Apple’s market cap drops below $400 billion for the first time in ages

Apple’s stock has a taken a hit and the company’s market cap have dropped below $400 billion for the first time since January 2012. The Cupertino’s stock has been wobbling ever since the launch of the fifth-generation iPhone and according to few reports, the investors are concerned about the company’s contracting profit margins.

Apple’s upcoming products and innovations along with the superabundance of the assets have all raised a cause of concern among the investors, resulting in the drop of company’s share price and overall market cap.

Apple’s market cap saw a high of $650 billion in September 2012, but has been dropping ever since and the stock is now trading at the same value as in January 2012. Apple’s market cap is currently at $395.88 billion, but analysts expect the company to bounce back over the $400B mark in the upcoming weeks.

A cool infographic shows the rise of Samsung to the top of smartphone food chain

Over the past several years, Samsung has gradually risen to become one of the top ten most valuable brands, and one of the top dogs in the mobile realm.



To get a taste of how exactly they accomplished this, dutch site typhone.nl has created a nifty new infographic of Samsung’s evolution.




Thanks, arturo, for sending this in!

A glitch found on Samsung Galaxy devices, allows you to bypass the lock screen for a brief moment

A newly discovered vulnerability on Samsung Galaxy devices, allows you to bypass the lock screen. The security breach lets you have a sneak peak at the home screen of the smartphone and the flaw does not expose any sensitive data on the device. 

The latest security breach was found on the Samsung Galaxy Note II and Galaxy S III smartphones, but the glitch might be present in other smartphones running on Android 4.1.2 OS. The hack can be performed by accessing the emergency call menu from the lock screen.

The listing of the user’s ICE emergency contacts list and by pressing the home button, allows the screen to be displayed for a brief period, which allows the users to launch any of the applications present on the home screen. Of course, you need to have fast hands, but nevertheless the application can be launched.

Apparently, the glitch also allows you to call someone from the contacts list by using the Direct Dial widgets. The hack is reported to be working on the Samsung Galaxy S III with Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and one can expect the same method to work on other Galaxy devices, provided they are running on Android 4.1.2.

HTC One promo video shows off Zoe’s capabilities

HTC’s Zoe is one of the defining new features of Sense 5.0, which will debut as the company’s One flagship hits stores.



Тhe Taiwanese are quite proud of it and have made a special promo video using exclusively the powers of Zoe.
We talked a lot about Zoe in our extensive HTC One preview. It’s essentially a gallery on steroids and every time you press the shutter key, the phone captures up to 20 full res shots and a 3 second video that are later used for the special features such as Events and Sequence shots.
Anyhow, here’s the video itself, which makes use of photos and clips taken from the phone’s Singapore announcement event on February 25.

Sony aiming to become 3rd overall smartphone manufacturer

The current top spots amongst smartphone manufacturers are taken up by Samsung and Apple, who combine for the lion's share of the market, making other manufacturers seem like they're arguing over scraps.

Nevertheless, Sony hopes to take over that elusive 3rd position, which, as of December 31st, was occupied by China-based manufacturer Huawei with its 4.9% markeshare. The rankings, provided by market research company IDC, put Sony at 4.5% for the same period, while ZTE, another emerging smartphone manufacturer from China, is next at 4.3%.

So, it's obvious that the race for 3rd place is neck-and-neck, which means that we should see a significant number of affordable devices from Sony, to rival those released by the Chinese for emerging markets.