iPhone market share grows 6.4% in USA, takes share from Android in most markets

The latest Kantar data shows that the iPhone’s U.S. market share grew 6.4% year-on-year in the three months ending in November of last year. iOS made gains in seven of the nine key markets monitored by the market intelligence company.

The company says that early holiday sales helped three iPhone models top the charts, ahead of Samsung.

iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and iPhone 6s were the three most popular smartphones in the US at the beginning of the holiday period, for a combined 31.3% share. The Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge were the fourth and fifth best-selling phones in the US, with Samsung capturing 28.9% of smartphone sales.

The most dramatic iPhone gain was made across the Atlantic in the UK …

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Apple’s Mac Pro, Touch Bar MacBook and original Air designer, Matt Casebolt, will now be designing Teslas

(Also on Electrek)

Chris Lattner isn’t the only high profile Apple executive who departed for Tesla over the past month, rather than sticking around to work on Titan. 9to5mac has learned that Matt Casebolt, a high profile Senior Director of Design for Apple’s Mac lineup left the company last month for a role at Tesla as Sr. Director Engineering, Closures & Mechanisms. A job meant for a man named Casebolt … more…

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FBI hands over 100 pages of documents on San Bernardino iPhone hack, but censors the key facts

After the FBI refused to reveal details of who helped it to access the work iPhone in the San Bernardino shooting case despite Freedom of Information Act requests, three news organizations filed a lawsuit demanding access to the information. The agency has now responded with 100 pages of documents, but has censored the key facts, reports CNET.

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After AT&T price hike, Verizon goes after Unlimited users too, with new disconnection threat [Poll]

Carriers seem to have decided it’s open season on those grandfathered into unlimited data plans. After AT&T applied a second price rise in a year, Verizon is now threatening to disconnect those using more than 200GB of data per month – seemingly more serious about this than an earlier threat to those using half this.

While the company’s original statement was a little vague, Verizon has now clarified the terms …

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End-to-end encryption option added to CareKit, allows greater use by hospitals

Apple has partnered with a security company to add full end-to-end encryption to CareKit data, making it easier for hospitals to use the platform while remaining compliant with patient data regulations. CareKit allows patients to choose to share health data from an app on their iPhone with the physicians treating them.

While CareKit data is already encrypted by default, it doesn’t use full end-to-end encryption, meaning that any data stored on cloud services would be open to decryption by the owners of that service. Buzzfeed reports that Apple is partnering with security firm Tresorit to offer better encryption options to developers – but this won’t necessarily mean that all CareKit programs adopt it …

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iFixit joins iPhone’s 10th anniversary celebrations with ten years of teardowns

With the 10th anniversary of the iPhone getting plenty of attention, iFixit has joined in by posting photos and repairability scores for every iPhone from the first generation (left) to iPhone 7 (right).

While iFixit of courses focuses on the repairability of the different models (noting that the first ever iPhone was the worst, with a score of just 2/10), what’s interesting to me is to see the change in the apparent complexity of the designs over the ten years …

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Foxconn reports first-ever earnings dip amid slow iPhone sales, expected to return to growth in 2017 w/ iPhone 8

Amid rumors of plans to move to the United States, cut iPhone orders, and expansions to India, Foxconn today announced that it saw its first-ever annual sales decline in 2016 since it went public in 1991. The company’s decline is being blamed on “lukewarm” demand from Apple, its biggest client, according to Nikkei.

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Apple’s ‘Designed by Apple in California’ hardcover book now available in more countries

After launching Designed by Apple in California back in November, the book celebrating 20 years of Apple product design is available today in more countries including Canada, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Brazil, New Zealand, Ireland, Singapore, and many others. The book is available to purchase now through Apple.com and also through some of its retail stores.

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Filed under: Apple