Tech overtakes finance among top global companies July 4, 2016 Technology has stolen a march on finance, with the success of companies such as Alphabet and Microsoft helping the innovative sector surpass the traditional world of financial services among the world's top 100 companies over the past year. Technology firms in the list notched up a combined value of $3bn compared to financial firms' $2.7bn and the $2.6bn [...]
Amazon’s UK sales jump by 14pc June 25, 2015 UK sales at online retailer Amazon rose 14 per cent to £5.3bn last year, as British consumers engaged in an online shopping bonanza. A filing with Companies House showed Amazon’s UK division recorded a profit of £34.4m during the period, paying out £11.9m in tax. UK sales accounted for 9.4 per cent of Amazon’s global [...]
Amazon overtakes Walmart as US’ biggest retailer: But has it really stolen its crown? July 24, 2015 The king is dead: Long live the king. If Americans still had monarchic leanings that might be how they would have viewed last night’s shock announcement that Walmart, that behemoth of retailing, had lost its crown as the nation’s biggest retailer. The fact that it lost it to Amazon, a dot-com upstart with no physical [...]
Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May to make Top Gear-style show for Amazon July 30, 2015 Former Top Gear presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have found a new home at Amazon, after being ditched by the BBC earlier this year. Read more: Chris Evans picked to replace Jeremy Clarkson as Top Gear presenter The trio will create a Top Gear-style motoring show for Amazon's Prime Video service, with long-time [...]
Why British homeowners still aren’t buying into the idea of the home connected by smart tech June 29, 2016 Take any object in your home and you can guarantee that at some point a Silicon Valley startup has tried to create a web-enabled version of it. The ever expanding “Internet of Things” (IoT), as it’s clunkily termed, now includes almost every household item under the sun. Many are useful, such as thermostats, light bulbs, [...]
Alibaba invests $1bn in cloud computing arm Aliyun to compete with Amazon Web Services July 29, 2015 Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is planning a $1bn push into the cloud, taking on Amazon by expanding its cloud computing unit Aliyun into international markets. The company, often described as the “Chinese Ebay”, is expanding its cloud computing arm from its current bases in China and Silicon Valley to the Middle East, Europe and Japan, [...]
These are Britain’s best companies for customer service: First Direct, Amazon and John Lewis July 15, 2015 Anyone who detests being taken for granted by a company will be pleased to know there's a list of firms offering shoppers the best customer service experience. Online bank First Direct scored 87 for the overall level of customer satisfaction, helping it overtake better-known brands such as Amazon and John Lewis in a ranking compiled [...]
More money for proptech: HouseSimple raises £13m from Carphone Warehouse boss June 6, 2016 More money is flowing into up and coming property technology (proptech) companies, with the founder of Carphone Warehouse leading a new multimillion pound investment in online estate agent HouseSimple. Sir Charles Dunstone lead the £13m funding in the firm which ditches the high cost of traditional agency fees, along with his business partner Roger Taylor. An institutional investor [...]
As the EU says 20 per cent of Netflix content should be made in the European Union, is this a good reason to back Brexit? May 26, 2016 Len Shackleton, professor of economics at the University of Buckingham and fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, says Yes. A quota for tedious German family sagas or subsidised reworkings of Napoleon’s triumphs, compulsorily advertised on the Netflix homepage, may not itself drive voters to Brexit. But attempting to regulate video-on-demand is symptomatic of the Commission’s ever-expanding [...]
Amazon wants to make talking to robots an everyday event with Echo June 25, 2015 Amazon is aiming to make talking to robots as normal an event as turning on the TV or checking your phone. The company has ambitious plans to make voice control ubiquitous in households and has started by launching the Amazon Echo, a wireless speaker you can control through voice commands by saying “Alexa”. Alexa is [...]