Amazon Black Friday deals deliver busiest day ever as shoppers surge online ahead of Cyber Monday November 29, 2014 It's not even Cyber Monday yet, but Amazon has clocked up its busiest ever day of sales in the UK thanks to Black Friday, selling 64 items every second yesterday. Shoppers ordered more than 5.5 million items such as TVs, tablets and toys with huge price reductions, beating last year’s Black Friday sales of four [...]
Black Friday UK 2014: 5 of the worst Amazon lightning deals savvy shoppers have not been waiting for November 26, 2014 Everyone loves a bargain, but there are some things that scream “rather not” than “must have”. Among quite a few decent deals on expensive tech and electrical items, some of Amazon’s early flash deal Black Friday treats are, well, a little underwhelming, let’s say. Here are five of the least exciting deals waiting for you [...]
Why national statistics have become sexy September 15, 2015 A potential candidate for the world’s most boring book is the Office for National Statistics’s National Accounts: Sources and Methods. This book, all 502 pages of it, is currently available in hardback on Amazon for just 1p. It does exactly what it says in the title, giving a detailed description of how the data in [...]
Brands without borders: OMD’s Nikki Mendonca on the digital single market November 22, 2015 Sharing data across jurisdictions remains a headache for brands that operate within a number of different markets. The situation may be about to become a lot easier in Europe, however, due to the European Commission’s digital single market strategy. “I’m optimistic about what these changes would mean for brands,” says Nikki Mendonça, president of OMD [...]
Google’s Eric Schmidt: Amazon is our biggest search rival October 13, 2014 Google's chairman has dismissed Bing and Yahoo: the biggest threat to its search hegemony is Amazon. Eric Schmidt believes that the scrutiny Google is under in Europe after the 'right to be forgotten' battle is unfair given the large roles played by the company's rivals, such as Facebook and Amazon. Mobile search is becoming more [...]
Younger viewers are turning away from traditional television viewing and watching Netflix and iPlayer instead July 2, 2015 Only half of young people are watching broadcasts through live television. The figures are from media watchdog Ofcom’s latest research into the state of Public Service Broadcasters, released today. It found that viewers aged 16 to 24 years old are increasingly using online, on demand, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and the [...]
Billy Zane talks Zoolander 2, the future of Hollywood and having the ghosts of Picasso and Hemingway hanging over him February 4, 2016 Billy Zane is drawing me a diagram of his Theory of Everything. He’s on his fourth draft and a little pile of crumpled sheets of paper are piling up beside his Bloody Mary. It’s a kind of business model for the creative industries, a way to bring together media, advertising, luxury goods and philanthropy, dotted [...]
Amazon’s Twitch takeover puts tech deals at 14-year high August 26, 2014 Amazon's $970m (£585m) takeover of eSport video website Twitch on Monday pushed the value of global tech M&A (mergers and acquisitions) so far this year to $174bn, its highest level since 2000, according to industry data. Global tech M&A activity is up 54 per cent compared to the same period last year, according to [...]
Clicks vs bricks is gone: Even savvy e-commerce firms need to do both May 21, 2015 The retail industry is in a state of flux. Consumers and technology are driving fundamental changes. And now, the line between in-store and online is increasingly blurred. When online shopping began to gain popularity, the future of retail was painted by numerous commentators as being a battle: clicks versus bricks. But recent events [...]
Dixons Carphone share price rises two per cent as it hails strong start to the year September 10, 2015 Dixons Carphone is still going from strength to strength, as it consolidates its position in the sector following last year's merger. Dixons Carphone share price rose two per cent in mid-morning trading on the news. The figures Dixons Carphone reported group like-for-like revenues up eight per cent for the first quarter of the year ending [...]