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Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 Review

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Verdict

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 is a lovely Windows laptop with a lot of power with its Snapdragon X2 Elite SoC, plus it comes with a comfortable keyboard, dazzling OLED screen and immense endurance. It is rather expensive in the top configuration, though, and the port selection feels a bit one dimensional.

  • Lightweight and stylish finish

  • Increased grunt from Snapdragon X2 Elite chip

  • Excellent battery life

  • Dearer than rivals in top-spec

  • One-dimensional port selection

Key Features

  • Trusted Reviews IconTrusted Reviews Icon

    Review Price:
    £1669.99

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    Snapdragon X2 Elite inside

    The new Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 packs a lot of power into a small chassis with its use of Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 Elite processor.

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    14-inch 3K 120Hz OLED screen

    It also has a high-res and high refresh rate OLED screen for added razzle-dazzle.

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    70Whr battery

    This Lenovo laptop also has a large battery inside to help you power through work over multiple days.

Introduction

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 updates its longstanding line of excellent all-round ultrabooks with quite a boost in power.

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The headline here is Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 Elite SoC that touts a large boost in overall power against the original model, which comes alongside 32GB of RAM and a generous 2TB SSD in my sample. That comes built around a fetching blue metal chassis with a 14-inch 3K 120Hz OLED screen and large 70Whr battery.

It all sounds very promising, although Lenovo has quite the competition to overcome with its latest model. The Asus Zenbook A14 (2026) has a similar spec sheet and has been out and about for a few weeks, while there’s also the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI and of course the Apple MacBook Air M5 to worry about. Prices start at £1050/$1199 for a Snapdragon X2 Plus-equipped base model, with my tricked out sample costing £1669.99/$1899.99, making things very interesting indeed.

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I’ve been putting the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 through its paces for the last couple of weeks to see if it’s one of the best laptops we’ve tested.

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Design and Keyboard

  • Gorgeous and sturdy construction
  • Meagre port selection
  • Responsive keyboard and trackpad

One area about the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 I’m both relieved and surprised that hasn’t shifted too much is its overall design. I like the dark blue finish it retains, plus a metal chassis that provides a quality finish. If you’re after a Windows laptop that looks like a midnight blue MacBook Air, then this is a dead cert.

At 1.17kg, it’s quite light for a 14-inch laptop, and its compact form factor makes it especially easy to carry around. I am splitting hairs a little bit, but it isn’t quite as light as the Asus Zenbook A14 (2026) and Acer Swift Edge 14 AI, both of which push towards the sub-1kg mark, and you can feel it when you pick the laptop up.

Left Ports - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11Left Ports - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)

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The Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 is just 13.9mm thick, which makes it slender and svelte, but has the unintended consequence of reducing its port selection down. We’ve got three USB4-capable Type-C ports in total, with two on the left and one on the right. It’s modern and fast, but a bit too one-dimensional. 

This comes at a time when Asus’ rival is slightly thinner at 13.3mm, and manages to pack in a pair of USB-C ports, a full-size HDMI, a USB-A port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. As I said then, the Zenbook A14 (2026) is more Pro than Air, and it’s clear to see which side Lenovo has opted for.

Keyboard & Trackpad - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11Keyboard & Trackpad - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)

The Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 excels with its keyboard in typical Lenovo fashion, though. It’s a quiet, tactile scissor-actuated offering with Lenovo’s typical deep-dish keycaps that feel brilliant to use for extended periods, while its bright white legends are big and easy to read. The smaller form factor is fine, too, while its white underglow backlighting provides vibrancy for after-dark working.

As for the trackpad, it’s got a glossy, smooth texture to it in a similar vein to a lot of modern ultrabooks, while it’s also quite large for a laptop of its size, providing your fingers with a lot of real estate.

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Display and Sound

  • A couple of different screen choices
  • Excellent brightness, contrast and black level
  • Surprisingly competent speakers

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Lenovo is offering the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 with a couple of different display variants, both of them OLED, and both of them 14-inches in size.

The base model comes with a 1920×1200 resolution 60Hz touch-enabled panel, while the higher-end variant I have ups the resolution to 2880×1800 (or 3K), the refresh rate to 120Hz and its rated peak brightness. Weirdly, though, it eschews touch capabilities but retains a lay-flat hinge for collaborative working.

In practice, though, it’s a capable screen with deep blacks and lovely contrast, as measured by my colorimeter. Here, I measured a 0.03 black level and 17250:1 contrast ratio. A 6700K colour temperature is also right where it should be.

Screen - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11Screen - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)

We’re also seeing sharp brightness, with a measured peak SDR of 480.2 nits, making it a capable panel for indoor and outdoor work, while also helping displayed images pop, given the black level and contrast ratio results. Lenovo also touts this screen to offer up to 1000 nits of HDR brightness alongside DisplayHDR 1000 True Black certification.

The Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11’s panel also impresses with its excellent colours. I saw perfect 100% coverage of both the sRGB and DCI-P3 spaces, plus an excellent 92% coverage of the trickier Adobe RGB gamut. This makes this screen suitable for productivity and more colour-sensitive workloads alike.

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Screen - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11Screen - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11
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Lenovo has opted for an upward-firing four-speaker array for this laptop, with two woofers and two tweeters. This helps to provide a full and quite rich sound for a set of laptop drivers with decent mids and good volume.

Performance

  • Beefier Snapdragon X2 Elite processor
  • Improved integrated graphics
  • Capacious RAM and SSD arrangement

Lenovo’s last Yoga Slim 7x laptop I tested came with one of Qualcomm’s first-gen Snapdragon laptop SoCs, and it’s arguably inside where the biggest gains have been made with this latest model.

For 2026, the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 I have is supplied with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 Elite processor, the second-in-command to the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme. There are two variants of this processor available to manufacturers, with 12-core and 18-core options – the variant I have ships with the latter. For the base model, Lenovo is also offering the Snapdragon X2 Plus, which we haven’t tested just yet.

Logo - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11Logo - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)

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The difference between this chip and the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme you’ll find in the likes of the Asus Zenbook A16 (2026) appears to be clock speeds, with this chip rated for a max boost clock across single or dual cores of 4.7GHz (against the Elite Extreme’s 5GHz) and a max multi-core frequency of 3.4GHz (against the Elite Extreme’s 3.6GHz).

Qualcomm is touting major gains in both single and multi-core performance with this new 18-core chip, which I’d certainly wager is true in comparing it to laptops with the Snapdragon X Elite chip.

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Profile - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11Profile - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11
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As you’d expect, the numbers here aren’t quite as strong as with the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme SoC, but the difference is only a few percentage points in the synthetic benchmarks in real terms. It is much the same story, though, with especially high single-core scores in Geekbench 6 that push this laptop into Apple Silicon territory for comparison, plus much-improved multi-core scores, too. 

The improvements in Cinebench R23 are slightly more modest and peg this laptop back a smidgen, but there are nonetheless some substantial improvements to be proud of in synthetic terms against the original Snapdragon X Elite chip.

Lid - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11Lid - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11
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There is also a major improvement to the Adreno iGPU with the Snapdragon X2 Elite, which provided a doubling in the 3DMark Time Spy test and brings it more into line with more recent iGPUs fitted to x86-based laptop chips from Intel and AMD. 

My sample of the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 came quite a generous RAM and storage configuration, with 32GB of fast DDR5 RAM provided and a hefty 2TB SSD. In testing, it also proves to be a brisk PCIe Gen 4 option, with reads and writes of 7144.32 MB/s and 6721.86 MB/s, respectively.

Software

  • Clean Windows 11 install with Copilot+ PC AI smarts
  • Minimal Lenovo-specific software
  • Small compatibility issues, being Arm-based

For its software situation, the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 comes with a reasonably clean Windows 11 install with minimal pre-installed apps, including McAfee antivirus. There are some Lenovo-specific system apps here, including the catch-all system app Lenovo Vantage in the taskbar, but that’s about it.

There is also enough AI horsepower from the Snapdragon X2 Elite chip inside to mark this laptop as a Copilot+ PC, providing access to Microsoft’s AI functionality for generative powers and filters in the Photos and Paint app, as well as the clever Windows Studio webcam effects for background blurring, auto framing and maintaining eye contact. With the latest version of Windows 11, there is also the controversial Microsoft Recall feature.

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Logo - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11Logo - Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11
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Being Arm-based, the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11, also has the problem of having minor issues with some compatibility.

This is because Windows is traditionally run on x86-based systems, so to work on Arm, apps have had to be translated through Microsoft’s Prism translation software. For the most part, I had little in the way of issues with compatibility in running a range of benchmark software, as well as Photoshop and similar apps. Qualcomm has also worked with lots of brands to increase overall app compatibility with its latest Arm-based laptop chips against the original run from last year. 

As with other Arm-based Windows laptops I’ve looked at, the PCMark 10 benchmark app doesn’t run fully, but that’s an issue we’ve seen on other Arm-based Windows systems

Battery Life

  • Lasted for 19 hours 42 minutes in the battery test
  • Capable of lasting for two to three working days

Lenovo has put a hefty 70Whr battery inside the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11, which, combined with the excellent efficiency that these Qualcomm chips have traditionally yielded, should result in some fantastic battery life.

In dialling the brightness down to the requisite 150 nits and running a video loop test in PCMark 10, this Lenovo laptop lasted for 19 hours and 42 minutes – that’s just about enough for three working days with some hypermiling. For reference, that’s one of the best results I’ve seen in recent times, matching the likes of the Acer Swift Edge 14 AI and the Asus Zenbook A14 (2025). The new Zenbook A14 (2026) is nearly three hours ahead, though, and uses the same SoC as this Lenovo choice.

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The Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 comes with a reasonably compact 65W charger that’s also quite fast at getting charge back into the laptop. It took around 40 minutes to get it back to 50%, while a full charge took 75 minutes or so.

Should you buy it?

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You want oodles of power in a lightweight chassis

The Yoga Slim 7xGen 11 packs a lot of performance with its Snapdragon X2 Elite processor into a slender and lightweight chassis.

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The three USB-C ports Lenovo provides are okay, although it feels quite one dimensional against rival choices from Acer and Asus that are much more rounded.

Final Thoughts

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 is a lovely Windows laptop with a lot of power from its Snapdragon X2 Elite SoC, plus it comes with a comfortable keyboard, dazzling OLED screen and immense endurance. It is rather expensive in the top configuration, though, and the port selection feels a bit limited.

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The Asus Zenbook A14 (2026) is the closest competitor, as it ships with the same SoC as Lenovo’s choice, albeit at a slightly lower £1599 price tag. There is a compromise with a 1920×1200 OLED screen being lower-res, although it gains against the Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 in battery life and port selection. 

The Acer Swift Edge 14 AI offers similar computing power with its Intel Lunar Lake SoC, plus a similarly high-res OLED screen and a richer port selection, and is actually the cheapest of the three at £1399, making it a quietly unsung hero in the range of modern ultrabooks.

WIth this in mind, I think the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 is a lovely laptop, and a lot of it is in part due to the Snapdragon X2 Elite chip inside, but rising costs mean it suffers the same price-driven criticism as the Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro and the Asus Zenbook A14 (2026), not least with the other options offering similar spec sheets for less money. For more options, check out our list of the best laptops we’ve tested.

How We Test

This Lenovo laptop has been put through a series of uniform checks designed to gauge key factors, including build quality, performance, screen quality and battery life. These include formal synthetic benchmarks and scripted tests, plus a series of real-world checks, such as how well it runs popular apps and extensive gaming testing.

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FAQs

What’s different between the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 and the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 10?

The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 comes with a newer and faster Snapdragon X2 Elite processor, plus a stronger OLED screen, webcam and better battery life. It’s also a lot more expensive in terms of RRP.

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Test Data

  Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11

Full Specs

  Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x Gen 11 Review
UK RRP £1669.99
USA RRP $1899.99
CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite
Manufacturer Lenovo
Screen Size 14 inches
Storage Capacity 2TB
Front Camera 1080p IR webcam
Battery 70 Whr
Battery Hours 19 42
Size (Dimensions) 312 x 221 x 13.9 MM
Weight 1.17 KG
Operating System Windows 11
Release Date 2026
First Reviewed Date 17/06/2026
Resolution 2880 x 1800
HDR Yes
Refresh Rate 120 Hz
Ports 3x Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports
GPU Qualcomm Adreno iGPU
RAM 32GB
Connectivity Wifi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
Colours Cosmic Blue
Display Technology OLED
Touch Screen No
Convertible? No

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Intel is giving a startup the keys to its x86 (Atom) CPU kingdom

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Does It matter?: Intel is providing a startup with significant access to its chip design schematics as part of a rare licensing deal involving the x86 instruction set architecture. RosaicLabs could now theoretically build its own x86 CPU, although speculation points to more cutting-edge applications such as robotics and AI.

Reuters sources claim that Intel is entering into a secret agreement with RosaicLabs Inc., a company incorporated in Delaware just a couple of months ago. The agreement covers the register-transfer level (RTL) code for Intel’s Atom CPUs, although we don’t have any specific clues about which generation of Atom chips – or which computing core technology – is involved.

Atom chip technology is based on the x86 ISA, although it is designed to operate within significant power and form-factor constraints. In circuit design, RTL code provides a design abstraction that models data transfers between hardware registers and logical operators. In theory, RosaicLabs could use Intel’s RTL IP to develop a brand-new x86 CPU or even design something more complex based on the ISA that has powered most PCs since the IBM PC era.

A few significant hints about RosaicLabs’ business prospects come from the people actually involved in the deal. Reuters reports that the company’s CEO is Amarjit Gill, a longtime business partner of Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Gill and Tan previously worked at Rivos, a chip company that was later acquired by Meta. Amit Parikh, Rivos’ former top financial officer, is also part of the new Rosaic venture.

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Besides a long-standing cross-licensing agreement with AMD, Intel is not known for freely sharing official design documents for x86 CPUs with third-party organizations. Incorporation documents filed in Delaware state that RosaicLabs is seeking an initial funding round of $10 million, with executives free to invest up to $5 million without seeking approval from investors or the board.

It’s safe to say that one potential outcome for RosaicLabs is adapting Atom’s peculiar low-profile “skills” to this brand-new world of chip scarcity and data center overprovisioning. The “lesser” x86 processor could find a new role in edge-computing infrastructure, robotic AI, or other emerging applications. In the worst-case scenario, Lip-Bu Tan’s Intel could simply swoop in and acquire whatever RosaicLabs develops a few years down the line. Although, then again, there would be nothing particularly revolutionary about that.

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Moving faster than planned, AI drug developer Accipiter Bio quietly tops up seed round with $10.5M

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An illustration of a protein created by Accipiter Bio that has two active sites, shown in light and darker green, that can simultaneously bind two targets. (Accipiter Bio Image)

Less than a year after emerging from stealth operations with $12.7 million and partnerships with pharmaceutical giants, Seattle-based biotech startup Accipiter Biosciences has added $10.5 million to its funding total. The new cash will let the company move faster on promising drug candidates.

“We could have stuck with the original plan and been just fine,” said Matthew Bick, Accipiter Bio’s co-founder and CEO. “But we thought we’d rather capitalize on the progress we’ve made now and diversify our clinical portfolio.”

The team has grown to 22 people and includes researchers who worked at the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design under Nobel laureate David Baker.

The company uses artificial intelligence tools developed at the institute to engineer proteins with the unusual ability to bind multiple cellular targets at once, potentially amplifying their ability to fight illnesses.

“We’re not just trying to replicate what antibodies can do,” Bick said. “We’re unlocking some really interesting biology.”

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Accipiter Bio has a collaboration and license agreement with Pfizer to research and engineer new molecules. The deal provides an upfront payment and the potential to earn more than $330 million through milestones and royalties. The startup has a similarly structured agreement with oncology drug company Kite Pharma, owned by Gilead Sciences, to design proteins for use in cell therapies.

The startup also runs its own in-house drug-development programs. It originally planned to advance one or two into the clinic, but the extra cash will allow it to bring three or four programs forward into clinical trials. Bick said the company is now primarily focused on immunology-related conditions, alongside its lead oncology program.

Matthew Bick, CEO and co-founder of Accipiter Biosciences. (Accipiter Bio Photo)

The company launched in March 2023, emerging from stealth in November 2025. The new funding is an addition to Accipiter Bio’s seed round and includes only existing investors. Flying Fish Partners and Takeda co-led the seed round, which included Columbus Venture Partners, Cercano Capital, Washington Research Foundation, Alexandria Investments, Pack Ventures and Argonautic Ventures.

The new funding will help grow the team, bringing in additional scientists and reaching a headcount of about 30 people over the next six months to a year.

Interest continues to grow in AI’s potential to speed up the creation of new drugs. But Bick cautions that the process isn’t as simple as some might suggest, particularly for more complex therapeutics.

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He knows this firsthand: he and two of his co-founders worked at Neoleukin, a biotech company co-founded by Baker that spun out of the UW in 2019. The startup’s lead drug candidate, an engineered protein used in cancer treatment, underperformed in a Phase 1 trial. Neoleukin laid off many of its employees before merging with another company.

“There’s an impression with AI methods that you can just hit a button and you get your molecule out, but it’s not that easy — and certainly when you’re pushing the methods to their limits, it’s really not that easy,” Bick said.

The process still requires asking the right therapeutic questions, manual engineering and a deep understanding of the molecules, he said. “There’s still protein intuition that comes into it.”

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Medtronic invests in CoreMap’s oversubscribed $37m Series C round

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The funds raised will enable CoreMap to develop more precise data-driven tools to assist atrial fibrillation ablation.

CoreMap, a US-based medtech, has announced the closure of an oversubscribed Series C funding round, which was led by Medtronic and included participation from existing and new investors.

The organisation, which was established in 2016 and is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, focuses on advancing the diagnosis and treatment of atrial fibrillation. This is a common heart rhythm disorder in which the beat is irregular. 

CoreMap will put some of the funds raised towards further developing its electrophysiology mapping system, which is designed to provide physicians with atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation guidance, based on large datasets of highly accurate electrical activation data.

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Ablation is a technique that targets tissue in the heart, creating tiny scars via radiofrequency or pulsed field energy; this works to block the faulty signals that result in the irregular heartbeat.

Commenting on the funding announcement Sarah Kalil, the CEO and co-founder of CoreMap, said: “The successful completion of this financing is a significant milestone for CoreMap. 

“AF remains one of the most significant unsolved challenges in electrophysiology and physicians need better data to guide treatment decisions and improve patient outcomes. This investment provides the resources to accelerate CoreMap’s next-generation AF mapping platform’s time to market.”

Chris Eso, the global head of corporate and business development, M&A and ventures at Medtronic, said: “CoreMap is addressing one of the critical unmet needs in AF treatment with a differentiated technology platform and strong clinical support. We are excited to support Sarah and the CoreMap team as they advance the company through its next stage of growth.”

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SiliconRepublic.com previously spoke with Ronan Rogers, the senior R&D director for cardiac ablation solutions at Medtronic. Alongside his colleague Ruth Callanan, who is Medtronic’s director of site quality, Rogers discussed how the Ireland’s west is building real depth not just in medtech, but across key areas such as pharmaceutical science, advanced analytics and digital technology. 

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

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Astronomers Have Detected an Exomoon for the First Time

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To confirm that the observed signal was indeed caused by a moon, the research team also examined other possible factors. These included apparent periods resulting from errors in corrections for Earth’s orbital motion, seasonal variations in atmospheric conditions, and the effects of the brown dwarf’s own rotation.

An artist’s concept of a moonlike object (center) orbiting the brown dwarf CD-35 2722 B (right). Researchers refer to this object as an “exosatellite” and describe it as a massive gas giant with a mass at least equal to that of Jupiter.

Video: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Furthermore, calculations of the Roche limit—the boundary beyond which a satellite would be torn apart by the brown dwarf’s tidal forces—and the Hill radius—the radius of the brown dwarf’s gravitational influence—confirmed that the satellite’s orbit falls within a range where it can exist in a physically stable manner.

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According to the researchers, this is the first evidence of a satellite orbiting a brown dwarf companion obtained using this method. A few months earlier, another team had gathered clues suggesting the presence of a satellite during observations of the HD 206893 star system using the VLT Interferometer but had not yet achieved a definitive detection.

The object discovered in this study occupies a unique position that cannot be fully understood using the conventional framework for moons in our solar system. “We have a clear delineation between the planets and the Sun in the Solar System, so defining things like moons is simple,” says Alice Zurlo, an astrophysicist at Diego Portales University, in a news release. “In the CD-35 2722 system, where we are blurring the lines between stars, planets, and moons, the whole thing becomes more complicated to describe.”

It remains unclear whether this object should be called a moon. ESO also notes that there is no officially recognized definition for exomoons and the researchers use the term “exosatellite.” The paper itself acknowledges that it is uncertain whether this object will meet future criteria to be considered a moon, but that the discovery is a step toward creating a definitive detection.

Researchers believe this discovery will serve as a catalyst for identifying new directions in future theories of planet formation and celestial mechanics. Furthermore, if there are smaller, rocky moons like the one in the new paper, they could be subjected to tidal heating from brown dwarfs, potentially creating environments suitable for life even at greater distances from their stars—a development that might also have implications for the search for extraterrestrial life.

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It’s also possible that once the next-generation Extremely Large Telescope equipped with a 39-meter primary mirror is completed, it will be possible to detect even smaller exomoons.

This story originally appeared on WIRED Japan and has been translated from Japanese.

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India is starting to pay for apps, not just download them

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For years, India was the world’s largest app download market but one of its toughest places to make money. That is beginning to change as Indian consumers spend more on AI, entertainment, and other premium apps.

India’s mobile app market generated a record $345 million in consumer spending during the second quarter of this year, up 35% from a year earlier, according to a new report by Sensor Tower. The app-market intelligence firm said the gains were increasingly driven by generative AI, streaming, and productivity apps rather than gaming, as Indian consumers became more willing to pay for digital subscriptions.

The record quarter builds on a broader trend of rising app monetization. India’s revenue per download has more than doubled over the past three and a half years, while quarterly app downloads have remained at around 6.3 billion since 2023.

“We would describe India today as a rapidly evolving mobile market with a large user base and growing willingness to pay for digital services,” Eve Chen, an insights analyst at Sensor Tower, told TechCrunch.

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Chen attributed the change to the wider adoption of digital payments, including India’s Unified Payments Interface (a system that lets people pay directly from their bank accounts) and digital wallets, which have reduced friction for in-app purchases, alongside growing acceptance of app-based subscriptions and premium digital services.

The trend also stands out globally. India’s app revenue saw its fastest growth in Q2 among major app markets, generating more than $200 million in quarterly consumer spending, per Sensor Tower’s data shared with TechCrunch. In contrast, Mexico grew 30% and Turkey 25%, while U.S. app revenue actually declined 3% over the same period.

“These figures suggest that India is no longer just the world’s largest market by downloads, but is also emerging as one of the fastest-growing markets for app monetization,” Chen told TechCrunch.

India still trails more mature app markets by a wide margin. Revenue per download stands at about $4.60 in the U.S., $3.90 in South Korea, and $6.10 in Japan, compared with a small fraction of that in India. Nonetheless, Chen said the trajectory matters more than the absolute level, with India’s steadily improving monetization suggesting significant room for long-term growth.

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Generative AI has emerged as one of the fastest-growing segments, with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude together accounting for nearly 83% of India’s AI app revenue in Q2, according to Sensor Tower’s data shared with TechCrunch.

Much of India’s app revenue growth is also being driven by non-gaming apps. Non-gaming categories, Sensor Tower said, accounted for 68% of India’s mobile app revenue in the first half of 2026, up from 58% three years earlier.

The latest data also suggests global subscription apps continue to be among the biggest beneficiaries of rising app spending in India, with Google One becoming India’s highest-grossing mobile app during the quarter. Streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime Video, Crunchyroll, Sony LIV, and JioHotstar also saw growing consumer spending. Gaming also bucked the global trend, with revenue rising 3.7% from the previous quarter despite a worldwide decline, per Sensor Tower.

Image Credits:Sensor Tower

App intelligence firm Appfigures also sees India’s app subscription market continuing to grow, although it says the pace has slowed after an AI-fueled surge over the past two years. Subscription revenue is still rising, but much of the initial excitement around AI has abated, Ariel Michaeli, the company’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch.

“The numbers are still staggering,” Michaeli added. Appfigures estimates that ChatGPT generates about $60,000 a day in India and attracted around 1.8 million downloads over the past month, although that’s down from roughly $80,000 a day last October.

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Apple captures nearly half of global smartphone revenue

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Apple captured 49% of global smartphone revenue in the second quarter despite accounting for only 23% of shipments, showing how much more money the iPhone generates per device than competing smartphones.

The company’s iPhone revenue climbed 22% year over year in the second quarter, the fastest increase among the five largest brands, according to preliminary data from Counterpoint Research. Its share of global smartphone revenue reached a second-quarter record of 49%, up from 44% a year earlier.

Apple’s growth came from higher shipments and a more expensive sales mix. Counterpoint’s latest report estimated that shipments rose 13% from a year earlier, while Apple’s average selling price increased 8% to $946.

Counterpoint attributed the performance to sustained demand for the iPhone 17 lineup, particularly the base iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro Max. Demand for the two models helped keep Apple’s product mix concentrated on premium devices without requiring the steep price increases imposed by some competitors.

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The research firm said Apple’s largely stable pricing improved the iPhone’s value as memory costs rose across the industry. Many Android manufacturers depend more heavily on entry-level and midrange devices, where price increases can quickly weaken demand.

Apple gained a similar advantage in China, where rising Android prices made discounted iPhones more competitive. The regional results support Counterpoint’s argument that pricing helped Apple gain ground, although they do not prove that every market followed the same pattern.

Apple’s premium product mix and ability to absorb higher component costs gave it an advantage over several rivals. The company increased both estimated revenue and shipments even as the broader smartphone market shipped fewer devices.

Apple gains as smartphone shipments fall

Global smartphone shipments declined during the quarter, but total revenue increased 7% year over year to a second-quarter record of $109 billion. The industry’s average selling price rose 17% to $400 as price increases and a greater share of premium devices lifted the amount earned from each sale.

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Counterpoint’s latest chart gave Apple a record 23% share of second-quarter shipments. Apple’s revenue share remained much higher because the average iPhone sold for substantially more than devices from competing manufacturers.

The shipment estimate differs from a Counterpoint report published July 13, which put Apple’s growth at 3% and its market share at 20%. Counterpoint has not explained whether the newer preliminary figures reflect revised data or a difference in methodology, so the 13% growth estimate should not be treated as settled.

Apple’s market performance came alongside a strong fiscal third quarter that ended June 27. The company’s record earnings included $54.25 billion in iPhone revenue, up 21.7% from a year earlier.

Three small line charts comparing global smartphone revenue, average selling price, and shipment share from Q2 2020-Q2 2021, highlighting Apple's leading growth versus Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo.Samsung ranked second with 16% of global smartphone revenue. Image credit: Counterpoint

Samsung ranked second with 16% of global smartphone revenue. Its estimated revenue and shipments each increased 9%, while its average selling price remained roughly flat at $270.

Demand for Samsung’s Galaxy A-series supported shipment growth, while the Galaxy S26 lineup strengthened its premium business. Counterpoint also credited Samsung’s vertical integration and control over component sourcing with helping it limit price increases.

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Xiaomi recorded the steepest shipment decline among the five largest brands, falling 26% year over year. Its revenue dropped 17% even as its average selling price rose 13%.

OPPO and vivo posted revenue declines of 10% and 11%, respectively, despite higher average selling prices. Falling shipments outweighed the additional revenue each company collected per device.

The results show the limits of relying on higher prices in cost-sensitive parts of the market. Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo shifted toward more expensive devices, but the higher average selling prices did not offset their shipment declines.

Higher iPhone prices may still be coming

Apple remained relatively insulated from rising component costs during the second quarter, according to Counterpoint. The research firm expects Apple to raise iPhone prices in coming quarters as memory shortages continue.

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Separate Counterpoint estimates suggest rising DRAM and NAND costs could add hundreds of dollars to the production cost of the iPhone 18 Pro Max. The projected increases have not translated into confirmed retail pricing, but higher component costs could make Apple’s current advantage harder to maintain.

Counterpoint also expects global smartphone shipments to decline more sharply during the second half of 2026. The firm said limited supplies are becoming a greater constraint as manufacturers face persistent memory shortages and higher costs.

The second-quarter results show that Apple benefited by holding prices steadier than several Android rivals while continuing to sell more premium models. Apple may struggle to preserve that combination if component costs eventually force broader iPhone price increases.

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3 underrated movies on HBO Max you should watch this weekend (July 31-August 2)

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Looking for the best movies to stream this weekend on HBO Max? You have landed in the right place. Max holds a treasure trove of hidden gems that deserve a spot on your watchlist. This week we have a dark comedy, a heartfelt drama, and an unforgettable Studio Ghibli masterpiece. So, grab your favorite snacks and dive into these three fantastic films currently streaming on Max.

We also have guides to the best new movies to stream, the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best free movies, and the best movies on Amazon Prime Video.

Sorry, Baby (2025)

Genre: Dark comedy, drama
IMDb rating: 7.1/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 97%

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Literature professor Agnes Ward (Eva Victor) struggles to rebuild her quiet life in Maine following a deeply traumatic incident at her university. When her pregnant best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) comes for an extended visit, Agnes confronts how isolated and paralyzed by grief she has become.

This underrated movie on HBO Max moves between the present and flashbacks to show how Agnes has learned to function around her trauma. I really liked how the friendship between Agnes and Lydie carries the entire film, giving Agnes an anchor without ever solving her pain for her.

You can watch Sorry, Baby on HBO Max.

The Florida Project (2017)

Genre: Drama
IMDb rating: 7.6/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 96%

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Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) is a six-year-old living with her young mother, Halley, in a budget motel just outside Walt Disney World. While Moonee spends her summer running wild with the other kids, Halley’s financial situation quietly unravels, forcing her into increasingly desperate choices to keep a roof over their heads.

Director Sean Baker shoots the film almost entirely from Moonee’s height, keeping the camera locked into a child’s perspective on an adult crisis. I liked the vibrant cinematography that captures pure childlike wonder right alongside hardship without losing its tender spirit.

You can watch The Florida Project on HBO Max.

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Whisper of the Heart (1995)

Genre: Animated, coming-of-age, drama
IMDb rating: 7.8/10
Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

This Studio Ghibli movie follows Shizuku, a middle schooler who is also an avid reader. She notices that every library book she checks out was previously borrowed by the same boy, Seiji. Her search to find him pushes her to question what she actually wants from her own future, not just his.

Unlike most Studio Ghibli films, this one skips fantasy entirely and stays grounded in an ordinary Tokyo suburb. What really impressed me was how delicately the story captures the quiet uncertainty of teenage artistic ambition.

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You can watch Whisper of the Heart on HBO Max.

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Silicon Valley loves young founders. Until it doesn’t.

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For Arlan Rakhmetzhanov, 19, there is no middle ground. Either he builds a company as valuable as Google, he says, or he fails and ends up on the streets. He started coding at 15 in his native Kazakhstan, completed a couple of summer programs in San Francisco, and cold-DM’ed every Y Combinator founder he could find on LinkedIn until one gave him an angel check for his first company at age 17.  

That company, now the YC-backed Nozomio, is an API index for AI agents — a tool that helps AI agents find and use software services — and has raised more than $6 million in funding to date. “I either win or lose, and a lot of young founders have the same mindset,” he told TechCrunch. “They just want to win.”

Young founders like Rakhmetzhanov are building under a new set of pressures. Investors are throwing more capital at them, yet the expectation to hit that “north star” milestone — the one big number investors are chasing — hasn’t relaxed, and every misstep along the way is now publicly dissected on social media.

While Silicon Valley VCs have always famously loved backing young college dropout founders, they preferred to see them paired with technical founders, or at least to have some experience — ideally with a FAANG company (Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google) — on their résumés. In many ways, that is still very true. But AI tools have democratized the opportunity to build, shortening the timelines of success and enabling more young people to start successful companies without stepping foot inside a Big Tech company.

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Pranjali Awasthi, 19, is an example of that. She dropped out of high school to launch an AI startup, then attended Georgia Tech before dropping out of that, too, to launch Slashy, a YC-backed startup that bills itself as the “Cursor for emails” and helps consumers manage their email inboxes. After more than a year running that company, she recently announced she’s now building yet a new startup currently in stealth.  

When she was younger, around 14 or 15, she recalled, investors whom she would pitch often asked why she was looking to build a company. “It’s gotten more normal now,” she said, “post-18.”   

It seems more than ever, investors look to founders like Awasthi, whose experiences can be traced through “GitHub activity, open-source contributions, communities they’ve already built, and familiarity with all the latest tools in AI,” Ashley Smith, a general partner at the early-stage firm Vermilion, told TechCrunch. “A lot of young developers learn how to build software through contributing to open-source projects or toying around with the latest AI tooling,” she explained. “They have more time to do that while in college or younger than someone with a full-time job and a mortgage.”

Smith said a “meaningful” share of her portfolio consists of companies founded by those under 30, with a handful even younger than 21, she said, adding that she’s “clearly not skeptical of youth.”  

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“What they lack in experience, they make up for in excitement to experiment and lack of fear,” she continued.

But she admits the market has become more merciless. “It doesn’t give you room to learn slowly anymore,” she said. There are more funding opportunities than ever, regardless of age — accelerators, incubators, pre-seed funds. But that money comes with strings attached: Founders like Rakhmetzhanov and Awasthi, flush with millions in cash, are expected to deliver growth in months, not years.

“The forgiveness that used to exist at an early stage and the assumption you’d iterate your way to product-market fit doesn’t exist right now,” Smith continued. “Everyone is looking for the next Cursor, even though that growth trajectory is an outlier, not the norm.”

For many founders — especially those building in public — the relentless strain to succeed can lead to murky ethical territory, or even predatory deal terms, since younger founders are often too new to the game to know what’s standard, yet ambitious enough to chase growth at all costs. To keep up, revenue numbers start to look inflated, while content creation for social media starts to crowd out writing good code. The excessive posturing is perhaps inevitable, since getting attention is now harder than ever in a crowded AI market.

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It’s all about who can convince “the most people [they] are smarter than everyone else in the space,” Smith said, “and make the most noise about it.”

“In 2004, you could quietly iterate for years without anyone watching,” Awasthi added. “Now there is this constant ambient pressure from LinkedIn and Twitter where every raise, every milestone, every pivot is public.”

That means some young founders aren’t just worried about hitting competitive revenue marks or funding valuations — they’re also under pressure to perform the appearance of being a successful founder. That pressure has always existed in startup culture, but founders say it’s grown more extreme. “If you’re a startup and you’re competing in a market, usually you worry about incumbents,” Timothy Chen, an investor at Essence Ventures, told TechCrunch. “Now you worry about your neighbors.”

For example, “everybody’s doing shiny, good-looking launch videos,” he noted. “It wasn’t even a thing three years ago.” The trend was popularized by Cluely founder Roy Lee, now around age 22, whose startup initially promised to help students cheat on exams — a premise that dazzled investors like Andreessen Horowitz and helped the company raise $20 million.

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Though Cluely is now more of a note-taking tool, Lee became a face of young Silicon Valley talent. “The pressure is coming from, ‘I need to show off much better, quick,’” Chen continued.  

Not hitting the bar has bred new anxiety. “When Zuck was building Facebook, there wasn’t this huge negative social ecosystem,” Aidan Guo, 20, told TechCrunch. He’s the co-founder of the AI desktop assistant startup Attention Engineering, which has raised around $1.6 million in funding to date.

Much of the strain, as he describes it, is self-imposed. “You already have a constant fear of failure on your mind. You have to steer the ship and learn all these things as you go. And everything can always go wrong at once,” he continued. “And then you have all these people piling on anything you do wrong. I think people need to be more empathetic.” 

Amid all that pressure, Awasthi takes a page from the old days. “If you focus your time on what needs to get done, it’s not too hard,” she said.

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“The best product that stays active and talks to customers wins,” Rakhmetzhanov added.

In the end, all the founders are describing the same thing: The fundamentals of a good startup haven’t changed — “conviction, intellectual honesty, and obsession with the customer,” as Smith put it. None of that has anything to do with age.  

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Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Aug. 1 #881

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Today’s Strands puzzle was kind of tough, with some really long clues to unscramble. If you need hints and answers, read on.

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: “As if!”

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Ha ha!

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints, but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

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  • PERT, SUET, ROLL, ROLLS, BADE, TREE, POTS, SPOT, TOPS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight, but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

  • SILLY, ABSURD, LAUGHABLE, LUDICROUS, PREPOSTEROUS

Today’s Strands spangram

The completed NYT Strands puzzle for Aug. 1, 2026.
The completed NYT Strands puzzle for Aug. 1, 2026.NYT/Screenshot by CNET

Today’s Strands spangram is GETREAL. To find it, start with the G that’s the first letter on the top row, and wind diagonally down.

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Enterprise cloud infrastructure uptake shows no sign of slowing

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OFF-PREM

Cloud revenue now north of $143 billion a quarter, and growth is accelerating

Cloud infrastructure services grew at their fastest for eight years during the second quarter of 2026, thanks to the AI craze and continued demand for flexible and scalable IT infrastructure.

According to the latest figures from Synergy Research, enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure passed $143 billion in Q2, a year-on-year growth rate of 43 percent. This followed 11 successive quarters of increasing growth rates, during which the market has now doubled in size.

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Synergy says that total market revenues for the preceding 12 months add up to an impressive $500 billion. Public IaaS and PaaS platforms account for the bulk of this, and these expanded by 47 percent during Q2.

While cloud-based services have been growing at quite a decent rate for some time as organizations expand their IT using this route, the introduction of AI services has given them an extra boost.

“AI has, of course, driven most of that incremental growth, and we now see year-on-year growth rates of 165 percent for AI-specific cloud services. It is the handful of leading cloud providers and neoclouds who are mostly benefiting from that market acceleration,” comments Synergy chief analyst John Dinsdale.

Chart shows increasing cloud infrastructure revenue, from Q3 2020 to Q2 2026

Cloud infrastructure services revenue

And the top three global players continue to dominate the market, with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud together accounting for 67 percent of all the cloud revenue during the quarter.

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That percentage has increased since the third quarter of last year, when the triumvirate made up 63 percent of enterprise cloud infra spending.

AWS is still the largest beast in this sector of the compute arena, taking 28 percent of the market, but its lead over Microsoft is now less impressive, with the Redmond giant making up another 20 percent. Google remains in third place on the global stage, at 15 percent.

Among the tier two cloud providers, Synergy reckons those with the highest growth rates include CoreWeave, Oracle, Crusoe, Nebius, and Nscale. However, Oracle accounts for 4 percent of market share, while CoreWeave is another 2 percent.

Other firms with a market share of 1 percent (to the nearest percentage point) include IBM, Akamai, Baidu, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Snowflake, Tencent, and SAP.

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Synergy says that nine rent-a-gpu neocloud operators are now among the top 40 cloud providers, based on service revenue.

Geographically, the US remains the world’s largest cloud market by some margin, and its share is actually increasing, growing by 49 percent in Q2, well above the worldwide average. Other countries growing at above the average include India, Indonesia, Ireland, Thailand, and Malaysia. In Europe, the largest cloud markets remain the UK and Germany, but the fastest growing markets are Ireland, Norway, Denmark, and Finland.®

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