Amazon.com Serious About Its Own Air Delivery System

The retail giant is testing its own air delivery service for the transportation of parcels from the United States to the United Kingdom.

In hopes of starting its own air freight business, Amazon.com has been going back and forth to the United Kingdom since November, according to Evening Standard. The retail giant has been taking these parcels from the United States to the UK quite discretely as they don’t want the public to be aware of transportation service as yet. It has managed to transport a number of parcels, trying to get experience in the delivery service first before it makes it official in front of its customers.

As per the report by Evening Standard, there have been five flights weekly that transport these parcels from the US to the UK. The route taken by the plane is from Portland to Luton along with East Midlands and Doncaster airports. The return route that the flight is taking has been from Kassel in Germany back to Portland. The flights have been made to land close to fulfillment centers in Europe as they have been strategically worked on and would help in reducing transport cost as well.

There are two major Amazon warehouses in the United Kingdom which are located at Swansea and Dunfermline – which is as big as 14 football pitches combined. The other locations of the warehouses that are in London are Milton Keynes and Hemel Hempstead.

These flights, by the retail giant have been booked via DB Schenker which is a logistics company in Germany. The logistics company is planning on starting its operations in Italy and Spain as well, which is news that adds up to the retail business’s news of launching its own delivery service. In order to delay third party deliverers, the e-commerce company is also working on starting its own freight service due to which it is in talks with Atlas Air and Air Transport Services Group – ATSG.

The retailer had planned to start its own service by as soon as January 2016 by hiring 20 Boeing Co 767 aircrafts for in-house deliveries. In case the company starts to act on its own service by hiring these jets, it will be saving a lot of cost of its fast growing transport costs.

This news has come into attention ever since the e-retailer started to have problems with UPS – United Parcel Services. UPS was helping Amazon make its deliveries but it disappointed the company by sending in late deliveries. Given that Amazon is one of UPS’s major customers; they should really work on building a healthier relationship with the retailer.

According to the Wall Street Journal, both the executive directors of the companies have had talk regarding the fiction between the two them. Due to the increase demand during the holiday season, the retail giant needed a delivery service provider who the organization could completely rely on.

IBM Takes On AT&T’s Managed Hosting, Managed Application Services Unit

IBM begins controlling the managed application and managed hosting services unit of AT&T.

The New York based enterprise, IBM, has started to control AT&T’s managed hosting facilities division and managed software, as the company makes efforts to take control of more application, hosting, and networking facilities.

Big Blue stated it aims to align the carrier’s hosting services and managed application to its IBM Cloud portfolio, so they could connect clients more easily, carry out the integration of cloud workloads and networks with their information technology environments. According to a press release, the agreement also provides the opportunity to IBM to access floor space and equipment in the telecom’s datacenters currently providing support to managed hosting operations and softwares.

An official at IBM, Phillip Guido, stated, “Today’s announcement represents an expansion of our strategic relationship with AT&T and continuing collaboration to deliver new innovative solutions. Working with AT&T, we will deliver a robust set of IBM Cloud and managed services that can continuously evolve to meet clients’ business objectives.”

The contract marks a huge change of pace for the telecom, which up till now, used to handle its own hosting services and managed softwares. The telecommunications service provider would be continuing to offer networking facilities including mobility facilities, cloud networking and security, AT&T stated.

eWeek has reported that most of AT&T’s workers who are presently supporting these facilities would be moving to IBM and keep performing their current roles. The latter did not reveal whether it had paid any kind of financial compensation to the telecom giant under the conditions of the revised partnership contract.

An official at AT&T, Jon Summers, stated, “AT&T and IBM have worked together for nearly 20 years. This is a natural expansion of our relationship, and it demonstrates our continued commitment to serve customers based on our respective strengths and capabilities.”

This is not the first time that the two companies have collaborated as far as cloud solutions are concerned. In October, the enterprises announced they would be delivering a scalable mobile cloud solution to safeguard applications and corporate data.

Last week, IBM detailed an extended collaboration with Box, in which both enterprises decided to concentrate on sales and stronger go-to-market commitments. This development has taken place at a time when the UK based LED specialist PhotonStar has teamed up with the IBM Watson for ‘Internet of Things’.

PhotonStar stated it showed its Halycon intelligent lighting technology working with the Watson for Internet of Things Cloud system at IBM’s newly opened global Watson IoT head office in the German city, Munich.

Ford Ties Up With Google To Introduce Driverless Cars For Rides-Sharing Service

Ford has collaborated with Google to launch self-driving cabs for commuters.

Yahoo Autos has come to know that Ford and Google would develop a joint project to manufacture driverless automobiles with the technology of the search engine developer, a significant measure taken by both corporations towards the development of a new automated ride-sharing business.

According to three sources aware of the plans, the collaboration would be announced by the Michigan based enterprise at the Consumer Electronics Show in January next year. By collaborating with Google, Ford has progressed in the field of driverless application development, whereas it has been testing its own technologies for years, it only recently disclosed plans to start testing on California’s public streets.

Google tests 53 automobiles on road in Texas and California, with 1.3 million miles of autonomous driving. By tying up with the carmaker, the company avoids disbursing huge amount of money and many years that developing its own vehicle manufacturing company will require. Previously this year, co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin, affirmed that Google was finding manufacturing partners that will employ the driverless system of the company, which it believes could sometime cut down approximately 33,000 annual deaths on roads of the United States.

While precise details regarding the tie up were not disclosed, it is understood that the project will be legally isolated from Ford, in part to protect it from liability concerns. Questions regarding who would be held responsible for any accidents involving driverless vehicles are viewed as a significant hurdle in bringing them on roads. Volvo stated it will accept responsibility for accidents in autonomous mode, a promise followed by Mercedes-Benz and Google.

The agreement is viewed to be non-exclusive. Google has asked to several other organizations for some time regarding the utilization of its self-driving technologies. Majority of several automotive parts vendors and vehicle manufacturers are making their own driverless controls as well, with a few Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and Nissan, promising modern automobiles for sale to clients by 2020.

The search engine company has refused to share its views on the development. An official at Ford, Alan Hall, told that the company collaborates with several businesses on its Ford Smart mobility plan. He further said, “We keep these discussions private for obvious competitive reasons, and we do not comment on speculation.”

Last week, according to Bloomberg’s report, Google’s parent company ‘Alphabet’ will be moving the self-driving enterprise under its own division, with the objective of finally launching a car or taxi hailing services in urban regions that will battle with the app-based ride-sharing enterprise, Uber, and others. 

Twitter Brings Ads To Logged Out Users

The social media network has brought ads to its logged out users in its efforts to growth and compete with its rival.

Twitter, Inc. has fallen by 11% since Jack Dorsey was appointed as the official chief executive officer of the social media network in October. On Thursday, the stock of the social media website fell by 4% registering its all-time low at $23.31. Initially Yahoo! Finance did mention the 52-week stock low at $21.01 at intra-day trading. On that day, the entire stock market was reported down.

The social media network announced that it would start to promote ads to its ‘logged out audience’ as well due to which the stock did witnesses an increase in its price. However, this announcement is not exactly what the investors are looking for.

It is safe to say that 2015 has been the worst year for the social media site’s stock. Furthermore, year-to-date stock is down by 30%, which indicates a decline in users of the site. The management of Twitter thought that the new move of showing ads available to logged out users could bring better days to the company, the Wall Street analysts still remain cynical. They suggested that the social media company would have to do much more than this to get back in the game and compete with other social media websites.

Ken Sena, employee at Evercore, stated that advertisers mostly want social media networks on board who have larger target audience or user base. In comparison to Facebook’s 1.5 billion monthly active user base, Twitter’s 320 million users are not less to monetize from advertisements overall. Apart from that, Snapchat and Twitter are advertiser’s first choice than the social media site itself.

In comparison to the same quarter, the user base of the social media website only increased by 2 million, which is noted as the worst growth of the company yet. This growth rate made many analysts believe that the social media is about to hit its peak now. It will need to make efforts to attract new users to the micro-blogging platform.

The ads for outside users were Twitter’s thought outside the box but it’s not something that can bring growth and a bright future to the organization. We can easily say that not all hope is yet lost because when comparing to Facebook, any social media platform will look like a loser, but in its own space, Twitter show signs of growth and betterment. At this point, Wall Street should try to cheer the company instead of losing faith in it.

IBM Extends Cloud Alliance With Box , Booting Collaboration

The extension of the alliance would increase sales and benefit both partners consequently.

After signing an enhanced agreement with Sales force in recent times, Box has also extended its strategic coalition with IBM. Box, which is known for letting business users manage and access details in the cloud, announced the measure today.

Apparently, the initial collaboration between Box and Big Blue was so fruitful that the organization took the decision to press the sales and go to market pedals a little harder. According to the revamped agreement, the companies would work together for a decade, forming a strategic alliance. This is a long-term commitment in a rapidly growing technology market. 

“IBM and Box are committed to delivering world-class solutions that transform how businesses work,” stated CEO and co-founder of Box, Aaron Levie. Specifically, the enterprises, which first collaborated in June, are pushing out partnership and modern business management solutions. They are also introducing two new device integrations for IBM Datacap and IBM Case Manager.

The two companies earlier launched out integrations for content collaboration instrument IBM Content Navigator and data migration, records management, compliance, storage optimization, electronic discovery tool IBM StoreIQ.

IBM Case Manager is known for helping knowledge workers carry out the optimization of case outcomes and increase client satisfaction. The organization has disclosed that with this tool, caseworkers would be able to access both unstructured and structured details from many kinds of data stores and applications.

IBM Datacap takes details from document pictures so workers could employ them in line of business systems and enterprise content management. Consider it as a universal capture portal that could port documents via mobile, multifunction peripherals, e-mail, mobile and fax.

Recently, the content management and online file sharing service provider brought its collaboration platform and enterprise content management to Salesforce. The measure is taken to help clients of both organizations to work more effectively by importing content management service and documents stored in the cloud storage of Box into Salesforce. That agreement, along with the IBM coalition shows how much Box is trying to get into the enterprise.

NewsFactor was able to catch up with Pund-IT’s principal analyst, Charles King, to know his point of view regarding the extended partnership. He told it that the announcement highlights two issues for Box.

“First, and foremost, it suggests that the partnership with IBM is delivering the goods that both companies had anticipated,” Charles stated. “There's no way they would willingly lock themselves into a 10-year commitment otherwise.”

Alibaba Interested In Buying Ming Pao Newspaper

Alibaba seems interested in buying another newspaper company, Ming Pao, just after a week of buying South China Morning Post.

Alibaba Group Holding is on a buying spree these days. The company recently completed the acquisition of South China Morning Post for $226 million in order to improvise its position in the media and advertising industry. The Hong Kong based newspaper was the leading paper in the country and it certainly raised many questions during the time of acquisition. However, the deal is now done and dusted but Alibaba has not.

According to sources, it is believed that the Chinese company is now interested in buying another newspaper. Australian Financial Review reported that the Chinese tech giant has held talks to discuss about a potential buy of another Hong Kong based newspaper, Ming Pao. Alibaba Group reacted quickly and it came just a week after it finalized the purchase of Hong Kong’s English language newspaper.

The spokesperson of the company, Rico Ngai, denied that his company held talks over a potential move. However, a person familiar to the matter told AFR that it is indeed interested in buying the Chinese language newspaper and the negotiation between both parties started in July.

The source further mentioned that he was informed then that the executives of both parties, Alibaba and Ming Pao, are under negotiation to discuss over a potential deal. He stated that this deal would be more complicated and time-consuming than that of South China Morning Post deal. Moreover, so far it is believed that the deal might not go through successfully considering the situation now.

Other sources have stated that it is not Alibaba but a subsidiary of the Chinese company or another related company that is trying to push for a potential move. It is believed that Alibaba has shares in the parent company of Ming Pao, Media China International.

When this news broke down, the shares of Media China International surged significantly in the market and this amused analysts. However, the company said in a statement given to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that ‘it was not aware of any reasons for such price and trading volume movements.’ The stocks jumped by 19.3% before the market closed that day.

Ming Pao is still considered as one of the most influential organization chosen by the intellectuals in Hong Kong. If the deal goes through in the coming times, same questions would come in front once again which the company is currently dealing after purchasing South China Morning Post lately.

Amazon Refunds To Buyers Of Hoverboards

Amazon is refunding buyers of hoverboards after those products have proved to be harmful for human beings.

After taking hover boards away from its digital stores, the ecommerce giant ‘Amazon’ in UK is refunding its customers while asking them to throw away all of those devices over security concerns. The Seattle-based company recently pulled out almost all the models of those gadgets in United Kingdom and the US after an increase in the number of reports regarding the burning or explosion of two wheeled electric scooters.

According to Swagway, whose hoverboards have once again become a part of the organization’s listings, 97% of hoverboards were removed on Monday. While presently investigating the product’s safety, the company has not informed the date on which the remaining hoverboards would be re-launched on its platform, nor it has told that whether it would re-launch them or not.

For months, UK has become the most aggressive state as far as the regulation of new hoverboards is concerned, placing a ban upon them from roads and pavements and removing many found at its airports and seaports.

United States Consumer Product Safety Commission has revealed that in the US, 12 blasts and burning incidents have been witnessed in 10 states. The main factor responsible for causing explosions seems to be the defect of lithium-ion batteries. “It looks like there might be overcharging, too many batteries stacked together in ways that lithium-ion batteries are not meant to be stacked,” Chairman of CPSC Elliot Kaye spoke to the New York Times.

In an email to its customers disclosed by the UK-based publication, Telegraph, Amazon UK has notified owners of hoverboards that these products are “unsafe for use as this product is supplied with a non-compliant U.K. plug”. The company’s division in the European country also requested the proper recycling of hoverboards and alerted that it has filed a full repayment request on behalf of its customers.

It is not clear that if Amazon in the US would be taking similar action as far as refunds to owners are concerned. The customer-friendly measure is taken at a time when Bloomberg has reported that the company is increasing its stake of American online spending throughout the holiday season even as retail giants, such as Target Corporation, Walmart Stores, and other competitors who are trying to attract shoppers with free deliveries and promotional sales.

Slice, who is responsible for gathering information through 3.5 million shoppers' email receipts, revealed that the ecommerce enterprise was able to take in 39.3% of the online commerce spending from November 1 to December 6, 2015, which is greater than 37.9% of the expenditure done at the same time in 2014.