Michael Simon, staff writer for PC World, discusses Apple's 11.3 iOS announcement, as well as the HomePod which is now available for pre-order. He also explores what China's first ever annual decline in phone shipments could mean.
Simon says iOS 11.3 will finally allow users to check the health of their batteries, a growing issue for customers. The iOS 11.3 will also offer new Animojis. Apple says the update is due out this spring.
Simon also discusses Apple's new HomePod, now available for pre-order. While the company has a loyal following of people who will definitely purchase the product, he doesn't see most people paying $349 when Amazon's Echo is just $99. Concerning China's decline in phone shipments, Simon says Americans will always buy new phones for new features, but China is a different market and Apple will need to learn how to adjust.
General Electric, the once mighty conglomerate that traces its roots back to the invention of the light bulb, delivered a hugely disappointing earnings report Tuesday morning, in which the company that was once known for its steady and generous payouts to investors slashed its quarterly dividend to just a penny.
Brad Twohig, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, said that Fortnite has built itself into a kind of social network and that the community its developed will likely help the game maintain its popularity for some time to come.
Facebook doesn't report its latest earnings until Tuesday, but some analysts are already predicting a drop in the numbers amid security concerns and waning popularity among the platform's younger users. Chris Versace, chief investment officer at Tematica Research, predicted on Cheddar Monday that its quarterly earnings report will put Facebook ($FB) at $1.47 per share, down from $1.59 last year.
Hershey's ($HSY) has unveiled a deal to promote its latest candy creation, a combination Hershey-Reese's bar, with the help of two of esports' biggest names: DrLupo and Ninja. Cheddar was at TwitchCon in San Jose, Calif. and got an early look at Hershey's first foray into esports and live-streaming from the company's head of integrated media, Charlie Chappell.
In a tacit admission that its cloud-computing division was lagging behind competitors like Amazon and Microsoft, IBM announced it would shell out $34 billion for open-source software maker Red Hat for an amount equal to almost a third of IBM's market cap.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know.
At TwitchCon 2018, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear sat down with Cheddar CEO Jon Steinberg to discuss the streaming platform's explosive growth, the rise of Fortnite, and Twitch's relationship with parent company Amazon.
"Red Dead Redemption 2" hit store shelves on Friday with big ambitions. The hotly anticipated game, seven-years in the making, was met with wide acclaim, boosting stock in the game-maker, Take-Two Interactive ($TTWO), and earning comparisons to the mega-hit "Grand Theft Auto V." "Everyone loves 'Grand Theft Auto,' and they just believe that anything Rockstar [Games] can make is going to be a sure-fire hit," Peter Brown, Managing Editor for GameSpot said in an interview on Cheddar.
Next week marks 10 years since the debut of Bitcoin, and it's been a decade of both big ups and big downs. In a special episode of Cheddar's Crypto Craze, we looked at how the digital currency landscape has evolved since that fateful day in 2008.
Since Dailymotion was acquired in 2015 by French media conglomerate Vivendi, the video-sharing platform has grown its audience exponentially, according to CEO Maxime Saada. And now, the company's focus is fixed squarely on one concept: premium. "We decided to focus on premium content, premium audience, premium partner," told Cheddar Thursday.
