Amazon had a record-breaking holiday season in 2018, with over one billion items bought and millions of Prime memberships sold.
Apple will Outperform other FAANG Stocks, Analyst Predicts
Apple stock will outperform its major competitors in 2019, even in the face of an economic slowdown, according to a top analyst.
Instagram Tested a Horizontal Feed and People were not Happy
Instagram briefly tested a horizontal feed on Thursday. The Verge reported that the test was pushed to a wider than expected audience. Not surprisingly, people freaked out. However, normal, vertical, service resumed after a short amount of time. The horizontal feed essentially turns a user’s feed into an Instagram story and makes it harder to quickly scroll through lots of posts.
Instagram has quietly started testing a horizontal feed for some users, a huge sideways shift from the vertically-scrolling user experience that’s been the norm since the app launched. The company had previously been testing the feature back in October, but it seems that it’s rolling it out more widely to users starting today. The new feed basically turns all posts into a single, giant Instagram story, complete with tapping to advance and a scrolling bar at the top to show you how far you’ve progressed. It’s certainly a jarring change for Instagram’s community, which has grown accustomed to the old feed.
Foxconn Could Manufacture iPhone X in India from 2019
Foxconn could start assembling top-end iPhones in India as early as 2019 – it would be a significant increase in Apple’s business there.
Qualcomm Wants Apple Lawyers Jailed or Fined
Qualcomm says that Apple isn’t taking the Chinese ruling as serious as the German injunction, even though the German injunction is hardware-related and the Chinese one is software-related.
Chinese Companies are Boycotting Apple Products in Favor of Huawei
Hundreds of companies are participating in this because of the arrest of Huawei’s CFO in Canada.
White House Considering Blocking use of Huawei, ZTE Products
U.S. President Donald Trump is considering an executive order that will declare a national emergency and block the use of equipment by Chinese telecommunications firms Huawei and ZTE. An exclusive report by Reuters said that the order is unlikely to name the two companies explicitly but will be understood to authorize reduce the use of their equipment.
The executive order, which has been under consideration for more than eight months, could be issued as early as January and would direct the Commerce Department to block U.S. companies from buying equipment from foreign telecommunications makers that pose significant national security risks, sources from the telecoms industry and the administration said.
Apple's Future With Hardware, Software, and Services
Adam Estes writes that Apple’s future looks rotten, based on the premise that Apple is no longer about hardware, but about software and services too.
If Apple’s future really is all about services and not about hardware, what a rotten future that is. It probably won’t be rotten for Apple, a company with nearly $240 billion of cash on hand. Apple is rich and will almost certainly find all kinds of new ways to get richer. If that involves taking money from people in the form of subscriptions and fees instead of fun new gadgets, well, that sucks for Apple fans.
Mr. Estes links Apple’s “innovation nap” with the arrival of the bear market we seem to be heading in. I’m personally not sure why this means the company’s future is rotten, but doom and gloom stories sell better than happy stories.
Gift Card Spending Tips – TMO Daily Observations 2018-12-26
Today, Dave Hamilton and Andrew Orr join host Kelly Guimont to discuss ways to spend Apple store and iTunes store gift cards.
Why Parents Should be Cautious of TikTok
Millions of teenagers are using a new social app called TikTok. It focuses on creating short videos to upload, but it might leave kids open to predators.
