Worldwide tech roundup: November 2021

Netflix releases mobile games

Netflix on 2 November announced its newest innovation by releasing mobile games. Every Netflix subscriber can access and enjoy the game in the Netflix mobile app with no ads and additional fees. It is available both for Android and iOS users. Subscribers will have access to five mobile games: Stranger Things: 1984, Stranger Things 3: The Game, Shooting Hoops, Card Blast and Teeter Up.

Apple to add crash detection feature to iPhone and Apple Watch

Wall Street Journal reported that Apple will add a safety feature which allows iPhone and Apple Watch to detect car crashes. The feature, which will be released in 2022, will work by measuring data on sudden spikes in gravity or if a sudden fall occurs. This is similar to Apple Watch’s existing fall detection capability. The feature would auto-dial 911 when a car accident is detected. The emergency contact of the device owner will be notified with a text message and a map of the device’s location at the time of the fall. 

Facebook drops its face recognition tool

Facebook, now Meta, announced on 2 November that it will discontinue its face recognition feature. People who’ve opted in this feature will no longer be automatically recognised in photos and videos. The company will also delete more than one billion individual facial recognition templates. Meta VP of Artificial Intelligence Jereome Pesenti said that while facial recognition technology is a powerful tool to verify identity, it is most valuable when it operates on a personal device only, not for a tool used to communicate with an external server, as Facebook’s technology had operated.

Xiaomi’s revenue stagnates due to global chip shortage

Xiaomi has been hit hard by the global chip shortage, as reported by Bloomberg. The company is seeing its slowest pace of quarterly sales growth since early 2020. Xiaomi foresees that deficit will persist until early 2022 before easing around the second half of next year. Xiaomi’s smartphone shipments shrank nearly 6% year-over-year to 43.9 million in Q3, not long after it became the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer in Q2. Now, Xiaomi dropped to the third place after Samsung and Apple. Other than chip shortage, the release of the iPhone 13 and the current tech crackdown in China are also seen as the reasons behind Xiaomi’s plunging profit.