Platform Executive

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Apple sales and profit top estimates as hit from chip shortages eases Apple Inc has reported record sales in the holiday quarter, beating estimates due to high iPhone demand and growing subscribers, even as a chips shortage that it said has begun easing cost it over $6 billion in revenue. Apple shares rose over 5% in after-hours trading. But they have been down 10% this year, in line with the broader market, as investors reconsider stocks that have soared during the pandemic and shift funds toward safer assets. The record results for the quarter ended December the 25th reflected what analysts have described as Apple taking advantage of its incredible size. The company, which has more than 1.8 billion active devices in the market, has been able to squeeze suppliers and manufacturers to produce big quantities of iPhones and other devices despite shortages brought on by the pandemic and most recently t...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Tencent plans to take US-listed streaming firm DouYu private Tencent Holdings Ltd plans to take DouYu International Holdings Ltd private amid disagreements over strategy among executives at the Chinese videogame streaming firm, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said. Tencent, the biggest shareholder in Nasdaq-listed DouYu with a 37% stake, wants to team up with at least one private equity firm for the deal and is currently talking to investment banks, they said. It is aiming to complete the deal this year, said one of the people. Shares in DouYu , one of Tencent's main platforms for game marketing and China's No. 2 videogame streaming site, surged on the news, jumping 12.7% in pre-market trade. The company has been debating its business strategy after Tencent's plans to merge it with bigger rival Huya Inc were blocked by regulators in July last year on antitrust grounds. T...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: EU: WhatsApp has until end of Feb to clarify privacy policy change Facebook unit WhatsApp has been given until the end of February to explain changes to its privacy policy and whether this complies with EU consumer protection laws after complaints from consumer groups, the European Commission has said. The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and eight of its members took their grievances to the EU executive and the European network of consumer authorities, saying WhatsApp was unfairly pressuring users to accept its new privacy policy which allows it to share some data with Facebook and other group firms. EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said he shared the worries and has asked WhatsApp to clarify the policy and if it complies with EU consumer protection law. "WhatsApp has until the end of February to come back to us with concrete commitments on how they will address our concerns,...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Binance hopes Russia will help regional growth Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, wants to expand in Russia and neighbouring states where it sees prospects for new regulations that will boost its business, an executive said. Russian politicians have pressed for a change of tack by the central bank, which has proposed restricting cryptocurrency trading and mining because of concerns it may cause financial instability. They say it should instead regulate a business which could draw in more tax revenues. President Vladimir Putin has called for the central bank to find a consensus on how to deal with the cryptocurrency business, which central banks and regulators around the globe have been grappling with. "Our goal is to obtain a licence and conduct legal business where the regulation allows," Binance Eastern European Director Gleb Kostarev told Reuters, adding that his ...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Facebook’s cryptocurrency venture to wind down and sell tech assets Meta Platforms Inc's digital currency venture Diem Association is winding down and selling its technology to California-based Silvergate Capital Corp for about $200 million, the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. Meta, formerly Facebook Inc, first unveiled plans for Diem, known as Libra earlier, in June 2019, as part of an effort to expand beyond social networking into e-commerce and global payments. The project immediately ran into fierce opposition from policymakers globally, who worried it could erode their control over the money system, enable crime, and harm users' privacy. In the quest for regulatory approvals, Facebook then renamed its digital coin to 'Diem' and scaled down its global ambition to focus on the United States by announcing the launch of a US dollar stablec...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Apple to let iPhones accept credit cards without extra hardware Apple Inc is planning a new service that will allow small businesses to accept payments directly on their iPhones without any extra hardware, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. For payments to get accepted on an iPhone, retailers currently use payment terminals to receive money on their iOS devices that are connected via Bluetooth, such as Block Inc's Square payment systems. The new feature will instead turn the iPhone into a payment terminal, allowing merchants to accept payments with the tap of a credit card or another iPhone onto the back of their device, the Bloomberg report said. The system will likely use iPhone's near field communications, or NFC, chip that is currently used for Apple Pay, the report said, adding the feature may roll out through a software update in the comi...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Software group SAP to buy majority stake in US FinTech firm Taulia SAP has said it has agreed to buy a majority stake in privately held US FinTech firm Taulia as the German business software group seeks to expand its presence across supply-chain financing and working capital loans. Taulia works with financial institutions to allow suppliers that use its platform to receive early payments on their delivered goods and services, and the market has significantly increased due to the pandemic disrupting supply chains. SAP, which provides some of the supply-chain financing through its Ariba brand, said acquisition of Taulia will help the company remove the limited growth rates for its own products. While SAP did not disclose the deal price, SAP CEO Christian Klein said the value is less that $1 billion. Taulia had raised more than $200 million from the likes of Trinity Ventures, Questmark Partner and Lake...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Apple poised for strong earnings despite supply constraints, Omicron Apple Inc navigated pandemic-related supply chain issues better than rivals at the end of 2021, likely helping the iPhone maker surpass Wall Street revenue growth targets of 6%, some analysts estimate. Apple, which is set to post quarterly earnings on Thursday, was buoyed by strong iPhone 13 sales globally, sales in China and continued growth in Mac shipments, several analysts told journalists at our partner news agency, Reuters. The market is closely watching earnings at Apple, Tesla and other tech companies to see if they quell the sell-off that has wiped out nearly $3 trillion in value from the Nasdaq 100. Investors are dumping tech stocks on fears that the Fed will hike interest rates fairly aggressively and erode the value of their future earnings. Some are concerned that the surge of pandemic at-home tech buying will not last ...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: William Ackman’s Pershing Square takes new position in Netflix Billionaire investor William Ackman has built a new stake in streaming service Netflix Inc worth more than $1 billion since its stock price tumbled starting last Thursday. Mr Ackman told investors that his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, started buying on Friday and now owns more than 3.1 million shares in Netflix, making Pershing Square a top 20 shareholder. In a letter to his clients, Ackman praised the company's "best-in-class management team" and on Twitter the manager said he has long admired Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and the "remarkable company he and his team have built." Netflix shares climbed as much as 5% in after-hours trading. They had tumbled more than 30% in the last five days, a much steeper swoom than the broader market. After the market closed last Thursday, Netflix forecast weak s...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: YouTube permanently bans Fox News host Dan Bongino Fox News Channel host Dan Bongino became among the most-followed conservative personalities to be permanently banned from YouTube , a week after the Google-owned video service said he had posted COVID-19 misinformation. YouTube suspended one of Bongino's YouTube channels on January the 20th after he posted a video where he questioned the effectiveness of using masks against the coronavirus, a violation of the company's pandemic-related misinformation policy. His later attempt to circumvent that one-week suspension by posting from another channel triggered a permanent ban, YouTube said. "When a channel receives a strike, it is against our Terms of Service to post content or use another channel to circumvent the suspension," YouTube said in a statement. "If a channel is terminated, the uploader is unable to use, own or create any...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Microsoft cloud growth forecast bodes well for tech rivals, too After a brief scare, Microsoft Corp reassured tech investors that its enterprise internet cloud business category has plenty of room to grow. Shares of the software and services giant sank as much as 6% on Tuesday after it reported less-than-stellar growth in its cloud business. But they rebounded on Wednesday on Microsoft forecast for cloud growth in the current quarter. Shares climbed more than 5% to $303.14, adding a boost to Wall Street's main indexes. Executives forecast revenue for Microsoft's Intelligent Cloud unit of $18.75 billion to $19 billion for the third quarter, compared with a Wall Street consensus of $18.15 billion, according to Refinitiv data. "We believe this can start to change the sentiment tide in tech," said David Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors. Microsoft's guidance was ...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Buy now, pay later firms Zip, Sezzle confirm merger talks Buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm Sezzle Inc is in talks to be acquired by larger Australian rival Zip Co Ltd, the companies has said, sending shares of Sezzle soaring 23% during the session. The companies said in separate statements that talks were at an early stage and there was no certainty that a deal would materialise. US-based Sezzle has a market capitalisation of almost A$425 million (approximately $303.5 million), while Zip is valued at A$1.94 billion. Zip has been actively deal-making over the last year to build scale to compete with rivals including Klarna and Block Inc's Afterpay. The talks, earlier reported by the Australian newspaper in November, come at a time of rapid consolidation in the BNPL sector, which has seen a meteoric rise during the pandemic as customers thronged to online shopping and preferred alternate sources of ...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: China targets celebrities, fan groups in new month-long clean up campaign The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has launched a month-long "clean cyberspace" campaign, which it said would target online abuse, "chaos" in celebrity fan groups and "money worship", among other issues. CAC made the announcement on its official WeChat account on Tuesday, saying that it would closely look at content platforms and advertisements as part of the campaign over the Spring Festival period. The aim is to "rectify the disorder on the Internet, curb the spread of unhealthy culture", "to create a healthy, festive and harmonious online environment for internet users, especially minors during the Spring Festival," the CAC said in the statement China first launched a crackdown on its booming entertainment industry in summer last year, targeting celebrity behaviour...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Meta says its new AI supercomputer will be world’s fastest Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc has said that its research team has built a new artificial intelligence supercomputer that it thinks will be the fastest in the world when completed in mid-2022. Meta said in a blog post that its new AI Research SuperCluster (RSC) would help the company build better AI models that can learn from trillions of examples, work across hundreds of languages, and analyze text, images and video together to determine if content was harmful. "This research will not only help keep people safe on our services today, but also in the future, as we build for the metaverse," the company said in a blog post. The social media company changed its name in October to Meta to reflect its focus on the metaverse, which it thinks will be the successor to the mobile internet. The metaverse, a broad term which has generate...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Marketplace bug sees at least $1 million of NFTs sold below market price A bug in the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, allowed attackers to purchase at least $1 million worth of NFTs across multiple different wallets for significantly below market price, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic has said. A non-fungible token (NFT) is a form of crypto asset, which records the ownership status of digital files on blockchain. OpenSea is the largest marketplace for speculators and enthusiasts to trade their NFTs, with $4.8 billion worth of sales volume so far in January. But a flaw in the marketplace allowed users to buy certain NFTs at prices which they had been listed for in the past, without the owner realising that they were still on sale. OpenSea did not immediately respond to a request for comment. "The exploit appears to come from the fact that it was previously possible to re-list an NFT at a n...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Teenage bitcoin throws an interest rate tantrum Bitcoin is growing up. The original cryptocurrency turns 13 this year and is showing signs of becoming a more mature financial asset - but watch out for the teenage tantrums. This drift towards the mainstream, driven by the big bets of institutional investors, has seen bitcoin become sensitive to interest rates and fuelled a sell-off in the coin this month as investors braced for a hawkish Federal Reserve policy meeting. The cryptocurrency, born in 2009, was still on the fringes of finance during the Fed's previous tightening cycle, from 2016 to 2019, and was barely correlated with the stock market. Times have changed. Bitcoin has been positively correlated with the S&P 500 index since early 2020, according to Refinitiv data, meaning they broadly move up and down together. Their correlation coefficient has risen to 0.41 now from 0.1 in Septemb...

The full version of the article, along with thousands like it, can be found here: Marketplace bug sees at least $1 million of NFTs sold below market price A bug in the largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea, allowed attackers to purchase at least $1 million worth of NFTs across multiple different wallets for significantly below market price, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic has said. A non-fungible token (NFT) is a form of crypto asset, which records the ownership status of digital files on blockchain. OpenSea is the largest marketplace for speculators and enthusiasts to trade their NFTs, with $4.8 billion worth of sales volume so far in January. But a flaw in the marketplace allowed users to buy certain NFTs at prices which they had been listed for in the past, without the owner realising that they were still on sale. OpenSea did not immediately respond to a request for comment. "The exploit appears to come from the fact that it was previously possible to re-list an NFT at a n...