Meta Platforms released its Q4 earnings on February 2, at which time several media outlets have become quite exercised over the fact that the company’s flagship social media platform, Facebook, reported that daily and monthly active users were “1.93 billion on average” and “2.91 billion,” respectively, in both Q4 and Q3, i.e., “flat,” as in zero growth. While sequential quarterly analysis can be a useful metric, it is more relevant when analyzing startups. For mature companies, a year-over-year analysis that compares like quarters is the Wall Street norm. Launched in 2004, Facebook turns 18 this year. Continue reading Meta’s Future Pondered as Facebook Matures, Growth Slows

Pinterest stock spiked in extended trading Thursday after its 2021 earnings results stressed the company’s first full-year of profit, as well as the first year to tick above $2 billion in annual revenue. Pinterest stock rose 28 percent in extended trading on a better than expected Q4. “We took important steps in 2021 with the launch of our foundational technology to deliver a video-first publishing platform,” Pinterest co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann said, emphasizing that the company would continue to focus on the new initiatives that helped revenue grow 20 percent for Q4 and 52 percent for the year. Continue reading Pinterest Posts Its First Full-Year Profit on Sales of $2 Billion

Laptops and smartphones are electronics categories that closed the book on 2021 with different takes on success. Smartphone shipments were up for the first time in four years, growing between 4 and 5.7 percent, according to Counterpoint and IDC research, respectively. Notebook computers, meanwhile, ended 2021 with record Q4 shipments down 1 percent from 2021 but a record 19 percent increase for the year as “the industry prioritized notebook PC production in the face of supply constraints to keep up with hybrid working needs,” according to Strategy Analytics. Continue reading 2021 Marks Renewed Demand for Laptops and Smartphones

Facebook finds itself the subject of yet more unflattering allegations, this time claiming the company gouged people in third world countries by charging them for services it had said would be free when making deals with cellular carries in the areas. Internal documents are said to have surfaced indicating that after promising to let low-income citizens in places like Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines use a pared-down version of Facebook along with some Internet browsing without incurring data charges, the Meta Platforms company wound up charging, in total, millions of dollars a month. Continue reading Facebook Caught in Fee Controversy for Free Mobile Service

Deploying 5G spectrum through rural America has national security and social equity implications, say legislators struggling to keep up with rapid technology changes as the government allocates $65 billion to broadband through 2021’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Although 5G is here when it comes to cell phone communication in dense areas, there are unmet mobile needs that range from farming to emergency response and the build-out is big business. The FCC’s 3.45-3.55 GHz mobile spectrum auction in Q4 2021 raised $22.5 billion for the Treasury Department. That follows $80.9 billion raised in a C-band auction early last year. Continue reading CES: Lawmakers Grapple with 5G as Deployment Continues

The U.S. “must reinvent the machinery of government itself, just as much as any piece of transportation equipment,” U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said Thursday in his CES speech on the Future of Transportation. “Innovation isn’t about the technologies themselves, but how we deliver transportation resources cost-effectively and quickly,” Buttigieg said, sharing his vision for an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Infrastructure, “ARPA-I, modeled after DARPA” (the Defense Department ARPA that invented the Internet) as required in an era in which mobile connectivity and transportation are becoming inextricably intertwined. Continue reading CES: Buttigieg Says Tech Calls for New Government Thinking

ETC’s George Gerba visited the CES Unveiled show floor in Las Vegas Monday evening looking for companies and products that would be of interest to our members, illustrate emerging trends, or are simply unusual. Gerba discovered a range of compelling technologies across areas such as blockchain, non-fungible tokens, Li-Fi, wearables, large-scale video screens, the metaverse, remote work, cell signal boosters, health, batteries and more. Among the more interesting companies at CES Unveiled this year were Icecap, Oledcomm, Somalytics, VideowindoW, Toraru, SureCall, Biospectal, Prinker, Airxom and Nanotech Energy.  Continue reading CES: Highlights from the 2022 CES Unveiled Pre-Show Event

During CES 2022, Hyundai Motor Company presented a compelling vision of the future that blends the metaverse, the Internet and robotics to make time, distance and the distinction between the physical and virtual worlds irrelevant. The company’s media event started with videos of a robotic platform concept that could be built into furniture for dynamically reconfigurable rooms. The platform technology could also carry people in personal mobility pods and power autonomous vehicles. Hyundai describes its vision as the “unlimited mobility of things.” Continue reading CES: Hyundai Envisions ‘Unlimited Mobility of Things’ Future

Sometimes you see a product idea that is so obvious you wonder why no one created it sooner. French company Fittingbox has developed an augmented reality app and a 3D model database that lets you try on new frames for eyewear without taking off your old glasses, so you can actually see what you look like as you try them on. Diminished reality is a subset of augmented reality focused on removing, rather than adding, elements of what you see and hear. The Fittingbox app uses the selfie camera on a smartphone to scan the face of the customer. It then recognizes and removes the wearer’s glasses from the 3D modeled image. Continue reading CES: Fittingbox Demonstrates Unexpectedly Useful AR App

New videos uploaded to Twitter will now have the ability to automatically generate captions and subtitles. This new feature is available on Android, iOS and the web version of the popular social platform. In the mobile app, auto-generated captions will appear when the videos are on mute; meanwhile, users can turn the captions on or off with the CC button in the web version. Further, mobile users can keep the captions in unmuted mode by adjusting the accessibility setting in their smartphones. However, Twitter is not allowing users to correct or change the captions before posting the clips. Continue reading Twitter Offers New Auto Generate Caption Feature for Videos

TikTok is introducing new camera and editing tools, a collaboration with Giphy, and support for 1080p video. The platform is also taking on Twitch and YouTube with TikTok Live Studio. The Windows program is currently in a test phase, allowing creators who download it to their desktop to stream live from the host computer or a connected device such as a smartphone or game console. This could keep TikTok fans in-app for live streaming, eliminating the need for third-party broadcast software like Streamlabs or OBS Studio. Continue reading TikTok Reveals New Content Creation Tools, Tests Live Studio

Intel has raised a red flag regarding the metaverse, warning that more processing power is needed to support the vision. “Immersive computing, at scale and accessible by billions of humans in real time” will require a 1,000x increase in computational capability from today’s state of the art, says Intel senior vice president Raja Koduri, general manager of the company’s Accelerated Computing Systems and Graphics Group. Intel remains enthusiastic about the metaverse, however, conceding in the company’s first official statement on the matter it “may be the next major platform in computing after the world wide web and mobile.” Continue reading Intel Says the Metaverse Needs 1,000x More Compute Power

The Amazon-led universal connectivity protocol, Matter, is being marketed as the first universal casting standard to reliably work with Apple, Samsung and Google protocols, among others. Interoperability issues that smart home inhabitants have encountered getting their devices connected are legion. A key aspect of Matter’s promise of platform agnosticism is its specs for streaming video players and TV displays, prompting speculation that Matter TV could replace proprietary casting systems, including Apple’s AirPlay and Google’s Cast. Matter is an independently developed protocol developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance due to launch in 2022. Continue reading Matter Could Soon Become Smart Tech’s Universal Language

Global consumer in-app spending is predicted to reach $133 billion in 2021, up nearly 20 percent from the prior year, according to market analytics firm Sensor Tower. Mobile games account for 64 percent ($89.6 billion) of the projected spend. While game revenue continues to grow, share of overall spending will by the end of 2021 have declined by 6.7 percent from 2020, due to “the persistent growth of non-game categories such as entertainment, which received a large boost from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.” TikTok is 2021’s most-downloaded app, according to the study. Continue reading Mobile Apps Trigger $133 Billion in 2021 Consumer Spending

Samsung Electronics Co. is streamlining its corporate structure, merging its mobile and consumer electronics units and paring down to two CEOs to simplify its structure and focus on the logic chip business. Promoted to vice chairman and CEO, TV research and development expert Jong-Hee (“JH”) Han will continue to head Visual Display while also leading the merged SET Division, combining mobile and consumer electronics. Kye-Hyun Kyung has also been named CEO, running Device Solutions, a B-to-B components division led by chips. The former head of Samsung Electro-Mechanics brings experience in flash memory and processor design. Continue reading Samsung Merges Mobile and Consumer Electronics Divisions