Davemichels

The five most valuable public companies are all tech companies based on the West Coast. 

Amazon and Facebook passed Exxon Mobile in market cap on Monday, making them the fourth and fifth most valuable public companies.

Apple, Alphabet, and Microsoft are currently in first, second, and third place, respectively. 

The switch came the week after the oil giant's profits tumbled 59 percent last quarter, leading to a 3.47% drop on Monday. 

Meanwhile, Amazon posted its fifth straight quarter of profits and Facebook's revenue grew 59%.  

Here are the largest US stocks ranked by market cap at the market close on Monday, according to Yahoo Finance: 

1. Apple ($appl): $570.7 billion
2. Alphabet ($goog): $560B
3. Microsoft ($msft): $434B
4. Amazon ($amzn): $365B
5. Facebook ($fb): $354B
6. Exxon Mobile ($xom): $351B

SEE ALSO: There's a bull case for Apple — but the company won't tell you about it

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NOW WATCH: Elon Musk just unveiled Tesla's 'top secret' master plan — here are the details

Apple might not be growing anymore, but it still sells a lot of iPhones, and makes a lot of money. It's hard to comprehend the $7.8 billion in profit that Apple made last quarter. 

Programmer Neal Agarwal has put together an addictive web app showing just how big Apple is — and how much money it makes per second. 

Many of these stats are publicly reported by Apple, but other stats Agarwal seems to have interpolated and extrapolated from publicly available data points. He promises more stats are coming soon. 

Still, it's pretty hypnotizing to see the rate at which the most valuable public company in the world stacks its paper, and it's perfect for an Apple fan's Monday morning wake-up.

Check it out at everysecond.io/apple. He's also got a second version for YouTube.

CHECK IT OUT

SEE ALSO: Everything we know about 'Project Titan,' Apple's electric car

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Two IoT alliances announced on Wednesday a liaison agreement to drive cross platform interoperability, a key concern in the smart home market.

The Thread Group and Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) revealed the news of the agreement in a press release. It said that the two alliances would let members easily design connected devices using both standards, without any compatibility issues.

See Also: These 5 issues are scaring homeowners away from IoT

While the two alliances don’t work on the same ‘layer’, having interoperability between the two should avoid hiccups in the future. The Thread Group supports the Thread network protocol, designed by Alphabet’s Nest Labs as a way for smart home devices to better communicate. OCF is a much larger alliance, focused on setting the standards and certification for IoT devices of all sizes.

Some of the largest corporations sit on both alliances, including Samsung and Qualcomm, so it makes sense that the two alliances would enter into an agreement to avoid conflict in the future.

Alliances getting together a signal to other protocols?

An approval from OCF may be a signal to other IoT protocols that it is time to consolidate, though we doubt the ZigBee Alliance and Bluetooth SIG are ready to accept Thread as the primary networking protocol for the Internet of Things.

“Thread Group members identified and prioritised OCF as a strategically important application layer to run over the Thread wireless mesh network,” said Thread Group president, Grant Erickson. “In order for consumers to put their faith in the connected home, their experience must be simple, reliable, and effortless. This agreement takes us one step closer to our common goal of ensuring that consumers will have smart home devices that seamlessly work together out of the box, regardless of their brand or function.”

Even with the agreement, we are still in the early days of IoT and are bound to see more confusion and fragmentation as consumers and enterprise start to invest more into connected devices. That’s not even taking into consideration the changes to networking that are coming from the adoption of 5G and other high-speed internet solutions.

The post IoT alliances join forces to make homes smarter appeared first on ReadWrite.

Garmin’s stock price rose to its highest level in 52 weeks after reporting better than expected earnings and revenue for the second quarter.

Investors were pleased to see Garmin transition from the lacklustre automotive industry to the growing fitness market. The automotive segment accounted for 39 percent of the company’s revenue in 2015, but now only accounts for 30 percent. Fitness, outdoor, and marine segments all grew this year, with fitness now accounting for 26 percent of revenue.

See Also: U.S. health policy can’t stop wearables data-bleeding

Garmin focused on fitness

Garmin sells a wide range of wearables for all types of sports and adventure customers. In the past, that market has been overshadowed by GPS and dashboard sales, but sales have been dwindling for a few years as smartphones and in-house dashboard GPS start to take over.

The Vivoactive, Forerunner, and Vivomove trackers were the most popular, according to Garmin. It did not mention individual segments of its fitness sales, like cycling, a market Garmin has been trying to corner with a variety of wearable devices.

“Fitness and outdoor achieved impressive revenue and profit growth driven by our strengthening position in the wearables market,” CEO and President Cliff Pemble said. “Aviation and marine also delivered revenue and profit growth while auto remains a solid base of profit contributions to the overall business.”

Even with the surge in consumer demand for its fitness wearables, Garmin remains below the leaders in this segment, Fitbit. Xiaomi, the Chinese tech giant, also holds more marketshare with its range of inexpensive wearables, available in Asia.

Garmin is ahead of Jawbone and smaller fitness tracker providers and sells more wearables than any Android Wear manufacturer. It currently also sells more wearables than Samsung, which is surprising when you consider the breadth of Samsung’s wearable range.

The post Garmin stock surges following pivot from autos to wearables appeared first on ReadWrite.

Great Bay Software unveiled Beacon Suite 5.0 on Wednesday, a major security update to its Internet of Things (IoT) connections security platform that provides enterprises the ability to discover, monitor, and enforce changes across an entire network.

Since a lot of the smaller IoT devices have poor onboard security and cannot run security or access agents, enterprises have been unable to connect and protect most of their IoT network when deployed. Great Bay Software’s Beacon suite brings the low-power devices into the fold, while also enhancing the security of the entire platform.

See Also: AI adoption coming quickly to the enterprise sector

“Gartner predicts that by 2020, 25 percent of enterprise breaches will involve IoT, while only 10 percent or less of the enterprise security budget will be focused on IoT,” said Manish Rai, vice president of marketing and product management at Great Bay Software. “The new Beacon Suite 5.0 takes the industry lead in helping enterprises protect themselves against the growing threat posed by rapid adoption of IoT devices.”

Great Bay adds authentication layer

In the recent update, Great Bay has added “Beacon Endpoint Enforcement,” which simplifies authentication and enforcement for IoT devices. It also brings authentication to unmanaged devices.

Beacon is also able to identify a device with more accuracy than usual security platforms, according to the company’s press release, providing appropriate levels of security and access to devices.

The suite is able to quarantine, block, and remove faulty or hacked devices from a network, which is good for medical and military contractors that need assurances their devices are secure at all times.

Great Bay added more support for Cisco’s devices and platforms, announcing native integration with Cisco Wireless LAN controllers and support for Cisco Nexus VRF, which it claims will increase visibility.

For enterprise customers that like the sound of Beacon Suite 5.0, it can be yours for $21,500 annually.

The post Great Bay Software strengthens IoT device security appeared first on ReadWrite.

I’ve been thinking about what “truth” means lately. With almost no effort I can find contradictory articles, thoughts, perspectives, statements, and opinions on almost everything being discussed today. I’m sure our election cycle is amplifying this, but I see this in a bunch of stuff I’m reading about tech as well.

As someone who views independent critical thinking as extremely important, this dynamic is perplexing to me. A few months ago I wrote a post about TruthRank vs. PageRank. It started me down a path where I began separating types of truth. Specifically, I’ve begun referring to “your truth” vs. “the truth.”

When I say “your truth” I’m not referring to opinions. I’m referring to your deeply held beliefs. Your truth is the set of ideas that forms the basis of your view of the world. It requires a huge act of will and introspection for you to change your truth.

To understand this better, I’d like to use a classic example from tech – that of Steve Ballmer’s view of the iPhone, and subsequently his approach to the mobile business.

Let’s set the stage with a classic interview with Ballmer at the time the iPhone is announced in 2007.

Now, let’s look at Ballmer’s reflections about this in 2014.

As part of this arc, Ballmer’s big solve was to move Microsoft from a software only company to software+services and then software+devices. For many years, Microsoft was disdainful of Apple’s tightly coupled hardware+software business. In a final thrust of reactionary behavior, Microsoft bought Nokia in 2014 for $7.2 billion and then wrote off $7.6 billion a little over a year later.

Ballmer had “his truth.” It was stronger than an opinion. It shaped his entire view of the world. He held on to it for seven years (or probably longer).

And, at least in the case of mobile, it was completely wrong. It was not “the truth.”

I see this in all aspects of the world. It’s noisiest in politics right now, but it’s prevalent through all aspects of society. I’m running into it constantly in business and technology – both at a macro level (about the industry) and a micro level (within a company).

In the same way it’s different than an opinion (which can be wrong and/or invalidated over time), it’s different than strategy. I’ve always felt that a strategy was the framework for executing your truth. Strategies evolve and opinions change but your truth doesn’t.

And herein lies the problem. I’m seeing people hold onto their truth for much too long. They hold on too tightly. They turn an opinion into their truth. They extrapolate their truth from a small number of data points. The generalize one experience to create their truth. They react emotionally to something that they disagree with and anchor on their truth. They justify their behavior by holding onto their truth.

In many of these situations, individual critical thinking goes out the window. The internal biasing behavior of your truth dominates. You stop being able to listen to other perspectives, to process them, to think about them, and to evolve your opinion. Instead of deeply held beliefs, you end up with a shallow and self-justifying perspective that you hold on to endlessly rather than think hard about what is actually going on.

I embrace the idea of seeking the truth. I love the construct of deeply held beliefs as a framework for it. I challenge everyone to think harder about what the truth actually is, rather than just hold on to your truth to justify your perspective. Remember, the truth is out there.

The post Your Truth vs. The Truth appeared first on Feld Thoughts.

Get ready for construction projects to move along a lot faster.

The Australian company Fastbrick Robotics recently revealed a robot that can lay over 1,000 bricks per hour. The robot, dubbed the Hadrian X, is capable of building a house in just two days — that's four times faster than human workers. 

Hadrian X basically consists of a truck with a long, 98-foot robotic arm. First, it cuts and grinds the bricks before stacking them. Then it automatically applies an adhesive to make sure the bricks all stick together.

The robot uses a laser-guided system to figure out where to place each brick. Fastbrick Robotics wrote on its website that it plans on commercializing Hadrian X.

Here's a closer look:

H/T Inhabitat

SEE ALSO: Microsoft is laying off another 2,850 people in the next 12 months

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The company has now shed nearly all of the Nokia mobile phone business that it acquired in April 2014.

Microsoft is cutting an additional 2,850 jobs as it further curtails its smartphone efforts and restructures its sales force.

About 900 of those workers have already been notified, Microsoft said.

The new cuts, which were disclosed in the company’s annual report on Thursday, come on top of the 1,850 layoffs announced in May as the company retreated even further from the phone business.

At this point, Microsoft has essentially shed nearly all of the Nokia mobile phone business that it acquired back in April 2014 for $7.2 billion.

Although it closed shortly into Satya Nadella’s tenure as CEO, the Nokia deal was the last vestige of the Steve Ballmer era and Nadella started unwinding the move not long after the deal wrapped up.

Instead of trying to force the world to use Windows phones, Nadella’s strategy has been to make more of Microsoft’s technology available on iOS and Android. He has also led the acquisitions of several iOS apps, including email program Acompli and calendar app Sunrise, both of which are now part of the mobile version of Outlook.

Just this week, the company’s research unit released Microsoft Pix, a photography program for iOS that aims to take on Apple’s built-in camera app.

Manufacturers of products across the consumer spectrum have by and large read the writing on the wall by now: go IoT, or go home.

In the near future, pretty much everything more complicated than a paper clip will assume the prefix of ‘smart’, and join the ranks of connected, communicative, hitherto inanimate objects.

As this process continues to unfold and products are overhauled to stay relevant in an IoT world, it will behoove companies to remember that a product ceases to be smart if manufacturers don’t plan, or ideate, with certain elements of usability in mind. Sure, you can call anything “smart” by slapping it with sensors and a Bluetooth module. But is it actually smart for your company and your consumers?

There is a difference between being connected – and being smart. Smart product design and development involve several key factors on the user-facing side of things which must be taken into consideration.

 The overarching principle when considering usability of your smartened product is not maximizing the amount of platforms to which it is compatible, or even how seamlessly it syncs with the internet in general. Chief on your list of concerns should be how operational aspects will affect and engage the end user. Unintuitive? Perhaps, but to prove this we can look to any tech gadget of the last 20 years, well before IoT took over. Products that succeeded – and of course I’m looking mostly at Apple here – were those whose tech advances were surpassed only by their intuitive and easy usability.  

Usability features are critical

Great care should then be taken when considering these usability features. The location, shape, material, and placement of electrical components can greatly affect overall design, and subsequent consumer reception. Similarly, manufacturers must have a deep understanding of smart component pricing so as to build a cost-effective IoT product and keep prices reasonable for customers. Integrating the world’s most premium electrical components can add a competitive edge to your brand, but an unaffordable final product will defeat the entire purpose.  

Finally, before moving on to production, you must experience the smart capabilities of your new product and iteratively operate, test, re-evaluate, and optimize all components – placement, electronics, behaviors, and performance – until you are positive that your dream product is coming to life as expected. Naturally, this step entails a working prototype of your smart product.

IoT-adaptation is a fascinating science of equipping the tools of yesterday with the intelligence of tomorrow, and this leaves plenty of opportunity for creative functionality overhaul. By making the right decisions in usability, components, and design, manufacturers can steer their products into the coveted zone of global consumer ubiquity.

The author co-founded Seebo in 2012 and serves as the CEO. Previously he successfully launched and managed Playfect with his brother Liran, delivering value to investors, employees and the market. His innate understanding of complex technical issues combined with an ability to analyze markets has allowed him to intuit “where the ball is going” – especially in the rapidly changing field of IoT.

The post What are the challenges of ideation in IoT? appeared first on ReadWrite.

The world’s largest shipping container firm, Maersk Line, has brought two thirds of its vessels online in a partnership with Ericsson.

It took the Swedish networking giant four years to bring the fleet online. Ericsson built a floating DSM network that can track individual cargo loads and provide real-time information back to Maersk Line customers.

See Also: Roost smart water leak detector should keep your drier, richer

“Ericsson managed to transform the capabilities from a shore-based DSM network provider into what we needed—and that was the world’s largest floating DSM network,” Niels Bruus, head of fleet management at Maersk Line said.

Bruus sees this as the start of a long partnership with Ericsson, as the two companies attempt to bring the shipping industry from “the stone ages” by using IoT tech already implemented on land.

Ericsson claims that 90 percent of the world’s cargo is delivered by sea, but most of the cargo is not easily trackable and customers are unable to find information on the temperature and stability of the container.

With Ericsson’s Maritime ICT Cloud platform, all that will change. Maersk Line customers will have better oversight of their container.

A connected vessel fleet may reduce time spent preparing a delivery, since routes can be pre-mapped by a software program ahead of time. Ericsson believes we could see a reduction in fuel usage, alongside more productivity from the vessels.

“One of the things the solution has enabled for Maersk Line is for us to monitor the fleet live as the vessels are conducting the voyage,” Bruus said. “So that means every time there is an incident that is less than optimal for the most optimal production of the voyage, we can interfere immediately and be proactive and change the behavior as it happens.”

In a recent report from the United Nations ITU, it said that Scandinavian countries are surging ahead of the rest of the world in IoT deployment. This is another one of those occasions, with a Danish and Swedish company collaborating to build the first IoT network for the sea.

The post Ericsson connects Maersk’s vessel fleet at sea with IoT appeared first on ReadWrite.

Amazon has launched a device in the UK that allows customers to order food shopping from their kitchen by calling out ingredients or scanning a bar code.

The Amazon Dash is a small handheld stick that is designed to make it easier for customers to order everything they'd normally get from their supermarket via AmazonFresh — the company's online food delivery service.

A built-in microphone and an LED scanner allow the Dash to recognise what the customer wants and adds that item to their shopping basket. However, completing the order must be done by logging onto Amazon's website.

"We’re all used to trying to remember the contents of the fridge and kitchen cupboard and scribbling down reminders on pieces of paper," said Ajay Kavan,VP of AmazonFresh, in a statement on Thursday. "With Dash, at any given time, customers can keep track of products when they come to mind and scan to reorder groceries and household essentials as soon as they run out. At Amazon, we’re always looking to innovate based on feedback and Dash has been designed to continually learn as customers use it."

Amazon is giving the device away for free to anyone that makes two AmazonFresh deliveries between now and August 28. Those that fail to make two deliveries will be charged £35 for it.

In the US, Amazon has released a number of Dash "buttons" that can be placed onto things like washing machines and used to order specific items when they're depleted. In the washing machine instance, the Amazon Dash button would be pre-programmed to order washing powder or washing tablets when pushed.

Amazon has also launched another household device in the US called the Amazon Echo. The Amazon Echo also uses voice recognition technology but it's arguably more sophisticated than the Dash because it can be used to carry out a plethora of things, including music, light switches, and thermostats. It can also be used to order a Domino's pizza or request an Uber.

Prior to the launch of all these products, Amazon acquired a Cambridge-based voice recognition startup called Evi Technologies for a reported $26 million (£20 million). 

Business Insider asked Amazon how Evi's software has been incorporated into Dash but did not immediately hear back. 

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Bad behavior in the workplace is contagious. But a new study suggests that pairing workers together can boost productivity and profits.

Your office seating chart may hold the key to how happy and productive you are at work.

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Microsoft released Windows 10 almost a year ago on July 29th, 2015. The software maker has offered its latest OS to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users as a free upgrade for the past year, but that offer is about to run out. You only have one day left to upgrade to Windows 10 for free if you're currently running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. After July 29th, Microsoft will start charging $119 for upgrades to Windows 10, and if you upgrade during the free period you'll also get the Anniversary Update (launching August 2nd) free of charge.

The upgrade is an easy process which you can initialize from the taskbar upgrade notification on eligible machines, or you can follow Microsoft's guide. If you're planning to upgrade over the next 24 hours,...

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Oracle is acquiring NetSuite, a cloud-based software services provider, in a deal valued at about $9.3 billion.

Oracle's $109 per share offer is at a 19% premium to Netsuite's Wednesday close.

"Oracle and NetSuite cloud applications are complementary, and will coexist in the marketplace forever," Oracle CEO Mark Hurd said in a statement. "We intend to invest heavily in both products – engineering and distribution."

Oracle's cofounder, executive chairman, and chief technology officer, Larry Ellison, holds a roughly 45% share in NetSuite together with his family, according to Bloomberg.

The deal is expected to close later this year, pending shareholder and regulatory approval.

(Reporting by Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

SEE ALSO: A $30 billion merger is more evidence of the tech market's most dominant trend right now

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Amazon's Alexa has been able to control some smart home products, like Belkin WeMo switches or certain Wi-Fi-connected lightbulbs, for many months, but the intelligent assistant hasn't been able to control your doors. Well, until now. Amazon said this morning that it has partnered with San Francisco-based hardware startup August to allow Alexa to control August door locks.

This means that you can say to your Amazon Echo speaker, "Alexa, lock the door" and, provided that your Amazon and August devices are connected to the same Wi-Fi network, the door will lock. It is the ultimate lazy person move, perhaps even more so than using your voice or an app to turn off your lights when a light switch is an arm's length away.

You'll need the...

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Last year, visitors to a wide range of gambling sites started reporting unusual behavior. Strange text windows would pop up, offering users special access codes for third-party gambling sites. Links would appear with new affiliate tags, an almost unnoticeable difference that could still prove wildly lucrative for whoever got paid for the new referrals. The sites’ visitors were being hacked, but webmasters couldn’t figure out where the new scripts were coming from.

"We very carefully monitored the traffic coming from our servers because we take that sort of situation extremely seriously," says Michael Corfman, executive director of the Gambling Professional Webmasters Association, the organization targeted by the attack. "The monitoring...

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Was taking a few planned days off when I realized that everywhere I looked there was video conferencing news.  Gartner's new Magic Quadrant for group video systems just came out, there was a big acquistion in the business meeting / video conferencing space and leading business publications were pushing stories about how to make video work for your business.  Let's dig in. 

Twilio has announced Twilio Sync: an API solution to keep real-time applications synced across devices and between users. Scaling synchronization remains a continuous challenge as the economy of real-time apps continues to grow. Twilio has addressed the problem by providing API access to a backend state synchronization infrastructure. In turn, developers can focus on app features and rely on Twilio for syncing needs.

Scandinavia is pulling ahead of the rest of the world on Internet of Things (IoT) adoption, according to a new report from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a United Nations specialized agency.

The report showed the twenty countries with the most machine to machine subscriptions relative to 100 mobile subscriptions. Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark were all in the top 10.

See Also: These 5 issues are scaring homeowners away from IoT

The Scandinavian block appears to be seeing more IoT investment than its European counterparts, apart from France, in fifth place. Germany came 17th in the report, and the United Kingdom wasn’t in the top 20.

Sweden came first, bolstered by the performance of Yanzi Networks, a software platform built to make IoT more efficient and Ericsson, one of the largest network giants in the world. Norway and Finland came third and fourth respectively, with Denmark filling out the Scandinavian countries at sixth.

Scandinavia most active but not the only players

Apart from enthusiasm for IoT and lower regulations, there isn’t much the governments of these four countries have been doing that others haven’t tried. The U.K. announced IoT funding in the 2015 budget and the U.S. Department of Transportation recently ran a contest for the best smart city, which led to hundreds of millions in public and private funding.

While Sweden, Norway, and Denmark were expected, Finland is a surprise. The country is wealthy and standard of living is high, but mobile penetration in was much lower than its Scandinavian neighbours in Google’s Our Mobile Planet survey, at 45 percent compared to Norway’s 67 percent, Sweden’s 62 percent, and Denmark’s 59 percent.

It appears Finland has fell behind in the same way, though we can’t be certain since the ITU did not provide actual device ownership numbers.

Connected devices will outnumber Scandinavians 2.6 to one in 2017, according to Machina Research, which should give a good indication of how ubiquitous these connected devices are becoming in the region.

The post Scandinavia leaps ahead of everyone in IoT deployment appeared first on ReadWrite.

General Electric is bringing its industrial Internet of Things (IoT) platform to China, and has partnered with local giant Huawei to win more factory and utility contracts.

As part of the deal, Huawei will push GE’s Predix, an industrial IoT operating system, as its recommended platform to Chinese customers.

See Also: Huawei bets tomorrow’s smart cities are today’s safe cities

Predix is a massive platform that covers all sorts of connected devices in the industry, making it perfect for the extensive industry clout that China holds, most of which is still not Industry 4.0 supported.

GE has already shown a proficiency with its industrial IoT platform, lowering operating costs for coal factories, while increasing output and reducing emissions. This could be huge in China, where coal power continues to be the heavily dominant way of creating electricity.

Unlike other Western tech firms, GE has also been able to integrate into the Chinese economy, working on aviation, healthcare, and power contracts for the state and private firms.

“The growth of the industrial Internet in China demands not only capital and development from companies like GE and our partners—but also a commitment to align the private and public sector to build together,” said GE Digital chief executive Bill Ruh.

Huawei already IIoT-focused in the region

Huawei has its own investments in the IoT, but the partnership with GE may prove to be fruitful for the telecommunications giant in the future, as it pushes to win smart city contracts in Australia.

GE announced at the same event in Shanghai another Digital Foundry, a technology campus and incubator where GE employees and third-party developers will be able to work on new applications and devices.

It plans to spend $11 million on the foundry, which will offer 10 digital programmes and 40 data analytic applications.

“It’s right at the starting point,” said GE vice chairman, John Rice. “We think that the intersection between the horizontal and vertical is the place we can play and create enormous value.”

GE has big plans for the IoT, telling investors that it wants to be one of the top ten largest software companies within the next few years. That’s a big change for the conglomerate that has, for the longest time, been invested in hardware and service contracts.

The post Huawei and GE team up to power industrial IoT appeared first on ReadWrite.

As the Internet of Things grows at a rapid rate, so does my skepticism for each additional "smart" product that makes it to market. The latest gadget of questionable necessity is a new line of smart shirts that are capable of detecting dangerous pollutants in the air. The concept is a cool fusion of tech and fashion, but I’m not sure how useful the shirts will be.

The three shirts, made by Aerochromics, are each built to detect either carbon monoxide, particle pollution, or radioactivity. Basically, when the shirts find dangerous levels of pollutants in the air, they change color, displaying a bold geometric pattern and alerting the wearer.

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China has long been known for its exports, for manufacturing items quickly and cheaply for sale abroad.

But the culture of mass production and copycatting technology has changed as the world's most populous nation has grown.

China is now turning into a force for innovation in its own right.

Citi's latest Disruptive Innovations report includes a bunch of charts and tables on the world's most innovative cities.

It's striking that China is rising up the rankings, and Shenzhen is becoming a patent-filing powerhouse. The emergence of Shenzhen — along with China more broadly — as an innovation hub has broad implications.

China is trying to transition its economy from one based on investment to one based on consumption. Chinese companies having been buying up tech companies around the world. A rising urban middle class that is tech savvy and mobile friendly is gaining more prosperity and demanding more convenience. The population is aging, making healthcare and robotic technology more important.

In short, the Chinese market is huge, and it is giving the West a run for its funding.

Let's look at the charts:

Silicon Valley leads the way in VC investment, but Beijing is closing in.

Silicon Valley, of course, comes out on top as the best-known innovation cluster with the most venture capital investment through the years. It is home to computer software, social-media giants, and a hit TV show poking fun at the tech-savvy nature of this city. 

But Beijing increased its VC investment from just $0.9 billion in 2007 to a whopping $7.7 billion in 2014, catapulting it into second place.

China ranks second in fintech investment too.

When it comes to financial technology, China comes second, behind only California, in fintech investment by region. Hong Kong actually beats California in the number of fintech hubs it harbors.

China has also vaulted up the rankings for patents filed, with Shenzhen-Guangdong ranking second, behind Tokyo and directly ahead of San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland.

China's sudden rise as an innovation hub is thanks in part to support from the government's plans and policies and increases in the number of internet and mobile users.

China's government has given significant support to innovation through favorable land and tax policies, improvements in local infrastructure, and the establishment of important research centers and industrial parks.

In the Hangzhou Yuhang Economic and Technological Development area, for example, 100% of taxes can be refunded to eligible companies in the first two years after starting a business.  

iPhone, China, Mac — all down again.

Here’s a good sense of where Apple is right now: Its only two growing businesses are the iPad — where unit shipments fell year over year but revenue grew — and its Services business — mostly iTunes and the App Store.

And expectations are now low enough that a second consecutive quarter of shrinkage — and a third now projected — still sent shares up 5 percent in after-hours trading. (And let’s be realistic: Apple, which generated $8 billion of profit during the quarter, is fine.)

As expected, Apple just reported $42.4 billion in third-quarter revenue. That represents a roughly 15 percent year-over-year decline, as most of the company’s product segments and geographic segments continued to shrink.

iPhone shipments, for example, fell to 40.4 million, China revenue declined 33 percent to $8.8 billion, and the “Other Products” category — which includes the newish Apple Watch and Apple TV — declined 16 percent to $2.2 billion. Japan, meanwhile, was Apple’s only growing region, where sales grew 23 percent.

Apple expects the trend to continue this quarter, despite the expected launch of a new iPhone in September. The company projects its fourth-quarter sales between $45.5 billion and $47.5 billion, compared with $51.5 billion this period last year.

Chinese restaurants started to replace their workers with robots as early as 2006. Though some have proven pretty incompetent, they're still cheaper than human wait staff — the approximate $1,200 up-front cost per robot is just a couple months' salary for an average server in China (though robot prices vary).

Robot waiters seem to have taken off in China because they're novel and fun, rather than for their efficiency. Many robots in Chinese restaurants appear anthropomorphic and toy-like — The Wall Street Journal writes that the Chinese even refer to their robots as jiqiren (机器人), literally meaning "machine people."

Here's a look at seven Chinese restaurants that have replaced some of their staff with robo-waiters.

SEE ALSO: Cyanogen CEO on layoffs: We're not pivoting and we're stronger than ever

These ten robot waiters serve customers in Chengdu, China, carrying dishes around and giving simple greetings to customers.

They cost around $11,310 each when they were bought in 2014.

A "Wall-E"-themed dining hall in Hefei, China uses 30 of these robots, which can accommodate 200 customers.

For 72 episodes, What’s Tech has invited guests to explain technology and its cultural periphery — from drones and fan fiction to ASMR and biohacking. We were bound to make a podcast about podcasts eventually. This was inevitable.

For this momentous occasion, our guest is Alex Goldman, co-host of one of my favorite podcasts, Reply All. After you listen, visit Reply All’s publisher Gimlet Media, which is responsible for a number of the best examples of the podcasting form.

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Microsoft is investigating widespread reports of battery issues with its line of Surface Pro 3 devices. Reports of Surface Pro 3 battery drain originated back in May, and some users are now reporting that their devices only last up to an hour after a full charge. It's not clear exactly what's causing the issues, but most Surface Pro 3 users who are experiencing the problems have SIMPLO batteries installed in their devices. Microsoft used SIMPLO and LG to manufacture batteries for the Surface Pro 3, and it appears that the SIMPLO ones are affected by capacity issues.

"We are aware of some customers reporting a scenario with their Surface Pro 3 batteries in which the system is reporting lower battery capacity than expected," says a...

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If you've used the last few versions of Word, you'll know it's really hard to pinpoint exactly what's changed. Word might feel feature complete right now, but Microsoft isn't giving up on adding new and interesting features. This month, Microsoft is adding a new Researcher feature to Word. As the name implies, it's designed to make research paper writing a lot easier.

Researcher uses Microsoft's Bing Knowledge Graph to query content from the internet and then pull it straight into Word. Microsoft has a curated list of trusted sources and reference materials which the company plans to expand upon over time. If you add source material, it will even automatically create the citation in your bibliography as part of your research paper. If...

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Google is on a mission to eliminate spam calls.

The Californian technology giant has announced an update to the default phone app for its Android operating system that will automatically flag up a warning by suspected spam calls.

The app will check the incoming caller's number against an internal database — and then label it a "Suspected spam caller" in a red warning box if it thinks something is amiss.

It's based on the same caller ID tech already available in the app. Previously, it would highlight "useful information about callers or businesses not in your contacts" — but that's now being expanded to include more troublesome callers.

It will also let you label recent callers as spam and block them. But if it was a case of mistaken identity, and the "spam" call was actually from a valid caller, you can report that it was wrongly labelled as spam.

Here's how a spam call looks. The standard blue banner in the app is replaced by a much more ominous red one.

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