NewsBytes Briefing: Zuckerberg says no deal with Trump and more
Since last evening, the world of technology has seen some notable developments. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of social media giant Facebook, quashed the growing rumors that he has a secret deal that allows President Donald Trump to share inflammatory posts. "There's no deal of any kind," Zuckerberg told Axios, calling the idea "pretty ridiculous." Here are other major stories.
Marc Levoy, the researcher who led the team that developed Google Pixels' incredible computational camera technology, has joined Adobe, where he is expected to work on a computational tech-backed 'universal camera app'. The exact details are not yet available, but at Google, Levoy's software mastery helped Pixel's single-camera tech match the likes of dual camera-equipped iPhones and other flagship phones.
In another news, the COVID-19 pandemic and the two-month-long nationwide lockdown to contain it has had a major impact on India's smartphone market. A study from technology market analyst firm Canalys says that the smartphone shipments in the country fell 48% year-over-year (YoY) to 17.3 million units in Q2 2020. Chinese players Xiaomi and OPPO accounted for 43% of all shipments.
A report from The Wall Street Journal has suggested that China could retaliate against Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson if the European Union follows the UK and US in banning Huawei's 5G tech. The outlet's sources claimed that the Chinese Ministry of Commerce is considering imposing restrictions barring the two companies from exporting the products they make in China to other nations.
Among other things, Apple is facing an 11-count class-action lawsuit for refusing to help victims of the iTunes gift card scam. Then, Snapchat and Google announced major updates for their apps, with the former bringing meditation feature with Headspace for its users, while the latter testing an option to schedule downloads in Chrome. IBM, meanwhile, reported a 5% decline in its sales for the June quarter.
In the fight against COVID-19, Oxford University's preventive vaccine has been proven to be safe and effective in early human trials. It could become available by October. In another case, the government has written to all states and union territories, warning that N95 masks with valved respirators do not prevent the novel coronavirus from spreading and are detrimental to adopted containment measures.
