Everything analysts think will be in the next iPhone (AAPL) | ||
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The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus has seen record-breaking sales and profits, but Apple isn't resting on its laurels. The Cupertino company's 12-month refresh cycle means that the smartphone's next iteration is expected to drop this Autumn. Apple remains as tight-lipped as ever about the device's specs and features, but this hasn't stopped people guessing. A new research note from Citi lays out what their analysts believe will be in the iPhone 6s (as they are calling it). This includes:
Citi expects that the iPhone 6s will provide another extremely strong year for Apple. The iPhone 6 saw unit growth of 40-50% year-on-year; the incremental upgrade of the iPhone 6s should see growth of 34% in the 2015 financial year. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: How to build an iPhone projector for less than $10  | ||
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Tim Cook joked that people should just recycle their phone if it's not an iPhone (AAPL) | ||
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Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at George Washington University on Sunday to give a commencement speech to graduating students. Cook spoke about Martin Luther King, Jr, working with Steve Jobs, and meeting President Jimmy Carter. But Cook couldn't resist making a little joke aimed at the people in the audience who were using Android phones. "They've asked me to make a standard announcement ... about silencing your phones," Cook said. "So those of you with an iPhone, just place it in silent mode. If you don't have an iPhone, please pass it to the centre aisle, Apple has a world-class recycling program." You can watch Cook make that joke around one minute into the video here: "Many of these customers were switchers from Android," he said. "They had bought an Android phone, by mistake, and then sought a better experience. And a better life. And decided to check out iPhone and iOS." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Kids settle the debate and tell us which is better: an Apple or Samsung phone  | ||
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Billion-dollar unicorn Taboola has just raised more millions in funding, and now it plans to conquer China | ||
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Taboola, the content recommendation platform valued at more than $1 billion, has just raised a multi-million dollar funding round from China's largest search engine Baidu — which is also the fifth most-popular site in the world, according to Alexa. Even if you don't know Taboola as a company, you've most likely encountered it several times online. Its content recommendations — paid-for by brands and publishers — appear on sites including The Weather Channel, The Atlantic, MailOnline and Business Insider. It is the third biggest syndicated advertising platform, behind only Google and AddThis, according to comScore's US rankings for April. And Taboola claims the average online American sees Taboola's content recommendations 60 times a month. Speaking to Business Insider, Taboola CEO and founder Adam Singolda would not confirm the exact amount Baidu has invested in his company. Prior to Baidu's investment announced on Monday, the company had raised $157 million in funding. At the heart of this round is also a partnership that will help Taboola expand into China, in a similar way the $117 million in Series E funding the company raised in February, which included Yahoo Japan among the investors, has helped it expand into Japan. "We are going to spend the next few months looking at how the partnership will work. It is in very early stages but we are excited to partner ... we are going to learn together with them ... every local market has its own ingredients — even the UK," Singolda told us. This funding round marks the fourth investment Baidu has made in US-based companies, with other investments including Uber and geo-location technology company IndoorAtlas. Baidu already has its own content arm, but Taboola will now work with the company to install the technology to help monetize it further and bring publishers and advertisers on board, Singolda said. The idea is to help Baidu users discover content that they may never have known existed, based on their Taboola's predictive targeting technology. Taboola currently has 270 employees worldwide and an annual revenue run-rate of more than $300 million. Singolda said the company has generated positive EBITDA for the past seven consecutive quarters, adding "in that respect, we don't have to go public." Outside of its expansion into China, Taboola also plans to use its latest investment round not just to enter the Chinese market for the first time, but to help build out what Singolda describes as "the next generation of personalization," which will see entire content sites personalized depending on your reading habits and other data collected about you — not just recommendations at the bottom of each page. Taboola is also building out a newsroom product for homepage editors, to help them test different homepages to see which ones deliver the highest click-through rates, depending on different types of content and where articles are positioned. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 5 Tricks Advertisers Use To Make You Buy Their Products  | ||
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Blinkx is imploding because of its failure to switch to mobile | ||
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Online video advertising company Blinkx, listed on London's junior AIM stock market, has full-year results out today and they show the company is getting crushed for failing to be on mobile. Revenue at the company slipped from $247.21 million (£157.82 million) in 2014 to $214.96 million (£137.23 million) in the year to March 31. It might not seem like a big drop but the online advertising is booming, particularly in video. Pre-tax profit also nose-dived: the company swung from a $12.17 million (£7.77 million) profit in 2014 to a $20.79 million (£13.27 million) loss this year. The problem Blinkx is facing is one that almost any consumer-facing Internet business will have to deal with at some point — the shift from desktop to mobile. While video advertising is doing well at the moment, Blinkx's traditional desktop market is dying. As more and more people browse the internet on their smartphones, advertising money is being redirected to mobile. Blinkx is overhauling its business to adapt to the changes. But this is costly — research and development rose from $24.69 million (£15.76 million) to $30 million (£19.15 million) over the last year. That's on top of falling desktop revenue remember. The rise of programmatic advertising, the practice of buying space using automated processes, is also adding to costs. Blinkx has to spend money to integrate its business with various programmatic buying platforms. Blinkx CEO Subhransu Brian Mukherjee said today: "In 2015, both the industry and company went through a significant structural shift. The Company deliberately realigned the business to focus on mobile, video and programmatic advertising channels, as the industry continued to move in this direction. "Through organic investments and strategic acquisitions, the company reconstituted over half of the desktop revenue shortfall experienced year-on-year. Historically, companies in the sector that have evolved their strategies to capitalize on emerging trends and offer fully integrated solutions — through either acquisitions or organic growth — have been rewarded in the long run."
Despite Mukherjee's calls for investors to play the long game, Blinkx opened down 8% this morning. That's despite warnings earlier in the year that results weren't going to be pretty and a share price slump last week. Blinkx's performance should be a warning to other ad companies facing the shift to mobile — or even any business that interacts with its customers online. Make the shift early or prepare for a painful transition. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The Russian parliament is refusing to hold an investigation into Boris Nemtsov's murder | ||
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The Russian Duma rejected a request to hold a parliamentary investigation into the murder of opposition politician and activist Boris Nemtsov. On Monday independent Duma deputy Dmitry Gudkov posted a letter on Facebook posted a copy of the letter sent in response to his appeal to State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin to hold the inquiry. It states that "without belittling the importance of...the need to bring the perpetrators to justice, it should be noted that the investigation of criminal offences is the focus of the investigating authorities."
Netmsov was gunned down in February as he crossed a bridge in central Moscow only a few hundred metres from the Kremlin after a dinner date with his girlfriend. Questions have since been raised about the speed at which the investigation into his killing was conducted and the fact that none of the five men arrested in connected with the murder appear to have had a strong motive to commit the crime. In response to the investigation Ilya Yashin, who co-founded the opposition movement Solidarnost with Nemtsov, told the AFP: "The official version of the inquiry is more than absurd." And it is these doubts that Gudkov sought to have the Duma look into. In his accompanying post, Gudkov is highly critical of the Duma's stance. He writes: "Only a court can identify the perpetrators [of the crime]. No one disputes this. However, a parliamentary investigation is an element of oversight of the investigation from the State Duma. In all civilised countries, it is the highest form of investigation. An important institution that enables society to ensure transparency and objectivity, to get answers to all the questions, check out the findings of the investigation, etc. It is necessary to ensure that the results of the investigation are credible to citizens. "Failure to carry out a parliamentary investigation into the assassination policy of this magnitude, when the media widely discussed the version of involvement in the crime of state structures of Russia, only strengthens their suspicions." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 11 mindblowing facts about North Korea  | ||
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Everything analysts think will be in the next iPhone (AAPL) | ||
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The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus has seen record-breaking sales and profits, but Apple isn't resting on its laurels. The Cupertino company's 12-month refresh cycle means that the smartphone's next iteration is expected to drop this Autumn. Apple remains as tight-lipped as ever about the device's specs and features, but this hasn't stopped people guessing. A new research note from Citi lays out what their analysts believe will be in the iPhone 6s (as they are calling it). This includes:
Citi expects that the iPhone 6s will provide another extremely strong year for Apple. The iPhone 6 saw unit growth of 40-50% year-on-year; the incremental upgrade of the iPhone 6s should see growth of 34% in the 2015 financial year. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: How to build an iPhone projector for less than $10  | ||
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Tim Cook joked that people should just recycle their phone if it's not an iPhone (AAPL) | ||
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Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at George Washington University on Sunday to give a commencement speech to graduating students. Cook spoke about Martin Luther King, Jr, working with Steve Jobs, and meeting President Jimmy Carter. But Cook couldn't resist making a little joke aimed at the people in the audience who were using Android phones. "They've asked me to make a standard announcement ... about silencing your phones," Cook said. "So those of you with an iPhone, just place it in silent mode. If you don't have an iPhone, please pass it to the centre aisle, Apple has a world-class recycling program." You can watch Cook make that joke around one minute into the video here: "Many of these customers were switchers from Android," he said. "They had bought an Android phone, by mistake, and then sought a better experience. And a better life. And decided to check out iPhone and iOS." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Kids settle the debate and tell us which is better: an Apple or Samsung phone  | ||
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Billion-dollar unicorn Taboola has just raised more millions in funding, and now it plans to conquer China | ||
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Taboola, the content recommendation platform valued at more than $1 billion, has just raised a multi-million dollar funding round from China's largest search engine Baidu — which is also the fifth most-popular site in the world, according to Alexa. Even if you don't know Taboola as a company, you've most likely encountered it several times online. Its content recommendations — paid-for by brands and publishers — appear on sites including The Weather Channel, The Atlantic, MailOnline and Business Insider. It is the third biggest syndicated advertising platform, behind only Google and AddThis, according to comScore's US rankings for April. And Taboola claims the average online American sees Taboola's content recommendations 60 times a month. Speaking to Business Insider, Taboola CEO and founder Adam Singolda would not confirm the exact amount Baidu has invested in his company. Prior to Baidu's investment announced on Monday, the company had raised $157 million in funding. At the heart of this round is also a partnership that will help Taboola expand into China, in a similar way the $117 million in Series E funding the company raised in February, which included Yahoo Japan among the investors, has helped it expand into Japan. "We are going to spend the next few months looking at how the partnership will work. It is in very early stages but we are excited to partner ... we are going to learn together with them ... every local market has its own ingredients — even the UK," Singolda told us. This funding round marks the fourth investment Baidu has made in US-based companies, with other investments including Uber and geo-location technology company IndoorAtlas. Baidu already has its own content arm, but Taboola will now work with the company to install the technology to help monetize it further and bring publishers and advertisers on board, Singolda said. The idea is to help Baidu users discover content that they may never have known existed, based on their Taboola's predictive targeting technology. Taboola currently has 270 employees worldwide and an annual revenue run-rate of more than $300 million. Singolda said the company has generated positive EBITDA for the past seven consecutive quarters, adding "in that respect, we don't have to go public." Outside of its expansion into China, Taboola also plans to use its latest investment round not just to enter the Chinese market for the first time, but to help build out what Singolda describes as "the next generation of personalization," which will see entire content sites personalized depending on your reading habits and other data collected about you — not just recommendations at the bottom of each page. Taboola is also building out a newsroom product for homepage editors, to help them test different homepages to see which ones deliver the highest click-through rates, depending on different types of content and where articles are positioned. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 5 Tricks Advertisers Use To Make You Buy Their Products  | ||
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London's crazy house price bubble is finally losing some air | ||
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Anyone who's tried to buy in London knows that property prices in the capital are insane. New figures from online estate agent Rightmove released this morning show average asking prices in London are £581,074, compared to £285,891 nationally. But prices in the capital have actually dipped so far this month, falling 2.3% compared to April. Nationally the average asking prices slipped by just 0.1% and London registered the biggest monthly fall. Rightmove put the slump down to pre-election jitters. London would have been hit hardest by Labour's mansion tax (although some analysts think the Tories may yet introduce a version of it). Unfortunately Rightmove don't expect house prices to continue to cool, with the surprise Conservative victory giving both buyers and sellers more confidence. Rightmove's housing market analyst said: "This is an election-driven price stall which gives some buyers only short-term relief from the back-drop of a long-term housing shortage, and many estate agents are now reporting a resurgence in interest following the surprise election result." Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's how Floyd Mayweather spends his millions  | ||
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Blinkx is imploding because of its failure to switch to mobile | ||
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Online video advertising company Blinkx, listed on London's junior AIM stock market, has full-year results out today and they show the company is getting crushed for failing to be on mobile. Revenue at the company slipped from $247.21 million (£157.82 million) in 2014 to $214.96 million (£137.23 million) in the year to March 31. It might not seem like a big drop but the online advertising is booming, particularly in video. Pre-tax profit also nose-dived: the company swung from a $12.17 million (£7.77 million) profit in 2014 to a $20.79 million (£13.27 million) loss this year. The problem Blinkx is facing is one that almost any consumer-facing Internet business will have to deal with at some point — the shift from desktop to mobile. While video advertising is doing well at the moment, Blinkx's traditional desktop market is dying. As more and more people browse the internet on their smartphones, advertising money is being redirected to mobile. Blinkx is overhauling its business to adapt to the changes. But this is costly — research and development rose from $24.69 million (£15.76 million) to $30 million (£19.15 million) over the last year. That's on top of falling desktop revenue remember. The rise of programmatic advertising, the practice of buying space using automated processes, is also adding to costs. Blinkx has to spend money to integrate its business with various programmatic buying platforms. Blinkx CEO Subhransu Brian Mukherjee said today: "In 2015, both the industry and company went through a significant structural shift. The Company deliberately realigned the business to focus on mobile, video and programmatic advertising channels, as the industry continued to move in this direction. "Through organic investments and strategic acquisitions, the company reconstituted over half of the desktop revenue shortfall experienced year-on-year. Historically, companies in the sector that have evolved their strategies to capitalize on emerging trends and offer fully integrated solutions — through either acquisitions or organic growth — have been rewarded in the long run."
Despite Mukherjee's calls for investors to play the long game, Blinkx opened down 8% this morning. That's despite warnings earlier in the year that results weren't going to be pretty and a share price slump last week. Blinkx's performance should be a warning to other ad companies facing the shift to mobile — or even any business that interacts with its customers online. Make the shift early or prepare for a painful transition. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Bank of America just named the five 'CRASH' catalysts most likely to spark a global market slump | ||
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Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) analysts just flagged up five factors that could cause a "cleansing drop in asset prices." They've even given the possible catalysts a catchy acronym: "C.R.A.S.H." Each is an assumption of a consensus in the market at the moment, which if overturned could spark a slump. Here are the "C.R.A.S.H" indicators to watch, with some snippets of text from the note itself:
On the last point, they've illustrated the surge into high-yield investments, compared to safer and lower-yielding assets like inflation-protected US bonds (TIPS):
Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Here's how Floyd Mayweather spends his millions  | ||
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Losing the support of unions risks shattering the Labour party | ||
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If Labour picks a fight with its union supporters, the party's prospects for 2020 could take a massive hit — along with its finances. Between May 2010 and December 2014 the Labour party received donations of £48,586,759.96 from trade unions. That figure is just under half of the £110 million that the party took over that period, and illustrates just how important the labour union movement remains Labour's electoral machine. Since Ed Miliband's general election failure, however, the relationship between the two sides has soured. Now Britain's biggest union, Unite, is set to debate its automatic support for Labour at its July conference with union leader Len McCluskey suggesting that future support from his members would rely on the party picking the "right leader." The very public spat has already forced prospective Labour leadership candidates to distance themselves from Unite. Even McCluskey's favoured candidate, Andy Burnham, tried to put some clear water between himself and the trade unions by saying that calls for Labour to move to the left "are wrong" and that he is "attracting support from all parts of the party." Nevertheless, the prospect of Unite dropping its support for Labour will be a big concern for party strategists. Indeed, in many ways the current positioning can be read more as a game of chicken with the party gambling on the lack of viable alternatives for the union to channel its support and funding (worth around £18 million between 2010-2014) towards. Yet the rift has been a long time in the making.
Although Miliband was elected Labour leader in 2010 on the back of union support, with some unions even including a large picture of him on the ballots that they sent to members, it was his moves while in office to limit their role that marked the beginning of the end of what many had seen as a cosy relationship. Last year a scandal erupted over the selection of the Labour party candidate for the Falkirk seat. During the selection process allegations were made that Unite had been encouraging its members to sign up as Labour members in order to get its preferred candidate selected. The claims prompted a review by Labour's National Executive Committee, which found that there was sufficient evidence to warrant concern and placed its own officials in charge of the process. In the aftermath Miliband moved to curtail the close ties between the unions and his party by revoking the ability of trade union members to vote in Labour leadership elections automatically as a result of their automatic union affiliation. Instead members must now opt in to pay a £3 affiliation fee in order to have their say under the one member, one vote system. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 11 mindblowing facts about North Korea  | ||
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This 13-year-old is making thousands of pounds from selling a piece of paper that you don't need | ||
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A 13-year-old boy is making thousands of pounds a month by selling a paper product that people don't actually need because it was abolished by the British government last year. In October 2014, the British government abolished "tax discs" for motorists after 93 years in operation. Tax discs were circular pieces of paper which motorists displayed on their windscreens. It detailed the driver's licence plate, when their road tax expired, and when their MOT was due. However, Harry Willington from Taunton, Somerset decided to print his own tax discs with his colourful designs for £4 ($6.3) each, after the rule change saw the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) clamp around 5,000 vehicles a month and fined motorists for around £800 ($1,254) for not having paid road tax. According to the Guardian newspaper, more than 100,000 vehicles are likely to be clamped in 2015, compared with 60,000 in 2014, because people forget to renew their road tax in the absence of a paper tax disc.
"I'm probably the richest person in my class. I'm hoping to carry on for a while." According to the interview, Willington receives around 400 orders a day for paper discs, which he prints from home. He says that he has made £3,000 ($4,702) in the last two months, from offering eight different disc designs. His father, Howard Millington, gave him £2,000 ($3,135) to start the business, which included paying for the website, printer, a cutting device, and several pieces of advertising. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Forget the Apple Watch — here's the new watch everyone on Wall Street wants  | ||
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"I'm alright with it. The money is nice. I haven't got any plans for it yet though," 