Items tagged with China
Hackers employed by the Chinese government have purportedly stolen 614GB of sensitive data from a United States Navy contractor. The data potentially includes plans for a supersonic anti-ship missile and other information related to naval warfare. According to a report by The Washington Post, the breaches occurred in January and February of 2018. The Chinese hackers compromised a contractor who had been hired by the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. The Rhode Island-based military organization focuses on researching and developing submarines and naval weapons. Navy officials have not publicly identified...
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It looks as though ZTE will live to see another day. After facing a near-certain death earlier this year when Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross imposed crippling sanctions on the company for violating an agreement with the U.S. government, a deal brokered in part by President Donald Trump has saved the Chinese company. As part of the new agreement, which was signed off [again] by Secretary Ross, ZTE has been given 30 days to replace its entire board of directors and senior leadership. It also has to pay a $1 billion fine and hold another $400 million in escrow. These hefty monetary...
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The intricacies of Facebook's full data collection and sharing policies are not really known outside of the social network, but it is safe to assume that your information changes hands. Facebook does not hide this tidbit, even if the full scope is not known. What is known, however, is that Facebook has data sharing deals with four Chinese companies, perhaps more, including Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo, and TCL. These are not small firms by any means. Huawei is the world's third biggest smartphone player, while Lenovo often jostles with Hewlett-Packard for the top spot in computer shipments and market share....
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It appears that the United States is backtracking on its decision to pummel Chinese electronics company ZTE into submission. In a tweet over the weekend, President Donald Trump revealed that he is working with Chinese President Xi Jinping to give ZTE some assistance in regaining the ability to purchase components from U.S. manufacturers. In his tweet, Trump specifically calls attention to the fact that many jobs in China will be lost and that the company should have the ability to restart its operations as soon as possible. On the first front, ZTE employees around 70,000 people, mostly in...
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Many smartphone makers have seen China as their key market for growth over the last few years. Chinese consumers have been gobbling up smartphones despite the booming black market in the country for devices like iPhones. That black market is so robust that smugglers had taken to flying iPhones in by drone. Canalys has some numbers that look at the Chinese smartphone market and they aren't good. Smartphone shipments in China had their worst ever decline in Q1 2018, with shipments down 21% annually to 91 million units. Shipments haven't been that low since Q4 2013. The numbers also show that eight...
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The hits keep coming for Chinese telecom giant ZTE. Last week, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that ZTE would be banned from buying components from U.S. companies for a period of 7 years due to its blatant disregard for a plea agreement to atone for previous transgressions. Now, a major Chinese regulator is coming down hard on ZTE, and is blaming the company for making the country look bad. China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), which regulates domestic enterprises, said that ZTE's actions were simply "stupid and passive". SASAC went...
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Chinese hardware OEM ZTE has just been hit hard by the U.S. Department of Commerce after the company pled guilty to illegally providing telecommunications equipment to Iran and North Korea and lying about its actions. ZTE agreed to pay nearly $1.2 billion in civic and criminal penalties for shipping the goods, making false statements, and obstructing justice. While the financial penalties were no doubt significant, the Department of Commerce has an even stiffer penalty for the company that was announced today (terms of which ZTE agreed to comply with as part of the original plea agreement). American...
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The concept of smart glasses has not taken hold in the consumer sector, even when a company like Google was pushing the technology. Whether the timing was simply off or if the technology is not something consumers are ultimately interested in, it doesn't mean there is not a market to be had. Just ask China—local police in Beijing are testing out the use of smart glasses as security tools at highway checkpoints. According to Reuters, the smart glasses are made by LLVision. Using artificial intelligence technology, the smart glasses scan people's facial features and car registration plates,...
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LG is coming off its biggest year ever, in terms of overall revenue—it generated 64.1 trillion South Korean Won (around $55.4 billion U.S. currency) during all of 2017 and across all of its divisions, a 10.9 percent jump from the previous year. It also generated its highest profit since 2009, coming out ahead 2.47 trillion KRW (~$2.23 billion), so there is plenty to celebrate. However, its mobile division has been struggling, especially in China where LG has reportedly decided to stop selling smartphones. A Chinese-language news report quotes a representative at LG's Beijing office as saying...
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Just as the U.S. Navy looks to scrap its incredibly powerful railgun, the Chinese Navy have apparently installed a railgun of their own onto one of warships. A leaked image appears to give us our first glimpse at this immensely powerful weapon, but no real details are known about the Chinese weapon at this time. Image via NewScientist The image appears to show parts of the barrel of the railgun wrapped in camouflage (sort of like what we see automotive manufacturers using to hide the lines of their new vehicles during testing). If the weapon in the images is in fact a railgun, it would make China...
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Intel is in hot water after a report from The Wall Street Journal surfaced yesterday that claims that Intel announced to a handful of customers, including several Chinese companies, that its chips were susceptible to Meltdown and Spectre security flaws. Those two flaws affected chip technologies from Intel, AMD, and ARM. Security experts have taken issue with what Intel did because the early warning to the Chinese firms could have allowed the companies to alert Beijing officials on the flaws, giving China operatives extra lead time to exploit the vulnerabilities in the chips. Jake...
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Fans of the shooter genre in China will soon be playing PlayerUnknown's Battlefield under the watchful eye of Tencent. Tencent has announced that it has landed exclusive rights to PUBG in China, its home market. Tencent will run the servers for the game and has promised to deal with cheaters. Cheating in the game is a major problem; especially so in China. "PUBG has sold more than 20 million copies since we released the game in March 2017, and we expect our strategic partnership with Tencent to open up new horizons in the Chinese market," PUBG Corp chief executive officer CH Kim said. "We...
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Apple's decision to launch three different iPhone models has been met with a bit of intrigue since the plan originally came to light. Many figured that iPhone 8 sales might be sluggish as people held off for the fancier iPhone X. In China this has proven particularly true, as two major online retailers in China are already offering big discounts on the device to try and move iPhone 8 stock. Chinese e-tailer Suning.com is offering the iPhone 8 with discounts as large as 1,100 yuan, which works out to about $165.50 off the device. That discount makes it cheaper than pricing offered on the...
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The gloves are coming off in the legit brawl between two major players in the smartphone industry: Qualcomm and Apple. While we've detailed the legal bickering between the two tech giants on this site on numerous occasions, Qualcomm's latest move is aimed at crippling Apple's base of manufacturing in China. The majority of Apple's iPhones are manufactured in China, and Qualcomm has filed lawsuits in that country that seek to have production halted and ban all sales. Qualcomm alleges that Apple is infringing upon three non-standard patents, which include the technology that enables Force Touch on...
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