Spotify fails to hit the right note as subscriber numbers miss expectations July 31, 2019 Spotify’s subscriber growth hit the lower end of its guidance in the second quarter, sending shares down in pre-market trading. The music streaming platform said it now has 108m premium subscribers, up 30 per cent on the year before. Read more: Music streaming firm Roxi plans London float as it looks to take on Spotify [...]
Uber car rental startup Splend moves headquarters to London July 31, 2019 Uber car rental startup Splend has relocated its headquarters to London as it looks to cash in on the booming ride-sharing market. The Australian company, which provides cars, training and data analytics to drivers, has set up shop in Aldgate as it prepares to grow its presence in the capital. Read more: Uber lays off [...]
Apple shares turn green as services rise July 30, 2019 Apple’s booming revenue in its services division provided a boon to investors tonight, as shares bounced more than four per cent in after-hours trading. The Californian tech giant topped expectations for quarterly profit and revenue for the three months to the end of June, as performance improvement in China helped its results. Read more: Apple [...]
Saudi Arabian wealth fund set to invest in digital health startup Babylon July 30, 2019 Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is said to be in late-stage talks over an investment in British startup Babylon Health. The investment, which would come as part of a funding round worth hundreds of millions of dollars, could be announced later this week, the Financial Times reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Read [...]
Nintendo switches it up in profit loss July 30, 2019 Japanese video game manufacturer Nintendo has announced a 10 per cent decline in its quarterly profit. The decline comes amid a troubling period for Nintendo’s older consoles, with the Kyoto-based company aware of the declining sales of the Nintendo 3DS, whose hardware and software sales have fallen almost 50 per cent year-on-year. Nintendo’s net revenue [...]
Uber lays off 400 marketing staff in drive to trim IPO bloat July 30, 2019 Uber has laid off a third of its global marketing team as it pushes to cut bloat after its stock market debut in May. The decision to cut its marketing team from 1,200 to 800 people represents an overall staff reduction of roughly 1.6 per cent worldwide. Read more: Uber and rival Ola sniff around [...]
Sextortion and bomb threats fuel rise in email scams July 30, 2019 The number of email extortion scams has spiked in recent months as cyber criminals increasingly use fabricated bomb and sex threats to dupe victims into handing over money. In a report published today, cybersecurity firm Symantec said it blocked almost 300m extortion scam emails from the start of the year until the end of May. [...]
Huawei shrugs off US blacklisting with strong first half revenue growth July 30, 2019 Huawei has posted a sharp rise in revenue for the first half, despite the US’s attempts to cripple its global trading. President Donald Trump has added the Chinese firm to a trade blacklist, effectively blocking it from doing business with American companies. Read more: US sanctions blamed for Huawei 5G decision delay But the move [...]
Facebook fact checkers stumped by satire amid crackdown on harmful content July 30, 2019 Third-party fact checkers tasked with flagging misinformation on Facebook have been forced to reconsider how they handle humorous posts due to the number of people misinterpreting satire as fact. Full Fact, which carries out fact checking services on Facebook in the UK, has urged the social media firm to introduce a new rating for humorous [...]
Vodafone rockets 8% amid IPO excitement July 29, 2019 | City Talk It’s been a long time coming, but Vodafone has a market-friendly strategy to underpin a recovery. The spin-off of the “TowerCo” business is by far the most scintillating development within Vodafone (LSE:VOD) first-quarter trading update. Vodafone had previously mentioned that it was planning to monetise this part of the business, and has now added some flesh to [...]