Microsoft's share of the mobile market plummets to below 1% as Android continues to rise
Global smartphone sales figures published by Gartner show that Windows-based devices have a market share of just 0.7 percent. The latest figures cover the first quarter of 2016 and reveal that fewer than 2.4 million handsets with Microsoft's OS installed were sold.
This is a dramatic drop from the first quarter of 2015. A year ago the numbers were hardly earth-shattering, but with a 2.5 percent market share they were decidedly healthier than right now. While Windows Phone continues to drop like a stone, Android's seemingly unstoppable rise continues, with Google increasing its market share from 78.88 percent a year ago to 84.1 percent in Q1 2016. Apple suffered a drop to 14.8 percent.
Best Windows apps this week
One-hundred and eighty-one in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 8.x and Windows 10 in the past seven days.
Microsoft rolled out a new Store layout and design for beta versions of Windows 10 that it plans to make available to all users with the upcoming Anniversary Update.
Medical devices targeted by cyber attacks
Hacking and cyber attacks are no longer confined to computers. Thanks to the Internet of Things they affect a whole lot of other equipment too and that includes medical devices.
Application protection specialist Arxan has produced an infographic looking at the growing threat landscape surrounding connected medical devices.
You're about to see a whole lot more of Reddit thanks to embeddable threads
Reddit has announced that it is now possible to embed its discussion threads on other websites. Just as you can embed tweets on your site, the same can now be done with Reddit content. While Reddit has successfully earned its reputation of being the modern-day Digg, the site has not been without controversy.
Its AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions may prove immensely popular, but it has been plagued with problems with racist content and complaints about censorship. However, Reddit has suffered with image problems of a different kind, often viewed as being niche, geeky and exclusive. Enabling embedding is an attempt to bring the site to a wider audience and change its public perception.
Ultramobiles are a glimmer of hope in a shrinking PC market
PC vendors are definitely in a pickle, as the market size everywhere continues to shrink, but there are areas of the industry that are still profitable, market analysts Gartner have said.
PC sales have recorded one of its lowest quarterly growth rates in Q1 2016, but ultramobiles are growing, and that’s where the focus should probably be. Ultramobiles (tablets, thin and lightweight PCs, convertibles) are expected to grow 16 percent, to $34.6 billion, compared to 2015.
How can enterprises streamline the migration of data? [Q&A]
Businesses are under increasing pressure to replace legacy storage with cloud and hybrid options in order to modernize their infrastructure and cut costs.
Migrating data presents a number of challenges and IT teams are turning to automation in order to address them. We spoke to Jonathan Huberman, CEO of specialist in the hybrid enterprise file sync and share market, Syncplicity, to find out more about how enterprises can move their data smoothly and make it available across a number of devices.
Chinese government manipulates social media with nearly half a billion fake posts per year
China's control over access to the internet is hardly a secret, but the government is not just interested in using the famous Great Firewall of China to limit what its citizens can see. State monitoring of internet usage is very common, and the government also has a propaganda machine in place, manipulating the country via the web.
A new study by researchers at Harvard University suggests that governmental interference online could be even more prolific than first thought. Social media has been infiltrated and is believed to have been taken over by paid trolls whose job it is to inject pro-government, pro-regime, pro-Communist Party posts disguised as genuine content from regular citizens.
Remembering Apple Store at 15, and marveling its changes
Fifteen years ago today, the first Apple Store opened at Tysons Corner Center in McLean, Va. I was there, covering the event for CNET News. Four days earlier, then CEO Steve Jobs briefed journalists—bloggers, bwahaha, no—across the way at upper-scale Tysons Galleria. Most of us thought his scheme was kind of nuts, as did analysts, and news stories reflected the sentiment. Recession gripped the country and rival Gateway was in process of shuttering more than 400 retail shops. Timing was madness.
But companies that take big risks during economic downturns are most likely to reap rewards later. Retail would be Apple's third walk across the tightrope during 2001. The others: iTunes (January); OS X (March); iPod (October). I've said before that these four are foundation for all the company's successes that followed, including iPhone. But 15 years ago, battling the Wintel duopoly with less than 2 percent global PC market share, Jobs figuratively walked a tightrope across the Grand Canyon carrying original Macintoshes in each arm.
Windows 10 Anniversary Update will improve interoperability between Microsoft Edge and IE 11
Since the release of Windows 10, the update of Microsoft Edge has been a little on the slow side. The addition of support for add-ons may help to increase the user base for Edge, but many enterprise customers still have a need for Internet Explorer.
When building Edge from scratch, Microsoft included Enterprise Mode to allow sites that rely on older technology to open with Internet Explorer 11 instead. With the upcoming release of Windows 10 Anniversary Update improvements are being introduced that will smooth out some of the rough edges of Enterprise Mode, including removing the friction that currently exists when switching browsers.
Google makes Chromebooks exciting again by adding Google Play and Android apps
Much like Windows Mobile, Chromebooks have long suffered with something of a limited range of apps. Starting today, all this changes; Google is bringing the full range of Android apps to Chromebook users via the Google Play store.
With Chromebooks having just overtaken Macs in terms of popularity, the introduction of millions of Android apps to the platform is incredibly well-timed. Before you get too excited, the rollout is not immediate. Users on the developer channel with certain Chromebook models will get access first, but there are plans to bring Google Play to more devices over the coming months.
IBM creates faster, longer lasting memory technology
IBM’s researchers have found a way to build computer memory that’s incomparably faster to anything we have today. Besides being that much faster, it’s also more enduring and dense. Sounds a bit like science fiction, doesn’t it?
The new technology is called PCM, or phase-change memory, and it revolves around storing three bits of data per cell. It doesn’t lose data when powered off, and it can live through "at least" ten million write cycles (average USB stick can endure some 3,000 cycles).
Bracketron TekGrip Power Dock is an elegant smartphone charger and mount for your car
Summertime is on the horizon, which for many folks means traveling by car. Whether taking a short drive to a local beach, or a cross-country family vacation, the warm weather makes for a fun time -- if you have air-conditioning, that is! Nowadays, smartphones make the experience even better, thanks to streaming music and GPS-based mapping services.
Unfortunately, keeping your phone charged and easily accessible is problematic. Wires can easily get tangled, and holding your phone while driving is dangerous. Not to mention, when multiple people are in the car, there may be arguments over who gets to use the 12V outlet. Today, Bracketron unveils the TekGrip Power Dock -- an elegant smartphone charger and mount that may alleviate many of the aforementioned woes.
Popular hacking site Nulled hit by cyberattackers, user info leaked
The email addresses and private messages of over 470,000 members of the popular hacking website Nulled have been leaked following a data breach.
The website served as a marketplace where its users could buy and sell the account details they stole from users along with hacking advice and tips. The data that was leaked from Nulled contained over 5,000 purchase records that detailed how the stolen information available on the site’s marketplace was exchanged between users.
The future of game development
Gaming has come a long way since the first arcade games were invented in the early 1900s. From the original pinball machine, to today’s gaming world of Virtual Reality, the gaming industry has advanced rapidly. We can look back on the gaming evolution over the decades but seeing into the future isn’t so easy.
However, based on current trends we can take some educated guesses into the future of gaming.
Stop ransomware accessing your files with Privacy Fence
Privacy Fence is a free tool which aims to prevent untrusted applications from accessing your data, blocking threats like ransomware before they can do any harm.
The program starts by building a list of protected file types. Common file types are included by default, and key user folders -- Desktop, Pictures, Videos, Music and so on -- are scanned for other types you might be using. Privacy Fence then starts to build a Trusted Applications list by adding programs currently associated with your file types.
© 1998-2025 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. About Us - Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy - Sitemap.