Netflix and Univision will co-produce at least five more TV shows

Netflix’s team-up with broadcaster Univision on El Chapo was a hit (it became hugely popular both in Mexico and on Univision), and the two are determined to capitalize on this success. They’ve renewed their partnership with the promise of creating “at least” five more shows together. The productions will be available in both English and Spanish, with Univision getting the chance to air them on TV in the US before they stream worldwide on Netflix. The first show out of the gate will be Tijuana, a Spanish-language show about a “web of corruption” that unfolds when reporters investigate the assassination of a presidential candidate.

It’s not certain when the first shows from the production will arrive, although it may take a while when production on Tijuana doesn’t start until April.

Both sides have strong incentives to work together. Univision, of course, extends the reach of its Hispanic American-oriented programming beyond both its existing viewers and US borders. And for Netflix, this continues a longstanding strategy of releasing shows that target wide audiences — it’s catering to much of the planet, and it’s easier to justify big deals like this when it knows there are hundreds of millions of potential viewers.

Source: Variety

Nintendo Labo gadgets can be remixed with ‘Toy-Con Garage’

Nintendo stunned the gaming world last month when it unveiled Labo, a system that uses the Switch and some cardboard to make lovably homely little minigames. Reception among the Engadget staff was… mixed. But Nintendo might have nullified a growing concern about the system’s longevity with its latest announcement. At a hands-on press event earlier today, the company introduced the Toy-Con Garage, a feature in the Labo’s base software that lets users essentially create their own Switch-empowered cardboard toys.

It might be a complex process, though. Reports from the event explain that users can repurpose cardboard parts and apply new functionality to them through the Toy-Con Garage feature in the Labo software. During a demo, Nintendo showed how one could set the Motorbike cardboard-and-controller setup to drive the RC Car, or reconfigure the piano software and custom cardboard cutouts to make an electric guitar.

I’m ready to play hard #NintendoLabo pic.twitter.com/JlKFrLYKAG

— Devindra Hardawar (@Devindra) February 1, 2018

It’s unclear how much leeway Nintendo will end up giving creators. The issue isn’t in the system’s makeshift controllers — cardboard is cheap — but in the Labo software. If it includes a lot of mappable functionality, it could prolong the platform’s lifespan beyond the handful of projects in each first-party Nintendo kit.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Polygon

Google Assistant gets music-powered alarms and better Netflix controls

Google has been improving its Home devices for a while now. The company added better search, upgraded the Home app interface and enabled an intercom feature last November. It can also now match your voice to your own Netflix profile, too, a feature that builds upon Home’s multiple voice recognition system. Now Google has added an update that adds a voice-powered alarm function and makes it a bit easier to find shows and music with your Home devices.

If you link your Netflix account with Google Home, you can tell it to watch any of the streaming platform’s shows with a voice command. Home will also answer any questions you might have about when a certain show airs or what network it’s on. You can also control YouTube TV the same way. The update also adds new Google Play Music functionality, too; just ask for the track, album or artist and Home will play it, provided you’ve purchased or uploaded it to the service.

You can also set a music-based alarm with your voice via any Google Home device. Simply tell it to set an alarm for any time and to play any song. You can also just ask it to wake you up to a specific artist. Need a reminder to tune in to your favorite show? You can set an alarm just for that, too. Simply say something like, “Hey Google, remind me to watch Riverdale every Wednesday at 8 PM,” for example.

Source: Google

All-Tesla EV racing series could hit the track this year

Tesla’s electric race car series has been in the planning stages for awhile, and now it has been approved by the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), the organization that oversees Formula One. Eventually, the plan is to put together an all-electric series of racing events around the world. But because others’ electric racing vehicles aren’t ready yet, the Electric Car Production Series is starting with the Tesla Model S P100D. It was previously called the Electric GT Wold Series.

According to The Verge, the organization is planning on conducting its first race later this year, but nothing has been finalized yet. Motorsport.com reports that the electric series race weekends will include a format of three heats to qualify and two races that are 30 miles long. These will take place during the daytime and in the evening.

Tesla isn’t close to the only car company with an electric racing model, though. Jaguar is planning on an EV racing line of cars in 2018, and Porsche, Lucid, Infiniti, BMW and more have all made strides in the area. Hopefully soon, the Electric Car Production Series will include more than just Teslas.

Via: The Verge

Source: Motorsport.com

Apple’s iPhone sales dropped during the holidays

This past holiday quarter was a particularly notable one for Apple: It released the iPhone X, probably the most hyped and anticipated device the company has launched in many years. And despite some grumblings in the financial and media world that the iPhone X isn’t selling as well as expected, and indeed Apple slipped a little bit. The company just announced that it sold 77.3 million iPhones in its fiscal year Q1, down a scant 1.3 percent compared to the 78.3 million sold one year ago.

It’s the first time iPhone sales have declined during a holiday quarter since the phone launched, as best we can tell. That speaks both to how saturated the iPhone market is getting, how relatively incremental annual iPhone updates are getting, the massive iPhone X revision aside. Despite that, Apple says the iPhone X has been the top-selling iPhone every week since it shipped in early November. It’s also worth noting that iPhone revenues increased 13 percent year-over-year despite sales slipping — that speaks to the higher sales price of the iPhone X. If Apple can keep on bringing in more money, it’ll likely not get too worried about the small sales dip.

Mac sales also dropped slightly, to 5.1 million units — good for a five percent year-over-year decline. iPad sales, however, continued a resurgence, increasing a small one percent over last year to 13.2 million units. But that’s three consecutive quarters where iPad sales bested the previous year, so Apple has to like that trend after years of decline. Services revenue, which has been Apple’s second-largest product category in terms of revenue for a few years now, stayed flat compared to a year ago, coming in at $8.5 billion.

Finally, the “other products” category (which encompasses the Apple Watch, AirPods, Beats hardware and other, lesser products) was an undeniable bright spot: Revenue increased 70 percent year-over-year, hitting $5.5 billion. That speaks to the quiet success that the company has found with the Apple Watch.

All told, total revenue came in at $88.3 billion, up 13 percent year-over-year. Net income came in at $20 billion for the quarter and was up 12 percent compared to a year ago. So despite the slight slip in Mac and iPhone sales, Apple is probably pretty pleased with its holiday quarter. We’ll be listening in to today’s conference call with CEO Tim Cook (starting at 5PM ET) and will update this post with anything else we learn.

Source: Apple

GoPro faces uncertain future as holiday sales disappoint

The holidays were not kind to GoPro. The action camera company had already issued an earnings warning in January, dropping its projected Q4 revenues from $470 million to $340 million, that’s a 37 percent year-over-year decline. The holidays were so dreadful, in fact, that GoPro has since decided to abandon its drone pursuits and a fifth of its workforce, roughly 300 positions. That said, the company did earn $1.18 billion in 2017, flat year-over-year, and the staff reductions did help drop GoPro’s operating expenses by 30 percent, which left the company with $247 million in cash and marketable securities at the end of the year. That’s $50 million more than it had on hand at the end of Q3.

Neither the oft troubled Karma drone nor the existing Hero5 flagship camera managed to ignite the public’s passions during the holidays. As a result, the company was forced to offer these products at a discount, further eroding its profit margins during the critical sales season.

And as GoPro had difficulty penetrating a highly competitive drone market, the camera market is no less crowded. The company is getting it from all sides — from classic camera companies like Nikon, Olympus, and Canon to titans of the electronics industry like Sony, Samsung and Panasonic, everybody seems to have skin in the action camera game these days.

As such, GoPro’s investment outlooks are not great. Analysts have become increasingly reticent to invest in the company, causing its Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2017 to swing from a 4-cent earning to a 50-cent loss (per share) in just the last month. That said, GoPro is still a large presence in the action camera market. It still dominates the US with 80 percent of the market by unit volume and 44 percent of Europe. It saw its business grow in China by 28 percent in 2017 and posted a 96 percent year-over-year growth in Japan.

Still, while the company claims that its balance sheets are strengthening, GoPro did post a net loss for the year of approximately $183 million, or $1.32 per share, down from a net loss in 2016 of $419 million. Is it any wonder that GoPro now finds itself looking for buyers?

Via: Yahoo! Finance

Source: GoPro

Alphabet picks up momentum with Google’s cloud and hardware

You probably don’t need to be reminded that Google makes the vast majority of its money from ads scattered across every corner of the internet. Other products are more recognizably Google-y, however, and Alphabet’s new earnings release shows off some impressive growth in areas beyond just ad money. Alphabet raked in $32.3 billion in revenue in its fourth quarter, and just about $4.7 billion came from what Alphabet refers to as Google’s “other revenues.”

For those keeping track, that’s the most money Alphabet has pulled in from its “other revenues” segment, which is where you and I probably spend most of our money. “Other revenues” encompasses cash earned from the Play Store, subscription services like YouTube Red and Google’s cloud offerings, not to mention Google’s own hardware. We’re still waiting for more details in Alphabet’s customary post-earnings conference call, but if nothing else, Google itself is bullish about the headway its Made By Google products has made.

“Our device shipments in the fourth quarter have more than doubled year-over-year,” Google CEO Sundai Pichai added on the call.

In particular, Pichai seemed pleased by the performance of Google’s smart speakers. According to a statement made in early January, Google sold more than one Home speaker every second since the launch of the Google Home Mini on October 19th. Some quick math suggests Google sold some 6.4 million speakers over that stretch of time, and we wouldn’t be surprised if a decent number of Pixel 2s were also sold over those three months. Here’s hoping we get some more insight in the Q&A — for now, all Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat would say is that the 38 percent growth in this category was fueled by “hardware, cloud and Play.”

Meanwhile, Alphabet’s “other bets” category — which encompasses out-there divisions like Verily, Calico, Waymo and more — is slowly stemming its losses. As of the end of December, revenue for those other bets stood at $409 million, up from only $262 million during the same period in 2016. Granted, this entire category is operating at a loss, but the hole isn’t quite as large as it once was.

This time last year, Alphabet reported a $1.09 billion loss — now it’s only $916 million. Progress is progress, but it still seems clear that Alphabet will essentially eat money for years to come as it pursues these moonshots. Oh well: if Alphabet can keep offsetting those losses by improving Google’s hardware and cloud businesses, those self-driving cars and glucose-sensing contact lenses will show up eventually.

Review: Here’s a Look at the $99 Colgate Smart Toothbrush You Can Get From the Apple Store

One of the surprises of this year’s Consumer Electronics Show was a smart toothbrush from Colgate, which, as it turns out, was designed to be an Apple Store exclusive.

The new $100 Colgate Smart Electronic Toothbrush is both Colgate’s first smart iPhone-connected brush and the first personal hygiene product you can get right from an Apple Store.

Toothbrushes that connect to your iPhone have become a thing over the course of the last couple of years, and you can now get smart brushes from most of the major brands, including Philips and Oral-B. I’m no stranger to smart toothbrushes — I’ve previously reviewed the Oral-B SmartSeries, the Sonicare FlexCare Platinum Connected, and the Sonicare DiamondClean Smart, and for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been testing the Colgate Smart Electronic Toothbrush.

Colgate’s Smart Toothbrush is the simplest smart toothbrush that I’ve tested so far, but as you’ll see in my review below, there are some shortcomings to be aware of if you’re considering this brush.

Design and Features

Colgate partnered with Kolibree for the Smart Electronic Toothbrush, and the brush itself appears to be a Kolibree design because it’s almost identical to the $129 Kolibree Ara. This Kolibree mirror is the first higher-end toothbrush that Colgate’s come out with, so it’s different from all other Colgate brushes on the market, which are typically not priced over $10.

Design wise, the brush is made from a lightweight white plastic material, and it consists of two pieces: a removable and replaceable brush head and the vibrating base that the brush head fits on. The brush head pops onto the base of the toothbrush and then twists to lock in place.

There’s single button on the base of the Colgate Smart that turns it on or turns it off, and that’s the extent of the functionality, too. It’s on or it’s off. There are no modes or sensitivity levels to switch between, so you can’t alter brushing length (it goes for two minutes), brushing intensity, or any other parameter.

That’s fine if you just want a simple brushing experience, but if you want a softer brushing experience, a longer brushing experience, pressure detection, or special modes like gum care or whitening, the Colgate Smart can’t deliver.

There are also no brush head options. The Colgate Smart has a single brush head, and all replacement brush heads are the same style. Design wise, it’s smaller and wider than my Sonicare brush heads, and it’s a bit longer than Oral-B brush heads.

It’s a stiff brush, but these kinds of electric toothbrushes are often better for your teeth and gums than manual brushing because there’s no need to apply pressure or scrub to get your teeth clean. The Colgate Smart is leagues better than a standard manual brush, but compared to my Philips Sonicare, I didn’t feel like it worked as well.

For comparison’s sake, the Kolibree brush that the Colgate Smart is modeled after vibrates 15,000 times per minute, while the Sonicare DiamondClean brush vibrates 62,000 times per minute and the Oral-B SmartSeries vibrates 48,000 times per minute. I don’t know how much this matters, but I can feel a difference in brushing experience and the cleanliness of my teeth when using the Colgate Smart vs. the Sonicare.

If you’re using a manual brush, the Colgate Smart is going to get your teeth cleaner, but if you’re already using a higher-end electric toothbrush from Sonicare or Oral-B, the Colgate Smart is going to be something of a downgrade with less vibration, fewer options, and no choice when it comes to brush head.

Some people will prefer having less choice and fewer options to have to worry about. With just an on/off button and a single kind of brush head, the Colgate Smart has a certain appealing simplicity to it.

The Colgate Smart is much lighter than my other toothbrushes and it doesn’t feel as well made, which is to be expected because my DiamondClean is priced over $200 and the Oral-B model I have on hand cost $140. It’s still stylish, easy to clean, and ergonomic in the hand, though.

Inside of the Colgate Smart, there’s an accelerometer that’s able to detect the position of the brush in your mouth, which allows it to determine whether or not you’re thoroughly brushing your teeth.

A matching plastic base comes with the Colgate Smart and is used to charge it. Though so light that it barely feels like a battery is inside, the brush can last for two weeks before needing to be recharged.

iPhone Connectivity and App

The Colgate Smart app also appears to be a mirror of the app that the Kolibree smart brushes use. Pairing the toothbrush to the iPhone was a quick and simple process, and while I did see a Bluetooth disconnection or two during my time testing the Colgate Smart, it was always quick to reconnect and I had no glaring connection problems.

There are a few different modes in the Colgate app that are designed to walk you through a thorough brushing experience or encourage you to brush longer. Coach+, for example, displays a 3D model of a set of teeth and it lights up with each area that you need to clean. It has you brush 16 different zones, spending approximately eight seconds on each section.

The brush itself, as previously mentioned, has an accelerometer so it can tell where you’re brushing. Using the accelerometer to detect my brushing was a hit or miss on the left side of my mouth. Despite brushing properly on that side, the app didn’t feel like I was holding the brush in the right position, so half of the time, it would tell me that I was in the wrong zone and it wouldn’t count it as adequate brushing.

Almost every time I brushed, I had to adjust my grip on and reposition the brush to get it to register, and by the time I did that, it had moved on to a new section. That resulted in a frustrating experience where the app was telling me I hadn’t brushed well enough, while also not giving me extra brushing time to make it up at the end. If it’s going to tell me I missed a spot, it should add extra brushing time so I can properly cover all of the sections of my mouth.

Though the brush uses an accelerometer to determine where it is in your mouth, there is no pressure sensitivity, so it’s not going to know when you’re pressing too hard. In fact, it doesn’t even know when it’s touching a tooth since it relies entirely on brush position. It’s a system that works well for the most part, but has flaws.

Along with the Coach+ brushing mode, there’s also a “Coach” mode that’s supposed to be personalized, but over the course of testing the brush, this mode never updated and was the same as the standard brushing mode for me. There are also two games, which are focused on getting you to brush for a full two minutes rather than monitoring where you’re brushing, so that’s a good alternative for a more relaxed brushing experience or for children.

You don’t have to have the Colgate app open when you brush if you don’t want to. Even when the app is closed, the brush will track where in your mouth you brushed and for how long, and it will log it the next time your iPhone is nearby.

If you brush offline, the brush will pause four times for each quadrant of your mouth (top left, top right, bottom left, and bottom right) so you’re not spending too much time in one area.

The main page of the app has a weekly average featuring the length of your average brushing session, your brushing frequency, and your overall surface coverage, and it will show how much coverage you achieved when you last brushed your teeth. If you swipe to the right, you can also see how you did during past brushing sessions.

You can also tap the “Duration,” “Frequency,” and “Surface” readings to see more detailed graphs of your brushing habits over the past week, month, and year.

Other app features include a battery reading, a help section, and access to the Colgate shop where you can purchase additional brush heads. Brush heads need to be replaced every three months and cost $19 for a pack of three.

Bottom Line

The Colgate Smart Electronic Toothbrush is going to improve your brushing habits over a manual toothbrush with its timed brushing to motivate you to spend more time on your teeth and its ability to detect problem areas that aren’t getting enough attention, but I didn’t find that the brushing experience was as robust as I get with other comparable brushes from Sonicare and Oral-B.

If you already use an electric toothbrush from a company like Sonicare and Oral-B and have good brushing habits, there’s no reason to switch to the Colgate Smart Electronic Toothbrush. If you have a manual brush and like the simplicity of it but want to add smart features, that’s something the Colgate Smart can deliver.

Colgate’s partnership and rebranding of the Kolibree toothbrush is the company’s first foray into the higher-end toothbrush market, and there’s still some work to be done. Detection of brush position could use some improvement as it was inaccurate for me at times, and the app itself could use a brushing mode with an option to make up any missed areas to achieve better brushing. On the plus side, the in-app games may encourage better brushing in children.

Because the Colgate Smart is a straightforward electronic toothbrush designed to be as simple as possible, there are no different modes to choose from and there are no brush head options. That’s great if you want something easy, but it’s not as full-featured or as powerful as similar smart brushes from Philips and Oral-B, and in my opinion, it doesn’t quite measure up to brushes that have more to offer.

How to Buy

You can purchase the Colgate Smart Electronic Toothbrush from the online Apple Store for $99.95.

Note: Colgate provided MacRumors with a Colgate Smart Electronich Toothbrush for the purpose of this review. No other compensation was received.
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Apple Reports Record Results for 1Q 2018: $20B Profit on $88B Revenue, 77.3M iPhones

Apple today announced financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2018, which corresponds to the fourth calendar quarter of 2017.

For the quarter, Apple posted revenue of $88.3 billion and net quarterly profit of $20.1 billion, or $3.89 per diluted share, compared to revenue of $78.4 billion and net quarterly profit of $17.9 billion, or $3.36 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. The revenue and earnings per share numbers were company records for any quarter in the company’s history.

Gross margin for the quarter was 38.4 percent, compared to 38.5 percent in the year-ago quarter, with international sales accounting for 65 percent of revenue. Apple also declared an upcoming dividend payment of $0.63 per share, payable February 15 to shareholders of record as of February 12.

For the quarter, Apple sold 77.3 million iPhones, compared to 78.3 million in the year-ago quarter. iPad sales were up slightly to 13.2 million, up from 13.1 million a year ago, and Mac sales slipped to 5.1 million from 5.4 million.

“We’re thrilled to report the biggest quarter in Apple’s history, with broad-based growth that included the highest revenue ever from a new iPhone lineup. iPhone X surpassed our expectations and has been our top-selling iPhone every week since it shipped in November,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve also achieved a significant milestone with our active installed base of devices reaching 1.3 billion in January. That’s an increase of 30 percent in just two years, which is a testament to the popularity of our products and the loyalty and satisfaction of our customers.”

Apple’s guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 2018 includes expected revenue of $60-62 billion and gross margin between 38 and 38.5 percent.

Apple will provide live streaming of its fiscal Q1 2018 financial results conference call at 2:00 PM Pacific, and MacRumors will update this story with coverage of the conference call highlights.

Conference call starts at 2:00 PM Pacific – No need to refresh

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Tag: earnings
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