Meet The Apple Watch

Meet The Apple Watch

Frederic Lardinois

TechCrunch

During its iPhone 6 launch event this morning, Apple announced the Apple Watch, its first foray into the world of wearable tech. It’s a smartwatch with inductive charging, a square face, sapphire glass, swappable bands, a heartbeat sensor and a rotating digital crown.

Users will be able to choose between six different straps, including a sport band, a leather loop, a classic leather buckle and a stainless steel strap that is easily adjustable. The watch will come in two different sizes and three different collections: Watch, Watch Sport and Watch Edition.

Unsurprisingly, the Apple Watch will only work in conjunction with an iPhone, but you will need a relatively recent model, starting with the iPhone 5.

“We love to make new products that improve people’s lives. We love to make things that allow our users to make things that they could never have imagined,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said today. “We think it will redefine what people expect from its category.” He called it “the next chapter in Apple’s story.”

Cook stressed that Apple didn’t just take the iPhone and put it on your wrist. Pinch to zoom, for example, wouldn’t work on a watch. Instead, the watch has a small dial on the side — Apple calls it a digital crown with IR and LED diodes. Pressing the dial will take you to the watch’s homescreen, which users can personalize just like the watch face.

The interface makes full use of the digital crown, and developers will be able to use it for their own apps. The Apple Watch will also be using voice input through Siri.

In addition, Apple developed something it calls “digital touch” to allow you to quickly share a sketch you draw on the watch face. Given that the watch doesn’t have a keyboard, these sketches allow you to still communicate relatively complex ideas easily.

The dial also understands the difference between a simple touch and a press, and the watch will offer at least some haptic feedback.

As expected, the watch interface will heavily center around notifications and like Android Wear, it will feature the ability to send quick replies, but in a typical Apple twist, the company will look at the text and analyze that to automatically select a few possible replies. The watch also features customizable animated emoji.

By default, all standard iPhone notifications will appear on the watch homescreen, but developers will be able to create custom notifications for the Apple Watch. In addition, developers will also be able to create apps specifically for the watch and some of the brands Apple featured today include Apple, American Airlines, BMW, Nike and Starwood Hotels.

Apple itself has developed two different fitness apps for the watch, too. The “Activity” app is meant to track your movement throughout the day. The “Workout” app, on the other hand, focuses on specific sports.

Apple also built a cool way to see your photos. You start out zoomed out, with all of your photos showing as minuscule thumbnails. Then you use the crown to zoom in. The watch uses the same gesture to zoom in and out of Apple Maps, too.

Ahead of the event today, the Apple rumor mill went through its usual cycle of going from rather outlandish ideas like a solar-powered watch (an idea Apple supposedly canned pretty early on), to more realistic ideas like curved screens, scratch-resistant sapphire crystal glass and the possibility that Apple could release the watch in at least two different sizes.

The early word was also that the battery life was going to be less than optimal. Over the last few days before the event, we also started hearing more about Apple integrating the watch with its rumored new NFC-based payments system. Overall, the rumors weren’t all that far off.

The Apple Watch starts at $349 and will be available “early next year.”

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Apple to reveal its next big thing

Apple to reveal its next big thing

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple is poised to reveal its next big thing Tuesday in a crucial attempt to prove its technological tastemakers still have the power to mesmerize the masses.
The trend-setting company is expected to rouse the still-slumbering market for wearable computers with a smartwatch or bracelet equipped to monitor health, help manage homes and even buy merchandise.
Apple is a late arrival to this relatively new niche: several other companies already sell smartwatches that are being greeted with widespread indifference.
If any company can transform the landscape, it's likely to be Apple Inc. after the company shifted the direction of digital technology with the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Other MP3 music players, smartphones and tablet computers were first to market, but the devices didn't enthrall consumers until Apple imbued them with a sense of elegance, convenience and wizardry.
"It means more to us to get it right than to be first," Apple CEO Tim Cook explained to analysts earlier this year.

Apple is likely to provide the first peek at its wearable device at an event set to begin at 10 a.m. PDT in the same Silicon Valley auditorium where Apple's late co-founder, Steve Jobs, unveiled the industry-shifting Mac computer 25 years ago.
Rumors have been swirling that U2, one of Jobs' favorite musical groups, will perform live to promote its new album, as well as Apple's latest gadgetry, which is likely to include an iPhone with a larger screen.

As usual, Apple hasn't said what's on tap, though the company's top executives have repeatedly promised major breakthroughs without providing any details.
"The location suggests this will be a historic event and the historic aspect will be their movement into a new category," predicted technology analyst and longtime Apple watcher Tim Bajarin.
After Tuesday's glimpse, it still may be several months before people get a chance to wear the device. There's speculation that the smartwatch won't be available until early next year, although Apple is expected to take orders during the holiday shopping season.

A smartwatch or high-tech bracelet would mark the first time that Apple Inc. has rolled out a new product line since the iPad's release nearly four-and-half years ago. In that time, the Cupertino, California, company, has been sprucing up its selection of iPhones, iPads and Macs with new models each year since Jobs died in October 2011 after a long battle with cancer.
The innovation void raised questions as to whether Apple's creativity was fading under Cook, Jobs' hand-picked successor.

Those concerns have waned in recent months amid high hopes for the products Apple has lined up for the holiday shopping season. The fervor propelled Apple's stock to new highs last week, a dramatic swing in sentiment from 17 months ago when the shares were trading about 44 percent below current levels. The stock closed down less than 1 percent at $98.35 in Monday's trading.
Even with all the anticipation surrounding the potential smartwatch, the next generation of the iPhone will still be the star of Tuesday's show, as well as the main source of Apple's profits for at least the next year.

The device, likely to be called the iPhone 6, is expected to feature a screen spanning at least 4.7 inches diagonally, up from the 4-inch display on the previous models released during the past two years. Some analysts have speculated Apple may also offer an iPhone model with a 5.5-inch screen.
Any significant increase in the iPhone's size would make the device more competitive with smartphones made by Samsung Electronics and other rivals, and virtually ensure that Apple would have one of the holiday season's hottest selling items. "There is incredible pent-up demand for a larger-screen iPhone," Bajarin said.

Besides a larger screen, the new iPhone is expected to include a near-field communications chip that would enable the device to transmit payment information wirelessly to receivers at store check-in stands. The technology is expected to be accompanied with a mobile wallet feature that taps into the more than 800 million credit card account numbers that users store on Apple's remote servers to buy songs, video and apps from its iTunes stores. The mobile wallet could be secured with a fingerprint reader that Apple introduced last year on the iPhone 5S.

The mobile wallet conceivably could also work on a smartwatch or high-tech bracelet.
Apple's latest mobile software for the iPhone 6 and other recent models, iOS 8, also includes two features called HealthKit and HomeKit that represent the next step in the company's to play an even bigger role in the lives of the people tethered to its devices. The tools are designed to turn Apple's products into a suite of digital servants that do everything from monitoring a person's eating habits and exercise routines to turning on the coffee maker in the morning to turning off the lights at night.
If Apple follows its recent traditions, the free iOS 8 software will be released shortly before the iPhone 6 goes on sale later this month

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See Pics from Niall Horan's 21st Birthday Celebration

Credit: Splash News

Niall Horan's 21st birthday is coming up very soon (this weekend! September 13! Mark your calendars!), but the One Direction star celebrated his big day ahead of time with friends and family in London.

Credit:Twitter

 His bandmate Louis Tomlinson came with  Eleanor Calder

Eleanor Calder 

Louis Tomlinson

 and they looked very nice dressed in casual but coordinating styles.

Niall and Greg Horan

Credit:Twitter

Instead of your typical party cone hats, the birthday boy even had his guests wear silly masks with his face on them! 

Credit:Twitter

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Taylor Admits She Has a Major Enemy

One of the best parts of listening to Taylor Swift's music is figuring out who she wrote her songs about. While Taylor reportedly dissed Harry Styles and Kendall Jenner in her song "Shake It Off," the singer reveals that the subject of her upcoming song "Bad Blood" isn't about an ex — it's about a major female artist.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Taylor discusses her frenemy-turned-enemy.

"For years, I was never sure if we were friends or not. She would come up to me at awards shows and say something and walk away, and I would think, 'Are we friends, or did she just give me the harshest insult of my life?' [Then last year] she did something so horrible. I was like, 'Oh, we're just straight-up enemies.' And it wasn't even about a guy!"

"It had to do with business," Taylor said. "She basically tried to sabotage an entire arena tour. She tried to hire a bunch of people out from under me. And I'm surprisingly non-confrontational — you would not believe how much I hate conflict. So now I have to avoid her. It's awkward, and I don't like it."

That's so sneaky! We can't believe that someone would try to sabotage Taylor's tour, especially if they're successful on their own.

We're definitely interested in finding out who it is, even though we don't have much to go on. However, we can definitely rule out Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato — they're both still friendlywith Taylor.

Our guess? We'll have to wait for the song to come out to fully decode her clues, but we think it could be about Katy Perry. They used to be photographed at award shows a lot together, but haven't been recently.

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'Telepathy' experiment sends 1st mental message

'Telepathy' experiment sends 1st mental message

Leon Neal

AFP

For the first time, scientists have been able to send a simple mental message from one person to another without any contact between the two, thousands of miles apart in India and France.
Research led by experts at Harvard University shows technology can be used to transmit information from one person's brain to another's even, as in this case, if they are thousands of miles away.
"It is kind of technological realization of the dream of telepathy, but it is definitely not magical," Giulio Ruffini, a theoretical physicist and co-author of the research, told AFP by phone from Barcelona.

"We are using technology to interact electromagnetically with the brain."
For the experiment, one person wearing a wireless, Internet-linked electroencephalogram or EEG would think a simple greeting, like "hola," or "ciao."

A computer translated the words into digital binary code, presented by a series of 1s or 0s.
Then, this message was emailed from India to France, and delivered via robot to the receiver, who through non-invasive brain stimulation could see flashes of light in their peripheral vision.
The subjects receiving the message did not hear or see the words themselves, but were correctly able to report the flashes of light that corresponded to the message.

"We wanted to find out if one could communicate directly between two people by reading out the brain activity from one person and injecting brain activity into the second person, and do so across great physical distances by leveraging existing communication pathways," said co-author Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.

"One such pathway is, of course, the Internet, so our question became, 'Could we develop an experiment that would bypass the talking or typing part of Internet and establish direct brain-to-brain communication between subjects located far away from each other in India and France?'"
Ruffini added that extra care was taken to make sure no sensory information got in the way that could have influenced the interpretation of the message.

Researchers have been attempting to send a message from person to person this way for about a decade, and the proof of principle that was reported in the journal PLOS ONE is still rudimentary, he told AFP.

"We hope that in the longer term this could radically change the way we communicate with each other," said Ruffini.

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Home Depot confirms payment systems were breached

Home Depot confirms payment systems were breached

Reuters

Home improvement retailer Home Depot Inc confirmed on Monday that its payment security systems have been breached, which could impact customers using payment cards at its stores in the United States and Canada.
Home Depot, however, said it has found no evidence that personal identification numbers (PINs) have been compromised, it said in a statement.
The breach was first reported by security website KrebsonSecurity on Sept. 3, which had said the problem could extend back to April and affect all of Home Depot's 2,200 stores in the United States.
Home Depot said it is focusing its investigation from April this year, after its banking partners and law enforcement agencies first notified them of the breach last week.
"We owe it to our customers to alert them that we now have enough evidence to confirm that a breach has indeed occurred," Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Frank Blake said.
"It is important to emphasize that no customers will be responsible for fraudulent charges to their accounts."
Home Depot had said earlier it will roll out PIN- and chip-enabled cards at all its U.S. stores by the end of the year.

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When Cars Are as Hackable as Cell Phones

When Cars Are as Hackable as Cell Phones

Alexis C. Madrigal

The Atlantic

Imagine this future scenario: Self-driving cars form an orderly procession down a highway, traveling at precisely the right following distance and speed. All the on-board computers cooperate and all the vehicles travel reach their destinations safely.
But what if one person jailbreaks her car, and tells her AI driver to go just a little faster than the other cars? As the aggressive car moves up on the other vehicles, their safety mechanisms kick in and they change lanes to get out of the way. It might make the overall efficiency of the transportation lower, but this one person would get ahead.
This is but one of many scenarios that Ryan Gerdes of Utah State University is exploring with a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to look at the security of the autonomous vehicle future.

"The designers of these systems essentially believe that all of the nodes or vehicles in the system want to cooperate, that they have the same goals," Gerdes said. "What happens if you don't follow the rules? In the academic theory that’s built up to prove things about this system, this hasn’t been considered."

While Google is out to create a fully autonomous vehicle some years into the future, the major carmakers are taking more incremental steps toward autonomy. Nissan, Volkswagen, Daimler and others all have programs. Just this week, Cadillac announced that it would include "super cruise" that would allow for "hands-free" driving on highways in a 2017 car.
The race to come out with self-driving technologies has drawn in regulators in several states, but it's hard to evaluate the claims of the carmakers or anyone else without independent analysis about the vehicles.

All the autonomous vehicle makers have downplayed security concerns. Chris Urmson, Google's self-driving car project lead, provided a reasonable, but largely boilerplate answer to a security question at an event earlier this year. "There is no silver bullet for security and we're taking a multilayered approach," Urmson said. "Obviously there is encryption and very narrow interfaces or no interfaces at all. You do your best to make your outside layer secure and then make your inside layer more secure."

To translate: Urmson is saying that they don't want hackers to get into any of the car's systems (the outer layer), but they also don't assume that no one will ever get in. So, the access to the controls of the car would be further quarantined from the other networked components that someone might gain access to.

But a straight up hacking is not the only kind of threat that Gerdes is studying with his NSF grant money. "If you just look at at traditional threats to a computer, you’re going to miss out on a lot bigger threats," he said.

What he's fascinated by is the way that bad actors could use the self-driving cars' algorithms against themselves. The algorithms that guide these cars—at least now—are fairly "deterministic" as he put it. A given set of inputs will yield the same outputs over and over. That makes them prone to manipulation by someone with knowledge of how they work. He can spin out scenario after scenario:

• "What happens when you have two advanced cruise control vehicles and the one in front starts accelerating and breaking such that the one behind it starts doing the same thing in a more amplified fashion?"
• "We’re looking at the collision avoidance systems. They rely on radar. We think we can manipulate radar sensors to some extent. Is it simple for an attacker to create an obstacle out of thin air?"
• "Auto manufacturers always maintain the proper spacing in adaptive cruise control. You might get interesting effects if [someone] crafted certain inputs or misbehaved in a certain way so they create a very large traffic jam."
• "If I’m a shipping company and I want to slow down the competition... I can take advantage of their sensors and keep making their cars brake and accelerate. We’ve already demonstrated in theory that it’s possible."

In all of these circumstances, they're trying to understand how the algorithms that guide autonomous vehicles could be exploited by hackers or other bad actors. They don't have access to the self-driving cars that car makers are working on, so to test their ideas in the field, they're using BattleBots to stand in for full-size cars and trucks. They program the BattleBots using algorithmic logic that they imagine the car companies are using based on published academic literature.
Because of the way the car companies work—building their specialized systems with components from large suppliers like Bosch—Gerdes' team can often get the core parts that make up the self-driving car systems.

"Experiments are really hard in this realm, but we think we have a decent analog," Gerdes told me. "We can accelerate a lot faster than most cars and they are also made for battle, so we can crash them together."
Obviously, everyone building autonomous vehicles has a major incentive to get the security issues right. But so do credit card companies and Target and Apple—and they have all experienced major problems with security over the last few years. And, Gerdes said, the traditional car companies have not inspired confidence in the security research community with some of their designs.

A 2010 paper found all kinds of security flaws in a modern automobile, including headslappingly simple stuff like allowing the car's control system to be accessed through the radio controller. Install a hackable aftermarket radio and some malicious entity could take control of one's brakes.
"Why would you design a car to work like that?" Gerdes asked. "And these are the same people who are going to be making our automated vehicles?"

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Fire breaks out on Colossus roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain

Fire breaks out on Colossus roller coaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain

Veronica Rocha and Lauren Raab

Los Angeles Times

 

LOS ANGELES —Firefighters are monitoring damage caused to the classic wooden coaster Colossus at Six Flags Magic Mountain after fire consumed a portion of it, causing a portion of the structure to collapse.

Although the raging flames tore through the top of a lift hill, Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Scott Miller said Monday there appeared to be no immediate threat of the coaster further collapsing.
But firefighters plan to work with Six Flags officials to determine the next steps.
No injuries were reported as a result of the fire, which Miller said was reported at 1:32 p.m.
Aerial television news footage shows fire crews extinguishing the blaze around 1:50 p.m. as a portion of the structure collapsed, opening a hole in the track.

Firefighters often train at the park, but mostly for rescues, Miller said.
"It's not something you see every day," he said of the fire.
Sheriff's officials said the fire was sparked by welders working on the ride, which is under reconstruction.

No park visitors were riding Colossus at the time the blaze broke out — the 36-year-old roller coaster closed in mid-August.

Less than two weeks ago, the Valencia, Calif., theme park announced plans to revamp the ride it into a hybrid wood-and-steel coaster named Twisted Colossus, scheduled to open next year. Idaho-based Rocky Mountain Construction, which has converted a number of wooden coasters into hybrid rides with looping inversions, landed the makeover job.
Construction crews were slated to remove the upper level of track from the horseshoe turnaround segment of the ride. Similarly, the right spur of track departing from the station is also to be demolished.

In all, more than 3,000 feet of track will be removed from the structure as it transforms into Twisted Colossus.

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Amazon Just Dropped The Price Of Its Smartphone To 99 Cents

Amazon Just Dropped The Price Of Its Smartphone To 99 Cents

Business Insider 

Amazon just dropped the price of its first smartphone, the Fire phone, from $199 to $0.99 with a two-year contract with AT&T.
Even with the slashed price, the phone still comes with a year of Amazon Prime, which includes free shipping on thousands of items as well as a growing selection of free movies, books, and music.
Amazon launched the phone on July 25, and it was widely seen as a bit of a flop, with slow usage growth, according to market research (Amazon itself hasn't released any sales numbers yet).
The phone has two main unique features: Dynamic Perspective, which allows it to react to how it is held, and Firefly, which can scan more than 100 million objects and make it easy to buy them on Amazon.com.

Here's the statement from the company:
Dynamic Perspective, Firefly, world-class customer support with Mayday, free unlimited cloud storage for photos, 32GB of storage—and, for a limited time, customers get 12 months of Prime membership with Fire phone, which includes unlimited streaming of tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes from Prime Instant Video, access to over a million songs to download or stream from Prime Music, over 500,000 books to borrow from Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and free two-day shipping on tens of millions of items. Now there’s another great reason to buy Fire—it’s just 99 cents with a two-year contract. Customers can purchase Fire on www.amazon.com, www.att.com and in AT&T stores nationwide.

“Fire is now 99 cents with a two-year contract, plus customers get one full year of Prime included,” said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Devices. “With access to all of the Prime content, Mayday, 32GB of memory and free unlimited cloud storage for photos, plus the exclusive Dynamic Perspective and Firefly features, Fire is another example of the value Amazon delivers to customers.”

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The Super Harvest Moon Is Coming

The Super Harvest Moon Is Coming

Business Insider

It's that time of year again! For those in North America, the Harvest Moon will look brightest and fullest at sunset on Monday night, Sept. 8.

The Harvest Moon is the name for the full moon that is closest to the autumnal equinox, or the official start of fall, on Sept. 22. Traditionally, every full moon has special nickname that says something about the season or time of year in which it appears. For example, the Snow Moon happens in February during winter and the Flower Moon is in May during spring. Before electricity, moonlight was crucial for farmers who had to work after sundown, especially in early autumn when many crops are ready to be harvested. For that reason, the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox was called the "Harvest Moon." The Harvest Moon can come either two weeks before or two weeks the autumnal equinox. This year it's a bit early.

But the Harvest Moon is special for another reason. Typically, the moon rises about 50 minutes later each day throughout the year. But when the full moon occurs near the fall equinox, the gaps between moonrises are shorter. The moon rises only about 30 minutes later each night, appearing at sunset. This has to do with the moon's path, which makes a narrow angle with the horizon at the beginning of autumn. Not only does the moon rise earlier than usual in the evening, but this happens for several nights in a row — before and after the full moon — resulting in three consecutive days of the moon appearing at nearly the same time.

Both of these events give the illusion that the Harvest Moon is bigger, brighter, and closer, even though it's not. The moon is simply closest to the horizon at sunset, when most people are looking for the Harvest Moon. This year, the Harvest Moon will appear even bigger than usual because it's a supermoon, "when "the moon turns full less than one day after reaching lunar perigee — the moon’s closest point to Earth for the month," according to EarthSky.

Also, when the moon is near the horizon, it must pass through more dust and cloud particles that scatter blue light and only let red pass through. That's why the Harvest Moon usually looks yellow, orange, or red.

If you can't step outside to grab an eyeful of the moon, the Slooh Space Camera will be showing real-time images of the Harvest Moon online. The event starts on Monday, Sept. 8 at 9:30 p.m. EST.

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Is Justin Bieber Going to Jail for Assault?

Earlier this year, Justin Bieber was charged with assaulting a limo driver, and now a decision has finally been made about his case. The verdict? All charges have been dropped!

According to The Canadian Star, it's because police couldn't determine who hit the limo driver. Plus, Justin's people maintain that nobody actually hurt him.

ustin's lawyer Brian Greenspan said, "Quite frankly it's our belief no one assaulted the driver. That may be a continuing debate. Our position is no one associated with Mr. Bieber came into any illegal contact with the driver.”

Of course, Justin still faces charges for his recent ATV encounter while visiting home with Selena Gomez. Selena doesn't seem worried that he will be convicted.

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WeChat helps Apple rack up bonus points in China

WeChat helps Apple rack up bonus points in China

By Paul Carsten

Reuters

BEIJING - Apple Inc has a lot for which to thank people like Deng.
A Beijing-based quality analyst, she gave only her surname as she's embarrassed by how much money she spends playing mobile games on WeChat, a hugely popular messaging app developed by Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd.

"The most expensive time was when I spent 68 yuan ($11.08) on a leopard on Tiantiankupao," said Deng, an avid iPhone user, referring to Tencent's hit game - called Timi Run Everyday in English - where characters run through obstacle courses. Having a leopard as a pet gives the characters extra power, helping players beat their friends.

Deng and tens of millions like her have made China Apple's third-largest market for software sales, and a huge chunk of that comes through WeChat. Known locally as Weixin, WeChat had 438 million monthly active users globally, mostly in China, at the end of June, and has rapidly evolved from a messaging tool into a digital Swiss Army knife, allowing users to send messages, play games, book taxis and shop online.

The app has proved a winning formula in getting people in China, a market notorious for not paying for software, to connect their bank accounts with their phones and pay for virtual goods like extra lives and power-ups in mobile games.

Apple takes a 30 percent cut on all sales.
"We're seeing some substantial strength there," Apple CEO Tim Cook said of China in a July earnings call. "The thing that's actually growing the most is the iTunes, Software and Services category, which has the App Store in it. That area is almost doubling year over year."

Apple's Greater China revenues, which include Hong Kong and Taiwan, soared 28 percent in April-June from a year earlier to $5.9 billion, and globally, iTunes, Software and Services sales were the company's second-fastest growing product category, up 12 percent year-on-year to $4.5 billion.
Tencent was the top game publisher for Apple's iOS operating system in China by revenue for both June and July, according to App Annie, a company that measures app usage. Apple is this week expected to launch its new iPhone - with a gamer-friendly larger screen.

"A VERY VIRTUOUS CYCLE"

Apple makes all software sales on the iPhone go through its App Store. Typically, the Cupertino, California-based company will take its 30 percent of the sales, while the rest goes to an app's developer or publisher.

WeChat, which itself hosts apps and games made by other developers, is no different. The cash from any products sold on the app are split between Apple, Tencent and the developer.
"By far the biggest factor driving App Store revenue in China is WeChat," said Ben Thompson, who writes about technology at stratechery.com. "WeChat has driven app download and usage, which drives people to want to buy stuff, which drives them to connect their payment information. It's been a very virtuous cycle."

Growth has also been helped by increased smartphone sales since China Mobile, the country's largest carrier, began offering the iPhone in January.

A big part of WeChat's success has been with casual games - highly addictive hits like Candy Crush Saga and Temple Run that are often free to download but let users pay for in-game upgrades. WeChat has its own stable of games, and also publishes Candy Crush in China.
Games integrated with WeChat and Tencent's other mobile social network, Mobile QQ, generated revenues of 3 billion yuan ($489 million) for Tencent in April-June, up from around 1.8 billion yuan in January-March.

"If you look at who's playing Temple Run and Candy Crush, a lot of these were non-gamers five years ago," said Junde Yu, App Annie's vice president of Asia Pacific. "With the advent of smartphones, the ease of use, they started to download apps, and because they're very casual and fun they start playing games. It hooks them and encourages them to start making payments."

REPEAT PURCHASES
China is unique in another way that helps push up spending on smartphones.
Both Apple and Tencent have tried to drive the adoption of mobile payments on their platforms, but China's banking payment system is complex at best, and makes it difficult to carry out any kind of online payment with ease.

Apple uses a top-up system for its App Store in China, with a 50 yuan ($8.15) minimum value, said Yu - for those using China's national bank card payment network rather than international credit cards. "This leads to a lot of repeat purchases as people aren't likely to spend 50 yuan on one purchase," Yu said. "After the first time, they won't stop but will keep purchasing and playing games."

iPhone users themselves are a big draw for app developers, and some value them more highly than people using smartphones operating on Google Inc's Android system.
"I'd pay six times the price for an iOS user compared to Android," said Peng Tao, chief executive of breadtrip, a Beijing-based travel app. Part of the reason, in China at least, is that Android's Google Play app store isn't accessible, so dozens of smaller, less curated app stores have sprung up.

"On the iOS App Store front page apps are chosen by merit, whereas in China for Android they're chosen by who pays," said Peng. "Android users just like to download things, no matter the need. They see it's free and download it, so they shift apps quickly - download and delete, download and delete."

UNEASY ALLIES?

For Apple, though, WeChat may turn out to be a Trojan horse.
While the U.S. company is earning good money through WeChat's success, there is some concern that Tencent may want Apple to see less of that.

"WeChat made the market, Apple didn't, and it's becoming so powerful on mobile in China that, broadly speaking, it's a threat to Apple," said stratechery.com's Thompson. "If Tencent want to flex their muscles and keep more of that revenue, I could certainly see them leaning on the government to help them and keep a bigger percentage of the sales they're driving."
China's ruling Communist Party is no stranger to heavy-handed regulation. Last week, a U.S. business lobby said foreign companies are increasingly concerned they are being targeted by Chinese regulators, charges the regulators deny.

Apple itself has repeatedly come under fire from Chinese state media - more frequently since former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden's revelations about U.S. government cyber-espionage conducted through private companies including Apple, Google and Microsoft Corp.
In July, China's state broadcaster branded the iPhone a national security threat because of its ability to track and time-stamp user locations, and government mouthpieces have called for 'severe punishment', accusing Apple of providing user data to U.S. intelligence agencies.
Some of WeChat's rivals in messaging apps have also fallen by the wayside in China because of the government.

Chinese authorities said in August they blocked South Korean firm Kakao Corp's KakaoTalk and Naver Corp's Line as part of efforts to fight terrorism, according to the Korean government, explaining service disruptions in China that had begun a month earlier.
"The biggest danger for Apple in China is always the uncertain regulatory environment," said stratechery.com's Thompson. "It's very plausible to see the government moving against Apple's App Store policy."

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