Fitbit share price opens 55 per cent higher on stock market debut June 18, 2015 Shares in fitness tracking technology maker Fitbit opened 55 per cent higher at $30.40 as it launched its initial public offering today. The company made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange this morning at $20 per share under the ticket FIT, raising $732m. It is now valued at more than $4.1bn. You can [...]
Women in tech: Female health apps are helping us get to the top June 18, 2015 Female health products are becoming recognised as a huge opportunity in the tech industry – you only have to look at the positive response to the release of Apple's reproductive apps to realise this. And among all the tech sectors, digital female health is one of the fastest growing, with period and fertility trackers [...]
Unicode 8: Unicorns, cheese, eye-roll face and the 37 new emojis you’ll soon be using after Apple, Google and Microsoft updates June 18, 2015 Rejoice, emoji lovers! Soon you'll be have 37 new characters to use in your texts, tweets and chats. Even if you're not down with the emoji lingo (*sad face*), it's the perfect time to get in on the action – Goldman Sachs is doing it, and an emoji password could even be the new secure way [...]
Queen bees contribute more to the UK economy than the Queen herself June 17, 2015 Pollinating bees contribute an estimated £651m to the UK's economy each year by helping crops to grow, researchers at the University of Reading have suggested – £150m more than the value of tourism brought to Britain by the Royal Family. The results, published in the journal Nature Communications, show that apples and strawberries are particularly reliant [...]
London Technology Week: Britain’s brilliant at FinTech – now it must realise its global ambitions June 17, 2015 Anyone who’s seen Love Actually will remember the speech by Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister when he stands up to the US President and explains some of the unique things about Great Britain that make our nation truly great. “We may be a small country, but we're a great one, too. The country of [...]
Apple is ready to face rivals in music streaming market June 16, 2015 Apple’s announcement that it is to enter the music streaming industry points towards the way we will access music in the years ahead. But how will it fit into the sector, and what does it mean for those brands already occupying that space? Spotify is the major presence in the market at present. It has [...]
Aldi Shmaldi: Conviviality Retail’s Bargain Booze is playing German discounter at its own game June 16, 2015 Last week it was teachers, this week it's rival retailers. Aldi has suddenly become the brand to beat. Conviviality Retail – which runs Bargain Booze – has this week launched a head-to-head campaign with budget grocer Aldi, pitting its prices for big-label brands such as Carlsberg Export and Smirnoff against the supermarket's own label [...]
London Technology Week: Tech City is an awesome success story combining the best of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, New York and DC June 16, 2015 I emigrated from Silicon Valley a little more than ten years ago to work at a very young startup at the time, Skype. It was so new then that I spent months correcting friends’ pronunciation of the company name from Skype-ee to Skype. At that time I was exasperated at the dearth of candidates for [...]
Swiss trader agrees $2.8m settlement with US authorities over insider trading charges June 15, 2015 A Swiss trader will pay the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) $2.8m (£1.79m) to settle insider trading charges. Helmut Anscheringer was charged with trading on non-public information he acquired ahead of Apple's $355m acquisition of Florida biometrics company AuthenTec. A SEC investigation found that the trader based in Basel learned from a relative of [...]
Amazon’s facing another EU investigation – this time its ebooks business is under the microscope June 11, 2015 Amazon is the latest US tech firm to face the scrutiny of regulators in Europe. The European Commission has opened a new investigation into the retail giant, this time putting its ebook business under the microscope. Brussels will be taking a closer look at Amazon's contracts with publishers and whether the deals are anticompetitive and [...]