Technology

Re/wind: iPhone 6s Sales, Carly Fiorina’s Campaign Gains and More

Also: A bunch of new Facebook stuff is launching.

Sep 20, 2015, 9:35 PM UTC

Vjeran Pavic for Re/code

Tech headlines from this week include news on the iPhone 6s preorder sales numbers, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina’s ascendant campaign for the presidency, Microsoft product announcements and more. Here’s the full story:

Pleasing Wall Street, though not necessarily surprising anyone, Apple said that the preorders for the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus are “on pace” to beat last year’s first-weekend sales numbers for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. However, Apple didn’t disclose the actual first-weekend sales numbers, for only the second time in five years.
As CEO of Hewlett-Packard in the early 2000s, Carly Fiorina effectively drove the company into the ground with the disastrous acquisition of Compaq, the failed PricewaterhouseCoopers deal and more. In spite of this spotty record, her presidential candidacy is picking up steam on the back of her performance during Wednesday night’s Republican debate.
A debate about the ethics of ad-blocking software (and some angry blogging) prompted developer Marco Arment to pull his ad-blocking app Peace from Apple’s App Store. When he yanked Peace, it was one of the top-selling apps on iOS. Of course, the broader argument about ad blockers — and how they affect the economics of independent Web publishing — still rages on.
Facebook launched Signal, a special service for journalists, to bring more of them onto the platform. One analyst estimates Instagram could be a $5 billion to $11 billion business for Facebook, and the company also tweaked the rates advertisers pay for buying ads on the platform. Also: Get ready to see Facebook’s workplace version of its social network, Facebook at Work, in a cubicle near you.
On the “Re/code Decode” podcast this week, Senior Editor Peter Kafka interviewed BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti about the rise of BuzzFeed and the mechanics of viral success. Peretti even broke out some audience distribution numbers on the show.
On Oct. 6, Microsoft will unveil its Surface Pro 4 tablet-laptop, new Lumia smartphones and a new Microsoft Band. Also coming later this year (though probably not next month) will be an enterprise-focused offering of Microsoft’s VR headset, the HoloLens.
An analyst says that DraftKings and FanDuel, the fantasy sports services, have spent $150 million on TV and Web advertising over the past three months. This kind of spending is helping keep TV advertisers afloat, and it is probably not sustainable in the long run.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere says the company has tripled the number of new customers it reported last quarter, adding that he also expects the company to bid aggressively in the FCC wireless spectrum auction next year.
On Tuesday, investor Bill Gurley said he didn’t think a number of startups, including the delivery service Postmates, had strong enough profit margins to last. In an interview with Re/code, Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann says that Gurley is wrong, and it has everything to do with partnerships where Postmates gets a bigger cut of the sale.