Apple faces a renewed threat in the UK, where a new report from the top antitrust regulator says both it and Google are holding back innovation in the mobile browser market. By far, most of the criticism is being leveled at Apple.

The final Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) inquiry report finds that Apple wields too much power. Not only does it determine what mobile browsers can do on its devices, which limits differentiation, but it also gives Safari greater or earlier access to key operating system functions and new WebKit features before offering them to any other browser or browser developer.

This, they claim, has a “negative impact on competition and innovation,” which means “consumers and businesses could be missing out on potential innovative features that mobile browsers can provide.”

Safari and Chrome, ‘holding back innovation’

“Following our in-depth investigation, we have concluded that competition between different mobile browsers is not working well, and this is holding back innovation in the UK,” said Margot Daly, chair of the CMA’s independent inquiry group. “The analysis set out in our report and the range of potential interventions considered to address the market issues we have identified, merits consideration by the CMA under its new powers, which have been specifically designed for digital markets.”

Some of these arguments seem moot.

For example, it seems appropriate that Apple would introduce new operating systems via its own controlled browser first, in order to maintain security while the new features are bedded in, and in that regard early access seems an acceptable thing. However, the report points out that those risks could be managed in other ways that would not involve a complete ban on other browser engines, such as by the imposition of minimum security standards on browsers that don’t use WebKit.

No change yet, but it’s coming

The report suggests a number of changes, but a lot will rest on another decision currently going through the CMA. Under new powers contained in the recently-approved Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, the CMA can now declare some firms as having Strategic Market Status (SMS). A firm that receives SMS status must submit to the CMA, which can impose legally binding conduct requirements or intervene to force changes in systems.  

We don’t know whether Apple will be given SMS status — that investigation only began in January — but it seems probable, after which it can expect to be forced to engage in a range of changes in its business practices, including in mobile browsing.

It is important to note that rather than demanding immediate changes, the CMA has shunted responsibility to the wider market investigation ongoing into Apple. Presumably, this means the CMA plots a series of demanded changes that go beyond those distilled in today’s report. It also means that, for the moment, Apple can carry on as it is already.

What will Apple need to change?

As for today’s new report, some of the changes Apple might be forced to make could include being:

Required to support browser engines other than WebKit.

Forced to offer competing browsers access to key functionalities from the operating system.

Forced to provide proper support for Progressive Web Apps, as many smaller UK app developers have complained that the higher cost of native app development is holding back their business.

Required to make it possible to link to web content from within an app on iOS, enabling traffic to be directed to competing browsers. It is interesting that the CMA highlights Facebook as being a company that wants to be able to do this. I presume if it were to do so, this would utterly undermine hard-won privacy controls; it isn’t clear whether privacy could become a minimum standard required from third parties. 

Placed in position to allow Safari to become an optional choice when setting up a new iPhone. The CMA resolutely believes the default nature of Safari on new devices forms a barrier to entry to other browser vendors.

The regulator did walk back previous criticisms concerning cloud gaming on iOS devices, saying it is satisfied with recent changes Apple made to its approach.

Follow the money…

Perhaps the biggest and most expensive problem identified by the CMA is the lucrative revenue-sharing deals between Apple and Google over search traffic. The CMA says these revenues are so great that neither Apple nor Google are strongly motivated to compete. The lock-in they share, given that both Apple and Google share dominance of the smartphone market, makes it that much harder for independent browsers to thrive.

“We find both Apple’s and Google’s product design choices about when, whether and how users make certain decisions about mobile browsers, also known as ‘choice architecture,’ are making it significantly harder for users to drive competition by making active choices about their use of mobile browsers,” the report says.

This latest salvo of bad news for Apple from the UK follows hot on the heels of the UK government’s criminally shameless attempt to undermine iPhone security for people worldwide with a demand to create a secret back door into iPhone data. That decision, made in private and subject to very little public scrutiny, also affects people outside of the UK. It’s understood that Apple will protest the demand in a top secret UK court later this week — though the nature of the pernicious legislation is such that even when it does, the people actually impacted by the decision won’t get to learn about it. 

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Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt Renewed calls for Google to sell Chrome have reignited demands for the company to also divest Android. An executive at Murena, a French smartphone startup, said today that breaking up the businesses is the only way to end Google’s “cycle of domination”. The appeal follows a Friday court filing from the US Department of Justice (DOJ). The filing reaffirmed a proposal for Google to divest its Chrome browser and sell it to a competitor, in a bid to break up the tech giant’s alleged search engine monopoly.  “Through its sheer size and unrestricted power, Google has robbed consumers and businesses…This story continues at The Next WebOr just read more coverage about: Google

Source:: The Next Web

By Siôn Geschwindt With their heavy battery packs, EVs are hardly known for being lightweight. That is, perhaps, until now.  British startup Longbow — founded by former Tesla, Lucid, and Polestar execs — emerged from stealth today with plans for two new ultralight EVs. The company bills the cars as “spiritual successors” to the iconic Lotus Elise and Jaguar E-Type. The first of the pair is Speedster, a nimble, open-top sports car weighing just 895kg that could accelerate from 0 to 100km/h in just 3.5 seconds. Speedster will have an estimated range of 275 miles and a starting price of ₤84,995. The first customer…This story continues at The Next WebOr just read more coverage about: Tesla

Source:: The Next Web

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It’s no big revelation that project management can be a chore.

Enterprise teams need to be able to easily collaborate, track progress, and gain important insights from data, but they often don’t have a cohesive platform on which to do so, creating fragmentation, administrative burdens, and ultimately slowing project momentum.

Zoho Corporation is aiming to take the headaches out of this process with its release Tuesday of Projects Plus. The data-driven project management (DDPM) platform pulls together disparate data so that internal and external teams can collaborate, communicate, and get projects done more quickly and easily.

DDPM “takes guesswork out of the project management equation,” said Aarthi Elizabeth, Zoho senior evangelist. “Team members and project managers can start to make informed decisions rather than having to rely on intuition.”

Building on Zoho Projects

Projects Plus integrates four Zoho applications — Projects, WorkDrive, Analytics, and Sprints — to support collaboration, file management, real-time business intelligence (BI), and agile or waterfall workflows.

Using data from time tracking, budgeting, task completion, and team and deliverability metrics, Projects Plus supports predictive analysis (to estimate timelines or anticipate risk or resource needs); progress tracking (moving beyond static project management tools like Gantt charts); and quality control analytics throughout a project’s timeline.

“Our aim is to make data accessible to everyone on project teams, not just data engineers or analysts,” Elizabeth said. “This will increase transparency and improve efficiency among cross-functional teams.”

Zoho has also brought its in-house AI engine, Zia, to the platform to automate data analysis and generate insights. For instance, Zia can spot project bottlenecks and take corrective action, determine where resources are being underutilized or overutilized and tap the right people based on their skills, and make predictions based on how a project is going so that managers can make adjustments to avoid delays and cost overruns.

“Zia’s ability to generate real-time insights based on various project metrics significantly increases the success probability of the project, and conversational AI enables users to ask questions about the project,” Elizabeth explained. For instance, teams can ask Zia to show them overdue tasks, and Zia will automatically pull out that data.

Multiple use cases

One Zoho customer, a commercial automobile manufacturing team, uses Projects for both simple redesigns and more complex new projects, Elizabeth noted. The team uses the platform for everything from R&D redesign to production, unifying metrics to understand common delays and risks. Using these insights to modify their processes, they have improved client satisfaction by 20%.

Elizabeth also pointed to another customer, a financial institution, that undergoes a half dozen internal audits a year, leaving employees with a list of issues and action items to track and resolve under deadline. Zia helps them pull together the materials and data they need to remediate flagged issues, providing progress reports via dashboards along the way. 

“Zia can break down the progress perfectly for them,” said Elizabeth.

Supports Zoho’s ‘upmarket trajectory’: analyst

The new platform is an extension of Zoho Projects, one of Zoho’s earliest products. The company has steadily built upon Projects over the last two decades, finding that nearly 20% of customers use it alongside other Zoho apps such as Analytics.

The goal with Projects Plus, Elizabeth said, is to help customers from different verticals get started with a single platform.

Zoho has many competitors in an increasingly cluttered field — including Zendesk, HubSpot, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Creatio. However, Elizabeth pointed to the fragmented nature of rival platforms; users of different systems, such as Asana or Monday.com, have to use a combination of apps from different vendors to communicate and collaborate. 

Zoho said that Projects has pulled ahead of other third-party apps in the market, with 55% of new users migrating from Microsoft Projects and Jira.

Elizabeth noted that the company owns its entire tech stack — data centers, hardware, software, and apps — and integrates with other components of its software suite, as well as with third-party software including Microsoft Office 365, Google Workspace, and popular repository management, collaboration, customer service, and analytics tools, via its online business app store, Zoho Marketplace.

“The Projects Plus Platform launch underscores Zoho’s continued commitment to meeting customers where they are,” said Evelyn McMullen, research manager at Nucleus Research.

For customers not yet ready to adopt more advanced project management capabilities, the new offering is a good option to support them as their requirements evolve over time, said McMullen. And large enterprises should take note that the platform is designed to meet the specific needs of organizations in complex verticals such as e-commerce, construction, manufacturing, and automotive.

“Overall, this move supports Zoho’s upmarket trajectory while offering different levels of functionality to support the entirety of its broad client base,” said McMullen.

Projects Plus is available for immediate use globally. Cost in the US is $16 per user per month, which Zoho said is 27% lower than the licensing price of its individual components; regional pricing is available on the Zoho website.

Source:: Computer World

Google is jazzing up videoconferencing and chat features in its Workspace suite with new generative AI (genAI) features, including image and background enhancements for Google Meet and built-in translation for Google Chat, the company said on its Workspace update page. 

The latest features rely on Google’s Gemini AI model, which the company is integrating into its Workspace Business and Enterprise plans. The company started the integration earlier this year without the need for customers to buy an add-on plan for Gemini.

The Gemini model used for Google Meet can generate or improvise custom backgrounds, touch up the looks of a participant in a meeting and use machine-learning to reduce background noise and adjust lighting. And Google Chat now gets built-in real-time translation features for 120 languages. Because the feature is built on Gemini, users don’t have to switch to another window to translate.

Systems administrators can decide which users get access to the features, and the users can then choose whether to enable the new options. 

Google’s efforts to include better Gemini-powered tools in Workspace — and now offering them for no additional charge — make the software more competitive, said J.P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. “But Microsoft isn’t standing still, and Microsoft 365 Copilot continues to improve,” he said. “It remains a big challenge for Workspace to unseat Microsoft 365, regardless of the quality of individual Gemini-based features.”

Over time, Google’s investments in AI and migration tools might reach a tipping point for some companies to switch. But most of Workspace’s problems lie outside of the AI space.

“Transitioning from the Microsoft stack, and the millions of documents a large company has in Office formats, is a daunting challenge, despite Google’s attempts to create migration tools,” Gownder said.

Organizations would have to overcome a great deal of inertia to make the switch, Gownder said. “Imagine using thousands of Excel macros in the finance department, all of which no longer work in Workspace. And Google Workspace hasn’t reached feature parity with Microsoft 365,” he said.

As for Microsoft, it recently announed it was shutting down Skype and moving the software’s functionality to Teams. Videoconferencing providers are also constantly plugging more AI tools into interfaces; Zoom has a feature to touch-up appearances, and also provides an AI assistant.

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt French satellite operator Eutelsat was thrust into the spotlight last week as a potential replacement for Elon Musk’s Starlink in Ukraine — and potentially, broader Europe.  Eva Berneke, Eutelsat’s CEO, said the company was in advanced discussions with the EU about expanding its internet service in Ukraine. She also said Eutelsat was in “very positive talks” with Italy to provide an encrypted communications service for government officials. In the same week, investors rallied behind Eutelsat, sending its shares soaring over 500%. But what exactly is Eutelsat? And could it realistically replace Starlink in Ukraine and beyond?  An independence mission In…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Siôn Geschwindt Social media platform X was hit by a series of outages yesterday in what its owner Elon Musk has called a “massive cyberattack” stemming from Ukraine. Analysts believe the disruption was caused by botnets — but finding the culprits will be a tall order.   The outages began at around 14:00 CET and lasted for most of the afternoon, trailing off at around 18:00, according to Down Detector. While the outages appeared to have flatlined overnight, there was an uptick in reports of downtime starting from 08:00AM today up until the time of writing. “We’re not sure exactly what happened,”…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

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Companies creating generative AI (genAI) tools that can clone voices are not doing enough to prevent scammers from using them to defraud customers, according to a study from Consumer Reports.

The study found that four of six companies providing the services didn’t construct enough barriers to prevent individuals’ voices from being fraudulently cloned.

Consumer Reports tested voice cloning tools and found that four companies — ElevenLabs, Speechify, PlayHT, and Lovo — didn’t provide any way to ensure the user had a speaker’s consent to clone their voice. The software also placed no technical guardrails to prevent voice cloning.

The publication was able to easily create voice clones using publicly available audio with tools from the four companies. It only required marking a check box that the user had the legal right to create a voice clone.

Two companies, Descript and Resemble AI, had more safeguards in place by limiting uploads of pre-recorded audio. 

Descript required a user to read the consent statement, which was used as a basis to create the voice clone. Resemble AI required a person to do a voice recording in real time to create a high-quality clone; attempts to create a clone based on pre-recorded audio were of poor quality.

Still, the testers were able to bypass those safeguards, prompting the magazine to call for tighter standards. “We argue that the nascent voice-cloning industry should adopt norms and standards to mitigate the risk of fraud,” Consumer Reports said.

GenAI tools have made voice-cloning a possibility, and it is increasingly being used for fraud.

Scammers use the tools as a form of social engineering to cheat victims out of money or to spread misinformation. In many cases, they create realistic audio of a close relative or friend in trouble and deceive callers to fraudulently send money or to divulge sensitive information.

The technology is also being used to access bank accounts by bypassing voice identity verification. The FBI issued an alert in December about video- and voice-cloning schemes being used for financial fraud.

One UK-based bank, Starling, is recommending customers use phrases to verify the person on the line isn’t a clone. The bank also recommends that users protect their voice by limiting social media access.

Productivity tools from Synthesia and D-ID that create digital avatars from voice and video cloning are being used in enterprises for marketing and presentations. The tools can create realistic videos that combine the video and voice clones of individuals, which saves on the cost of hiring production teams.

Synthesia has an ethics and AI policy to prevent abuse. It prevents non-consensual cloning by putting biometric-based checks in place to ensure the person initiating the cloning request is the same as the person in the footage, said Alexandru Voica, a Synthesia spokesman.

The company also applies robust content moderation at the point of creation, before a video is generated, based on publicly available policies to prevent the creation of harmful content. 

“We work with independent red teaming organizations to ensure our approach is as robust as possible,” Voica said.

Source:: Computer World

One of the hottest trends right now involves work on reasoning AI models — tools that can more or less arrive at the right conclusion on their own. (The best-known reasoning models at the moment are the Chinese Deepseek-R1, as well as o1 and o3-mini from OpenAI.

However, credible reports suggest Microsoft has decided to seriously challenge Deepseek and OpenAI by developing its own set of reasoning AI models called Microsoft AI (MAI).

If successful, Microsoft would eventually not have to use its partner OpenAI’s o1 models in Copilot, Bloomberg reports.

Exactly when MAI might be released to the public is unclear at the moment, though experts expect a launch later this year.

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt EU governments are in talks with four European satellite firms about providing a back-up service for Starlink in Ukraine, as the region pushes to boost tech sovereignty amid mounting transatlantic tensions.  Starlink has provided a vital communications system to Ukraine’s military since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022. It allows the armed forces to coordinate drone strikes, identify targets, and stream battlefield data to troops on the ground in real-time. However, European leaders are increasingly concerned about relying on Starlink — fears stoked by a Reuters report that US officials had threatened to cut off the system in Ukraine if…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

By Siôn Geschwindt Edge Impulse, a TNW community member that produces an AI platform for developers, has been acquired by American chip giant Qualcomm for an undisclosed sum.  Qualcomm said it had bought Edge Impulse to boost its machine learning software capabilities, particularly for its Dragonwing line of AI-powered chips.  Nakul Duggal, Qualcomm’s head of IoT, said the acquisition would strengthen his firm’s “leadership in AI” and bolster “critical sectors such as retail, security, energy and utilities, supply chain management, and asset management.” Under the deal, Edge Impulse will integrate its operations with Qualcomm’s, but maintain its own offices, employees, and website.     “Our team…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

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“Sluggish” might be the best word to describe the IT job market after the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published its data for February employment today.

The data offered mixed signals for US tech jobs: even though the number of tech roles grew, unemployment rose. And while tech companies cut staff, nearly 490,000 job postings were made.

The unemployment rate continued to climb for the IT marketplace, to 3.3% in February from 2.9% in January. It was the second month in a row the unemployment rate grew, according to ComTIA, a non-profit trade association. The numbers represent a dramatic increase in tech unemployment compared with December’s 2.0% rate.

Janco Associates, which uses different metrics than CompTIA to determine tech unemployment, pegged February’s unemployment rate at a much higher 5.4% — though that number is still down from 5.7% in January.

Janco said the number of unemployed IT professionals dropped slightly in February to 148,000 from 152,000 in January.

“There continues to be uncertainty in the outlook for IT initiatives,” said Janco CEO Victor Janulaitis. “A preliminary impact of DOGE is being felt, as many contracts for IT professionals have been put on hold and government IT pros do not have a clear picture of what the future holds for them.”

DOGE stands for the unofficial “Department of Government Efficiency” put into place by President Donald J. Trump; it is being overseen by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.

According to BLS data, the IT job market shrank by 9,100 positions in early 2025, Janulaitis said. Economic uncertainty, including stock market fluctuations and concerns over inflation, tariffs, tax cuts, and global conflicts, is responsible for the hiring slowdown, he said.

Kye Mitchell, head of tech recruiting firm Experis North America, agreed that tech demand so far this year is down 6%. “It remains challenging for those looking for new jobs, even as employers face talent shortages,” he said. “However, there is optimism that AI can be used to effectively upskill and reskill existing employees as hiring continues to stall and people hold on to the jobs they have, given economic uncertainties.”   

Employer hiring for those with AI skills continues to trend upward, according to a CompTIA analysis of Lightcast job posting data. Active job listings referencing AI skills in some capacity was up 116% in February compared to the same period last year, while hiring for dedicated AI job roles increased 79% during the same time frame, according to CompTIA.

February’s IT unemployment rate remained well below the national unemployment rate of 4.1%. The overall number of unemployed Americans, 7.1 million, changed little from January, and the overall national unemployment rate has remained in a narrow range of 4.0 percent  to 4.2 percent since May 2024, according to the BLS data.

Typically, January and February see increases in employment and a drop in unemployment.

The jobs report shows a market trying to balance itself amid falling consumer confidence and ongoing economic uncertaintyr, according to Ger Doyle, US country manager for staffing firm ManpowerGroup. While the labor market remains resilient, job seekers face challenges, and signs of cooling indicate cautious employer behavior.

“This year, our real-time data shows that demand is down 6%,” Doyle said in a statement. “We’re also seeing month-over-month declines in areas tied to consumer confidence and goods production — particularly with retail managers, where demand has dropped 16% — and in wholesale and manufacturing, down 20%. These declines are noticeable and indicate that the pace of hiring has slowed.”

Employment by tech sector companies declined by a net 11,514 positions in February, with tech services and tech manufacturing accounting for most of the retreat. At the same time, tech employment across all industry sectors increased by an estimated 177,000 for February, according to CompTIA’s analysis.

“As expected, the report paints a mixed picture, as labor market data catches up to market developments,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA. “Recent employer tech hiring and future hiring intent indicators remain steady, so [that offers] a degree of reassurance.”

The march toward skills-based hiring continued, as nearly one-half of all tech occupation job postings did not specify a four-year degree requirement for applicants, CompTIA said.

Some IT jobs had a far higher percentage of openings without four-year degree requirements. Those included: network support specialists (85%), tech support specialists (71%), computer programmers (57%), network systems administrators (54%) and web and UI/UX designers (53%).

According to BLS data, employment trended up in vertical markets such as healthcare, financial activities, transportation and warehousing, and social assistance. But US government employment declined, a result of President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to cull the federal workforce through firings and steps by DOGE to eliminate positions and even whole agencies.

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt Elon Musk’s allegiance to Trump is once again stirring up controversy — this time over Starlink. The satellite internet provider, owned by Musk’s firm SpaceX, has become embroiled in a hot debate among Italian politicians, as Rome weighs its strategic alliances amid mounting tensions between Europe and the US. Italy’s right-wing League party is pushing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government to choose Starlink to provide satellite communications for government officials, citing the superiority of its technology over French rival Eutelsat. Starlink has around 6,700 active satellites in orbit, while Eutelsat has just over 600. “In the Italian interest it would…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web

After nearly two years of intensive beta testing, Duckduckgo has launched the live version of the AI assistant previously known as Duck Assist. Similar to Google’s AI Overviews, the AI Assistant can provide quick answers to users’ questions, such as why Pluto is no longer classified as a planet.

If users want more information, they can ask follow-up questions via the built-in chatbot Duck.ai; users can choose between generative AI (genAI) models, including GPT-4o mini, o3-mini, Llama 3.3, Mistral Small 3 and Claude 3 Haiku.

Both the AI assistant and the chatbot are free to use, and don’t require an account, The Verge reports.

Source:: Computer World

By Siôn Geschwindt AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or DeepSeek have radically disrupted the way we access and generate information. However, these systems are general — they are jacks of all trades but masters of none.  Increasingly, though, scientists are training AI to solve very specific problems and fast-track everything from creating new drugs to designing fusion reactors. One area where they’re gaining traction is enhanced material discovery. Their advances are creating a growing range of promising startups. PhaseTree is one of them. Spun-off from the Technical University of Denmark in 2021, PhaseTree has developed a platform that integrates computer simulations, lab automation,…This story continues at The Next Web

Source:: The Next Web