Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 119
Toshiba to open new chip plant in Japan
As demand for flash memory soars, Japanese storage-maker Toshiba has announced that it will build a new semiconductor manufacturing facility in Iwate, northern Japan.
Beleaguered tech giant Toshiba is currently negotiating a sale of its Toshiba Memory Corporation chip business for up to $8.8 billion to plug vast losses of revenue, but that hasn't stopped the company from laying plans to open a new fabrication facility in Japan. This new plant, which is planned to go up in Iwate sometime next year, would be the memory-maker's second such facility, with the first located in Yokkaichi, central Japan.
The conglomerate may partner with SanDisk, the Western Digital-owned memory company, to help raise investment funds for the plant. With flash memory in major demand for consumer electronics, it will be interesting to see if this new facility helps alleviate the memory shortage that plagues key segments as well as Japanese-owned companies like Nintendo.
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Pay for your KFC in China by smiling at a camera
KFC is really making some big moves in China, first by launching their own smartphone, and then launching a VR training app, but now KFC China has introduced a new facial recognition payment system.
KFC China's new 'Smile to Pay' system lets customers pay for their orders by simply smiling into a kiosk, and second later the computer will identify you as it analyzes over 600 facial features in order to match them to the photo ID stored on the Alipay system. KFC China includes a "live-ness detection algorithm" which stops people from scamming the system if they were wearing wigs or heavy make up.
Jidong Chen, Ant's Director of Biometric Identification Technology explains: "Combined with a 3D camera and liveness detection algorithm, Smile to Pay can effectively block spoofing attempts using other people's photos or video recordings and ensure account safety".
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HP posts earnings growth for fourth straight quarter
Technology giant HP Inc has reported its fourth straight quarter of strong earnings growth driven by its Personal Systems segment.
HP's fiscal third quarter 2017 earnings mark the fourth consistent period the company has one-upped its total net revenues. The company earned $13.1 billion in net revenues in the three-month period ending July 31, 2017, up 10% year-over-year. HP's Personal Systems segment, which includes its lucrative commercial and consumer PCs as well as workstations, thin clients, and tablets, accounted for roughly 64% of fiscal Q3'17 net revenues, or $8.404 billion in net revenues and up 12% year-over-year. Commercial and Consumer segment net revenues increased by 11% and 14% respectively, and Notebook segment revenues were also up 12% with Desktop units down 3% year-over-year.
The tech titan's Printing segment earned $4.698 billion in net revenues in the period, up 6% year-over-year.
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Apple expected to spend $1 billion on shows
Apple is already a force in apps and music. However, they're still a nobody in the world of video. It seems that Apple wishes to change this and to change it pretty soon.
The rumors coming from Hollywood are saying that Apple is prepared to spend up to $1 billion of their own money to buy and create original video content.
Apple's move into the original content video space is mostly a reaction to Netflix's success with original content. Companies like Disney and others are already looking at creating their own streaming services, which will make it increasingly more difficult to fill a large library like Apple is used to having. One way of doing this is through creating original content that people want to watch, which can even be content that already exists and is very popular with viewers.
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MoviePass charges $10 for daily movie screenings
Netflix co-founder Mitch Lowe aims to provide a similar business model to theater moviegoers by dropping MoviePass subscription to just $10 a month.
Streaming services like Netflix and Hulu are taking a big bite out of movie ticket sales as traditional moviegoers are simply staying home to consume content. This summer was one of the lowest periods in years with movie ticket sales down 12.4%, the Wall Street Journal reports. AMC reported dismal quarterly earnings due to the summer drought, triggering shares of the theater chain to slide dramatically. "The quarter was simply a bust," said AMC CEO Adam Aron during the company's quarterly earnings call.
MoviePass, a subscription service that allows subscribers to watch a film a day across the entire month, may be a solution to boost theater attendance. The service has recently lowered its price tag from $30 to just $10 a month in a bid to attract typical Netflix subscribers. MoviePass holders can watch a showing of a non-3D or IMAX film every day at any U.S. box office that accepts debit cards, and the company will actually pay the theater full price for the tickets. There's a trade-off, however: the company has essentially sold subscriber data to an analyst firm.
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Amazon Instant Pickup has orders ready in two minutes
With its new Instant Pickup initiative, Amazon has made a big move on convenience stores, big box retailers, and traditional brick-and-mortar stores.
Amazon has rolled out its new Instant Pickup program, which allows customers to pick up select "daily essential" products ordered on Amazon.com. Instant Pickup locations will have orders ready within 2 minutes, Reuters reports, and targets quick impulse buys such as cold drinks, pre-packaged food, and other products like phone chargers. Company execs affirm Instant Pickup aims at bridging the gaps in Amazon's delivery service by offering convenient and fast pickup stations for items that don't translate well to delivery.
"I want to buy a can of coke because I'm thirsty," Amazon's director of student programs Ripley MacDonald told Reuters. "There's no chance I'm going to order that on Amazon.com and wait however long it's going to take for that to ship to me."
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NVIDIA smashes Q2 2018, more record revenue results
NVIDIA has just posted up its Q2 2018 fiscal year results, with the company continuing to pound out money from its success in the gaming market. Revenue reached a whopping $2.23 billion, up by a huge 56% year-over-year.
NVIDIA's net income was $583 million, up a massive 123% year-over-year, which is huge. NVIDIA's success is coming from their gaming market, which is their largest source of revenue. PC gaming is still big business, with NVIDIA's gaming division making $1.186 billion, compared to $781 million this time last year. This is what happens when you're the sole maker of high-end/enthusiast graphics cards.
It's not just the GeForce business that NVIDIA is benefiting from, but it's also the datacenter division - quickly becoming a money generator. This time last year, NVIDIA was making just 11% of their revenue from the datacenter, but fast forward to Q2 2018 (fiscal) and it has jumped by 175% to $416 million. It used to be small, but now the datacenter makes up 19% of NVIDIA's revenue... not bad at all.
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Toshiba reports $8.7 billion loss for 2016
Toshiba has reported a substantial $8.75 billion loss of income in the fiscal year ending March 2017, the company today announced.
Embroiled chip-maker Toshiba Corp has today revealed its fiscal year 2016 earnings following approval from auditors, illustrating how far the company's earnings have slid due to the Westinghouse closure. The earnings had previously been delayed three separate times. The timely filings have saved the company from being de-listed from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The earnings filings show that Toshiba has suffered an $8.75 billion dollar net loss during the twelve-month period ending March 31, 2017. The Japanese electronics company pins the losses on the sizable debt incurred by its Westinghouse Electric nuclear power plant, which filed for bankruptcy in March. Overall the dissolved Westinghouse division incurred a total loss of 1.394 trillion yen, or $12.76 billion, during the fiscal year due to the discontinued operation of the branch.
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Disney pulls out of Netflix, plans its own service
Disney has announced it will be ending its distribution deal with Netflix, with plans to launch their own streaming service sometime in 2019. This is a tectonic shift for the company, as they own Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and everything in between.
Netflix secured the Disney deal back in 2012 before the streaming giant was the size it is today, but Disney is making a move for the future as it turns into a streaming content provider. This means that Netflix will be losing Disney content, something that will include Marvel content - think Avengers, and MCU movies. It also means Pixar movies (Toy Story, Finding Dory), and even the entire Star Wars universe.
Disney plans to cut Netflix off with their 2019 movies, but have said that Netflix will be able to keep Disney movies through to the end of that year. This means that Netflix will have their hands-on the next two Star Wars movie, but will miss out on the final movie in the end. A spokesperson for Netflix has said: "We continue to do business with the Walt Disney Company on many fronts, including our ongoing deal with Marvel TV".
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US ITC will investigate Apple on patent infringement
Qualcomm just gained a big fighter in their corner for the battle against Apple, with the US International Trade Commission announcing that it will be investigating the claims that Apple has infringed on Qualcomm's patents.
Some of the models of Apple's latest iPhone 7 are using an Intel-made modem and not the one from Qualcomm, and while Qualcomm notes that the modem doesn't violate patents, it's the implementation by Apple that does infringe on their patents.
Qualcomm released a statement not too long ago, where they said:
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