Despite a record fourth quarter with shipments reaching 117 million units, the Chinese smartphone market slowed down significantly in 2015. As vendors struggled to find more first-time buyers and the economic climate in the People’s Republic worsened, the market’s growth slowed down from 20 percent in 2014 to just 2.5 percent in 2015. According to IDC, a total of 434 million devices were ship...

With venture-capital investors increasingly nervous, once-hot tech startups are retrenching.Money-losing initiatives drained cash at Practice Fusion, a San Francisco electronic medical-records company, which has replaced its CEO, laid off a quarter of its staff and cut other costs. Not long ago, employees at Practice Fusion Inc. reveled in the technology boom, munching daily on free healthy foo...

With kale now having a place on even Chik-fil-A’s menu, it’s clear that the formerly trendy leafy green is no longer as fashionable as it once was. This doesn’t mean that people are passing it by at the farmer’s market, but those who enjoy sampling nutrition trends are searching for alternative superfoods. One such contender is algae, which not only stands to enhance wellness overall but al...

Cossette in Vancouver has made another tasty McDonald's billboard that skiers and snowboarders heading to Whistler will think is pretty gnar.The ad uses real-time snowfall data to synchronize the whipped cream or foam levels on McDonald's espresso drinks to the amount of recent snowfall in centimeters at the Whistler Blackcomb resort.The billboard is on Highway 99 in Squamish, B.C., en route to...

The Salamander can accommodate children up to 46 in (116 cm) tall and 79 lb (36 kg).If a skateboard that doubles as a stroller is a little too extreme for your parenting modus operandi, then perhaps a trusty old bicycle might be more to your liking. The Salamander Bicycle Stroller aims to keep parents on the move by providing a two-wheeled way of getting around town and quickly converting into...

An aerial display image (cube at center) with so-called guide images to either side.As soon as the year 2020, you may be seeing advertising or other imagery floating before you. That's when Mitsubishi Electric hopes to have its "aerial display" technology perfected and commercially available. Already, it's capable of displaying images measuring up to 56 inches (142 cm) diagonally, hovering in t...

Young consumers are doing more and more through their mobile devices. 78% of post-millennials use social media apps most. A new study from Fluent focused on the mobile habits of the college-aged Gen Z demo. "To relate to this newer group of post-millennials [Gen Z] that are 'always on,' multitasking on more screens than ever before and tempted every second by the next best thing, brands need to...

Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab to unveil world’s first wireless flexible smartphone; simulates feeling of navigating pages via haptic bend input.Researchers at Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab have developed the world’s first full-colour, high-resolution and wireless flexible smartphone to combine multitouch with bend input. The phone, which they have named ReFlex, allows users...

Restoring Value Creation Through Business Model Revolution. Historically, Big Oil has been a structurally strong value creator, favored by investors for growing and preserving long-term wealth. Global in reach, massive in scale, and able to manage complexity and mitigate risk, leading oil and gas companies have generated superior shareholder returns across the business cycle. From 1999 through...