Amazon profit triples to $252M but investment forecast disappoints investors

Online giant Amazon said on Thursday its profits more than tripled in the third quarter to $252 million, but shares fell as the rise was weaker than expected.

Amazon extended its string of positive results after years of investments that produced little or no profit, helped by its cloud computing, streaming video and new products and services.

Profit surged from $79 million in the same period a year ago, while revenues jumped 29% to $32.7 billion, the company reported after stock markets closed.

The company however noted that high spending on warehouses and video production would drag on profits in the holiday quarter, disappointing investors who are weary of roller coaster results from the e-commerce giant and sending its shares down 6%.

Amazon is racing to ship packages as quickly as possible by building out its own delivery system. It is making heavy U.S. investments as well as pouring funds into foreign markets, and it also is building out its home electronics and video businesses, aiming to make it difficult for customers to leave.

As a consequence, the Seattle-based company projects operating income in the fourth quarter would range from nothing to $1.25 billion, a wide span that is considerably below Wall Street's $1.62 billion, according to market research firm FactSet StreetAccount.

"Investments are going to be lumpy," Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said on an analyst call. "The second half of this year looks like a big step up compared to the first half - and it is."

Long known for heavy spending and losses, Amazon has come to turn a profit consistently, partly thanks to selling computer storage and services in the cloud. Companies globally are turning to Amazon, the market leader, and rival Microsoft to host their data. In the just-ended third quarter, Amazon's cloud business grew sales by 55% from a year earlier.

But investors are focused on rising costs for the company's retail operation.

Anticipating more shoppers this holiday season, Amazon opened 18 warehouses in the third quarter and another five in the first few weeks of October, Olsavsky said. Amazon grew its workforce by 38% in the third quarter.

In addition, the company has nearly doubled its spending on the creation and marketing of movies and TV shows in the second half of 2016. Amazon's hope is that people will sign up for its Prime service to watch these videos - and in turn buy more goods from Amazon to make the $99-per-year subscription worth it.

"Amazon tends to flex investment up and down somewhat unpredictably from time to time in order to drive growth, and that's what's challenging for investors," said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research. "Some investors thought the new era of higher margins was here to stay permanently, and this quarter has likely taught them (otherwise)."

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Hike To Roll Out Video Calling Feature for Android Users

WhatsApp beta, India’s home grown and second largest messaging platform- Hike begins to roll out video calling feature. The feature which was rolled out earlier this year to selected beta users will now be available to the entire users in the new update, starting with Android platform.

The company claims that the video calling feature is built for a high quality video experience that is designed to work even under challenging network conditions, including 2G networks. Live Caller Preview is an interesting feature of video calling in Hike which allows the user to see a live video preview of the caller before answering the call. Hike video calling feature will be available to the recently updated versions in which the video calling option was inaccessible.

According to reports, in January 2016, Hike had claimed a user base of 100 million people. Earlier this year, Hike Messenger had raised 175 million USD in a fresh round of funding led by Tencent Holdings and Foxconn Technology Group, in a move to join the coveted unicorn club of startups with a valuation of around 1.4 billion USD.

Based on reports, around 95 percent of Hike users are based in India below the age of 30.
The company claims that Hike users, on an average, exchange 40 billion messages per month and spend 120 min. per user per week on the platform.

Here's how 5G will change your life

Qualcomm made news this week with its launch of a 5G modem, the Snapdragon X50. India is expected to commercially roll out 5G in 2020. But it's not just download speed that will change...

Will change how you watch sports

Qualcomm has said the chip is likely to be on phones in South Korea in time for the 2018 Winter Olympics. So expect some super selfies from the ski jump. 5G could change the way you watch sports events since everything, from phones to stadium lights, can everything, from phones to stadium lights, can be connected to the internet. You could choose the best view in the stadium and have the game streamed straight to your house. It could also change the experience of fans as sensors in balls, goals and other equipment can transmit possible scenarios, player stats, real-time to phones.

Your driverless car will be faster, safer

Current mobile networks have digital response times of around 50 to 80 milliseconds (the time it takes for a web page to load on your smartphone), 5G hopes to reduce this to a mere millisecond. This means that driverless cars can communicate almost in real time to avoid potholes and jaywalking cows.

Cities will get smart

In a 5G world, a smart city -an urban system where connected devices constantly send data that can be used for routine maintenance and service delivery -could be reality. City corporations could be updated about that abraded road surface or fused streetlight... oh wait, your city will be so smart, the streetlight will warn the corporation that it's going to conk out in so many hours. But we'd probably still need to figure out a way to get that slothful corporation employee to actually change the light bulb.

Amazon Festive Updates

At Amazon, this festive sale season is about work, play and learn

For people working in retail and ecommerce space, the festive sale season is generally all about work. But employees of Amazon also had some good fun and leadership lessons to go with work this season.

The ecommerce major has just concluded a week of ‘Leadership Principles Carnival’ for employees across its offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru to help them collaborate, engage, learn and get ready for the biggest season. “It is about preparing your team not just for this season but for next year’s sale as well,” said an Amazon spokesperson.

These leadership lessons are not delivered in a classroom or boardroom, but just anywhere at work with loads of fun elements.

“Our leadership principles carnival is a blend of teaching, leaning, sharing and playing,” the spokesperson said.

“The fun and engagement elements are big in this.” The programme was loaded with games, selfie opportunities, photo booths and other props. “Most of the activities done in India are different from the US as Indian employees are far younger and so all programmes have to be loaded with fun,” the spokesperson said.

Average age of employees at Amazon India is 26 years. And more than one-fourth of its total 25,000 employees are new to festive sale.

Twitter joins race for IPL digital rights

Micro-blogging social network Twitter is bidding for the digital rights for Indian Premier League, the Board of Control of Cricket in India’s marquee event, joining a raft of corporate heavyweights from broadcasters to telecom behemoths.

“We are constantly evaluating opportunities around the world to transform the live sports experiences for fans in partnership with our most valued global sports partners and this IPL tender purchase is representative of that,” Aneesh Madani, Head of Sports Partnerships at Twitter India, told ET.

Twitter currently has a partnership with the NFL, wherein fans can go to tnf.twitter.com to watch Thursday Night Football live for free this season and participate in real-time, public conversation around the game right there from Twitter.

“Cricket fans watch the IPL with Twitter and love tweeting about it. Globally, there were more than 10.6 million tweets related to the IPL in 2016, a 56 per cent increase over 2015 and nine out of ten Twitter users in India are fans of cricket. At Twitter, we see this interest growing and are excited to continue working with long standing partners like the IPL to build a global, mobile fan base for cricket in the years to come," Madani said.

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Amazon Updates

Amazon to hire 120,000 temporary workers for holiday season

Amazon said on Thursday it would hire more than 120,000 seasonal employees across its fulfillment centers, sortation centers and customer service sites in the United States in the upcoming holiday season. More than 14,000 seasonal positions were transitioned to regular, full-time roles after the holidays last year, and the company expects to increase that number this year, Amazon said.

Rival US retailers have taken a cautious view of the holiday selling season this year. Macy's and Bloomingdale's department store chains, said in September, it would hire 83,000 temporary workers for the holiday quarter, a 2% decline from last year.

Indian Railways plans linking Aadhaar

Indian Railways plans linking Aadhaar with concessional ticket booking

Indian Railways will hold discussion with UIDAI for linking Aadhaar number with booking of concessional tickets to prevent misuse of subsidy facility by unscrupulous elements.

The Finance Ministry has asked various ministries including the Railways to identify areas where Aadhaar-based verification can be applied before doling out subsidies, a senior Railway Ministry official said.

With the successful linking of Aadhaar cards with LPG service and passport service, the government has now shifted its focus on railway ticketing and booking.

In railways, people in various categories including senior citizens, patients, eminent artists and sports persons are eligible for availing concessional fare facilities.

"We are exploring how to link the ticketing system with Aadhaar so that it can be verified before booking concessional tickets," said the official.

He said railway is writing to Unique Identification Authority of India to know the details of Aadhaar-based system and how it can be linked with the passenger reservation system.

CRIS, railways technology arm, will hold threadbare discussions with UIDAI to find out way forward for making it possible in the national transporter.

However, he said though the Aadhaar-based booking system will prevent touts using fake names and IDs and the concessions will be availed by the genuine persons, it will slowdown the system.

"Currently, we are booking about 15,000 tickets in a minute. Once the system is linked with Aadhaar, it will take some time to verify and as a result the ticket delivery process will be delayed," he added.

He further said railways has its own verification system as before giving tickets and also on board checkings are being conducted by authorities concerned.

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New feature in Instagram allows user to save draft edits

Popular photo-sharing platform Instagram has received an interesting update. Users will now be able to save drafts of edits that they make to photos and pick them up later.

Till now, one had to deploy a number of tricks to save an edit, like putting the smartphone onto an airplane mode and then editing and trying to make the post live. This saves the post but does not make it public. With the option to save a draft, Facebook-owned Instagram is finally giving users a reason to cheer.

With the new feature, if a user has an important engagement to attend to while posting, the image can be saved as a draft with all the filters and picture highlights applied as it is. The app will display a pop up asking you whether you want to save the draft or discard it. The user would be able to pick up the post from where it was left before closing the app.

Earlier this month, the platform launched a keyword moderation tool to allow its users to control the comments posted on their pictures. The feature allows its users to list words that they consider offensive or inappropriate and then comments with those words would be hidden from the user's posts. 

Abusive comments and online trolling seen on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have been garnering eyeballs as more celebrities deactivate their accounts as a result of the hate they receive online.

The new feature from Instagram comes almost a month after pop star Justin Beiber quit the site after threatening to make his account private due to the backlash he received on a picture he posted.

WhatsApp to scrub off user data once the app is uninstalled

WhatsApp to scrub off user data once the app is uninstalled: Delhi HC

"It is a path-breaking judgement protecting the interest of WhatsApp users. It is a major dent on their policy, definitely," said senior advocate Prathiba Singh, who argued for the petitioners. "WhatsApp will have to make changes to its policy to incorporate the directions of the court.

For the future it will create a sensitivity among people that all their data could be shared with Facebook.

If users make a conscious choice to share, then it's fine." WhatsApp and its counsel could not immediately be reached for comment. Trai Chairman RS Sharma declined to comment saying that he was yet to go through the court order.

On Friday, the judges asked WhatsApp to completely delete information of users who do not want to remain on it and not share any information with Facebook after the account is deleted. It also said the service shouldn't share information of existing WhatsApp users with Facebook until September 25.

WhatsApp says it doesn't usually retain messages on its servers after accounts are deleted, but may do so in some cases. "To improve performance and deliver media messages more efficiently, such as when many people are sharing a popular photo or video, we may retain that content on our servers for a longer period of time," WhatsApp says in its terms of service.

It also says that if a user does not use the 'Delete my Account' feature in WhatsApp to remove the app, information "may be stored with us for a longer period."

Facebook is testing its own version of Snapchat

Facebook is testing its own version of Snapchat in the Messenger app

Facebook is testing Snapchat-like photo and video messages that disappear after 24 hours - in its Messenger app.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the feature test, which is called "Messenger Day," to Business Insider.

The company spokesperson said that Messenger Day is currently being tested in Poland and declined to offer details on whether it would eventually be available to Messenger users in other countries.

We know that people come to Messenger to share everyday moments with friends and family," the spokesperson said in a statement. "In Poland we are running a small test of new ways for people to share those updates visually. We have nothing more to announce at this time."