Samsung apparently failed to right its ship, this past quarter. On the contrary, the mobile giant now expects its fourth quarter-earnings to reflect a nearly 40% decline in operating profit, year-over-year. “Samsung also estimates that its sales for the quarter likely fell about 12 percent year over year,” CNet reports, citing the company guidance on Wednesday. Chiefly to blame is increasing competition in the highly competitive smartphone market. 

In a troubling sign for new publishers and their social extensions, a group calling itself the "CyberCaliphate" just took over the Twitter feeds of two U.S. news outlets: CBS affiliate WBOC-TV, based in Salisbury, Maryland, and The Albuquerque Journal. “The banner over both the hacked Twitter feeds showed someone's face covered in a kaffiyeh with the message ‘I love isis’ in white letters on a black background, in an apparent reference to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” CBS News reports. 

Essentially on schedule, Apple will reportedly be ready to release the Apple Watch by late March. “Unexpected delays in software development and manufacturing could push the Watch back further in the year, but March is the current plan,” 9to5 Mac reports. “Apple has been polishing up the Watch OS and putting the device’s battery through more extensive testing.” 

Curious how Amazon -- with its vast resources and distribution network -- could fail so miserably to get its Fire phone business off the ground? Lucky for you, Fast Company has claims to have compiled interviews with “dozens of Amazon employees” to help explain the debacle. According to one source, the phone was designed for an audience of one: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. “In essence, we were not building the phone for the customer -- we were building it for Jeff,” the Amazon employee tells FC. 

From music to music videos, streaming services continued to cut content sales in 2014. Last year, on-demand streams of audio and video music-related content grew 54%, while total streams were up from 106 billion in 2013 to 164 billion in 2014, per AppleInsider, citing new data from Nielsen SoundScan. However, “sales of digital albums fell 9% in 2014 to 117.6 million, while songs dropped 12% to 1.26 billion.” 

After analyzing a number of personnel reports from top tech companies, USA Today concludes that their diversity problem goes far beyond their engineering ranks. “Minorities are also sharply underrepresented in non-technical jobs such as sales and administration,” USA Today reports, citing its own analysis of employment documents submitted by Facebook, Google and Yahoo to the federal government. “Black and Hispanic professionals … make up 5% of all professionals at Facebook, Google and Yahoo but 13% of college-educated professionals nationwide.” 

Unfortunately for Facebook and Apple, 2015 will not be a big year for virtual reality or wearable technology. No, according to star VC Fred Wilson: “Oculus will struggle to ship their consumer version … [while] the Apple Watch will not be the homerun product that iPod, iPhone, and iPad have been.” According to Wilson, Winners in 2015 will include Chinese tech giant Xiaomi — which is going to challenge Apple and Google for a share of the U.S. mobile market — and Asian messaging services like Line and WeChat, which are going to shake up the U.S. market.