Connect with us

Published

on

New York Yankees center fielder Aaron Judge, #99, hits his 62nd home run to beat the Roger Maris home run record during the game between the Texas Rangers and the New York Yankees at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, on Oct. 4, 2022.

Icon Sportswire | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images

Apple on Wednesday released a free new iPhone app for tracking sports scores, its latest effort to become a major provider of sports content and news.

The app, called Apple Sports, does one thing well: show sports scores from all the major teams and leagues. Users in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. can download it on Wednesday, the first day of the Major League Soccer season.

Apple services chief Eddy Cue said Apple designed the app to be fast and simple for multiple quick checks per day. It will stand out from other sports scores apps because Apple doesn’t represent a team or league and isn’t incentivized to engage users for long sessions, he said.

“You want your scores basically to be real-time. You want them to be really easy to get to. And nothing else is getting in the way. And that’s the primary purpose of the app,” said Cue, hoarse from cheering at the Super Bowl, in an interview last week.

Apple has moved into sports in recent years by buying rights and airing Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer games, adding additional sports journalism to its News app and airing sports-related documentaries about teams such as the Golden State Warriors and the New England Patriots on Apple TV+.

Apple also bid for rights to National Football League games last year before losing out to YouTube, CNBC reported, and is expected to be a player in upcoming rights negotiations for the National Basketball Association. Apple, like Google and Amazon, sees major live sports events as a potential anchor for its streaming services.

This new app, which won’t come pre-installed on iPhones, is tightly integrated with Apple’s other Services apps, such as the TV app and News app.

For example, it will take the user’s existing preferences for favorite teams, sports and leagues from those apps, so when the Sports app is first opened, many will already see scores from their favorite teams.

Notifications and live activities are also handled by the Apple News and Apple TV apps, including existing features such as notifications for game start times or an alert for a close game the user is interested in.

Most game pages will include sport-specific information, such as who scored goals, which players are on the court or who’s on first base. Pages will also include live betting odds, but users can turn them off in settings.

The game pages will also often include an Apple TV button. That means the user can tap the button to view a live stream of the game. It works for sports Apple carries, as well as games on streaming services that are connected to the Apple TV app, many of which still require a cable subscription but will increasingly be available from over-the-top streamers.

“In an ideal world, when I’m looking at the Duke game, it says open the TV app, I’d like it to get me to the game of basketball,” Cue said. “And that’s what we try to do.”

Notably, there isn’t a special version for Apple’s new Vision Pro headset, which is the best Apple product for watching sports on a big virtual display.

Cue has spoken about Apple’s desire to fix sports distribution since before Apple had a streaming service. He critiqued cable channel guides in a 2016 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, and how it was tough to find the Duke game. In 2019, Apple gave Sports Illustrated a look into a war room the company built to monitor games and send notifications.

Cue said Apple does a fair amount behind the scenes to work with app developers and streaming providers to get their services working seamlessly with Apple’s services, for example. Apple’s goal is to make it simple and clean to find sports information, and eventually, seamlessly cue up the game with a few taps.

“As a huge sports fan, there’s never been a better time, there’s never been a worse time,” Cue said. “The best time is that pretty much everything in the world is televised in some fashion. But it’s never been worse. Because of the amount of services, the rights, the blackouts, the restrictions.”

Apple will also have features that will allow users to follow college basketball’s March Madness tournament in the app, Cue said.

Here’s a list of leagues Apple says it will support:

  • MLB
  • NFL
  • NCAA Football
  • WNBA
  • MLS
  • NBA
  • NCAA basketball (men’s and women’s)
  • NHL
  • Bundesliga
  • LaLiga
  • Liga MX
  • Ligue 1
  • Premier League
  • Serie A

Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO:

Continue Reading

Technology

Qualcomm says it expects $4 billion in PC chip sales by 2029, as company gets traction beyond smartphones

Published

on

By

Qualcomm says it expects  billion in PC chip sales by 2029, as company gets traction beyond smartphones

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon speaks at the Computex forum in Taipei, Taiwan, June 3, 2024.

Ann Wang | Reuters

Qualcomm said on Tuesday that it expects its push into new markets to generate an additional $22 billion per year by 2029.

Of that amount, roughly $4 billion will come from PC chips, Qualcomm said at its investor day on Tuesday. The chipmaker just introduced PC processors earlier this year, when it released Snapdragon X for Windows devices.

The latest forecast marks an important milestone for Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, who took over the company in 2021 with a promise to get past a reliance on smartphones. In fiscal 2024, Qualcomm’s handset business reported $24.86 billion in sales, about 75% of its entire chip business.

Qualcomm also said on Tuesday that automotive revenues would rise about 175% by 2029 to $8 billion, of which 80% is tied to contracts that have already been secured.

We have been on this trajectory realizing that the technologies we have developed over the many years can be very relevant to a number of different industries beyond mobile,” Amon said at the investor event.

Another $4 billion in revenue will come from industrial chips and $2 billion will come from chips for headsets, a category Qualcomm calls XR. About $4 billion of the forecast is a catch-all for other chip sales, like those for wireless headphones and tablets.

Qualcomm shares are up 16% this year, trailing the Nasdaq, which has gained 26%.

Qualcomm grew rapidly over the past decade as its modems and processors became essential parts for high-end smartphones, especially those running Google Android. Qualcomm also sells modems and related parts to Apple for its iPhones.

But the company has warned investors that Apple could choose to stop buying Qualcomm parts as soon as 2027. Qualcomm said on Tuesday that its growing businesses will more than offset any losses from Apple.

A Li Auto L9 electric vehicle (EV) is seen displayed at the Qualcomm booth during the first China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) in Beijing, China November 28, 2023. 

Florence Lo | Reuters

Qualcomm’s strategy under Amon has been to use the technology its developed for its handset chips, like modems, processors, and AI accelerators, in new markets, including cars, PCs, and virtual reality. The investor event was the first time in years that the company has given a forecast for those new markets. Qualcomm said its total addressable market is as large as $900 billion.

“We put a strategy in ’21, and we’re not changing our strategy,” Amon said.

Laptop and desktop chips are currently dominated by Intel, which has over 70% percent of the market, according to Mercury Research. Intel reported $29 billion in PC chip sales in its 2023.

“The competitive landscape changed between the Windows and Macs,” Amon said, referring to Apple’s move in 2020 to switch from Intel to its own processors. “We saw that as an opportunity, especially as the ecosystem did not have confidence in the existing players to actually deliver a solution.”

The forecast for XR headsets also hints at the growth potential of the VR market over the next five years. Qualcomm supplies chips to many of the top headset makers, including Meta for its Quest and Ray-Bans products.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, Qualcomm calls itself an “edge AI” company, in contrast to cloud-based AI that’s typically powered by Nvidia processors. Company officials didn’t rule out introducing data center products in an interview with CNBC.

Qualcomm suggested that its mobile chips will be able to run the kind of advanced AI that’s restricted to large server farms today, an indication that that company may benefit from the AI boom down the road as the technology becomes more efficient.

“What you can run on the cloud last year, you can run on the device this year,” Durga Malladi, Qualcomm’s senior vice president in charge of planning, said at the event.

WATCH: Qualcomm shares spike on earnings beat

Qualcomm shares spike following quarterly beat on earnings and revenue

Continue Reading

Technology

Bitcoin ETF options begin trading, ushering in a new way for investors to hedge their bitcoin exposure

Published

on

By

Bitcoin ETF options begin trading, ushering in a new way for investors to hedge their bitcoin exposure

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Options on BlackRock’s popular iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) began trading on the Nasdaq Tuesday, ushering in a new way to trade and speculate on the price of bitcoin.

IBIT traded 73,000 options contracts in the first 60 mins of trading Tuesday, Nasdaq told CNBC, placing the fund in the top 20 of the most active nonindex options.

Options trading allows investors to play bitcoin’s notorious volatility by letting them buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price based on whether they anticipate the price will rise or fall in a given period.

“Bitcoin has a lively derivatives market, but in the U.S. it is still tiny compared to other asset classes, and is largely limited to institutional players,” said Noelle Acheson, economist and author of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter. “A deeper onshore derivatives market will enhance the growing market sophistication. This will reinforce investor confidence in the asset, bringing in new cohorts while enabling a greater variety of investment and trading strategies … [That] should, all else being equal, dampen both volatility and downside.”

The market for options contracts on major ETFs can be extremely active, and are widely used by more sophisticated traders. For example, over the past five business days, Interactive Brokers clients have more options orders on the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) and the SDPR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) than for the funds themselves, according to data from the brokerage.

The launch of the bitcoin ETF options will likely also lead to new funds that incorporate those options, said Todd Sohn, ETF strategist at Strategas.

“Grayscale already did a filing for a covered call [fund], and I’m sure BlackRock will come out with it too. And then we’re going to get buffers, and then we’re going to get whatever other trend-following-type strategy that folks think of. I think the ecosystem’s really going to start to fly here,” Sohn said.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC PRO:

Continue Reading

Technology

Intuit, H&R Block shares fall after report that Trump government efficiency team is considering tax-filing app

Published

on

By

Intuit, H&R Block shares fall after report that Trump government efficiency team is considering tax-filing app

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The stock prices for H&R Block and Intuit fell after a report Tuesday said Trump’s government efficiency team is considering creating a free tax-filing app.

Intuit, which makes the TurboTax tax-filing software, was down 5%, putting it on pace for its worst day since Aug. 23, when the company’s stock price fell nearly 7%. H&R Block was down 8% and on pace for its worst day since 2020.

President-elect Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” has held “highly preliminary” discussions about creating the free tax-filing app, The Washington Post reported. The so-called DOGE will not be an official government department but an outside advisory commission. It will be led by billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and aims to slash government spending.

A DOGE tax-filing app would be a competitor of both H&R Block and TurboTax.

Intuit spokeswoman Tania Mercado didn’t directly address the prospect of a government tax-filing app, but told CNBC in a statement that, “For decades, Intuit has publicly called for simplifying the U.S. tax code so individuals, families, and small businesses can better understand their finances.”

George Agurkis, H&R Block’s director of government relations, said in an email that the company looks forward “to engaging with the new Administration and the Department of Government Efficiency on their ideas related to sound and efficient tax administration.”

It’s unclear where a new DOGE tax app would bridge with newer policies the Biden administration already implemented. Under the Biden administration, the IRS in March rolled out a pilot Direct File program in 12 states, allowing qualified taxpayers to file directly through a government portal. The IRS also offers free filing services through its Free File program for taxpayers who make an adjusted gross income of $79,000 or less. 

While both Intuit and H&R Block have free filing options, neither have had stellar records when it comes to transparently offering those services. 

The Federal Trade Commission in February filed an administrative complaint against H&R Block for deceptively marketing free filing products and wrongfully deleting users’ in-progress tax data. Intuit, meanwhile, agreed to pay $141 million in restitution “for deceiving millions of low-income Americans into paying for tax services that should have been free,” according to the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James.

WATCH: Spruce Point shorts Intuit

Spruce Point shorts Intuit

Continue Reading

Trending