Phablets Will Outnumber Tablet Sales Three To One By 2018
Tony Danova

The days of the 3.5-inch or 4.0-inch phone screen are gone. The entire smartphone market has blown up, which can be seen in these Smartphone statistics, and has been moving towards phablets over the past few quarters, and that trend is set to continue, as phablets become the go-to smartphone form factor.

PhabletSmartphoneTablet

BII

We at BI Intelligence define the phablet as a smartphone with a screen between 5-inches and 7-inches.

While this is a broad definition, the advantage is that it captures one of the most important trends in the smartphone market in the last couple of years – the phenomenal popularity of phones like the Samsung Galaxy S4 released in 2013 (5 inches) and S5 launched in 2014 (5.1 inches).

In part, the massive success generated by the Galaxy line is responsible for nudging all phone manufacturers toward the the phablet – in particular, Apple.

The iPhone line has kept to smaller screen sizes so far, but the expectation is that later this year Apple will be launching two large-screened phones. One of these, with a 5.5-inch screen, would fall under our definition of a phablet.

In a new report from BI Intelligence, we survey these trends toward larger screens and build out our own exclusive forecast for the phablet market. We also look at how phablets have altered the smartphone market and cannibalized demand for tablets.

Here are some of the key points from the report:

Phablets are the fastest-growing smartphone category. We forecast global phablet shipments will rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27% in the next five years, which is almost double the 15% compound rate for the smartphone market over the same period.
Phablet shipments will hit 1.5 billion in 2019. With that, phablets will account for 59% of total global smartphone shipments during that year, which is up from an expected 35% this year.
Phablet sales are cannibalizing tablet sales globally. Tablet demand has whithered. By 2018, there will be three times as many phablets shipped as tablets.
Phablets have accelerated the trend toward consumer time-spend on visually oriented social media and messaging apps. Larger-screen real estate encourages sustained on-the-go engagement on content-centric social networks and apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and LINE. More than half of activity on phablets is tied to social networks.






Microsoft Announces August Update To Windows 8.1, But Don’t Call It Update 2
Alex Wilhelm @alex

Microsoft has a number of upgrades coming for Windows 8.1 on August 12, but the company today announced in a blog post that the new features and tweaks don’t constitute an “Update 2? to the operating system.

So what is coming in the non-Update 2 August release? Trackpad improvements, better SharePoint Online integration, and Wi-Fi API updates for external developers. Good stuff, but not on the same size-scale as Update 1. SharePoint is one of the most useful features, with many businesses using sites like https://www.cognillo.com/sharepoint-essentials-toolkit to buy the whole toolkit.

The new code will land via Windows Update, so you won’t have to do much to snag it. Just be around.

Update 1 to Windows 8.1 was a large release, improving the boot preferences of the operating system, expanding device support, and also adding new user interface elements that made the platform far easier to use. It was big enough to warrant an “$Update_X” tag.

What Microsoft has planned for August does not. The company explains that by saying that it is committed to shipping updates more rapidly, and not saving up new code to release as a group, as with Update 1: ”

“[R]ather than waiting for months and bundling together a bunch of improvements into a larger update […] customers can expect that we’ll use our already existing monthly update process to deliver more frequent improvements[.]”

This release is somewhat notable as it underscores Microsoft’s faster release strategy for non-numbered releases, which is to say smaller, incremental updates rather than platform-wide releases. If you use a Windows machine, in other words, you can expect your machine to improve month-by-month.





Russia gang hacks 1.2 billion usernames and passwords
BBC TECH NEWS

A Russian group has hacked 1.2 billion usernames and passwords belonging to more than 500 million email addresses, according to Hold Security – a US firm specialising in discovering breaches.

Hold Security described the hack as the “largest data breach known to date”.

It claimed the stolen information came from more than 420,000 websites, including “many leaders in virtually all industries across the world”.

Hold Security did not give details of the companies affected by the hack.

“They didn’t just target large companies; instead, they targeted every site that their victims visited,” Hold Security said in its report.

“With hundreds of thousands of sites affected, the list includes many leaders in virtually all industries across the world, as well as a multitude of small or even personal websites.”
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These databases were used to attack e-mail providers, social media, and other websites to distribute spam to victims and install malicious redirections on legitimate systems”

Hold Security

The New York Times, which first reported the findings, said that on its request “a security expert not affiliated with Hold Security analysed the database of stolen credentials and confirmed it was authentic”.

“Another computer crime expert who had reviewed the data, but was not allowed to discuss it publicly, said some big companies were aware that their records were among the stolen information,” the paper said.

The paper added: “Hold Security would not name the victims, citing nondisclosure agreements and a reluctance to name companies whose sites remained vulnerable.”

The Wall Street Journal later revealed that Hold Security intended to offer website owners the ability to check whether they had been affected, but only if they paid a fee.

The firm initially posted a message on its site saying it would charge $120 (£71) a month for the “breach notification service”, however the details have since been replaced with a message saying “coming soon!”.

One computer security expert said he was surprised by this approach.

“This situation is quite unusual in that the company has decided to charge for this information,” Dr Steven Murdoch from University College London’s computer science department told the BBC.

“Usually they would do an initial disclosure [of who had been affected] for free and then offer their services for a fee at a later stage.

“The company rightly points out that there is going to be a huge amount of work to securely contact all the affected websites, but a common solution to this is to partner with a government or industry-funded organisation to help with that.”

Despite the large amount of credentials said to have been compromised, Dr Murdoch added that it would be premature to advise the public to reset all their passwords.

“Although there’s a large amount of passwords involved, a lot of them could be irrelevant and many of the websites tiny,” he said.

“It’s not necessarily the case that a large proportion of internet users have been affected. Until we get more statistics we won’t know that.

“So, there’s no reason to panic now, but perhaps it’s a good reminder to follow best practice of not using the same password on multiple websites, because this will not be the last time such a breach happens.”
Multi-pronged attack?

Hold Security, which has previously reported about hacks on Adobe and Target, said it took more than seven months of research to discover the extent of the latest hack.

The firm claimed the gang initially acquired databases of stolen credentials from fellow hackers on the black market.

“These databases were used to attack e-mail providers, social media, and other websites to distribute spam to victims and install malicious redirections on legitimate systems,” Hold Security said.

The hackers also got access to data from botnets – a network of computers infected with malware to trigger online fraud. In cases such as this fraud detection software is very important and can stop hackers in their tracks.

Hold Security said the botnets helped the hacking group – which it dubbed CyberVor – identify more than 400,000 websites that were vulnerable to cyber attacks.

“The CyberVors used these vulnerabilities to steal data from these sites’ databases,” the firm said.

“To the best of our knowledge, they mostly focused on stealing credentials, eventually ending up with the largest cache of stolen personal information, totalling over 1.2 billion unique sets of e-mails and passwords.”
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Password tips

The University of Surrey’s Prof Alan Woodward suggests the following rules should be observed when picking a new password.

Don’t choose one obviously associated with you

Hackers can find out a lot about you from social media so if they are targeting you specifically and you choose, say, your pet’s name you’re in trouble.

Choose words that don’t appear in a dictionary

Hackers can precalculate the encrypted forms of whole dictionaries and easily reverse engineer your password.

Use a mixture of unusual characters

You can use a word or phrase that you can easily remember but where characters are substituted, eg, Myd0gha2B1g3ars!

Have different passwords for different sites and systems

If hackers compromise one system you do not want them having the key to unlock all your other accounts.

Keep them safely

With multiple passwords it is tempting to write them down and carry them around with you. Better to use some form of secure password vault on your phone.





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