Tag: technology news

Technology news heats up as keyboards return to BlackBerry smartphones

| March 3, 2014

The launch event brought back the highly beloved feature to the struggling manufacturer’s handsets.

BlackBerry Ltd. has now unveiled its next smartphone offerings and these mobile devices are making exciting technology news headlines with the long awaited (and hoped for) return of the key-based keyboard built into handsets.

The lack of touch screen keyboard had always been a draw before the brand’s massive decline.

Also revealed in this technology news from BlackBerry was a lower cost smartphone that will make its way to market shelves in April. Its own server software for organizations will also be experiencing an important and flashy update, to try to enhance the experience that it provides while the company fights for it life to become relevant once more.

The BlackBerry technology news will be impacting consumers from various regions around the world.

For example, the inexpensive version of the smartphone, the Z3, will make its way into the Indonesian market first, followed by other Asian markets. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to those who have followed BlackBerry’s movements, as this has been what was predicted for the handset maker. The company has revealed that these mobile devices will sell for under $200, without subsidies.Technology News - BlackBerry Keyboard

After that point, it will expand the sale of the device to other southeast Asian markets, which is a region of the world in which the company has been able to keep hold of a notable market share, despite the massive competition with other mobile devices.

For the North American market – particularly in the United States – BlackBerry has become nearly nonexistent, with iOS and Android establishing themselves as the primary leaders in that space. The hope now is that the Q20 smartphone will greatly outperform last year’s release of the Q10. This new version of the device is what the CEO of the company, John Chen, has called “Classic” in its design. This refers primarily to the restoration of a keyboard based on keys, instead of a touchscreen.

BlackBerry responded to the technology news that its consumers enjoyed the keys on their devices and didn’t want to lose them. Now, they’re being brought back to appeal to those consumers, once more.

Technology news: Candy Crush Saga maker’s IPO plans

| February 24, 2014

The company behind the wildly popular and addictive mobile apps is seeking to raise $500 million.

The mobile app development company behind Candy Crush Saga, King, has made technology news headlines as it is to raise at least $500 million in an initial public offering.Technolgy News - Candy Crush

The British computer games company has said that its most popular mobile app generated 78 percent of its Q4 revenues.

This, and a number of other statistics were also released in this latest mobile technology news, including that approximately 93 million people play the Candy Crush Saga app every day. This, according to the documents that King filed with the United States SEC. That application is, by far, its biggest hit and its popularity continues to grow.

The technology news continued as the company revealed that the game brought in $1.9 billion last year.

According to King, this is a massive increase over the tremendous earnings it was already generating through the Candy Crush Saga in 2011, which were “only” $64 million. All of these figures were included in the pre-IPO documents submitted by the company.

At the same time, though, King still found itself in a pre-tax loss of $698,000 in 2011. The company managed to turn that around quite dramatically in 2013, showing a $714.3 million profit. The company is registered in Ireland and has its headquarters in London, but has filed to float under the ticker “King”, on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the United States.

Now the company must face its next challenge, which will be to win over investors and build their confidence after the mobile gaming sector has performed quite poorly and unexpectedly in the past. Many will surely be worried that they will only find themselves burned once again by the hype of this technology news and the opportunity that King appears to be presenting.

The first case that typically comes to mind was that of Farmville on Facebook. It was created by the mobile app development company, Zynga, a major competitor of King. It drew a tremendous user base and created a great deal of excitement before its 2011 floatation, after which it rapidly plummeted to about one third of its IPO price, as the company scrambled to try to come up with another equivalent success.