Still digging out from vacation. Lot of interesting developments.

1. Huawei, Xiaomi to hike adoption of in-house-developed smartphone APs. I think they’re focused on reducing their component costs, and on diversifying or securing supply, rather than on any sort of performance boost. An interesting excerpt, however:

Xiaomi and Huawei’s strategy is expected to directly impact AP providers such as MediaTek and Qualcomm. Within the global top-5 smartphone vendors, Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi and LG, which together contribute over 60% of worldwide shipments, four of them have already adopted in-house developed APs or have been aggressively increasing their adoption, which could seriously damage independent ARM-AP suppliers as well as x86-based solution supplier Intel.

Note, however, that Leadcore, the AP manufacturer working win Xiaomi claims that “Xiaomi wants its own custom-designed processors to differentiate its products and control its destiny“. I think that’s a bunch of marketing spin, and the “differentiation” is really a cost focus.

2. Microsoft Launches ‘Translator’ Free Apple Watch App. I haven’t tried it yet. In principle, sounds like a good idea; a good fit with the fact that a smartwatch is, in my view, essentially a tool. And it’s not surprising that Microsoft has a team(s) working to quickly deliver apps for Apple Watch.

3. Big Android Makers Will Now Push Monthly Security Updates. … because there’s something magical and comforting about the nice, round 30-day number?

4. Michael Lopp (Rands in Repose): “Busy is a bug, not a feature.” I suppose it depends on the role. I agree that for a leader to be continuously busy, or “too busy”, is not a good sign. Though it is more complicated than that (“war time” vs. “peace time”, etc.). Michael is now at Pinterest. Another interesting part:

“It’s gonna sound like I’m lazy but I swear I’m not lazy,” he says. “My job is to get myself out of a job. I’m aggressively pushing things I think I could be really good at and should actually maybe own to someone else who’s gonna get a ‘B’ at it. But they’re gonna get the opportunity to go do that [and continue to learn in the process]. My job is to — it sounds like I just want to sit here and drink coffee and talk about bread — but it’s about pushing it down, so these things, which naturally come to me [go to others in the company].”

5. Smartphones are hurting our children – but the real culprit is bad parenting. The headline says it all.

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