THE port city of Kobe, on the southern side of Japan’s main island, is known for luxury beef from pampered cattle, fine sake and precision engineering. Its reputation for the last of those products took a blow on October 8th when one of its oldest industrial firms, Kobe Steel, admitted that that it had falsified […]
Read moreSHAREHOLDER meetings in Ohio are not usually the stuff of high drama, but a recent gathering was a nail-biter. Nelson Peltz of Trian Fund Management, an activist hedge fund, sought a seat on the board of Procter & Gamble (P&G), the world’s largest consumer-goods company, in a proxy vote on October 10th. It was the […]
Read moreTHE new app for an upmarket British department store certainly looks the part. Released on Google Play, a shop for Android software, on September 5th, it has the right logo, the correct vibrant colour and offers fashionable clothes and accessories. But the app is not authorised by the brand, is littered with pop-up ads and […]
Read moreInvestors are under-estimating Netflix’s ability to charge more for its video streaming service, according to a top Wall Street firm. Bernstein reiterated its outperform rating on the company’s shares, predicting Netflix will thrive from its recent price increases without any big detrimental effects. “Looking at the history of past Netflix price increases, the impact on […]
Read moreNamed the richest man in China on Thursday with a net worth of $43 billion, property tycoon Xu Jiayin is likened by some media to Donald Trump, having built his fortune on a real estate business that has blossomed under a mountain of debt. The 59-year-old Xu’s China Evergrande Group has a market value of […]
Read moreAmazon is winning the smart home speaker battle. New data from Strategy Analytics suggests that Amazon’s Alexa smart assistant is beating Google in the home. Strategy Analytics found that Amazon Alexa will be on 68 percent of all smart speakers by the end of the fourth quarter of 2017. This includes Echos built by Amazon […]
Read moreSome people are calling for a boycott of Twitter on Friday, after the service partially suspended actress Rose McGowan for violating its terms and policies. Early on Thursday morning, McGowan posted on Instagram that access to her Twitter account had been “limited” for violating the platform’s rules, preventing her from tweeting, retweeting or responding to […]
Read moreTarget takes voice-activated shopping nationwide with Google, joins Wal-Mart in fight against Amazon
Target shoppers nationwide will now be able to make purchases on Google Express, after a successful test on the platform in California and New York, the company announced Thursday. The big-box retailer is among several that are deepening their relationships with Google‘s voice-activated shopping platform in a battle for market share against Amazon‘s Alexa-enabled devices. […]
Read moreIf you’ve ever purchased a movie from iTunes and wished that you could watch it on another platform, such as Vudu or Amazon Video, now it’s easier than ever to do so. A few years ago, Disney launched a service called “Movies Anywhere” that allowed you to purchase a movie from, say, iTunes, and then […]
Read moreDisney‘s shift to pay-television and direct-to-consumer video products will weigh on the stock, thanks to a sizable initial investment and a long lead time to get the offering up and running, an analyst said. Guggenheim downgraded shares of the media giant and cut its price target, saying investors have unrealistic optimism on content. Disney unveiled […]
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