The mystery of the iPhone X’s success just got cloudier.  Apple has cut orders for parts used in its iPhone X by 60 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the iPhone supply chain. Another person familiar with Apple’s production goals said the gadget giant slashed its output targets to 20 …

Google has completed its $1.1 billion deal to hire hardware engineers from HTC.  “I’m delighted that we’ve officially closed our deal with HTC, and are welcoming an incredibly talented team to work on even better and more innovative products in the years to come,” Rick Osterloh, Google’s senior vice president of hardware, said in a blog post.  In September, Google agreed …

Snapchat Stories are branching out, hoping to bring more people in.  Stories, the app feature that lets people and publishers string together photos and video clips that eventually disappear, will be easier to share outside the Snapchat app, as part of a redesign unveiled Tuesday.  The one big caveat: My Story, the compilation that you as an individual user can …

On the eve of Oscar nominations, Netflix was reveling in its popcorn fare.  Netflix cheered its Hollywood-blockbuster flick “Bright,” a fantasy/action film starring Will Smith, as the company on Tuesday reported its best quarter ever for booking new members. “Bright” might have been panned by critics but it got high marks from Netflix execs for boosting membership. The news, hitting …

Maybe the best way to characterize Netflix’s attitude about price hikes at the moment is that the company has no plans to increase your bill right up until it does.  During a video interview about fourth-quarter earnings Monday, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said the company has “no plans to try to repeat” price hikes “in the near term.”  Last year, …

At YouTube, every time a user uploads something appalling, a cat-and-mouse hunt begins, to find and purge the pest. Now imagine the cat having to sort through 400 critters a minute to find the offending rodent.  With 400 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every 60 seconds, the site has an “absurd” scale, Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan said in an …

In the media circles swirling at CES 2018, the figure $8 billion gets thrown around a lot, but Hulu isn’t buying into the hype.   Rival Netflix is spending at a breakneck pace — a new high of $8 billion this year — to both create and license the shows and movies that will fuel your watercooler talk and suck …

YouTube’s artificial intelligence is getting better at dragging you down a video rabbit hole.  For more than 70 percent of the time you spend watching on Google’s massive video site, you’re lured in by one of the service’s AI-driven recommendations, YouTube Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan said Wednesday, speaking at a panel discussion at CES.  And if you’re watching on …

iHeartRadio has gone to bot.  The streaming music service unleashed a slew of product integrations announcements at CES Monday. Listeners will be able to access iHeartRadio through its first bot, a helper on Facebook Messenger; and Garmin’s GPS running watch Forerunner 645 Music.  iHeartRadio, the digital arm of traditional radio giant iHeartMedia, has been extending itself deeper into technologies after …

Spotify reached 70 million paying subscribers, the music-streaming company tweeted Thursday, indicating it had added a net 10 million members in about five months. The swelling membership suggests Spotify, which passed the 60 million mark at the end of July, is successfully preserving its wide lead over Apple Music, its next-closest rival. Apple said its service had “well over 30 million ­paying ­subscribers” in …