India blocks more ByteDance services
According to Businessinsider , ByteDance will shut down its music streaming app Resso in India by the end of January 2024.
Previously, in December 2023, the Indian government asked Apple and Google to remove Resso from app stores.
India is the last market where Resso will operate after ByteDance discontinued its music service in Brazil and Indonesia to launch TikTok Music in those countries. TikTok Music is also available in Australia, Mexico and Singapore, operating independently of Resso.
ByteDance has not announced plans to launch TikTok Music in India.
TikTok has been banned in India since 2020 when the South Asian country's government removed hundreds of Chinese apps amid a geopolitical border standoff between the two countries.
Apple surpasses Samsung for the first time
Apple became the world's largest smartphone maker for the first time, surpassing Samsung by 0.7% in 2023.
Samsung lost its dominance for the first time since 2011 when it was surpassed by Apple by a small margin, according to a report by the analysis firm International Data Corporation (IDC).
Specifically, data from IDC shows that Apple sold 80.5 million phones in Q4/2023, achieving a growth of 11.6% over the same period. Meanwhile, Samsung experienced a poor business quarter with just over 50 million products shipped, down nearly 11%.
In 2023, Apple shipped a total of 234.6 million iPhones, surpassing Samsung for the first time in terms of smartphone shipments, with a difference of nearly 8 million units.
Apple has a 20.1% market share, while Samsung has a 19.4% market share. The top 5 companies with the largest smartphone shipments in the world include Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and Transsion.
Thus, among the top 3 leading manufacturers, only Apple achieved positive growth compared to the same period last year.
The surge in growth in the second half of 2023 suggests the smartphone market could see a recovery this year, with foldable devices and growing interest in artificial intelligence (AI) integration.
Google Announces Trans-Pacific Submarine Cable
Google has just announced the Humboldt Project, a $400 million submarine fiber optic cable project aimed at improving Internet connectivity across the Pacific Ocean, in partnership with Google, government agencies and investment funds.
The Humboldt Project establishes the first direct submarine fiber optic cable between South America and the Asia-Pacific, stretching 14,800 km under the Pacific Ocean floor, connecting the coasts of Australia and Chile.
According to Analysys Mason, Google's previous submarine cable projects in Latin America and the Caribbean contributed up to $178 billion in GDP growth and 740,000 new jobs to the region between 2017 and 2027.
Microsoft offers ChatGPT Plus for free
Microsoft has updated its AI assistant Copilot (available across many Microsoft products and services) with the latest version of OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo large language model, which was previously only available on ChatGPT Plus.
Another significant change in GPT-4-Turbo is improved image analysis and increased inference capabilities.
According to Tom's Guide , by bringing GPT-4 Turbo to Copilot, Microsoft appears to be giving away ChatGPT Plus for free.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT Plus is offered by OpenAI for $20 per month. Microsoft has not officially announced this.
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