Amazon to challenge Apple with $99 fire TV April 2, 2014 AMAZON will enter the living room with a video streaming set top box called Fire TV. Chief executive Jeff Bezos described the rival to Apple TV as a: “Tiny box, huge specs, tons of content, incredible price”. It will pipe movies and TV shows directly from Amazon’s video service onto TV. No UK release date [...]
Alibaba could move into Indian market with $500m investment in One97 Communications January 12, 2015 Alibaba could soon expand its global influence by purchasing a stake in India’s One97 Communications for over $500m. Alibaba and payment service provider unit Alipay are said to be in advanced talks to buy between 30 and 40pc of the Indian company which owns mobile payment platform Paytm. According to Reuters sources, One97 [...]
Europe vs Google: EU accuses search giant of market dominance abuse in EU antitrust case and launches Android probe April 15, 2015 Five years after the European Commission first began investigating Google's dominance of internet search, formal charges against the search giant have finally been filed, accusing Google of anti-competitive behaviour. The EC's competition commissioner claims Google favours its own comparison of shopping products in search result pages over those of other shopping sites and has taken the [...]
Tesco share price dips as Blinkbox Books closes ending supermarket’s digital entertainment services January 26, 2015 Tesco is closing the last of its digital entertainment services, Blinkbox Books, after failing to find a buyer for the ebook platform. The news sent shares in the supermarket down just over three per cent in afternoon trading. The struggling supermarket said it would close the service by the end of February to focus on [...]
Fitbug starts to flex its muscles January 7, 2015 The founder of the British fitness tracking group tells Oliver Smith in Las Vegas that he is already thinking about the next big thing PAUL Landau has had an interesting six months. In July he was the founder of a wearable fitness tracker firm whose share price had hovered around 1p for over two years, [...]
CES 2015: Still the biggest tech show on earth – Bottom Line January 8, 2015 As the global tech industry packs its bags and leaves the neon lights of Las Vegas behind for another year, is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the world’s largest tech convention, still relevant? On one hand, CES boasts that this year it had more than 3,500 tech exhibitors and over 160,000 attendees. The organisers have [...]
Royal Mail share price falls as profits drop after struggles with competition November 19, 2014 This isn't what Royal Mail shareholders wanted to hear in the run-up to its busiest month: shares fell 7.3 per cent in the early afternoon as the 500-year-old postal service said its delivery operations faced "stiff competition" in the first half of the financial year. For the six months to 28 September, pre-tax profit [...]
Styluses for iPads: Take your tablet experience to the next level November 5, 2014 Apple doesn’t believe in styluses. Avoiding reliance on a digital pen was part of Steve Jobs’ masterplan when engineering the first iPad and the Cupertino company has stuck to its guns ever since. There are a handful of third party devices on Apple’s online store but you won’t catch it manufacturing its own. [...]
EU VAT rule change could hike the cost of ebooks January 1, 2015 After weeks of deep discounts and mega-sales courtesy of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day, shoppers may be a bit miffed to find out that at the start of the new year they may have to pay more for their ebooks. As a result of a change in EU tax rules, digital products will be [...]
Netflix now more popular than iPlayer, 4OD and Amazon Prime Instant Video May 14, 2014 Netflix is now the second largest driver of online traffic in the UK and Ireland, just two years after it launched, and it now accounts for 17.8 per cent of traffic, according to new research. The television and movie streaming service is beaten only by YouTube’s 19.9 per cent share of traffic, according to Sandvine. [...]