Bloomberg For 19 nonstop hours as Hurricane Irma lashed Florida, disc jockey Nio Fernandez broadcast updates in Spanish from the 92.5 Maxima radio studios in St. Petersburg, fielding updates from those trapped in their homes as wind and rain whipped through the area. “There was a sense of desperation in people’s voices,†he said of callers to the station. “They ...
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Electric cars ‘next disrupter’ since iPhone
Bloomberg It’s been 10 years since Apple Inc. unleashed a surge of innovation that upended the mobile phone industry. Electric cars, with a little help from ride-hailing and self-driving technology, could be about to pull the same trick on Big Oil. The rise of Tesla Inc. and its rivals could be turbo charged by complementary services from Uber Technologies Inc. ...
Read More »Temasek leads $300mn investment in electric scooter maker Gogoro Inc
Bloomberg Gogoro Inc., an electric scooter-maker backed by Panasonic Corp., raised $300 million from Singapore’s Temasek Holdings Pte. and other investors to pay for expansion and research and development. Generation Investment Management LLP, co-founded by Al Gore, Japan’s Sumitomo Corp., and French utility Engie SA, also invested. The new funding brings the Taiwan-based startup’s valuation to about $800 million, including ...
Read More »Ubisoft bets on cloud, AI to stay ahead of Vivendi threat
Bloomberg Ubisoft Entertainment SA, the French video-game company that’s racked up the fifth-best performance among Stoxx 600 members this year, has a plan to keep revenue and profit growing, if it can maintain its independence from French media giant Vivendi SA. The industry will expand at a rate of 15 percent to 20 percent over the next several years, Ubisoft ...
Read More »Cook weighs Apple’s biggest deal yet to protect chip supply
Bloomberg It’s been a busy week for Apple Inc. While Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook showed off the 10th anniversary iPhone in California, his lieutenants worked half a world away on what may become the company’s largest deal ever. Apple is in talks to invest about $3 billion in Toshiba Corp.’s memory chips business as part of a consortium led ...
Read More »Microsoft adds cloud security to secure data from hackers
Bloomberg Microsoft Corp., working with chipmaker Intel Corp., is offering a cloud-computing service with more powerful encryption to secure data from hackers—and protect it from secret government data-gathering. Called Azure confidential computing, the technology encrypts data while it is in use—which is when most security breaches occur, according to Azure Chief Technology Officer Mark Russinovich. The new product works by ...
Read More »Samsung ties robot-car efforts into Harman after $8 billion deal
Bloomberg Samsung Electronics Co. is upping its $8 billion bet on automotive technology, forming a separate business unit within Harman to house autonomous driving products and plowing $300 million into a new fund investing in startups in the space. The autonomous driving unit will compete on everything from driving algorithms to systems integration, Dinesh Paliwal, Harman’s chief executive officer, said ...
Read More »Small consumer drones unlikely to cause head injury: study
Bloomberg The small, popular drones flooding the commercial market are unlikely to cause severe head injuries if they fall out of the sky and strike people, a new study has concluded. The results are similar to findings earlier this year by researchers associated with the Federal Aviation Administration and offer more justification for opening the door to unmanned operations over ...
Read More »China rivals plan own debuts to challenge new IPhone
Bloomberg Apple Inc.’s new iPhones are expected to come with vibrant full-screen displays, wireless charging and other cutting-edge technology. But consumers in China can get those features on other devices already — and without the sticker shock. Shoppers in the world’s biggest mobile market are accustomed to getting the latest technology with their Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi handsets. That makes ...
Read More »BMW revives e-vehicle push with ‘i’ Sedan
Bloomberg BMW AG will add a low-slung electric sedan to its stalled “i†sub-brand, part of plans to accelerate the rollout of battery-powered cars to counter Tesla Inc. The four-door model, kept under wraps as BMW showed journalists around its Munich design headquarters, is set to go on sale by 2021 and will slot in between the squat i3 city ...
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