Tech

Consumers will spend significantly more on wearable devices this year than they did last, with the Covid-19 pandemic proving to be a strong market driver, according to new data from Gartner. Global end-user spending on wearables such as smart watches and ear-worn devices will will reach US$81.5 billion in 2021, up 18.1% year-on-year, the analyst

Small and medium sized businesses are being especially hard hit by the continual lockdowns, so Vodafone UK is smart to push the boat out for them. The press release talks of giving small businesses free broadband for 2021. While this is technically true, it only comes if they commit to a three year broadband contract,

OnePlus Band is confirmed to have an SpO2 monitor to track blood oxygen levels. The battery life of the fitness band has also been teased ahead of its launch in India. Amazon has also created a landing page that shows off the key features of the OnePlus Band. It highlights sleep tracking and real-time heart

Swiss IoT logistics company U-blox wants to merge with UK company Telit Communications, which does much the same, but the latter doesn’t like the terms of the deal. U-blox made its preliminary move on 20 November and they had to extend the process in mid-December because the two parties had yet to come to an

Ericsson has poached longtime BT executive Katherine Ainley to head up its UK and Ireland business, whose current focus is squarely on the rollout of 5G networks. Ainley will join the Swedish vendor next month, after leaving her current role as Managing Director, Ventures, at BT, a unit that focuses on small businesses and start-ups.

iOS 14 is now running on 81 percent of all iPhone models introduced in the last four years, Apple has shared on its developer support page. Apple also shared iPadOS usage numbers on the page, as measured on December 15. It also states that only two percent of iPhone users are on iOS 12 or

Openreach has signed up testing and analytics firm Exfo to help with its roll out of full fibre networks in the UK. In a statement published this week Exfo said it has won a contract to supply to supply optical test heads and test access switching to the UK telco. Essentially, the deal should enable

The UK Public Accounts Committee reckons even the revised gigabit broadband rollout target will be missed. Welcome to the party, pal. A major flaw in the democratic process is that candidates will promise almost anything in order to get elected and Boris Johnson was certainly no exception when he was bidding to become leader of

Acer Chromebook Spin 514 has been launched ahead of CES 2021 as the latest addition to the company’s laptop portfolio. There’s also Acer Chromebook Enterprise 514 that caters to working professionals. Acer Chromebook Spin 514 has a 360-degree hinge for keeping it in tent mode, flat mode, or using it like a tablet. The laptop

The legal protections enjoyed by social media companies need updating, but that responsibility will fall to the Democrat-controlled FCC. A new administration means a new FCC Chairman. The incumbent, Ajit Pai (pictured), belatedly decided last October to push for reform of the law – Section 230 – that protects internet platforms from liability for the

The storming of the Capitol by a few nutters in fancy dress seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back regarding Trump’s relationship with social media. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in, of course, a Facebook post, that it is banning the US President from Facebook and Instagram indefinitely. Meanwhile Twitter has

Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Kun-hee, who transformed the South Korean firm into a global tech titan, died at the age of 78 on Sunday, the company said. Under Lee’s leadership, Samsung rose to become the world’s largest producer of smartphones and memory chips, and the firm’s overall turnover today is equivalent to a fifth of

Comcast Cable consumer president Dana Strong (pictured) will take over as the new group chief executive of Sky this year after longtime holder of the post Jeremy Darroch tendered his resignation. US-based Strong has a track record in the industry that matches her name. She has been in her current role at Sky’s parent company

This is just getting silly now. In the space of a few days the New York Stock exchange has reversed its position three times on the matter of listing China Mobile, Telecom and Unicom. On Monday we reported that the NYSE is delisting the three Chinese telcos in order to conform to some huffing and

Minecraft Earth AR mobile game, launched by Microsoft two years ago, is shutting down. The developers say that the current global situation has prevented free movement and collaborative play – two things that are essential for playing Minecraft Earth. As a result of this pandemic, Microsoft has taken the tough decision to end support for

Departing US President Trump is maintaining his campaign against Chinese commercial interest for as long as he can. Yet another executive order has been issued by the Donald ‘Addressing the Threat Posed By Applications and Other Software Developed or Controlled By Chinese Companies’. There’s the now-standard preamble about how anything Chinese is intrinsically dodgy and

Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf is calling it a day in June and will be succeeded by the man so seems to be already running the company anyway. For as long as this hack has been covering Qualcomm – around 13 years – Cristiano Amon (right) was Qualcomm’s most trusted spokesperson. There have been others, but

Redmi Note 5 and Redmi Note 5 Pro smartphone users are now reportedly receiving the MIUI 12 update. Some users have also taken to Twitter to confirm the arrival of the latest update. Reports suggest that the new update brings along optimisations to animations on screen and a fix for notification shade in Dark Mode.