Mobile News - Week of July 27, 2020. Congress Grilled Google

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, acknowledged, albeit earnestly and transparently, that Amazon may have improperly used third-party seller data to inform its own product decisions – a key concern over the company’s approach to competition.

I’ll be honest: I don’t buy the argument that TikTok is an urgent threat to America’s national security. Or, to put it more precisely, I am not convinced that TikTok is inherently more threatening to Americans than any other Chinese-owned app that collects data from Americans. If TikTok is a threat, so are WeChat, Alibaba and League of Legends, the popular video game, whose maker, Riot Games, is owned by China’s Tencent.

Apple has revealed its new iPhones won’t ship until October this year. Apple typically announces and ships a new iPhone in September, and the company has delayed its launch by a few weeks this year.

The geopolitical squabbling gives Samsung, the industry’s No. 4 player, a major chance to muscle into a telecom-equipment market it considers a pillar for future growth. Though deep-pocketed, Samsung has been a fringe networks player for decades, mostly servicing its home market. But with stagnating sales from its former cash cows in smartphones and televisions, Samsung has bet billions of dollars that telecom operators will prefer a supplier who sells both the network equipment and all the consumer products that connect to it.

Internet usage has skyrocketed around the world since Covid-19 restrictions were introduced. In April, Ofcom revealed that a record number of UK adults spent a quarter of their waking day online during lockdown.

As demand for high-speed internet increases around the world, companies are continuing to look for ways to reach more consumers.

And Google is not alone in pursuing ownership of vital data infrastructure.

Microsoft and Facebook, for example, are joint-owners with telecoms company Telxius of the Marea cable, which runs from the US to Spain.

The list, reviewed by ET, includes gaming app PubG backed by China’s most valuable internet major Tencent, Zili by phonemaker Xiaomi, AliExpress by ecommerce giant Alibaba as well as apps like Resso and ULike from TikTok-owner ByteDance.

Huawei shipped more smartphones worldwide than any other vendor for the first time in Q2 2020. It marks the first quarter in nine years that a company other than Samsung or Apple has led the market. Huawei shipped 55.8 million devices, down 5% year on year. But second-placed Samsung shipped 53.7 million smartphones, a 30% fall against Q2 2019.