Is fintech the new black? Lower trust in disruptors gives banks reason to cheer June 10, 2016 Digital innovation – and more specifically the impact of fintech – is currently the most intensely debated topic in the financial services sector. Two years ago hardly anyone outside the industry had heard of fintech. Now it’s the hottest investment class globally for VCs. PwC recently produced a report claiming that over 20 per cent [...]
General Electric backs German renewable battery start-up Sonnen June 7, 2016 General Electric has bet on renewable energy storage with a stake in a lithium battery start-up. GE Ventures, the engineering giant's venture capital arm, paid a "double-digit million sum" for a slice of Bavaria-based start-up Sonnen, which has become Europe's largest maker of lithium-battery energy storage systems. Read more: Oil major Total makes near €1bn wager on renewable energy Sonnen, [...]
The war on cash is raging – should we welcome or fear the death of hard money? June 7, 2016 Cash is no longer king. Although the Bank of England unveiled a new, polymer-coated £5 note last week, the seemingly unstoppable march towards paper-free transactions continues. Electronic payments overtook notes and coins last year in the UK, according to the Payments Council, an industry body representing the banks and card machine industry. They now account for [...]
Firing up innovation in Japan: Entrepreneurship has been frowned up in Japan but a new breed of youngsters are hoping to make the country a world class technology player once again June 6, 2016 The eighties were a boom time for Japan, when the country’s high-tech innovations meant the likes of Sony, Nintendo, Mitsubishi and Toshiba were global leaders. Its technology had changed society, from the appearance of the first bullet train in 1964, to Sony’s Walkman in 1979, through to the Nintendo GameBoy in 1989. Japan’s dominance in [...]
A foldable smartphone that fits in your pocket? Samsung’s working on it June 1, 2016 As smartphone screens get bigger, the size of our pockets do not, resulting in a bit of a conundrum when it comes to carrying the thing around (when it' not glued to our palm, at least). Samsung is working on it, however, with plans for a device that simply folds in half and a new patent [...]
ARM eyes virtual reality with new chips May 30, 2016 British chipmaker ARM is eyeing up the burgeoning market for virtual reality with the launch of new chips that will support more high end graphics and greater processing power of the devices which use smartphones. The Mali-G71 boasts graphics performance better than some of those found in today's mid-range laptops, while the Cortex-A73 will boost the power of smartphones, including 30 [...]
Samsung’s Apple and Android Pay rival will launch in Europe next week May 25, 2016 Samsung is heading into battle with Apple and Google in the war for mobile tap and pay users by focusing on extras such as membership and loyalty schemes as it launches Samsung Pay in Europe for the first time. The Korean smartphone maker is facing stiff competition from Apple Pay which launched last year and Google’s Android Pay [...]
Microsoft is axing jobs in the aftermath of its Nokia sale May 25, 2016 Microsoft has announced it will slash 1,850 jobs as it moves to "streamline" its smartphone hardware business. Earlier this month the Redmond, Washington based software giant announced it would sell the Nokia handset business for a measly $350m (£238m) to FIH Mobile, a subsidiary of Taiwanese gadget maker Foxconn. Microsoft acquired it business in 2014 for $7.2bn. Last year the company cut 7,800 jobs [...]
Are Apple’s glory days over? May 24, 2016 It has been among the most innovative companies in the world for decades, but Apple’s star has dimmed recently. It reported its first fall in sales since 2003 – before the iPhone even existed – and was overtaken as the world’s most valuable company again last week by Google’s parent Alphabet, after briefly surpassing it in [...]
Have women’s smartwatches just gone mainstream? There’s more to high-tech horology than the Apple Watch May 23, 2016 Bettridge’s Law states that if a headline ends in a question mark, then the answer is “no”. If that were always the case, then a column such as this would be a very short read indeed. But the question “can a stylish woman wear a smart watch?” is more complex than a simple “no”. A [...]