EncryptoTel weekly digest(25.11.18)

Black Friday breaks records, Apple struggles with poor sales, and Washington creates a secret coalition against Huawei

Apple cuts iPhone XR prices amid poor sales

So far, the company has decided to cut prices only on the Japanese market. Discount promotions may be launched as soon as next week, sources told the Wall Street Journal. Although this is not the first time that Apple decides to lower the cost of its products in certain markets, such steps are quite rare for the company.

Earlier, there were some reports that Apple is reducing the production of the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR.

The global smartphone market is not in the best condition. For the past two years, it has been showing a decline in sales, whereas before that for many years it had been growing at unprecedented rates.

The iPhone XR is the cheapest smartphone in the new Apple lineup presented in September 2018. But Japanese buyers still prefer last year’s model iPhone 8.

Spy scandal around telecom equipment from China is gaining momentum

The US government is trying to convince telecommunications companies in other allied countries to abandon the purchase of equipment from Chinese manufacturer Huawei Technologies.

According to the WSJ, US officials contacted their counterparts from other governments and top management of foreign telecom companies that also cooperate with Huawei, and noticed that equipment supply from this Chinese manufacturer carries high risks to cyber security. Washington also fears that spyware from China may end up in countries where American military bases are located — Germany, Italy and Japan. The representative of the US Department of Commerce did not confirm, yet did not deny the information about such conversations with US foreign partners, while noting that the ministry continued to deal with any threat to US national security.

In the US, Huawei has already lost customers among government organizations, and Australian authorities have banned the import of new-generation mobile equipment for Huawei’s 5G mobile networks.

By 2022, the world will spend $ 1.97 million on digitization of business processes

According to a new study by International Data Corporation (IDC), global spending on technologies and services aimed at digital transformation (digitization) of business processes and products reached $ 1.97 trillion in 2022. For five years from 2017, they will increase in total by 16.7%.

According to IDC’s forecast, by 2020, 30% of the 2000 largest companies in the world will pledge at least 10% of the income to implement their digital strategies.

The greatest interest in digitization will be shown by companies with discrete and continuous production, transport and retail. In total, their business digitalization costs will be $ 1.25 trillion by 2022.

Online sales on Black Friday in the United States are predicted to grow to $ 6.4 billion

According to Adobe, in 2018, Internet sales during Black Friday will rise to $ 6.4 billion. In 2017, it amounted to $ 5.03 billion. As of 7.00 pm on the West Coast, American buyers already purchased goods via mobile and desktop applications and websites for $ 643 million. This is 28.3% more than in the same period of 2017.

“Mobile shopping continues to grow rapidly and shows increased conversion. Vendors understand that shopping and buying goods via smartphones is a common experience for their consumers, and as a result, they improve and optimize their services for mobile devices,” said Adobe Digital Insights director of Taylor Schreiner.

According to Shopify, the rate of purchases in the United States on Black Friday was about $ 650,000 per minute.

Bitcoin fell to an annual minimum

Bitcoin hit $ 4,262. At this level, it has not been traded for more than a year — since the beginning of October 2017. Bitcoin capitalization fell to $ 74.5 billion, and the total capitalization of the entire cryptocurrency market — to $ 138 billion.

According to the NYTimes publication, there are five reasons:

• Unregulated infrastructure and not the most reliable exchanges
• World regulators tighten cryptocurrency legislation
• Despite the declared decentralization, many cryptocurrencies are managed by developers
• Cryptocurrencies failed to enlist wide user support, and they are rarely used in payments.
• Governments can do cryptocurrencies and manage them more efficiently

EncryptoTel will take part in the largest blockchain conference in Switzerland

The Blockchain Leadership Summit, an international conference on blockchain technologies will take place in Basel on November 23–24. The list of speakers includes representatives of financial regulators of the largest crypto-jurisdictions, ministers and heads of government.

Our company will be represented by Roman Nekrasov, the executive director and founder of EncryptoTel.

The main areas of discussions at the summit will be regulation of blockchain technologies, implementation of blockchain solutions in various areas of economic activity, tokenized assets in the banking and financial sectors, and smart economy.

Partners of the event include PWC Consulting, Bosch, and IT giant IBM.