Month: July 2021

Enlarge

Facebook’s ability to track users and show them certain ads appears to be tanking thanks to Apple’s “ask not to track” feature, according to some advertisers.

Apple rolled out the privacy prompt in late April with iOS 14.5. Since then, nearly half of all iOS devices worldwide have at least version 14.5 installed, according to Statcounter, and a vast majority of these devices' users have chosen to deny Facebook and other apps the ability to track them. Nearly three months after the feature's launch, just 17 percent of users worldwide have opted in, according to analytics company Flurry.

The changes could have a significant effect on Facebook’s bottom line. Eric Seufert, an analyst who writes Mobile Dev Memo, forecasts that if only 20 percent of users consent to tracking, Facebook’s revenue could drop 7 percent in the first full quarter that the opt-in prompt is active (the forthcoming third quarter). The company warned back in February that the iOS changes would curtail its ability to track users across the Internet.

• 

  The OnePlus 9 Pro's new camera block. [credit: Ron Amadeo ]

The global chip shortage is claiming another victim.

Android Police reports that OnePlus is canceling the base model of the OnePlus 9 Pro for the US. During the phone's March 2021 announcement, OnePlus said the device would start at $969 for a version with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, but that model is not coming out. Instead, the phone is effectively getting a price increase in the US, as only the $1,069 version with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage will be sold in the US.

OnePlus started selling the $1,069 SKU on time in April, but the $969 version was never for sale in the US and never went up for preorder. OnePlus gave Android Police the following statement:

• 

  A labeled mock-up of the new model shows where everything goes. [credit: Nintendo ]

The recently announced "OLED Model" of the Nintendo Switch will retail for $50 more than the $300 standard model when the upgrade goes on sale on October 1. But the new model is estimated to cost Nintendo only about $10 more to produce, increasing the company's profit margins on the high end of its still-hot gaming hardware.

That cost estimate comes from Bloomberg News' Takashi Mochizuki, who breaks down the estimated production cost increase like this:

• 7-inch Samsung OLED screen: $3 to $5 more per unit (according to Yoshio Tamura, co-founder of industry research firm DSCC)
• 32GB of additional internal storage: $3.50 per unit (according to Omdia’s Akira Minamikawa)
• New dock w/ LAN port and other improvements: "a few dollars more" per unit

Loss leaders and profit centers

Historically, many console-makers have sold their hardware at cost or at a loss in order to attract a bigger audience of potential customers for software (and the console-maker licensing fees that come with it). But while Nintendo initially sold the Wii U at a loss, it has made a profit on every Switch hardware sale since its launch, with estimates at the time suggesting that the $300 system cost about $260 to produce (per unit) in 2017.