Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives says Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) AirPods could face a holiday shortage due to a “surge of demand.”
Ives estimates Apple could ship 65M AirPods in 2019 and 85-90M units next year.
Ives: “While AirPods today are on a trajectory to represent ~4%+ of overall revenues, this product category continues to speak to the unparalleled flywheel” of having more than 900M iPhones and 1.4B active devices.
Wedbush has an Outperform rating and $325 price target on Apple.
Related: Earlier today, Nikkei supply chain sources said Apple was doubling its AirPods Pro orders to its supply chain in China.
Ant Financial, PSBC team on fintech innovation
Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) affiliate Ant Financial signs a strategic cooperation agreement with state bank Postal Savings Bank of China.
The agreement focuses will include digital payments, online lending, and corporate finance.
Ant and PSBC will also establish a joint lab for fintech innovations.
Amazon and eBay linked to mercury report
Amazon (AMZN +1.3%) and eBay (EBAY +0.4%) are reacting to reports that some of their skin lightening products contain mercury.
Amazon has reportedly removed skin lightening creams from its U.K. and U.S. websites due to the potential for mercury contamination and eBay is reviewing certain products on its platform.
Testing by the European Environmental Bureau revealed 95 of the 158 products purchased exceeded the legal limit of 1 ppm (part per million), with mercury levels ranging from 40 ppm to over 130K ppm.
BidorBuy, Lazada, Daraz, Flipkart and Jumia were also named in the report as having skin care products listed on their websites with mercury.
SoftBank joining work on fast maritime network
SoftBank (SFTBY +1.6%) is taking part in a joint venture to build a fast maritime network paving the way to remote-controlled ships, Nikkei reports.
The project is led by e5 Lab, whose investors include Mitsui OSK (OTCPK:MSLOY), Asahi Tanker and Mitsubishi. The service will use a satellite constellation from OneWeb, about half-owned by SoftBank.
And OneWeb expects the network to deliver speeds of 400 Mbps, about 100 times faster than current maritime networks. Remote control of ships could halve crew requirements for many ships, in an industry facing worker shortages.
Amazon’s delivery operations have safety issues – NBC News
NBC News sources say Amazon’s (AMZN +1.2%) delivery operations have numerous safety issues, including drivers who don’t pass background checks and who participated in hazardous activities like speeding to meet quotas.
The sources say that location managers turned their heads, and Amazon knew about at least some of the behavior.
Amazon tells NBC News that delivery packages without a background check would violate company policies. The company didn’t say how it enforces the policy.
