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Today’s topics include a new strategy for AMD, rumored features of the Apple Watch 2, a plan to get Nokia back in the phone game and a new project from Google and the other major browser makers, including Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla.
Advanced Micro Devices officials have a plan for getting the chip maker back into sustainable profitability, a strategy that they laid out for financial analysts and journalists during a meeting in New York City last month. However, spinning off a business or breaking the company in two reportedly is not part of the plan, despite earlier rumors.
During the session with the financial analysts, AMD CEO Lisa Su and other executives outlined a strategy in which the chip maker will go after the gaming, immersive computing and data center infrastructure markets as the foundation of the recovery plan.
When the second-generation Apple Watch 2 smartwatch is released sometime in 2016, it will include a built-in FaceTime video camera, more independence from accompanying iPhones and additional models at varying price levels. Among the rumored new features are an HD video camera on the front of the watch, as well as the ability to receive and send texts, emails or app updates without having to be tethered to an accompanying iPhone, which would give the Apple Watch more independence for users.
Nokia will again create and license mobile phone designs—but not manufacture the devices—starting sometime in 2016, some two years after selling its once-market-leading mobile phone line to Microsoft as it worked to shed shrinking operations. The move, which will offer the phone designs to third-party manufacturers for production and distribution, was revealed by Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri in an interview with German publication Manager Magazin.
Engineers from Google and the other major browser makers, including Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla, are working on a new standard dubbed WebAssembly for running compiled code in Web browsers. When complete, WebAssembly will be a new machine-readable instruction set, or bytecode, that will let non-JavaScript source code run more efficiently in modern browsers.
WebAssembly will run on JavaScript engines and will provide a secure format for running compiled C and C++ code (and eventually other languages) in browsers. The idea is to enable Web applications written in different programming languages to run at near native speed in any browser.