All posts in IT news

Microsoft offers special discounts for Black Friday

The promotion for American Black Friday is coming soon. Microsoft announced its preferential measures and it will start the sales promotion for the theme of 10 cents.

black friday

ZDNET reported that Microsoft’s most important software Windows 10 contains the key word 10, thus it use 10 for its sales promotion theme for Black Friday. Its promotion will last for 10 days. 10 cents are the promotion price for many of its products.

Microsoft claimed that it would offer about one thousand digital products at 10 cents for their promotion prices to its Windows 10 users. Those digital products refer to software, movie and game.

Microsoft Xbox One console and another gaming software will be sold at $299, while Windows 10 personal computer will be promoted at $ 150.

In addition, digital music albums are promoted at the price of one dollar, including Jack White’s Lazaretto.

To attract its game players, Microsoft Xbox live will offer the first month subscription at one dollar.

Microsoft tranfers its light disk service to montly subscription service. It announced a promotion measure for application service bundled. This service includes Office 365, Xbox Live prime membership, Skype IP Phone, Wi-Fi hotspot. The users only need to pay $149 for the first year’s subscription.

If you wish to purchase Microsoft products, the special offers for Black Friday sound reasonable.

 

Microsoft teamed up with HP to develop Cloud Computing business

Microsoft announced on November 18 that it made deal with HP for cooperation and updated its key Cloud Computing software suit for attracting more clients.

HP enterprise just finished its spin-offs. Microsoft and HP announced in 2014 that they would develop the Cloud Computing and consulting business together. Lately, they announced to target HP enterprise’s regular clients on the basis of Windows 10 products.

HP claimed it would shrink its cloud computing service in October, that is Helion public clouds. Helion public clouds offer the pure computing sources to its clients. It will continue to offer cloud computing application. Chris Moyer added it will offer the popular Office 365 suite with the cooperation of Microsoft.

Microsoft will make full use of Windows instant service with the cooperation of HP. The users can update their windows system by default under such mode. Ajit Modliar suggests that it bring convenience for enterprises to manage computing softwares.

Microsoft and HP also cooperated to develop applications for auto industry. They aim to retail, energy and transportation sections to launch the new products and services.

Microsoft released on Thursday that it updated Dynamics of ERP. Dynamics can help enterprises to manage accounting, storage, manufacturing and HR to rival with products of SAP and Oracle.

Microsoft realized the acquisition of Great Plains Software in 2001, and Navision in 2002 to march into ERP market. Its latest ERP version is Dynamics AX 2012.

Apple Pay available in Canada and Australia this week

Apple Pay was released last year. To enhance its competitiveness, Apple firm is going to introduce it to more countries, banks and merchants.

Apple Pay is available in Canada since this Tuesday. It plans to bring Apple Pay to Australia on Thursday. In fact, mobile payments are more popular in those two countries than in United States. As Apply Pay is initially introduced to these two markets, it only accepts Amercian Express Card for payment.

applepay

Apply Pay is compitable with Visa card, MasterCard, Express, and Discover since its release. It will support over 100 card issuers from this Tuesday. In UK, it will support Tesco and TSB to use its payment service.

There are also other mobile payments launched. Google released its Android Pay a few months ago. And Samsung introduced its Samsung Pay. Android Pay and Samsung Pay aim to Android devices, while Apple Pay aims to Apple devices.

Jennifer Bailey claims that the reason for supporting American Express Card in Canada and Australia is that American Express is both issuer and mobile operator. It offers convenience for their cooperation.

Visa Card and MasterCard are issued by banks and they require to testify user accounts when they apply Apply Pay.

Apple is looking for more cooperations with mobile payment manufacturers in order to attract more merchants to use Apply Pay. There were only 200,000 devices accept Apple Pay when it was released. Apple Pay is estimated to be applied by more than 1.5 million devices. Apple confirmed that there are average 100, 000 small and medium-sized businesses support Apple Pay per month.

Apple revealed on Tuesday Cinnabon will fully support Apple Pay next year. Domino will apply Apple Pay by the end of the year. Starbucks is on trial this year.

Apple Pay members are increasing, but there are still millions of merchants use the outdated accounting system so that they could not support Apple Pay.

 

Evernote COO submitted resignation

Linda Kozlowski, the COO of Evernote has submitted resignation recently. She will be supposed to leave office by the end of this year.

evernote

Evernote has been suffering a series of adjustments inside this year. It appoited new COO, cut job opportunities, close down offices and cancel the launch of products.

It is unclear why Linda Kozlowski leaves Evernote. It is worth noting that she joined Evernote three years ago and was appointed as COO this summer.

It is rumored that there will be 4 more senior managers leaving Evernote in the following months.

It implied that conflicts sustain inside the company. Evernote was founded in 2007. So far, it obtains 100 million users. It financed $290 million from Sequoia and Morgenthaler.

It seems Evernote doesn’t develop well as predict. It was criticized for lack of products priorities. Some applications and services were shut down quickly after their release. What is more, it failed to obtain more subscribers from its existing users.

Many of the senior managers were appointed during Phil Libin worked as its CEO, it is unexpected for their dimission. Even though Libin still works as Evernote’s chairman of the board of directors, he doesn’t show up a lot for daily routine  due to he works as the co-founder of General Catalyst at the same time.

Libin considered Linda Kozlowski as the key figure to help Evernote march into new market and business section when he appointed her as the COO.

Evernote and Kozlowski do not response for her dimission yet.

Snapchat website traffics doubled

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It is reported that the large gap between Snapchat and Facebook is narrowing. They are closer for the website traffics subject to video displays.

The views for daily videos on Snapchat increased by twice since this May, accounting to 6 billion times. Facebook announced last week that its views of daily video reached 8 billion times.

From the statistics, Facebook’s traffics are from both desktop users and mobile devices, while Snapchat’s traffics are all from smartphones users. Snapchat confirmed the news about the 6 billion views but it did not make any further comments.

Videos is the most popular content among the social networking applications. Videos are the important source for the revenue of social networking platform according to the analyst’s prediction. The click rate for videos is higher than static images or characters.

At the earning conference held last week, Mark Zuckerburg stated: ” videos will be the most attracted content among social networking service in the following years.” Facebook aims to beat YouTube as its monthly active users reach 1 billion people. Snapchat reveals that its daily active users is over 100 million.

Zuckerburg indicates that the content for those videos display on video platforms and TV are different. It requires the producers to adjust its production methods.

“The traditional medias and content production need be narrowed to meet the online consumers’ demand. The demands for brief and specified content increase fast. There are challenges to achieve our goals.,”said Zuckerburg.

 

Apple sets up subsidiary in Ho Chi Minh city

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Apple just set up a subsidiary in Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam in the hope of directly importing and selling smartphones in Vietnam. Vietnam is one of the fastest growing market for smartphones in the Asian-Pacific region.

According to the record of Vietnam national enterprise registration website, it indicated the Apple Vietnam Limited Liability was established on 28 October. Its registered capital is about $672,000.

It locates in Ho chi minh city and specializes in the wholesaling and distributing of iPhone and other products. It provides information technology, maintenance and consulting service as well.

From 2009 to 2013, Vietnamese mobile users increased by 26% and obtained 124 million users. The latest data provided from Vietnamese Ministry of Information, its population was 90 million people two years ago. Over one third of the population have access to internet.

Vietnam is one of the hottest markets for selling Apple products. The revenue of first half year in its previous fiscal year doubled twice and the growth rate is 5 times quicker than Indian market.

Apple sets up branch in Vietnam would help to save some expenditures as the material and labor are comparatively cheaper there.

Samsung also invested billions of US dollars to set up plantation for manufacturing smartphones and electronics in Vietnam.

 

Samsung will streamline 30% of its workforce, excluded China

samsung

Korea Times reported that Samsung will carry out the staff reduction plan to cut the expense by the end of this year. The involved departments are including financial department, human resource department and marketing department.

Samsung doesn’t officially response this news yet, but its Chinese branch confirmed that it has no plan to cut jobs here.

Korea Times reported the news confirmed by insiders, the top priority for Samsung is to cut its manufacturing expense. To those staffs who have ordinary performance, they are suggested to quit the job and get some compensations. To those over 50-year-old managers with ordinary performance and have difficulty to get promoted, the firm suggested they get retired voluntary.

Early in September, there were rumors that Samsung will cut jobs of about 10 thousands of employees. It was focus on Human Resource departments, Job Relation department and Financial department.

Samsung faces many challenges for its performance. It released new type of smartphones Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, but its marketing expense increased in the second quarter earnings due to the low of shipment quantity. Thus,the sales volume of Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge got affected. Samsung’s net profit number declined five quarters in a row before.

In its latest released third quarter earnings, Samsung’s revenue is 284.4 billion RMB, increasing by 8% compared to the same quarter last year. Its net profit amounts to 29.21 billion RMB. It was the first quarter that net profit realized increasing in the past two years.

The reasons that Tony Fadell and Danielle Lambert left Apple

tony

Tony Fadell, the father of iPod revealed the reasons why he and his wife left Apple in an interview reported by The Guardian

Fadell was one of the most important membership in the development team of iPod. He was hired by Apple to launch iPod then. At first , Fadell was just a contractor, then he began full-time operating the development team.

Fadell’s wife, Danielle Lambert was also Apple’s employee, working as the vice president of Human Resources. They left Apple in 2010. Fadell confessed that their career in Apple had affected to their family life.

He said : “ One day, we got home and heard our son was crying. My wife tried to comfort him and let him calm down. But he run up to baby-sitter. We realized that we missed a lot for his growth.”

It is true that the employees face much pressure to work in Apple. Fadell occupied an important position, there was no wonder he had a lot to deal with. There were reports suggesting high pressure, extra working hours and day-off on call duty among the Apple employees. The employees did not have many chances to spend quality time with their family.

Another reason why Fadell left Apple was that Fadell and Jonathan Ive did not get along well with each other. Leander Kahney confirmed this news in his new book.

He established a hardware company named Nest Labs after he left Apple, while the company was took over by Google at the cost of $3.2 billion in 2014. It was mainly launching temperature-controlled equipment and smoke alarms.

 

 

NetEase reacts the rumor concerns its data leak

NetEase made announcement on October 19 concerned the news of its data leak. Its tech team had tested the database and found its system did not exsit data leak problems.

Those users used the same passwords in other sites as they did in NetEase. Their NetEase accounts were log-in by the lawbreakers which led to their details leak.

NetEase claimed that the NetEase mail applied advanced and most hightes level  security certificate EAL 3+. Its mail system is one of the most trustful account in mainland.

WooYun announced it found new vulnerability early on October 19. The vulnerability caused 100 million of accounts’ leak in NetEase email database. The leaks were involved in accounts, passwords and users privacy.

WooYun found users complained their iCloud accounts were being hacked lately and their phones they made to bind up with NetEase were being locked or blackmailed. They had in common that they used NetEase account as their iCloud accounts.

The rumor made a great panic among the NetEase users. NetEase made response to this rumor and confirmed that its system doesn’t encounter bugs. It reminds uses set higher security password in those sites that apply lower security level certificate. Or it will cause high risk of leaking privacy while logging their accounts.

NetEase has been running 18 years. Product safety means a lot to its development. NetEase keeps working hard to provide safer service for users while use its products. Feedback and comments are welcome from its users. It will make full use of legal approach against malicious calumniation.

 

It rumors that Apple cuts component orders for iPhone 6s series

Apple announced the sales volume of iPhone 6s and 6s Plus was over 13 million sets in the first week and it set a new record. Some analyst feels that the sales of new iPhone won’t be as good as its predecessor, although it made a good start.

iphone

Recently, the Pacific Crest Securities’ analyst John Vinh indicated that Apple has cut about 5% of its orders due to the sales performance of iPhone 6s and 6s Plus did not meet its expectation. It is reported that this news was confirmed by several chip manufacturers.

In addition, John Vinh predicts the sales volume of iPhone 6s and 6s Plus will be only 67 million units in the fourth quarter. Its sales volume was initially predicted up from 75 million to 80 million unints by some other analysts.

There were reports indicated Apple would cut its component orders. A few weeks ago, Digitimes revealed Apple will adjust its shippments will be deducted from 80-90 million units to 65-70 million units in the fourth quarter. Before iPhone 6s series being released, some analysts hold negative attitude towards their sales growth.

There are also analysts holding positive attitude towards their saels. Katy Huberty, the analyst from Morgan Stanley once predicted the sales volume of iPhone 6S and 6S Plus will increase by 7 % in 2016 as Apple fans keep high loyalties to iPhone and Apple shortens its product’s updated period.