reuters | Pixr8 News

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and wife MacKenzie to divorce

10Jan By reutersNo Comments

News

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and wife MacKenzie to divorce

Amazon.com Inc founder and Chief Executive Jeff Bezos and his wife MacKenzie Bezos are divorcing after 25 years of marriage, the couple said on Twitter on Wednesday. Jeff Bezos, 54, has a fortune that has soared as high as $160 billion thanks to his stake in Amazon, which again became Wall Street’s most valuable company this week, surpassing Microsoft Corp. Bezos has credited MacKenzie, 48, for her support when he uprooted the young couple to Seattle from New York to launch Amazon, an online bookseller that grew into the world’s largest internet retailer. MacKenzie Bezos, a Princeton graduate who is now a novelist, did accounting for Amazon for its first year after it was founded in 1994. The couple decided to divorce after a long period of “loving exploration” and trial sepa...

9Jan By reutersNo Comments

INDIA

India Forms Panel for Digital Payments, led by Infosys’ Chairman Nandan Nilekani

India’s central bank has constituted a panel with Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani as its head in a bid to deepen digital payments in Asia’s third-biggest economy. The five-member panel, which includes a former deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), will identify ways to widen financial inclusion via the use of digital payments and suggest measures to “strengthen the safety and security of digital payments”, the central bank said in a statement. In 2017-18, card payments in India rose 43 percent from the previous year to 10.61 trillion rupees ($151.21 billion), while payments through state-backed unified payments interface rose 16 times year-on-year to 1.01 trillion rupees, according to RBI data released in August. India’s digital payments are expected to grow five-f...

7Feb By reutersNo Comments

CHINA

Apple Brings Alibaba-linked Payment System into China Stores Amid Market Push

Apple Inc will accept Chinese mobile payment app Alipay in its local stores, boosting its ties with giant e-commerce firm Alibaba Group Holding Ltd amid a push by the iPhone maker to revive growth in the world’s No.2 economy. The tie-up will make Alipay, run by Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial, the first third-party mobile payment system to be accepted at any physical Apple store worldwide, Ant Financial said in a statement on Wednesday. Apple’s own payment system has had a lukewarm reception in China. The Cupertino-based firm will accept Alipay payment across its 41 brick-and-mortar retail stores in China, said Ant Financial, which was valued at $60 billion in 2016. Apple, whose China website, iTunes store and App Store have been accepting Alipay for more than a year, did not imme...

Dell Says it will Explore IPO or Merger with VMware

4Feb By reutersNo Comments

BUSINESS

Dell Says it will Explore IPO or Merger with VMware

Computer maker Dell said on Friday it was considering a public offering of common stock or a combination with business software maker VMware, its publicly held subsidiary. Dell, the world's largest privately held technology company, is under pressure to boost profitability after its debt-laden acquisition of data storage provider EMC for $67 billion in 2016 failed to meet financial targets, hurt by intensifying price competition. Combining with VMware would provide access to VMWare's $11.6 billion in cash, helping Dell trim its $52.5 billion debt pile. Last month's U.S. tax reform made servicing that debt more expensive due to caps on deducting interest expense. The combination would also make Dell a publicly listed company, offering a path for private equity firm Silver Lake to b...

How Tesla’s First Truck Charging Stations Will be Built

3Feb By reutersNo Comments

Tech

How Tesla’s First Truck Charging Stations Will be Built

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Inc, has said little about how he plans to turn his prototype electric truck into reality. But Reuters has learned that Tesla is collaborating with Anheuser-Busch, PepsiCo and United Parcel Service Inc to build on-site charging terminals at their facilities as part of the automaker’s efforts to roll out the vehicle next year. Details of the partnerships, which have not been disclosed previously, are still being hammered out, but include design and engineering from Tesla, the companies said. They declined to disclose what portion of the building costs, if any, Tesla would pay, or whether Tesla would be compensated for its work. The firms are among nine major corporations that have placed pre-orders for Tesla’s truck, dubbed the Semi. With ...

Amazon Posts Largest Profit in its History on Sales, Tax Boost

2Feb By reutersNo Comments

News

Amazon Posts Largest Profit in its History on Sales, Tax Boost

Amazon.com Inc on Thursday reported a profit near $2 billion, the largest in its history, as the online retailer drew millions of new customers to its Prime fast-shipping club for the holiday season and as changes to U.S. tax law added to its bottom line. Shares rose more than 6 percent in extended trading, after previously closing down 4 percent on the Nasdaq. Seattle-based Amazon is using fast shipping, television shows exclusive to its website and forays into new technology, such as its voice-controlled Alexa devices, to attract high-spending Prime members. Amazon said price cuts at Whole Foods Market, which it acquired for $13.7 billion last year, are helping it win grocery sales, too. The world's largest online retailer said net income more than doubled to $1.86 billion, or $...

Xiaomi Usurps Samsung To Become Top Smartphone Seller in India

25Jan By reutersNo Comments

Tech

Xiaomi Usurps Samsung To Become Top Smartphone Seller in India

Samsung Electronics has lost its crown as the top smartphone seller in India for the first time in six years, as it was outsold by China’s Xiaomi in the final quarter of 2017, data from two tech research firms shows. Xiaomi’s aggressively priced suite of high-spec handsets and market expansion strategy enabled it to take the top spot in the world’s biggest smartphone market after China, said Tarun Pathak of Counterpoint Research. The Chinese company, which is exploring a public listing and is now valued at close to $100 billion, entered India just over three years ago. Its strategy there has so far rested on flash sales on leading homegrown e-commerce player Flipkart and U.S. tech giant Amazon.com’s Indian site, an approach that helped it snatch market share without have to spend hea...

Netflix Crosses $100B Market Capitalization As Subscribers Surge

23Jan By reutersNo Comments

Tech

Netflix Crosses $100B Market Capitalization As Subscribers Surge

Netflix Inc snagged 2 million more subscribers than Wall Street expected in the final three months of 2017, tripling profits at the online video service that is burning money on new programming to dominate internet television around the world. The results drove Netflix to a market capitalization of more than $100 billion for the first time. Shares jumped 9 percent to over $248 in after-hours trading on Monday after rallying throughout the month and rising 53 percent last year. The company has signed up more than half of all U.S. broadband households and is building its customer base in 190 countries by spending billions on programming. Netflix picked up 6.36 million subscribers in international markets from October through December, when it released new seasons of critically accla...

Twitter To Notify Users Exposed To Russian Propaganda During U.S. Elections

20Jan By reutersNo Comments

USA

Twitter To Notify Users Exposed To Russian Propaganda During U.S. Elections

Twitter Inc, which is reviewing Russian interference during the 2016 U.S. elections, said on Friday it would notify some of its users whether they were exposed to content generated by a suspected Russian propaganda service. The company said it would email 677,775 people in the United States who followed, retweeted or liked content from accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA) during the election. The IRA is a Russian organization that according to lawmakers and researchers, employs hundreds of people to push pro-Kremlin content under phony social media accounts. Twitter added that because it has already suspended these accounts, the relevant content is no longer publicly available on its platform. Twitter executives on Wednesday told U.S. lawmakers that it ma...

Twitter Says World Leaders Like Trump Have Special Status

6Jan By reutersNo Comments

USA

Twitter Says World Leaders Like Trump Have Special Status

Twitter Inc on Friday reiterated its stance that accounts belonging to world leaders have special status on the social media network, pushing back against users who have called on the company to banish U.S. President Donald Trump. “Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate,” Twitter said in a post on a corporate blog. Twitter had already said in September that “newsworthiness” and whether a tweet is “of public interest” are among the factors it considers before removing an account or a tweet. The debate over Trump’s tweeting, though, raged anew after Trump said from his @realDonaldTrump account on Tuesday that he had a “much bigger” and “more powerful” nuclear button than No...

Security Flaws Put Virtually All Intel, AMD Devices At Risk, Warn Researchers

4Jan By reutersNo Comments

Tech

Security Flaws Put Virtually All Intel, AMD Devices At Risk, Warn Researchers

Security researchers on Wednesday disclosed a set of security flaws that they said could let hackers steal sensitive information from nearly every modern computing device containing chips from Intel Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc and ARM Holdings. One of the bugs is specific to Intel but another affects laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, tablets and internet servers alike. Intel and ARM insisted that the issue was not a design flaw, but it will require users to download a patch and update their operating system to fix. “Phones, PCs, everything are going to have some impact, but it’ll vary from product to product,” Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in an interview with CNBC Wednesday afternoon. Researchers with Alphabet Inc’s Google Project Zero, in conjunction with academic an...

Know Why Spotify Is Hit With $1.6 Billion Copyright Lawsuit

3Jan By reutersNo Comments

News

Know Why Spotify Is Hit With $1.6 Billion Copyright Lawsuit

Music streaming company Spotify was sued by Wixen Music Publishing Inc last week for allegedly using thousands of songs, including those of Tom Petty, Neil Young and the Doors, without a license and compensation to the music publisher. Wixen, an exclusive licensee of songs such as “Free Fallin” by Tom Petty, “Light My Fire” by the Doors, (Girl We Got a) Good Thing by Weezer and works of singers such as Stevie Nicks, is seeking damages worth at least $1.6 billion along with injunctive relief. Spotify failed to get a direct or a compulsory license from Wixen that would allow it to reproduce and distribute the songs, Wixen said in the lawsuit, filed in a California federal court. Wixen also alleged that Spotify outsourced its work to a third party, licensing and royalty services prov...