Amid Shrinking Market Share, Apple’s 2014 Challenges Loom Large
In my mind, 2014 is shaping up to be Apple’s wildest year in the post-Jobs era. Last year, we saw a lot of incremental innovations from Apple but no thunderous new products. Sure, the new Mac Pro is insanely small, quiet and super sexy — not to mention manufactured in America, which is no small feat these days — but it’s also a niche product for professionals.
Read More →How to Speed Up a Sluggish Android Smartphone
One of the disadvantages of retaining a phone after the expiration of a two-year contract — as many of us do — is that those older phones have accumulated a few years’ worth of digital gunk. They’re clogged up like an aging sewer on the wrong side of town. Just like on a PC, bits of app and OS code become discombobulated — orphaned from the parent program.
Read More →Chinese man detained after dead tiger found in SUV
Police in China have detained a man over the death of a rare Siberian tiger discovered in the back of an SUV, a report said on Thursday. Pictures showing officers pulling the black-streaked tiger, wrapped in a plastic bag, out of a white vehicle went viral on China’s Internet after they were posted online. Trade in Siberian tigers, also known as Amur tigers, is outlawed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. Hundreds of the animals, known scientifically as Panthera tigris altaica, once roamed the lush pine and oak forests of northeastern China.
China has world’s most outbound tourists: report
Nearly 100 million Chinese tourists visited foreign countries last year, and they are likely to extend their lead as the world’s biggest-spending travellers, state media reported Thursday. A total of 97 million Chinese tourists left the country in 2013, up 14 million from the previous year, the state-run China Daily reported, citing official data from China’s National Tourism Administration. China’s economy has boomed over the past decade, expanding the ranks of its middle-class who are hungry for foreign travel after the country’s decades of isolation in the last century. European Union and Asian countries have moved to ease visa application procedures for Chinese tourists in recent years, keen to cash in on their big-spending habits.
Taiwan’s Pegatron may get half iPhone 6 orders
Taiwan’s Pegatron Corp, an assembler of Apple’s iPhone 5C, is expected to win half of the orders from the US tech giant for its next smartphone model, a report said on Thursday. In order to meet the demand, Pegatron has started building a new plant at Kunshan, a satellite city near Shanghai where all its iPhones are assembled, the Liberty Times said without identifying its source. The paper said the Kunshan plant is scheduled to become operational in the middle of the year and start mass production late this year, when Apple is expected to roll out its iPhone 6. It said Pegatron expects its revenue to rise to Tw$950 billion ($31.5 billion) this year, from Tw$882 billion the previous year, thanks largely to Apple orders.
Shares of Indian gold lenders up on central bank rule change
Shares of India’s gold-based finance companies soared on Thursday after the central bank eased rules on amounts they could loan in return for gold deposits. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday allowed non-banking finance companies to lend up to 75 percent of the value of gold jewellery deposited with them, increased from 60 percent. “It has been decided to raise the loan-to-value ratio to up to 75 percent for loans against the collateral of gold jewellery from the present limit of 60 percent with immediate effect,” the RBI statement said on its website. India, which rivals China as the world’s biggest gold consumer, has been attempting to reduce gold demand to narrow its current account deficit, including by hiking bullion import duties.
China’s LightInTheBox acquires Ador, the Seattle-based social commerce site formerly known as Lockerz.
LightInTheBoxBox (NYSE:LITB), the China-based e-commerce and sourcing company, has acquired Ador, the Seattle-based social e-commerce startup, for an undisclosed sum. Both parties have confirmed the acquisition …
Read More →Toymakers target ‘kidults’ at high-tech Hong Kong fair
Never mind girls and boys — adults who refuse to grow up are being increasingly targeted by a toy industry promoting adolescence as a lifestyle choice, say industry watchers. Among the “Smart-Tech” toys at this week’s Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair — one of the largest of its kind in the world — were smartphone-operated flying machines equipped with cameras and rotor blades that clearly had so-called “kidults” in mind — particularly male ones. “‘Kidults’ are not defined by age, they are defined by attitude,” said Kenes Cheung, business development manager for Hong Kong-based manufacturer E-Supply International, which produces Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled vehicles boasting infra-red and night vision for the likes of Toys “R” Us. “We’re seeing a lot more products for the older player who has a smartphone,” said Christopher Byrne, content director of timetoplaymag.com, a toy industry website.
TVB stops transmitting stations leased to China Mobile
The company announced that they will stop leasing their transmitting stations to China Mobile, which was acquired by HKTV late last year
Read More →China demolishes landmark inn once hailed as symbol of change
When they introduced market reforms that would shake the world, China’s rulers celebrated a tiny privately owned Beijing hotel that survived decades of state planning as an example to the nation. The hotel reportedly endured as Beijing’s only private business even during the worst excesses of Mao Zedong’s rule, when capitalists were often vilified, but was torn down in late December to make way for a government-backed modernisation project. “Until we were demolished, the government always protected us,” said Qiao Shuzhi, 63, the son of the inn’s founder, who supported China’s Communist Party when it was still an underground movement. His father Qiao Tianmin was granted a “Special Business Operation Licence” in 1953 by Beijing’s chief of police, seemingly as a reward for his service to the communists as China fought against Japan.
