News
Consumers are more comfortable than ever buying on their mobile gadgets this holiday season.
Early indications in the first days of the season show that mobile devices are not only being used for product search and review, they are increasingly replacing desktops as the device where consumers click for purchase.
On Monday morning Adobe said early data for Cyber Monday activity showed mobile driving nearly 40% of online sales.
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Today Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Siemens announced they’re developing a hybrid electric plane, with first the first test flights due to take place by 2020.
You could be flying electric in a so-called ‘eAircraft’ by the 2030s, the companies claim.
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Cyber Monday shoppers take note! Walmart may be gaining ground in its quest to take on Amazon, as a new study shows the retail giant’s online operation is approaching price parity with its e-commerce nemesis.
Data analytics firm Market Track performed the study for Reuters, discovering that over the last year Walmart.com’s prices were on average only 0.3% higher than those on Amazon. Rewind a year, and the difference was 3%.
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APEXX, a marketplace for global payments, has closed a $4m (£3.2m) Seed.
Forward Partners led the round, which also drew support from MMC Ventures and Oslo-based Alliance Venture.
APEXX, which received a grant from Innovate UK, allows firms to integrate all their required payment suppliers by presenting them in a single API.
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Manchester-based MindTrace has raised £1.3m to create self-learning machines.
The investment came from Accelerated Digital Ventures (ADV) and the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund.
MindTrace is working to develop novel software algorithms to mimic how the human brain works.
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In February 2017, Airbnb acquired peer-to-peer payments startup Tilt, which was like an early precursor to Venmo or Square Cash. A few months later, Airbnb started quietly testing how it could use Tilt's technology to help people traveling as a group. The early results were promising and more than 80,000 groups used it to make it easier to pay.
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Just Eat, a company that specializes in the ordering and delivering of mass-market takeaway food, is set to join the FTSE 100, the UK’s benchmark stock index, just three and a half years after going public.
The company’s stock has surged 40% this year, giving it a market value of £5.6 billion ($7.5 billion). The increase has made it bigger than two of the UK’s largest listed supermarket groups, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, which are valued at £5 billion and £5.1 billion, respectively.
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But some recent surveys show that young people actually prefer an in-store shopping experience. In the 2017 Future of Retail report, communications company WalkerSands found that younger people actually prefer to shop in-store, seeking out discounts, personalised service, product demonstrations, and food and drink. By contrast, less than half (46%) of 26-to-45-year-olds want to shop in stores.
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Ocado Technology has developed a robot that can recognise and sort over 50,000 unique items from its storage crates.
The robot pick station consists of a suction cup on the end of an articulated arm. The arm is equipped with a pipe running to an air compressor, which is capable of lifting items regardless of their shape, as long as they are within the weight restriction.
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Harrods, London’s famous luxury department store, is planning the biggest revamp in its 180-year history as part of a £200 million investment which is aimed partly at attracting more Hong Kong and Chinese customers, managing director Michael Ward told the South China Morning Post on Thursday.
The three-year capital plan includes ploughing more money into its e-commerce offering to ensure the store remains popular for customers from around the world, especially from affluent Asian destinations, led by Hong Kong and China, said Ward.
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