Facebook is hiring a small team of journalists to help curate breaking news and repair its strained relationship with news publishers, the social media giant announced Tuesday. 



The company says it will employ journalists to select breaking news and top stories that will appear in its soon-to-be-launched feature called News Tab, rather than using algorithms to determine what is shared with its vast network of users.



With the move, Facebook is part of a growing trend in the tech industry. Apple, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat have all employed journalists to help their companies sort through the news and cozy up to news organizations.



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Apple, for example, has used some form of human curation since its subscription Apple News app launched in 2015. In June 2017, the company hired former New York magazine executive editor Lauren Kern as the app’s editor-in-chief. Twitter has also employed some form of human news curation since 2015. 



Even with a team of in-house journalists, companies like Twitter continue to struggle in the fight against misinformation. On Monday, Twitter announcedit will no longer accept advertising from state-controlled media, in large part as a response to the discovery that China ran a misinformation campaign to combat Hong Kong protesters. 



Facebook, facing similar scrutiny for the same Chinese misinformation campaign, said that employing journalists will help “surface more high quality news.”



“Our goal with the News tab is to provide a personalized, highly relevant experience for people,” Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of news partnerships said in a statement sent to Forbes. “The majority of stories people will see will appear in the tab via algorithmic selection. To start, for the Top News section of the tab we’re pulling together a small team of journalists to ensure we’re highlighting the right stories.”



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Facebook says the team will take into account user controls, pages and publisher as well as the news that users interact with or share,&nbsp;and other unnamed signals from its vast network to personalize content.&nbsp;



The company has been under pressure to mitigate its misinformation problem since it was revealed in 2016 that Russian operatives carried out a misinformation campaign in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” on the network, as it was described by special counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.



The Mueller Report found that Russia spent $1.25 million per month on digital advertisements in an effort to sow discord in the U.S. and influence the presidential election. On Monday, Facebook came under fire for taking money from China to spread disinformation about Hong Kong protests.



The social media giant remains an important part of many Americans lives, much more than its rivals Twitter and Snapchat. According to Pew Research, about 69% of American adults use Facebook, and of those who use it, about 74% visit the site once a day. By comparison, only one in five U.S. adults (22%) use Twitter.



According to a survey conducted in 2018, about four in ten (43%) U.S. adults get at least some news from Facebook.



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In January 2017, Facebook hired Campbell Brown, a former television news anchor, to lead its news partnerships team. She remains a key figure in easing the tension between large national news outlets—those who have historically provided an endless trove of free content for the social media giant—and the company.



Publishing executives have slammed Facebook for siphoning advertising revenue away from traditional news publishers while also demanding that those same companies provide content for free. Following years of backlash, the social media company is now trying to work with publishers to create a more even relationship.



Facebook’s news partnership program involves deals that are potentially worth millions of dollars. The Wall Street Journal reports that several news outlets including the Washington Post, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, and the New York Times have discussed receiving as much as $3 million per year to license news content.



The News Tab, which has not been publicly viewed, is being positioned in stark contrast to the company’s Trending Topics news section, which shut down in 2016 following increasing pressure from users.



In 2016, the tech website Gizmodo published an article alleging contractors hired to curate the now-defunct Trending Topics feed were actively suppressing conservative news stories. In a letter to Congress, Facebook said, “We could not reconstruct reliable data logs from before December 2014, so were unable to examine each of the reviewer decisions from that period,” thus suggesting that it may have very well suppressed conservative news when the tool first launched.



-Michael Nuñez; Forbes

gettyimages-904274222-170667a

Facebook Joins Other Tech Giants In Employing Journalists To Curate News

Apple aficionados have learned to wait for the end of its product announcements for the most tantalizing news: the &#8220;one more thing&#8221; that Steve Jobs would toss off, almost as an afterthought, and send the audience into a frenzy.



This time, the finale of Apple&#8217;s long-anticipated announcement launching its Apple TV+ video subscription service Monday in Cupertino — the signature moment that brought some in the audience to their feet — took human form. Oprah Winfrey strode on stage wearing Apple-white and, as the applause died down, responded with a comically understated, &#8220;Hi.&#8221;



Winfrey talked publicly for the first time about her multi-year deal with Apple — a partnership CEO Tim Cook has referenced frequently, if vaguely, on earnings calls with the Wall Street analysts. 



The talk show host turned media executive said she&#8217;s working on a documentary dealing with the sexual harassment and assault in the workplace, currently titled&nbsp;Toxic Labor,&nbsp;and an untitled multi-part series exploring mental health issues.



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&#8220;The Apple platform has allowed me to do what I do in a whole new way — connecting people and taking it to a whole new level, because they have a billion pockets y&#8217;all,&#8221; Winfrey said, a reference to the 1.4 billion Apple devices in use around the world that some analysts believe give its streaming service a competitive edge over established rivals, such as Netflix.



Winfrey was the headliner at an event packed with Hollywood celebrities. Director Steven Spielberg took the stage for his inaugural appearance at an Apple event to talk about his revival of the anthology series&nbsp;Amazing Stories.&nbsp;



Actors Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston touted their new project,&nbsp;The Morning Show,&nbsp;which explores the power and gender dynamics of morning news shows — an opportunity so appealing, the&nbsp;Friends&nbsp;star said it brought her back to TV.



Director J.J. Abrams shared the stage with Grammy-nominated artist Sara Bareilles to tout their collaboration on&nbsp;Little Voice,&nbsp;a show about a young, flawed artist finding her voice. Kumail Nanjiani of the HBO series&nbsp;Silicon Valley&nbsp;will explore immigrant stories in the series&nbsp;Our Little America.&nbsp;Even&nbsp;Sesame Street&nbsp;staple Big Bird stepped into the spotlight to announce a children&#8217;s series called&nbsp;Helpsters.



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Apple spelled out its broad ambitions for the forthcoming streaming service, saying it had partnered with the most accomplished storytellers as it seeks to define Apple TV+ as a home for quality entertainment. The tech company did more showing than telling at the Steve Jobs Theater Monday — each celebrity presentation was notably devoid of trailers.



It&#8217;s possible that the marking impresarios at Apple are holding their promotional firepower until a date closer to the Apple TV+ launch. Today&#8217;s event serves as a placeholder, staking Apple&#8217;s claim on the TV landscape ahead of the Walt Disney Co.&#8217;s April 11 investor briefing to discuss details of the Disney+ streaming service, or the television industry&#8217;s Upfront presentations, showcasing the fall schedule.



The Apple TV+ service will launch sometime this fall — though pricing has not been announced. It will be available through an updated version of the Apple TV app that&#8217;s already on millions of iPhones, iPads and Apple TV streaming devices. A new version of the app, due out in May, will work like a cable-TV service, where users can choose which TV channels they want to pay for and watch, including HBO, Showtime and Starz.



On the same day as Apple&#8217;s big announcement for original programming,&nbsp;Bloomberg reported&nbsp;that Google has cancelled plans for big budget scripted shows on YouTube. Google&nbsp;denied claims&nbsp;from Bloomberg sources that said the tech giant stopped accepting pitches for original scripts, but confirmed plans to launch ad-supported programming alongside YouTube Premium, $11.99-per-month ad-free access to YouTube Music and original content.



-Dawn Chmielewski; Forbes Staff

Apple Holds Product Launch Event In Cupertino

Apple Brings Out Hollywood’s Heavyweights To Kick Off Its Apple TV+ Streaming Service

Software pirates have hijacked technology designed by Apple Inc to distribute hacked versions of Spotify, Angry Birds, Pokemon Go, Minecraft and other popular apps on iPhones.



Illicit software distributors such as TutuApp, Panda Helper, AppValley and TweakBox have found ways to use digital certificates to get access to a program Apple introduced to let corporations distribute business apps to their employees without going through Apple’s tightly controlled App Store.



Using so-called enterprise developer certificates, these pirate operations are providing modified versions of popular apps to consumers, enabling them to stream music without ads and to circumvent fees and rules in games, depriving Apple and legitimate app makers of revenue.



By doing so, the pirate app distributors are violating the rules of Apple’s developer programs, which only allow apps to be distributed to the general public through the App Store. Downloading modified versions violates the terms of service of almost all major apps.



TutuApp, Panda Helper, AppValley and TweakBox did not respond to multiple requests for comment.



Apple has no way of tracking the real-time distribution of these certificates, or the spread of improperly modified apps on its phones, but it can cancel the certificates if it finds misuse.



“Developers that abuse our enterprise certificates are in violation of the Apple Developer Enterprise Program Agreement and will have their certificates terminated, and if appropriate, they will be removed from our Developer Program completely,” an Apple spokesperson told Reuters. “We are continuously evaluating the cases of misuse and are prepared to take immediate action.”



After Reuters initially contacted Apple for comment last week, some of the pirates were banned from the system, but within days they were using different certificates and were operational again.



“There’s nothing stopping these companies from doing this again from another team, another developer account,” said Amine Hambaba, head of security at software firm Shape Security.



Apple confirmed a media report on Wednesday that it would require two-factor authentication &#8211; using a code sent to a phone as well as a password &#8211; to log into all developer accounts by the end of this month, which could help prevent certificate misuse.



Major app makers Spotify Technology SA, Rovio Entertainment Oyj and Niantic Inc have begun to fight back.



Spotify declined to comment on the matter of modified apps, but the streaming music provider did say earlier this month that its new terms of service would crack down on users who are “creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisements” on its service.



Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds mobile games, said it actively works with partners to address infringement “for the benefit of both our player community and Rovio as a business.”



Niantic, which makes Pokemon Go, said players who use pirated apps that enable cheating on its game are regularly banned for violating its terms of service. Microsoft Corp, which owns the creative building game Minecraft, declined to comment.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">SIPHONING OFF REVENUE</h4>



It is unclear how much revenue the pirate distributors are siphoning away from Apple and legitimate app makers.



TutuApp offers a free version of Minecraft, which costs $6.99 in Apple’s App Store. AppValley offers a version of Spotify’s free streaming music service with the advertisements stripped away.



The distributors make money by charging $13 or more per year for subscriptions to what they calls “VIP” versions of their services, which they say are more stable than the free versions. It is impossible to know how many users buy such subscriptions, but the pirate distributors combined have more than 600,000 followers on Twitter.



Electronic Arts&#8217; new game challenges Fortnite



Security researchers have long warned about the misuse of enterprise developer certificates, which act as digital keys that tell an iPhone a piece of software downloaded from the internet can be trusted and opened. They are the centerpiece of Apple’s program for corporate apps and enable consumers to install apps onto iPhones without Apple’s knowledge.



Apple last month briefly banned Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc from using enterprise certificates after they used them to distribute data-gathering apps to consumers.



The distributors of pirated apps seen by Reuters are using certificates obtained in the name of legitimate businesses, although it is unclear how. Several pirates have impersonated a subsidiary of China Mobile Ltd. China Mobile did not respond to requests for comment.



Tech news website TechCrunch earlier this week reported that certificate abuse also enabled the distribution of apps for pornography and gambling, both of which are banned from the App Store.



Since the App Store debuted in 2008, Apple has sought to portray the iPhone as safer than rival Android devices because Apple reviews and approves all apps distributed to the devices.



Early on, hackers “jailbroke” iPhones by modifying their software to evade Apple’s controls, but that process voided the iPhone’s warranty and scared off many casual users. The misuse of the enterprise certificates seen by Reuters does not rely on jailbreaking and can be used on unmodified iPhones. -Reuters



-Stephen Nellis and Paresh Dave

Man hacking into computer

Software Pirates Use Apple Tech To Put Hacked Apps On iPhones

Apple Inc plans to cut the price of some of its flagship iPhones for only the second time in the device’s 12-year history, pegging its retail value to past prices in local currencies outside the United States instead of the rising U.S. dollar. 



The move is an attempt to stem weak sales of the iPhone, particularly in overseas markets such as China, where a 10 percent rise in the U.S. dollar over the past year or so has made Apple’s products &#8211; which already compete at the top end of the market &#8211; much pricier than rivals.



Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook disclosed the plan on Tuesday after the company reported the first-ever dip in iPhone sales during the key holiday shopping period. The company has only once before cut iPhone prices, shortly after it debuted in 2007.



Apple did not say in which countries it would adjust iPhone prices. Resellers in China already began cutting iPhone prices earlier this month after Apple lowered its sales forecast for the quarter ended in December.



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The company priced its new iPhone XS, which was released in September, at $999, the same price in U.S. dollars as its predecessor, 2017’s iPhone X.



That worked for U.S. consumers, but in countries such as China and Turkey the local currency had fallen so much against the surging U.S. dollar, it made the phone significantly pricier than its predecessor a year before. Apple had essentially asked the consumer to bear the cost of the strengthening dollar.



On Tuesday, Cook said Apple will adjust foreign prices in some markets by resetting them at or close to what they were one year before in local currencies. Effectively that means Apple will absorb the cost of the strengthening dollar.



“We’ve decided to go back to (iPhone prices) more commensurate with what our local prices were a year ago, in hopes of helping the sales in those areas,” Cook told Reuters in an interview.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">RISING DOLLAR HURTS APPLE SALES</h4>



In the company’s quarterly earnings call on Tuesday, Cook also highlighted the impact of foreign exchange problems in Turkey, where he said the local lira had depreciated by 33 percent against the dollar and Apple’s sales were down by $700 million from the previous year. In November, Apple also cited currency pressure on its prices in Brazil, India and Russia.



Apple has not said when or how often it might reset its prices because of foreign currency changes.



Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said the price adjustments may not extend to its services business, which includes Apple Music and the App Store.



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While that unit beat analyst expectations with $10.8 billion in sales in the quarter ended in December, growth has slowed compared to previous years.



Apple posts revenue drop but optimistic on China



Maestri said slower growth was partly because prices rose for users in non-U.S. markets.



“Roughly 60 percent of our services business is outside the United States, and as you know, the U.S. dollar has appreciated in recent months,” Maestri said. “And in general, we tend not to reprice our services for foreign exchange on a very frequent basis.” -Reuters



-Stephen Nellis

gettyimages-1090831872-594×594

Apple Lowers Some iPhone Prices Outside US To Offset Strong Dollar

Apple Inc has dismissed more than 200 employees from its autonomous vehicle group, Project Titan, CNBC reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.



The dismissals are seen, internally, as anticipated restructuring under the relatively new leadership of Project Titan, CNBC said.



“As the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of the company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple,” the company said in a statement.



However, Apple didn’t confirm or deny the layoffs.



Last year, the iPhone maker hired Doug Field, an Apple veteran and a Tesla engineering vice president, to lead the Project Titan team alongside Bob Mansfield. -Reuters



-Mekhla Raina and Rishika Chatterjee

Inside Sands China Resorts As The Company Reports Full-Year Results

Apple Dismisses Over 200 Staff From Autonomous Vehicle Group

Behind the bar of San Francisco&#8217;s Four Seasons Hotel last March, a set of doors led into an empty cafe room where an unknown, 25-year-old British-Nigerian entrepreneur named Silas Adekunle was about to meet a senior executive at Apple.
If he was nervous, Adekunle didn’t show it.
He smiled and opened up a large suitcase. It was filled with colorful robots that looked at first like toys. When he took one out and set it on the floor, it came alive.
Called a Mekamon, it raced, spider-like across a mat on four pointed legs, trotting daintily before bowing, and performing a dramatic death shudder. Adekunle took out his phone and pointed it at the Mekamon, and now on his screen it was surrounded by glowing lights, facing an animated opponent that it could shoot lasers at.
Apple’s head of developer relations, Ron Okamoto, carefully surveyed the other robots, then peppered Adekunle with questions about motors and articulations. “It’s got character,” he noted.
Their expected 15-minute chat went on for more than an hour. At the end, Okamoto said the words every young entrepreneur with a team of just nine staff dreams of hearing: “You need to come spend some time with us in Cupertino.”
A year on and Adekunle, who at 26 is part of <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/01/21/meet-europes-30-under-30-in-technology-2018/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forbes’ latest 30 Under 30 list for European Technology</a> launched this week, is on course to sell plenty of Mekamon robots thanks to an exclusive distribution deal he signed in November 2017 after “spending some time in Cupertino” and meeting Apple&#8217;s retail executives.
Impressed by the quality of his robots and their ability to show emotion with subtly-calibrated movements, Apple priced his four-legged “battle-bots” at $300 and has put them in nearly all of its stores in the United States and Britain. Early customers skew towards male techies but a growing number of parents are buying the robots for their children to get them interested in STEM, Adekunle says.
What he hadn’t known during that first meeting at the Four Seasons: Apple was about to launch <a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2017/09/13/apple-not-google-facebook-will-define-future-augmented-reality/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ARKit</a>, its very first platform for augmented reality. AR is the cutting-edge technology that mixes digital animations with the real world, on smartphones screens, popularized by Pokemon Go and expected to go further with the face and object tracking technology in Apple’s latest iPhone X. With no track record, Adekunle and his team of nine were suddenly working with the world’s biggest brand.
Robots might already be <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2017/11/30/grocery-robot-hand-ocado/#7039ad3f1b53" target="_blank" rel="noopener">changing the nature of warehouse management</a> for retailers and other industries, but they’re gradually making their way into our homes too, helped along by people’s increasing ease with artificial entities like Amazon’s Alexa. Adekunle hopes his anthropomorphised robot-spiders will be as popular, say, as iRobot’s Roomba vacuum cleaner.
Trends point that way. Analysts at IDC <a href="https://idc-community.com/idc_futurescape_worldwide_2017_predictions/top_10_worldwide_robotics_predictions" target="_blank" rel="noopener">predict that in three years</a>, the market for consumer robots will have doubled. Next generation AI robots will be focused less on physical tasks, and more on teaching and interacting with family members, says Jing Bing Zhang, the research director of IDC Worldwide Robotics.
On a more recent Monday morning in January 2018, Adekunle is standing in the corridor of Reach Robotics in Bristol, UK, and staring at a hunk of wires and melted plastic. It’s the first prototype he made in his college dorm room, and is on display as a reminder of how far his start-up has come.
“Some of my fingerprints are still on there” he says. “It’s ugly as hell.”
The Mekamon today looks a lot more cutting edge, something like a cross between a crab and a spider, but unlike either of those animals, it has no features resembling a pair of eyes or mouth.
There’s a reason for that.
“When I went into robotics I really loved motion,” says Adekunle. “People are used to clunky robots, and when you make it appear to be realistic, people either love it or they’re freaked out.”
Adekunle decided that his robots could use motion to get an emotional reaction from humans. “I love motion,” he says. Back when he was first tinkering on a robotic prototype while he was at the University of West England, around 2012, several robotic pets like the Sony Aibo robot dog were already hitting the market. The trouble was that most of these personified gadgets cost a fortune. Sony’s <a href="https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/31/16588878/sony-aibo-2017-announced-price-release-date" target="_blank" rel="noopener">latest version</a> of the Aibo costs $1,700 plus a subscription fee.
The Mekamon costs $300, (or £300 in the UK) and future updates to its firmware will see it take on further characteristics. “It gets angry if you don’t play with it, and when it wins games, its behavior changes,” says Christopher Beck, co-founder and CTO of Reach Robotics.
The Mekamons will later this year become touch responsive, so that when their owners rub their heads they’ll show “happy” movements such as wagging from side-to-side like a dog. Adekunle’s research team drew inspiration from animal behavior, looking for instance at what horses do when they get nervous.
“A large part of our product is emotional,” says Beck.
Sharp movements and stamping feet, for instance, can show aggression, while a calmer movement would be slowly rising up and down to suggest breathing.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Mekamon Demo at CES 2018" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VPmxEVw1KCE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Reach Robotics’ headquarters is part of a nondescript office complex just off Britain’s M3 motorway leading into Bristol. A few dozen engineers are sitting in front of iMacs in its open-plan office, and two rooms that serve as labs for building prototypes are currently empty save for machinery.
Adekunle walks into a meeting room toting a rolling suitcase. It’s the same one he used for his demonstration to Apple’s Ron Okamoto and within a few moments he’s taking two of his latest bots out of the case and snapping on some leg casings and a battery pack.
Once the battery goes in, each bot starts doing its own wake-up movements. One lifts a leg to “stretch” it before shaking it out, and then bowing down. “They can see each other,” he says, “but we’re not doing anything with that at the moment.”
Down the line, if one robot is winning battles on the Mekamon mobile gaming platform, it might strut when it meets another, less successful peer.
Adekunle has already come a long way from his early experiments as a teen, including a robotic hand made out of baked beans cans, and a robotic face (based on the Kismet robot of MIT’s Cynthia Breazeal) that had tennis balls for eyes and rolled up pieces of paper for ears.
Back in Nigeria, where Adekunle was born, he also inadvertently caused a power outage in his apartment block as a kid, when he took a battery and plugged it with some spare wires into the mains outlet. “I was lucky I didn’t get electrocuted,” he says.
He was fortunate to grow up in a relatively well-off family; his father was a school principal and his mother was a midwife. But he lacked the exposure to technology that many kids get today. He remembers how one day someone brought a computer to his primary school and the kids who wanted to see it up close had to pay a fee.
When Adekunle’s mother moved to Britain to work, times got tough. There was no email, and the family could only speak on the phone once every couple of months. If for some reason his mother couldn’t get access to a landline, Adekunle’s family would be waiting at the other end with no idea what was going on.
Two years later, when he was around 10, Adekunle moved to the UK and started going to secondary school.
At home he continued tinkering with amateur robotics, getting ideas from YouTube and dabbling in code as a script kiddie; then at university, he cut his teeth on programming in C++ to unlock a wealth of new possibilities. It was here that he started experimenting on the first moving prototypes for what would become the Mekamon.
In 2013 he met Beck, who was working on a Ph.D. and had experience in robotics, and asked if he could help develop Mekamon into something that would look like a product.
“Everyone told us it was too complicated and expensive and no one would buy it,” Beck remembers. “Toy manufacturers who were stuck in their ways were saying ‘You have to make it as cheap as possible. People will play with it for five minutes, then break it.’”
But Adekunle and Beck believed there was a market for a more complex product, a robot with 12 motors when most motorized toys had no more than five.
“Looking at the state of robots out there, they made fart noises or they burped, which is funny for the first month,” says Beck. “There’s no crossover between robot toys and high-end products which cost thousands and are aimed at hobbyists.”
No one, he adds, has dared to be this bold. “There’s a few legged robots but they scuttle and don’t walk,” says Beck. “Or they walk in a way you can’t animate. We animate this robot.”
Adekunle, who had previously left the room, now slides open the door to speak to Beck and let him know that some potential investors are about to turn up. Both later sit down for a meeting in their cozy cafeteria space.
For his next act, Adekunle is hoping to raise a new round of funds (having already raised $10 million for the company), and also strike some licensing deals with entertainment companies in Asia. Eventually, Mekamon robots might start to come out with branded versions &#8211; think Pokemon characters, for instance.
“Asia is going to be a huge market for them,” says one of Reach Robotics’ investors and the former CEO of Atari, David Gardner.
For now, Reach will continue to make money with direct sales to consumers and with that exclusive deal with Apple Retail.
“The partnership with Apple has been fruitful,” says Adekunle, adding that he’s looking to continue the relationship. “We have many more products to bring to market,” he adds. “It’s a watch this space situation.” &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Parmy Olson</a>, FORBES STAFF

Meet The Young Robotics Entrepreneur Who Got A Dream Deal With Apple

At Apple&#8217;s last annual developer conference in June, one new tool captured the attention of developers perhaps more than any other product or tool introduced that day. Called ARKit, the tool for iOS 11 enables developers to create augmented reality applications that place digital objects in the real world.
With a new set of iPhones announced on Tuesday &#8211; iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X &#8211; Apple now offers the best hardware and software platform for developing AR applications.
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2017/09/12/live-blog-all-the-news-about-apples-new-iphones-watch-and-more/#8791c005f8e9" target="_blank" rel="noopener">(Read more: Apple News Wrap Up: IPhone 8, IPhone X, Face ID, Wireless Charging, Animated Emojis And More)</a>
Developers are jumping on board and spending a considerable amount of time, money and effort to take full advantage of ARKit. Ikea&#8217;s head of digital transformation, Michael Valdsgaard, said 70 employees at the retail giant spent nine and half weeks weeks toiling day and night on an ARKit app. The result, Ikea Place, allows customers to place digital versions of Ikea furniture in their homes before spending money on something that doesn&#8217;t work outside of a store setting.
Ikea starting toying with an AR tool in 2013, Valdsgaard told Forbes. But earlier versions required dedicated AR headsets, which lack the ubiquity of iPhones. That severely limited rollout. The experience was also never very solid. ARKit handles the complicated task of measuring the room and its dimensions to accurately place objects.
&#8220;We never had the vehicle or platform to make AR really good,&#8221; Valdsgaard said. &#8220;This is what ARKit does.&#8221;
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/entreprenuers/2017/09/11/battling-giants/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Battling Giants</a>
But placing furniture may not be ARKit&#8217;s most compelling use. The Machines, a multiplayer strategy game Developer Directive Games demonstrated at the Apple event, places a battlefield in the real world in which players direct combat by moving their iPhones.
Apple&#8217;s ARKit does have limitations. It can detect horizontal surfaces like floors and tables, but not vertical surfaces like walls. Valdsgaard predicts that Apple will soon add this function.
Although ARKit will support iPhones as old as the iPhone 6s, it looks like AR apps will really shine on the latest hardware announced on Tuesday. The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus will contain Apple&#8217;s latest chip, the A11 Bionic. It has a six-core central processing unit  &#8211; two high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores &#8211; Apple&#8217;s first custom graphics processing unit, and an image signal processor. The CPU core will handle the world tracking, the ISP will do real-time lighting estimation, and the GPU will generate digital images.
&#8220;It’s clear Apple is focused on AR as a platform and is building their phones with the hardware needed to enable great experiences,&#8221; said Scott Montgomerie, cofounder and CEO of Scope AR, an enterprise AR developer.
More important for AR hardware will likely be the iPhone X, Apple&#8217;s highest-end device. Inside the iPhone X is the A11 chip as well as a processor dedicated to neural network computing. The neural network models are supposed to more accurately track faces and the world around them, which could make for some more compelling AR experiences.
Google, Microsoft and Facebook all have competing AR developer platforms. At one point, Google was trying to push its own hardware platform with Project Tango, a depth-sensing camera system it offered to third-party phone makers. Only two phone makers &#8211; Asus and Lenovo &#8211; have adopted Tango, but the resulting phones have been lackluster. Tango received little developer support.
Now Google is trying a similar to approach to Apple ARKit, ARCore for Android. But like everything else in the Android ecosystem, Google has a hard time controlling what&#8217;s happening on the hardware side. Only Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy S8 will support ARCore at launch.
Valdsgaard says he is glad Google decided to move beyond Tango to support AR development, but Ikea has been just working with Apple&#8217;s AR platform for now.
&#8220;We&#8217;ve been focusing just on Apple,&#8221; Valdsgaard said. &#8220;Ikea is for many people. How can we reach many people? We need to focus on the biggest AR platform the world.&#8221; &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Aaron Tilley</a>, FORBES STAFF
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Apple, Not Google Or Facebook, Will Define The Future Of Augmented Reality

When the iPhone emerged in 2007, it came with all the promise and pomp of a major Steve Jobs announcement, highlighting its user interface and slick design as key selling points. We know now that the iPhone transformed the mobile phone business, the internet economy and, in many ways, society as a whole. But technically speaking, the iPhone was not very innovative.
Its software and the interface idea were based on the iPod, which was already <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/itunes-10th-anniversary-how-steve-jobs-turned-the-industry-upside-down-20130426">reinventing the digital music industry</a>. Touchscreens had appeared on earlier phone and tablet models, including <a href="http://oldcomputers.net/apple-newton.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Apple’s own Newton</a>. And <a href="http://nokiamuseum.info/category/launching-year/2007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">top-line Nokia phones</a> had more memory, better cameras and faster mobile connectivity. What made the iPhone transformative was the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/13/15782200/one-device-secret-history-iphone-brian-merchant-book-excerpt" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">shift in concept underpinning the entire iPhone project</a>: Its designers did not create a telephone with some extra features, but rather a full-fledged hand-held computer that could also make calls and browse the internet.
As a <a href="http://www.internationalinnovation.com/how-digitasation-is-changing-the-working-world/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">scholar of management, design and innovation</a>, I find it hard to predict what the next truly revolutionary technological development will be. In the 10 years since the launch of the iPhone, <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/when-iphone-met-world-7-years-ago-today/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">so much about modern life, commerce and culture has changed</a>. In part that’s because the iPhone, and the smartphone boom it spurred, created a portable personal technology infrastructure that’s almost infinitely expandable. The iPhone changed the game not because of its initial technology and cool user interface but rather as a result of its creators’ imagination and courage.
<h2>Inventing mobile apps</h2>
As the iPhone took shape, its designers found themselves <a href="http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/the-one-device/9781478915836/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">torn between making a phone or a computer</a>. Engineers and marketing executives alike worried the new device would kill the iPod market that had <a href="http://business.time.com/2012/09/14/without-music-apple-would-be-nothing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">driven Apple’s corporate resurgence for five years</a>. Nokia, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/263438/market-share-held-by-nokia-smartphones-since-2007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the biggest player in the cellphone market at the time</a>, had similar technologies and prototypes, and also <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304388004577531002591315494" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">feared outcompeting</a> its own successful mobile phone product lines that used a simpler and more old-fashioned software platform than that on which iPhone was built.
Apple took the leap, however, by installing a fully capable computer operating system on the iPhone, along with a few small application programs. Some were phone-related, including a program that handled making and receiving calls, as well as <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-the-Phone-with-iPhone/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a new way to display voicemail messages</a>, and a system that kept different contacts’ text messages separate. Others were more computer-like, including an email app and a web browser. Of course, the music-playing features from the iPod were included too, linking the phone with the emerging Apple music ecosystem.
Initially, that was about it for apps. But <a href="https://www.cultofmac.com/164137/meet-geohot-guy-who-unlocked-the-first-iphone-and-hacked-the-sony-ps3/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">skilled computer engineers and hackers</a> knew they were holding a palm-sized computer, and set to work writing their own software and <a href="https://www.cultofmac.com/213904/how-far-weve-come-the-original-iphone-jailbreak-took-74-steps-jailbreak/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">getting it running on their iPhones</a>. That was the dawn of the now-ubiquitous app. Within a year, these apps were so popular, and their potential so significant, that <a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/1134503/iphone2update.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Apple’s second version of the iPhone operating system</a> made it easy (and legal) for users to install <a href="http://www.phonecruncher.com/features/00942/the-first-ever-apps-on-the-app-store-gone-but-not-forgotten/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">apps on their phones</a>.
<h2>Shifting priorities</h2>
The prospect of making a fully functional hand-held computer changed how users and manufacturers alike thought about mobile phones. For Apple and every other phone company, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-android-smartphones-2011-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">software became much more important than hardware</a>. What apps a phone could run, and how quickly, mattered much more than whether it had a slightly better camera or could hold a few more photos; whether it flipped open, slid open or was a bar-style; or whether it had a large keyboard or a small one. The iPhone’s <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-reaction-first-iphone-2015-9" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">keyboard was on-screen</a> and software-generated, making a function that had required dedicated hardware into one running on generic hardware and dedicated software.
At the time of the iPhone launch, Nokia offered about 200 <a href="http://nokiamuseum.info/category/launching-year/2007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">different phone styles to meet all the different needs</a> of its hundreds of millions of customers. There was just one iPhone model at the start, and in the ensuing decade there have been only <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iOS_devices#iPhone" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">14 major styles</a> – though today they come in different colors, not just white and black as the original did. This is the power of software functionality and related simplicity.
The heightened importance of software on a mobile phone shifted the industry’s economy as well. The money came now not just from selling devices and phone services, but also from marketing and selling apps and in-app advertisements. <a href="https://www.recode.net/2016/6/8/11889298/google-apple-subscription-app-revenue-share" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">App developers must share revenue</a> with the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/16/14634656/android-ios-market-share-blackberry-2016" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">companies that control smartphones’ operating systems</a>, providing serious earning power: Apple holds <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/16/14634656/android-ios-market-share-blackberry-2016/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">about 15% of the mobile phone market</a>, but reaps <a href="http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170308000345" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">80% of global smartphone profits</a>.
Whatever the next tech industry game-changer is, and whenever it arrives, it will likely have some connection to the smartphone and related infrastructure. Even today, <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/13/virtual_reality_is_made_o_smartphones/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">exploring virtual reality</a> requires only installing an app and connecting just a bit of additional hardware to an existing phone. Similarly, smartphone interfaces and cameras already <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410889,00.asp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">monitor and control intelligent and automated homes</a>. Even as devices are developed to operate all around us, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/alphabets-new-plan-to-track-10-000-people-could-take-wearables-to-the-next-level-76620" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">even in our clothes</a>, many of them will be able to point to the iPhone as a conceptual ancestor and inspiration.  &#8211; Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/kalle-lyytinen-336943" target="_blank" rel="author noopener noreferrer">Kalle Lyytinen</a>, Iris S. Wolstein Professor of Management Design, Case Western Reserve University
Originally published in <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Conversation</a>
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Understanding the real innovation behind the iPhone

The last few years have seen an unprecedented number of people rushing to develop mobile apps for iOS and Android. But looking at the installed user base on each platform and information on the payouts made by the different companies, it appears that the vast majority of developers will find themselves with little revenue to show for.
Google, Apple, Microsoft : Rich in users, developers
The consensus around the industry is that Google dominates the mobile market with 900 million users, while Apple follows with 600 million iOS devices purchased, and Microsoft comes in third place with an estimated 12 million Windows Phones sold (the vast majority of those, 81%, being sold by Nokia).
With different forums aimed at attracting developers, each company handles announcing the size of their markets differently.
Apple, at its WorldWide Developer Conference, talked about 1.25 million apps in the app store accounting for 50 billion downloads and $5 billion paid off to developers in the last year. To the company, it is a sign of pride to be able to pay this developer community. Internal data from the app store, gathered from sources close to the company, indicate that the numbers are in line with the actual payments made to developers.
At Google I/O, the largest Android developer conference, Google touted 150,000 developers responsible for over 800,000 apps. While the company does not break out revenue numbers on their apps, recent data in their financial filings seemed to indicate somewhere around $900 million in pay-outs to developers “over the last 12 months” and discussions with external research analysts put the number of downloaded apps from the Google Play store at around 48 billion, close to what Apple has claimed.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has been claiming 160,000 apps in their store from 45,000 developers. In a recent interview, Microsoft officials claimed that the average user downloaded 54 apps, which would put their download count at 650 million to date. While the company does not break out data for its mobile division, looking at the variations in the accounts payable line of their 10-Qs over the last few quarters before and after they introduced their app store shows a variation of up to $100 million since 2011 that could be attributed to the app store.
So taking all that data into account, we can summarize it as follows:
Looking at this, it is clear that Apple is winning the game in terms of total number of apps and money paid to developers. But lost in the shuffle is how much money developers can actually make on those platforms.
Meager dollars per download
Taking the data in front of us, we can get a sense of how many apps the average developer creates and what kind of revenue a developer can expect from those apps, on ave-rage (granted, power laws dictate that a small number of developers will do extremely well while the vast majority will fail, but we’re trying to look at averages here).
Based on this, the average developer on those platforms is pretty busy, developing 3 to 5 apps depending on the platform. Interestingly, Android is the big winner on downloads for a given app but this is largely offset by substantially lower revenue, with the average app download bringing in around 2 cents to its developer; Apple fairs 5 times better, bringing in a dime for every one of the 40,000 potential app downloads a developer could strive for. But the interesting thing is that Microsoft’s platform may be substantially more rewarding for its developers, bringing in $.15 per download (a fact that is offset by download numbers shown to be only 10 percent of what the other platforms can offer).
With the average paid app retailing for $.99, what we see here is the direct impact of free apps on those marketplaces. Android’s substantial lead in offering free apps cuts deeply into the average revenue paid out to developers while the smaller availability of free apps on the Windows platform may work to its advantage.
But what does that mean in terms of actually revenue?
Impact on developers’ wallets
Multiplying the average revenue per app by its average number of downloads, we can get a sense as to what an average developer can expect to make on an app today. Taking the same number and multiplying it by the number of apps an average developer creates, we get a sense of the revenues one can pull from going that way:
What we see here is that while decent amounts of money can be made on an app, a hard-working developer on iOS will be able to get a new car, while Android and Microsoft developers will be forced into the used car market if they plan to take those earnings on the road. At $4,000 in average revenue per app, Apple has a lead but it still begs the question as to how many developers can actually make a living directly from apps on any platform. Direct revenue from the apps themselves may not be able to justify large development teams but other revenue sources (advertising, for example) may help developers increase their take.
Of course, these are average values and many hope to find the next big hit, the one that will be on the higher end of the median. But for every app that goes north of those numbers, the average for the remaining apps drop.
Where are the opportunities?
There is, however, some hope. While Apple has developed a rich market for developers, Google and Microsoft both have opportunities to improve. For Google, the focus should be on improving the numbers by helping developers monetize their apps so they can come more in line with what Apple can offer. Even if they only reached half of what Apple does in terms of revenue per download, they would be able to match the revenue developers make. For Microsoft, the story is all about the number of users. If they were to manage their average revenue per app while growing their user base, they could potentially out-earn all the other platforms.
In all three cases, however, there is much work to be done to increase monetization of free apps. And that may be the next growth opportunity for any developer as it presents an opportunity that is substantially larger than the existing one.
Every app developer hopes to build the next big hit but, as is the case for any hit-driven market, a large group will be left behind with little to show for their efforts. At the end of the day, the model for mobile apps is no different than any other of the past: whether it is gold in the Yukon, websites in the 1990s, or app developers today, larger amounts of revenue will go to those who enable development than to those who are doing the development. Levi Strauss made his fortune selling picks and shovels to gold prospectors; Adobe, Amazon, and Google made theirs enabling web developers; and as the mobile revolution takes hold, some new players will emerge providing tools to create apps and those may be the biggest winners.

Tag: Apple

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