Research-firm Kantar Worldpanel released a note on Tuesday showing the iPhone is seeing continued growth in China. During the three months ending in January 2015, Apple reached its highest ever marketshare in the urban parts of the country as one in every four smartphones sold were an iPhone.
Japan news source Nikkan reports that Apple is in talks with Japan Display to fund a new factory in the region that will be responsible for manufacturing LCD displays for iOS devices. Exact details are said to still be in the works, but the funding is said to be somewhere around 200 billion yen (roughly $1.7 billion).
The smack talk between Apple and Motorola continues, as Motorola president Rick Osterloh called out Apple for "outrageous prices" in an interview published by the BBC on Wednesday.
"We do see a real dichotomy in this marketplace, where you've got people like Apple making so much money and charging such outrageous prices. We think that's not the future," Osterloh said. "We believe the future is in offering similar experiences and great consumer choice at accessible prices."
As reported Wednesday by BBC News, two banks in the United Kingdom will soon allow their customers access their bank accounts using Touch ID-based fingerprint identification technology, a UK first.
“RBS and NatWest customers must activate the feature with their security information, but would only need to use Apple's Touch ID thereafter,” reports the BBC.
To protect their customers' sensitive financial information and mitigate risk, the banks have put a number of restrictions in place to augment Apple's existing Touch ID safeguards.
It's odd to think about, but did you know that the Touch ID sensor on your iPhone makes noise? If you hold an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus up to your ear in a quiet room and touch the Touch ID sensor, then you will hear a very faint clicking sound emitting from the vicinity of the sensor. It's just another weird fact gleaned from the /r/apple this morning.
Owners of larger smartphones tend to use a lot more data than those with smaller screens, according to a new report from Citrix. The marketing research firm found that, on average, iPhone 6 Plus users consume twice the data of those with an iPhone 6.
While it makes sense that the 6 Plus would eat more data due to its larger display, Citrix thinks the difference has more to do with user behavior. People are treating the 6 Plus like they would a tablet, playing more games and streaming a lot more video.
The latest leak for Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S6 point to the flagship smartphone looking very close to the iPhone 6 that was released by Apple last fall. Nowhereelse.fr got its hands on alleged photos of the handset's parts, showing a metal cassis with rounded sides.
More suspect, the photos also show feature placement of the Galaxy S6 is the same on the iPhone 6 for the headphone jack, speaker, cable connector, and SIM card. There's also similar antenna breaks, however they're found on the bottom and top of the device instead of the left and right sides.
Apple has seeded a new beta build of iOS 8.2 to developers on Tuesday, marking the fifth build of the software.
The new software, build number 12D5480a, is available to download over-the-air and should be available through the Developer Center soon. Apple claims the new beta "contains bug fixes and improvements."
USA Technologies announced on Tuesday that it will be bringing Apple Pay support to 200,000 acceptance points, which includes owners and operators of coffee brewers, vending machines, kiosks, laundry equipment, parking pay stations and other self-serve appliances.
During the company's quarterly earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the company has sold its one billionth iOS device since the original iPhone was released roughly seven years ago - a huge accomplishment.
Canalys is out with a note on Tuesday saying that Apple has garnered first place in the Chinese smartphone market for the first time by units shipped.
The research firm says the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were behind the large amount of growth in China in the fourth quarter of 2014, pushing the Cupertino-based company to the top spot.
Apple is set to report its earnings for the Christmas quarter on Tuesday after the market closes. Before the numbers hit in roughly 24 hours, Bloomberg has averaged numbers from Wall Street analysts to see how the company may fare. And as Business Insider puts it, this earnings report is going to be the big one.