Fresh from reporting stellar earnings, Facebook Inc on Thursday rolled out applications tailored to Microsoft Corp’s latest operating system for the social network, as well as its Messenger and Instagram services.
“There are many people using Facebook, Messenger and Instagram on Windows, so today we’re excited to roll out Windows 10 apps for Facebook and Messenger on desktop and Instagram on mobile,” product manager Davis Fields said in a blog post at the social network. “These new apps will load quickly and easily within Windows and have the most up-to-date features.”
Free Facebook and Messenger programs for Windows 10 were hitting virtual shelves at the Windows desktop app store, and an Instagram application that runs on mobile devices powered by the Microsoft operating system hit the Windows Phone Store.
“We’re thrilled to have this collection of apps available from Facebook for Windows 10 users,” Windows marketing vice president Tuula Rytila said in a blog post.
Microsoft has been working to adapt to lifestyles that have shifted away from the kinds of packaged software on which its empire was built to relying on smartphones or tablets to access computing services or data hosted in the Internet cloud.
The US tech veteran has also been struggling to get traction for Windows-powered smartphones in a market dominated by handsets running on Apple Inc or Google-backed Android operating systems.
Microsoft last week reported a 25 percent plunge in quarterly profits.
The results showed a 2 percent drop in revenue from Windows, the PC operating system which has been the core for Microsoft for years, despite a larger drop in PC sales.
In contrast, Facebook on Wednesday reported earnings that showed it is thriving, with the bulk of its revenue coming from members accessing the leading social network from mobile devices.
Facebook has been cautiously optimistic about the potential for money-making advertising on its popular services such as Instagram, Messenger and Live real-time video streaming.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by