IF / News

LeEco is the biggest shareholder of Coolpad; Nubia has announced expansion plans for Europe and Latin America; Nokia has absolutely no interest to go back into the mobile business; Indian government has announced it will relax the local sourcing requirements that have prevented foreign companies, including Apple, from entering the nation; Mobile phones can lose up to 65% of their value a month after being released; Facebook has  reiterated interest in entering China; etc.

Chipset

Smartphone SoCs that are produced with 14/16nm just launched recently, e.g. Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 / 625, MediaTek Helio X20, etc. These vendors have already started considering 10nm process. According to product announcement of these vendors, 2017 might be the year which smartphone SoCs enter 10nm process. (TechNews)

A microchip containing 1,000 independent programmable processors has been designed by a team at the University of California, Davis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The energy-efficient “KiloCore” chip has a maximum computation rate of 1.78 trillion instructions per second and contains 621 million transistors. (CN Beta, Science Daily, Express Computer, TNW)

China-based enterprises should be allowed to invest in Taiwan’s IC design houses, according to MediaTek chairman MK Tsai. Tsai indicated he believes the government with its adequate review mechanism will be able to monitor and access the terms and conditions of deals between China-based investors and Taiwan’s IC design houses, and the intention for the investments. (China Tech, Digitimes, press)

Top500 has declared that China’s Sunway TaihuLight, a 40,960-node system powered entirely by Chinese processors (the 260-core ShenWei 26010) capable of running at 93 petaflops of processing power, is the world’s fastest supercomputer. (Kit Guru, The Inquirer, Engadget, Top500, Popular Mechanics, ChinaZ)

Vimicro launches China’s first embedded Neural Processing Unit (NPU) processor, which has entered mass production from 6 Mar 2016. NPU aims to provide hardware acceleration of intelligent algorithms, with target application domain of resource-constrained, low-power small embedded devices. (CN Beta, Tencent, ScienceNet, IT Home, NDTV)

Touch Display

Samsung Galaxy S8, which is believed to be launched in Feb 2017, is also said to sport a 4K display. It is because users can immerse themselves in VR content on a smartphone. (TechNews, WCCFTech, Phone Arena)

Memory

TrendForce finds prices of TLC wafers and spot prices of mainstream memory cards have been on a steady rise for three consecutive months since this April 2016. The uptrend will continue as the possibility of the market encountering tight supply in 3Q16 becomes more apparent. The margin of price increase has also been getting larger over the past month. (TechNews, TrendForce[cn], press, TrendForce, press)

Credit Suisse analyst Hideyuki Maekawa believes that the market conditions regarding NAND are set to improve: (1) Major North American and Chinese smartphone makers increase NAND storage density, (2) 3D NAND is adopted for use in enterprise SSDs and in smartphones, (3) NAND supply-demand tightens, and (4) NAND prices rise for all applications. (Barron’s, blog)

Samsung said early June 18 that its Xi’an plant, which is designated to manufacture profitable 3D (V)-NAND chips was disrupted by a brief power outage on June 18. A brief power supply disruption at Samsung’s latest NAND flash chip-producing facilities will benefit its rival SK Hynix and Samsung, indicated by CLSA a leading market research firm. (TechNews, Korea Times)

Battery

WattUp, which is still under development by Energous, is using radio frequencies to deliver electricity for wireless charging. Seeking Alpha “Stock Puzzle” has analyzed the technology, found out that WattUp interferes with Wi-Fi transmissions. WattUp charging will completely block a Wi-Fi signal for the device being charged. (Seeking Alpha, TechNews)

Siemens AG, the owner of Hutchinson’s wind turbine manufacturing plant, has signed a binding agreement with Gamesa Corporación to merge Siemens’ wind power business with the Spanish-based company to create a leading global wind power. (TechNews, Hutchinson News, Bloomberg)

Connectivity

Google has stated that over 1.5 million Indians are leveraging free Wi-Fi over 19 train stations, consuming 15 times as much data as they normally would on a 3G connection. (Android Central, Google)

Ricoh has announced its acquisition of wireless memory card company Eyefi. (Digital Trends, PDN Pulse)

Sensory

Mobileye’s maps interpret road conditions, adding foresight to autonomous driving, while also collecting data and sharing it to support a future where drivers may or may not take the wheel. (TechNews, MarketWatch, Forbes, Hexun, EEPW, EE World)

Smartphones

According to the result of JD.com grand sale held from 1 June – 18 June, Meizu M3 Note is ranked the top sale, follows by Apple iPhone 6s and Xiaomi Redmi Note 3. As for phone sales brand ranking, Xiaomi comes as top 1, followed by Honor, Apple, Meizu, LeEco, etc. (Gizmo China, Xinhuanet)

Barring developers from them placed Apple at risk of falling behind Android, says Andy Hargreaves, an analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets, and seeing third-party tools overtake its own apps. But Apple is not making iOS a truly open platform, and it will not go open source or device agnostic in the way Android is. (TechNews, Wired, article)

Indian government has announced it will relax the local sourcing requirements that have prevented foreign companies, including Apple, from entering the nation. (Phone Arena, Reuters, Bloomberg, Licai, ZOL)

Nokia Technologies President Ramzi Haidamus indicates that they have absolutely no interest to go back into the mobile business. That is their history, not their future. They have been developing  (health) technology and solutions inside Nokia, experimenting both on the regulated and unregulated side of health. (CN Beta, ZDNet, Digital Trends)

To protect their privacy, paranoid users are turning to a multitude of methods to keep their personal data away from prying eyes in the online world. Kapersky surveyed 12,355 users from 26 countries in June 2015 to discover how people accessed the internet and how strong their personal privacy settings were. (Financial Express, ZDNet, CN Beta)

LeEco has acquired an additional 11% stake in Coolpad. This purchase makes LeEco the biggest shareholder of Coolpad at 28.9%. (Android Headlines, 163, DoNews)

LeEco has acquired a 48.6-acre development site in Santa Clara, California in a deal with ailing Yahoo worth as much as USD250 million. (Android Headlines, Bizjournals, Fierce Wireless, ZOL)

Smartphone brand Nubia has announced expansion plans for Europe and Latin America. Consumers in Mexico, Argentina, Russia, Spain and Germany will soon be able to purchase the latest nubia devices in their domestic markets including nubia Z11 mini, Z9 mini and Z9 Max. (Android Headlines, Channel EMEA, Mobile World Live, TechWeb)

Susquehanna Financial Group’s Mehdi Hosseini writes that Samsung is seeing better-than-expected traction for its flagship Galaxy S7 phone—it is on track to ship total of 48-50 million in 2016, which is better than Galaxy S6 shipments of 40 million in 2015. (Barron’s, press, TechNews)

Spotify announced that it now has over 100 million active users, with 30 million paid subscribers. (The Verge, The Telegraph, Reuters, GSM Arena,  iFeng)

Facebook Inc COO Sheryl Sandberg reiterated interest in entering China, where the world’s largest social network is banned. (CN Beta, MarketWatch)

Mobile phones can lose up to 65% of their value a month after being released, meaning they depreciate faster than cars, according to research conducted by musicMagipie.co.uk. (CN Beta, Daily Mail, musicMagpie, article, Trak.in)

OPPO A37 is official – 5” HD IPS LCD 2.5D curved glass display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor, 8MP + 5MP cameras, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage, Android 5.1 (ColorOS 3.0), 2630mAh battery, SGD215. (GSM Arena, Android Authority, Yahoo, Phones Review)

Tablets

Dell Inc. is selling its software group to private-equity firm Francisco Partners, hedge fund Elliott Management, as the computer maker continues to sell assets and change strategy to focus on its acquisition of storage vendor EMC Corp. (CN Beta, WSJ, Reuters, MarketWatch)

Wearables

Google is “betting that mobile will be the key to VR proliferation, vs. desktop or console-based hardware”, according to  Marxent CTO Barry Besecker. (Technews World, CN Beta)

Some PC vendors believes that an arcade-type VR gaming business model could be realized – operators can procure expensive VR arcade gaming machines to enable users to experience VR gaming at low charge rates, said Digitimes Research. (Digitimes, press)

Robots are now a fashion statement, at least to some innovative minds in Japan—for example, KYUN KYUN’s wearable robot Metcalf Clione, Amano’s Arm Skirt, Necomimi headset’s robotic cat ears, etc. (Nikkei, CN Beta, Nikkei)

After conducting a survey of 2,000 workers across the UK, PwC found that only 46% of respondents would accept a free wearable device from their company if their employer had access to the data it recorded. (IT Pro Portal, Telegraph, CN Beta)

LifeBEAM is working with sound wunderkind Harman/Kardon to create a pair of powerful, high-fidelity smart headphones, Vi headset. It has a voice assistant, packed with sensors that measure heartbeat, heart beat variability, etc. (Phone Arena, Pocket-Lint, LifeBEAM, Android Headlines, Tuicool, PC Pop)

Zungle Panther is a pair of sunglasses equipped with bone-conduction headphone technology. (Engadget, Android Headlines, Zungle)

Internet of Things

Strategy Analytics estimates that in 2015 fewer than 75,000 homes in the US and 30,000 homes in Western Europe used technology solutions for elderly monitoring. By 2020, the user base is set to grow to more than 600,000 homes in the US and 579,000 homes in Western Europe, an increase of more than 600%, opening up new opportunities for providers of technology solutions for elderly monitoring. (199IT, Strategy Analytics, press)

Toyota Research Institute (TRI) CEO Gill Pratt says, the company  is targeting developing in the next 5 years driver assistance systems that integrate artificial intelligence (AI) to improve vehicle safety. (TechNews, Yahoo, Japan Times, Money Control)

OpenAI announced its major goals, which include the creation of a “general purpose” robot and a natural language processing chatbot. They are working to enable a physical robot (off-the-shelf; not manufactured by OpenAI) to perform basic housework. (CN Beta, Silicon Angle, Venture Beat)

Walmart is collaborating with Five Elements Robotics to develop a shopping cart that relieves customers from the strain of pushing while helping them find items on their shopping lists. (CN Beta, ZDNet, MSN, TNW, Bloomberg)

Tesla Motors Inc is eyeing Shanghai for its China production base in an investment that could be worth about USD9 billion. (CN Beta, Bloomberg, Yahoo)

Computer Vision Center in Barcelona has created Synthia, a virtual city simulation complete with pedestrians, traffic signs and other components of an urban environment, automatically annotated at the pixel-level. This allows for a more efficient method of training AI systems. (CN Beta, Daily Mail, Gizmag)

Apple has filed a new trademark application for the iPod, covering the use of the trademark on items which make use of sensors for medical and wellness reporting. (CN Beta, Patently Apple, Forbes)