itHub doubles bug bounty for security researchers

Hackers and researchers can earn $5,000 to $10,000 for uncovering security vulnerabilities in GitHub apps

 

 

GitHub is doubling the maximum payout for its Security Bug Bounty program, with hackers and security researchers now able to earn $5,000 to $10,000 for reporting unknown security vulnerabilities in GitHub applications.
The increased payouts kick off the program’s second year, said GitHub Application Security Engineer Ben Toews, in a blog post. “If you’ve found a vulnerability that you’d like to submit to the GitHub security team for review, send us the details, including the steps required to reproduce the bug,” Toews said. “You can also follow @GitHubSecurity for ongoing updates about the program.”
Thanks to researchers worldwide, 57 previously unknown security vulnerabilities in GitHub applications have been found and fixed, Toews said: “Of 1,920 submissions in the past year, 869 warranted further review, helping us to identify and fix vulnerabilities fitting nine of the OWASP top 10 vulnerability classifications.”
Vulnerabilities found have been creative, he said. “Our top submitter,  @adob, reported a persistent DOM based cross-site scripting vulnerability, relying on a previously unknown Chrome browser bug that allowed our Content Security Policy to be bypassed.” The second-most-prolific submitter, @joernchen, reported a complex vulnerability in the communication between two back-end GitHub services that could allow an attacker to set arbitrary environment variables.
Programs by Google, Facebook, Mozilla, and others have helped build a strong bug-hunting community, GitHub says: “Our bounty program gives a tip of the hat to these researchers and provides some cold hard cash for their efforts.” The Google Vulnerability Reward Program offers rewards ranging from $100 to $20,000. Facebook offers a minimum reward of $500, while the Mozilla Security Bug Bounty Program pays $3,000 and a T-shirt for “valid critical client security bugs.”
GitHub even posts a leader board for its top 10 bounty hunters, with advice such as not publicly disclosing a bug until it has been fixed and only testing for vulnerabilities on GitHub-operated sites and listed under GitHub’s open bounties.
Rewards are determined by factors such as the complexity of successfully exploiting a vulnerability, the potential exposure and the percentage of impacted users and systems. Bounties are paid via PayPal; rewards can be donated to charity. International researchers, provided they are not from a country facing U.S. export sanctions or trade restrictions, are eligible, as are researchers between the ages of 13 and 18.

Apple puts the big hurt on Samsung

Samsung's Galaxy S5 has had disappointing sales, while Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus smartphones have surged.
Credit: Samsung

2015 will be a challenging year for the Korean phone maker, but there are steps Samsung can take to reverse its declining market share

 Things are not looking so good for Samsung in the smartphone market, especially as it faces its Apple nemesis.
Long the world's largest smartphone maker, Samsung is likely to see Apple iPhones rise to the top spot in 2015, pushing Samsung and its Galaxy and other smartphone models into second place.

 What's more, Apple is releasing in April its first Apple Watch, which could knock the wind out of smartwatch competitors including Samsung, which already has several models on the market.
"No question, 2015 is going to be a challenging year for Samsung," said IDC analyst Ryan Reith.
There are many reasons for Samsung's decline and not all of them have to do with Apple's product superiority. What Samsung must do to reverse its declining share in smartphones and remain a competitor against Apple in smartwatches may sound like a complex marketing dilemma, but a lot comes down to Samsung's basic need to build a better overall brand reputation.
"Building brand loyalty and customer lock-in to a Samsung ecosystem is the major challenge Samsung faces in battling Apple, " said Jack Gold, an analyst at J. Gold Associates.

Samsung's smartphone decline

Fourth-quarter smartphone shipments show Samsung's embarrassing decline. Apple and Samsung virtually tied in global shipments, each reaching about a 20% share of the total market, according to research firms Strategy Analytics and IDC.
A year earlier, in the fourth quarter of 2013, Samsung had about a 30% smartphone market share, compared to Apple's 17%.
IDC on Thursday said that the smartphone gap between Samsung and Apple had narrowed to 600,000 units at the end of 2014 with Samsung still in the lead. But IDC warned: "Continued success from Apple, coupled with ongoing challenges facing Samsung, could enable Apple to overtake Samsung during the 2015 calendar year."
In the fourth quarter, Samsung shipped 75.1 million smartphones, while Apple shipped 74.5 million, IDC said, well ahead of the others in the top five: Lenovo (24.7 million), Huawei (23.5 million) and Xiaomi (16.6 million).
Even in South Korea, home of Samsung, Apple surged ahead in smartphones in the fourth quarter, grabbing 20% of that market, up from 11% a year earlier, Strategy Analytics said. For November, Samsung's domestic share fell to 46%, down from 61% in September (before the new iPhones had taken their toll), according to Counterpoint Research.
Clearly, Apple did well with its new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in the fourth quarter, but Samsung also crashed, comparatively, with its Galaxy S5, introduced earlier in the year.
"The Galaxy S5 sold horribly and had a significant impact on Samsung's profitability last year," said Kevin Burden, an analyst at 451 Research.
Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said U.S.buyers perceived the Galaxy S5's plastic case as "cheap." Plus, the phone had new technologies that consumers didn't find valuable, such as a heart rate monitor. "Samsung has to do a better job aligning their technological capabilities with what consumers are asking for and new innovations that they can create," he said.
"Samsung's biggest issue is that they failed in 2014 to innovate and build upon the success they were having over the past five years," added IDC's Reith. "They have very much stayed stagnant, in terms of brand image, device lineup and marketing. The Galaxy S line should have been a three-year, three-device strategy, with another completely different sub-brand to follow-on. Instead, it is almost six years now and becoming stale."

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The coming Galaxy S6

While Samsung's need to end the Galaxy S line, there are already reports indicating that Samsung will produce a Galaxy S6, probably to be unveiled at Mobile World Congress in March.
Rumors suggest the Galaxy S6 could have Samsung's own in-house Exynos processor, instead of a Qualcomm 64-bit Snapdragon 810, which has been found to be susceptible to overheating problems.
Using its Exynos processor, Samsung could save on costs and flex its technology muscles, but better styling and other features are what may more important in Galaxy S6. Some pundits have suggested the device needs an "Edge" version, where the screen wraps around one side, but even the value of the Edge technology isn't a proven market winner.
"We are hearing rumors of a Galaxy S6 announcement at Mobile World Congress and if so, my guess is that it won't be well-received," Reith said. "This is the time when Samsung needs to launch something new in its product line, its brand, its messaging and overall value proposition."

The China effect

While Samsung may need to overhaul its smartphones, there's little question it is being hurt by a range of cheaper smartphones, mainly from at least 10 Chinese manufacturers.
IDC put Lenovo, Huawei and Xiaomi — all based in China — in third, fourth and fifth place in total shipments in the fourth quarter behind Samsung and Apple.

 

 Apple has always been seen as a premium brand and hasn't competed in the low-cost smartphone segment. Even so, Apple walloped the smartphone market in China in the fourth quarter of 2014, doubling its sales over the prior year, and accounting for 22% of Apple's overall sales for the quarter. Apple managed to attract customers to its high-end iPhones in China, a feat that's been out of reach for Samsung.
"The case in China is less that Samsung is getting pushed around by Apple as they are feeling the pressure from Chinese vendors that are hungry and satisfied with low-digit profit margins," Reith said. "At the same time that Apple is clearly not letting up, Lenovo, Huawei and Xiaomi are all gunning for the top."
While Samsung gets drubbed for not being more innovative in smartphones, it is simply harder to be innovative with lower-priced smartphones that cut out expensive features, Gold noted. At the low end, "you have newcomers with new models like those from Xiaomi that have stolen a lot of Samsung's thunder," he said.

Changes needed for Samsung's smartphone brand

Samsung seems to miss something basic that Apple is really good at: Long-term market research about what technologies matter most to buyers and the ability to act on those insights.

 

 

Google fourth-quarter revenue misses Wall Street target

(Reuters) - Google Inc's (GOOGL.O) (GOOG.O) revenue grew 15 percent in the fourth quarter but fell short of Wall Street's target on declining online ad prices and unfavorable foreign exchange rates.
Shares of Google edged up 0.1 percent to $510.66 in extended trading after an initial dip on the news.
Google's advertising revenue has come under pressure as more consumers access its online services on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, where ad rates are typically lower.
The growing popularity of mobile devices has made No. 1 social network Facebook Inc (FB.O) a greater threat in the battle for advertisers. Facebook reported on Wednesday that mobile ads on its network doubled year-over-year during the fourth quarter.
Google said on Thursday the average price of its online ads, or "cost per click," decreased 3 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter, while the number of consumer clicks on its ads increased 14 percent.
Some analysts had hoped for gains in cost-per-click, said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis, adding that the company, which gets about half of its revenue overseas, also was hurt by the strong dollar.
"Business is slowing. The core is slowing. And what we're saying is, it's going to look on paper even worse as the dollar strengthens. And we are not at that point where mobile monetization is improving," he said. "The thesis that the landscape is changing and Google is missing out - I don't think it will hold to be true, but they haven't squelched it."
Consolidated revenue in the three months ended Dec. 31 totaled $18.10 billion, compared to $15.71 billion in the year-ago period. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S were looking for revenue of $18.46 billon.
Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette said in a statement that revenue grew "despite strong currency headwinds."
Net income rose to $4.76 billion, or $6.91 per share, from $3.38 billion, or $4.95 per share, a year earlier. Adjusted earnings per share of $6.88 missed analysts' expectations of $7.11.
(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic, additional writing by Peter Henderson; Editing by Richard Chang)

Apple, Google and Amazon Reach ‘Freemium’ Agreement

MILAN— Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Amazon . com Inc. have reached an accord that allows the U.S. companies to avoid fines for allegedly misleading people in the European Union to make purchases in mobile phone apps that are initially free to download.
The three companies, which run stores to download apps, and Gameloft , a French game developer, committed to make changes including removing the words “free” from the apps that could require payments once a person has started using them, Italy’s Antitrust and Competition Authority said on Friday. The companies also agreed to make it clearer within the apps when people are about to make a purchase.
The investigation began last May following a complaint from an Italian consumer association and came after the EU had called on companies to change the “freemium” model in which apps are free to download, but then can later require payments that sometimes get automatically charged to credit cards.

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“Consumers can now count on stronger guarantees than what would have been achieved by sanctioning the companies involved,” said the Italian regulator, which carried out the investigation in conjunction with the EU Commission.
The companies, which have 60 days to implement the changes they agreed to make, had faced a maximum fine of €5 million ($5.65 million) each.
The freemium model, which can include payments to access new levels or acquire a virtual object that makes a player more powerful, accounts for more than half of the EU online games market.
The EU has forecast that the bloc’s “app economy” will produce €63 billion in revenue in 2018, more than triple the 2013 figure, and that the long-term health of the industry could be threatened by consumer confusion with the freemium model.
“The apps market is good for Europe and consumer satisfaction is high,” said a Google spokesman. “It is still a relatively new market—new for consumers, new for developers, and new for us too—and we will keep iterating to ensure our users enjoy the best experience possible.”
Amazon declined to comment. Apple and Gameloft couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
“We were able, together with the Antitrust Authority, to commit three giants of the web to change their behavior—not only in Italy but throughout Europe—this does not happen every day,” said Marco Pierani, the head of public affairs for Altroconsumo, the Italian consumer group that brought the case to the regulator’s attention. “Now we must ensure that the commitments are respected.”

The Apple Watch will go on sale in April

Apple unveiled its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday — and the numbers were huge — but in the follow-up conference call, CEO Tim Cook revealed another bit of much-awaited information.
The Apple Watch is "right on schedule," and Apple expects the device to begin shipping in April.

See also: Company offers $30,000 diamond-encrusted Apple Watch for preorder

"My expectations are very high on it. I'm using it every day and love it and can't live without it," Cook said. The amount of developers writing apps for the wearable is "impressive," he said, and Apple is "seeing some incredible innovation."
Plenty of hype and rumors have surrounded Apple's wearable since it was announced in September. The device was previously rumored for a March launch. According to reports, the watch will not have stellar battery life: about 19 hours of "mixed use." (And as low as 2.5 hours of "active use," which basically means actually using the watch.)
Even if the Apple Watch happens to be a colossal failure, Apple will probably be OK.
The company broke its record (by a good amount) for iPhone sales. In the December quarter, Apple sold 74.5 million iPhones, the first period that Apple began selling its latest 6 and 6 Plus models. Compare that to the now modest-seeming 51 million iPhone sales when Apple released the iPhone 5S last year.
The money Apple actually ended making shattered analysts' expectations. The company posted earnings of $18 billion on $74.6 billion of revenue.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Apple Pay expanding to thousands of vending machines, parking meters

USA Technologies, a company that makes vending machines, parking meters, laundromats and other self-service kiosks, announced Tuesday it would be adding support for Apple Pay to 200,000 of its appliances.

See also: Why Apple Pay Is the Most Secure Payment Platform on the Planet

The new Apple Pay-supported kiosks will roll out to thousands of locations around the country. It shouldn't take much to update the machines' software: USA Technologies has already been using NFC, the technology that powers Apple Pay, Google Wallet and many other digital wallets, in its appliances for more than 10 years, the company said.
"USA Technologies has always sought to provide convenience, security and an easy way to pay for consumers who are less and less likely to carry cash," CEO Stephen Herbert said in a statement. "We recognized early on the potential for mobile payment, and promoted the technology to ensure our customers were ready for this shift to occur."
The expansion comes as Apple looks to ramp up adoption of its mobile payments system. Since launching with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus last year, Apple's payments platform has rapidly expanded to support hundreds of banks and brick-and-mortar retailers.
During an earnings call with analysts and media Tuesday, Apple CEO Time Cook said that Apple Pay accounted for more than $2 of every $3 spent on contactless payments in the U.S.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Facebook Q4 earnings preview: What to expect

You know what's really cool? $10 billion.
Facebook is expected to post earnings of $0.48 per share on revenue of $3.77 billion when it reports December quarter earnings on Wednesday afternoon, according to analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. If the social network comes anywhere near that estimate, it will top $10 billion in annual revenue for the first time in its history.

See also: Facebook in 2015: Drones, messaging and virtual reality, oh my!

The company's total revenue for 2014 — nearly $12.5 billion based on current analyst estimates — is all the more impressive when you consider that Facebook just topped $5 billion in annual revenue for the first time in 2012.
Monetizing on mobile, once viewed as Facebook's achilles heal in the lead-up to its IPO, has turned into a tremendous opportunity fueling that revenue growth. Analysts expect mobile ads revenue to top $2.3 billion, growing by as much as 90% year-over-year. Current projections are for mobile ads to account for two-thirds of total ad revenue, roughly the same as the previous quarter.
"We believe over the next two years, mobile advertising revenue could represent ~80% of total advertising revenue for Facebook," Arvind Bhatia, an analyst with Sterne Agee, wrote in an investor note this week. "Facebook’s recently launched mobile ad network called Facebook Audience Network will likely prove critical to this. In fact, Facebook has made it clear it wants to be the very fabric of the mobile ecosystem."
As with other recent earnings reports, analysts and investors will be listening in for any clues about progress toward monetizing Instagram and WhatsApp, which recently topped 300 million users and 700 million users, respectively, and perhaps to a lesser extent, Facebook Messenger. There may also be talk around Facebook's video efforts, which have ramped up in recent months, especially in light of news this week that competitors Twitter and Snapchat are both doubling down on native video experiences as well.
Facebook stock hit a new all-time high at the end of last year, driven in part by strong growth on mobile and investor optimism for new revenue opportunities.

FB data by YCharts

Microsoft's Windows Reboot Could Be Legendary

I was one of the launch analysts for Windows 95, and the launch of that product is widely held -- including by Bill Gates -- as the company's pinnacle. No launch before or since ever came close to that launch, and I remain amazed that no one, including Apple or Microsoft, has ever really attempted to duplicate that effort.

Windows 10 has the potential to be even greater than Windows 95 -- but potential alone won't a legendary product make. It'll come down to execution, not just on the product, but on the launch itself.
I'll close with my product of the week: the Microsoft HoloLens, which has the potential to take us one big step closer to something we call the Singularity.

Remembering Windows 95

The Windows 95 launch cuts very close to the heart for me, because Bill Gates and Windows 95 made me as an analyst. Windows 95 is how I got to know Don Clark over at The Wall Street Journal, and that wasn't a good thing, initially -- it almost cost my job.
That was when IBM told me I would be unemployable, and Sun, SGI and Novell all lined up with only one thing on their plate -- to get me fired. That was the year Bill Gates personally stepped in twice -- once to save my job, and the second time my reputation. The Windows 95 launch year is one I'll never forget.
The ramp to the launch was amazing. At one point, I was doing near-daily TV interviews on the product, and the excitement approaching the launch day was bigger than I'd ever seen. I was in one really stupid video where they asked if the product would change my sex life, and I'm exceptionally grateful that Bill Gates himself killed it.
The launch itself was magical -- the clouds in the sky even matched those on the box. With tents spread out across the Microsoft campus, it felt more like a revival meeting than a product launch. (I should point out that Steve Jobs regularly created the same feel but never at this massive scale).
On my return flight, a woman in front of me on the plane stairs forced me to step sideways, causing me to sprain my ankle so badly I couldn't walk. That became a harbinger for the support disaster that likely kept Microsoft from making the same mistake again. You see, after the launch, virtually everyone who could make a decision went on vacation, and to keep the support lines short, the woman who headed support gave those holding the busy signal. Millions went from ecstatic to pissed off overnight, but that wasn't the fault of the product or launch team (except maybe the vacation part).
However, Windows 95 was the last time I saw Microsoft bring out a product as a company, not a division, with marketing dialed in from the beginning. The company was customer-focused back then, and the user's needs were a primary driver. And Brad Chase and Brad Silverberg were running the show under the legendary Bill Gates. It was an amazing time. Who knew it would go downhill from there?

Windows 10

During my visit with Microsoft last week, I was reminded of Windows 95 in that there was a huge focus on explaining several crucial things: that marketing was again being built into the front of the process rather than being an afterthought; that the user was again front and center for the requirements; and that people were again asking the question "why," as in "why are we doing this?" -- as opposed to just focusing on creative ways to explain "what we are doing."
You see, in companies filled with engineers, products tend to become science projects more than things for real people. Folks do things because they can -- because they want to see what will happen or simply because they want to showcase they have the authority, regardless of how foolish they are. So increasingly, you get products that suck. During the 2000s, that was the case at Microsoft. (We can the same about most of the products Google built rather than bought during that decade.)
Satya Nadella's Microsoft is a very different company, though. People are working together again, engineers aren't playing the "who can be the biggest wrong assh*le" game anymore, and the product looks amazing as a result.
The user interface is an improvement over Windows 7, not just different. It moves between tablet and PC mode when the user moves, not based on whether Office is in use or not, and it understands that users do stupid things and has their back. For instance, if you get a new PC with McAfee and let the subscription expire, rather than allowing you to be unprotected, Windows Defender will automatically step in and cover your butt.
Xbox (which I've long believed was one of the stupidest things Microsoft ever did, because it took gaming off its premier Windows offering and put it on a product initially sold at a massive loss) now is part of Windows. Instead of competing, it enhances the experience.
Windows 10 gets rid of the competing mail clients. It gives you a browser choice that makes sense -- legacy for old stuff, and advanced for folks who like stuff cool and new -- rather than the choice in Windows 8 that never made sense. It comes with good core productivity capability, so it works out of the box and Office looks like it belongs on the product.
It is vastly easier than any prior Windows product to upgrade too, and it will be even easier to upgrade going forward. Oh, and finally, for those on Windows 7 or newer platforms, it's free.
Even the OEMs are excited about this offering -- and too often at this point, they are just hoping the new version of Windows won't hurt sales so much that it costs them their job.

Wrapping Up: Windows 10 Is Windows 95's Brother by Another Mother

In short, in terms of potential, Windows 10 goes well beyond Windows 95's capabilities. Granted, everything is relative and we have higher expectations now -- but even taking that into account, Windows 10 feels well above Windows 95 in terms of capability. The excitement hasn't hit yet, though. At this time during the Windows 95 rollout, there was much more.
Things move faster now than they did two decades ago -- exactly two decades ago -- so there is still time, but Microsoft has to step up. Windows 10 is good enough for people to line up for. Within six months, we'll see if Microsoft can step up with a launch program that is worthy of this product's potential.

Product of the Week: Microsoft HoloLens

With the Microsoft HoloLens, I really don't think Microsoft knows what it has created. This is potentially even more disruptive than the Apple II was in its day -- but as with the Apple II, folks are looking at the small picture, not the big one.
Not that the small picture isn't interesting. The ability to place and eventually 3D-print things by blending the real and he virtual into an advanced augmented reality experience is pretty amazing. However, it pales against the potential this has to completely change how we use a computer.
Today, whether we are using a smartphone, tablet or PC, we have little human/machine integration. We use a keyboard or mouse, and we have to look at a display, which gets in the way of doing anything else we otherwise might be doing. The use of the computer disrupts life -- it doesn't integrate with it. The Hololens is the next major step in human/machine integration.

Microsoft HoloLens

You interface with it largely with speech and gestures -- no keyboard. The display moves where you look, and your eyes move the cursor. Because it is on your head and always in view, you can use it seamlessly to augment what you are doing by getting directions, having it tell you information you need when you need it, and showing you things all without having to change whatever else you may be doing.
It eventually will be able to enhance your vision and your memory, allow you to instantly see what others see from their perspective and them from yours, and it will be able to provide real-time advice on anything -- from how to cook or fix something to what to say to a new date (including recalling her name, something I once forgot out of nervousness).
It'll show you worlds that are limited only by imagination and help you build those worlds, and it will protect you and those around you by calling help or allowing others with the device to help you with the power of the Web or a remote specialist, always available to assist.
In short, the Microsoft HoloLens has the power to change computing as we know it, and to change us in unique, powerful and amazingly beneficial new ways. It could be the product of the century, but for now, the Microsoft Hololens is my product of the week.

Twitter to introduce 30-second video, group message features

 

 

SAN FRANCISCO: Mobile video uploads and group direct messages are coming to Twitter, as the social network tries to counter competitors by expanding its features, the Guardian reported on Tuesday.
The new video functionality will let users upload 30-second non-looping videos, which can be played directly in their timelines. The company describes it as existing “alongside” rather than instead of Twitter-owned six-second video service Vine.
The group direct messaging feature will allow users to carry out private chats with multiple friends away from their public timelines. The change comes after other recent improvements to DM functionality, including the ability to send pictures.
In a blogpost announcing the changes, Twitter said: “We designed our camera to be simple to use so you can capture and share life’s most interesting moments as they happen.”
“In just a few taps you can add a video to unfolding conversations, share your perspective of a live event, and show your everyday moments instantly, without ever having to leave the app,” it said. “Viewing and playing videos is just as simple: videos are previewed with a thumbnail and you can play them with just one tap.”
 

Apple iPhone sales trample expectations as profit sets global record

An iPhone 6 phone is seen on display at the Fifth Avenue Apple store on the first day of sales in Manhattan, New York September 19, 2014.

(Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) quarterly results smashed Wall Street expectations with record sales of big-screen iPhones in the holiday shopping season and a 70 percent rise in China sales, powering the company to the largest profit in corporate history.
The company sold 74.5 million iPhones in its fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 27, while many analysts had expected fewer than 70 million. Revenue rose to $74.6 billion from $57.6 billion a year earlier.
Profit of $18 billion was the biggest ever reported by a public company, worldwide, according to S&P analyst Howard Silverblatt. Apple's cash pile is now $178 billion, enough to buy IBM (IBM.N) or the equivalent to $556 for every American.
Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said the Cupertino, California-based company would release its next product, the Apple Watch, in April.
Shares rose about 5 percent to $114.90 in after-hours trade.
Daniel Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Apple-shareholder Synovus Trust Company in Atlanta, Georgia, said that the report was a good sign in a quarter where big tech companies such as IBM and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) have disappointed.
Apple Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri told Reuters in an interview that the company did not sell more iPhones in China than the United States, despite some earlier predictions by research analysts.
But the big-screen iPhone 6 and 6 plus drove revenues in China were up 70 percent in the quarter from a year earlier. The company's success in the competitive Chinese market can be attributed to its partnership with China Mobile Ltd (0941.HK), the largest global mobile carrier, and the appeal of the larger screen size of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
Maestri said he does not expect Apple to struggle because of China's slipping economic growth. "We haven't seen a slowdown," he added.
Maestri also said the company doubled iPhone sales in Singapore and Brazil.
Apple will reach 40 company stores in greater China by mid-2016, Maestri told analysts on a conference call.
Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, also lauded a 14 percent rise in unit sales of Apple Macintosh computers and sales of older iPhone models.
Apple was well positioned for the current quarter in China, she added, which will include the Chinese New Year holiday and reflect Apple's attempts to sell through new channels.
Apple reported net profit of $18.02 billion, or $3.06 per diluted share, compared with $13.07 billion, or $2.07 per share, a year earlier. That topped expectations of $2.60 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Analysts had expected revenue of $67.69 billion.
Maestri said that Apple faced "a clear headwind" from the strong dollar but that it had included the challenge in its forecasts. Apple predicted revenue of $52 billion to $55 billion in its fiscal second quarter, compared with Wall Street's average target of $53.79 billion.
Cook said that the company's new mobile payment service, Apple Pay, which lets customer buy products from select merchants with their phones, was in its "first inning" and the company would consider adding new features as it looked at expanding outside the United States.
(Reporting by Christina Farr in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru and Caroline Valetkevitch in New York; Editing by Peter Henderson, Ted Kerr and Lisa Shumaker)

Facebook and Instagram Go Down While Twitter Explodes

Users around the world reported that they could not access either site

Social-networking site Facebook went down briefly Tuesday, along with its subsidiary Instagram.

The company issued a statement saying, “Sorry, something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can,” according to Reuters.
Users across the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia said they were unable to access either site for upwards of 30 minutes.
Several took to social-media rival Twitter to voice their frustrations.
Rotten Tomatoes took advantage of the moment to make a punning comparison to a cheap Colin Farrell movie.

 

Technology Facebook Outage Brings Jokes, Marketing Pitches to Twitter

For many, the hour without a Facebook was a golden opportunity for a joke — or a marketing pitch — on other social media sites.

Facebook said the outage that made its sites inaccessible worldwide for about an hour Tuesday was self-inflicted.

Users in the Eastern U.S. itching to post photos of the big snowstorm had to turn to other outlets, while companies, like the dating app Tinder, that depend on Facebook and Instagram to reach their customers, had to wait.

For many, though, the outage was just a blip, a sign that while Facebook has become an important communications tool for some 1.35 billion people worldwide, a temporary shutdown does not have the same crippling effect as the shutoff of electricity, water, the Internet or a city's public transit system.

It's also a lesson, perhaps, in what happens when we rely on a free service that, while very stable, does not promise 100 percent uptime. Facebook's last significant outage was nearly 5 years ago.

People took to Twitter to complain and joke about the outage, while companies such as Coca-Cola took it as a viral marketing opportunity. The hashtag "#facebookdown" generated a cascade of tweets, including an image of a T-shirt with the words "I survived #facebookdown."

"Kind of like the snowstorm that was supposed to cripple New York City, this didn't have much of an impact on Facebook," said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with research firm eMarketer. "It was over quickly, it was easily fixed and life came back to normal fairly quickly."

She added that while it's possible that companies that rely on Facebook's login tool to let people access their sites and apps lost a "little bit of traffic" or a tiny bit of ad revenue, for the length of time that the outage lasted it's unlikely to have had a big effect.

"Life will go on, I think we'll all survive," Williamson said.

More than 7,500 websites had services affected by the Facebook outage, according to Web tracking firm DynaTrace.

Users of PCs and Facebook's mobile app reported they lost access in Asia, the United States, Australia and the U.K. Facebook-owned Instagram was also inaccessible.

Facebook said the disruption was caused by a technical change and wasn't a cyberattack. "This was not the result of a third party attack but instead occurred after we introduced a change that affected our configuration systems," its statement said.

The temporary loss of service may be Facebook's biggest outage since Sept. 24, 2010, when it was down for about 2.5 hours.

Outages were more common in the site's early years, when its backup systems and data centers were not as robust as they are now. These days, the Menlo Park, California-based company routinely tests its infrastructure and sometimes even takes down part of it intentionally to check its resilience.

On its website for developers, Facebook said the "major outage" lasted one hour.

The outage occurred at midday in Asia, and after Facebook was restored, some users reported that the site was loading slowly or not functioning fully.

Lizard Squad, a group notorious for attention-seeking antics online, claimed responsibility on Twitter for the outages, but Facebook said this was not the case.

Apple’s China Strategy Pays Off With Surge in Earnings

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple is famous for setting trends.

In China, though, Apple has found success by following one.

For years, Apple rivals like Samsung offered large-screen smartphones. Although the bigger phones sold well in China, Apple held off on releasing a similar model, and the country remained a weak spot. But Apple introduced its own versions last September, and now the sales spigot is wide open.

The company on Tuesday reported $16.1 billion in revenue from “greater China” — which includes mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan — in its first fiscal quarter, up 70 percent from the same period a year ago. Canalys, a research firm, estimates that Apple is now the No. 1 smartphone maker in China.

The success in China helped push Apple to a blockbuster first quarter, increasing overall profit to $18 billion and revenue to $74.6 billion. In the same quarter a year ago, the company had profit of $13.1 billion and revenue of $57.6 billion.

Overall sales of iPhones shattered analysts’ predictions. Apple said it sold 74.5 million iPhones in the quarter, as many as 12 million more than expected.

Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said on the company’s earnings call that excitement in China over the new phones, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, was “phenomenal.” He also noted that the new iPhones had attracted the highest number of customers who switched from an Android device.

“It’s an incredible market,” Mr. Cook said. “People love Apple products. And we are going to do our best to serve the market.”

Not too long ago, sales of Apple products in China were slipping. Last October, Apple was the No. 6 smartphone maker in China, trailing its Asian rivals Huawei, Lenovo, Samsung, Xiaomi and Yulong, according to Canalys.

For Apple, gaining a foothold in overseas markets like China has become increasingly vital. Its growth has slowed over the last few years as the smartphone market has become saturated in the United States and parts of Europe.

Over the last couple of years, Apple has made a series of moves to compete more aggressively in China. In late 2013, it reached an important deal to sell iPhones with China Mobile, the largest wireless network in the world, with more than 800 million subscribers. The company also continues to build its operations in greater China and has plans to open 25 new stores over the next two years, adding to the 15 stores it currently operates in the region.

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In 2013, Apple released the iPhone 5C, a lower-cost version of the smartphone that analysts thought would help increase its growth in China. But the latest numbers suggest that consumers in China wanted bigger iPhones, not cheaper ones.

In an interview, Luca Maestri, Apple’s chief financial officer, declined to say how many iPhones were sold specifically in China. But he said that iPhone sales in greater China were up 83 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago.

Mr. Maestri also noted that iPhone sales were still higher in the United States than in China. Some earlier news reports had predicted that Apple’s sales in China would surpass sales in the United States.

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Most of Apple’s revenue in the quarter came from the Americas, where Apple reported $30.6 billion in sales. Mr. Cook recently said it was only a matter of time until most of Apple’s sales came from China.

The company’s overall revenue, almost $75 billion, easily beat analysts’ average estimates of $67.7 billion, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters. The company’s shares, which have gained more than 50 percent in the last year, rose more than 5 percent in after-hours trading.

Ben Bajarin, a technology analyst for Creative Strategies, said Apple’s earnings showed that it did not hurt for the company to be late to releasing larger smartphones.

“Everybody was saying they’re losing share — maybe they’ll never get it back,” he said. “Sure enough, there was tremendous demand. The fact that they weren’t first didn’t really hurt their customer base.”

Strong sales of Macs also contributed to the company’s growth. The company said it sold 5.5 million of the computers in the quarter, up from 4.8 million in the same quarter of last year.

But iPad sales continued to shrink. The company sold 21.4 million iPads in the quarter, down 18 percent from 26 million in the quarter a year ago.

Mr. Maestri said it had become clear that customers were upgrading to newer models of iPads more slowly than they upgraded iPhones. But he said the company was pleased with overall customer satisfaction with iPads.

“We feel confident about the future of iPad,” he said.

On the earnings call, Mr. Cook said he continued to be optimistic about the iPad, partly because there were still many customers buying iPads for the first time. Over 70 percent of people buying iPads in China are first-time buyers, he said.

Increasingly, though, the company’s fortunes rely on the iPhone. Sales of iPhones accounted for 69 percent of the company’s revenue in the quarter, up from 56 percent in the same quarter a year ago.

“A bet on Apple is increasingly a bet on the iPhone,” said Toni Sacconaghi, a financial analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. “The good news is, iPhones are great. The bad news is, right now that’s driving over 100 percent of the revenue growth of the company.”

Many investors would like to see Apple’s revenue be more diversified, which is raising some of the expectations for Apple’s coming entry into the smartwatch market.

On Tuesday, the company said its smartwatch, the Apple Watch, was set to be released in April.

Mr. Cook said he had been wearing his Apple Watch every day.

“I can’t live without it,” he said.

How to backup an iPhone: back up iPhone contacts, photos and more

Make sure that all your precious photos, videos, and documents don’t get lost by following these simple steps to backing them up. We’ll show you how iCloud or iTunes could give you real peace of mind.

Our iPhones are probably one of the most important possessions we have. Putting aside the financial worth of each device, these little slabs of silicon and glass have become the central repositories for our memories, be they photographs of once-in-a-lifetime events or important documents. Making sure that all of this precious data is backed up somewhere is a crucial safeguard against theft, damage, or leaving our worlds behind on the backseat of a taxi. Then of course there’s the more joyous occasions of upgrading to a newer model and being able to transfer all of your data quickly and simply by using a backup.
Thankfully there are many ways to store your information on the web or your personal computer, all of which are free and easy to use. Apple’s iCloud service means your iPhone can constantly sync important data with web-based servers, and iTunes also offers a simple one-click backup facility. There are also several third-party services that offer a variety of options these days. As a safety precaution we recommend using at least two of available solutions, because if the worst happens and your backup is somehow corrupted, you’ll have another version available elsewhere.

How to backup an iPhone: Using iCloud

One of the simplest ways to backup the data on your iPhone is to use Apple’s own iCloud service. Each Apple ID has 5GB of storage available, in which you can store bookmarks, contacts, calendars, iCloud documents, mail message, notes, and your iCloud photo library. If you take lots of pictures and videos then you may need to upgrade the storage capacity, as it will fill up pretty quickly. At the moment Apple offers 20GB for £0.79 p/m, up to 1TB for £14.99 p/m. While iCloud backups are very handy, they’re best used in conjunction with iTunes, to cover all bases. iCloud backups are very easy to set up and once done they will automatically run in the background each time your device is plugged in and on a Wi-Fi connection.
To use iCloud backups you’ll need an iCloud account, which are usually created when you first setup your device. Read: How to get an Apple ID

On your iPhone go to Settings > iCloud > Backup and you’ll see the option to toggle on iCloud Backup. That’s it, you’re good to go. Now your phone will automatically look after your data without any need for you to get involved.

How to backup an iPhone: Using your PC and iTunes

Having a local backup is always a good idea, as it means you at least know that you have a copy that you control, rather than trusting to the all powerful cloud. Making a local backup is very easy thanks to that old favourite iTunes. Years ago you would have regularly plugged your iPhone into your PC to sync music, but with the advent of iTunes Match it’s maybe fallen a little out of favour. iTunes still remains a very useful piece of software though, and will give you a complete backup in a matter of minutes. Read our Guide to using iTunes Match.
First off, plug a connector cable into your Mac or PC and then your iPhone. In the top left hand corner, under the play controls, you’ll see a little icon of a phone appear, click this and you’ll be taken to the menu for your device. Ensuring that Summary is selected in the left hand column, you’ll now have three boxes in the main pane, the middle of which is entitled Backups.
There are two main sections - automatic and manual - and usually the iPhone is set to automatically backup to iCloud. If you prefer that each time you connect your phone to the PC it would immediately create a new, locally stored, backup, then click the ‘This computer’ option below. Moving over to the right hand side of the box there is the option to create a backup manually. Clicking the ‘Back Up Now’ button will do exactly that, with the length of time it takes dependant on how full your phone’s storage is at that moment. Next to this is the Restore from Backup option, which is where you would head if you wanted to reinstall everything after replacing your iPhone.
You may be asking yourself exactly what is included in the backup? Any photos currently on the device will be stored, as will contacts, calendar accounts, Safari bookmarks, notes, call history, profiles, and several other types of data. Apple has an extensive list of all the things contained in a backup, which you can read here.
The iTunes backup doesn’t make extra copies of any media files though, so films, music, and apps bought from iTunes will need to be downloaded again from the site or your PC.

Apple expected to ring up big iPhone sales

he sales momentum should continue into the spring, with the expected launch of Apple Watch.
Gillis expects Apple to sell 30 million Apple Watches in the first four quarters they are available. By comparison, 19.4 million iPads and 11.6 million iPhones were sold in their first years, respectively.