The latest global trade figures from the United Nations UNCTAD show a slump in the sale of information technology, prompting fears that the market has reached saturation point.
But the stats have not stopped mobile phone manufacturers from launching new models at the industry’s annual sales fest, the mobile World Congress. Encryption and security are important at the 2017 MWC. Privacy has been a concern ever since whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the security services were carrying out surveillance on citizens by collecting metadata from mobile devices. That was four years ago, and the industry is now catching up with more secure hardware as an alternative to apps like Snapchat which communicate but do not store data for long periods.
Google has announced that it will make its Artificial Intelligence personal assistant Alexa available across the whole range of smartphones, tablets and laptops, irrespective of the make, model and operating system. Why? That is one of the big questions that Future Intelligence editor Peter Warren explores in this week’s FI podcast.http://bit.ly/2m4Q3Vj
