Keeping Current
iPhone 7 Is Nixing The Home Button: Reports
Presenting the rumor du jour: In addition to eliminating the headphone port, the upcoming iPhone will reportedly ditch the Home button in favor of...
Keeping Current
Keeping Current
If You Use Smart Bluetooth Locks, You’re Asking To Be Burgled
Demonstrations at a recent hacking conference showed that not all locks are created equal. “Bluetooth-enabled locks are increasingly popular, but an analysis of 16...
Keeping Current
What It’s Like Using A Three-Year-Old Phone
In pursuit of technological perspective, the author turned off his state-of-the-art Nexus 6P and fired up his first-generation 2013 Moto X. The results were...
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T-Mobile Tops In LTE Speed
T-Mobile has surpassed Verizon to become the country’s fastest LTE provider, according to recent tests by Open Signal. Verizon still casts the widest 4G...
Keeping Current
Jet.com Landing At Wal-Mart?
Wal-Mart is reportedly in negotiations to buy Jet.com for an estimated $3 billion.The move would give the discount chain a much needed dot.com boost...
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Best Buy Tweaking Samsung Mobile Shops
About 160 of the branded in-store shops are marked for closure, while another 250 will be expanded, affecting about a third of Best Buy’s...
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Why Amazon Is Phasing Out MSRPs
While some fear the move may precipitate a rise in retails on the No. 1 e-tail site, those in the know argue otherwise. “The...
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Ex-Walmart Exec Credits Personalized Cyber Marketing For Online Growth
Former Walmart marketing VP and current NewCo exec Brian Monahan says personalized digital marketing is what drove the discounter’s online traffic past that of...
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Sears Canada President Leaving After Less Than A Year
Carrie Kirkman will be the second president to leave Sears’ Canadian spin-off in less than a year, following last August’s departure of former Sony,...
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Conn’s Enters Alabama
Conn’s, the multiregional furniture, bedding, appliance and electronics chain, continued its Colorado-to-the-Carolinas expansion with the opening of its first store in Alabama. “A retailer...
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The Silver Lining In Apple’s Core
On the surface, Apple’s third-quarter results were disheartening: Net sales down 15 percent in a second consecutive quarterly decline; lowered earnings; and iPhone shipments...
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Vizio May Be Acquired By LeEco
TWICE reached out to Vizio, but the company declined to comment. “Chinese intern and technology conglomerate LeEco may acquire US TV company Vizio and...
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Verizon To Disconnect Unlimited-Data Users Who Use ‘Extraordinary’ Amounts Of Data
Verizon has decided that merely throttling the data hogs isn’t sufficient enough. “Hey buddy, you, the one who is consuming massive amounts of 4G...
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Comcast Competing Against Top Mobile Carriers For Wireless Spectrum
More evidence that Comcast is getting into the mobile business: It’s one of 62 qualified bidders participating in the FCC’s 600MHz spectrum auction for...
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This Sears Unit Is Still Making Money (And It Has Nothing To Do With Real Estate)
Sears may be in the red, but the retailer’s delivery and installation arm, which provides services to rival chains like Costco, is raking in...
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Blazing-Fast 5G Wireless Is Coming …
… but don’t get rid of your old phone just yet. 5G is a complicated pastiche of different frequencies, technologies and approaches, and a...
Keeping Current
Amazon 3rd-Party Sales Up 30% On Prime Day
Third-party sellers had a field day on Prime Day, when Amazon’s merchants enjoyed a 30 percent boost in sales by midday, driven largely by...
Keeping Current
Prime Day Strategy Guide: How to Make the Most of Amazon Prime Day
This how-to guide provides consumers with the ins and outs of getting the best discounts on Prime Day, including how to know if a...
Keeping Current
Competing On Price Is A Loser’s Game
For brick-and-mortar retailers, creating a visit-worthy showroom experience with creative merchandising, enticing displays and concierge customer services is the ticket to survival in the...
Keeping Current
Google Working On Its Own ‘Android Wear’ Smartwatches: Report
Citing a reliable source, Android Police said that Google is currently building two smartwatches under the Android Wear umbrella for release this year that...
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Amazon Quietly Eliminating List Prices
Amazon is starting to do away with comparison pricing to avoid possible suits over misleading discount claims — and maybe even to raise its...
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Amazon Bookstore Coming To New York
Amazon reportedly plans to open a brick-and-mortar bookstore in Manhattan by early 2019, following a debut storefront in Seattle and a forthcoming location in...
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Small Changes Paved The Way For Best Buy’s Big Turnaround
One of Hubert Joly’s first executive actions upon assuming Best Buy’s helm was to modestly expand employee discounts, which helped secure support for the...
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Tekserve, Precursor To The Apple Store, To Close After 29 Years
With multiple Apple Stores now open in New York, Tekserve’s cult-like consumer base was unable to keep it afloat. Although both the service center...
Keeping Current
Amazon Adding More Dash-Button Brands, But Shoppers Aren’t Biting
Amazon is encouraging more manufacturers to deploy its Dash one-touch Wi-Fi ordering buttons, but estimates suggest that less than half of Dash households have...
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Apple’s iPhones Found to Have Violated Chinese Rival’s Patent
Apple violated the design patents of a Chinese device maker and may have to halt sales of its latest iPhones in Beijing, the city’s...
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Could Sears’ Hometown Spin-Off Fall Any Further?
Shares of Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores have fallen more than 34 percent since November and took another 4.2 percent hit yesterday. “The stock...
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LG Electronics Introduces TVs That Repel Mosquitoes
LG TVs targeted to the India market use ultrasonic sound to repel mosquitoes, but maybe they have a role for use in outdoor TVs...
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Huawei’s Big Plan: No. 1 in Smartphones Globally
Huawei says it’ll take four to five years to surpass Apple and Samsung globally in smartphone market share. “China’s Huawei Technologies Co. is one...
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Best Buy CEO Sells 44% Of Vested Shares
Best Buy’s share price slipped 4 percent on Monday after disclosing that chairman/president/CEO Hubert Joly sold nearly $13 million in company holdings. A spokesman...
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Pioneer mulls first dividend in decade for fiscal 2017
The company anticipates a net profit of 4 billion yen for the year through March 2018, quadrupling from the current fiscal year’s projection thanks to...
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Tony Fadell, head of Alphabet’s Nest Labs unit, is leaving
Fadell founded Nest, acquired by Alphabet/Google for $3.2 billion in 2014,and is often referred to as the Podfather for the major role he played...
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OnePlus CEO Pete Lau Describes China’s Mobile Market Rather Colorfully
Former Oppo exec Pete Lau, now CEO of smartphone start-up OnePlus, described competition within the Chinese mobile market as “very cruel” with “no bottom...
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Xiaomi Gearing Up For U.S. Market
A new patent licensing deal with Microsoft has cleared the way for Chinese mobile-device maker Xiaomi to enter the U.S. market with its highly...
Keeping Current
Could Sears Be Closing Kmart?
Back-of-the-napkin estimates suggest that Sears Holdings will shutter as many as 90 more Kmart stores this summer, which would represent 10 percent of the...
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China’s Xiaomi to Buy 1,500 Patents From Microsoft, Enters Cross-Licensing Agreement
Xiaomi also entered into a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft to preload Microsoft Office and Skype on select smartphones as part of Microsoft’s plans to...
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Developer working on an Xbox One VR game for 2017
A new, more powerful Xbox One—to be announced at E3 next month and released in 2017—will be compatible with the same Oculus Rift headsets...
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Google Wins Copyright Case Against Oracle Over Use Of Java APIs In Android
The use of the Java APIs makes it easier for Android apps, computer programs, and web sites to talk to one another. Software developers hailed...
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LG Electronics To Release 77-Inch LG Signature OLED TV In July At More Than $30,000
Korea’s ET News made a Korean won conversion to the U.S. dollar, and the 65-inch Signature OLED really retails in the U.S. for $7,999,...
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Lenovo admits mobile weakness, says it hasn’t capitalized on Motorola acquisition
For the full fiscal year, the pretax net loss at Lenovo’s mobile unit, which includes TVs and tablets, grew to $644 million compared with...
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AT&T wants to pipe DirecTV straight into your car
AT&T has no timeline yet for the integration, but DirecTV to the car via cellular would provide another revenue source for the company. “AT&T...
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Queen Guitarist Brian May launches Owl VR Viewer
May’s Owl VR kit is designed to be used with any type of smartphone. “Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May has designed and launched...