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Amazon reportedly delays Prime Day sales until September
This follows an earlier reported delay to August
Amazon is reportedly pushing back its two-day Prime Day sales event from its usual July spot to September, according to a report out of The Wall Street Journal. A previous report from Reuters back in April claimed the sale may be delayed until August, but it appears Amazon is giving itself an extra month to stock up.
According to a report published today by the Wall Street Journal, Samsung's next Galaxy S phone may have up to four total variants, one of which will sport a chunky 6.7"screen, six cameras, and 5G connectivity when it lands sometime next spring. In addition to that tech-toting titan, three smaller models are allegedly planned for an earlier release in February.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Nintendo and DeNA are teaming up once again in order to bring us Android gamers a new title in The Legend of Zelda series. Honestly, this isn't much of a surprise seeing how well their latest Zelda game has been selling for the Wii U and Switch.
Quite a lot of us have done away with the landline telephones that used to be a staple of homes in the developed world. A 2013 survey concluded that over 40% of US households had ditched their standard landlines phones, driven by younger users relying exclusively on their cell phones. But according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, both Google and Amazon are looking to revive the landline (well, VOIP line anyway) as a bonus feature in their voice-controlled Wi-Fi speakers, the Google Home and Amazon Echo/Tap/Echo Dot.
Google, for all its skill in the realms of mobile search, advertising, email, and even operating systems, has never been particularly good at the social thing. Even now, I suspect, someone at Google is fuming at the notion that the company "isn't very good" at messaging or social networks and pointing animatedly at the tens of millions of Google+ and Hangouts users. The problem is and has always been that for whatever success Google has had in social and messaging platforms, it is constantly undercut by the actions of Google itself that say otherwise. There is near-yearly reworking, redesigning, or branching off of these products in ways that very strongly suggest they aren't getting the results Google's Alphabet overlords consider acceptable.
Amazon's Fire Phone, the logical smartphone extension of its Kindle Fire tablet series, is a dud. A combination of lackluster reviews, carrier semi-exclusivity, and most of all being tied into Amazon's app and service environment have made it more or less a total failure. The company never publishes hard data for its hardware sales, but casual observation and constant discounts (sometimes more than $500 off of the original $650 off-contract price) imply that the product has been a wash.
At the first few major tech conferences of the year, CES in Las Vegas, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the current trend of virtual reality is inescapable. Such disparate players as Facebook, Samsung, and Razer are all throwing their weight behind various virtual reality headsets, and software developers are scrambling to meet the demand for apps, games, and videos. According to this report by the Wall Street Journal, Google isn't content to dip its toe into VR with the mostly experimental Cardboard platform.
Though the hardware was mildly refreshed back in June, Google Glass has been running on much the same internals for the better part of two years. With the rise of Android Wear, at least some of us were wondering whether Google still intended to bring its head-mounted wearable system to retail at all. According to the latest report from the Wall Street Journal, Google is indeed planning at least one more version of Glass, this time running on an Intel chipset. The new hardware will reportedly be released next year.
Samsung seems to have a big target on its back that is particularly attractive to lawyers. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, a media company focusing on photography and management is suing Samsung over its use of the "Milk" trademark for its proprietary music service. The New York- and Los Angeles-based agency alleges that Samsung knowingly and willingly violated its trademark when designing the new service.
Since Android's rise to the top of the mobile landscape, Samsung has been the clear market leader, at least in terms of sales. But the thrones of the mighty are shaking, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ cites anonymous sources, presumably within Samsung itself, that say the Galaxy S5's international sales have fallen 40% below the company's expectations. approximately 12 million phones were sold in the first three months after release, compared to 16 million for the Galaxy S4 last year.
Chrome and Android have been strengthening the old Google family ties for a while now, but according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, they just got a little tighter. The WSJ reports that Hiroshi Lockheimer, who currently serves as the Vice President of Engineering for Android, has also assumed the role of Vice President of Engineering for Chrome. That would put him in charge to a greater or lesser degree of the Chrome browser on desktops, Chromebooks and similar ChromeOS hardware, and Chrome on Android and iOS, plus whatever else Google has cooking up.
Wall Street Journal: Microsoft Is Ready To Buy Minecraft Developer Mojang For $2 Billion (Or 2 Instagrams)
Microsoft is prepared to purchase Mojang.
It's estimated that the build-your-own-adventure sleeper hit Minecraft has sold over 50 million copies on various gaming platforms, including more than 5 million of the Pocket Edition on Android. How much would you say that Mojang, the Swedish developer co-founded by Markus "Notch" Persson, is worth? If a recent report from the Wall Street Journal is to be believed, Mojang and its properties are being acquired for a staggering two billion dollars by Microsoft.
Recently, Google's ambitious and public-spirited ventures are sounding less like the careful expansions of an international megacorp and more like the pet projects of Dr. Benton Quest. Self-driving cars, medical contact lenses, industrial robots - seriously, we're just waiting on a Walking Eye and Steve Ballmer in a villain costume at this point. The latest report from the Wall Street Journal (which tends to be spot-on when it comes to Google's plans) says the company is preparing a fleet of low-orbit satellites that will deliver Internet access.
The time has come for America's most patriotic phone to remove its ten-gallon hat and hop down from its saddle, because Motorola Mobility has announced that it's closing down the high-end phone's assembly plant in Fort Worth, TX. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the facility will close its doors before the end of the year.
King has been making headlines lately thanks to trademark claims that are, frankly, insane. But it looks like the creators of Candy Crush Saga are doing something right: the Wall Street Journal reports that the company is filing for an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, preparing to sell as much as $500 million in initial stock.
There's big money in online storage, in case the presence of Google, Microsoft, and a seemingly endless parade of startups didn't tip you off. Box.com has been one of the more consistent rivals to Dropbox, Google Drive and SkyDrive OneDrive, and it looks like the small company is about to up its game in a big way. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Box is preparing for an initial public offering.
The partnership between HTC and the Beats By Dr. Dre company has been one of the more visible aspects of the former's branding over the last three years. Ever since HTC bought 50.1% of the company for an estimated $300 million in 2011, the headphone maker's iconic logo has had a reserved spot on both devices and software. But according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Beats is looking to end the relationship in order to find a new partner for greater expansion.
Wall Street Journal: Samsung's June 20th Premiere Event Likely Includes The Galaxy S4 Mini
Since Samsung is prone to have big, glitzy events for their flagship products, we had a feeling that "Premiere 2013" would include a few of their more
Since Samsung is prone to have big, glitzy events for their flagship products, we had a feeling that "Premiere 2013" would include a few of their more sedate offerings. According to the the Wall Street Journal, at least one of those will probably be the Galaxy S4 Mini, which we previously saw in a pair of leaks detailing most of the details of the mid-range phone. The Journal reports that a "person with knowledge of the matter" told them the S4 Mini would be one of several new devices revealed at the event.
There have been a few items in the rumor mill about Google either investigating or planning retail stores, not unlike the Apple stores that famously dot malls and upper-class shopping areas around the world. 9to5 Google reported a tip from "an extremely reliable source" citing a 2013 rollout schedule for a Google store. Then the Wall street Journal, itself a pretty reliable reporter of the inner workings of Google, reported the same thing. The WSJ omitted a time frame, and noted that the 2013 claim may not be accurate.