Amazon Prime revenues reach £5.2bn February 15, 2017 Amazon has published the figures for its Amazon Prime service for the first time, revealing that revenues for the subscription service have hit $6.4bn (£5.2bn). This means the service, which allows customers to access premium video content and faster product deliveries, lags behind Amazon's retail and web divisions. In 2016, Amazon Retail brought in $91.4bn [...]
Amazon’s delivery drones could one day be dropping packages by parachute February 15, 2017 Amazon has filed another very interesting patent. At the end of last year, it was revealed Amazon had filed a patent for a flying airship warehouse designed to speed up drone deliveries. As you do. And now the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted the e-commerce giant a patent for a new way to deliver [...]
Berkshire Hathaway “A” shares have officially topped $250,000 February 15, 2017 These shares are so expensive, you need a mortgage just to buy one: last night "A" shares of Berkshire Hathaway, the vehicle founded by legendary investor Warren Buffett, rose above $250,000 dollars for the first time. The company's shares closed 0.8 per cent higher last night, at $250,419. That means shares have surged more than [...]
Now Sonos is hiking prices because of the weaker pound February 13, 2017 Trendy speaker maker Sonos has become the latest cult tech giant to announce it is increasing prices on its UK catalogue thanks to the weaker pound “Our prices are defined regionally,” the company said in an email to its customers. “In the UK, this includes local taxation and import duties, but we pay for everything we make in [...]
Now Santander lets you make payments using just your voice February 13, 2017 More proof that voice control is the future… Santander is now letting customers make payments just by asking their phone, along with several other new functions that work in a similar way to Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa Users of the bank's SmartBank app can use their voice to check their account balance, report a lost [...]
DriveTribe co-founders Richard Hammond and Ernesto Schmitt talk dating, driverless cars and excluding Jeremy Clarkson from music ventures February 13, 2017 How would you transition from celebrity to business magnate? If you’ve already done well in life, one option is to wind down. This is not, however, the option Richard Hammond and sidekicks James May and Jeremy Clarkson are going for. In case they didn’t have enough to do launching Amazon’s The Grand Tour, they’ve also [...]
This is why a Silicon Valley entrepreneur believes London could produce the next Facebook February 12, 2017 By the time Clara Shih turned 30, she was a Starbucks board member, had raised $21m (£16.7m) for her social media startup and had become a bestselling author. A Stanford and Oxford graduate, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur founded software company Hearsay Social [now Hearsay Systems] in 2009 to make financial giants look slick on social media [...]
Ford gears up for a major AI investment to boost its self-driving car offerings February 11, 2017 Ford is spending big to up its game in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector. The US carmaker said it will invest $1bn (£800m) over the next five years in Argo AI, an AI software and robotics technology startup, to support its autonomous vehicle development. Pittsburgh-based Argo AI, which was founded by former Google and Uber leaders, will work to develop a [...]
End of days: Waitrose is closing six of its stores February 9, 2017 Is this the end of the middle classes as we know them? Waitrose is planning to close six stores, putting 500 jobs at risks, it has been reported. The supermarket, beloved of the chattering classes, has begun consulting with staff at six locations in Hertford, Staines, Leek, Huntingdon, Cardiff and Palmers Green (although the latter [...]
AmazonFresh parks tanks in Waitrose territory with expansion into Home Counties February 8, 2017 Already widely available across London, Amazon’s grocery delivery service is now expanding into the suburbs of Hampshire and Surrey. Launched in June last year, AmazonFresh was initially available within 69 London postcodes, before increasing its remit to 190 postcodes in the city and a total of 260 across the country. Amazon says that “Prime” customers [...]