Month: September 2016

BlackBerry CEO John Chen has been hinting at this move for almost a year now: today BlackBerry announced it will no longer design hardware. Say goodbye to all the crazy hardware QWERTY devices, ultra-wide phones, and unique slider designs.

Speaking to investors, BlackBerry CEO John Chen described the move as a "pivot to software," saying "The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners. This allows us to reduce capital requirements and enhance return on invested capital." The "Outsourcing to partners" plan is something we've already seen with the "BlackBerry" DTEK50, which was just a rebranded Alactel Idol 4.

Chen is now betting the future of the company on software, saying "In Q2, we more than doubled our software revenue year over year and delivered the highest gross margin in the company's history. We also completed initial shipments of BlackBerry Radar, an end-to-end asset tracking system, and signed a strategic licensing agreement to drive global growth in our BBM consumer business."

Hello Destiny

With over 30 million players registered since its 2014 launch, Destiny is one of the most popular shooters on consoles today. Now it looks like PC players will be able to get in on the action with upcoming sequel Destiny 2, according to online reports.

The rumor got going yesterday with a NeoGAF poster citing "somebody that works at Activision" as confirming that PC support for the sequel was being communicated to Activision employees. That tidbit was then fleshed out by Kotaku's Jason Schreier, who says he heard about the PC plans "earlier this year" and cites "several sources" in confirming the information. Schreier seems well-positioned to know, too, as he previously wrote an in-depth report on Destiny's messy development history.

The reported addition of PC support will likely be aided by the fact that Activision and Bungie officially abandoned the last-generation consoles (i.e., Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) for Destiny's last Rise of Iron expansion. That likely means any sequel won't have to worry about scaling back the PC experience so it also works on console hardware that is over a decade old at this point. The upcoming launch of the PS4 Pro and Xbox's Project Scorpio should also ensure that the development team can target relatively high-end PCs alongside the console market.

Enlarge / What the view of Mars might look like from inside the Interplanetary Transport System. (credit: SpaceX)

Elon Musk finally did it. Fourteen years after founding SpaceX, and nine months after promising to reveal details about his plans to colonize Mars, the tech mogul made good on that promise Tuesday afternoon in Guadalajara, Mexico. Over the course of a 90-minute speech Musk, always a dreamer, shared his biggest and most ambitious dream with the world—how to colonize Mars and make humanity a multiplanetary species.

And what mighty ambitions they are. The Interplanetary Transport System he unveiled could carry 100 people at a time to Mars. Contrast that to the Apollo program, which carried just two astronauts at a time to the surface of the nearby Moon, and only for brief sojourns. Moreover, Musk’s rocket that would lift all of those people and propellant into orbit would be nearly four times as powerful than the mighty Saturn V booster. Musk envisions a self-sustaining Mars colony with at least a million residents by the end of the century.

Beyond this, what really stood out about Musk’s speech on Tuesday was the naked baring of his soul. Considering his mannerisms, passion, and the utter seriousness of his convictions, it felt at times like the man's entire life had led him to that particular stage. It took courage to make the speech, to propose the greatest space adventure of all time. His ideas, his architecture for getting it done—they’re all out there now for anyone to criticize, second guess, and doubt.

(credit: Getty Images)

Amazon is already in the business of delivering packages to your door as quickly as possible, but now the company seems intent on cutting out shipping middlemen. A report by The Wall Street Journal claims that Amazon is building its own shipping service to replace FedEx and UPS, giving it more control over its packages and possibly allowing it to ship packages from other retailers.

Amazon has said its own delivery services would be meant to increase its capacity during busier times of the year, like the upcoming holiday season. However, "current and former Amazon managers and business partners" claim that the company's plans are bigger than that. The initiative dubbed "Consume the City" will eventually let Amazon "haul and deliver" its own packages and those of other retailers and consumers. That delivery network would also directly compete with the likes of UPS and FedEx.

It makes sense that Amazon would want to sell, ship, and deliver orders on its own. The report estimates that the company spent $11.5 billion on shipping just last year, amounting to 10.8 percent of sales. The shipping process is currently a bit convoluted: packages from Amazon warehouses get sent to one of two shipping routes, either FedEx or UPS, or to a sorting facility that lumps all packages with similar zip codes together. FedEx and UPS handle its shipments and deliver them to customers, while the packages at the sorting facilities either get delivered via USPS or by Amazon employees themselves. If Amazon were to have control over its shipments over longer distances, it's estimated that the company could save about $3 per package—about $1.1 billion annually.

Enlarge (credit: BusinessKorea)

Samsung's exploding battery nightmare may not yet be over, amid a report from China that a new Galaxy Note 7 burst into flames this week.

A Chinese customer has reported that a Note 7 that he bought this week exploded within 24 hours of acquiring it from an online retailer, causing minor injuries to two fingers and damaging his Apple MacBook.

“We are currently contacting the customer and will conduct a thorough examination of the device in question once we receive it,” the Korean company said in a statement sent to Bloomberg. Samsung, following an earlier Note 7 fire in China, had previously reported that there were no issues with the batteries used in Note 7s sold there.