a plunge from fiscal 2014 of just over $7 billion. The tech industry pundits love to talk about the failure of Apple's tablet business, but are short on the specifics of what's happening. Here's why.
Apple on Tuesday released a beta version of its Apple Music service for Android users, just the third time the Cupertino company has crafted an application for its rival mobile operating system.
Google has plans for series of chips it wants to co-develop with hardware partners to help standardize Android and make it more computationally competitive with Apple. However, the effort is considered a long shot by people in the chip industry.
A new adware scourge injecting itself into popular apps such as Facebook and Twitter is also "virtually impossible to uninstall," requiring infected users to replace their phones. Because it only affects users of Google's open-store Android app model, the device replacement requirement may accelerate the trend of users switching to iOS.
The difference between encryption and security on iOS and Android isn't just a technical issue but a "digital security divide," according to the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. That's because Apple secures its devices while Google leaves Android open to data collection and surveillance.
Google's bug hunt to identify software flaws in Android has revealed 11 exploitable flaws in Samsung's software included on its high end Galaxy S6 Edge flagship, including "a substantial number of high-severity issues," within just a week of looking.
Facebook's chief product officer is reportedly requiring a number of team members to switch from iPhones to Android phones so they can experience how most people interact with the social network.
Internal Sony communications indicated that "Spectre" star Daniel Craig and the movie's director Sam Mendes were both opposed to multimillion dollar product placements for Sony or Samsung Android phones because it could tarnish the suave image of James Bond.
Google has struggled to attract a fraction of iOS' top-tier commercial app development for its own Android platform. The abusive language allowed in Google Play—for reviews of products the reviewer hasn't even downloaded—highlight another reason why so few developers take Android seriously as a platform.
After two years of exploration work, Google is said to be "folding" its web-based Chrome OS into its mobile Android platform, creating a single operating system strategy that it expects to unveil in 2017.
During Apple's quarterly conference call on Tuesday, CEO Tim Cook said 30 percent of iPhone buyers switched from Android during the fourth quarter, the highest ratio of "switchers" Apple has recorded in a single three-month period.
A newly spotlighted hack utilizes an iPhone or Android handset — with headphones plugged in — to remotely and silently access the smartphone's built-in voice controls, potentially unbeknownst to the user.
At a Tuesday press event, Apple rival Google announced a wide slate of new hardware including two new Nexus phones, new Chromecasts, and the Pixel C Android tablet.
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Daniel Eran Dilger
Blair MacGregor
AppleInsider Staff
Roger Fingas
Mikey Campbell
Neil Hughes
