Amazon Pay India has received incentives of Rs.225 cr from the parent. This makes it a total infusion of Rs.450 cr this year to expand its UPI-based digital payment app in India, which offers faster refunds and incentives to its users. It also partners with third-party apps like Swiggy to provide a UPI tool. Amazon pay offers co-branded credit cards and buy-now-pay-later options to Indian buyers. Amazon has, so far, invested a total of Rs.2,055 cr in its Indian payment app.
Oracle announced the release of the first-ever 3D ad-measurement in-game tech. This will enable companies to get a better understanding of the impact of ads on video games. The latest Oracle update includes GIVT measurement for PC, mobile, and web-based gaming environments in ‘Oracle Moat Measurement’. Oracle Moat will enable advertisers to better analyze ad impressions and GIVT and manage their investments.
Big tech companies, under the draft legislation, will be forced to open offices in Russia or face consequences such as advertising bans. Russia aims to control big tech firms like Apple, TikTok, Facebook, and Google who are allegedly abusing their positions and distributing content banned in Russia. The draft will make it mandatory for firms having a daily audience of over 500,000 to open offices in the country.
Google won the deal of providing cloud computing services to Elon Musk owned SpaceX, which recently launched 60 satellites to give high-speed internet. Ground stations of SpaceX will be set up in Google data centers to connect Starlink satellite. The low latency high-speed internet service is expected to start in the H2 of 2021. Musk hopes that these hundreds of internet-providing satellites will generate enough revenue to support SpaceX’s interplanetary goals.
Dun & Bradstreet, in a survey report, said that one in two CIOs, or 56% to be precise, of leading companies, plan to invest in new-age tech to overcome the challenges posed by data management. 250 CIOs from India participated in the survey and they represented businesses around INR 5 bn revenue, across 10 verticles and six metropolitan cities in India. 52% of the CIOs who participated saw cybersecurity as a key priority while 48% wanted to enable a remote workforce.
Samsung and SK Hynix will invest up to 510 tril won into semiconductor research and production in 10 years. They will be among the 153 firms in the country to support the 10-year plan. SK plans to build a K-semiconductor belt that runs deep into Seoul and brings together chip designers, manufacturers, and suppliers. SK wants to train 36,000 chip experts and invest 1.5 tril won for R&D. South Korea, with its $450 bn plan, aims to join China and the US in a global race.
Elon Musk has taken a step back on his stance on bitcoin and halted payments of cars via bitcoins. Tesla is concerned about the use of fossil fuels for mining bitcoins that have a disastrous effect on the environment. Following the tweet by Musk, bitcoin fell more than 4%. Tesla, in this quarter, spent $1.5bn on bitcoin and then cut its position by 10%. The sale made a $101mn positive impact on the company’s profit during the period.
Independent cybersecurity expert Rajashekhar Rajaharia has asked users to change their Flipkart account passwords. This is after an unauthorised transaction from a Flipkart user account, which had kept similar login and password on BigBasket, which was leaked online. Hackers are selling email and password combinations of Flipkart data. Rajaharia has urged users to make 2FA mandatory to prevent anyone from accessing their account.
IDC, as per its latest report, said that the Indian PC market saw a growth of 73.1% after a sale of 3.1mn units in 1Q. Notebooks sales lead the growth during the period with 116.7% increase compared to the same period last year. Desktops also showed some recovery with 49.5% YoY. HP topped the chart with a staggering growth of 102.1% YoY, followed by Dell (102.1%) and Lenovo ( 73.4%). The strong annual growth could be due to the less-than-normal shipments in Q1 of 2020.