Consumer Tech News (Aug 7-Aug 10): Walt Disney & Palantir Report Earnings, CrowdStrike Sued For Global Outage & More

Zinger Key Points
  • Sony's PlayStation 5 has reached an impressive milestone of 61.7 million units sold since its 2020 launch.
  • TikTok has decided to eliminate a contentious rewards feature that was under scrutiny for encouraging excessive screen time.

Earnings Results

Palantir Technologies Inc. PLTR reported second-quarter revenue of $678.13 million, beating the consensus estimate of $652.1 million and adjusted earnings of 9 cents per share, beating analyst estimates of 8 cents per share.

Read: Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar Highlights Praises Company’s Hands-On Approach In Harvesting Economic Value Of AI: ‘We Didn’t Build Those Technologies Eating Berries in San Francisco’

Reddit, Inc. RDDT reported second-quarter revenue of $281.2 million, beating the consensus estimate of $253.58 million.

Related: Steve Huffman Explains Why His Platform Has Started Restricting Content Access For Some, Including Microsoft: ‘We Want To Know Where Reddit Data Is Going And What It’s Being Used For’

Walt Disney Company DIS reported fiscal third-quarter 2024 revenue growth of 4% year-on-year to $23.16 billion, marginally beating the analyst consensus estimate of $23.11 billion and adjusted EPS of $1.39 beat the analyst consensus estimate of $1.20.

Related: Disney CFO Addresses Hiking Fee For Viewers: ‘We’ve Earned That Pricing In The Marketplace’

Bumble Inc. BMBL reported quarterly earnings of 22 cents per share on $273.12 million of quarterly revenue.

Related: ‘Magnitude’ Of Misexecution At Bumble Comes As ‘Surprise’: Analysts Slash Forecasts Following Q2 Earnings

Gaming

Microsoft Corp.‘s MSFT  Blizzard Entertainment is expanding its operations with the formation of a new AA studio, which will focus on developing games centered around Blizzard’s established franchises, such as World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and StarCraft.

A recent leak from Microsoft's Activision has revealed a potential new Warzone map that may accompany the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.

Microsoft has unveiled the first wave of games joining Xbox Game Pass in August 2024, offering subscribers a fresh slate of titles that span diverse genres and gameplay experiences.

Read: Top 6 Free-To-Play Games On Steam In August: Dungeonborne, Ocean Playground And More

Sony Group Corporation SONY  PlayStation 5 has reached an impressive milestone of 61.7 million units sold since its 2020 launch.

Technology

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. CRWD is facing legal action from air travelers affected by a massive global computer outage last month.

CrowdStrike has responded to Delta Air Lines, Inc. DAL ‘s decision to pursue damages against Microsoft and the cybersecurity company. They claimed that the airline did not respond to their offer of help during a major system outage last month.

Microsoft has pointed the finger at Delta Air Lines for its extended recovery from a global cyber outage.

Federal judge Amit Mehta ruled against Alphabet Inc. GOOG in an antitrust lawsuit related to the company’s Search dominance. The Judge ruled that Alphabet’s payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphone web browsers violate U.S. antitrust law by effectively blocking competition in the space.

Read: Popular Browsers Chrome, Safari, And Firefox Fall Prey To Major 18-Year-Old Security Hole That Allows Hackers To Infiltrate Firewalls: Report

In a landmark ruling, a U.S. federal judge said that Google has unlawfully maintained monopolies in search and text advertising markets. This decision marked a significant win for the Department of Justice led by Jonathan Kanter.

Read: Bernie Sanders Says Google May Be Worth $2 Trillion And Its Founders Worth $292B But It’s Not Above Law: ‘Break It Up’

Nvidia Corporation NVDA has reportedly encountered delays in the production of its upcoming AI chips due to design issues

YouTube Shorts, Google‘s answer to TikTok, has hit a 1 lakh crore (1 trillion) view mark in India.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta Platforms Inc. META, acknowledged that the current social media experience on smartphones is "anti-social." This revelation is part of the reason why he is focusing on the development of Ray-Ban smart glasses.

The Global Alliance for Responsible Media or GARM has reportedly announced a suspension of its operations after an antitrust lawsuit was filed by Elon Musk's social media company, X, formerly Twitter.

Also Read: NVDL, SOXL And Other Chip ETFs Suffer Major Blow In Premarket Amid Global Market ‘Bloodbath’

Smartphones & Apps

Hidden AI prompts from Apple Inc. AAPL have been discovered in the latest macOS beta, shedding light on the tech giant's efforts to enhance accuracy and prevent hallucinations in its Apple Intelligence suite.

Read: Forgot Your Mac Password? Here’s What You Can Do According To Apple

In a recent development, TikTok has decided to eliminate a contentious rewards feature that was under scrutiny for encouraging excessive screen time, particularly among young users.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk has committed to investigate allegations that his social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), is curbing automated posts after the National Weather Service Twin Cities, Minnesota, complained about it.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Gary Marcus, a prominent AI expert, raised alarms about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who he says misled the public about his stance on AI regulation and his financial involvement in the company.

OpenAI has reportedly decided to postpone the launch of a watermarking system for its ChatGPT text despite having the technology ready for deployment for over a year.

The Humane AI Pin, launched in April, has been experiencing a significant setback as the product has reportedly seen more returns than sales from May to August, leading to a crisis for the company.

Read: Apple Intelligence’s Advanced Features Could Eventually Cost Money, Says Top Analyst, While Rivals Google And Samsung Currently Offer Many Of Their AI Services For Free

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