Apple sued for $5m over new Wi-Fi Assist on iOS 9

                            

Apple has been sued for $5m by a Californian couple who claim that the new WiFi-Assist feature has been eating up their 3G data without their knowledge.

The class action lawsuit accused Apple of "downplaying" the charges that you could accumulate as the result of a new default feature on the new iOS9 software.

The Wifi-Assist feature which was introduced in the iPhone software update iOS 9 last month, is designed to automatically switch your handset's connection from Wi-Fi to cellular data when in an area with poor connection.

According to the lawsuit, which was first discovered by Apple Insider, the couple William Scott Phillips and Suzanne Schmidt Phillips, had to pay excess data charges on both of their iPhone 5s phones after upgrading to iOS 9.

Although Apple did recently create a new support page on its website explaining the implications and details of the Wi-Fi Assist feature in response to complaints about data guzzling, the lawsuit claims that the explanation was too late in their case, and continued to underestimate the potential costs that could be incurred.

According to the complaint, Apple has been sued for unfair competition, false advertising and negligent misrepresentation under California law.

As the data allowance in some phone contracts can be as low as 500MB or 1GB, having the feature activated could technically result in higher bills for users if you use your iPhone to stream music and videos, download and run certain apps and Facetime often.

"With Wi-Fi Assist, you can stay connected to the Internet even if you have a poor Wi-Fi connection. For example, if you're using Safari with a poor Wi-Fi connection and a webpage doesn't load, Wi-Fi Assist will activate and automatically switch to cellular so that the webpage continues to load. You can use Wi-Fi Assist with most apps like Safari, Apple Music, Mail, Maps, and more," the new support page reads.

"Because you'll stay connected to the Internet over cellular when you have a poor Wi-Fi connection, you might use more cellular data. For most users, this should only be a small percentage higher than previous usage."

Bing adds $1 billion to Microsoft's revenue

                             

Microsoft Bing has emerged as the true underdog of search engines.

Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said Thursday that Bing had finally achieved profitability in its firstfiscal quarter of 2016, and that the search engine contributed more than $1 billion to Microsoft's revenue for this quarter.

The last time Microsoft broke down the numbers on Bing, back in 2011, it was bleeding a billion dollars a quarter. And it has remained unprofitable over the last four years.

People were perplexed as to why Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30) kept pouring money into a seemingly dead investment. However, the tech giant now has results to show: Microsoft's search revenue, excluding traffic-acquisition costs, grew 29%.

Much of Bing's success can be attributed to its subtle presence. Not many people may actively log on to Bing, but it's everywhere.

Obviously, Microsoft products push Bing -- Internet Edge and Cortana, the virtual assistant on Windows phones, search through Bing. Plus, Windows 10 was more positively received than it's predecessors, which has helped boost Bing's success.

About 51% of Yahoo (YAHO) searches are powered by Bing. In the last couple of years, Apple(AAPL, Tech30) bid adieu to Google (GOOG) and now the tech giant uses Bing for Siri and the spotlight function on Macbooks as well.

Market share is key in search: With it, advertisers flock to you, and you can charge high rates for ads. But without it, search is a very expensive business.

Bing crossed the 20% market share threshold in search for the first time in March, and currently holds 20.7% of the desktop search engine market share, according to comScore's September 2015 data. Although it trails far behind Google at 63.9%, it trumps Yahoo, the third-best search engine, by 8.1%.

Microsoft posted revenue of $20.4 billion overall for the quarter, down 12% from the same quarter a year ago.

China's Xiaomi's is changing the U.S. too

                                       

Xiaomi is the most important phone manufacturer you've never heard of.

In the rich world, dominated by Apple and Samsung and where even fading brands such as Nokia and Blackberry remain familiar, Xiaomi (pronounced like the "show-" in shower, plus "me") is still largely unknown.

Yet this firm, only 5 years old, has already become a formidable supplier of smartphones in its home market of China (the world's largest), and has begun a remarkably successful campaign of international expansion.

As the firm gets ready to announce its newest model, the Mi5, next week, it is worth tuning in, because more than any company other than Apple, Xiaomi will show us where smartphones -- which is to say the mobile, networked computers we all have in our pockets -- are going worldwide.

China and the United States are the two most important economic powers in the world, and that goes double for technology.

For three decades, that relationship could be summed up as "invented here, produced there." (The iPhone box may say "Designed in California," but it is made in Shenzhen, China.) Xiaomi is one indicator among many that that relationship is over. Its phones are well-designed and cheap, and, more importantly, the firm has been engineered to rely on the Internet, allowing it to build one of the leanest manufacturing and sales operations the world has ever seen.

In a half decade, Xiaomi has gone from a startup focused on making a new mobile phone interface to beating Samsung as the No. 1 phone vendor in the largest market in the world last year.

Xiaomi's products are so popular in China that it has become the third largest ecommerce firm there, just selling its own products. As 2014 closed, the company was valued at $45 billion, an increase in value of something like 18,000% since its first round of fund-raising. It is, by several metrics, the most valuable startup ever.

Xiaomi is widely referred to as the "Chinese Apple," a phrase that carries both a sense of awe at its design prowess and derision at its habits as a design copycat. Both reactions are warranted -- some of their phones look like little else on the market (the Mi3), while others are almost-copies of iPhones (the Mi4).

The firm was founded in Beijing in 2010 by Lei Jun, a computer scientist and charismatic serial entrepreneur now in his mid-40s, who is predictably, often compared to Steve Jobs, both for his energy and brilliance, and for his Jobsian taste in clothes and product launches.

Apple's new billion-dollar business

As if Apple needed the money, Tim Cook is about to add yet another billion-dollar business to the company's war chest.

                                

Apple Music now has 15 million subscribers, Cook announced at a Wall Street Journal technology conference in Laguna Beach, California, on Monday evening. Of those 15 million, 6.5 million are paying customers (the other 8.5 million are still on Apple's free three-month trial). Subscribers pay Apple $10 a month for access to unlimited streaming music.

Do the math: 6.5 million times $10 a month times 12 months in a year = $780 million.

That's not quite a billion, but Apple only needs to convert 1.8 million more of the free-trial subscribers to reach that mark.

And Apple Music, which launched in June, would join the iPhone, iPad, Mac, iTunes and Apple TV as the company's billion dollar businesses. Apple Watch will likely reach that mark this year too.

That's not bad for a brand new streaming music service that is taking on a giant field of strong incumbents that includes Spotify, Pandora (P), Amazon (AMZN, Tech30), Google (GOOGL, Tech30)and a sea of other contenders. Apple Music's success is particularly impressive, considering themixed reviews that Apple Music has received, particularly when compared with Spotify.

"This is completely at odds with the feedback that the service has received where Spotify offers a better experience with a much richer feature set at the same price," noted Richard Windsor, analyst at Edison Investment Research.

Amazon makes second surprise quarterly profit

                        

Internet marketplace giant Amazon reported a surprise profit for the second quarter in a row thanks largely to higher sales in the US.

Amazon, the world's biggest online retailer, reported profits of $79m (£51.3m), compared with a loss of $437m a year ago.

Another period of strong growth in its Amazon Web Services cloud business also contributed to the better result.

Total net sales rose 23.2% to $25.36bn. Its shares were 10% higher.

Worldwide Sales in North America rose 28.3% to $15.01bn.

Amazon has piled on revenue growth since it started up but only recently began booking profits.

Instead, the 20-year old Seattle-based company has reinvested profits in order to expand.

Net sales from Amazon Web Services, which has more than one million active customers in 190 countries, rose more than 78% to $2.09bn in the three months to the end of September.

Amazon has made a strong growth forecast - if vague as to quite how strong - of between 14-25% for the Christmas sales period.

The online retailer reported a $92m profit for the three months to 30 June, surprising investors who had expected another loss.

Google's new parent Alphabet reports steep profit gain

                                 

Alphabet the new parent company of Google, has reported profits up almost 50% for the third quarter.

Net income was $3.98bn, up from $2.74bn for the same quarter last year.

Google's revenue was $18.7 (£12.1bn) compared with $16.5bn.

Growth came mainly from mobile searches and YouTube users.

In August, the company created Alphabet as the new parent company of Google and its other diverse businesses.

In January, Alphabet will report Google's financial numbers separately from the other businesses, which include experiments with self-driving cars, investing in startups, making Internet-connected thermostats and searching for cures to health problems.

The break out of Google's figures are expected to reveal how much money Google would have made if it had not diverted money into chief executive Larry Page's so-called ``moon shots".

Alphabet shares were up 11% to $722.53 in after hours trading - a record, boosted by news of a large share buyback, which will means fewer investors in future who will therefore take a higher portion of any dividend payout.

Square root

YouTube announced on Thursday a plan to offer a monthly commercial free subscription service that will compete with Netflix and Amazon prime.

The company's board approved a plan to buy back a precise $5,099,019,513.59 in shares starting in the fourth quarter.

There has been speculation the number represented the square root of 26 - the number of letters in the alphabet.

Chief financial officer Ruth Porat acknowledged that was indeed the reference during a post-results conference.

Amazon targets 1,114 'fake reviewers' in Seattle lawsuit

                           

Amazon is taking legal action against more than 1,000 people it says have posted fake reviews on its website.

The US online retail giant has filed a lawsuit in Seattle, Washington.

It says its brand reputation is being damaged by "false, misleading and inauthentic" reviews paid for by sellers seeking to improve the appeal of their products.

It comes after Amazon sued a number of websites in April for selling fake reviews.

Amazon says the 1,114 defendants, termed "John Does" as the company does not yet know their real names, offer a false review service for as little as $5 (£3.24) on the website Fiverr.com, with most promising five-star reviews for a seller's products.

"While small in number, these reviews can significantly undermine the trust that consumers and the vast majority of sellers and manufacturers place in Amazon, which in turn tarnishes Amazon's brand," the technology giant said in its complaint, which was filed on Friday.

Amazon said it had conducted an investigation, which included purchasing fake customer reviews on Fiverr from people who promised five-star ratings and offered to allow purchasers to write reviews.

It said it had observed fake review sellers attempting to avoid detection by using multiple accounts from unique IP addresses.

Amazon said the lawsuit was not targeting Fiverr, which is not a defendant in the complaint. Fiverr said it was working with Amazon to resolve the issue.

"Amazon is bringing this action to protect its customers from this misconduct, by stopping defendants and uprooting the ecosystem in which they participate," the lawsuit says.

Anyone, whether they are a customer or not, has the ability to review products sold on Amazon's online store, but the rules of the site forbid paid-for or fictional reviews.