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Today’s topics include LG’s announcement that its flagship V20 smartphone will run on Android 7.0 Nougat, Microsoft’s plans to eliminate nearly 3,000 Nokia jobs by June 2017, the beginning of the Black Hat USA and DefCon security conferences and Qualcomm’s licensing agreement that will allow GuangDong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications to use Qualcomm’s chips in the company’s smartphones.
LG’s V20 flagship smartphone, its replacement for its 10-month-old V10 handset, will be the first smartphone that will be preloaded and ship with the upcoming Android 7.0 Nougat operating system when the handset is unveiled in the third quarter of this year, according to LG.
“We are excited to offer the first phone in the world to feature Nougat out of the box,” Juno Cho, the president of LG Electronics, said in a statement. “The LG V20 upgrades and extends its predecessor’s cutting-edge multimedia features a step further, providing a distinctive mobile experience and sets a new standard for premium phones for consumers,” Cho added.
The new handset “will be tuned to take advantage of many of the best features of Nougat,” LG claims.
Microsoft plans to eliminate 2,850 global jobs in its smartphone hardware and global sales divisions, it shared in an Aug. 1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The move will effectively wipe out the last traces of the Nokia smartphone team.
Microsoft, which purchased Nokia’s Devices & Services business for $7.1 billion in late 2013, said it periodically evaluates “how to best deploy the company’s resources.” The coming job cuts, which will be completed by the end of Microsoft’s fiscal year 2017, which is in June 2017, are the result of such an evaluation, the company said. So were the 1,850 positions Microsoft eliminated in May.
This week marks the beginning of the annual Black Hat USA and DefCon security conferences in Las Vegas.
While the focus of Black Hat USA is largely on new issues, this year’s event kicks off with a keynote address from security researcher Dan Kaminsky, who will likely reminisce about one of the largest issues ever revealed at a Black Hat event. In 2008, Kaminsky dominated the Black Hat headlines by detailing a flaw in the Domain Name System that has since become known simply as the “Kaminsky Flaw.” At Black Hat USA 2016, Kaminsky is talking about the hidden architecture of the internet and how it is at risk today.
Other sessions at the two events will bring out new research in car, payment and internet protocol security.
Qualcomm has entered into an agreement with GuangDong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications, enabling the Chinese company to license the chip maker’s 3G and 4G technologies for its smartphones and other devices.
The two companies on Aug. 1 announced the deal, in which OPPO will pay a royalty to Qualcomm to use its 3G WCDMA and CDMA2000 and 4G technologies in its products, which also include Blu-ray players sold in the United States and Europe.
The agreement with OPPO is the latest in a broad range of such deals Qualcomm has reached with mobile device makers in China more than a year after reaching an agreement with China’s National Development and Reform Commission—the country’s antitrust arm—that settled an investigation into the chip maker.