July, 2017

• 15 July

  Facebook’s bet on virtual reality runs into real reality

  

  If at first you don’t succeed, slash prices and try, try again. That seems to be the strategy at Facebook Inc., which said it would temporarily cut $200 from the $600 price of its Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles plus a related accessory. It’s the second time this year that Facebook has discounted Oculus gear. (The cost doesn’t account for ...

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• 15 July

  Britain’s alarm over acid attacks

  

  Acid attacks are catching on in Britain. The numbers may still be small relative to other violent crimes, but they’re sharply on the rise. These assaults are especially shocking — and they’re attracting feverish attention, which could inspire copycats. The government needs to act. The UK now has one of the highest rates of recorded acid attacks in the world, ...

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• 15 July

  Raising the Great Firewall too high

  Will it be R.I.P. for China’s VPNs? The Chinese government had ordered telecommunications providers to block access to individual virtual private networks by February 1. VPNs are popular and widely utilized services that allow internet users to bypass web restrictions. In effect, the new rules would block the most popular means for Chinese netizens to see beyond the so-called Great ...

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• 15 July

  Farm loan waiver: India will pay for giving in to populism

  

  Things only seem to get worse for India’s farmers. They’d barely recovered from two years of drought when they were hit by the government’s decision last fall to declare 86% of India’s currency illegal. They struggled through that, and the consequent crash in prices, in hopes that this year’s monsoon would be healthy. And, although forecasters insisted enough rain would ...

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• 15 July

  Citigroup’s risk-taking ways may not always reward

  

  Citigroup Inc.’s risk takers are once again leading the charge. So far, it’s been all rewards. The bank reported second-quarter results that were better-than-expected, including revenue for the period of $17.9 billion, or nearly $450 million more than analysts were anticipating. The results are the latest in a string of good news for Citi. Just last month, it flew through ...

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• 15 July

  A hot investment looks great in rearview mirror

  

  Our story thus far: After decades of expensive and often underperforming active fund management, the public has embraced low-cost, passive-index investing with a vengeance. The old chin-rubbing-this-company-looks-good school of stock picking has been hit with enormous asset outflows. Vanguard Group Inc. and BlackRock Inc. have captured trillions of dollars in new assets, tied to broad indexes, to the collective detriment ...

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• 15 July

  Facebook plans $200 wireless Oculus VR headset for 2018

  

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc. is taking another stab at turning its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset into a mass-market phenomenon. Later this year, the company plans to unveil a cheaper, wireless device that the company is betting will popularize VR the way Apple did the smartphone. Currently VR hardware comes in two flavors: cheap headsets that turn smartphones into virtual reality ...

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• 15 July

  Samsung snubbed in foreign stock funds’ $15bn Korea bet

  

  Bloomberg Investing in the South Korean equity market has taken an interesting turn: look past the Samsung trade. Foreigners were net sellers of Samsung Electronics Co. even as they bought more than $15 billion of stocks in the past 12 months, helping push the MSCI Korea and Kospi indexes to record highs. Instead of piling into the tech giant, they ...

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• 15 July

  TSMC’s sales forecast misses estimates despite iPhone boost

  

  Bloomberg Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. forecast quarterly revenue that trailed estimates, dashing hopes that Apple Inc.’s iPhone will help the world’s largest contract chipmaker pull out of a smartphone industry slump and avert the impact of a strong currency. The Taiwanese maker of the iPhone’s processors forecast third-quarter sales of $8.12 billion to $8.22 billion, short of the $8.6 billion ...

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• 15 July

  Apple’s billion devices give augmented reality edge over Google

  

  Bloomberg Later this year, Apple Inc. will put augmented reality software in as many as a billion mobile devices. Alphabet Inc.’s Google beat Apple by three years in releasing AR tools, but its features are on very few phones and haven’t gained wide acceptance. By contrast, Apple can easily pair its software and devices, an advantage that will help it ...

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