T-Mobile Q1 earnings show $10.46 billion in revenue and record low turnover

The carrier also added 1.4 million new subscribers.

On Monday, May 1, T-Mobile announced its financial report for Q1 of 2018. Although earnings are down by 2.5% compared to this time last year, T-Mobile is showing strong numbers every else across the board.

Looking first at revenues, T-Mobile reported $10.46 billion to exceed analysts’ expectations of $10.35 billion. Earnings were reported at $0.78/share and the carrier added 1.4 million customers (1 million of which were “branded postpaid”) to surpass the expected 1.27 million number.

That $10.46 billion in revenue results in an 8.8% year-over-year growth for T-Mobile, and this Q1 2018 report marks the 20th consecutive quarter of which more than 1 million customers were added to the network.

Looking a bit deeper at T-Mobile’s subscriber base, customer turnover is down to just 1.07% compared to last year’s 1.18%. The carrier also hopes to increase its new customer base for the year from 2 – 3 million to 2.6 – 3.3 million.

T-Mobile announced on April 29 that it was finally merging with Sprint for $26.5 billion after years of speculation. The two carriers will work together to build up the United States’ 5G infrastructure, and while the move is being marketed as a win for consumers, the general response is still all over the place.

The T-Mobile / Sprint merger could be great for consumers, but it probably won’t be

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Oculus Go: Everything you need to know!

Oculus Go is here!

At Oculus Connect 4, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Oculus is working a new headset that sits in a “sweet spot” somewhere between Gear VR and Rift.

Officially called Oculus Go, this headset requires no phone and no cables running to the PC. It will be able to play movies, run games, and help you meet up with friends in VR. We’ve got the details for you here!

May 1, 2018 Update: Ordering goes live on Amazon and news from F8 Conference!

Last night the Oculus Go pre-order page on Amazon was created. There were no confirmed cases of people actually being able to pre-order the headset overnight. Furthermore, the release date mentioned on the page was originally a staggering “December of 2018.” Don’t get discouraged, however. Whenever a new page is created on Amazon but hasn’t gone live yet the date will always read “December of 2018.” This is something I can understand gets confusing quickly.

Onto the real deal, what happened during the Key Note of F8? First, devs were greeted at the door this morning with a sign stating there would be updates for Oculus Go during the conference. Then, finally. The most anticipated news of the VR community has been released. Oculus Go will be shipping today. Getting an official date instead of “sometime before summer of 2018”. Get ready, VR nerds, it’s time to take VR to a mobile headset. Tell us in the comment section below what you plan on doing as soon as you get your headset! Keep an eye out on Amazon for the buying option to go live!

After checking out the available ways of buying the headset it turns out there are two different memory options! You can get the 32GB headset for $199 and the 64GB headset for $249.

See on Amazon

Click here to read more on which headset you should buy, 32GB or 64GB?

“The graphics were crisp across my view
without any distortion at the corners
with the games I played.”

Lori Gil, who is newer to the VR community, go to try out the Oculus Go during GDC 2018. Check out what she has to say about it here.

“Oculus Go, in my opinion, is positioned to be the first true consumer-focused VR system to bring new people into the fold. No, it’s not a top-quality device with all the bells and whistles, but it is completely self-contained so the initial investment is minimal. For $200, you can get started with VR. You don’t need a special phone, you don’t even need a phone at all! You don’t need a special computer or graphics card or game console. It’s the perfect starter VR device. Once new users get into VR through Oculus Go, they can then decide whether to move on to something more powerful if they’re ready to go all-in, or stick with the entry-level device if they discover they’re not heavy VR players. I can’t wait to get one.”

So, there you have it. Whether you’re new to VR or an avid user I can’t see anyone being disappointed with this device. Even when it comes to comfort Lori mentions “- just a little top-heavy (by comparison with the Rift, the Go has a bit of extra weight). I could feel some pressure on my cheeks, but the headset was definitely designed to counter the extra battery weight.”

The Oculus company truly put a lot of thought and planning into making a VR device that can be enjoyed by all. So, even if you’re a new VR player, this is still the device for you.

Click the link below to your own Oculus Go headset!

See on Amazon

What is Oculus Go?

Oculus Go is the third headset from Oculus, and it’s meant to sit between Gear VR and Oculus Rift. A cordless headset, you’ll no longer have to strap in with your PC or have enough juice on your phone in order to play in VR.

It is built to be lightweight, has a new mesh foam interface, and it supposedly has the best visual clarity so far seen in VR, thanks to new lenses and a WQHD LCD fast-switch display with a higher fill-factor than OLED. We learned at CES 2018 that Oculus Go is going to be made by Xiaomi, and it will be run by a Snapdragon 821 processor making it more than capable of playing the awesome games that are going to be available.

Oculus says this headset lives somewhere in between the Gear VR and Oculus Rift, but it leans much closer to the Gear VR than you might expect. This is a standalone headset, meaning the computer is inside the headset with the display, but it’s still an Android-powered headset. The good news is this means it will run many of the apps currently available for the Gear VR. That means the headset will not let you walk around and do much. Functionally, this will be very similar to the Gear VR.

Read more: Lenovo Mirage vs Oculus Go

Whats the difference between Oculus Go and Gear VR?

To begin with, Oculus Go is a stand-alone headset. This means no need to be wired into your computer like Oculus Rift, or the need for a top of the line phone like with Gear VR. It’s a middle of the road option that is priced affordably in an effort to draw in new users to help Oculus reach their goal of one billion VR users.

Instead of including headphones with the headset, a spatial audio experience is built right into the headset. That is spatial speakers that are built on the rails of the headset to let you hear what’s going on clearly without headphones. Of course, if you’d rather go with classic headphones, you can plug a set of your own into a 3.5mm jack. Oculus Go will have a controller similar to that of Gear VR, meaning devs can create apps that work on both platforms.

Indeed, a lot of the Gear VR’s best apps will be available for the Oculus Go from day one. The controller employs three degrees of freedom (DoF), which is the same as the Gear VR controller. It’s interesting to note that the Go headset will also use three DoF. To put that into perspective, the Oculus Rift uses six DoF.

Oculus Go will also have access to its own catalog of games and apps to dive into on launch day. While ports of Gear VR games are sure to show up, you’ll be getting access to new content with Oculus Go. From the photos we’ve seen of Oculus Go, there is also a fairly pared down look compared to Gear VR. No touchpad on the side of the headset, and only two buttons on the top; volume controls, and a power button.

Games and Experiences

Since we have been notified that Gear VR apps and games will be compatible with Oculus Go we know we’ll have plenty to keep us occupied! Not every Gear VR game will be available to the Oculus Go, but there are still 1,000+ titles available that I don’t see you getting bored in the next foreseeable future.

When is it launching?

Today during the F8 conference they finally announced the Oculus Oculus Go will be shipping May 1, 2018 (today!). Click the link below to get yours!

See at Amazon

How much will it cost?

You’ll be able to pick up this standalone headset for a tidy sum of $199. Considering Gear VR alone costs $129.99 and requires a top of the line smartphone, this is pretty exciting news!

Are you excited?

For now, we don’t have a ton of information about everything that Oculus Go will be able to offer, but that should be changing soon. However, the details we do have are definitely worth getting excited about, especially since this is a stand-alone headset, with an affordable price tag. Are you excited about Oculus Go, or are you sticking with another Oculus headset? Let us know about it in the comments below!

Updated May 1, 2018: Oculus Go is now available to purchase!

How to downgrade your Android phone to a previous version

Whether you need to downgrade your Android version or just think you need to, there are some things you need to know.

Most of us here are update junkies. When a new version of Android (or anything, for that matter) is announced, we start talking about when we’ll get a chance to try it and take a look at the changes the changes. We look at all the leaks or legit news about an update, and we’re ready to install it as soon as we can. It’s half the fun of owning an Android.

But not everyone feels this way.

There are a few cases where upgrading to a new version isn’t something you ever want to do. Enterprise software is notorious for being slow to adapt and new versions of any software may not be supported. Or you might have some equipment like a handheld scanner that won’t work if you take an update. Things like this aren’t an issue for most people, though.

More often than not, when someone wants to go back to an older version of Android it’s because they aren’t happy with the updated version. We all can deal with some bugs better than others, and if an update brings one of the bugs you can’t deal with you might look for the option of going back. That’s not as simple as it sounds in most cases.

Make sure you want to downgrade your Android

Moving backward and installing an old version of Android is not without its own set of headaches. There’s the security aspect of it all for starters. If your phone is tracked to be on version 3 of the software, issues with version 2 aren’t likely to be addressed by the company who made it. Next you’ll have to figure out how to downgrade, which we’ll talk more about later. After that, you may find that some of the things you really like just won’t work with an older version.

Google introduces new APIs for developers with every iteration of Android, and companies like Samsung or Huawei add their own on top when they customize it. Many times, these changes are not backward-compatible. Some of the new things you won’t get to use may be minor and seemingly unimportant, but there’s always a chance that something you really need or love isn’t going to work with an older version. There’s no real way to fix this unless you want to do something like install custom third-party software.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here, because for most of us, there’s just not going to be a way to roll back to a previous version.

The easy stuff first

If you have a Pixel or Nexus phone, or a phone from another company who is willing to let you unlock your phone’s bootloader and will provide you with a catalog of all the various versions of Android that apply to it, rolling back is fairly easy. And this isn’t unheard of, either. We’ve seen HTC and Motorola both offer a way to unlock bootloaders and have archives of older versions for certain phones that were sold unlocked.

If you have a phone that makes it possible, doing it is simple.

• Back up everything you can to the cloud
• Download the version of software you want to install and any utilities you need to install it
• Read, understand what you’ve read, then do it

There is a lot of stuff you’re not going to be able to back up without having root access. Know that things like game progress, message histories as well as photos and videos inside your messenger app, and any other third-party data that’s not cloud synced may be gone forever, because a downgrade of the OS always requires a full device wipe. Check into the various backup and restore apps and be sure to have Google Photos setup to back up your pics and videos before you start clicking anything.

You’ll also want to be sure you understand the process and have all the tools you need up and running. Flashing the operating system to a phone isn’t one of those things you can stop at the halfway mark

More: How to manually flash your Pixel or Nexus phone

The hard stuff

The thing is, most folks us aren’t using a unlockable device with factory images all packed up and ready to flash. Companies usually don’t like to share an installable version of their OS for some reason, and tracking down something you can flash yourself may prove very difficult. Your best bet is to visit online forums where others with the same model may be looking for the same thing.

Finding an older version can be difficult, and most times that’s the easiest part of it all.

Then again, finding it might be the easy part because there are other hurdles to overcome. Normally, an OS update also updates the device’s bootloader. That means to go back, you’ll need to be able to flash a prior version of the phone’s bootloader first. The bootloader is one of those pieces of software that usually can’t be rolled back through normal means so you’ll need to resort to some really tricky hacks if it can even be done. Flashing a bootloader incorrectly is one of the few sure-fire ways to brick an Android phone.

Sometimes the hacks used to flash software to your model of Android are simple and not that hard to do correctly. But that’s not always the case and you’ll usually see a handful of people explaining how they ruined their phone when things took a turn for the worse.

I’m not trying to talk you out of it, but you need to know that the five minutes it takes to flash your phone back to an older version could have hours and hours of reading as a prerequisite.

Custom ROMs

If you’re serious about going back, and don’t mind losing your warranty, a custom ROM is usually a better choice than actually downgrading.

Custom ROMs are third-party versions of Android that have been built and modified by users like you. It’s not unheard of for the phone manufacturer to give an assist (Sony provides resources for this) but most of the time a custom ROM comes from a person or group of people who just love to write code and tinker with phones.

A custom ROM may mean that you’ll have the best of both worlds: a version of Android that includes any critical updates and new features but can still support a feature that was removed in the official version from the company who made the phone. You’ll also have to void any warranty you may have and installing a custom ROM can be as difficult as installing an older version of official software, though. If you have a popular model, you’ll probably find a custom ROM for it at places like XDA Developers, a website dedicated to the good kind of phone hacking.

It’s not something we want to hear; we’re not allowed to install (or try to install) any software we like on the expensive phone we paid for. It’s almost like we don’t really own it. But it’s a reality in most cases and not something likely to change any time soon.

Update April 2018: This post has been updated with any new information about downgrading your phone.

Moto G6 Plus vs. Moto G5 Plus: Should you upgrade?

In case you missed it, Motorola just announced a handful of new low-cost devices for its wildly popular Moto G and Moto E series that finally look as nice as they perform, with rounded glass backings and dual cameras galore!

The highest-end of all the phones announced was the Moto G6 Plus, which replaces last year’s Moto G5 Plus in Motorola’s powerful budget lineup. The G6 Plus isn’t going to be available in the U.S. — stateside customers will want to look at the smaller Moto G6 instead — but that doesn’t mean it’s out of the question for the rest of the world, with the G6 Plus launching in Brazil, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. So how does this new affordable powerhouse stack up to last year’s top dog?

Specifications

Before comparing the value of the Moto G6 Plus’s newer features against where the Moto G5 Plus still holds its own, it’s good to have an understanding of how the two differ in specs.

What’s new with the Moto G6 Plus?

The Moto G6 Plus brings a lot of new features to the table, including a complete redesign that’s more akin to the Moto X4 than other Moto Gs before it. In addition to the rounded glass back, the fingerprint sensor up front has been shrunken down to make room for the G6 Plus’s new 18:9 aspect ratio display — that’s up from 5.2- to 5.9-inches year over year. The G6 Plus also features dual cameras, which didn’t show up on a Moto G until the Moto G5S Plus late last year.

The G6 Plus brings a gorgeous curved design to the Moto G lineup, with smarter software and a dual camera module.

The differences aren’t all on the surface, though. The Moto G6 Plus stays up to date with Android 8.0 Oreo, and starts off with twice the internal storage of last year’s G5 Plus. In addition, it houses a larger battery — 3200mAh vs 3000mah, respectively, though that may be negated by the G6 Plus needing to power a larger display.

The Moto G6 Plus is also smarter than last year’s model. Motorola has outfitted the G6 Plus with new intelligent camera settings, allowing the phone to identify specific objects and even apply fun face filter effects. Moto Voice has gotten smarter as well, combining on-device commands (“turn off Bluetooth,” “play Narcos on Netflix,” etc.) with Google Assistant as a fallback when necessary.

See at Motorola UK

Why you might not need to upgrade

At the end of the day, most people that buy a Moto G aren’t necessarily doing so because they’re tech fanatics. They’re buying it because so few other series of devices are able to offer the same levels of performance and reliability at such a reasonable price. Motorola is one of the most trusted brands in the budget space for a reason, and a year later the Moto G5 Plus is still as good a deal as ever — perhaps even more so now that it’s readily available at steep discounts.

The Moto G5 Plus isn’t suddenly a bad phone just because there’s a new model.

Intelligent camera features can come in handy, but they’re far from a requirement for most people. You probably won’t miss features like object recognition in the camera app, face filters, or the G6 Plus’s speedy face unlock — so why pay for them? Same goes for the newer Moto Voice features, though luckily you don’t have to give up Moto Gestures if you stick with the Moto G5 Plus.

Both phones are pretty evenly matched in the specs department. The Moto G6 Plus has a slightly newer Snapdragon 630 versus the G5 Plus’s Snapdragon 625, but both chipsets utilize the same Cortex-A53 microarchitectures (albeit at different clock speeds). If you still prefer the Moto G6 Plus for its 18:9 display, curved glass back, and dual cameras, then by all means, you should go for it. But with nearly equal specs and features in a smaller body, don’t discount the Moto G5 Plus — leave that up to the retailers.

See at Motorola

Which is right for you?

Are you interested in buying either of these budget champions? Or if you already have the Moto G5 Plus, does the G6 Plus bring enough to the table to make you consider upgrading? Let us know in the comments below!

Bluesmart shuts down following smart luggage battery ban

Smart luggage maker Bluesmart is shutting down after concerns over batteries in checked luggage kept travelers from using its bags as intended. The company has sold its intellectual property and is ending refunds, sales and warranty support.

Bluesmart’s bags were a hit, with the company raising over $4.1 million in crowdfunding since its first campaign in 2014. The latest Series 2 carry-on bags and suitcases, which had apparently sold out, included free 3G and GPS connectivity that let owners track their bags anywhere with cell reception. The bags also included a charger for your devices, weight sensors and an auto-locking mechanism in case you strayed too far away.

The nail in the coffin for Bluesmart was a policy most major US airlines enacted in January, which forces travelers to remove lithium-ion batteries from checked smart luggage and power down those in cabin bags to reduce the risk of fire. Similar concerns had previously led the FAA to consider an outright ban on laptops in hold luggage.

While Bluesmart provided instructions on how to extract its “non-removable” batteries, which are integrated into the bags’ electronics, the airlines’ policy effectively rendered the smart functions useless while traveling. That placed the firm “in an irreversibly difficult financial and business situation,” it said in a statement.

The company has sold its technology, designs, branding and IP to Travelpro, a luggage maker geared towards flight crews and frequent fliers. Bluesmart has ceased warranty support, though is still providing troubleshooting advice and how-to information. Consumers seeking refunds and other claims can do so through a third-party liquidator. Those who bought their bags elsewhere can seek a refund or exchange from their retailer.

For those hanging on to their Bluesmart bags, the servers and apps will remain functional for the next several months, though service quality or functionality “will be reduced in the future,” the company said. However, you’ll still need to unscrew the electronics board and stow it in your carry-on bags. It seems unlikely most Bluesmart owners will want to do that every time they fly.

Via: The Verge, TechCrunch

Source: Bluesmart

Facebook’s upcoming dating service will be a heartbreaker

Facebook is getting into the dating game, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced to the assembled crowd at its annual F8 developers conference today. Citing a 2017 Forbes article about how one in three US marriages now start online, Zuckerberg pointed out that some 200 million Facebook users currently list themselves as single on the social media site. So why not use Facebook’s practical monopoly in online social interactions to help folks find lasting love?

As the Facebook team described onstage, Facebook Dating will “mirror the way people meet in real life — through the experiences they have in common.” Users will set up a profile, which will be segregated from their regular FB account. This is so that any dating-related activities won’t show up on their News Feed or be shared with their friends (even if they’ve opted-in to the service as well).

Users can then select the groups and events that they are already members of and “unlock” their dating profiles for those activities, allowing them to view other users who have similarly unlocked themselves. The service will recommend matches “based on dating preferences, things in common, and mutual friends,” according to a statement from the company. This is similar to mechanisms that Tinder and Hinge employ, wherein if you’re logged in to those services via Facebook, you won’t be shown the profiles of people you’ve friended. If the user finds someone they’re interested in, the service offers a discrete text-only messaging service (to hinder the sending of dick pics and spam). For added privacy and security, a user’s profile will only include their first name.

But for the fanfare that the as-of-yet unreleased service received during Tuesday’s keynote, it’s not exactly a new feature for the site. In fact, existing dating apps that leverage the Facebook API will already raise an alert if you and the the person you’re swiping right on have mutual FB friends. Facebook appears to simply be cutting out the middleman (in this case Tinder, Hinge, et al) and monetizing the service for itself.

Facebook itself was initially designed as a way to rank the attractiveness of Zuckerberg’s female classmates. When it was still only available on college campuses, the social site already served as an effective platform for flirting and hookups. Find a cutie who also goes to your school? Give them a poke, post poetry to their wall, like and comment on their posts — the standard, and generally awkward, stuff young people do to get the objects of their affection to notice them.

However, this easy connectability is a double-edged sword. The same service that allowed Raman and Priya, the couple Zuckerberg was crowing about during his speech, to meet and marry, also allows stalkers, creeps and psycho exes to surreptitiously spy on your life. And I fail to see how formalizing the flirting process — even with the protections the company has in place — will enable the former behaviors without the latter.

For example, your profile will only include your first name but it’s right alongside the city in which you live and the company you work for. It doesn’t take a genius to leverage those tidbits of data in order to track down your official Facebook profile, About.Me page, or personal website. And given that the service will base matches — at least partially — on your mutual friends, stalkers will be afforded yet another vector of attack in tracking you down.

This is equally true for the service’s pairing mechanism which, again, is based off of the groups and events you’re already a member of. It remains unclear whether you’ll be matched up via an algorithm, which could conceivably help weed out the creeps, or it will simply give you a list of everybody in the group who also has an unlocked dating profile and matches some basic criteria. Additionally, what protections are going to be implemented to prevent creeps from simply joining every local group they can find to use them to farm for dates? Facebook did not specify during the keynote.

Of course, protecting your privacy from other users is only one side of the data protection issue. For the last year, Facebook has been repeatedly rocked by revelations revolving around its use of user data, specifically the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The CA debacle was so bad that Zuckerberg himself was forced to appear before congress to explain his company’s actions. So it seems odd that immediately after lawmakers repeatedly questioned him as to why Facebook would collect so much user data in the first place, Zuckerberg’s company would come out with a new service that collects even more of user data.

And just because the conversations you have within the messenger won’t show up on your timeline, doesn’t mean they can’t or won’t potentially be squirreled away by the company itself. Just look at Grindr’s April SNAFU where the company was caught sharing a host of sensitive data points, including users’ HIV statuses, with advertising companies.

Now, this isn’t to say that you shouldn’t give Facebook Dating a shot when it is released later this year. Virtually all of the issues raised here are simply online analogs to the dangers folks face while dating in real life. However, unlike other dating services like Tinder or Bumble, which simply leverage the social site’s API, Facebook’s overwhelming global reach dramatically increases user’s exposure risk. I mean, do you really want to trust the same site that your racist uncle uses to rant about “Obummer” and the Deep State with finding you a mate?

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2018!

Images: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Facebook hopes to write the security ‘playbook’ for others to follow

It was only back in March that Facebook’s Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos, was rumored to be leaving the company after reportedly clashing with other execs over its disclosure of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. But, that clearly never happened (though he did say his role “changed”), and Facebook has been dealing with a lot more problems than just election interference since then — like ensuring that it keeps people’s personal data safe. Today, Stamos took the stage at the F8 developers conference to talk about Facebook’s efforts in security and how it plans to address the many issues it faces now and others that may arise in the future.

Stamos said on stage, during a keynote dubbed “Security at Facebook Scale,” that the company has a responsibility to the world to build products that bring people closer together, but at the same time keep them safe from abuse. He added that one of the biggest challenges Facebook has had to face recently is knowing that, even though its tools are designed to create positive connections between people, building them comes with a risk. And that’s something the company has had to learn the hard way in the past couple of years, after what happened with the 2016 election in the US and, most recently, the Cambridge Analytica data misuse nightmare.

Alex Stamos shows an image of what Facebook’s network looks like.

“Protecting people’s data is extremely important,” Stamos said. “But doing that is not enough. I personally had to adjust to understand that security is more than building systems, it’s understanding how tech can be abused to cause harm.” He said that while Facebook “can build technically perfect products, there are still bad things that could happen,” and it needs to take that into consideration with anything it makes going forward. “When you think about AI you have to think about risks in how you’re training it,” Stamos said. “With VR, it’s not just the great, fun things, but what is safety in a VR world? How are we gonna build that at scale when there are not any examples to go off?”

Stamos said that Facebook’s goal isn’t just to figure out the answers to these questions on its own, by investing heavily in new technologies and hiring more people to filter out bad content, but also to work together with academics and even other tech companies. “When we do this work, we also have to build relationships around the world. We have a lot of work to do to understand our responsibility,” he said. “Theres no magic solution to these problems, but we’re also not going to allow these challenges to paralyze us. We’re going to build the playbook for companies to follow us, build at scale and mitigate those risks.”

Click here to catch up on the latest news from F8 2018!

HBO renews ‘Westworld’ for a third season

Less than two weeks after second season premiered, HBO has confirmed Westworld will return for a third go-round. The sci-fi drama, which centers around a theme park filled with humanoid robots, has proven a hit for HBO, so it’s hardly a surprise the network is saddling up for season three. It’s not clear when the third season will hit screens, but given season two is just a couple of episodes in following a 16-month hiatus, it might be some time before it airs.

Westworld creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan took a slightly different approach to marketing the second season, after releasing a video promising to reveal its secrets before the first episode had aired. Given Nolan’s track record, though, we bet he has a few more tricks up his sleeve to keep those fan theories bubbling away. The renewal follows HBO confirming Silicon Valley will return for a sixth season.

INITIATE: Season 3. #Westworld pic.twitter.com/s5Mz32Yo3C

— Westworld (@WestworldHBO) May 1, 2018

Source: HBO

FTC warned Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft about illegal warranties

Last month, the FTC sent letters to six companies informing them that their product warranties were violating US law. Though there are some exceptions, under the 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, voiding a warranty because a customer didn’t use a specified part or repair provider isn’t generally allowed. The FTC called out six companies for warranty language that did just that, though — required certain parts or services to be used in order to preserve a warranty. The agency didn’t say which companies received letters, but Motherboard filed a Freedom of Information Act request and found that Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Hyundai, HTC and ASUS were the recipients.

Each company received a similar letter. “Warranty language that implies to a consumer acting reasonably under the circumstances that warranty coverage requires the consumer to purchase an article or service identified by brand, trade or corporate name is similarly deceptive and prohibited,” said the letters. And the specific warranty wording found to be in violation of the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act was called out in each individual letter.

In Hyundai’s case, the letter notes, “The use of Hyundai Genuine Parts is required to keep your Hyundai manufacturer’s warranties and any extended warranties intact,” as an illegal statement. And for Microsoft, the FTC points to wording that warns against using anyone other than Microsoft to repair an Xbox One. Nintendo’s letter calls out its warranty for stating that it won’t apply if the product “is used with products not sold or licensed by Nintendo.” And Sony’s highlights a passage that states the PS4’s warranty seal can’t be “altered, defaced or removed.” You can read all of the letters over at Motherboard.

These companies have 30 days from when the letters were sent to change the passages in question, after which the FTC will review their policies again. If these six companies haven’t changed their language to fall in line with the law, the FTC says it could pursue legal action.

Via: The Verge, Games Industry

Source: Motherboard

Apple Announces $100 Billion Share Repurchase Program

During today’s second quarter earnings release, Apple said that it is launching a new share repurchase authorization of $100 billion, with a 16 percent increase in quarterly dividend.

Apple expects the execution of its previous $210 billion share repurchase authorization to wrap up by the end of the current quarter, three quarters earlier than originally expected. From Apple CEO Tim Cook:

Recent corporate tax reform makes it possible for us to executive our program more efficiently. Given our strong confidence in Apple’s future, we’re announcing a significant update. Apple’s Board approved an additional $100 billion share repurchase authorization, as well as a 16 percent increase in quarterly dividends, effective with the next divided later this month.

Following tax reform in the United States that will allow Apple to repatriate its overseas cash at a lower tax rate, Apple has said that it wants to reduce its net cash balance to zero, a goal it will accomplish through share buybacks, increased dividend payouts, acquisitions, and investments into research and development.

Apple CFO Luca Maestri said that Apple wants to maintain the cash it needs to fund day to day operations, invest in the future, and provide the flexibility it needs to respond strategically to opportunities that arise.

Maestri also said that Apple plans to executive its share buyback program thoughtfully, efficiently, and at a fast pace. Apple will provide updates on the program at the end of every quarter.

After the news of Apple’s $100 billion share buyback program, Apple stock is up 4 percent in aftermarket trading.
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