Rogers reports tremendous excitement for iPhone X and good demand for iPhone 8

Apple's iPhone X went up for pre-orders in Canada earlier today and quickly sold out of existing online stock. Rogers reportedly stated, "tremendous customer excitement" and strong pre-orders for the iPhone X. The carrier also changed its tune on the iPhone 8, which the company says now has good demand. More importantly, it now says overall demand for the iPhone 8 is "good" after initially saying initial demand  for iPhone 8 was 'anemic'.

In an exclusive interview with Axios reporter Ina Fried,  Rogers executive VP Raj Doshi said "we're seeing tremendous customer excitement for iPhone X with strong customer pre-orders."

"We're also seeing good demand for the iPhone 8. We expect the two together will be very popular with our customers this holiday season with iPhone 8 being a major contributor," he added. The uptick in iPhone 8 demand could be a result of the iPhone X's halo effect.

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Search Ads come to the Apple App Store in Canada

Apple announced today that Search Ads are now available to the App Store in Canada, Mexico and Switzerland, raising the total to seven countries.

Canadian developers today can create campaigns to promote their apps at the top of search results on the App Store for iPhone and iPad. Ads go live in these new markets on October 17 from 1:00 p.m. EST/ 10:00 a.m. PDT, and first time advertisers can try Search Ads for free with a $100 USD credit.

Search ads are an efficient and easy for developers of all sizes to help users discover their app on the App Store for iPhone and iPad. We launched search ads a year ago in the U.S. App Store, creating another point of discovery for developers of all sizes, while complementing a user’s search experience

Apple is still most valuable brand according to Interbrand

The Apple Store in Barcelona, Spain shows a thriving Apple product and services economy - Photo By Gadjo Sevilla

Apple is the Most Valuable Brand as per Interbrand's annual report. The iPhone-maker retains the top spot for the fifth consecutive year over rivals Google and Microsoft. 

The top ten brands are rounded out by Coca Cola, Amazon, Samsung, Toyota, Facebook, Mercedes Benz and IBM.

Interbrand assesses the all-in value of a brand by analysing three factors …

• The financial performance of the branded products and services
• The role the brand plays in influencing customer choice
• The strength the brand has to command a premium price or secure earnings for the company

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Apple drops Bing search in Siri and Spotlight in favour of Google

Bing is no longer the default search service used by Siri on iOS and Spotlight in macOS. Apple has moved to Google search as the go-to service.

"Switching to Google as the web search provider for Siri, Search within iOS and Spotlight on Mac will allow these services to have a consistent web search experience with the default in Safari,” Apple told TechCrunch in a statement.

This means that if Siri does not have the answer to a user's query, then the system with just pull up Google results. 

Investment firm Bernstein estimates Google currently pays Apple around $3bn for this deal, based on the fact Google paid around $1bn for the same deal in 2014 according to The Telegraph.

Source: TechCrunch