Apple earnings: What to expect from first quarter results on Tuesday as iPhone 6s and 6s Plus risk sales slowdown January 26, 2016 Apple will reveal its most crucial earnings in years as fears have been stoked about softer sales after the launch of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus as well as Apple Watch. Revenue is expected to come in at $76.6bn (£53.7bn) and earnings per share of $3.23, a rise of 2.7 per cent and 5.6 per cent, according to analyst [...]
Visa’s contactless payments soar by 250pc in the UK, as firm reports record revenues in Europe January 26, 2016 Cash is no longer king in the UK, where Visa Europe's contactless payments soared by 250 per cent last year. The electronic payments business said that people purchasing items by waving their Visa credit or debit cards over payment terminals now accounts for 1-in-7 of their transactions in the UK, up from just 1-in-25 a year [...]
Bitcoin: Banks are worryingly complacent about the coming digital currency storm January 25, 2016 The financial services industry is dangerously complacent in its approach to digital money. Some of the major banks almost look like they fear technological change that promises greater transparency, efficiency and security at a lower cost. Too many industry players and regulators have spent more time shutting down innovations than driving them. Barclays, Chase, Westpac [...]
Google agrees to pay £130m in back taxes in deal with HMRC January 23, 2016 Google has agreed a deal with HMRC in which it will pay £130m in back taxes after an "open audit" of its accounts by the UK tax authorities. The £130m covers corporation tax owed since 2005, and senior figures at Google have said it would follow rules which will result in it paying more tax [...]
Apple hires VR researcher Doug Bowman to catch up with Facebook, Google and Microsoft in Silicon Valley virtual reality race January 22, 2016 Apple has hired a leading VR researcher in a bid to catch up to its rivals in the great Silicon Valley virtual reality race. Doug Bowman can now add Apple employee to his cv, joining the company from his current role as the director of the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech, reports the [...]
Google has paid Apple $1bn to keep its search on iPhones – and has generated over $36bn from Android January 22, 2016 Google is paying a pretty penny to remain the default search bar on Apple’s iPhones. The tech giant paid its rival $1bn in 2014 to keep its search engine on iOS products like iPhones and iPads, court records have shown. Apple was also reportedly raking in a 34 per cent slice of Google’s sales through iOS devices [...]
New rankings show US democracy on the edge January 21, 2016 The Economist Intelligence Unit today releases its 2015 Democracy Index, ranking countries on a range of criteria including political participation, pluralism, civil liberties and political culture. One of the central conclusions of the EIU’s analysis is that “in many democracies, political elites worry about their inability to relate to the electorate and fear the challenge [...]
Spotify buys up Cord Project and Soundwave startups for product innovation in fight against Apple as Deezer raises $100m January 20, 2016 Spotify has acquired two startups, one specialising in voice messaging and the other in music discovery, in the fight against new rival Apple Music. New York-based Cord Project, founded in 2014 by two former Google employees, has one million users of its flagship app Cord. Soundwave is a Dublin-based startup founded in 2012. It boasts 1.5m downloads in [...]
Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk win 2015 Luddite Award for their “alarmist” warnings about artificial intelligence January 20, 2016 Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have just “won” the 2015 Luddite Award for their warnings about artificial intelligence. A world-renowned physicist and the entrepreneur behind ventures like Tesla and SpaceX, neither of the two are exactly what you might call afraid of technology. But the worries the two have expressed on the future of AI [...]
Apple iOS versus Google Play Store: Here’s the winner in each country according to downloads and revenue in 2015 January 20, 2016 In the ongoing battle of Apple versus Google, there's a surprising winner across the world – both of them. More people are downloading apps from Google's Play Store than Apple in most major countries. Only three of the top 20 countries – Britain, Canada and Japan – buck this trend, with iOS more popular than Google Play in [...]