The situation for Samsung is a tad grim, as the South Korea-based company reported a 74 percent year-over-year decline in net profit during Q3. This marks Samsung's fourth consecutive quarterly decline, and marks its lowest profit margin since the second quarter of 2011.
Microsoft has outed its upcoming 'Band' wearable in what appears to be the premature release of multiple applications. This evening, 'Microsoft Health' landed in iPhone, Android and Windows stores, and a Microsoft Band Sync client popped up in the Mac App Store.
It's unknown at this time if the releases were unintentional, or part of a cheeky PR stunt, but it's likely the former, given the scope of the apps. Microsoft has long been rumored to be working on a cross-platform wearable, and recent reports say it's preparing for launch.
The perspective path puzzle game has certainly been a hit on iOS. For example, earlier this year, Monument Valley turned heads for its visually striking graphics and complex puzzles.
Miika could be called a simpler, cutesier perspective puzzle game in the same vein as Monument Valley. Players must rotate the screen around in order to reveal the right path to take in order to get to the end of the line. We’ve got a full game review of Miika for you today.
Google on Wednesday announced an update to its mobile Wallet application for the iPhone which now includes handy low balance alerts and another feature allowing users to set up recurring bank transfer in order to ensure there's always money to spend in their Wallet.
The refreshed application did not receive support for the bigger iPhone screens and will be going live in the App Store later today.
Google Wallet is available free of charge.
Apple today asked PCalc developer to remove its Notification Center widget after it was previously approved in the App Store. The reason? Notification Center's Today widgets are apparently prohibited from performing any calculations, according to the company's email to developer James Thomson.
Thomson took to Twitter where he shared the news with the world. “Apple has told me that Notification Center widgets on iOS cannot perform any calculations, and the current PCalc widget must be removed,” reads the tweet.
It's somewhat surprising Apple would take an issue with PCalc's Today widget after approving the app more than a month ago. Besides, PCalc's iOS 8 update, along with the widget, has been widely covered in media and Apple itself has featured it in two sections on the App Store, “Extend Your Apps” and “Great Apps and Games for iOS 8”.
So what's going on here?
Sprint is expanding its Spark network, what it calls an enhanced version of LTE, to 17 new cities on Wednesday, including Cleveland, Columbus, Denver, Sacramento, and Seattle. The expansion is part of Sprint's plan to expand Spark coverage to 100 million people by year-end, and as of today, brings the network technology to 46 markets across the country.
Omnistat is a new app available in the App Store that provides a quick glance at some basic stats of your iOS device from within the app itself, or from Notification Center via a Today tab widget. If the name sounds familiar, it's because Omnistat used to be a jailbreak tweak back in the days of iOS 5. The tweak has now matured into a legit application that is simply yet elegantly designed to show various statistics about your device such as CPU usage, running processes and more.
Pandora and Spotify rank as the number one and number two music streaming apps in terms of downloads, analytics firm AppAnnie reports - no big surprise. However, where things become interesting is that Apple's Beats Music, which the company purchased for $3 billion in May, is placed ninth, below iHeartRadio, SoundCloud and Apple's GarageBand.
Apple is in preliminary talks to offer its iPhone in Iran, perhaps one day marking the company's first entry in the country, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Cupertino-based company is said to be in contact with Iranian distributors in case "Western sanctions ease sufficiently" and it makes sense to enter the country for business.
The social networking giant Facebook on Wednesday pushed a small update to its Messenger client for the iPhone and iPad which lets you preview sticker animations.
Facebook Messenger 12.0 (what's up with version numbers, Facebook?) allows you to press and hold down on a sticker to expand it and view any animations before sending it.
The app is available free in the App Store.
Keeping true to its promise, T-Mobile, the nation's fourth-largest carrier, on Wednesday announced that customers can now buy Apple's iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3 in participating T-Mobile stores and online. The new tablets are available in Wi-Fi-only and cellular flavors and in all three colors.
The top-of-the-line iPad Air 2 model with 128 gigabytes of storage is not yet available, leaving early adopters to choose between 16GB and 64GB iPad Air 2 models. The iPad mini 3 is available in 16/64/128GB storage flavors.
The whole CVS/Rite Aid/Apple Pay controversy is about to get uglier as MCX, the consortium of retailers who back the competing CurrentC mobile payment system, on Wednesday responded to accusations that it was purposefully blocking Apple Pay, Google Wallet and other NFC-based payment solutions and requiring participating retailers to use CurrentC exclusively.
Apple Pay has been praised for being secure and protecting your privacy by not sharing customer or transaction data with merchants. According to MCX, it does not store sensitive customer information in the mobile app. Instead, users’ payment data is stored “in our secure cloud-hosted network”.
Maybe I'm reading their blog post wrong, but if customer data and especially payment information is stored in the cloud, then it's not secure and this is precisely why Apple Pay is, in my personal opinion, better.