Huawei’s Rise Continues To Harm Apple’s Market Share In China, Claim Analysts; Other Reasons Also Highlighted For iPhone Shipments Decline

There was a slight chance that Samsung would have partnered with MediaTek to bring its Dimensity 9000 to its flagship Galaxy S series in the past. Given that the Taiwanese company took the premium Android SoC market by surprise with this release, competitors started taking note of MediaTek and where it could be headed. Unfortunately, the deal between the two firms could not materialize, with a tipster sharing that there was a scarce supply of the chipset, amongst other reasons.

The LLVM 18.1 release has seen new support for Intel's next-gen Panther Lake client & Clearwater Forest server CPUs.

The AI arms race between the U.S. and China has escalated to a new level, and there will be some defectors in the mix intending to steal highly secretive files to give the other region an edge. As it happens, one Google engineer, Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly stealing trade secrets revolving around Google’s AI chip software and hardware on March 5. In a statement, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said that Ding had 500 confidential files containing AI trade secrets and was secretly colluding with China-based firms attempting to seek an upper hand in the AI race.

Apple has a decent foldable product portfolio in the works, but when it comes to an actual launch, many reports talk about varying timelines. However, one analyst believes that a 20.3-inch foldable MacBook is the only one that has a clear development schedule in sight, and while that is a positive sign, the drawback is that consumers who are waiting for such a product have to wait an exceptionally long time.

Xbox Game Pass has confirmed another day-one game for 2024 in the form of The Alters. The next title from award-winning developer 11 Bit Studios is still without an official release date, although the Polish company committed to bringing it to PC, consoles, and Xbox Game Pass sometime this year.

Apple's iPhone sales in China fell 24% year-on-year in the first six weeks of 2024, according to research firm Counterpoint, as the U.S. company faced increased competition from domestic rivals such as Huawei.

Square Enix is lining up another patch for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, reports One More Game. As was the case with the previous update, the goal is to improve Rebirth's Performance mode, which has been heavily scrutinised since the game's demo launched last month. While the previous patch did make some positive adjustments, the mode still suffers from a dynamic resolution that can dip to noticeably muddy levels.

Apple’s iron grip on the ARM notebook and desktop space might be coming to an end, starting with Qualcomm and its Snapdragon X Elite. However, one rumor claims that Huawei is another player to enter this space, and there are claims that the former Chinese giant has already developed a competitor to the M1. Then again, the company might have obtained dependency from a slew of foreign companies in a bid to jumpstart its smartphone business, starting with the Kirin 9000S, but that does not mean that there are no other hurdles that need to be scaled.

As the video games industry violently contracts to ensure shareholder satisfaction at the cost of making thousands upon thousands of people unemployed, Skylanders studio Toys For Bob have announced they're splitting from Activision Blizzard and Microsoft to go independent. Good for them, but maybe too late for some. Earlier this month, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that it seemed Activision Blizzard were closing Toys For Bob's California headquarters and laying off 86 people. Still, the new independent Toys For Bob say they're working on something new and "exploring a possible partnership" with Microsoft.

Amid mass layoffs, studio closures, and general industry uncertainty, today began with a handful of studios and companies reclaiming control of their own destinies. We learned this morning that Saber Interactive and Gearbox are reportedly breaking free of Embracer Group. And now, it looks like Crash Bandicoot developer Toys for Bob has sprung free of Activision and Microsoft.

Skylanders and Crash Bandicoot developer Toys for Bob has announced plans to go independent.

It recently came to light that Apple had canceled its car project, which was internally referred to as ‘Project Titan,’ and with the abandonment, the company has re-assigned the 2,000 employees formerly stationed at the self-driving vehicle division to proceed with work on generative AI.