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If you're feeling good about the market, you're not alone. Take my hand as we go over some of this week's more uplifting headlines.
1. Netflix's British invasion
After a disastrous year, Netflix (NAS: NFLX) isn't standing still in 2012.
Last week the market was treated to the revelation that Netflix served up a whopping 2 billion hours of video streaming during the final quarter of 2011. This week the company jumped right in to the U.K. and Ireland.
This will be it for Netflix's global expansion -- for now. Netflix has announced that it will not introduce its video streaming service in a new country until it's able to return to profitability. However, coming through with its promise to roll out in the U.K. and Ireland early in 2012 -- and the second week of the year is about as early as you can get -- will help give the fallen dot-com darling continued momentum as it tries to bounce back this year.
2. Sirius bucks the trend
Things are looking up for Sirius XM Radio (NAS: SIRI) . Barrington Research analyst James Goss is rolling out a 2012 price target of $3 on the satellite radio giant. That's not too shabby for a stock that was trading for as little as a nickel when it was on the verge of bankruptcy three years ago.
Goss' goal of $3 is based on Sirius XM fetching 25 times his enterprise value to EBITDA multiple. It may be a high ratio for a media company, but Sirius XM's steady growth and expanding margins are worthy of a market premium.
3. The free e-reader has arrived
It took a few years, but the publisher-subsidized e-reader is finally here.
Barnes & Noble (NYS: BKS) began to offer its $99 Nook Simple Touch for free to those willing to subscribe to the digital edition of TheNew York Times for $19.99 a month. Sure, paying $240 for an entry-level Nook may not seem like much of a deal, but it's a bargain for the bibliophile who may have been considering buying an e-reader and subscribing to the Nook edition of the popular daily paper.
How much is the publication subsidizing here? How much is the struggling bookseller subsidizing here to move more Nooks? It doesn't matter. The gadgets have finally gotten cheap enough -- cracking below triple digits -- that subsidization is a feasible business strategy.
4. Microsoft's got game
Microsoft (NAS: MSFT) didn't generate a whole lot of buzz in its final year as keynote speaker at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but it did offer up a meaty nugget in divulging that there are now 40 million Xbox Live users.
Microsoft's Xbox business doesn't earn the kind of respect that it should, primarily because it's not the high margin jackpot that Microsoft has in its operating system, productivity suite, and server software segments.
However, having the attention of 40 million Web-tethered gamers is huge. It makes Microsoft bigger than any single cable service or satellite television provider.
Microsoft's been starting to flex its muscles on that front lately. Last month it teamed up with several television networks and service providers to beef up their offerings through Microsoft's Xbox console. As long as the Xbox Live community continues to grow, Microsoft's opportunities to monetize that audience will continue to expand.
5. The bigger picture
Who cares if 2011 was a dud for exhibitors? More multiplex owners are turning to IMAX (NYS: IMAX) to help make the most of waning audiences by delivering premium-priced enhanced cinematic experiences.
IMAX's latest deal is a joint-venture agreement with Canada's Cinemas Guzzo. The contract calls for four IMAX screen installations in the greater Montreal area.
IMAX's growing reach and compelling value to both moviemakers and exhibitors helped it become one of Barrington Research's "Best Stock Ideas" for 2012 in a report also issued this week.
At the time thisarticle was published The Motley Fool owns shares of Microsoft.Motley Fool newsletter serviceshave recommended buying shares of IMAX, Netflix, and Microsoft.Motley Fool newsletter serviceshave recommended creating a bull call spread position in Microsoft. Try any of our Foolish newsletter servicesfree for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe thatconsidering a diverse range of insightsmakes us better investors. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz calls them as he sees them. He does not own shares in any of the stocks in this story, except for Netflix. Rick is also part of theRule Breakersnewsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.
Copyright © 1995 - 2012 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.


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HOME DEPOT TROUBLES
By Todd Horwitz
Home Depot Disappoints
Home Depot shares tumbled about 5% on Tuesday after the company said it would take more time for its investments to pay off. The Atlanta-based home improvement retailer once again cut its 2019 forecast and reported same-store sales well below estimates. Although earnings came in a penny better than expected, the company said revenue, which also missed analysts’ targets, was hurt by spending on improvements to its IT systems, stores and supply chain.
“We are largely on track with these investments and have seen positive results, but some of the benefits anticipated for fiscal 2019 will take longer to realize than our initial assumptions,” CEO Craig Menear said in the release.
Home Depot and its followers were betting in the latest quarter that its investments in technology to better align its online business with its 2,290 brick-and-mortar stores would have resulted in greater sales gains. The company now says that it is going to take more time.
“Our sales performance was below our expectations,” Chief Executive Craig Menear said on a call with analysts. “Our rollout is largely on track and we are realizing benefits, it’s just taking a little longer than our original assumptions.”
Finance Chief Richard McPhail said in an interview that while the company is taking its time with its re-engineering efforts, overall consumer spending is still healthy. “The consumer is alive and well,” he said. “It was one of the most balanced quarters we’ve had in a long time.”
The number of customer transactions during the third quarter was up 1.5% from a year ago, while the amount of money customers spent per visit rose 1.9%. Big-ticket transactions, or the number of comparable transactions over $1,000, climbed 4.8% from a year earlier.
Lower lumber prices continued to weigh on the company in the third quarter, resulting in about $175 million in lost revenue from a year ago, Mr. McPhail said. In August, the company reported weaker than expected second-quarter results and cut its sales outlook as a result.
Todd “Bubba” Horwitz

domain: news


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In the blue light glow of last night’s TikTok event, you may have missed Walmart’s low-fi moves to build a profitable e-comm arm.
Entering uncarted territory: Walmart is converting one of its Dallas area Supercenters into a dark store, the Dallas Morning News first reported.
- Dark stores speed up online fulfillment by shortening the distance between products and consumers—a necessity in Walmart’s biggest market (Dallas-Fort Worth).
- Once the new center opens, employees who previously held store roles will have the option to be retrained for fulfillment work.
This isn’t a total floorplan flip: Walmart said in January it would rethink its store experiences to pack more online orders. Retailers including Best Buy, Macy’s, Whole Foods, and a younger Walmart have turned the lights off on shoppers with the same goal before.
- Other retailers (Apple, Nordstrom, the list goes on) are scratching a similar itch with online fulfillment from operational stores.
Hitting ghost mode: Walmart Canada is testing a ghost kitchen concept at a store outside Toronto, with four more arriving on the menu up north this year. Shoppers can choose two adventures: 1) prepped meals or convenience items, and 2) delivery or in-store pickup.
Walmart’s latest e-comm experiments complement a larger initiative to amplify its online presence, Business Insider reports.
In a confidential plan (codename: Project Glass), Walmart said its current ops “fail” shoppers. So it wants to convert Amazon boxes to Walmart boxes by...
- Speeding up fulfillment times, including a push for one-hour delivery.
- Folding grocery and everything-else fulfillment into a single in-app experience.
Even with new investments, Walmart’s still an oversized underdog. For example, check out its delivery real estate: Research firm R5 Capital estimates Amazon operates 15x more fulfillment centers than Walmart—and Amazon's closing in on 1,500+ delivery centers.
Bottom line: To catch up with its biggest competitor, Walmart’s throwing everything into the cart and seeing what fits.


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The new iMacs may not be home for Christmas. Via AppleInsider, French blog MacBidouille reports that Apple’s (AAPL) new iMac all-in-one PC models will not be ready for sale by the holiday shopping season. The blog speculates that Apple is having supply-chain difficulties, as its manufacturers are struggling with an “advanced welding process.” The new iMacs are quite an impressive fete of engineering, with edges that measure in at just 5 millimeters thin despite having display sizes of 21.5 inches and 27 inches. In other words, it’s not surprising that they’re challenging to mass produce.
- You might have access to an extra $1,000 stimulus check if you live in this state
- Extra stimulus checks up to $3,000 are coming if you live in one of these 10 states
- AirPods Pro, iPads, and Apple Watch just got huge price cuts at Amazon
- Leaked ‘Venom 2’ post-credits scene has a big ‘Spider-Man:No Way Home’ spoiler
- Here’s how you might be able to get an extra $600 stimulus check
September 17th, 2021
September 16th, 2021


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Premier of Ontario says 49% of Canadian gamers are women
A press conference was held today to announce Ubisoft Toronto’s studio opening. At the press conference, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said that 49% of Canadian gamers are female.
He also stated that Ontario’s gaming industry produces almost $1 billion each year.
Now all those wonderful women need to come and sign up here!


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The annual CeBIT is a big event for the high-tech industries, which is a barometer for the future technology development trend. The CeBIT 2016 was meaningful for Airwheel, as it was more than an exhibition, but a new products release conference. With the addition of Airwheel S8, S9, Z5 and C series, Airwheel was once again fully reflected on the international market. The harvest of Airwheel was quite abundant.
From the aspect of solid gains, visitors and dealers from France, Belgium and Germany placed orders on the scene. The Airwheel S8 double-wheels electric scooter, S9 wheeled mobile robot, Z5 standing up electric scooter and C series turned out to be a huge success. Other than that, high-tech enterprises from Germany and Asia have signed project cooperation MOU with Airwheel on the UL certification and spare and accessory parts production.
Another highlight is the official media of CeBIT came to Airwheel booth to have an interview with Airwheel. It was a great honour for Airwheel to be interviewed. “Airwheel plans to extend its reach to personal companion, household services, smart home appliances, etc. in the future,” said Zuo Guogang, CEO of Airwheel. “However, we will not launch new products in haste before the related technologies mature. We’ll play it safe, being responsible for both our customers and shareholders.”
Also, the potential dealers and companies showed great interest in the coming new series of Airwheel product. The born of Airwheel S9 two wheeled self-balancing robot was a solid evidence for Airwheel’s strength and capability. Airwheel will reinforce the status in artificial intelligence industry and launch more new models in the coming 3 years to empower citizens’ more comfortable life.
All of this indicated a promising prospect of Airwheel electric scooter. If you are interested in Airwheel, please feel free to contact us. Also, you can experience the Airwheel electric scooter on the coming Hong Kong Electronics Fair and Canton Fair.
Company Name: Airwheel Technology Holding (USA) Co., Ltd
Contact Person: Eric
Country: United States


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British tennis has suffered a collapse in the distributions received from the Wimbledon championships, down £8m from their peak a decade ago.
The Lawn Tennis Association benefits from an annual bursary from the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, in line with the terms of an agreement dating back to 1920. But after peaking at £33m in 1998, the money received by British tennis's governing body has fallen to £25m. Adjusted according to the retail prices index, that £33m would be worth £42m today - meaning the LTA's Wimbledon receipts have fallen in real terms by more than 40%.
Ian Ritchie, the AELTC's chief executive, blames the collapse of Germany's Kirch media group in 2002 for the fall in television-rights revenue as the major contributor to the slipping bottom line. But from this year there could be still more pressure on the Wimbledon surplus, which accounts for almost 60% of the LTA's gross revenue.
Last August, eight days after announcing a "new global partnership" with Wimbledon as its official bank and credit card sponsor, HSBC levied a mortgage on the premises. According to records lodged with Companies House, the All England Lawn Tennis Ground plc, an LTA-AELTC joint venture, has mortgaged to HSBC the "sports ground" and associated "freehold land". This is to pay for the major capital projects associated with redeveloping its
However, the AELTC refused to divulge whether debt service and capital repayment must begin this year or whether an increase in gate receipts would offset the outgoings. "We don't respond to financial questions," said a spokesman.
Seeds of discontent
Twelve months after the All England Club introduced pay parity for men and women at Wimbledon there remains one rule for men and another for women that could affect the earnings of seeded players. Wimbledon is the only tournament that does not employ simple world rankings to seed competitors. Men's seedings are calculated according to a formula relating to rankings points and an additional points weighting from previous grass-court tournaments. But for women, by contrast, Wimbledon's policy is to "follow the ranking list except where in the opinion of the committee, the grass-court credentials of a particular player necessitates a change in the interest of achieving a balanced draw." With tens of thousands of pounds at stake according to which round players are knocked out in, the faceless order-of-play committee can subjectively influence the strength of opposition. The All England Club's head of referees, Andrew Jarrett, said: "The committee is sensitive to this and this is why it has made very few changes to the women's seedings." There are no current plans to bring women's seedings in line with men's.
Shoe on the other foot
Andy Murray's switch from Adidas to Nike shoes at Wimbledon means the German clothing giant will miss out on one of the biggest marketing coups over the fortnight in favour of its bitter corporate rival. Adidas have repeatedly offered to formalise the arrangement by which Murray, below, has been wearing its shoes but were frustrated by his clothing supplier, Fred Perry. Although Fred Perry does not manufacture shoes, Murray is not permitted to have a separate footwear deal under the terms of his clothing contract. This year the British No1 has chosen to wear Nike trainers, although Adidas hopes to win him back when it launches a range of grass-court shoes it is developing in association with the Wimbledon brand.
Edging toward equality
Twelve months after the Football Association said its race equality advisory group would elect a first black or ethnic-minority representative to serve on the FA council, Lord Herman Ouseley was finally named to join its ranks yesterday. With about 100 members, presumably the council's make-up will soon reflect the more than 13% of footballers from BME communities.


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Microsoft's Bing search division is without two of its marketing team members, including Eric Hadley, who was until today the general manager of worldwide marketing for Bing. AdAge.com reports that Microsoft confirmed that both Hadley and Bing's Brand Entertainment head Sean Carver were fired from the company.
According to Microsoft's official statement:
We can confirm that as the result of an investigation, Eric Hadley and Sean Carver's employment with Microsoft has been terminated for violation of company policies related to mismanagement of company assets and vendor procurement.
Hadley was also the general manager of marketing for Microsoft's MSN service. Microsoft has not commented further on what Hadley or Carver are accused of doing and there's no word if the company plans to file any criminal charges against the two men. So far, Hadley and Carver have yet to comment publicly on their firings.
Hadley had previously worked for Microsoft and then returned to the company to head up its MSN marketing business in 2009 after working at Yahoo. Business Insider reports that Bing team member Mike Nichols will take on Hadley and Carver's responsibilities at Microsoft.


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Your shout at the bar (that'll be £40,000)
The average pubgoer spends £39,480 in a lifetime getting their round in.
Generous nation: Two thirds of drinkers say they buy rounds for virtual strangers
Each drinker can expect to shell out around £840 a year keeping themselves, their friends, partners and colleagues well watered.
And while we will all claim to know exceptions to such generosity, the nation as a whole forks out £30bn a year buying rounds, according to the survey of 4,000 adults by www.OnePoll.com.
The survey confirmed that the financial downturn hasn't spoiled all our fun, as the average adult will still go out socialising to bars, pubs and restaurants three times a month.
Each round they buy will cost an estimated £13, and they will buy an average 1.8 rounds in an evening out, totalling £23 - or a monthly figure of £70.
But this could be an underestimate for the big-time male boozers out there. The survey revealed that nearly a quarter of men go out twice a week, and buy bigger rounds - equating to £200 a month.
A OnePoll spokesman said: 'Buying rounds is a way of life in Britain and these results show us to be a very generous nation.
'The cost of buying a round soon adds up and over their lifetime it amounts to a sizeable piece of their disposable income.'
Two-thirds of drinkers said they always end up buying drinks for people they don't really know.
And an overwhelming majority (70%) said it really annoyed them when a drinking partner orders more expensive tipples once they have got their round out of the way.
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Systems and Storage News Roundup (11/19-11/26)
If your favorite vendor is missing from our news roundup, it’s likely they didn’t have any pertinent announcements last week. If there’s a vendor you’re interested in seeing, email me at firstname.lastname@example.org.
11/21- Huawei Releases CloudAIR3.0 Solution
11/19- Pure Storage Delivers Unified Hybrid Cloud, Launches New Cloud Data Services


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8-12-04 - FARMERS BRANCH, Texas (AP) A top maker of police body armor says lawsuits filed against it by Texas and six other states are baseless. Texas filed suit yesterday against Michigan-based Second Chance Body Armor.
The lawsuit alleges the company failed to disclose that the protection of its lighter weight vests degrades with exposure and endangers police officers.
It was filed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. It accuses the Michigan-based company of failing to disclose that the quality of its lighter-weight vests degrades with exposure to fluorescent light, heat and humidity.
The Attorney General’s investigation found that more than 5,000 of the vests made of a material called Zylon have been sold in Texas since about 1998.
Abbott says the lawsuit seeks restitution for police departments and other consumers who bought the 800 dollar vests.
The lawsuit also seeks civil penalties of up to 20,000 dollars per violation of the act, attorney fees and investigative costs. Spokesman for Second Chance, Gregg Smith says lawsuits from the seven states are baseless.


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OK, so we knew that the social gaming space was big — just look at the blockbuster $300-$400 million acquisition of Playfish. We also knew that FarmVille creator Zynga was huge — they are likely bigger than Twitter and were valued at $1 billion last month.
Well, it's time to throw all of those numbers and assumptions out of the window. Digital Sky Technologies (D.S.T.), the same Russian venture capital firm that paid $200 million to buy a chunk of Facebook, has dropped a ton of money on one of Facebook's biggest beneficiaries. The total amount of the round is $180 million, which included participation from several other venture capital firms. The FarmVille and Mafia Wars maker may now be worth between $1.5 billion and $3 billion. According to The New York Times, D.S.T. will not only buy directly into Zynga, but will be purchasing shares from current shareholders, a.k.a. the Zynga founders and its employees. This is exactly the same thing it did with Facebook.
The numbers are simply huge, and we're going to do more research to find out the terms of the deal and how this came about. In the meantime, though, we're just sitting here in shock at just how fast the social gaming market has grown. We couldn't have imagined a company that primarily makes Facebook games raising $180 million even six months ago, but here we are.
What's your opinion? We want to hear about it in the comments.


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By Bill Sheehan and Matt Prindiville, Product Policy Institute
A controversial EPR-related bill in Vermont has died and hearings took place on a new bill.
Vermont bill H.218 died, according to Resource Recycling. It was introduced in 2010, reportedly the brainchild of Coca-Cola and artfully framed as an “EPR Framework” bill. It would have implemented producer financing for collection of packaging and printed paper while repealing the state’s bottle bill - which is the state’s most successful recycling initiative, collecting over 80% of beverage containers sold into Vermont.
Hearings were held on a new bill, H.485, in mid-January. The new bill is mostly a traditional solid waste management plan based on government responsibility for recycling and waste management. However, the bill mentions extended producer responsibility, in the form of possible agency recommendations in future reports. Surprisingly, that was enough to draw opposition testimony from the Toy Industry Association and the anti-EPR Product Management Alliance.
The bill allows the Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation to recommend options for legislative consideration, including: (A) product and packaging bans, (B) tax incentives; and (C) deposit and return legislation or extended producer responsibility legislation for certain products.
While attempting to brand EPR for packaging and printed paper as being superior to bottle bills, Coca Cola and advocates for this approach missed the mark. PPI has always advocated that industry-run bottle bills are not only EPR, but are model examples for successful EPR programs and ones to build on.
Opponents have argued that bottle deposits are overly prescriptive, and don’t allow manufacturers the flexibility to create their own systems. We would argue that container-deposits are a policy tool to achieve robust performance, and that industry-run bottle bill initiatives meet the definition of EPR because manufacturers are “physically and financially” responsible for their products.
Besides, we want to allow government to be prescriptive when results aren’t being achieved. For another example beyond deposits, in 2006, Maine passed legislation to incorporate a $5 financial bounty in their underperforming EPR law for mercury thermostats, paid to anyone with an old thermostat. Once the bounty was in place, returns to Maine’s thermostat EPR program went through the roof and is now the highest-performing program in the nation, with collection wildly exceeding that of any other state.
We hope Vermont will continue to lead on producer responsibility legislation, and that Vermonters will realize they can have their bottle bill and EPR for packaging and printed paper, too. We’ll have to wait and see whether the beverage industry will support this concept. For now, they’re busy promoting EPR in non-bottle bill states.
For many of us who live in states with mature, successful bottle bill initiatives, we want to have EPR for packaging and printed paper too, but we’re not going to sacrifice the most successful recycling (and EPR) programs that we already have for the sake of winning industry support. Several provinces in Canada and many EU countries have already figured this out: Bottle bills and EPR for packaging can go hand in hand.


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Apple abandons effort to secure "POD" trademark
Apple has apparently decided to abandon its trademark application for the term "POD." Apple filed for the trademark in Canada on July 2004. After a series of changes required by the Canadian government and extensions that span seven years, Apple has decided to abandon the patent. The abandonment procedure began on December 2010 and was finalized on April 13, 2011.
The term "iPOD" is still covered by an Apple trademark, but the word "POD" is now up for grabs. Look for the next ePOD eReader or aPOD mp3 player to hit the market in the coming months.
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Best Buy Posts $81 Million Q1 Loss21 May, 2013 By: Erik Gruenwedel
Online revenue increases to $498 million, which includes movie sales on CinemaNow
Best Buy Co. May 21 reported a first-quarter (ended May 4) net loss of $81 million compared to net income of $158 million during the previous-year period.
The Minneapolis-based consumer electronics retailer said global revenue fell nearly $1 billion to $9.3 billion, which reflected in part the company’s previously-announced plan to sell a 50% stake in Best Buy Europe. Domestic sales dipped 2.2% to $7.9 billion when factoring in an additional week of revenue during the previous-year period.
Sam-store sales in the U.S. declined 1.1%, which was an improvement from a decline of 3.7% last year. Strong growth in mobile phone and appliances was more than offset by declines in home theater and gaming.
CEO Hubert Joly said Best Buy is making progress, which he attributed to a 16% increase in online sales to $498 million. Online revenue includes digital movie sales on CinemaNow. Other benchmarks included improving customer service 3% in the past five months; reaching an agreement with Samsung to establish Samsung Experience Shops in select retail stores; negotiating overall rent reductions for a number of stores and closing one large format store; and eliminating $175 million in annualized SG&A and supply chain costs in addition to $150 million eliminated last quarter.
Joly reiterated Best Buy’s changed strategy toward packaged media with shelf space previously allocated to music CDs and DVD movies replaced with higher margin categories like mobile, appliances and accessories. Specifically, Best Buy is allocating that store space to new Samsung branded in-store retail fronts.
“The feedback we're getting from customers is very positive because [they] can now look at the Samsung set of products and customer experiences as well as other competing universes,” Joly said.
Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter hailed Best Buy's online revenue, he cautioned that market segment will only get more competitive going forward.
"It is possible that online growth will outpace domestic comp declines, but we don't believe that is likely, especially in Q4; rather, we think domestic comp declines will accelerate at holiday from increased price competition from online merchants, and we believe that Best Buy is positioned to significantly disappoint later this year," Pachter wrote in a May 21 note.


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Smokers: Cheap Pa. cigarettes make cents
Matamoras, Pa. — It is, says one purveyor, the "miracle mile."
The miracle:?cheap cigarettes. And it's a retailing phenomenon that's reshaping business along the New York- Pennsylvania border.
Cigarettes in Matamoras, Pa., and Westfall, Pa., are so much cheaper than they are just a few blocks away in New York that there are nearly a dozen stores where smokers can buy discount cigarettes. And shops that only sell discount cigarettes have been popping up to claim their share of the market.
"There was one or two, and then they just started coming," says Kayla O'Dell, an employee at Smoker's Land. "I don't know why or don't remember when. They're all over the place."
The attraction is simple: money. New Yorkers can buy a pack of cigarettes in Pennsylvania for a third less. Savings on a carton of cigarettes are even greater. That has turned this strip, from the Delaware River at the Matamoras border with Port Jervis, down to Westfall, Pa., into a frugal smoker's wonderland.
Just after 4 p.m. on a recent Tuesday, Smoker's Land is bustling. A woman named Gayle buys a pack of Salems for $3.45. She's been coming to Pennsylvania for cigarettes for the last three years.
"Who's gonna pay $5 a pack for cigarettes when you don't have to?" Gayle says. "I know people who come here from Connecticut to buy cigarettes."
Go 24 was the pioneer of the discount cigarette stores here. Besides cigarettes, you can buy fast food, gasoline or fireworks at the store.
Cartons of Marlboro cigarettes are advertised in the window for $33.50 each. In New York, a carton of the same cigarettes could cost almost $50, says Nancy Mortensen, a manager at Go 24.
"We call it the miracle mile here because of all the cigarette stores," Mortensen says. "We've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven ... from the bridge to Kmart."
Mortensen estimates that 85 percent of her customers come from New York and New Jersey. Some come from as far away as Manhattan, she says.
Go 24 has been in town the longest. Tobacco Road has been around eight or nine years, and South of the Border has been in town since 2000.
"Most of the people are coming over because the taxes are lower," says Ken Thiele, chairman of Westfall's Board of Supervisors. "And now the patrons are coming over because they can smoke in our bars."
Most of the patrons on this so-called miracle mile are from New York. Pennsylvania's entrepreneurs have been happy to cater to those who have been shunned by their own state.
The Matamoras exit off Interstate 84 spits New Yorkers right in front of Go 24 on the right and South of the Border on the left. In big, block letters the words "cigarette outlet" lure smokers.
"It's always been a hotbed for cigarettes because Pennsylvania has always been lower on tax," says Brent Kunis, vice president of South of the Border.
New York's cigarette tax is 50 cents higher than Pennsylvania's.
In 2000, New York's cigarette tax went from 56 cents to $1.11. By 2002, the tax reached $1.50. That's when, as Kunis puts it, New York "went berserk."
The state tax is only one component of the high cigarette prices. There are also sales taxes. And in places like New York City, an additional $1.50 is tacked on to the price.
While so many people do it, bringing cigarettes back to New York and not reporting it to the state is illegal, says Michael Bucci, a spokesman with New York's tax department.
Bucci says smokers are required to figure out how much they would have been taxed in New York and then mail the state a check.
"Possession of more than two cartons of untaxed cigarettes is a crime," Bucci says. "It's considered intent to distribute."
Maybe that's why many along the Pennsylvania border would rather not talk about smoking; they're afraid to attract the tax collector. Maybe they don't want to talk because they're taking time from work to pick up a pack of cigarettes, or maybe it's because smokers and smoking have come to be looked down on in the last few years.
It doesn't matter to Scott Brenner what people think; he just wants them to buy his cigarettes, although he understands why they don't. Brenner, the owner of Easy-Way Beverage Discount Center in Port Jervis, used to sell 200 to 300 cigarette cartons a week. Now, he only sells about 20 cartons a week.
"The problem is that these things don't make sense to the people [lawmakers] in Albany and they're ruining the state," Brenner says. "Slowly but surely, they're ruining the state."
Business at Pennsylvania smoke shops may be going well, but having cheap cigarettes is not what townspeople want to be known for.
"They don't want to be known as the cigarette capital of the world," says Dayne Losee, Matamoras Borough council president.
Losee said citizens have asked the board to stop allowing more cigarette shops to open, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen.
"We're trying to zone them out, but we're not having very much luck with our attorney," Losee says.
Residents might not get their wish. Losee says there are rumors of more discount cigarette stores on the way.


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BY THE NUMBERS
As the organisations that monitor the health of UK game development have changed over the past ten years, so has the shape of the data they produce. It makes consistent comparison of the UK scene over time testing for even the most devoted analysts, but there’s enough to go on to get a sense of the direction in which the region is moving.
In 2005, nowdefunct trade body ELSPA reported that 22,190 people worked in games within the UK, some 6,000 of those at studios. At the time that represented a year-onyear climb overall, but a fall in numbers actually making games. Some ten years later, the trade body had become UKIE, which, working with innovation charity NESTA, found 1,902 game companies in the UK in 2014 – an increase of 22 per cent over two years, and a figure that, considering studio sizes, suggests a parallel increase in headcount.
UK industry body TIGA, meanwhile, found in its own research that across 2013/14 closure rates fell by 30 per cent, while throughout 2014 industry headcount climbed some ten per cent across the UK. For 2016’s numbers to be pooled and published, the wait will go a good way into 2017, but this year follows consistent growth in terms of the numbers of people and companies making games in the UK, against an uncertain economic backdrop.


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Is the Motorola/Google merger a game changing event?
hughye 2 years ago
So Google had an extra $12.5 billion to spend, and Motorola was just sitting there bored...
Motorola's stockholders voted pretty darn close to unanimously to accept Google's multibillion dollar merger offer. What does this merger mean in the big scheme of things. There were already Android phones manufactured by Motorola, so what does Google get out of this? I can see what Motorola gets (see that $12.5 figure). What impact is likely from this merger, assuming it goes through?
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In today's accessible technology roundup: Japan develops a wearable computer controlled by facial expressions, a high school student is engineering solutions to improve the web for the color blind and the EU wants to make government websites accessible
It’s time to update that old chestnut about March weather for the digital age
Drupal reaches a milestone, but WordPress is still - by far - the most popular content management system
WebAIM’s latest screen reader usage survey is out and the results should help inform those who design and build technology
French cosmetics company Clarins uses Demandware for international ecommerce expansion.
Just a month after Satya Nadella took over as Microsoft CEO the executive inner circle is being overhauled, with two key leaders leaving the company and a third assuming significant new power.
Play games, earn redeemable points to buy new stuff. Not a bad deal. Shame they don't offer it for business use, too.
Thanks to social media, mobile marketing and data analytics, the CMO is now closer to sales revenue. CMOs are among the most important executives at a company -- and they know it and want to take the next step to the CEO's office. The good news for CIOs is that they can't do it without you.
The hiring scene is changing for tech pros. Marketing departments are bolstering their technical ranks to help with big data, cloud, SEO, and mobile development initiatives.
In today's accessible technology roundup: Google is developing a new solution to indoor navigation, the BBC revises their mobile accessibility guidelines and another game goes color blind-friendly


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High costs put strain on SMEs
THE overall business environment has been positive over the past year, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have seen a dramatic improvement in performance,
writes Jayesh Ghaghda
. Noticeable increases have been seen in business confidence, employment and investment, a contrast to the difficult environment of previous years.
There are, however, still considerable concerns, both domestically and internationally, that threaten growth. Primarily, high costs have been repeatedly highlighted as a threat to sustaining and developing economic progress within the SME sector.
There has been a significant increase in labour costs in particular and, last year, this was consistently identified by business leaders as “enemy No 1” in their efforts to remain competitive.
The latest quarterly trends survey outlines a 6% increase in wage costs in the past 12 months and a 20% hike in salary rates in the past two years, twice the level of inflation and more than double the


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Ouya Unveils $60 Subscription Plan for Whole Game Library
It’s been quite a long time since we’ve heard anything from the little $99 Android-based console that started a new industry for cheap consoles in the living room. If you had any interest in the Ouya, how quiet they’ve been since launch would be a cause for concern.
However, the folks at Ouya have come up with a new plan to inject some life into the console. They’ve announced plans for a 12-month subscription to their game library for $60 per year.
The plan isn’t an outright purchase of all of the games in Ouya’s library. The Ouya All-Access Pass will only work on one-time purchases under $30 in its library. Ouya includes game purchases/unlocks and level packs as part of the content. Not included are items that Ouya says “enhance gameplay” including extra lives and power-ups. So it would seem that anything that could be termed a microtransaction won’t be covered by the subscription and must be paid for separately.
Given the reportedly low monetization rate for games on the Ouya, a slightly radical new plan to make money from the games of Ouya was needed. Last year, we reported that the top Ouya games had a monetization rate of 8% and only 27% of console owners actually spent money on even one game.
This isn’t the first big move by Ouya corporate to try to boost the console’s prospects. Back in March, Ouya eliminated the requirement that developers and publishers include a free demo or go free-to-play with microtransactions for all releases. That’s enticed some devs to get their game onto the Ouya when they otherwise might not have.
Whether this helps the Ouya’s prospects and makes it more financially viable to develop for the Ouya remains to be seen. A new plan of attack certainly couldn’t hurt after what seems to have been a quiet first year for the console.
Source: Ars Technica
Posted on July 3, 2014, in Games and tagged Business of Gaming, Ouya. Bookmark the permalink. Leave a comment.
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David Brancaccio: What’s in a name? When it comes to a famous one like “Ford,” there could be more than a billion dollars involved. That’s what marketers are making these days just selling that company’s trademarks, on all kinds of merchandise.
Here’s our senior business correspondent Bob Moon.
Bob Moon: This week, Ford’s improving financial health allowed the carmaker to take back control of its famous blue oval logo — which Ford had essentially pawned, as collateral for the big loan that helped it survive. Chairman Bill Ford sounded relieved.
Bill Ford: It really means that Ford is back.
He may not have been exaggerating. A report from Forbes says the blue oval logo has become the company’s hottest property in a booming product-licensing business. Goods ranging from Hot Wheels toys to “Built Ford Tough” T-shirts for girls take in $1.5 billion a year.
And the value goes far beyond that. So says Pete Canalichio, a branding expert at The Blake Project.
Pete Canalichio: The impact could be quite high.
Take, for example, the new “Forza 4” video game, which licenses images of Ford’s cars. An added boost comes when fans talk up their virtual Fords, in game replays they post to YouTube.
Canalichio: If you’ve got consumers playing a video game and getting jazzed up about automobiles that Ford is producing, kudos to Ford, they’re connecting with their consumer in such a powerful way.
That doesn’t mean Ford is taking every opportunity that comes along. It’s steering clear of tie-ins with alcohol and gun makers.
I’m Bob Moon for Marketplace.
We’re here to help you navigate this changed world and economy.
Our mission at Marketplace is to raise the economic intelligence of the country. It’s a tough task, but it’s never been more important.
In the past year, we’ve seen record unemployment, stimulus bills, and reddit users influencing the stock market. Marketplace helps you understand it all, will fact-based, approachable, and unbiased reporting.
Generous support from listeners and readers is what powers our nonprofit news—and your donation today will help provide this essential service. For just $5/month, you can sustain independent journalism that keeps you and thousands of others informed.


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Limited tourist accommodation in American Samoa is thwarting efforts to grow the industry, the head of Hawaiian Airlines says.
Peter Ingram visited the territory and met with airline staff and government officials.
American Samoa governor Lolo Matalasi Moliga has been pushing tourism development since he took office in 2013 as an alternative to the fish canneries that the territory's economy heavily relies on.
Mr Ingram said the airline collaborated with travel agencies and the American Samoa Visitors Bureau to present holiday packages that would help stimulate tourism.
The airline was also trying to generate awareness of American Samoa as a visitor destination, Mr Ingram said.
"One of the challenges we see with how much that can grow is that we still have a very limited inventory of accomodations overall in American Samoa."


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A federal jury found that Google's use of Oracle's Java programming language in Android didn't violate copyright law, claiming the fair use doctrine enabled Google to build compatible software without obtaining a license. But the case is likely far from over.
Google's not the only one making a splash in the virtual reality (VR) waters. Virtually every major tech company, including big device makers, are making a VR play as well.
As the online advertising market continues to change, Google is changing with it. The search engine giant, which relies on display and video ads to generate 90 percent of its annual revenue, said it is changing the size of the ads at the top of its search pages, The Wall Street Journal reports. The move, in part, reflects online users' continuing shift to mobile devices, and providers' efforts to keep up with the change.
Google showcased its Android Wear 2.0 smartwatch and Daydream mobile virtual reality technologies at Google I/O in Mountain View, California last week, and both tools could reshape the way developers collaborate with the technology giant.
Are your Google Play apps secure? If not, they could put your end users as well as your brand reputation and revenues at risk. And while Google has launched a program to improve security of apps while they're still in development, it can't substitute for good security practices by devs themselves.
As expected, Google and Federated Wireless threw their hats into the FCC's Spectrum Access System (SAS) ring, joining several other entities in the aim to provide spectrum sharing capabilities for the 3.5 GHz band.
Like a lot of companies in the tech world, Google has big plans for virtual reality. And for right now, at least, the smartphone is key.
CTIA said it wants to be a database administrator for the new Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) in the 3.5 GHz band, despite the association's concerns about how the FCC's new rules around the band might interfere with licensed operations in nearby bands.
Counting as backers Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, among others, Nest Labs released Open Thread, an open source implementation of the Thread networking protocol.
Google is reportedly considering adopting a policy for "acceptable ads" in an effort to combat ad blocking software. The online ad giant may require ads to be unobtrusive and not annoying, enabling ad-blocking companies with "acceptable ad" programs to let them bypass the filters.


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2017 was an exciting year for the Internet of Things. In the past year, the IoT market was valued at $170.57 Billion and predicted to grow to $561.04 billion by 2020. Similarly, the Verizon, 2017 IoT ‘State of the Market’ report shows substantial year on year growth in IoT network connections. Most noticeably the manufacturing sector saw an 84% growth in network connections over 2016. Moreover, Gartner research expressed that there were 8.4 billion total connected ‘things’ in 2017, an increase of 31% over 2016. All in all, it was a boom year and full of exciting developments.
2018, is expected to be the year that IoT truly blooms. In this article, TechDesign gives its rundown of the hottest 5 trends that we expect to shock the IoT world in 2018.
1) Greater Convergence between Blockchain and IoT
The biggest threat to the widespread adoption of IoT to this date stems from issues pertaining to security rather than anything concerned with the technology itself. We have already faced a number of high profile IoT hacks, such as the case of the Trendnet Webcam hack of 2012, when hackers posted live feeds on the internet from almost 700 of the company’s cameras. The cameras we marketed as being for baby monitoring and home safety purposes, but ended up only serving to highlight the frailty of internet of things.
Nearly every IoT device has a point of vulnerability to hackers, not only for itself, but for the whole network. We maybe could have overlooked this when IoT was concerned with smart kettles and TV’s, but in the wake of real serious uses of IoT technology in medicine and industry, the tech sector needs to pay real attention to these security concerns.
This is where Blockchain comes in. In this article for IoT Agenda, writer Tiana Lawrence states three ways in which Blockchain technologies can solve the stated IoT security issues:
- They let users directly conduct comment, through offering both a communication channel and a payment mechanism.
- Blockchain networks are able to be utilized in a way that is possible to create indexed records which are both linear and permanent. This means others are able to reference them globally without concerns of censorship.
- Blockchain technology empowers users to act as its own certificate authority.
The final point is the most salient as it lets us move towards something resembling transparency in IoT. Industry leaders are tipping blockchain to be at the forefront of IoT discussions in 2018. In an article for ComputerWorldUk, Igor Illunin, head of IoT practice at DataArt, expressed emphatically that blockchain has the potential to transform organisation’s ability to leverage their IoT’s assets: “Blockchain technology carries the potential to take IoT’s ability to help companies target consumers more efficiently to the next level. All systems of interconnected IoT devices can use blockchains to effectively and reliably organize, store and share streams of data. This technology is expected to play an integral role in the multitude of industries that manage real-world objects moving across different geographies, thereby making blockchain one of the top IoT trends in 2018.”
However Gil Press of Forbes thinks that Blockchain-based IoT adoption will only rise to 5% in 2018. He believes that blockchain is not yet suitable for large scale deployments that need a high level of stability, reliability and seamless integration with existing technology infrastructure. On the other hand, he goes on to note that “promising pilot projects are beginning to emerge and the maturation of Iot and blockchain technologies and products will drive blockchain adoption in 2018”.
2) Slow but Rising Adoption of AR in Industrial IoT (IIoT)
In 2018, we will see a rising number of companies using augmented reality devices in collaboration with industrial IoT applications. We have already seen utilization of devices such as Google Glass or Microsoft Hololens in industry but this is just the beginning. In an article for Internet of Things Institute, Dave McCarthy, director of products at Bsquare, explained how this trend will accelerate in 2018, “AR/VR will make its mark on IoT, whether using full virtual reality to simulate responses to conditions in the field or augmented reality to put more information in front of equipment operators, new ways of interacting with IoT data will emerge.”
This enthusiasm is shared elsewhere. In a recent interview for Forbes, Rich Rogers, SVP, product and engineering, industrial IoT portfolio at Hitachi Vantara, asked readers to “envision how AR might be used to help a general-purpose maintenance person service a company’s entire equipment portfolio. They show up on site, they scan an IoT-enabled asset, AI helps them make the right diagnosis, and then AR helps them make the repair or swap out a part. IIoT brings all of these technologies together.” Through the convergence of AR and IIOT, the way we manufacture products will change, the products themselves will change and even the way the products are serviced will change.
However, a little perspective is required, because a number of factors can create barriers for AR technologies becoming considered mainstream in industrial settings. Many industrial facilities lack functionality for pervasive high-speed wireless networks, which make it difficult for the implementation of truly sophisticated industrial AR systems.
3) LPWAN Technologies to Become More Important
With an increase in the number of connected devices that rely on wireless technology for 2-way communication, we expect to see a wider prevalence of LPWAN (Low power wide area networks) technologies in 2018. LPWAN technologies have been increasingly adopted as they enable long range, low power consumption transmission of small data amongst IoT devices. LPWAN can run for a long time, unwired while consuming a minimal amount of power. We see real LPWAN to increase to grow in 2018, thanks to new sensors, technologies and higher reach the growth in the number of large scale IoT projects. GSMA have forecasted that over one billion devices will be connected over LPWAN networks by the end of 2018.
4) The Year of Voice
In 2018, we see voice becoming the true interface between people and the connected world. Amazon’s Alexa has already proven to be popular with consumers and this trend is expected to grow two-fold in 2018 as the company opens up the technology to developers. Amazon is now licensing Alexa and many new devices such as thermostats, home lighting systems and automobiles have the smart assistant built in.
Voice will also move from the consumer sphere to becoming widespread in a greater number of verticals. The 2018 Forrester report, Predictions 2018: IoT Moves From Experimentation To Business Scale, expressed that complexity, breadth and quality of voice-based services from offered from Fortune 500 companies is likely to double in 2018.
5) IoT Electronics Design and Manufacturing Outsourcing to Move Online
At TechDesign, we also expect to see the way that hardware startups design, manufacture and purchase electrical components to change significantly in 2018. By outsourcing electronics design and manufacturing to services like those offered by TechDesign, startups can save valuable time, cut costs, avoid cultural and communication problems, protect their money and product, while at the same time increasing efficiency. There really is no reason to be wasting money on flying across the world to find a manufacturer or having projects setback due to communication issues with your factory in 2018. Check out our recent blog post on the topic to find out more.


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Developer Iron Gate has revealed in a press release that Valheim has reached over ten million sales worldwide. The open-world survival game first launched into early access in February 2021. For a project that started so small to reach ten million sales in just over a year is an incredible achievement.
And it isn’t just sales numbers where Iron Gate’s creation excels. It managed to reach almost 500,000 concurrent players at launch maintaining a similar number up until the end of March. Even now it regularly exceeds 40,000 concurrent players which is on par with games like Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, and Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel, and Terraria.
Iron Gate’s CEO Richard Svensson spoke more about the achievement. Svensson says: “We never imagined Valheim would become so big, not even in our wildest dreams, and the past year flew by faster than we anticipated.” From a small indie project to one of 2021’s most successful games, Valheim has reached sales number no one saw coming.
Svensson continued to confirm that a “new mysterious biome,” is in the works too. That most likely will be included as part of the upcoming Mistlands update that has previously been teased. Outside of the occasional glimpse though we don’t know much about it. Although you can expect a new biome, new enemies to fight, and new equipment to create.
Iron Gate has grown
In the same statement, it is confirmed that Iron Gate has grown considerably. The development team behind Valheim has doubled since launch with further growth expected to follow. The studio’s ambitions for Valheim continue to grow further every day. It has already established itself as one of the best survival games on the market but the developer isn’t stopping there. With more work and time invested Valheim has the potential to become one of the true greats of gaming.


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Under Armour is one of the main sportswear suppliers from the whole world, and officially came to Argentina in 2017. The goal of the brand was to have a breaking outdoor event, with the presence of the 28-olympic medals winner Michael Phelps and the hockey star Luciana Aymar, along with many amateur athletes. We were in charge of the production and communication of the brand launch, and of the event itself.
The main problem we had was the large amount of other sports brands in the country’s market. With that in mind, Bridger Conway, along with Under Armour, decided to have a massive event with two of the world’s biggest athletes: Michael Phelps and Luciana Aymar.
People from all around the globe followed the evening, that took place on December 7th. Along with Phelps and Aymar, 40 amateur athletes were chosen by the brand and by Bridger Conway -many of them after a contest that incited them to upload an image of themselves, with their favourite training place.
The result? Around 500 people participated in the contest, following the #UATrainingArg concept. That hashtag, along with #MichaelPhelps, were trending topics in Argentina. The very same day of the event, 650.000 people were reached by the official Under Armour Twitter account!
Facebook and Instagram were not the exceptions: on the first network, the brand had over 800.000 interactions since the announcement of the event, with a real reach of 6-million people. Counting both social networks, Under Armour had a massive growth of 6.000 new followers!
The biggest TV channels, radio stations, newspapers and online magazines from Latin America also amplified the news: Michael Phelps, the “Baltimore Shark” was going to come to Argentina for the first time.
On December 7th, hundred of Fans got to El Rosedal (Buenos Aires), where they saw two of the biggest athletes training face-to-face. That day, thanks to a minute-by-minute coverage of the event, #UATrainingArg had over 500 mentions on Twitter, along with 15.000 interactions. Also, the mentions of @UnderArmourArg grew 717%, and the followers increased on a 3000% level.
Our job couldn’t have been done if we hadn’t followed Under Armour’s main objectives: “move better”, “move faster”, “move longer” and “move stronger”. We’re really proud of the results.
Branding & Communication, Social Media & Interactive


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Press Releasespress | press releases | virtual press kit
American Media, Inc. Signs Web-Based Content Agreement With iAmplify
New York, NY, July 31, 2008 - American Media, Inc. (AMI), the leading publisher of celebrity journalism and health and fitness magazines in the U.S., announced today it has partnered with iAmplify.com, a video distribution network, to deliver premium downloadable audio and video content through AMI's web properties.
"We are very excited to launch this new relationship with iAmplify," said AMI Chairman and CEO David J. Pecker. "It adds a dynamic new dimension to our fitness websites, as well as giving us a potentially significant revenue stream." AMI Chief Marketing Officer Kevin Hyson added, "We look forward to making iAmplify video and audio offerings available on our other sites in the near future, as well as now having a new outlet to sell our own branded products."
"This deal represents the beginning of a real shift in the monetization of video in the online world," said Michael Wolf, Board Member to iAmplify.
New download stores will initially be available at www.shape.com and www.mensfitness.com and will incorporate health and fitness content from iAmplify's growing media catalog of thousands of titles, which include top fitness talent like Kathy Smith, Tamilee Webb and 9-time UFC Champion Matt Hughes. The content in these new download stores ranging from fitness to business to personal growth to health will allow consumers to train "on the go" with some of the most recognized experts in their fields.
In addition to the new download stores, iAmplify will also be syndicating the AMI fitness library throughout its growing network of third-party websites.
"We are thrilled to work with AMI to amplify their revenue potential in the premium online space," said Murray Hidary, CEO and co-founder of iAmplify.com. "iAmplify's eCommerce widgets represent a fundamental shift and opportunity for website and content owners to monetize their assets alongside the traditional advertising model."
About American Media, Inc.
American Media, Inc. is the leading publisher of celebrity journalism and health and fitness magazines in the U.S. These include Star, Shape, Men's Fitness, Fit Pregnancy, Natural Health, and National Enquirer. In addition to print properties and web sites, AMI owns Distribution Services, Inc., the country's #1 in-store magazine merchandising company.
iAmplify.com is a Web-based publisher and syndication network, providing the tools and distribution for leading authors, celebrities and media companies to publish paid audio and video content over the internet. The company owns and sells exclusive content on its Web site, iAmplify.com, and via syndication to portals and vertical websites.
iAmplify has exclusive rights to a large catalog of content in more than 30 verticals such as fitness, yoga, nutrition, relationships, spirituality, sports and more. The Company works with such partners as Marianne Williamson, Marilu Henner, Kathy Smith and Phil Hellmuth as well as the Emmy Award Winning Sports Legends library as well as media companies such as HarperCollins Publishers to publish paid audio and video content over the Internet.
Content is available for download to computer, iPods and cell phones and is always available online at www.iAmplify.com. Founded in 2005 by Internet pioneers Jack Hidary and Murray Hidary, iAmplify.com now has offices in New York and Los Angeles.
|For American Media|
|Kekst and Company|


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Leading hardware manufacturer, Avantis, has launched a new dedicated installer website for its smart lock innovation, Kubu.
The new website gives installers access to everything they need to be a Kubu Pro and is live at www.pro-kubu-home.com.
Mark Bromley, CEO of Avantis, says: “We’ve created the brand new Kubu Pro website to make it really easy for installers promote and demonstrate Kubu to potential customers.
“Via the website, installers can sign up to become a Kubu Pro and find a fabricator that is fitting Kubu Equipped Door Locks into their doors as standard.”
Once registered and signed up, Kubu Pro installers will get access to the Kubu Pro portal, which is an exclusive resource centre that contains a wealth of marketing material, including images, videos, brochures, leaflets and showroom displays.
The Kubu Pro portal has been designed to fully equip installers with everything they need to know about Kubu and get them set for smart technology.
Once homeowners have had their Kubu Equipped Doors fitted by installers, they can buy their Smart Kits directly from the Kubu website (www.pro-kubu-home.com) and set it up themselves, connecting to the Kubu App and Kubu Home Hub. It can also be added to Amazon Alexa and Google Home Hub, where homeowners can check on the lock status of their door. If homeowners leave their home with the door unlocked, the WiFi perimeter feature sends a notification to their phone via the app to let them know.
Mark adds: “We know how busy installers are and how competitive the market is. www.pro-kubu-home.com has been set up to make it easier for installers to win jobs quickly and differentiate themselves, thanks to the easy sign up and process and the extensive library of marketing support.”
To sign up to Kubu Pro today, visit www.pro-kubu-home.com.


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De-dollarization – The Global Movement towards Monetary Independence
June 19, 2023
The global economy has been dominated by the US dollar for decades, with many countries using it as their primary reserve currency. However, in recent years, there has been a growing movement towards de-dollarization, a term used to describe the shift away from the dollar and towards other currencies or alternative payment systems. This movement is motivated by various factors, including concerns about US economic and political power, the desire for monetary independence, and the need to protect against currency volatility. In this article, we will explore the concept of de-dollarization, its implications for the global economy, and the challenges and opportunities it presents.


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Turkish Inflation Climbs to Highest Since 2002 Amid Lira Woes
Turkish inflation accelerated for a seventh month in December, driven to a 19-year high by a slumping lira and lower borrowing costs.
Annual consumer inflation rate rose to 36.08% last month, the highest since September 2002 and up sharply from 21.31% in November. The figure was much higher than the 27.36% median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 19 analysts.
- Monthly inflation was 13.58%, compared with the median estimate of 8.5% in a separate survey
- Producer prices rose 19.08% through the month, bringing annual inflation to 79.89%
- The lira weakened after the report and was trading 3.7% lower at 13.8115 per dollar at 10:04 a.m. in Istanbul
- The acceleration takes Turkey’s benchmark interest rate adjusted for inflation to negative 22.08%, the lowest real yield among emerging markets
- Retail price inflation in Istanbul, Turkey’s business capital, climbed to 34.18% last month from 24.05% in November
- The central bank will hold its next rate-setting meeting on Jan. 20
- Turkey’s decision to slash five percentage points off the central bank’s benchmark rate since September has led to a slump in the lira, which has depreciated around 44% against the dollar last year, the worst among all major currencies tracked by Bloomberg
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.


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London: In an unusual event, a 13-year-old hanged himself after being raised bills worth hundreds of pounds which was by mistakenly purchased by him during Christmas, last year. Henry Tattersall was told he would not get any Christmas presents when he mistakenly downloaded Xbox games worth 420 pounds last November, an inquest was told.
Minutes before hanging himself, the boy spoke to his girlfriend on Facebook and said: “I’m going to kill myself.”
Coroner Richard Taylor, sitting in Burnley, said Henry’s death was the “unexpected conclusion of an intended action,” with a verdict of death by misadventure recorded.
Just as it is, the purchases made on these consoles should be more of conservative methods to stop making committing transactions out of errors or to skip omissions further.


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The month of Could is not just the time the annual Cannes Film Festival shall be held in addition to the Monaco F1 Grand Prix, this month also holds just a few surprises for video players and lovers. The rising function of huge data within the economy and enterprise will create a major need for statisticians and knowledge analysts; we estimate a shortfall of up to 250,000 knowledge scientists within the United States alone in a decade. Though new technologies have created extra power-efficient appliances and stronger constructions, there are nonetheless issues that you need to consider before upgrading.
Audio system mentioned the impression of new expertise and explored the future of bricks-and-mortar retailers and the merging of bodily and digital experiences. A reader that will get RF transmissions from an RFID device and forward the information to a number system for processing. “If you wish to return to those buildings with digital expertise to make them much more efficientâ€¦ (you will need) loads of service, tech jobs on the bottom to deploy these applied sciences.
While impartial work is nothing new (and self-employment remains to be the predominant form of work in emerging economies), the digital enablement of it is. MGI analysis finds that 20 to 30 percent of the working age population in the United States and the European Union is engaged in impartial work Simply over half of those employees complement their revenue and have conventional jobs, or are students, retirees, or caregivers.
Create marketing processes that identify and entice the type of people who want what you promote the instant that they know what you deliver. Digital expertise platforms have the potential to enhance the methods employees and jobs are matched, creating transparency and effectivity in labor markets, and potentially elevating GDP. With their powerful search capabilities and complicated screening algorithms, on-line talent platforms may velocity the hiring course of and lower the time people spend searching between jobs, decreasing unemployment.
Used and cheap computers can be found in the market for the advantages of students and professionals, working moms or for dwelling-based jobs, from companies to medicine, from training to aviation, from authorities departments to the corporate buying and selling world, these used computer systems and refurbished laptops are performing superb tasks!


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Google has banned an application that can be used to eavesdrop on an Android phone user’s text messages, after earlier approving it for sale.
Secret SMS Replicator from DLP Mobile duplicates incoming text messages and sends them on to a specified number.
Once installed, the ‘Secret’ version of the app – designed to help catch cheating partners - is invisible to the Android phone's user, who will be unaware that their texts are being read by someone else.
Google initially approved the app for sale on its Android marketplace, but pulled it again after just 18 hours, saying that it violated the store’s rules for inclusion.
The non-secret version of the app is still available for sale, designed for use as a backup tool.
Google’s ban won’t necessarily be the end for the app, though.
Unlike Apple’s iPhone App store – which rejected DLP’s application to sell an iPhone version of the app – Google doesn’t require all Android software to be approved and sold through its app store.
DLP has so far announced no plans to sell the software directly to the public.


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A California cannabis company has commissioned a new processing facility in Monterey County.
Cannabis grower Lowell Farms recently announced the commission of the new drying and midstream processing facility, located near its cultivation operation in the Salinas Valley.
The 10-acre, 40,000 square-foot processing facility, which Lowell says is the first-of-its-kind, will handle drying, bucking, trimming, sorting, grading, and packaging of up to 250,000 pounds of wholesale cannabis flower annually.
Lowell says the new facility will process nearly all of its locally-grown cannabis.
The company is also launching its Lowell Farms Services (LFS), which will offer fee-based processing services for regional growers in the Salinas Valley.
According to Lowell, the area is one of the “largest and fastest growing cannabis cultivation regions in the country.”
With no other solution in sight, Lowell Farms Chairman of the Board George Allen says the company is commissioning LFS to answer market processing needs.
“We seek to service the massive and fast-growing cannabis cultivation industry in California, not to compete with it,” says Allen. “Large-scale processing and automation are the missing pieces that will make California cannabis dominant in this exciting new frontier.”
Lowell says the new facility will initially include eight environmentally-controlled, segregated drying rooms which can accept up to 30,000 pounds of wet cannabis per month.
Mechanized and hand trimming services in the facility’s bucking and trimming area will include 70 stations and process up to 800 pounds of cannabis flower daily.
To further drive innovation in its product offerings, Lowell says it plans to add the country’s first “end-to-end, fully automated pre-roll manufacturing lines.”
Lowell says the pre-roll manufacturing line will bring an unprecedented level of choice to the cannabis industry’s “most discerning customers.”


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Trash Kitchen: A Social Entrepreneurial Kitchen
Beppu is booming more than ever with openings of new restaurants and cafes, and Trash Kitchen has now entered the market with a sustainable and socially aware twist. I sat down with Akito, one of the founding members of Trash Kitchen and a recent graduate from APU, to learn more about how they got started.
“The whole concept began while a co-founder and I were having tapioca drinks a few months back. There is this whole trend of taking pictures of these drinks, so lots of people just take pictures and then trash them,” said Akito. After witnessing this frivolous waste of food, they were inspired to open Trash Kitchen.
“Our main concept is to save food from the trash, and limit the amount of food being wasted. Eventually we want to be able to deliver excess or leftover foods to people who need it,” Akito elaborated.
Right now, Trash Kitchen is open for a four-month-long trial run. Their goal during these four months is to make enough profit to be able to hire on more people in the future. Akito believes that making a profit is the most challenging part of starting a social business.
On October 19th, customers were encouraged to bring their surplus ingredients from home for the chef at Trash Kitchen to incorporate in their cooking. “For today’s potluck event,” Akito explained, “guests brought their own ingredients, but usually we get our ingredients from local grocers.” Trash Kitchen incorporates ingredients like fruits and vegetables which do not sell well because they are slightly damaged into their dishes.
Personalization is also one of Trash Kitchen’s highlights, and they cook according to each customer’s preferences. This way they are able to cater to food allergies and restrictions, and ultimately make sure no food is wasted. One of their staple recipes is a customizable pasta. For this dish, the pasta is bought from a seller that also follows a no-food-waste philosophy when manufacturing their product.
Trash Kitchen is located at the first floor of Hotel Tsuruta near Beppu Kitahama. Their hours are 18:00-21:30 daily with the exception of Mondays and Thursdays. Trash Kitchen will be open for business until the end of January.
Do go and check them out!


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Now we’ve seen everything! A gelato shop concocted a new ice cream flavor in honor of Ed Sheeran’s favorite condiment — ketchup!The bright red treat, available at Gelati Enniscrone & Ballina in Ireland, is made out of Heinz ketchup and offered with a drizzle of ketchup on top. Naturally, people took to Twitter to share their thoughts on the ketchup-flavored ice cream — and not many people were keen on the idea.
Now we’ve seen everything! https://t.co/aH0b9qfpjh— Us Weekly (@usweekly) May 16, 2018


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The world is excited to transition to an electric platform, owing to the low emissions that electric vehicles are known for. The recent vehicle to join the electric family is fully electric Passat which is a large family sedan manufactured by the German automaker Volkswagen.
History Of The Vehicle
Passat has been in production since 1973. The vehicle has been well received by customers ever since its launch and was even named the European car of the year in 2015 which is significant given that all major German automakers including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi, produce cutting-edge machines.
Passat has been offered in a total of eight different generations which are known as the B1 to B8.
The vehicle’s first generation that remained in service from 1973 to 1981 was one the most iconic cars and it was the one that provided it the actual push.
However, over the years Volkswagen has produced the Passat as a high-end vehicle that has not only stood up to the expectations of the customers but has also been trendy.
Current Generation Of Passat
The current generation of the car has been in production since 2019. However, according to recent reports, Volkswagen intends to offer fully electric Passat to compete with vehicles from Tesla and other German manufacturers like Mercedes and BMW.
The fully electric Passat has been named Aero B however it was presented as a concept car in the 2018 Geneva motor show.
Nonetheless, for unknown reasons, VW has been unable to offer it to customers until now. It’s worth noting that the car was presented at the Geneva Motor Show under the name ID. Vizzion.
When Will It Be Available?
According to reports, it has already been spotted on the roads which means that it might be closer than we had anticipated.
The spy shots of the Aero B are going viral all over the internet, showing a camouflaged Passat, but what is surprising is that the vehicle has been fitted with Jetta grills to disguise it.
VW by replacing only the grills, however, has not been able to hide its latest offering from enthusiasts, who quickly identified the vehicle as Aero B.
A Blend Of Passat & Jetta?
It is also possible that VW is attempting to blend the looks of the Passat and Jetta for Aero B to differentiate it from the standard gasoline version of the Passat.
It is a common practice among car manufacturers to add a few distinguishing features to their EV models to separate them from regular models, and VW’s Jetta grills could be an example of this.
It is being anticipated that Aero B will sport a range of up to 600 km or 323 miles, which does not seem impossible given VW’s latest battery technology, which has already impressed EV enthusiasts in the company’s ID series vehicles.
The fully electric Passat, which may be offered under the title of ID. Vizzion, like other ID vehicles from the company, is expected to be a great addition to VW’s EV line-up, as the company is determined to go all-electric within the next few decades.
Prime competitors of the Aero B will include Tesla’s Model 3, Hyundai Ioniq 6 and Polestar 2.


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Following a successful series of physical events, the fourth FinTech Design Summit will now take place via online webinar software this 30th July, 8.30am New York City/Eastern time!
The FinTech Design Summit: Virtual Edition is the only event of it’s kind that pulls together innovative FinTech specialists to discuss product design, UX and strategy – now streamed live, direct to your home! The financial services industry is changing daily; with FinTech startups challenging the major FS players by creating powerful, new, user-centric products. At this event, a carefully selected arrangement of the world’s leading FinTech brands will present how they are utilising new technology and experience-led design principles to transform the industry; simplifying financial services for consumers around the world.
Tailored for those working as Product Managers & Directors in financial organisations; no matter the size, if you are interested in discussing how traditional financial products are being disrupted through clean, innovative, experience-led design: then make sure you tune in!


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Facebook is popularly anticipated to unveil a new operating system handled on Google’s android platform in an event due for Thursday. Rumors suggest that the social networking giant will release their own smartphone over HTC hardwares.
According to a tweet from the popular “evleaks”, which has been reporting unreleased phone rumors before their official announcements, said that HTC First could be the hardware for the Facebook OS.
Rumors about the smartphone developed by social networking giant has been making the rounds for quite a while already. But this time, is seems to be becoming true.
Latest rumors suggests that Facebook . . . → Read More: Facebook Phone Leaks Before Event


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Sales of vegan food in the U.S. now exceed $3.7 billion, according to new data from leading global information firm Nielsen.
According to the data, which was commissioned by the Good Food Institute (GFI), sales of vegan meat, egg replacements, and dairy-style products have grown by 17 percent over the past 12 months; whereas total U.S. retail food sales have grown just two percent in the same period.
Sales of vegan meat have increased by 23 percent in the last year, which is a six percent increase from the previous year. California-based food company Beyond Meat is leading this category with sales up by 70 percent; the brand’s realistic vegan Beyond Burger has seen great success since its 2016 launch and is available in thousands of grocery stores and restaurants across the country.
Hot on the heels of Beyond Meat is vegan meat brand Field Roast, with sales up by 68 percent. Gardein, Dr. Praeger’s, and Quorn Foods are close behind, with sales up by 51 percent, 44 percent, and 33 percent respectively.
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According to GFI, the vegan meat category is “looking suspiciously like the plant-based milk category about ten years ago.” The nondairy milk market is thriving, as highlighted by a recent report by Rabobank. In the past five years, the industry has grown by four percent, but sales of cow’s milk have dropped by 3.5 percent. Health concerns associated with dairy could be a factor says market research firm Million Insights. Earlier this year, the company published a report that stated heart disease and breast cancer fears will drive the global vegan milk market to an estimated $35.6 billion by 2024.
According to GFI, “As [vegan meat] follows a similar growth trajectory, reaching share-of-market parity with plant-based milk would make the retail plant-based meat category worth almost $10 billion.”
Alison Rabschnuk, GFI Director of Corporate Engagement, said in a statement, “As consumers look to decrease their meat consumption, more and more people are choosing plant-based meat. In fact, 12 percent of households across the U.S. now purchase plant-based meat.”


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LG Energy Solution launches scooter battery swapping network with Kooroo
The South Korean battery manufacturer LG Energy Solution is launching a business with battery exchange stations for electric two-wheelers via its subsidiary Kooroo, which is aimed at delivery services. The service enables drivers to swap their batteries for fully charged ones in around 20 seconds.
The process is launched via Kooroo’s mobile app, which is capable of displaying congestion levels at battery-swapping stations, and “allows for reservations and integrates with navigation systems for safe driving to stations.”
So far, Kooroo has installed around 180 battery swap stations in two districts of Seoul and aims to expand its network to 1,000 stations in the South Korean capital and neighbouring cities by 2025.
Kooroo advertises that it stands ahead of the competition due to its advantages in cost savings. “A conventional two-wheeler incurs about 470,000 won ($350) per month, including fuel costs and insurance, for a daily commute of 125 km,” the company wrote. “By integrating LGES’ technology with electric two-wheelers, which are noise and emission-free, our service has greatly improved convenience and safety,” said Kooroo CEO Park Chan-woo.
“Kooroo’s service has significantly enhanced convenience and safety by combining LG Energy’s technology and electric two-wheelers, which are free from noise and fumes,” said a Kooroo spokesperson, adding: “We will take the lead in creating a two-wheeler ecosystem that prioritizes differentiated customer values such as environment and safety.”


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Savers, investors and coin collectors have been buying Krugerrands in record numbers since the recent gold price slump of mid April 2013
The Scoin Shop, the UK and the worlds only gold coin retail chain, has reported a 468 percent increase in Krugerrand sales, above average weekly sales of the bullion coins, directly linked to the fall in international gold prices.
Alan Demby, an international bullion expert since 1978, founder of the Scoin Shop and chairman of the South African Gold Coin Exchange, commented, Since the gold price has dropped we have seen an enormous interest in buying gold at what is seen as a competitive rate many of our existing clients in both the UK and South Africa see it as a tremendous buying opportunity they would otherwise not have.
Having closely monitored golds performance over 40 years I can safely say that the media and gold skeptics have got it wrong on this occasion: it is not bad news. Gold is smart money at a time when currencies have never been so volatile. We only have to look at the Eurozone or Americas $16 trillion dollar debt to know that gold is the one tangible currency which can be used against depleted cash reserves which are liable to devalue further."


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6 cents for a plastic bag was what Mayor Bloomberg had in mind for shoppers, and it seems that 10 cents is what Mayor Bill deBlasio may have in store for shoppers per plastic bag according to a Daily News story. Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris has been consulting with the city’s new sanitation commissioner about a ten cent plastic bag fee that has been co-sponsored in the City Council by Councilman Brad Lander. Twenty of the 51 council members are said to be on board with the idea of the 10 cent per plastic bag fee that would go to the store owner rather than the 6 cent a bag fee going to the city as was proposed by Mayor Bloomberg.
Brad Gerstman of the New York Association of Grocery Stores says that the fee would drive away customers and do more harm than good. in cleaning the environment. An estimated 5.2 billion disposable plastic bags are used in the city each year, and it costs $10 million to ship them to landfills after they are tossed away, according to the bills’ supporters.
With club stores selling in case lots and others like Aldi already selling their bags the use of plastic bags should have dropped in recent years. Ask your council member which side of this argument they are on, and ask them if they are going to pay 10 cents per plastic bag or go shop over the city line where plastic bags are free. The other question that comes into mind is - what about the plastic bags that are sold for use as garbage bags by companies? Are we going to see a 10 cent per bag fee for Hefty or Glad bags which would add $2.00 to a package of 20 bags.


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Instagram bosses social media in 2014
Instagram, the popular photo sharing app for smartphones, has put other social media sites in the shade this year.
As 2014 draws to a close, it has outgrown Twitter and it has helped push the share price of its parent company, Facebook, to a record high.
Instagram was launched only four years ago by friends Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. It was sold to Facebook in 2012 for $1 billion.
According to one analyst, Instagram is now worth USD $35 billion on the back of higher ad revenues and strong user growth.
The company said this month that it now had more than 300 million users, with an average of 70 million photos shared and 2.5 billion likes posted every day. Twitter, meanwhile, has 284 million active users, according to its website.
[pullQuote position=”left”]Instagram members December 2010: 1 million
Instagram members December 2014: 300 million[/pullQuote]
Mark May of investment bank, Citigroup, told Bloomberg that while Instagram was only beginning to explore options for leveraging the user data it collects, it was “quickly gaining monetisation traction”, which is analyst-speak for it’s starting to make more money and will contribute a bigger share of Facebook’s revenues in the future.
The bumper $35 billion valuation would represent quite a return for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. At the time, Instagram was Facebook’s biggest ever deal, but it has now of course been eclipsed by this year’s $19 billion WhatsApp purchase.
And while the direct contribution Instagram makes to Facebook’s coffers may be limited right now, it is clear that Zuckerberg’s efforts to strengthen his mobile credentials with high profile acquisitions is paying off.
His company’s share price, which has at times been a stick for his critics to beat him over the head with, hit a record high, trading up 2.27 per cent at USD $81.68 a short time ago. Facebook reported revenue of USD $3.2 billion for the 3 months to September 30th this year, up by more than 30% on the same period in 2013, and said members were up 19 per cent to 864 million.
[pullQuote position=”right”]Facebook share price on December 21st 2012: $26.26
Facebook share price on December 22nd 2014: $81.69[/pullQuote]
Instagram meanwhile has been flourishing as part of the Facebook stable having trebled its number of users since the deal was signed. During that time it has invested heavily in the service, developing new filters and creative tools to keep its users interested.
Earlier this month, it unveiled badges for celebrities, athletes and brands to verify their real accounts, which will be an important part of the effort to attract and retain the recognisable names that will bring yet more users and more advertising revenue.
It also said it would step up efforts to identify and delete fake accounts, something that is a constant challenge for all big social media brands.


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Demand for iPhones, particularly in the Chinese market that includes the mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong, pushed Apple to new heights for its fiscal second quarter. The news overshadowed weakening demand for iPads, which generated less revenue than Mac computers for the quarter as unit sales dropped 23%.
The company is “pulling off a feat rarely seen in any industry, much less the cutthroat world of consumer electronics: gaining market share while also commanding higher prices,” writes Daisuke Wakabayashi in the Wall Street Journal.
“The company said its newest phones are luring more customers away from rivals,” Wakabayashi writes. “We’re seeing a higher rate of switchers than previous iPhone cycles,” CEO Tim Cook tells him, while also citing the expanding affluence of the market overseas.
Its gross margin was 40.8% compared to 39.3% in the year-ago quarter, according to a news release, with international sales accounting for 69% of revenue. It posted quarterly revenue of $58 billion and quarterly net profit of $13.6 billion, or $2.33 per diluted share.
Sales in China rose 72% over the previous year and were greater than those in the U.S. for the first time, Tim Bradshaw reports in Financial Times.
“I’ve never seen as many people coming into the middle class as they are in China and that’s where the bulk of our sales are going,” Cook said. “You can’t grow those kinds of numbers without getting significantly into the middle class.”
If that makes it sound easy — a fresh crop of consumers ripe for the picking — it’s not. Jackdaw Research technology analyst Jan Dawson believes “Apple’s performance “[highlights] its advantages against other American technology companies,” writes the New York Times’ Brian X. Chen.
“It’s hugely important because it shows that Apple continues to be the only major U.S. tech company that is really succeeding in China, in contrast to Google, Microsoft and Amazon,” Dawson tells Chen.
IPads, meanwhile, outsold Mac computers for the quarter — 12.6 million units vs. 4.5 million — but Apple took in $5.6 billion in revenue from its Mac sales and $5.4 billion in iPads — a reversal of a trend that began back to 2011, Tom Warren points out on The Verge.
The “decrease in iPad sales is likely related to consumers not refreshing tablets as much, a lack of big improvements to the iPad, and the fact that smartphones are still revolutionizing the industry more than tablets,” Warren observes.
Not to mention wearables.
He did not release sales figures for the Watch that first went on sale last week, saying “from a demand point of view, it's hard to gauge when you don't have product in stores.”
Bill Rigby, Devika Krishna Kumar and Yasmeen Abutaleb point out that Apple is “only selling the watch online and in select third-party boutiques due to the large number of models and straps for the watch, which could become a logistics nightmare if it offered every permutation of the many varieties at already jam-packed Apple stores.”
Every enterprise should have such disturbances to its sleep patterns, right?
“Cook noted that there are already 3,500 apps available for the Apple Watch, which is remarkable for a smartwatch that has been in some customers' hands for all of four days,” David Goldman reports for CNN Money. “We're far ahead from where we expected to be from an application perspective,” Cook said — adding that the iPhone launched with 500 apps, and the iPad with 1,000.
Meanwhile, the Apple board increased its share repurchase authorization to $140 billion from the $90 billion announced last year and also approved a dividend of $.52 per share, an 11% increase. “While most of our program will focus on buying back shares, we know that the dividend is very important to many of our investors, so we’re raising it for the third time in less than three years,” Cook said in a statement.
Let’s see. At $549 before tax for the basic Watch — for which visually lyrical "films" broke the other day — all you need is 1,056 shares (worth $140,078 this morning after a 1.82% bump yesterday), to roll over that forthcoming May 14 dividend check into some arm candy.


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India, robots & work
If robot automation is to maximize its potential to increase work efficiency and productivity, it’s got to outreach to small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Success for industrial robotics means getting its new-age tools into the hands of the globe’s largest manufacturing base—SMEs. Worldwide, SMEs number in the millions. India, by far the leader, has more than 50 million SMEs, larger than China’s 42 million, and nearly double the 29 million in the U.S.
Globally, the future of competitive opportunities are almost entirely in smart manufacturing, most of which require fewer human hands per unit of output. A mix of robotics, AI and IoT is making the Indian factory smarter.
“The conventional ways of doing incremental business will no longer suffice. India needs to push its people to adopt disruptive ways of doing business,” said Ashutosh Sharma, secretary, Department of Science and Technology.
MCI Robotics has positioned itself to be the high-tech difference for manufacturers looking for a competitive, “smart” manufacturing advantage.
With such a massive underserved market, it’s easy to see that industrial robots are projected to experience a huge upside over the near future. According to MarketWatch, the industrial robot market is slated to top off $80 billion by 2025.
Nowhere is that potential market more loomingly evident than in India. “Whether it is agriculture, manufacturing or service industry, SMEs are mushrooming in myriad sectors across the country. Statistics show that SMEs account for 45 percent of industrial output and 40 percent of the total exports in India. SMEs generate employment for 60 million people and create 1.3 million jobs every year.”
Harish Chandraprakasam, director and CEO of MCI Robotics, sees a vast opportunity for his new line of industrial robots to impact India’s SMEs…and beyond.
The Chennai-based, robot newbie, MCI Robotics is owned by Malles Automated and Robotic System Pvt Ltd, a division of four-decade-old Malles Group, a multi-industry conglomerate.
Harish Chandraprakasam was convinced that high-quality, low-cost industrial robots and cobots, engineered and manufactured in India, would be well-received by SMEs, especially if ease of operation and a manageable ROI were part of the sales equation.
So far, the results—a 200 percent year-over-year increase—have borne out his conviction.
As the company proudly boasts: “Robotics of Japanese precision, German quality, made proudly in India.”
Dueling robots: Homegrown vs. foreign
Harish Chandraprakasam has decades of expertise building and deploying robots and automation systems. After a 10-year period in the U.S., first earning an MS degree in Intelligent Robotics (University of Southern California (LA)), followed by automation stays programming PLCs, designing control panels, and heading automation project teams, as well as stints with Kawasaki Robotics, and Xyratex, Chandraprakasam returned to India in 2012, and then formed MCI Robotics in 2014.
His idea was to take what he learned during his decade of building automated systems and robots in the U.S. and to build robots of Japanese precision and German quality, but in India.
If the cost for his robots was lower than foreign robots, and if the ROI was readily attainable, he felt sure that his high-quality, industrial robots would sell well. He was correct! First exhibiting at India’s IMTEX Show in 2017, MCI’s robot lineup has sold 200 percent year on year ever since.