The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Tuesday, January 27
Apple reports earnings on Tuesday for what may be its most profitable quarter to date: analyst expectations are for a 17 percent increase in revenue and net income of $15.3 billion. The company is also expected to share data on iPhone sales that show it is closing in on smartphone leader Samsung.
Microsoft hits revenue target but Windows business sinks
Microsoft reported revenue just ahead of analyst expectations at $26.47 billion on Monday, but profit was about 10 percent down year on year to $5.86 billion. Digging into the numbers reveals that the unit where Windows and Office OEM sales sit saw a 25 percent decline in revenue.
Who's who at the new Hewlett-Packard, HP Inc.
It's official: When Hewlett-Packard splits in two, Meg Whitman will be leading the Hewlett-Packard Enterprise company, and Dion Weisler will run HP Inc., the PC and printer unit. Re/code has the full run-down of executives who will be working alongside Whitman in the enterprise business.
IBM knocks down layoff report
Don't expect IBM to cut as many as 100,000 workers this week, as reported the other day, a spokesman told the Wall Street Journal. He pointed out that the company has already booked a restructuring charge and plans to cut several thousand jobs, but not 26 percent of its workforce as was rumored.
Connected cars may number 250 million by 2020
Research firm Gartner expects about a quarter of a billion cars with built-in wireless connectivity to be on the road by 2020. In-vehicle wireless is migrating from luxury vehicles down to the mass market, meeting demand for more access to mobile content and better service from smartphones and tablets.
... And the government may know where all those cars are
The U.S. government has built a massive national database to track vehicles moving around the U.S. in real time, the Wall Street Journal reports. The paper quoted Sen. Patrick Leahy, senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, calling for more accountability; he said Americans shouldn't have to fear "their locations and movements are constantly being tracked and stored in a massive government database."
All it took was a simple search to put investigators on Silk Road founder's trail
As the trial of alleged Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht continued in New York this week, a tax investigator took the stand to describe how the defendant first came to the attention of law enforcement: via a simple Google search. He entered the name of the notorious e-commerce market for drugs and tracked down the earliest online mentions.
Watch now
Monday marked Motorola's return to the Chinese market after a two-year absence, brought back by its new owner Lenovo. Take a look at its new high-end phones that offer consumers lots of customization options.
One last thing
Meet the man behind OneWeb: Businessweek's Ashlee Vance profiles Greg Wyler, who wants to bring Internet access to everyone on the planet with an array of low-orbit satellites.