Top Tech Stock News: 7 Things You Missed This Week (13-Sep-2019)

1. Uber Announces New Layoffs Amidst Financial Difficulties

Uber recently announced another round of layoffs this Tuesday. The multinational transportation network company plans to let go of 435 people from its product and engineering team, or 8% of the total workforce.

The layoff was the result of Uber’s poor second quarter performance, which included around $5.2 billion in net losses.

“While certainly painful in the moment, especially for those directly affected, we believe that this will result in a much stronger technical organization,” an Uber spokesperson said.

The planned layoffs will not only affect Uber personnel in the United States, however. Regional offices in Europe, Africa, the Middle and the Asia-Pacific region, will also be affected.

According to Uber, 85% of the personnel to be laid off are in the United States, while 10% are in the Asia Pacific region. The remaining 5% will come from Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/10/20859413/uber-job-layoffs-announcement-engineering-product-profit

2. Nvidia fights AMD’s GPUs with the GTX 1160 Super

According to rumors, Nvidia is planning to launch a new and improved variant of the GeForce GTX 1660 graphics card. Although the company has yet to release any concrete information about their new product, it is expected to have a transfer rate of around 14Gbps as well as better memory. It is also expected to cost around $300.

Nvidia’s new graphics card is also rumored to be part of their new strategy against AMD. When released, the new GTX 1660 is expected to compete with AMD’s Radeon RX590 and other similar graphics cards. More importantly, it will also draw in the ray-tracing fans, which AMD does not seem interested in, and allow Nvidia to take back certain portions of the budget gamer market.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/rumors-suggest-nvidia-release-geforce-gtx-1660-super-gpu/

3. German Government to Invest in IBM’s Quantum Computing Research

IBM is about to receive $717 million dollars worth of investment from the German Government. IBM announced that it will install a new “Q System One” quantum computer (the first of its kind in Europe) at one of their German facilities, and will partner with the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft research institute to ‘support the transition of quantum technologies from basic research into market ready applications.’

Quantum Computing has the potential to be used for molecular modeling, physics, machine learning, chemical simulations and data recovery. According to reports, the goal of the new partnership is to develop a ‘research community’ for quantum computing in Germany, and to act as a catalyst for “Europe’s innovation landscape and research capabilities.”

4. Facebook and Google’s Growing Anti-Trust Problems

Last Friday, the Attorney General of New York announced that she and seven other states as well as the District of Columbia will join together to launch new antitrust investigations into Facebook.

The announcement was soon followed by 50 attorney generals from 48 states, including Puerto Rico and DC, announcing that they will soon join Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in investigating Google.

Presently, two of the biggest tech platforms in the world are now facing 2 Congressional, 6 state and local, and 8 federal anti-trust investigations. While the reasons behind the investigations may vary(political bias and privacy issues among them), anti-competitive behavior seems to be the unifying theme for most of parties.

Facebook and Google have been accused of bias and anti-trust violations before, from accusations of Russian collusion to political censorship, and they have managed to survive such accusations relatively unscathed. However, these recent developments may prove devastating for the two tech giants.

https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/9/10/20858028/google-antitrust-investigation-state-attorneys-general-facebook

5. Apple’s iPhone 11 is Here

Apple recently unveilied the iPhone 11 Pro, the 11 Pro Max and the iPhone 11 itself. The new iPhones boast several impressive improvements over their predecessors (the iPhone XS, the XS Max and the XR respectively), including better battery lives, improved camera systems as well as optimized hardware. The 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max also feature better cameras, including three cameras on the back as well as better battery life compared to older models.

Apple CEO Tim Cook also reported that the new Pro Models are the “most powerful and most advanced iPhones we have ever built, with a stunning design.”

The downside? They are more expensive than their predecessors. The 11 Pro starts at $999, while the 11 Pro Max starts at $1,099. Only the iPhone 11 is cheaper at $699 compared to its predecessor (the iPhone XR costs $749).

The new phones will be available for pre-orders this Friday and available for sale on September 20.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/10/tech/iphone-11-apple-event/index.html

6. Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband Network to Be Used for Testing Driverless Cars

Verizon is working with Mcity at the University of Michigan to explore and enhance transportation safety and automated vehicles. The partners are developing 5G solutions for automated and connected vehicles.

The new technology will also be used on traffic lights, cameras and intersections in order to enhance traffic safety and prevent various kinds of accidents.

Verizon also chose 5G for this project because it offers great bandwidth, super-fast speeds as well as low latency, all of which are ideal for automated vehicles and traffic technology.

The resulting applications will be tested on the Mcity Test Facilities 32 acre site. Outdoor laboratory equipment will also be used to simulate different problems and contingencies that vehicles often encounter in urban and sub-urban environments.

https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-5g-ultra-wideband-university-michigan

7. Netflix No Longer the Leading Bandwidth Consuming Application

Netflix used to be the biggest application in terms of bandwidth consumption however, it was recently dethroned by web based media streaming apps. The report comes from the 2019 Global Internet Phenomena Report from Sandvine, a company which specializes in bandwidth-management systems.

According to the report, HTTP media streaming services represented around 12.8% of all downstream internet traffic in the world during the first half of 2019, while Netflix only accounted for 12.6%.

Despite these numbers, however, Netflix’s declining share of bandwidth consumption does not mean that people are consuming fewer Netflix videos. It simply means that the relative share of traffic delivered over internet networks has changed. Moreover, there’s also the fact that Netflix’s video streaming services are becoming more and more efficient, which means that it is consuming less bandwidth per stream compared to other services.

Netflix Bandwidth Consumption Eclipsed by Web Media Streaming Applications