iPhone finally on top of the world

Apple’s iPhone has long been the top-selling smartphone in the United States. In 2023, iPhones held a 61% share of the U.S. market while No. 2 Samsung accounted for 22%, according to StatCounter. But worldwide, it has been a different story, where Samsung has been the top seller of smartphones for the last 12 years.

That changed last year. Research from International Data Corp. shows that Apple grabbed 20% of the global smartphone market last year while Samsung fell to 19%. Overall, Apple shipped 235 million iPhones last year, up 3.7% from 2022, while Samsung shipped 227 million phones, down 14%, IDC said.

Also cutting into Samsung’s market share: increased competition from other Android phone makers, including Pixel maker Google and China-based Xiaomi.

Copilot lands on iOS, Android

Microsoft continues its push to make Copilot the preeminent artificial intelligence assistant. The tech giant has released stand-alone Copilot apps for iOS and Android devices. Copilot on mobile is powered by GPT-4, the newest version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT assistant, and is free. Copilot is already baked into updated Windows versions, with Microsoft reportedly planning to have it open automatically when some Windows computers start up.

Skipping out on ads

As streaming services try to boost revenue by serving up ads on what had previously been ad-free tiers, some consumers are saying, “Enough.” Nielsen found that 63% of streaming subscribers will “tolerate” no more than nine minutes of ads per hour. And for ads that can be cut after a few seconds, 64% of consumers will hit the skip button as soon as it appears.

Meta to encrypt messages

Meta is rolling out end-to-end encryption for calls and messages across its Facebook and Messenger platforms. Such encryption means no one other than the sender and the recipient — not even Meta — can decipher people’s messages. Encryption critics and law enforcement agencies, however, note the risks of enhanced encryption, including users who could abuse the privacy feature to sexually exploit children, facilitate human trafficking and spread hate speech. — AP