by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Large Enterprise, Marketing Basics, Markets, Online Marketing, Technology
San Francisco : In a rare collaboration, Microsoft and Amazon have come to an agreement wherein Cortana users will have access to Alexa and vice-versa.
According to a report in the New York Times, the two rival tech firms have been coordinating behind the scenes for the past year to make artificial intelligent assistants Alexa and Cortana communicate with each other.
The partnership will allow people to summon Cortana using Alexa, and vice versa, by the end of the year.
In simpler words, someone using an Alexa device will have to say “Alexa, open Cortana” to get to talk to Microsoft’s digital assistant, and someone using Cortana will have to say “Cortana, open Alexa” to talk to Amazon’s.
According to the report, this cross-platform integration will also allow Alexa users to access some of the more unique aspects of Cortana.
Microsoft has built its digital assistant directly into its office products and now Alexa will get that functionality via Cortana.
Amazon, Apple (with Siri), Microsoft and Google (with Assistant) are pouring huge amounts of money into making digital assistants smart.
While Amazon, Apple and Google have already launched smart speakers, Microsoft is preparing to launch a Cortana speaker with Harman Kardon and push its digital assistant into cars, thermostats and more devices.
After a partnership with Microsoft Indian-origin CEO Satya Nadella, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also welcomed Apple and Google to offer similar integration saying he would support it.
“There are going to be multiple successful intelligent agents, each with access to different sets of data and with different specialized skill areas,” Bezos said.
“Together, their strengths will complement each other.”
Nadella also appears to welcome the idea of collaboration with Apple and Google, saying “Hopefully, they’ll be inspired by it”.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : With an aim to go toe-to-toe with Amazon’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant Alexa, Google has announced that it would put its “Assistant” on partner speakers, appliances and connected cameras.
Citing the announcement made at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) industry show that kicked-off in Berlin on Wednesday, Tech Crunch reported that the move is likely to be good for both the voice-powered assistant market as well as for Google’s ability to use its service to collect useful data which it can then use to work on its advertising and marketing products.
“The more places ‘Assistant’ appears, the more likely it is that people will engage with the voice companion and that’s not territory Google wants to cede to someone like Amazon,” the report said.
The devices that would get “Assistant” include the Anker Zolo Mojo, a small cylinder speaker that’s like a third-party Google Home, which will go on sale in late October.
Two other smart speakers powered by “Assistant” are Panasonic GA10 and the TicHome Mini.
Google is also now making it possible to use “Assistant” to check on the state of your laundry or dishes, using an integration with LG’s line of home appliances.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Markets, SMEs, Technology
Dubai : The 6GB RAM Coolpad Cool Play 6 smartphone launched for the Indian market at Rs 14,999 will be available exclusively on Amazon from September 4, the company has said.
The phone unveiled here on Sunday at an event comes in a metal body and sports a bezel display. It has a 5.5-inch Full HD display with 1080 x 1980 pixels screen resolution.
Powered by 1.95GHz Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 653 processor Cool Play 6 would be the most affordable 6GB RAM smartphone in India. It also has a fingerprint sensor.
India and the US have now become two of the largest markets for Coolpad overseas.
“We have always believed in launching products that start a trend in the market and Cool Play 6 is yet another winner from Coolpad,” James Du, Global CEO, Coolpad Group, told reporters.
“We are also coming with exclusive Coolpad services centres in India with plan to have these in at least five cities in the next six months,” Du said.
The phone will be available exclusively on Amazon.in from September 4, in two colour variants — gold and black, Coolpad announced.
The phone offers 64GB of internal storage and packs 13 MP + 13 MP dual primary camera and a 8 MP front shooter for selfies.
It has 4000 mAh, non-removable Li-Po battery with a standby time up to 300 hours, with support for USB Type-C reversible connector and Dual SIM (Nano), the company said.
The phone runs on Android 7.1.1. The Android 8.0 OTA update will be provided by December, Coolpad said.
“In the last couple of years Coolpad has done well and we have beaten even our own estimates. Year 2017 has been a game changer for Coolpad in India and we continue to put our resources in the country with a plan to achieve 50 per cent growth to extend our market share to six per cent of the total market in India,” Syed Tajuddin, CEO, Coolpad India, said.
“We already have offline presence in eight states with a reach in 3,000 multi-brand outlets and have plans to expand it to a total number of 18 states in the next one year,” Tajuddin said.
“Coolpad smartphones have a 25 per cent market share on Amazon in the Rs 8,000 category,” he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Markets, Online Marketing, Sales
New Delhi, (IANS) : Amazon is improving its foothold in India and the American e-commerce giant could be the second biggest player after Flipkart in the online retail market by 2019, says a new Bank of America Merrill Lynch report.
India could also become Amazon’s second largest market (after the US) as it plans to invest $5 billion in its India business, the report released on Tuesday said.
“For last couple of months, Amazon India gross sales are higher than that of Flipkart standalone (excluding Myntra),” it added.
“We now expect Amazon’s GMV (gross merchandise value) market share to improve to 37 per cent by 2019 from 21 per cent in 2015 and expect it to be close No 2 behind Flipkart,” the report said.
While revenues are relatively small to Amazon’s global scale, Amazon India could generate $81 billion in GMV and $2.2bn in operating profit by 2025.
Most of Amazon’s gains have come at the expense of Snapdeal and other sellers, not Flipkart, according to the report.
Flipkart still remains the market leader in India and “even in terms of customer satisfaction, reports indicate that it remains the leader, ahead of both Amazon and Snapdeal”, according to the report.
Amazon has been able to benefit from global brand and establishing reliability of service among consumers, concentrating on offering superior customer service and wider assortment of products.
Amazon has also tied up with Vakrangee, a franchisee with strong presence in rural/underdeveloped areas to fortify its rural presence at relatively lower investments.
As of June this year, Amazon is already active in more than 1,000 outlets, with plans to increase to 75,000 outlets by 2020, the report noted.
Alibaba is looking to enter into the Indian e-commerce market by early next year as a more direct entry, despite it having investments in PayTM/Snapdeal.
“We note that similar to Amazon, Alibaba likely considers India as the next big market apart from its home market and is looking to gain traction there,” the report said.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Uncategorized
The boss of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, has agreed to purchase the Washington Post newspaper for $250m (£163m).
Mr Bezos is buying the paper and its other print properties in a personal capacity.
The Post has been owned by the Graham family for 80 years.
“Years of familiar newspaper-industry challenges made us wonder if there might be another owner who would be better for the Post,” said Post chief executive, Donald Graham.
“Jeff Bezos’ proven technology and business genius, his long-term approach and his personal decency make him a uniquely good new owner for the Post.”
The Washington Post Company also owns Kaplan, a test preparation company, in addition to other properties. Those will stay under the ownership of the Grahams as part of a yet-unnamed entity.
The sale is expected to be completed in the next 60 days.
The flagship paper, known for its coverage of the Watergate scandal, has suffered in recent years as the internet has hurt advertisement sales and it has struggled to adapt its print coverage to the web.
Journalist Carl Bernstein, who, along with Robert Woodward, broke the Watergate story in the 1970s, said he had high hopes the announcement would “represent a great moment in the history of a great institution”.
He added that it showed “recognition that a new kind of entrepreneurship and leadership, fashioned in the age of the new technology, is needed to lead not just The Post, but perhaps the news business itself”.
“Jeff Bezos seems to me exactly the kind of inventive and innovative choice needed to bring about a recommitment to great journalism on the scale many of us have been hoping for, while employing all the applicable tools and best sensibilities of a new era and the old,” he said.
The Post has been “declining in circulation especially among young readers,” Horizon Media analyst Brad Adgate told the BBC.
Nonetheless, he added: “I always thought this would be a newspaper that would be able to withstand the digital tide because of the name and the prestige. It is, next to the New York Times, the most prestigious paper in the country.”
According to the Alliance for Audited Media, a newspaper auditing firm, the Washington Post was the seventh most popular daily newspaper in the US this year, with a total circulation of 474,767 – a 6.5% decline on last year.
In an open letter posted on the Washington Post’s website, Mr Bezos said he would not be leading the paper on a day-to-day basis and sought to reassure nervous employees, but saying he would not seek to change “the values” of the paper.
However, he added: “There will, of course, be change at The Post over the coming years…The internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs.”
Mr Bezos said he did not have a plan yet for what exactly he thought those changes would be.
Faded glory
The sale took many by surprise.
“We’ve all been broadsided by the acquisition. There are few things that come as a surprise any more but this one did,” said Rebecca Lieb, an industry analyst at the Altimeter Group.
“However, when you really start thinking about it, it makes sense – all because of digital,” she said, citing Mr Bezos’s experience with digital delivery and personalisation at Amazon.
In a filing with regulators, the company said, however, that Mr Bezos was not purchasing its other notable online properties: Slate magazine, TheRoot.com, and Foreign Policy.
This is the second sale of a major US newspaper in as many days.
Over the weekend, the New York Times announced it had sold another iconic newspaper, the Boston Globe, to John W. Henry, the owner of the baseball team the Boston Red Sox, for $70m – a fraction of the $1.1bn the company had paid for the paper in 1993.
