According to CRN Intel plans to slash the "Intel Inside" program by 40-60%-- cuts that will "reverberate through the industry," bringing about anything from PC prices increases to marketing cutbacks.

An anonymous source described as a "top executive for a major Intel partner" says funds making the program are being shifted towards driving datacentre business, "giving more to the data side of the house instead of compute." This means Chipzilla is moving dollars in other areas or keeping them in house, all in the name of improving profit and margins.

Meanwhile, an unidentified "CEO of a major solution provider" adds the funding cut will bring a "ripple effect" across the Intel ecosystem, before saying it is "disappointing, but it's not surprising," considering the cost challenges the company currently faces. Another CRN source simply says that he has "moved on" and partnered with other CPU makers, such as AMD.

TechCrunch reports Apple has quietly acquired another small startup-- Vrvana, a augmented reality specialist and maker of the unreleased Totem headset. The price for the company is reportedly $30 million.

Apple has no comment on the story, but does not deny it either. Vrvana similarly has no comment on the story, but TechCrunch says it has "sources close to the deal" confirm the acquisition. The news site also says a number of Vrvana employees are now working with Apple in California, and while the Vrvana website is still running it stopped updating any social media accounts and news on August 2017.

Vrvana's AR offering is the Totem, a headset combining AR and VR technology through pass-through cameras able to project real world images into a built-in 1440p OLED display. The cameras track the position of the user in both real and virtual space, while additional IR cameras detect the user's hands.

Microsoft OS designer Joe Belfiore takes to Twitter to confirm what many already suspected-- work on Windows Mobile is officially over, bringing an end to the Microsoft-powered smartphone.

Belfiore does say existing support phones will continue to receive bug fixes and security updates, but Microsoft is not working on new software features or hardware. This was to be expected, considering how new development builds of the mobile OS stopped appearing earlier this year.

One also has to keep in mind Windows Phone user volumes remained all too low, leading to developers dropping support for the platform even as Microsoft offered financial incentives.

The Google Pixel 2 event might have technically been about the flagship smartphone, but the search giant also found the time to reveal a range of other devices-- the Pixelbook Chromebook, the Home Max and Mini smart speakers, and the Clip camera.

Tying all the recently announced Google devices together is Assistant, the Google virtual assistant. The search giant says the launch builds on its current "AI-first philosophy," making a combination of hardware and software able to learn and adapt to the user.

But on to the devices themselves. The Pixelbook is a continuation of Google's Chromebook efforts, being a 12.3-inch notebook powered by the browser-based OS, with built-in Google Assistant and Play Store support. It is 10mm thick, weighs 1kg and carries 7th generation Intel i5/i7 CPU, 16GB RAM, up to 512GB SSD storage and a battery promising 10 hours of use on a single charge.

Road to VR reports Intel has given up on Project Alloy-- the reference design for an all-in-one self-contained VR solution promising to "cut the VR cord."

Described as "the future of merged reality" back at its 2016 Intel Developer Forum reveal, the Project Alloy headset carried all components to power VR experience. As such, it allowed a full range of motion with 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF), as well as Augmented Reality (AR) via RealSense technology.

However a statement provided to Road to VR reads Intel is winding down the reference design because of lack of partner interest. The reason why partners are not interested is unclear, but it could be due to costs associated with essentially cramming a full Windows PC in a headset.

Imagination Technologies, the former maker of the graphics chips inside iDevices, has found a buyer-- Canyon Bridge, an equity firm backed by Chinese fund Yitai Capital.

According to the Financial Times the deal is worth £550 million, and is conditional on the completion of the sale of MIPS. The Imagination US unit currently being bought by Silicon Valley investment group Tallwood Venture Capital.

Back in June 2017 Imagination put itself on the selling block after Apple, its largest customer and one of its biggest shareholders, decided to stop using PowerVR technology in favour of self-designed solution. The announcement halved the value of Imagination stock almost overnight, causing a crisis in the company.

The press is to see more of the Windows Mixed Reality-- aka the Microsoft combination of virtual and augmented reality-- at a special event come 3 October 2017, ahead of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update launch.

The event should be an "opportunity to hear where Microsoft is headed next," and will have Kinect and HoloLens inventor Alex Kipman as speaker.

One can safely assume the event will host a variety of Windows Mixed Reality headsets, which should hit the market from 17 October. As seen at IFA 2017, Mixed Reality headsets come from a number of vendors, including Acer, HP, Dell and Lenovo. The trade show also hosted an Asus headset with unique polygonal design, but that one will only hit the market on Spring 2018.

Toshiba appears to have decided on a buyer for its memory chip unit-- the consortium formed by Bain Capital and SK Hynix, together with some financial backing from Apple.

However, Reuters reports, Toshiba is still "not ruling out a deal with other bidders," making the lengthy process to sell the unit even more, well, lengthy. Reuters also says the decision to choose the Bain-led group comes after failure to bridge disagreements with the other main rival suitor, Western Digital.

“We are disappointed that Toshiba would take this action,” a WD statement reads. “Our goal has been — and remains — to reach a mutually beneficial outcome that satisfies the needs of Toshiba and its stakeholders.”

WD has complicated the sale of the deal, since it has a joint investment in a key Toshiba NAND production plant-- leading to a lawsuit from Toshiba over what it deems as interference.