Samsung Electronics reported overall Q4 operating profits of 5.29 trillion won (4.9billion)—a36percentyear−over−yeardrop—butitsMobiledivisionsuffereda64.2percentdropinprofits,fallingfrom5 billion in the year ago quarter to $1.8 billion in the December quarter.
How does that affect Samsung as a whole?
At the beginning of 2014, Samsung IM was contributing 70 percent of the company’s profits, primarily from smartphone sales, specifically from sales of its higher end Galaxy S and Note devices. Mobile division sales, which also include Samsung’s Chromebooks, Windows products and Galaxy Tab tablets, currently account for only 37 percent of the company’s profits.
How does that compare to Apple’s profits?
Apple’s overall operating profits for the quarter were $24.2 billion, up 36.9 percent over the year ago quarter. That means Samsung Mobile is now earning less than 7.5 percent of Apple’s profits while still shipping more phone units.
Android password manager vulnerability unpatched after almost two years
Almost two years later, the threat remains viable in at least some, if not all, of the apps originally analyzed. An app recently made available on Google Play, for instance, has no trouble divining the passwords managed by LastPass, one of the leading managers on the market, as well as the lesser-known KeePassDroid. With additional work, it’s likely that the proof-of-concept ClipCaster app would work seamlessly against many other managers, too, said Xiao Bao Clark, the Australia-based programmer who developed it. While ClipCaster does nothing more than display the plaintext of passwords that LastPass and KeePassDroid funnel through Android handsets, a malicious app with only network privileges could send the credentials to an attacker without the user having any idea what was happening.
The vulnerability has been known since early 2013 but app developers are not keeping users informed of it:
“Besides the insecurity of it, what annoyed me was that I was never told any of this while I was signing up or setting up the LastPass app,” Clark wrote in an e-mail. “Instead, I got the strong impression from LastPass that everything was very secure, and I needn’t worry about any of it. If they at least told users the security issues using these features brings, then the users themselves could decide on their own trade-off between usability and security. Not mentioning it at all strikes me as disingenuous.”
The finger is pointed at Android for the source of this vulnerability:
As already alluded, the threat stems from the use of the Android clipboard, which acts as a temporary cache for text that is being copied and pasted, either within the same app or from one app to another. Android has no official programming interface that secures the clipboard. By design, its contents are available to any app installed on the phone, from the highest privileged banking app to one with no privileges at all. (ClipCaster, for instance, requires no permissions.) Siegrist rightly noted that any password manager that makes use of the Android clipboard—and there are plenty, including LastPass—is vulnerable.
Both the app developers and Android should be making users aware of such a vulnerability so that they can take measure to avoid having their passwords from being stolen.
Plus (pun intended), Morgan Stanley estimates that the 6 Plus’ profit margins are as much as 61% higher than that of the iPhone 6. From data we have collected and corroborating third party reports, it seems China’s ravenous appetite for the 6 Plus will buoy Apple’s next reported earnings.
Apple’s iOS devices accounted for 78% of record setting Cyber Monday mobile sales
Mobile phones and tablets accounted for 21.9 percent of online orders on Monday, a major increase over last year’s 15.9 percent mobile proportion. On Black Friday, the firm said the mobile devices made up an even greater 30.3 percent of orders.
“The vast majority of mobile shopping happened on Apple devices over the weekend – 78%,” the firm noted, “while only 21.6% happened on Android devices.”
As we have seen before, iOS generates more revenue than Android. This trend could be due to the different type of users the platforms attract.
Putting words in Steve Jobs’ mouth continues apace
BGR’s headline: “Here’s why Apple’s upcoming ‘iPad Pro’ will be a failure, according to Steve Jobs”
So, does Boy Genius Report believe its own headline? Seem like it doesn’t. Strange that it’s the headline, then. The page title is “iPad Pro Specs Leak: 12.9-inch iPad may have a stylus accessory.” Which is less salacious and therefore completely useless. No one’s reading that! Put the ghost of Steve Jobs in the title and now you’ve got something baby! Something wrong on many, many levels, sure, but something.
Click-baiting headline for an article that does not understand the difference between stylus as a tool and stylus as the main interface.
In 2010 following the launch of the iPad, Steve Jobs famously said “if you see a stylus, they blew it.” His comment targeted earlier tablet products that relied on styluses for input as opposed to focusing on finger input.
Macalope:
True! And guess what? He was right. If you need a stylus for the general operation of a tablet, it’s junk. Is a stylus good to have in certain use cases? Oh, guess what again, that’s a different question.