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WhatsApp's CEO Is Suddenly Leaving Facebook. It Could Cost Him $1 Billion
'Fortnite' Season 4 Goes Live: Hop Rocks, Low-Grav, Huge Crater
For Apple's iPhone X, is it time for 'full panic mode'?

WhatsApp's CEO Is Suddenly Leaving Facebook. It Could Cost Him $1 Billion

Posted: 01 May 2018 06:27 AM PDT

Jan Koum's exit from Facebook Inc. could prove costly. A speedy departure may prevent him from collecting as much as $1 billion in stock awards.

The chief executive officer of messaging unit WhatsApp confirmed in a Facebook post Monday afternoon that he was leaving the company. The announcement comes before the final three vesting dates of restricted stock unit awards tied to Facebook's $22 billion purchase of WhatsApp in 2014.

Koum, 42, got about 24.9 million restricted shares as part of the deal. The stock vests in increments until late 2018, with 1.9 million shares due to vest in mid-May and mid-August, plus a final tranche of 2.1 million set to be issued in November.

The awards are contingent on him still being employed through those dates. He would forfeit 5.8 million shares, worth $997.5 million as of Monday's close, if he left before May 15, unless his exit is categorized as an involuntary termination or a good-reason resignation, regulatory filings show.

The precise circumstances of his departure aren't yet clear. Facebook declined to comment on Koum's departure date.

The Washington Post reported earlier that Koum is exiting the company after clashing with Facebook over strategy, and that he also plans to leave the board. The other co-founder of WhatsApp, Brian Acton, also left recently — and last month posted the #DeleteFacebook hashtag during the social network's scandal over user privacy.

Koum's decision may be made easier thanks to the $10.4 billion fortune he's already accrued, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He's already sold $8 billion worth of Facebook stock since 2015, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

"It is time for me to move on," Koum said in the post. "I'm taking some time off to do things I enjoy outside of technology, such as collecting rare air-cooled Porsches, working on my cars and playing ultimate Frisbee."

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'Fortnite' Season 4 Goes Live: Hop Rocks, Low-Grav, Huge Crater

Posted: 01 May 2018 07:06 AM PDT

Tilted Tower still stands in the wake of "Fortnite's" Season 4 opening event, the comet that spent much of the last season bearing down on the battle royale map leveled Dusty Depot instead. Players will now find a massive crater in place of one of the three warehouses and, if you eat the glowing rocks found there, the ability to float as if in low gravity.

The shards also damaged other areas around the map, so expect to stumble upon plenty of changes as you play through your first set of matches in Season 4. There's also a new location in the northern section of the map called Risky Reels.

Of course, Season 4 also brings with it a whole new set of skins and other cosmetics as well as the option to purchase a season pass. This season the unlockables have a distinct super hero flair to them. You can get a full rundown of what's unlockable (or purchasable) over at Fornite Intel, but they include a Wonder Woman-like costume, a Falcon-like glider and a giant lollypop pickax.

The season also brought with it a slew of updates. The full patch notes are pasted below and include details about weapon changes, including removal of the crossbow and tweaking headshots.

"Fortnite," an online shooter with a building element from developer Epic Games, is currently one of the world's most popular video games. It made $126 million in February alone, according to research company SuperData, and it's one of the most-watched titles on both Twitch and YouTube. Popular streamer Tyler "Ninja" Blevins recently broke the record for most concurrent viewers on Twitch (for the second time), topping out at 667,000 viewers. The youngest player for pro-'Fortnite,' which isn't yet officially a thing, is 13.

The success of the game doesn't include the title's move to Android, which is expected later this year, nor does it include its spread into China, backed now by Tencent, one of the largest game companies in the world. Tencent is said to be investing ¥100 million into the game.

GENERAL

Input settings are now filtered based on game mode.
- They've also been grouped by category (Combat, Building, Editing, etc.) to make it easier to search through them.
Added icons for the tabs at the top of the Settings screen.
Added "Ignore Gamepad Input" option to the Accessibility settings tab.
- This setting can be helpful to players who use external programs to remap their controller input and need the game to ignore the controller input.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a crash when using radial menus.
Improved texture streaming behavior when using a scope.
Fixed some objects being rendered using low resolution textures.
Fixed weapon ammo count display in the HUD sometimes being incorrect.

KNOWN ISSUES

Wanting to track the top community issues? Head over to our Fortnite | Community Issues Trello board here.
Tracking for the Self Refund issue can be found here.

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For Apple's iPhone X, is it time for 'full panic mode'?

Posted: 01 May 2018 05:41 AM PDT

The iPhone boom times may be officially over. And Apple may have the iPhone X to thank for that.

This fiscal year was supposed to be a blowout for Apple. The company redesigned its popular iPhone for the first time in three years and touted the iPhone X as "the future" of mobile. Analysts declared it would drive a "supercycle" that would reinvigorate excitement in a sluggish smartphone market.

But it appears many people aren't quite ready for the future -- or willing to pay so much to get it.

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The 5.8-inch iPhone X starts at $999, or $300 more than the 4.7-inch iPhone 8 and $200 more than the 5.5-inch iPhone 8 Plus. For those extra hundreds, you get a sharper, bigger screen in a smaller package; Face ID to unlock the device with your, well, face; and the ability to send animated emojis of yourself masquerading as a unicorn or a pile of poop.

Those changes haven't been enough to get consumers pumped, and worries remain that the mobile market will continue to fall after its first-ever year-over-year decline, in the fourth quarter of 2017. The slide underscores the industry's dilemma: It's becoming tougher for phone vendors to make huge, jaw-dropping changes to their devices, and prices for the newest flagship phones are increasing at the same time US carriers have gotten rid of subsidies. That means we're holding onto our "good enough" devices longer than before.

Not even Apple is immune.

After market close Tuesday, the company will report results for its fiscal second quarter, which ended in late March. The report will either alleviate or confirm fears that the iPhone's huge growth days may be behind it.

"The evidence is mounting for Apple's growth problem -- the company is a victim of its own success," Oppenheimer analyst Andrew Uerkwitz wrote in a note to investors Sunday. Adoption of newer products and services such as Apple Watch, Apple Music and AirPods has been underwhelming, he said. "We believe this is evidence that Apple's ecosystem appeal is not compelling enough."

Over the last week, suppliers such as Samsung, TSMC and SK Hynix have all warned about lower demand -- presumably attributed to Apple -- and reports have said the California company has reduced production plans for its priciest iPhone. Many analysts in turn have been cutting their expectations for iPhone sales in the March and June quarters. Some even predict iPhone sales could drop for the full year, a big turnaround from their optimism ahead of the iPhone X launch.

Overall, analysts believe Apple sold 54 million iPhones in the quarter that ended in March, compared with 50.8 million a year ago. While that's still a gain, it's not the explosive growth many had previously expected.

As GBH Insights analyst Daniel Ives put it, "The Street has gone into 'full panic mode'" ahead of the quarterly results and the forecast for the current quarter, which ends in June.

Apple's stock has dropped about 8 percent over the past two months. It closed Monday at $165.26 and was ticking upward slightly in premarket trading Tuesday.

The company declined to comment.

Apple supplier signals

The biggest warning flag for Apple's results are what its suppliers have reported. It's not good.

TSMC, the Taiwanese company that manufactures the chips that go into some iPhones and iPads, warned last month that its upcoming second quarter would be worse than expected due to "continued weak demand from our mobile sector."

Another key supplier, South Korean memory-chip maker SK Hynix, last week said smartphone chip sales are slowing. And AMS, an Austrian company that makes optical and 3D sensors for phones, said it's seeing weak orders from one of its main customers, which analysts believe to be Apple.

25-iphone-8-and-iphone-8-plus-productred-special-edition-2018 — Apple's iPhone X may not be selling as well as hoped.
Sarah Tew/CNET

On Wednesday, Samsung, the supplier for the iPhone X OLED screen, said profits in its display business were hurt by slow demand for flexible OLED panels and higher competition between rigid OLED and more traditional LCD displays. Flexible OLED displays let smartphone makers curve the screens of their devices, such as the iPhone X and Galaxy S9. Samsung warned demand should remain weak for OLED in the second quarter.

Samsung also said its own mobile business will struggle in the current quarter that ends in June.

Perhaps a bigger concern will be Apple's forecast for the current quarter that ends in June. Analysts overall expect revenue of $52 billion, up from $45.4 billion a year ago, according to a poll by Yahoo Finance. But some say Apple could fall short of that estimate.

Rising services

Apple generates about two-thirds of its revenue from the iPhone, and it's believed the bulk of its profit also comes from the smartphone. If that market suffers, so do Apple's financial results.

The company doesn't have any businesses that come close to the iPhone's size. But it's expanding into new areas like home audio with its HomePod and pushing its iPad in schools. Apple also has been trying to position its services business as a big source of revenue growth in the future. But as of the first quarter, only 9.6 percent of its sales came from services while 70 percent came from the iPhone.

Still, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty noted that services are "becoming the primary growth driver" for Apple. While a small portion of overall revenue, services sales have been growing in the double digits percentage-wise. In the first quarter, they were up 18 percent.

Despite favorable new tax policy, it's more likely Apple's earnings will go down than up this fiscal year and next, noted Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi.

"Moreover, we believe that the investor narrative post-earnings will likely be dominated by the question of whether the iPhone business can grow over time," he said.

Apple could potentially get back on the right footing. But it may not be because of the iPhone X.

Originally published April 27 at 5:00 a.m. PT.
Update, May 1 at 5:37 a.m. PT: Added comment from Oppenheimer analyst and Apple's closing stock price on Monday.

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