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Levi Strauss said net income for the Q1 period ending 26 February fell to US$115m compared to $196m for the same quarter a year earlier due to lower operating income stemming from lower gross margins and higher selling, general and administration expenses on the back of higher advertising and promotion expenses. Operating income was $157m versus $234m.
Net revenues, meanwhile, grew 6% to $1.7bn on a reported basis and 9% in constant currencies.
Specifically, DTC net revenues increased 12% on a reported basis and 16% on a constant-currency basis, driven by broad-based growth in both company-operated stores and e-commerce across all segments. Ecommerce increased 11% on a reported basis and 14% on a constant-currency basis. As a percentage of first-quarter company net revenues, sales from DTC stores and e-commerce comprised 33% and 9%, respectively, for a total of 42%. Wholesale net revenues increased 2% on a reported basis and 4% on a constant-currency basis, driven by strong growth in Asia and Canada and in the US.
Levi Strauss’ Asia business saw the highest growth during Q1 with net revenues up 12% on a reported basis and 22% on a constant-current basis.
In the Americas net revenues grew 7% on a reported and constant currency basis but in Europe net revenues fell 3% on a reported basis following the impact of the suspension in its Russia business and a retailer inventory rebalancing programme.
“Our first quarter results reflect the strength of our brands and the progress we are making against our strategic priorities,” said Chip Bergh, president and chief executive officer of Levi Strauss & Co. “We delivered strong growth in our international business and record-breaking revenue performance in our direct-to-consumer channel. As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the iconic 501® jean, we are deepening connections with consumers and cementing loyalty with the next generation of Levi’s® fans. This past quarter in the US, we were the market share leader among the key 18- to 30-year-old consumer, and we continued to grow share in our women’s denim bottoms business, further narrowing the gap to number one.”
Harmit Singh, chief financial and growth officer of Levi Strauss & Co, added: “On top of 26% constant currency growth a year ago, the company achieved solid results in the first quarter. Our teams also made significant progress reducing inventory levels, putting us in a stronger position as we move through the balance of the year. We are reaffirming our annual revenue and EPS guidance reflecting a cautious outlook on the macroenvironment though we remain excited about the momentum in our DTC and international businesses.”


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I recently wrote a series on the Key Demographic Trends that I believe will provide the next great investing profits, with opportunities from the graying of America. One of those trends: the incredible profits we can reap by focusing on the Millennial generation and their spending habits. Later, I’ll give you a few millennial stocks worth buying.
The Millennials are Overtaking the Baby Boomers!
While Baby Boomers (those of us born between 1946-1964) growing older will offer many investment possibilities, another segment of the population has supplanted the Boomers as the world’s largest living generation, offering increasing investment potential. Millennials comprise 25% of the U.S. population, and 27% of the global population.
Asia accounts for the largest segment of Millennials, about 58% of total Millennial population, and in absolute terms, India, China, the U.S., Indonesia and Brazil have the world’s largest Millennial populations.
And Millennials are pretty well-heeled. It is estimated that $7 trillion passed through their hands between 2017-2020. That’s a lot of spending power!
And like the older folks, Millennials are also migrating to urban areas, particularly to southern and western cities. In the past 10 years, college student migration has been highest to Texas, Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina.
Millennials are generally more focused on value, experiences, sustainability and technology. And they are less likely to own homes and automobiles. Consequently, they will create considerably different investment opportunities than the Boomers.
Here are a few industries that should benefit:
Sectors that will Benefit
- Apartment rentals (REITs)
- Travel & Leisure
- Healthy, higher-quality food
Millennial Spending Power Should Boost these Millennial Stocks
Here are several stocks that we have recently covered in my Wall Street’s Best newsletters that I believe hold significant opportunity to benefit from the growing Millennial population. Let’s call them millennial stocks.
The first millennial stock to consider is Meta (FB), which is both ubiquitous and in the process of developing its own cryptocurrency. Contributor Jon Markman, editor of Pivotal Point, noted, “The Journal reports Facebook managers are seeking $1 billion in investment from Mastercard (MA), Visa (V) and First Data Corp. (FDC) for a new cryptocurrency based on government-issued securities. The benefits of this approach are obvious. Bitcoin is unusable as an actual currency. Volatility is too high. Say what you will about fiat currencies like U.S. dollars, but the benefit is the cost of buying a loaf of bread at the local supermarket doesn’t rise and fall during the day.
“Tying a digital currency to government-issued dollars brings price stability. It also brings the presumed cost savings of blockchain technology. And restricting access to trusted players like Visa and Mastercard, reduces the number of moving parts. This should allow the back end to scale to meet the demand of billions of users conducting millions of transactions every minute.”
FB is down sharply of late (along with most growth stocks) since hitting all-time highs last September, but given the steady growth prior to the last few months, the stock still represents compelling long-term value, especially should their recent pivot to Meta succeed.
Another millennial stock is Lululemon Athletica Inc. (LULU), recommended by Dan Sullivan, editor of The Chartist. Lululemon has been growing like crazy in recent years, particularly among Millennials, many of whom wear their yoga pants and pullovers virtually everywhere they go. The growth supports what you see with your eyes every time you enter a coffee shop. In 2010, Lululemon did just $411 million in sales. In 2020, net revenue increased 11% to $4.4 billion, exceeding analysts’ expectations of the company to pull in $4.14 billion in revenues, even with the nationwide shuttering of non-essential retail stores putting a dent in those estimates. Earnings did take a hit last year, but are expected to bounce back in a big way this year: analysts anticipate 43% EPS growth in 2022. LULU stock has been down of late, falling from a high of 477 all the way to 289 as of this writing, but the long-term trend is decidedly up.
Our third millennial stock was previously recommended by our own Mike Cintolo, chief analyst of Cabot Growth Investor. He previously recommended Snap Inc. (SNAP), saying, “The first couple of years of this stock’s life were brutal, but new management and a slew of new products (including more camera-based and some augmented reality offerings, video collections, games and even a bit of original content) and technology (including a new Android app that loads faster and has boosted engagement) has helped the user count to increase (up to 280 million active users in the latest quarter, a 22% year-over-year bump) and kept revenue growth strong (up 42% in the latest quarter).”
As for the stock, SNAP, like FB and LULU, topped out at all-time highs last fall, and has retreated quite a bit since, plummeting from 83 to 29. And yet, it’s still up 155% in the last two years. But I’d wait for it to put in a meaningful bottom before I go bottom-fishing in this one.
The rising Millennial generation comes with diverse strategies for profitable investing in growth companies. There are many more stocks that will benefit from these trends, but I hope that these ideas will give you an entrée to profiting from investing in these key demographic developments.
Do you own any other stocks that you would consider to be millennial stocks? Tell us about them in the comments below!
*This post has been updated from a previously published version, published in 2021.

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Indore (Madhya Pradesh): The objective of designing a machine or product is to bring together the Indian manufacturing sector and the design expertise on the same platform. To avail the consultation of the expert and effective solutions on design problems of new product development, continuous improvement in designing of new products and value addition to the existing products is necessary.
Experts expressed these views to create awareness at a workshop organised jointly by the Association of Industries Madhya Pradesh (AIMP), MSME Development Institute and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indore, ACE Foundation and Incubation Centre. The workshop was held at the office of AIMP on Wednesday. The objective of the workshop was to avail information about the design scheme of the Ministry of MSME. Design expert, Dr Parag Vyas, gave a presentation. He also informed about the design implementation plan through medium and urged the industrialists to take advantage of the design plan in their industries.
In the programme, Rajeev Pandey and Dr Swaminathan of IIT, Indore, highlighted the benefits of the design scheme in the industries and the finance support provided by the Ministry of MSME. Dr Swaminathan briefed the industrialists about the activities of IIT Indore. Dr Swaminathan discussed with the industrialists on Innovative Scheme, Incubation Scheme and Design Scheme.
The experts said in unison, to provide real time expert advice and effective solutions on design problems for new product development, continuous improvement and value addition to existing and new products is needed. More than 50 industrialists, including secretary, AIMP, Tarun Vyas, former president, Pramod Dafaria, vice-president, Dilip Dev, assistant director, MSME Development Institute, Gaurav Goyal, participated in the program and placed their queries about the schemes. The experts resolved them too. Mementos were presented to the experts as a mark of respect from IIT, Indore.
(To receive our E-paper on WhatsApp daily, please click here. To receive it on Telegram, please click here. We permit sharing of the paper's PDF on WhatsApp and other social media platforms.)


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Virgin Galactic to accept Bitcoin for space flights
J Thoendell stashed this in Cryptocurrency
The virtual currency Bitcoin can be used to purchase pizza and to make apartment rentals – and now it can be used to buy tickets to space. Virgin Galactic, the space-flight branch of Richard Branson’s empire, announced on Friday that it will accept payments made by Bitcoin.
“All of our future astronauts are pioneers in their own right, and this is one more way to be forward-thinking,” Branson said, in a blogpost for the company. He said a female flight attendant from Hawaii purchased a Virgin Galactic ticket using bitcoin on Friday.
I wonder how it works? What if I was late for the meeting? Do I need to pay 50% more?
Haha, yes, so you better order early!


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But since the clientele of intermediate products is the core business of most of the brands, the trend suggests that the price has become the key component in purchasing decisions, something that had not been seen in the past It is said that in categories that were once considered immune to economic cycles. Many jokes are circulating out there that we would be the only segment immune to the recession, said Douglas Brand, senior brand manager of Chunky Soup and Campbell Soup Co. Chili I think we are discovering that there is nothing that is immune to recession. The consumer trend to mentally calculate the value of the product-quality divided by price, has gone from the largest purchases such as cars and refrigerators, to products of lower prices, such as soup cans. It is a challenge for us, marketing professionals, maintaining our position a Of course there are companies that take advantage of these opportunities and make almost like good brands, which possessed the market and take advantage of the recession, many sometimes even fake brands as with Chinese companies, for example the recent Italian brand with products that has led to the Italian government to take action in the matter. The products offered are cheap and It conquers the trachea consumers already know about these brands, or acquire new a interested in these marks. Reference is made in this Congress a several speakers pointed out that marketers should pay attention to the kind of anxiety that plagues the customer.
It is said that there are many things in life people are not getting control what we can do as it makes efforts to make the consumer more aware of what happens. In Campbell’s, that meant to emphasize the traditional manufacturer’s quality by drawing attention to the nutritional information of the product began to show in front of the packaging. Everything counts when it comes to the decision, even things that seem unimportant. The goal, he said, is to reassure the customer, to tell him that when he decides to buy a certain product, the decision was good. Maybe they are taking bad decisions around it: the banks are investing in poor-quality mortgages. However, it is spending their money on things that are worthwhile, allowing you to control what can be controlled. Gunther said that Newell Rubbermaid has made a similar change in the packaging of the product line of paint applicators Shurline. Although Shurline acting on a segment without major attraction-where the brand recognition is approximately 5% – research showed that customer’s desire to have a greater degree of control was, inter alia, in touch bristle paint applicators before buying.
There was a change in the packaging allowing the customer to interact with the product. As a result, Shurline sales held steady last year, while the sector in general, registered a fall of 30%, said Gunther. It was referenzia that makes should work asociac Industrial Engineer-manager, lawyer. EGADE (ITESM), UC, University of Chilea Graduate Masters in Business Administration mentioned markets, human resources, Quality and Productivity; Doctoral Education Education and researcher Professor Graduate Area Faces UC. Graduate Program Coordinator quality management and productivity.


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"From an equity standpoint, it’s frustrating as a business owner to know that we can travel, we can convene in households without masks. And yet it’s the restaurants and bars that get penalized.”
And it's coming right up...
Starting Friday, dining rooms can be filled just to 25% capacity or 50 people, whichever is fewer.
Burger Stevens, Jojo and Derby are among those planning expansions.
Canard's steam burger, Toki's bao burger and the fully loaded restaurant burgers that didn't quite fit our big smash burger ranking.
Crispy little patties obliterated with a cast-iron press, peeled off the grill with a paint scraper and topped with American cheese. What could be better?
Fueled by tasty TikTok trends, downtown Portland’s Toki is a new destination from the Han Oak team: Takeout diaries
Start with brunch, where chef Peter Cho has created a new menu with the pandemic in mind.
Few American cities had restaurant scenes more poorly positioned to survive COVID-19 than Portland.
Portland’s love for these throwback burgers doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
The colorful Thai restaurant has roots in San Francisco, where it has been recognized by the Michelin restaurant guide.
Multnomah County will enter the state's "moderate risk" COVID-19 category at the end of the week, allowing up to 50% capacity indoors for restaurants and bars.
Experts say the safest bet when dining out remains eating solely with your own household in a well-ventilated space.


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The Better Business Bureau issued a news release Wednesday to draw attention to a a new type of texting scam called “smishing,” which includes a Walmart gift card scam in Kansas.
The bureau said consumers throughout the state have been receiving cell phone text messages claiming they won a free Walmart gift card. The texts instruct you to click on a link and enter some information.
“Unfortunately, there is no gift card,” said Roberta Namee, operations manager for the BBB. “It’s a scam to steal your credit card number and other personal info, which will expose you to possible identity theft.”
Walmart released a statement saying the text messages and the sites aren’t from Walmart, nor is the store chain associated with parties promoting the activity.
“Walmart will never initiate a text message where we ask for sensitive personal data like credit card information or social security numbers,” the statement read.
BBB said the scam has several versions. One such message reads, “Walmart $1000 gift card for the first 1000 users to go to LINK and enter code 2938.”
The texts use different URLs, including:
■ promocenterdaily.com/walmart gift
The text message is a twist on the classic email phishing scam in which scammers pose as a legitimate organization and send out emails containing links to scam sites.
The type of scam detailed above is called “smishing,” the bureau said, because it uses SMS technology to “phish” for consumers’ private information.


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And we are not selling our mobile division either
Sony has been at the centre of a few rumours lately and it appears that Sony Corporation President and CEO Kazuo Hirai has had to go on record with a fairly big list of denials.
Expect something fabless
Chipzilla has announced that it has a new president Dr. Venkata "Murthy" Renduchintala which it appeared to have headhunted from Qualcomm.
Exclusive: Just not all of them
Our well informed sources have informed us that Qualcomm will win some SoC design wins for Samsung Galaxy S7 – just not all of them.
Review: Heavy Cyanogen artillery
Lenovo’s smartphone strategy can be baffling at times. The Chinese giant acquired Motorola Mobility almost two years ago, and now it seems it will merge its own mobile division with Motorola’s. Lenovo brand phones aren’t even marketed in many big markets, namely Europe and North America.
Anti-trust probe in South Korea
Qualcomm can’t really get a lucky break anywhere. The chipmaker has just confirmed that it is facing an anti-trust probe in South Korea.
Tsinghua Unigroup's glorious five year plan
Move over Qualcomm there is a new chip giant in town and it will be number three in five years.
Wants to jump on record growth
Qualcomm has said that it is optimistic about China despite the fact that it is having problems flogging licences in the country.
One stop solution for greatness
Qualcomm and a few top managers have been underlining the importances of SoC integration – Snapdragon 820 has top WiFi, top LTE, top GPU, quite powerful DSP and custom cores.
Executives firefight a hot-topic
Four Qualcomm VPs and execs absolutely denied that its new Snapdragon 820 was suffering from any thermal issues.


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Most individuals find that working from home raises security and regulatory compliance concerns since home networks lack the same level of IT control as those found in the office environment. Microsoft Teams engineers realized that distant employees shouldn’t have to give up productivity for the sake of security, so they made changes to the platform to address this concern.
The FBI has issued a public service announcement alerting businesses about the rise in Business Email Compromise (BEC)/Wire Fraud email attacks. As the cryptocurrency sector has grown, so has the number of frauds perpetrated. Even though these frauds are heinous, there are ways your business can keep your users safe and protected.
For the sake of company confidentiality, email data leak prevention and encryption are a must. When it comes to their work, though, many employees regard it as simply another roadblock; they are not aware that most governments mandate the encryption of sensitive data before it can be sent by email.
As a business owner, you know that you need insurance. But what kind of insurance do you need? If you’re like most business owners, you probably don’t even know where to start. One type of insurance that is growing in popularity is cyber insurance. But what is cyber insurance, and why do you need it? Keep reading to find out!
The internet has had a profound impact on how we interact and carry out our daily activities. The amount of personal data you’ve shared online can surprise you. So, what happens to the data?
Some of you may already be aware of the widespread use of virtual desktops in many companies today. Companies are increasingly using Azure Virtual Desktop, commonly known as AVD, to adapt to the digital evolution and reduce expenses. Using Azure Virtual Desktops, your whole team can securely access the data and services they need on their own devices. This saves time and money while also enhancing staff productivity.
If we’ve learned anything from 2020, it’s that we need to be prepared. Every one of us has learned the importance of being ready for the unexpected, whether that means stocking up on toilet paper or digging an underground bunker to store our gallons of antiseptic and cleaning wipes.
The current world of businesses requires heavy reliance on external vendors to deliver value. These vendors can be IT tools, SaaS products, or much more.
Penetration testing, sometimes known as a pen test, is a form of cyberattack simulation. The purpose is to identify and address security flaws in a network such that they cannot be exploited by actual malicious attackers. While vulnerability scanning and assessment are important IT security practices, pen-testing simulates a real-world cyber assault.
Nearly all industries nowadays are heavily reliant on digital technology. Automation and increased connectivity have changed global financial and cultural systems, but they have also increased the risk of cyberattacks.


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Hibernia Media has entered a strategic relationship with Colt to connect their European and US broadcast networks globally. Colt has selected Hibernia Media’s platform to deliver managed broadcast services from its customers in Europe into the US, expanding reach and creating a seamless content-delivery system. Colt is Europe’s leading information delivery platform.
Hibernia Media will provide Colt’s European customers a variety of services including over 45,000km of terrestrial and trans-Atlantic fiber connectivity, over 100 POPs in the US and Europe, with another 50+ on-net media customer nodes and world-class Content Exchange Center (CEC) for native HD content delivery from programmers to cable and consumer satellite distributors. The agreement helps broadcasters meet the increasing industry demand for high quality content by providing unmatched connectivity options for US and European media companies, A full complement of video transmission services, including HD and 3D delivery, for both full time and event-based services will be available through this partnership. The service will be available to customers from May 15, 2012.
For more information on Hibernia Media, visit www.hiberniamedia.com.


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NYC Curb-To-Market Challenge
Manufacturing entrepreneur and efficiency enthusiast Chris Graff approached TASC with the goal of creating a competition to identify the best business plan to take recyclable material from New York City and use it to both manufacture and sell a product locally, with the winning company being offered a $500,000 prize. TASC was brought on to develop and manage all of the infrastructure for the campaign, dubbed the NYC Curb-To-Market Challenge (CTMC).
Our strategy included structuring the contest rules, timeline, launch strategy and promotional materials; cultivating and managing partnerships with key stakeholders; building a judging panel; and executing a media outreach and promotional strategy to put the CTMC in front of applicants worldwide. TASC developed relationships with key stakeholders and experts in the circular economy and recycling spaces – including leaders at the NYC Department of Sanitation, NYC Economic Development Corporation, investment firm Closed Loop Partners and sustainability incubator RISN, among others – to seek input on how to best structure the contest and recruit for the CTMC’s judging panel. TASC engaged nearly 50 universities around the country, inviting participation from a critical pool of students, professors and researchers. TASC developed promotional partnerships with leading industry organizations, including the Danish CleanTech Hub, leveraging their Circular City Week as a platform to publicly launch the CTMC, immediately reaching hundreds of thought leaders and experts in the industry. TASC developed a judging panel comprised of government officials, private industry executives and circular economy advocates. TASC also conducted media outreach to entrepreneurship and sustainability-focused publications and social media influencers.
The CTMC’s launch and subsequent winner announcement landed coverage in leading business and all major trade outlets, including Crain’s New York Business, Next City, Waste360, Recycling Today and Resource Recycling, garnering millions of total media impressions and dozens of social media postings reaching hundreds of thousands of followers. TASC’s publicity work generated dozens of submissions from 5 different countries. Six applicant teams were selected for in-person presentations to the judging panel in NYC, of which two were selected as co-winners, each receiving a $250,000 investment. Both companies are actively expanding operations in NYC, and TASC’s work has helped procure access to millions of dollars of additional angel investment, enabling both companies to continue to bring about significant positive environmental impact.


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It was a rough start of the year for the UK’s car industry. The latest figures show car sales have fallen for the first time in six years, with diesel sales dropping by almost a fifth last year compared to 2016. While consumers keep shunning polluting diesel cars, sales of electric and hybrid vehicles have shot up by 34 percent.
The message coming from consumers is about as loud as a lorry horn, but somehow the car industry is still failing to hear it. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) – the organisation representing British car makers – have wheeled out the all too familiar explanations for the falling diesel sales. They say it’s the government’s fault for sending out confusing messages. It’s also Brexit’s fault for weakening the pound. And consumers are to blame too for simply having doubts about diesel.
It’s everyone’s fault, but the car industry’s. Over two years after the VW cheating scandal and its aftermath called into question the entire diesel industry’s claims about their cars’ emissions, the motor lobby seems to be still in denial about what happened. Since they failed to own up to their mistakes, it’s no wonder they are failing to regain customers’ trust.
If the car industry genuinely wants to back out of the cul de sac it got itself into, it should start by acknowledging that consumers’ concerns are real and legitimate.
People have good reasons to reject diesel cars. Britain is in the grip of what MPs have described as a “public health emergency” triggered by air pollution. Tens of thousands of lives are cut short every year by toxic air with the worst impacts falling on children, the elderly and those on lower incomes. Diesel vehicles, which are responsible for 90% of air pollution from road transport, are the heart of this crisis. At the same time, while CO2 emissions in all sectors are falling, they remain stubbornly high for transport, showing that the much-touted climate benefits of diesel haven’t materialised.
Both these problems are the direct result of the marketing and production strategies of European car manufacturers. These companies pushed diesel cars because they wanted a return on their investment in the technology. Led by VW, they lobbied hard to make sure EU CO2 and air quality targets for vehicles were as low as possible despite the obvious costs to people …


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Council will not discuss tax rebate
A proposal to stop paying local businesses for collecting and remitting sales taxes on behalf of Lafayette Consolidated Government has been removed from discussion at Tuesday’s City-Parish Council meeting.
Councilman Kevin Naquin, who co-authored the proposal, asked the council clerk Wednesday night to withdraw the ordinance from final adoption “without vote or discussion,” according to his email.
“This issue was brought forward in consideration and interest of the people who pay this tax,” the four co-authors wrote in a news release. “Discussion on this matter will continue in the near future and additional feedback/input will be solicited from both the business community and the citizens of Lafayette Parish.”
This was the third attempt by the council to eliminate the 2 percent vendor compensation this year, which would generate about $1.5 million for the local government.
Business owners and leaders praised the decision to remove the ordinance from consideration.
“I think the proponents of this ordinance realized exactly how much it costs the retailers to collect their sales taxes, and we’re very appreciative of their wisdom in this decision,” business owner Fred Hoyt told The Daily Advertiser.
The Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce was one of several business associations that opposed the proposal.
“Given that virtually every local tax jurisdiction in Louisiana provides vendor’s compensation for collecting general local sales taxes, moving forward with this proposal would have put Lafayette in a very unorthodox posture that would have placed our retail businesses at a competitive disadvantage,” said Jason El Koubi, chamber president and CEO.
The Lafayette Parish School Board and municipalities of Youngsville, Carencro and Scott have eliminated the rebates.
The ordinance, authored by Naquin and Councilmen Jay Castille, Don Bertrand and Keith Patin, was introduced Dec. 3 and was scheduled for final consideration and adoption Tuesday.
The ordinance would have phased out over two years the 2 percent rebates that local businesses receive for collecting sales taxes. No change would have taken place in 2014. But in 2015, the rebates would have dropped to 1 percent and in 2016 would have been eliminated.


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Petitions FCC For Flight Testing
Walmart’s efforts to catch up with Amazon have extended to drones.
The world’s largest retailer by sales volume, if not market cap, is asking the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to OK tests of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) at a distribution facility and in residential neighborhoods.
In the former scenario, the drones would be used to take inventory of trailers and other items in a warehouse parking lot; in the latter, Walmart would attempt to use the remote-controlled aircraft to deliver a package from a truck to a home and return safely. That trial would require permission from residents living along the flight path.
The discounter, which has been testing drones indoors for several months, also wants to employ them for its curbside grocery pickup program, Reuters reported.
The FAA application comes nearly two years after Amazon founder/CEO Jeff Bezos famously revealed plans to use delivery drones on a broadcast of CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
Amazon has said its UAV program is ready to take flight, and is just awaiting FAA approval of commercial drone use, which is expected within the next 12 months.
Apparently shoppers are ready. According to a study by Walker Sands, nearly 80 percent of consumers would be more likely to shop with a retailer that offers drone delivery to their doorstep within an hour, and 77 percent would be willing to pay for the privilege.
What’s more, the majority (88 percent) of respondents said they would trust drones with delivery for at least one kind of product, with the most popular items being books (74 percent), clothing and apparel (73 percent) and pet items (54 percent).
Meanwhile, Walmart’s billion-dollar catch-up efforts in e-commerce and fulfillment, and the expected hit to its earnings, rattled investors this month, with the company losing more than $20 billion in market cap, or 10 percent of its value, in the resulting sell-off.
- 2019 TWICE Top 100: Watch List - May 23, 2019
- 2019 TWICE Top 100: Consumer-Direct Sales Dominate The Charts - May 22, 2019
- 2019 TWICE Top 100: Best Buy Keeps The CE Crown, But Barely - May 21, 2019


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The third Virtual Reality Los Angeles (VRLA) meetup is fast approaching, with an extensive list of high-profile exhibitors already being confirmed for the event, which takes place on 16th August 2014. Today however sees the organisers announce one of the most exciting features of the show; a rare showcase of the Project Morpheus virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD) on PlayStation 4.
Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) will be on hand to display the device at the show. While it’s not clear exactly what the company will be showing, it will likely involve the tech demos and experiences that it has used for events such as E3 2014 in the past. It will join its VR rival, the Oculus Rift VR HMD in exhibiting at the event. Project Morpheus currently matches the Oculus Rift’s second development kit (DK2) in terms of positional tracking, though uses an LCD 1080p display where DK2 uses a low-latency OLED 1080p one.
Tickets for VRLA are currently on sale through Event Brite. The HMD joins the likes of Jaunt VR, GameFace Labs and even famed director Guillermo del Toro’s production company, Mirada. The event takes place at 14:00 – 20:00 PDT at New Deal Studios in LA, which attendees will also be allowed to tour. VRFocus will continue to follow any and all news in the VR world, reporting back with any more updates.


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Ikea is developing a green alternative to its popular Swedish meatballs. The company has become increasingly concerned about its impact on global warming and has decided to change the world
This Earth Day marks the 22nd year that Google has created some kind of special logo to mark the occasion. As you can see below, the creativity has really blossomed as
They say you should never start a new diet on a Monday because you’ll inevitably fail. Well, it’s a great thing Earth Day is on a Tuesday this year then
Olivia Wilde is a super hero—ish. Princess Layers is her not-so-secret identity and she is encouraging people to clean up their closets and save the environment while they’re at it.
Johnny Depp went for a test drive with Tesla electric car CEO and his Transcendence co-stars but soon got pulled over for speeding.
Four years later and the effects of the BP oil spill are still visible, says a new report from the National Wildlife Federation (NWF).
On May 4th, “Avatar” director James Cameron will celebrate two years of, in his own words, a diet devoid “a single molecule of anything that came from an animal.” “This includes


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Brewers in the country are said to be using more of sorghum, a crop that is widely grown in Nigeria in place of barley in beer and malt making.According to a report by BusinessDay, Adamu Batur, Secretary, Sorghum, Millet Farmers Association of Nigeria, said that Nigeria Breweries fayrouz brand is 100 percent sorghum.
“Brewers make use of 70% sorghum as a by-product for brewing beer and malt. The brewery industry is buying so much from sorghum farmers now than before,” Bature said.
According to him, the high demand from brewers shows that the crop has a huge industrial potential.
Sorghum is also used in the food and beverage industry for biscuit and noodles production.
The crop is widely grown in the Northern states, including Kogi and Kwara states.
Industry stakeholders say that the demand for sorghum by industry presents opportunities for entrepreneurs to tap into its production to meet local demand.
According to data obtained from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Nigeria is the natural habitat for many varieties of sorghum and the world’s second-largest producer and supplier of the crop. The country produces 11 million metric tons of sorghum per annum while local demand for the crop stands at 12.5 million MT, leaving a gap of 1.5 million MT.
AmehNews recall that “Nigeria Breweries funded sorghum research at the institute and developed a sorghum variety with high malting properties which can be used in place of barley as a by-product for brewing beer and malt,” said Ibrahim Umar Abubakar, Director, Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR), Zaria.
Abubakar noted that most brewers in the country are ramping up their local sourcing of sorghum.
According to the institute, two varieties of sorghum with malting properties have been released.
“The CSR03H and CSR04H are the two varieties we developed with high malting properties and have been released officially,” said Daniel Aba a sorghum breeder at the Institute for Agricultural Research, Zaria.
Sorghum is native to East Africa. It is the 4th most important cereal after wheat, rice, and maize and is used as a maize substitute for livestock feeds because of their similar nutritional values.
“The stalk from sorghum can be used as livestock feeds while the grains are used for poultry feeds production. It has high protein content than maize,” said Aba.
The crop has the potential to be a huge export earner for the country, but years of low investment, lack of government support and natural vagaries has limited the huge potentials.
As a result, average yield of the crop in Nigeria is low at 0.500 ton per hectare compared to other leading countries which produce between 4.5 to 6 tons per hectare of improved variety.
Most brewery firms in the country are now supplying free inputs such as improved seed varieties to farmers and also giving them technical support in the production of the crop.
Currently, a metric ton of sorghum sells for N900,000 at farmgate price while 100kg bag sells for N9,000.
According to Danjuma Bunshak, a farmer, sorghum, grows all year round but mostly in December through January.
“There are various varieties of the crop. Some take 90days to grow, while some 45 days,” he said.
Bunshak who is also a member of the National Association of Sorghum Producers, Processors and Marketers of Nigeria said that the association has been approached by the Chinese government to start supplying their market.


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GLOBAL ECONOMIC OUTLOOK
For our suite of reports, please scroll down to ‘Global Economic Outlook Content’
The global economy is on course to rebound from the pandemic-induced recession in 2021 led by an increasing number of large economies. So far, outsized consumer demand for goods and exports to satisfy that demand have fueled much of the global economic recovery. Importantly, considerable monetary and fiscal policy supports enabled select economies to capitalize on the goods consumption-exports revival more than others.
Still, this mix of growth is unsustainable and likely will give way to a more balanced recovery that includes consumption of in-person services, capital investment, and greater exports from the rest-of-world instead of domination by high-tech and manufacturing hubs in Asia. This rotation is expected to produce global real GDP growth north of 5 percent year-on-year in 2021, and above-trend growth in 2022.
However, there are plenty of pitfalls and roadblocks that may hinder the global economic rebound and expansion. Businesses should be aware of these factors that might curtail return to “normalcy.”
1. First, and likely foremost, is the evolution of the coronavirus itself and the way that governments react to additional waves of infection. Moreover, how quickly governments can vaccinate their populaces to attain herd immunity, a feat that is pivotal to returning to uninhibited economic activity.
2. Second, are frictions in global supply chains and labor markets that are inducing inflationary pressures presently. Those pressures may become so acute that consumers pull back on activity, having negative knock-on effects on business production and investment, and global trade. Moreover, central banks may tighten monetary policy to address elevated inflation rates, which would also slow growth.
3. Third, are government policies that might stop the free flow of people, goods, services, and money across borders. Actions include the indefinite use of international travel bans, industrial policies towards global supply chains, capital controls, and business investment prohibitions in foreign markets.
4. Finally, central banks and governments must carefully unwind the extraordinary amount of stimulus implemented during the worst of the pandemic to mute the effects of the adjacent recession. Removal of accommodation too aggressively stands to thwart the global economic revival, while maintaining easy policies for too long poses financial stability risks.
In the long term, beyond 2023, The Conference Board projects global growth to return to an average annual rate of around 2.6 percent. The severe contraction induced by the global pandemic leaves a permanent scar on global growth in the long run, but global growth is expected to return to close to previous projections. Factors that have for a large part driven global growth in the last two decades, including the greater supply of labor and fast growth in capital stock to worker ratios, are expected to weaken substantially over the next decade. This will only be partially offset by a shift towards qualitative growth sources, driven by accelerating digital transformation and productivity improvements.
REGIONAL INSIGHTS FOR WHAT’S AHEAD
The Conference Board forecasts that US Real GDP growth will rise to 9 percent (annualized rate) in Q2 2021 and 6.6 percent (year-over-year) for the full year 2021. Following solid economic growth in Q1 2021 growth should further accelerate in Q2 2021 and Q3 2021. The primary driver of this rapid expansion will be a surge in consumer spending as the economy fully reopens. High and increasing vaccination rates and low new COVID-19 case numbers indicate that the reopening process may be complete for much of the country by the end of the summer. The rapid acceleration in growth has led to heightened concerns about rising inflation. Presently, inflation is forecasted to peak in Q4 2021 with the price level for personal consumption expenditures (PCE) – the US Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation metric – rising to 2.8 percent (year-over-year) and Core PCE inflation rising to 2.3 percent (year-over-year). It is unclear whether the Fed would tolerate inflation rising to these rates for an extended period of time. However, inflation pressure should abate in 2022 and 2023.
After contracting by 6.8 percent in 2020, The Conference Board forecasts GDP to expand by 4.2 percent in 2021 and 3.6 percent in 2022.As lockdowns were extended in most countries and with a slower-than-expected vaccine rollout weighing on confidence, quarter over quarter growth in the Euro Area declined again in the first quarter of 2021. This brought the common currency bloc into a so-called technical recession, although employment and industrial production (coincident indicators) are above their levels six months ago. However, following the stall, growth in the Euro Area should pick up from Q2 onwards. As the vaccination distribution in continental Europe gathers speed and restrictions are lifted, CEO’s and consumers are becoming increasingly optimistic, judged by a jump in business confidence in May. Inflationary pressures are rising as well, but so far are mostly concentrated in volatile items and in producer prices. It’s unclear to what extent these price pressures will be passed on to consumers, but it is likely that core inflation will increase in the coming months as service sector activity rebounds.
For 2021 The Conference Board expects official GDP growth to come in at 8.6 percent, slowing down to 5.7 percent next year. China's economic growth continued to steady in April, but it was essentially driven by strong export growth and resilient real estate investment. Both drivers are likely to be resilient over the short term, basically ensuring that China’s Q2 GDP growth will be strong. However, both growth drivers are arguably unsustainable, as the monetary environment and trade environment continue to normalize. Current producer price inflation might further intensify in the coming months before it levels off in late 2021. As down-stream producers mostly absorb rising prices into their profit margins, consumer prices are unlikely to rise as significantly as the PPI inflation. Despite the inflationary pressure, the PBOC probably will not shift current monetary stance in the near term. Sluggish household consumption growth and weakening manufacturing investment growth raise concerns about the longer-term picture.
Driven to a large extent by a reduction in energy-related GDP, overall GDP declined by 4.7 percent in 2020. For the full year 2021 we again expect a stronger contribution from non-energy related GDP to drive overall GDP growth of 2.7 percent. A fuller resumption of global oil demand and related Gulf oil production should then lift the 2022 GDP growth rate to 3.7 percent. Oil prices surpassed pre-pandemic levels in early 2021 and are expected to peak in the third quarter of this year. After that we forecast prices to decline again, following the end of OPEC+ production cuts which should lead to a surge in supply. Countries that have long realized that heavy reliance on oil revenues is not sustainable and are committed to their development plans (to support the non-oil economy) will have a head start in the race towards recovery. Hence, the 2021 economic recovery of the Gulf countries will diverge drastically, with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE rebounding rather faster than Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
To access our forecasts in excel format, click here.
Chart 1: Quarterly real GDP index: COVID-19 versus global financial crisis of 2008-2009
Notes: Quarterly GDP data for China are based on official data rather than alternative GDP growth data utilized in the Global Economic Outlook and thus overstate the growth trajectory of emerging markets and developing economies.
Source: The Conference Board Global Outlook, June 2021
The Conference Board Global Economic Outlook, 2011-2030
|Real GDP Growth Rates (Average Annual Percent Change)|
|Other Mature Economies||2.7||-2.2||5.8||2.4||2.6|
|All Mature Economies||1.9||-4.7||5.2||1.5||1.6|
|Other Developing Asian Economies||5.0||-3.1||4.2||2.8||4.6|
|Middle East & North Africa||2.8||-2.8||3.2||1.5||2.6|
|Russia, Central Asia and SE Europe||2.8||-1.5||4.2||1.9||2.4|
|Emerging markets and developing economies||3.9||-2.7||5.3||2.5||3.5|
|United States (Adjusted)||2.4||-3.3||6.8||NA||NA|
|India (Fiscal Year)||6.5||-7.3||9.4||NA||NA|
Notes: Chinese data are based on alternative GDP measures, See Harry Wu, China’s Growth and Productivity Performance Debate Revisited—Accounting for China’s Sources of Growth with a New Data Set, The Conference Board, 2014. The data was updated and revised in May 2020 and the historical data series are available through The Conference Board’s Total Economy Database; United States (adjusted) refers to our alternative GDP series for the US which are revised upward as they are based on alternative price deflators for ICT investment goods and services.
Source: The Conference Board Global Economic Outlook, June 2021


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from the paywall-fails dept
Over the past few weeks of our Error 402 series on the history of web monetization, we talked about the rise of the commercialized internet, and how it enabled transactions online, leading to the original dot com bubble around e-commerce. But, as we noted, nearly all of that was based on using the internet as a kind of glorified mail order catalog to order something physical, rather than something digital.
The path to paying for digital content took a very different route. As we highlighted last week, some news industry veterans decry the decision by many news providers to put their content online for free as the “original sin” of the news industry in the internet era. The argument, in short, is that by putting news online for free, we trained consumers to expect online content to be free, and made it impossible to charge.
Both ends of that equation are somewhat suspect, however. First, in the early days of the web, neither the infrastructure nor the culture was really set up for paying for content online. Most of the earliest attempts at doing so failed miserably. On top of that, over the past few years, we’ve seen that some sites (including news sites) have worked out successful strategies for getting people to pay to support them, though, as we’ll explain as this series goes further, the reasons they have been successful, and what lessons can be learned, have been widely misunderstood.
Indeed, there were early attempts to get people to pay for content online using various forms of paywalls that mostly did not succeed. One of the earliest news “paywalls” was launched by Microsoft, which created Slate as a site that wanted to charge a $20 annual fee for access. It did offer content for free for a couple years before launching the paywall in 1998. However, by the end of 2001 it decided to drop the subscription fee, saying that it resulted in “sluggish growth.”
Salon had a similar experience, charging users $24/year initially for some “premium” content, though by the end of 2001, it had switched nearly all of its news to be behind the paywall. A year later, recognizing that its subscriber base had stagnated, the company started experimenting with “day passes” for users who agreed to first watch an advertisement. By 2009, Salon finally dropped the paywall, admitting it was a mistake. Former Salon editor Andrew Leonard noted that, at its peak, Salon’s paywall brought in about $2 million, the costs were just too high, and the company was out-competed by news organizations that provided equivalent content for free.
Leonard made an important observation: “locking your stuff away in order to charge for it means that you are usually making it less valuable at the moment that you are asking people to pay for it.” What he was highlighting is that, in the internet world, sharing content is almost as important as accessing it, and making it more difficult to share is a real limitation.
It’s also one of the things that more modern paywalls have gotten much better at dealing with, which we’ll get to later in the series.
The NY Times, whose modern paywall is considered one of the gold standards of media paywalls (though even it has many limitations) also tried and failed with an early paywall. In 2005, it launched TimesSelect, the first version of its paywall, focused mainly on its opinion columnists, op-ed section, and business stories. The thinking going into it was that these sections were the parts that were unique to the Times, and not easily replicable elsewhere (or regarding the business section: timely, and mostly read by those with budgets to spend). However, it was seen as a failure and was shut down after exactly two years.
As Vivian Schiller, then the Senior VP and General Manager of the Times, noted at the time:
Since we launched TimesSelect in 2005, the online landscape has altered significantly. Readers increasingly find news through search, as well as through social networks, blogs and other online sources. In light of this shift, we believe offering unfettered access to New York Times reporting and analysis best serves the interest of our readers, our brand and the long-term vitality of our journalism. We encourage everyone to read our news and opinion – as well as share it, link to it and comment on it.
Basically, the competition (from blogs and social networks) was getting stiffer, and the ability to share and comment on content became critical to being deemed a part of the wider conversation. By 2009, Arianna Huffington had declared “the paywall is history.”
In short, the “original sin” was probably a necessity, rather than a mistake in development. Later in this series we’ll look at more modern paywalls that have solved some (but certainly not all) of the problems of the earliest paywalls, as well as other methods of paying for content online.
That’s not to say that all paywalls were a disaster. The Wall Street Journal was actually somewhat successful with a paywall in the mid-90s. The “Interactive Journal,” came about in early 1996, charging $49/year (or $29 if you had a paper subscription). While the then CEO of the paper, Peter Kann, chalked it up to his own “ignorance,” the reality probably had more to do with the uniqueness of the WSJ’s business content, and the value to business readers of having ready access to it.
Next week we’ll dive into an even bigger reason why paywalls failed: online advertising was just a way more lucrative means of supporting online content.


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Welcome to Microsoft Pri0: That's Microspeak for top priority, and that's the news and observations you'll find here from Seattle Times technology reporter Janet I. Tu.
Topic: surface rt
You are viewing the most recent posts on this topic.
October 22, 2013 at 8:29 AM
Microsoft has put the Windows RT 8.1 update back in the Windows Store after pulling it several days ago when some users experienced difficulties.
Here’s what the company said in a statement in the Microsoft Community support forum:
August 15, 2013 at 8:33 AM
Microsoft is allowing a few resellers in 17 additional countries to sell the Surface tablets to commercial, education and public-sector customers.
This follows on a program the company launched last month in the U.S. allowing business buyers to purchase Surface tablets and commercial services through authorized resellers.
Today’s announcement expands the program to Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. A list of the authorized resellers is here. Microsoft says it will choose additional partners in those markets in the coming weeks.
Microsoft has been making a push to expand sales of its Surface tablets with discounts on both its Surface RT and Surface Pro models, new commercials and the new reseller distribution programs. The company has never said how many units its has sold but said in a filing with the SEC that it made in $853 million in revenue for the Surface in the last fiscal year, ended June 30. A Bloomberg story from March estimated the company had sold about 1.5 million units. In its fourth fiscal quarter, the company took a $900 million writedown for Surface RT inventory adjustments — mainly the $150 price cut the company placed on those devices.
August 13, 2013 at 8:34 AM
[Update Aug. 14: My story, running in the Aug. 14 print edition of The Seattle Times, on the lawsuit is here.]
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Microsoft on behalf of shareholders who say they were misled by Microsoft executives about how well the Surface RT tablets were selling.
July 30, 2013 at 3:11 PM
Microsoft made $853 million in sales of its Surface tablets in the past fiscal year — almost as much as it had to write down as part of its recent price-cutting on the Surface RT tablets.
The company disclosed that revenue figure in a document it filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
July 19, 2013 at 9:36 AM
A day after Microsoft announced it was taking nearly a billion-dollar write-down on Surface RT inventory, it’s releasing a new ad pitting it against the iPad and touting the Surface RT’s now-lower price.
Of course, the lower price — a $150 reduction — is the reason Microsoft took a $900 million write-down in its fiscal fourth quarter on the Surface RT inventory in the first place.
July 19, 2013 at 9:00 AM
[This story is running in the print edition of The Seattle Times July 19, 2013.]
Microsoft missed big in the fourth-quarter earnings it reported Thursday — hit especially hard on the sales side by the slumping PC market and on the profit side by a write-down in the inventory of Surface RT tablets.
Also a factor was Microsoft’s shift in how it sells some of its products, most notably Office. The company is moving away from selling traditional software licenses, where people pay a licensing fee upfront, toward a subscription model, where people pay in installments over time.
For the quarter ended June 30, Microsoft posted revenue of $19.9 billion with earnings per share of 59 cents on profit of $4.97 billion. Those figures reflect a $900 million write-down of Surface RT inventory related to a price-reduction offer for those devices.
Adjusted for that write-down, Microsoft says earnings per share would be 66 cents.
That still would have fallen short of analysts’ expectations of $20.7 billion in quarterly revenue and earnings per share of 75 cents.
All of these trends — the PC sales decline; Microsoft’s shift toward subscription fees and cloud-based services; and lukewarm demand for Windows 8 in general and the Surface tablet in particular — have “been building up for some time,” said David Cearley, an analyst with research firm Gartner.
“Some of it seems to have come to a head” in the fourth quarter, he said.
For the fiscal year, Microsoft also fell short of analysts’ estimates, posting revenue of $77.85 billion, profit of $21.86 billion and earnings per share of $2.58.
Analysts had expected revenue of $78.69 billion and earnings per share of $2.75.
Microsoft shares took a hit after the earnings report came out, trading after hours Thursday at $33.21, down $2.23, or about 6.3 percent.
Up from last year
Still, the fourth quarter and fiscal year results were up from last year’s.
In the fourth quarter of last year, Microsoft posted revenue of $18.06 billion, net loss of $492 million, and loss per share of 6 cents.
Those figures reflected some unusual events such as a write-down of the 2007 acquisition of online ad company aQuantive and deferred revenue from a Windows 8 upgrade offer.
Adjusting for those items, Microsoft had fourth-quarter 2012 revenue and earnings per share of $18.6 billion and 73 cents.
For the full year 2012, the company posted revenue of $73.7 billion and earnings per share of $2 on profit of $16.98 billion. (Those figures include the aQuantive write-down and deferred Windows 8 upgrade offer revenue.)
“In many ways, our fourth-quarter trends continued many of the trends we’ve seen earlier this year,” Amy Hood, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, said during a conference call with analysts Thursday afternoon.
One such trend is the continued decline in PC shipments, which several research firms said dropped 11 percent in the second quarter from a year ago.
Hood, who became CFO in May, also acknowledged the difficulties Microsoft is facing in what some call the “post-PC era” and what Microsoft likes to refer to as the “PC-plus era.”
“We are working to transition the business into this modern era of computing,” Hood said. “Given the complexity of the ecosystem, this journey will take time.”
Hood touted some of the company’s accomplishments, including a record $22.4 billion in unearned revenue — basically, money corporations have committed to Microsoft via multiyear licenses.
July 15, 2013 at 7:07 AM
Microsoft has dropped the price on its Surface RT tablets.
The 32 GB price has dropped from $499 to $349; the 64 GB from $599 to $449.
A keyboard Touch Cover to go along with the tablet will cost $100 extra. The Type Cover, with a more traditional keyboard feel, will still cost $130 extra.
Surface RT is the less expensive, less powerful version of Microsoft’s Surface tablets. While the more powerful Surface Pro runs Windows 8 and is backwards compatible with programs that run on current or past versions of Windows, the Surface RT runs a sort of “Windows 8 lite” that is not backwards compatible and works only with apps designed for the new Windows 8 tile interface.
Microsoft has never revealed sales figures for its Surface tablets, but analysts have estimated that sales of the Surface RT have been below expectations and lagged behind those of the Surface Pro.
May 31, 2013 at 1:21 PM
From today until June 30, Microsoft is throwing in a free Touch or Type cover with the purchase of a Surface RT in the U.S. or Canada.
Usually the covers sell for $120 for the Touch cover and $130 for the limited edition Touch cover (which features the work of several designers) and for the Type cover (which has a more springy key action than the Touch cover).
The official blog post on the limited-time offer indicates that, in addition to the Microsoft Store, Best Buy and Staples are also offering the deal.
We’ve asked Microsoft what the impetus was for the deal and if early Surface RT adopters who paid for the covers might get any kind of refund or rebate. We’ll post the response when we get it.
May 1, 2013 at 1:22 PM
Microsoft has landed among the top 5 tablet vendors worldwide for the first time, according to research firm IDC.
In the first quarter of the year, Microsoft shipped about 900,000 units of its Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets — most of those Surface Pro, according to IDC estimates.
But “beyond the Surface products, Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets continued to struggle to gain traction in the market,” according to the IDC news release, which also noted that total combined Windows 8 and Windows RT shipments across all vendors reached 1.8 million units.
Microsoft’s share of the market, though, was still tiny at 1.8 percent. Leading the market were Apple and Samsung. Coming in fourth was Amazon.com, with 3.7 percent.
Here’s IDC’s chart:
March 14, 2013 at 4:02 PM
Surface sales may have reached about 1.5 million, with about 400,000 of those coming from sales of the Surface Pro, according to Bloomberg.
Microsoft has sold about a million of its Surface RT tablets — far less than the 3 million the company ordered, Bloomberg reported, citing three people who asked not to be named. It’s also trying to revamp its marketing for the device, according ot Bloomberg.
The more powerful Surface Pro tablets, which launched in February, faced apparent initial supply problems, with both Microsoft Stores and retail stores such as Best Buy and Staples not having some versions of the Surface Pro in stock during the initial launch weeks.
[Update 3/15/13: To put the numbers into an overall tablet market context, in 2012, 128.3 million tablets were shipped worldwide, according to IDC. That's up from 72 million in 2011.]


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U-M Surveys of Consumers: Strong economy amid darkening tariff clouds on the horizon
July 27, 2018
ANN ARBOR—Consumer sentiment was virtually unchanged from last month, and was nearly identical with the average since the start of 2017, according to the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers.
Despite the expectation of higher inflation and higher interest rates during the year ahead, consumers have kept their confidence at high levels due to favorable job and income prospects, said U-M economist Richard Curtin, director of the surveys.
This mix of positive and negative expectations is similar to past expansions, and, as in the past, it will prevail as long as increases in inflation and interest rate hikes remain modest, Curtin said. All households anticipated income gains of 2.2 percent in the year ahead, with those under age 45 expecting gains of 4.8 percent. The data indicate that real consumer spending should advance by 2.6 percent in the year ahead.
“The unique aspect of the current situation is the potential negative impact of tariffs on the domestic economy,” he said. “The news heard by consumers about tariffs dominated all other aspects of the economy in July. References to tariffs rose significantly in the past month, rising to 35 percent in July from 21 percent in June and 15 percent in May.
“Of course, these negative economic expectations could quickly disappear if the trade issues with Europe are promptly settled and immediately followed by agreements with China, Canada and Mexico. Resolution is critical to forestall decreases in discretionary spending as consumers may begin to take precautionary steps against the potential for a worsening economy.”
Potential Impact of Tariffs
Consumers anticipated a slightly slower pace of economic growth during the year ahead, although the majority of consumers still judged the overall conditions in the economy would remain favorable. Importantly, three-fourths of all consumers expected the unemployment rate to remain at its current low or to inch downward in the
So far, the greatest impact of prospective tariffs was on vehicles. Vehicle buying plans posted a significant decline in July, falling to its lowest level in five years. Consumers voiced the worst assessment of vehicle prices since early 1997, partly due to fears of tariffs.
Personal Finances Remain Strong
Personal finances remained very favorable as 53 percent of all households cited recent financial gains, just below last month’s 55 percent, with 43 percent specifically mentioning recent income increases, also slightly below last month’s 47 percent.
Gains in net wealth were reported by one-in-five households in the top two-thirds of the income distribution, although small net wealth declines, largely due to increasing household debt, were cited by those in the lowest income third for the first time in more than a year. Rising home values were reported by two-thirds of all homeowners
in July, a figure that has remained largely unchanged over the past six months.
Consumer Sentiment Index
The Consumer Sentiment Index was 97.9 in July 2018, between June’s 98.2 and last July’s 93.4, and nearly identical to its average since the start of 2017 (97.4). The Expectations Index rose to 87.3 in July, up from June’s 86.3 and last July’s 80.5. The Current Conditions Index fell slightly to 114.4 in June, down from 116.5 in June and last July’s 113.4.
About the Surveys
The Surveys of Consumers is a rotating panel survey based on a nationally representative sample that gives each household in the coterminous U.S. an equal probability of being selected. Interviews are conducted throughout the month by telephone. The minimum monthly change required for significance at the 95-percent level in the Sentiment Index is 4.8 points; for Current and Expectations Index the minimum is 6 points.
Contact: Bernie DeGroat, 734-647-1847, [email protected], Surveys of Consumers, 734-763-5224


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LOOK INSIDE: The largest dairy farm in NJ is in Mullica Hill
MULLICA HILL - If you've sipped a Lucerne-brand glass of milk, you've tasted a little bit of Gloucester County.
Mullica Hill is home to the Garden State's largest dairy farm — Wellacrest Farms. And it's only a mile from Clearview Regional Middle and High schools.
"Most people don't even realize that we're even here," said Eric Eachus, who owns the Jefferson Road farm with his dad Ward Eachus.
"From the road you just see buildings and a sign. You don't see any animals."
The sprawling, 3,000-acre farm pumps out 17 million pounds of milk every year — about 51,000 pounds a day, Eric Eachus estimated.
It gets sent to Florence in Burlington County to be mixed with milk from other producers in the state and bottled by brands like Lucerne, which is sold at most Acme stores, he explained.
The farm is nearing its 75th anniversary. V. Willard and Ella Eachus bought the first 70 acres where the farm was founded in 1943. The family also owns land in upstate New York.
The thousands of acres in Mullica Hill also grows feed for the animals on the farm. Feed is also sold to other farms, Eric Eachus said.


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Happy Saturday! Hopefully you’ve got some pancakes and a hot liquid of your choice. Maybe you’re recovering from the Specialty Coffee Expo, like we are (check out the robot barista and connected coffee roasters we saw!). To kick off your weekend, we’ve rounded up some quick food tech stories from the week that caught our eye. Enjoy!
Edible insects leap forward in Canada
It was a big week for edible insect company Entomo Farms. First, Maple Leaf Foods, a company best known for its plant-based meat products, took a minority stake in the company. Secondly, food distributor Loblaws launched a cricket powder made with insects from Entomo Farms. These two updates are a big step towards introducing edible bugs into the mainstream — at least in Canada, where Maple Leaf and Loblaws are based.
Grubhub adds Venmo payment option
This week food delivery service Grubhub launched an update that will allow its customers to automatically split the cost of their food with Venmo, the Paypal-like app that lets you send money to friends, and request payments. This is a (smart) way that Grubhub is adding value, trying to distinguish itself from the competitive food delivery pool. Grubhub owns Eat24 and Seamless, so they’ll also offer the Venmo payment option.
Finally! A way to fix that wobbly table
You can stop wedging sugar packets and napkins under your wobbly restaurant tables — a pair of restauranteurs have developed a hydraulics system that will keep your table wobble-free, even on uneven floors. Customers can either purchase their FLAT table bases, which use fluid to expand or compress table feet, stabilizing the table, or if they don’t want to purchase all new furniture, there’s also a modular option which can replace screw-in table feet. A low-tech solution to a highly annoying problem.
The Food Corridor releases a guide for commercial kitchen spaces
On Tuesday The Food Corridor launched their Shared Kitchen Toolkit. The Food Corridor, which raised $555K in February, is an online platform which lets budding food entrepreneurs connect to shared commercial kitchen spaces. The web-based toolkit is geared not towards startups, but towards people who want to launch and manage a commercial kitchen space. Because with more shared kitchen spaces come more startups; if you build it, they will come.
Did we miss any food tech updates from the week? Tell us in the comments, or on twitter @thespoontech.


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The Internet can be downright dangerous. Just ask our biggest celebrities, some of whom have "died" several times in online reports.
Will Ferrell supposedly died in a paragliding accident in California in 2006, according to a rumor circulated online thanks to a faux press release posted online.
Keystone Resort/Ben Lindbloom
SRI International via Wikimedia Commons
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Disney+ £1.99 introductory offer
September 7, 2022
By Nik Roseveare
Ahead of Disney+ Day on September 8th, Disney has announced that from September 8th at 5am through to September 19th, new and returning UK subscribers can get one month of Disney+ for £1.99.
Disney+ stopped offering free trials back in summer 2020. A regular subscription now costs £7.99 in the UK.
The Disney+ Day celebration leads into D23 Expo: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event presented in Anaheim, California from September 9th through September 11th, where subscribers in attendance can receive access to even more onsite perks and expect surprise announcements and first-looks at upcoming Disney+ Originals.
Additionally, on September 8th, Disney+ subscribers and their party with Disney theme park admission and reservations are invited to enter the theme parks at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, Disneyland Resort in California, and Disneyland Park at Disneyland Paris 30 minutes before regular park open to extend the celebrations.


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SHANGHAI — China and Hong Kong stocks started the week on a firm note after upbeat data pointed to a continued recovery in the world’s second-largest economy, with the establishment of a China-backed trade bloc aiding sentiment.
** The CSI300 index rose 0.8% to 4,893.92 at the end of the morning session, while the Shanghai Composite Index gained 1.0% to 3,342.23.
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** The tech-heavy start-up board ChiNext added 0.4%, while Shanghai STAR50 index rose 1.2%.
** China’s factory output rose faster-than-expected in October and retail sales continued to recover albeit at a slower-than-forecast pace.
** Property investment was a key driver of broader spending, with October real estate investment up 12.7% from a year ago, the fastest pace since July 2018 and quickening from 12% seen in September, according to Reuters calculations based on NBS data.
** Materials firms led the gains on Monday, with the CSI300 materials index rising 3.8%. The index has gained 31% so far this year.
** Investors also welcomed the establishment of a China-backed trade bloc that excludes the United States.
** Fifteen Asia-Pacific economies formed the world’s largest free trade bloc on Sunday, which had left a rival Asia-Pacific grouping under President Donald Trump.
** Responding to Washington’s decision to ban U.S. investments in firms tied to the Chinese military, China’s commerce ministry said the U.S. should stop its unreasonable suppression of Chinese firms.
** In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index added 0.4% to 26,263.41 and the Hong Kong China Enterprises Index lost 0.1% to 10,537.04. (Reporting by Luoyan Liu and Andrew Galbraith; editing by Uttaresh.V)


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China EVs: BYD plans US$14 billion investment to develop smart cars, seen as the next battlefield
He was speaking at the company’s Dream Day event in Shenzhen on Tuesday to launch its smart car system, Xuanji.
The system integrates several technologies BYD has developed in both vehicle intelligence and electrification, including cloud-based artificial intelligence, 5G network connectivity, smart driving and smart-cockpit features, enabling a car to perceive changes in the internal and external environment and adjust in real time to enhance driving safety and comfort, according to the company.
“The first half [of the game] is about electrification, the second half is about intelligence,” Wang said, without giving a time frame for or more details about what innovations the 100 billion yuan investment is expected to yield.
The company has more than 90,000 employees, with some 4,000 working on smart driving, including 1,000 algorithm and hardware engineers and 3,000 software engineers, Wang said.
EVs with the latest digital technologies have become a trend in China because young drivers give priority to autonomous driving systems and digital cockpits when scouting for new cars.
Intelligence is measured by a car’s digital bells and whistles through built-in features such as voice-activated controls, facial recognition, over-the-air software upgrades, phone compatibility and self-parking.
“Nearly all key Chinese EV builders are strengthening their research and development teams to make their cars smarter in terms of self-driving and in-car entertainment,” said Cao Hua, a partner at the Shanghai private-equity firm Unity Asset Management, which counts artificial intelligence (AI) and vehicle robots among its investments.
Telecom and smartphone maker Huawei, also a potential rival to BYD, in November invited at least four traditional carmakers to join its new smart car joint venture, which is launched with state-owned Changan Automobile.
There are more than 2.6 million BYD cars already equipped with L2 autonomous driving systems, according to the carmaker. According to SAE, a global standardisation body, L2 systems provide assistance to the driver but require active supervision.
In 2023, more than 57 per cent of the vehicles BYD sold came with smart driving systems, and the company expects to further increase the percentage this year.
Last year, BYD sold more than 3 million new energy vehicles, including pure EVs and plug-in hybrids, a year-on-year increase of 60 per cent, Wang said.
This year, BYD will launch more than 10 high-end smart driving models equipped with lidar (light detection and ranging) sensors, according to Wang. Models priced above 200,000 yuan will offer high-end intelligent driving assistance systems as an option, while it will be standard in models priced above 300,000 yuan, he added.
“With more automobile companies accelerating their deployment of urban NOA [navigation on autopilot], the trend of car intelligence is becoming increasingly clear,” Zhou Xuhui, analyst at Eastmoney Securities, said in a report on Tuesday.
“We believe that ‘intelligence’ will become an important criterion for measuring the core competitiveness of car companies in the future.”
Additional reporting by Daniel Ren


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One of the leading virtual reality studios Schell Games has announced during E3 that the escape-the-room VR spy puzzle game “I Expect You To Die” will be launching a new level titled “Seat of Power” on July 16th.
Seat of Power
The great thing about this new level is that it will be a free DLC. In the new level, you will begin by being placed at the head of the table in Dr. Zor’s boardroom, challenged to retrieve information and solve a series of puzzles to escape safely and avoid death.
In the trailer you can see the signature sound, look, and feel of the original game. For those unfamiliar with the game, I Expect You To Die is a virtual reality puzzle game where players take on the role of an elite secret agent. Inside the game, they attempt to survive deadly situations in immersive, dangerous locales by completing missions using problem-solving skills and wits. It’s a race to thwart the evil Dr. Zor without succumbing to traps and tricks that may cause an untimely demise.
Schell Games has stated that the game thus far has generated over $3 million in revenue which is an impressive feat in the VR community.


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Minister of Industry Innovation and Science and Technology, Davidson Ishmael, has described as “irresponsible and reprehensible” a circulating WhatsApp voice note denouncing the Trident National ID card.
The message claims that the Government is seeking to infringe on the rights of its citizens and is involved in spying on them. The Minister maintained that there is absolutely no truth at all to this and he expressed his disappointment with those who would seek to infer that the digital ID system is being used for unethical activities.
The Minister described the allegation that the Government is charging Barbadians for the new ID as blatantly untrue. He asserted that the ID card is free; however, if you lose your card, you are required to pay a fee to have it replaced.
“The same thing happens right now with our current ID card. Indeed, the cost of the replacement has increased and whilst the pricing for this is set by the Electoral and Boundaries Commission, I believe this reflects the cost of the new card and the processing that is required to invalidate the old card and issue a new card.”
He stressed that the card is a passive card and is essentially the same as your bank cards which contain the same chip and pin technology.
“It contains no power source so unless it is inserted into a reader or tapped on a terminal, it cannot transmit anything, it cannot do anything on its own. The QR code or the Machine-Readable Zone can only be read if you present them to someone to be read – which is actually why they are on the back of the card, not the front. Therefore, the card holder is in full control.”
The Minister noted that the QR code is something that some misinformed people seek to use in conspiracy theories. He explained that the ‘Q’ and the ‘R’ stand for Quick Response.
“It is simply a way of encoding information that devices can read quickly. It saves time because the card holder would not have to type out any information. The QR code on our new ID card simply takes you to a website where information can be verified,” he said.
In relation to a suggestion that has been made that there is some kind of link between the Trident ID card and purported technology allegedly contained within COVID-19 vaccines, the Minister refutes this reckless claim as absolutely baseless. “There is no link here whatsoever,” he stressed.
Mr. Ishmael emphasized that the card has one purpose only, that is, to make citizens’ lives easier. “Sometimes we need to step back and understand what identification has done for Barbados. There are a number of other islands in the Caribbean that have never had a proper ID card system. Some of us take it for granted that we can walk into a bank or any business or government office and just by showing an ID card prove who we are. That does not happen in other places. You have to get someone to vouch for you – you have no simple way of proving who you are.
“Our government is now building on that system that we have had in place for 40 years and which almost everyone in the country has agreed needed to be upgraded. We are taking it to the next level. Just a couple of days ago, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) published a report called the Digital Nation Survey. In this report more than two out of three people in Caribbean are fully in favor of Government providing digital services. Eighty-seven per cent said that they would be more likely to use digital services provided by government if government would incorporate new technologies to improve these services. This is what the government is doing,” he explained.
He further stated, “We are doing two things here: the Electoral and Boundaries Commission (EBC) is replacing the current ID card with a new, more secure and digitally capable ID card; and on top of that, we are introducing a Mobile Digital ID. Certainly, there will be a new ID card. However, you can use your new ID card in exactly the same way you have always used your ID card.”
The Minister pointed out that people could choose to never put it in a machine or never tap it on a reader – that is their choice. He concluded, “Our job as a government is to bring you new ways of doing things that are easier, faster and safer with the Digital ID, and once you are comfortable, you can onboard to the Mobile ID at any time – the choice is yours.”


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Dodge RAM 2500 trucks stand on display during the 2003 Greater Los Angeles Auto Show.
Chrysler believes 453,000 vehicles in that group may have portions of their steering systems misaligned, creating a risk that they could stop functioning and cause accidents.
The automaker said it knew of seven accidents and two injuries associated with the problem.
Among the vehicles covered by the recall are roughly 842,400 Dodge Ram 2500 and 3500 trucks from model years 2003 to 2008. The rest include certain Ram 2500 and 3500 pickups from 2008 to 2012, Ram 1500 4x4 Mega Cabs from 2008, and Ram 4500 and 5500 4x4 chassis cabs from 2008 to 2012.
Chrysler said it would notify the affected truck owners by mail next month with instructions for making free repair appointments.
In June, Chrysler was forced to recall 2.7 million Jeeps because of a potential fire risk, after initially challenging a recall request from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
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In January 2022, AirAsia Group Berhad rebranded itself as Capital A Berhad to better represent its expanding portfolio of businesses, extending beyond its core budget airline. Besides the AirAsia airline, Capital A’s businesses include ventures in digital, logistics, and other aviation services. Its ‘airasia Superapp’ now acts like an online travel agency that allows consumers to book air tickets, accommodation, as well as hail a cab. Its fintech and e-wallet platform, BigPay, and logistics business, Teleport, also look promising.
Here are 10 things I learned from the 2023 Capital A annual general meeting.
1. Revenue surged from a low base of RM1.7 billion in 2021 to RM6.4 billion in 2022. Net loss narrowed from RM3.o billion to RM2.6 billion over the same period despite the absence of government support as all core business segments recovered except Teleport. COVID-19 movement restrictions have gradually eased, and border closures have slowly lifted in the past two years. Air travel demand remains strong as forward bookings have surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Approximately 70% of the company’s 205 leased planes are currently fully operational, and the expectation is that all of them will be in full operation by the third quarter of 2023. Retrenched staff have also been recruited.
2. Capital A was restructured into four main businesses, namely aviation, digital, logistics, and aviation services. The aviation segment consists of its aviation businesses in Southeast Asia. AirAsia Japan was shut down in 2020, while the company’s stake in AirAsia India was recently sold. It targets to launch AirAsia Cambodia by the end of 2023 and will continue to focus its business primarily in Southeast Asia particularly Thailand and Malaysia.
As consumers, we may have observed a significant increase in airfares after the pandemic. According to CEO Tan Sri Anthony Francis Fernandes, these airfare hikes are ‘rational’ and are maintained at levels that are beneficial for both the company and its shareholders. The management doesn’t anticipate that the emergence of a new competitor, MYAirline, to have a substantial impact on the Malaysian market, given that other well-established airlines also exercise fare discipline. Additionally, the CEO anticipates that ancillary services such as Wi-Fi will play a more significant role in boosting the company’s bottom line.
3. Under its digital segment, the company repositioned its airasia Superapp as a low-cost online travel agency (OTA) by focusing on travel-related businesses including flight, hotel, and ride-hailing. The airasia Superappno longer offers food delivery after three years since its launch as Anthony Francis Fernandes thinks they ‘are never going to make money on food delivery’. As part of its collaboration with foodpanda, consumers who wish to order food delivery or hail a cab will be redirected to each other’s app instead. The benefit of this partnership is yet to be seen. Additionally, the airasia Superapp now enables consumers to make discounted reservations for in-house dining. The CEO is optimistic about the prospects of its digital ventures, citing the company’s strategy of capitalizing on its extensive database to engage in cross-selling to its 12.9 million average monthly active users (as of Q1 2023), which helps reduce advertising expenses.
4. The company’s ride failing app — Airasia Ride — is currently available in Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia while the company is applying for relevant licences in Singapore and the Philippines. The number of completed rides per month improved from 161,000 in the first 17 months of operations to 410,000 currently. Market conditions are challenging — it’s noteworthy that Grab, the dominant player in the ride-hailing sector, continued to incur losses in 2022.
5. One shareholder pointed out that airasia Superapp was not as user-friendly as Grab. In fairness to Capital A, it’s worth noting that their app was developed during the pandemic when the company faced financial constraints. As a user myself, I have observed some noticeable improvements in the airasia Superapp over the past few years. Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that lately, airasia Superapp’s fares have generally been more competitive and lower than those offered by Grab.
6. BigPay, an ewallet app, is available across Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore. The company is seeking approval in other parts of ASEAN. The CEO aims to have at least 30% of the revenue in airasia Superapp transacted on BigPay in the future, which is a bold target.
To me, the positioning of BigPay can be clearer to the public. It acts like an e-wallet, a budgeting tool, and a debit card. Users can apparently transfer money to overseas bank accounts and pay bills in the three countries mentioned (obviously I am not a user). Migratory workers look like the target users as cross-border remittance grows. BigPay has disbursed RM2.8 million to its 1.3 million user base so far as part of its nascent lending business.
BigPay raised US$100 million from SK Group in 2021 and aims to achieve profitability by 2024. Its payment business made up of 69% of its revenue in 2022. It will rely on QR payments to reduce its dependence on Visa and Mastercard payment networks.
7. Teleport sells AirAsia’s and third-party passenger flight cargo belly space to freight forwarders like DHL and Schenker. It has grown its market share to 10.3% in the ASEAN region and targets to overtake Singapore Airlines Cargo by the end of 2023. Teleport is also an e-commerce service delivery provider and a courier for customers like Zalora, Shopee, Lazada. One aircraft freighter was brought in in June 2023 for the first time with two more on the way.
Teleport’s revenue declined from RM551.2 million in 2021 to RM469.1 million in 2022, primarily attributed to the increased availability of belly space as air travel rebounded, leading to higher supply in the market. Losses before interest, taxes, depreciation & amortisation narrowed from RM69.1 million to RM26.9 million over the same period as it used low-margin passenger planes to carry cargo in 2021. In 2022, it shifted back to using the belly space of AirAsia aircraft to carry cargo.
8. Aviation Services comprises several entities, including the inflight catering company Santan; the ground handling services provider, Ground Team Red; the maintenance, repair, and overhaul company, Asia Digital Engineering (ADE); as well as AirAsia Consulting, among others. These companies provide services to AirAsia and the CEO wishes to expand their offerings to other airlines.
In an effort to sustain the company during the pandemic when flights were halted, the management explored various business verticals, such as launching Santan outlets in the Klang Valley. Some of these Santan outlets were subsequently shuttered. Currently, the company is pivoting towards smaller-format kiosks and supplying its food products to convenience stores and inflight catering services instead.
The cargo volume handled by Ground Team Red is anticipated to grow 30% year-on-year in 2023. To capture the rising cargo demand, three cargo terminals will be introduced by Q1 2024 at Sandakan, Kota Kinabalu, and Tawau in Sabah. Ground Team Red is expected to be profitable by the end of 2023.
Additionally, the company’s dual-listing in New York does not appear to be progressing as of now.
9. Capital A remains financially distressed and may only exit PN17 status by 2024. It postponed the submission of its regularisation plan to October 2023 to incorporate its latest FY2022 figures. At the same time, it plans to list in New York look shelved for now. Despite these challenges, the CEO has reaffirmed his commitment to remain at the helm of Capital A.
Impairment losses from AirAsia X and Thai AirAsia X (both are related parties) totalling RM313.2 million and RM227.7 million respectively were recognised in 2020 and 2021. The amounts were pertaining to the former’s debt restructuring exercise and the latter’s proposed rehabilitation plan.
10. Capital A aims to raise RM1 billion through debt and equity financing. Teleport raised US$50 million in 2022, while the aviation group and Asia Digital Engineering secured US$30 million and US$100 million respectively in 2023. Capital A is in talks with third parties to secure funding totalling US$40 million for airasia Superapp and another US$150 million for the aviation group.
The fifth perspective
Capital A has experienced remarkable growth since its inception, expanding its fleet from 2 to 205 planes. Much like how it successfully challenged Malaysia Airlines in the aviation sector, the company aims to extend its competitive edge into other industries. While numerous promises and prospects were discussed during the AGM, many of these initiatives are still in the process of materializing. It may be prudent to adopt a wait-and-see approach to gauge the outcomes of these endeavours.
Moving forward, the company stands to benefit from favorable business conditions, including the recovery of the Chinese market, which contributed to 15% of Capital A’s pre-pandemic revenue.
Liked our analysis of this AGM? Click here to view a complete list of AGMs we’ve attended »


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The demand for industrial and storage space in Maharashtra’s second-largest city, Pune, is likely to expand by double digits to almost 7.5 million square feet this year.
According to the newest study, e-commerce and third-party logistics providers would drive demand in Pune.
The research revealed that the demand is expected to climb 15-16% in 2022, bringing it to 7.5 million square feet by the end of the year.
Pune’s demand reached a high of 6.5 million square feet in 2021. Its industrial and warehouse industry grew quickly last year, with current stock totaling 33.2 million square feet.
In the city, monthly leases are currently between $17 and $30 per square foot.
Several significant global firms focusing on auto, auto and ancillaries, electronics, white goods, and some of the newest industries such as Electric Vehicles (EVs) and renewables have relocated to the city.
As per the study, supply is mostly centred in the northern section of the city, particularly Chakan and Talegaon, along with the eastern belt, which runs from Phulgaon to Ranjangaon.
It’s worth noting that Chakan and Talegaon provide over 70% of the industrial and warehousing supplies.
By the end of 2025, Pune’s supply is estimated to reach 60 million square feet.


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Author Nicholas Leigh has been interviewed on numerous radio stations this week, about new research that finds that many Brits buy books they never plan to read – to look more intelligent.
Leigh, a client of Palamedes PR and the author of four novels including his latest thriller, Blood Harmonies, spoke to stations including BBC Radio Hereford & Worcester, and BBC Radio Jersey, about the study.
He said the findings confirm that many people have “wonderful stories and sources of fascinating information on their bookshelves”, but will never know because they will never start to read them or persevere past the first few pages.
Author PR agency Palamedes helps authors secure publicity for their books with a range of guaranteed book PR services. You can read a handy FAQ with the answers to the most common questions about running a PR campaign or contact our PR team to discuss a potential campaign HERE.