GoPro To Take On Nikon With Upcoming 360-Degree Spherical Camera

The action camera maker will be releasing its very own and more casual spherical camera in 2016 along with a quadcopter.

At the Consumer Electronics Show, GoPro’s CEO Nick Woodman announced that he would be releasing a ‘more casual’ 360-degree spherical camera in the near future. This announcement came right after Nikon announced that it would be releasing a same type of camera.

In the Code Conference held last year, the camera manufacturer announced the release of two new products, which were spherical camera rigs; these were capable of working with virtual reality including 3D and 360-degree video shooting. Since the maker made it pretty clear these were expensive gadgets, they were mainly made for professional videographers. At the CES, the CEO and YouTube will be working on producing more such devices this year.

Additionally, Facebook is the only platform that supports 360-degree spherical videos so GoPro came handy in that aspect as well. The action camera maker released its Hero 4 line up in 2015, which is easily the best action camera in the market, but the company has plans of exploring more options in the new year.

At the Code Conference previous year, Nick Woodman had announced that the organization had plans of introducing a quadcopter, which turns out it will be releasing this year as well. A more realistic scenario would be if both the quadcopter and the 360-degree camera would be released together.

In other news, in the previous trading session, GoPro stock saw a decline of 7.66% and was called at a share price of $17.00 per share. The shares traded at the session were 10,101,326 shares. JP Morgan Chase & Co. has given a rating of ‘overweight’ to the action camera maker’s stock with a price target of $45.00. The 52-week high share price reported by the company was $65.49 and the one-year low was reported to be $15.90.

The earnings per share reported on October 28, 2015 for the quarter were $0.25 under-performing the estimates of stock analysts. The difference between the actual and calculated price was of 0.04, as the estimation was of $0.29. For the current fiscal year, the stock experts expect the company to post earnings of at least $1.17 per share. In revenue, it managed to generate $400.34 million in the same quarter; however, the analysts had predicted that it would be able to generate at least $435.33 million.

The President, Anthony John Bates sold 7,434 shares of GoPro at an average share price of $17.61 on December 7, 2015. The insider trading activity was worth $130,912.74. At present, he owns 19,963 shares of the camera manufacturer, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Apple Stakeholders Demand Diversity Among Executive

Investor claims that Apple lacks diversity among top executives and directors

As per a report by Bloomberg, Apple Inc. is likely to experience a tough time since a stakeholder has highlighted a major issue that is seaming in the structure of the company. The shareholder has issues with the company’s higher executives lacking diversity. A resolution has been submitted by an investor according to which there is a dire need of placing the “people of color” in positions as executives and directors.

However, the company has defended itself by putting forward its stance to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As per the tech giant, this is an initiative to “micromanage” and it need not be included in the proposal regarding the proxy material. The company also cleared that they have been trying hard to have a fair share of minorities on board, but it does not have the power to make the recruits take the offer they make.

Back on December 11, 2015, the SEC drafted a letter and sent to the Apple iPhone manufacturer in which is claimed that the reasoning was not that sound. Moreover, it is the company’s choice to decide if it needs to bring the issue to the 2016 annual meeting. It needs to be noted that the SEC can actually lead to the enforcement if the matter is not added to the proxy.

The stakeholder who is concerned about the lack of diversity at the company is Mr. Antonio Avian Maldonado II- who present owns 645 Apple stocks. According to him, the board is “little but too vanilla”. The reason why he was forced to think this way was when he was showing the photographs of the directors at Apple, his teenage son questioned why almost everyone in the board was white.

The Silicon Valley In general has been putting in a lot of effort to have a substantial number of minorities at workplaces. Activists have also been trying hard to get women and minorities in the Silicon Valley. The women and minorities are an important asset of the corporate world in the United States that shouldn’t go unattended due to lack of diversity.

2016 is expected to be a crucial year for the corporate world and it will be amazing if the Silicon Valley can sort of the issues pertaining to gender discrimination and equality for minorities. The annual stakeholders meeting which has not been scheduled yet will govern the course of future decisions made by the company in the fiscal year of 2016.

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McDonald's Plans To Sort Its Menu Blunder

McDonald's is devoted to fix the flaws in its menu so it paves its way to redemption

McDonalds Corporation has been stumbling since a fairly span of time where the efforts of Mr. Steve Easterbrook – the Chief Executive Officer of the company have helped in regaining stability for them. The all-day breakfast introduction in the United States has actually done wonders for the company.  However, the worst offering that the fast food giant could come up with from the perspective of an investor is actually the complete menu- this includes the Dollar Menu offering and a lot more.

As per a renowned financial blogger, Mr. Asit Sharma claims that the value menu is one of the “most detrimental” menu offering that the company could come up with as per a post published on The Motley Fool. The reason behind the failure of this offering lies in the inability to offer customers with a good bargain and at the same time churning in sales for the fast food behemoth.

"McDonald's 'Dollar Menu and More' was actually covering a vast price point so that it could succeed in luring customers and in return churn in revenues for the company as stated by Mr. Sharma.

“McDonald's 'Dollar Menu and More” was launched two years ago since the company had already evaluated that its dollar menu was not churning in profits. The recent value menu offering was derived with an idea to get customers on board who had a tight budget. Moreover, items were priced between $2 to $5 so that customers of all spending brackets copula benefit.

McDonald’s has finally decided to bid farewell to its menu in January. As a replacement, the company has decided to come up with a "McPick 2" menu, which will allow the consumers to pay an amount worth $2 for any two items of the McDonald’s menu.

According to Mr. Sharma, McPick 2 will not be a success "if customers add on other items (like high margin soft drinks) to orders, and if it wins repeat visits."

Mr. Sharma is quite optimistic about McDonald’s growth and 2015 was actually not a bad year for the company. As reported by Business Insider, “Sharma said the best thing McDonald's released this year was also a group of items: the all-day breakfast menu, which he said had an immediate, potentially long-term impact on the company's revenue and earnings.”

Hence, the company can actually can further pave its way to redemption by coming up with better menu offerings. However, MCD should not really repeat the mistakes it has committed in the past.

Alphabet's Eric Schmidt Considers UK As A Potential Market For Global E-Commerce

United Kingdom poses immense growth opportunities for tech startups and the future is bright for E-commerce.

The executive chairperson at Alphabet Inc. Mr. Eric Schmidt is of the opinion that the United Kingdom is the leader in terms of global E-commerce instead of the United States. He is of the opinion that the regulatory scenario in the UK along with the role of authorities within the European Union (EU), has assisted the company in making a sound mark in the tech fraternity. During an interview to the BBC Radio 4, the executive has reiterated that there will be no difficulty for technology startups to establish themselves in UK

The executive has stated that the region has no hindrances to establish its operations throughout Europe which is bigger than its operations in the United States. However, the entrepreneurs in Britain need to take out a bunch of leaves from the page of their American colleagues. At this point, the thing of immense concern for tech based startups is to not get tempted by bids in its businesses infancy stage- a thing quite popular in the United States.  According to him, it is a good idea to postpone the takeovers by tech giants in order to experience better growth.

Apart from this, if someone wants to establish a strong brand, the entrepreneur needs to streamline his focus on the quality of products as their major area of growth. The in house production is the ingredient to success for any startups since those businesses that are not dependent on third party designers tend to perform better.

The social media is a great tool that can be used smartly for promotions and advertisements claims the executive at the search engine giant. This will help the startups to minimize expense on hefty marketing campaigns. When it comes to funding, a group of three entrepreneurs can pair up for a project and then take the vision forward to their close ones. On the other hand, there is also another option to approach crowd funding platforms and venture groups.

The United Kingdom has a significant edge when it comes to competition from its Europe based rivals in terms of E-commerce. The continent at this point of time is coming up with a consolidated digital market and till the time United Kingdom makes its own E-commerce startups, the remaining part of Europe will then develop a unanimous digital market platform so that they can retail their products.

Hence in a nutshell, United Kingdom poses immense growth opportunities for tech startups and the future is bright for E-commerce.

Apple Will Not Disappoint It's Christmas Shoppers

Apple has initiated last minute overnight deliveries to accommodate all Christmas shoppers

As reported by 9to5 Mac, Apple Inc. the tech giant is one of those companies that try its best to facilitate consumers. This time the company is assisting all those who want to do last minute shopping for Christmas during the holiday season.

As per the publication, Apple users can buy the company’s products from their online store till 2 pm on 23^rd December. The company will deliver all those products overnight and will not charge any extra amount as the delivery charges.

This feature seems like a great incentive since the tech behemoth is trying quite hard to bring the new service coined as “Personal Pickup” to different regions other than the United States. The buyers also have the leverage to place their order online by simply checking the availability slot present and then go to their brick and mortar stores to pick the product in just a few hours. So users can also place their orders online and pick it up two hours before the company’s official closing time at their ease.

This facility got immense traction amongst the consumer base of the company in the United States. This is another reason why the company wants to take this feature to its other stores in United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

To motivate and encourage the pickup trend, the company has also plans regarding bringing the service to six new countries such as Italy, Sweden, France, Netherlands, France and Germany. Many analysts believe the reason behind coming up with a service of this nature during the holiday season is incompliance with their plan to make Apple products the most feasible last minute present. There is a lot of rush at the company’s brick and mortar stores thus delivery and pickup will actually help them in streamlining and facilitating buyers.

Christmas is an extremely busy time of the year. So if buyers are given the leverage to get their hands on Apple devices through pick up on December 24 along with shopping online till December 23 with free deliveries then it will certainly lure a great chunk of the masses that plan to shop for Christmas at the last minute. The company has a policy where they ship its products in two days. However, through this initiative they are actually going against this policy that will make them a blessing in disguise for Christmas shoppers. The delivery option is not viable for those placing orders before 23^rd of December.

Tor Myhren To Render His Services To Apple

Apple has been making several structural changes to achieve its goal

Apple Inc. is making several structural changes that will help the company in achieving its targets of reigning over the tech fraternity. The company is recruiting the top notch industry giants so that they can get one step closer to their goals.

The changes are being made to the company’s top executives where recently it was announced that Mr. Jeff Williams has now been promoted and will now held the position of the company’s Chief Operating Officer (COO). Mr. William is associated to the company since a fairly long span of time. Back in 1998, Williams was heading global procurement. In just 2 years, he became the Vice President of Apple’s Operations. He is associated to be as the pioneer member who was present during the launch of the Apple iPhone and is now working to take the Apple Watch to newer heights.

This is not the only thing that has happened at Apple but the company has now welcomed Mr. Tor Myhren on board who has been named as the President of Marketing Communication. Mr. Tor Myhren will be working directly under Mr. Tim Cook, the Chief Executive Officer of the company. It has been reported that the executive will render his services to Myhren next year. Previously he served at Grey Advertising as the Chief Creative Officer.

Moreover Johny Sriuji has also been promoted as the Senior Vice President of the company’s Hardware Technologies segment. Apple Store and various operating systems will be headed by Mr. Phill Schiller now.

Ironically, the person who will be replacing Mr. Myhren at Grey Advertising is Hiroki Asai who has served Apple for the past 18 years. Mr. Asai was taking care of marketing communications and graphic design at the tech behemoth and will be heading marketing at Grey’s now.

Apple is known for poaching the best talent that has ample experience. The company knows who has the potential to take the company to newer heights thus they never fail to surprise their fans. The company at this point of time is hiring aggressively since it is competing with various tech based companies. The ideology behind AAPL is to offer services that are top notch and unique. To make that happen, the company needs individuals that are devoted to the company and share the same vision which Steve Jobs has instilled in the top leadership. Hence the efforts made by the company are destined to achieve the targets that have been chalked out by the late maestro. 

Tesla CEO Is Ready To Embrace Competition

Elon Musk along with other counterparts is encouraging Volkswagen to come up with electric cars

Elon Musk, the Chief Executive Officer at Tesla Motors Inc. along with almost three dozen colleagues are now forcing the regulators in California to encourage Volkswagen AG to come up with cars that are ecofriendly.

Volkswagen had to deal with a lot of criticism when the company made use of a software that assisted them in cheating during the emission test that was conducted on cars that were being fueled through diesel.

The Californian regulators should push Volkswagen to come up with cars that do not produce emissions. A letter was written by Mr. Elon Musk and his counterparts to the California Air Resources Board’s head, Ms. Mary Nichols. Those cars that are powered by gas and diesel tend to produce a lot of emissions however; the new technologies like electric vehicles can actually result in no or few emissions.

Volkswagen previously claimed that they will come up with a Phaeton car that will be governed using electric batteries. Moreover, they also vouched to come up with high volume electric cars and hybrid plugins that cross 186 miles on an average.

The Tesla and Volkswagen have not really commented on the letter. As per a spokesperson from CARB, “Our focus has and will continue to be cleaning the air and advancing the cleanest vehicle and fuel technologies.”

Apart from Mr. Musk, who is the electric car giant, other Californian regulators like Jeff Skoll- former executive at eBay Inc. and Internet entrepreneur. Along with that Mr. Michael Brune of Sierra Club has also signed the letter.

The scandal that Volkswagen had to deal with earlier is actually a bad name that will haunt the company’s credibility for the years to come. By cheating during the tests they have actually ruptured their image in the automotive sector that needs to be cleared through playing a vital role in shaping the ecosystem.

This is a great way through which the company can repent for the mistakes it has committed. However, the thing that is quite ironic is that Mr. Elon Musk wants Volkswagen to join the electric car bandwagon. If the company starts producing EVs then it will further ignite competition for them.

This clearly indicates that TSLA is geared up to deal with competition and is confident about its present market presence. A new competitor also acts as a catalyst to bolster growth thus it will be great to see how things unfold when Volkswagen actually joins the EV race.