Technology

News on tech innovations and their impact on businesses and markets.

Technology
Microsoft unveils its first quantum computing chip
Microsoft has revealed its first quantum computing chip, the Majorana 1. It is the world’s first quantum chip powered by a new Topological Core, the style of which Microsoft says will have quantum computers solving real world problems on an industrial scale “in years, not decades”. The chip utilises the worlds first topoconductor, a type of material which can observe and control Majorana particles to produce more reliable and scalable qubits. Quibits are the base line for building quantum computers, and this new design, used by Microsoft to develop the Majorana 1 processor, could see a million qubits on a single chip small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. This kind of power is what would allow quantum computers to achieve things such as breaking down microplastics, inventing self-healing materials for construction, manufacturing or healthcare, with Microsoft stating that every computer in the world operating together “can’t do what a one-million-qubit quantum computer will be able to do.” “Whatever you’re doing in the quantum space needs to have a path to a million qubits. If it doesn’t, you’re going to hit a wall before you get to the scale at which you can solve the really important problems that motivate us,”
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Trifold Huawei smart phone set to hit global market
Huawei has announced it will launch its trifold smartphone, the Mate XT, outside of China for the first time, seeing to make a comeback in international markets and compete with other big names. The announcement comes after years of the tech giant facing sanctions from the United States starting back in 2019, which cut off its access to advance chips and Google’s Android operating system, but ultimately did not prevent overall growth for the company. The IDC reported that Huawei's comeback began over the last couple of years after releasing a new smartphone, the Mate 60,containing a fairly advanced chip despite the sanctions, at the end of 2023. Subsequently their 2024 market share jumped up 5% from the previous year to 17%.Credit: IDCNow the Mate XT is poised to hit the global market, with a price tag of €3,499, (A$5751), nearly double that of their competitor's Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6, a bifold smart phone model. The Mate XT wasfirst released exclusively in China at the end last year, gathering attention internationally as the first ever trifold phone. Normal foldable phones and devices can be folded once in half either vertically or horizontally, with the Mate XT taking it a step further and all 3 screens are a
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Apple unveils latest in iPhone 16 range, the cheaper 16e
Apple has announced its latest iPhone 16e model, which is set to be the smaller, less expensive smartphone in the range to replace the 2022 iPhone SE - the last remaining model with a home button. The new phone will go on sale on 28 February and comes in black and white, with pricing starting at A$999 (US$599). After 18 years, Apple has officially discontinued the home button from its range, instead, the new iPhone 16e uses Apple’s FaceID scanner and sensor notch at the top of the screen. Apple said in a statement that the 16e utilises many of the unique features from the main range of iPhone 16 models, with the exception of a few features to provide a similar product for a much lower cost “[bringing] the iPhone experience to even more people.” The new low-cost iPhone comes as sales have been mixed in recent quarters, as the company seeks growth for its most important product category. In the last quarter, Apple’s overall iPhone sales were down 1% on an annual basis, while the company still sold more than US$69 billion of phones in the period alone. “iPhone 16e packs in the features our users love about the iPhone 16 lineup, including breakthrough battery life, fast performance powered by the latest-generation A1
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Micron soars on unveiling of Gen5 solid state drive
U.S. Semiconductor maker Micron Technology's (NASDAQ : MU) shares were on a heater yesterday after it unveiled its new 4600 PCIe Gen5 NVMe Solid State Drive (SSD) - the company’s first Gen5 drive and designed to allow for advanced performance AI models, gamers, creators and professionals. It is designed to double the performance of its predecessor, the G9 TLC NAND, and comes with super fast read (14.5 GB/s) and write speeds (12.0 GB/s). The new SSD is created with cutting edge AI applications in mind, reducing model load times by up to 62% in comparison to previous generations and reckons uptake of the Gen5 model will grow rapidly in 2025 and 2026. Micron vice president and general manager for client storage Prasad Alluri said it will be capable of loading large language models in less than one second. “As AI inference runs locally on the PC, the transition to Gen5 SSDs addresses the increased need for higher performance and energy efficiency,” Allrui said. The Gen 5 SSD will be compatible with leading-edge platforms to ensure seamless integration for PC OEMs, with up to 38% better performance than Gen4 SSDs and up to 11% better scores compared to its Gen5 competitors.Credit: MicronLenovo principal engineer Takashi
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HP buys AI startup Humane, adds its tech to HP devices
HP has acquired artificial intelligence startup Humane for US$116 million (A$182.83 million), and will incorporate Humane’s AI technology and employees into HP. Humane’s flagship products include Cosmos, an AI operating system, and the Ai Pin, a small wearable AI device. “This investment will rapidly accelerate our ability to develop a new generation of devices that seamlessly orchestrate AI requests both locally and in the cloud,” said HP’s president of technology and innovation Tuan Tran. “Humane’s AI platform Cosmos, backed by an incredible group of engineers, will help us create an intelligent ecosystem across all HP devices from AI PCs to smart printers and connected conference rooms. This will unlock new levels of functionality for our customers and deliver on the promises of AI.” Humane’s engineers, architects, and product developers will form a new AI innovation lab at HP, known as HP IQ. HP IQ will be tasked with building an AI ecosystem for HP’s products. Humane first contacted HP about a potential acquisition in April 2024, with Humane aiming for a price above US$1 billion. The previous week, its Ai Pin had debuted to poor reviews targeting its lack of features and slow speeds. More Ai Pins were return

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Musk's xAI rolls out 'smartest AI on Earth' Grok 3
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has launched its Grok 3 chatbot, which the company claims outperforms other AI models on the market. The Grok line of chatbots is integrated into X, the social media platform Musk owns. Grok 3 will begin rolling out to X Premium+ subscribers on Tuesday. “We’re very excited to present Grok 3, which is, we think, an order of magnitude more capable than Grok 2 in a very short period of time,” said Musk. Musk has also called Grok 3 the “smartest AI on Earth”. Grok 3 will also be usable on a separate app and website, with a Grok-specific subscription. According to Musk, Grok 3 has over 10 times the computing power of Grok 2. xAI said that it outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4o, Google Gemini-2 Pro, DeepSeek V3, and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet on mathematics, science, and coding abilities.Credit: xAIGrok 3 has both a “Think” option for simple questions, based on a less complex “mini” Grok model, and a “Big Brain” option for detailed tasks. The chatbot will include a search feature, known as DeepSearch, that can synthesize information by searching online sources. OpenAI released a similar search feature earlier this month, and Google Gemini added a search function in December. G
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Mexican govt threatens to sue Google over map dispute
The Mexican government is awaiting a response from Google regarding the country’s request to restore the name Gulf of Mexico to the tech giant’s maps service. “We will wait for Google’s response and if not, we will proceed to court,” said Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum during a press briefing. According to reports from the Associated Press, last week Sheinbaum shared a letter addressed to Mexico’s government from Cris Turner, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy. The letter said Google will not change the policy it outlined after U.S. President Donald Trump declared the body of water the Gulf of America. Mexican authorities threatened legal action in response saying that “under no circumstance will Mexico accept the renaming of a geographic zone within its own territory and under its jurisdiction." Currently for users in the U.S. Google Maps says Gulf of America, while in Mexico it says Gulf of Mexico and to the rest of the world Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).Credit: Google Maps AustraliaThe change was the result of an Executive Order signed by the U.S. President on his first day in office. Turner’s letter said the company was using “Gulf of America” to follow “longstanding map
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Tencent, Baidu partner with DeepSeek on AI web search
Tencent and Baidu are integrating DeepSeek into their platforms’ search functions, as Chinese companies rush to partner with the rapidly rising artificial intelligence startup. Tencent is testing allowing users of its Weixin messaging app to search the web with DeepSeek. Baidu will add DeepSeek’s AI models to its search engine. Weixin users can use “the full version of the DeepSeek-R1 model for free to [enjoy] a more diverse search experience,” according to Tencent. Weixin is China’s largest messaging app. Combined with WeChat, Weixin’s sister app aimed at international users, Tencent said the apps had over 1.3 billion users in 2022. Both Tencent and Baidu have made their own AI models. Baidu said last week that its Ernie chatbot would be available for free from 1 April, while Tencent released a new version of its Hunyuan AI model in January that can generate three-dimensional visual assets. Tencent also plans to add DeepSeek’s models to its AI assistants Tencent Cloud and Tencent Yuanbao. Car companies like BYD and telecommunications firms like China Mobile have also partnered with DeepSeek to incorporate its AI models. The release of DeepSeek’s first free chatbot last month temporarily tanked AI-related stocks
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Amazon rolls out new AI updates for Kindle Scribe
Amazon has just rolled out new AI features for the Kindle Scribe that will be rolled out in Australia and New Zealand. Over the next few weeks, the software update will be available for all 2022 and 2024 models. The update will automatically download and install while your Kindle Scribe is connected to Wi-Fi over the coming weeks. The update comes as Amazon attempts to popularise the Kindle Scribe, as the notetaking deviceonly sold 1,000 unitsover the past month in Amazon's largest Kindle market, the U.S.. Amazon’s update will come with a suite of new features including notebook summarisation, handwriting refinement and expandable margins. The summarisation feature allows users to select up to 15 notebook pages and generate a concise bullet point summary, which is presented in a script font for both a handwritten field and legibility. Handwriting refinement will also allow for handwritten notes to be more legible in script font that is more convenient for reviewing and sharing. Lastly, the expandable margins build upon last year’s “Active Canvas” which dynamically adjusted page space as you wrote. The new feature allows users to expand the margins of books and documents they take notes on.