Apple Extends Baseband Partnership Agreement with Qualcomm
On February 1, Qualcomm said on its first earnings call of 2024 that Apple had extended its 5G baseband cooperation agreement with Qualcomm and that the two companies would continue to work together until at least 2027, meaning that future generations of iPhones will still use Qualcomm basebands. Previously, it was revealed that Apple has been trying to develop its own baseband, but the process has been blocked.
Universal Music Group Plans to Recover Song Rights from TikTok
Universal Music Group (“UMG”) said on January 30 that it will pull its music titles from TikTok effective January 31 after failing to reach an agreement with ByteDance, the parent company of the TikTok platform, over royalty issues.
UMG will not seek to renew its music rights agreement with TikTok and will withdraw the licensed content provided to TikTok and its music service, TikTok Music.UMG argues that TikTok is attempting to build “a music-based business without paying a fair value for [the artists’] music.”
In addition, TikTok and UMG disagree on the use of AI music, with UMG arguing that TikTok’s indulgence in AI-generated music also indirectly reduces the scope for human artists to create and profit from their work.
Global smartphone shipments pick up in Q4 2023
Recently, analyst firm Canalys released data stating that global cell phone shipments in the fourth quarter of 2023 increased 8 percent year-over-year to 319.5 million units. This compares to an annual total of 1.14 billion units shipped in 2023, a 4 percent decline from 2022, and Canalys cites locally-based AI computing capabilities as one of the key drivers for users to update their devices. The top four handset brands in terms of global shipments in 2023 will be Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi and OPPO.
ICANN to Officially Launch Intranet Domain Name .internal
YooCare reported that after years of discussion, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) decided on January 30th to register .internal as a new top-level domain, but prohibited it from being delegated to the global Domain Name System (DNS). As a result, .internal will have the status of an intranet IP address similar to 192.168.x.x, which can only be used on an intranet and cannot be resolved directly on the public web. Because the domain name is for intranet use only, users can name the .internal domain name whatever they want without registering it. And since the domain name is not accessible on the public web, users do not need to worry about many privacy issues.