Technology Roundup – New smartphone chief at Samsung Electronics, Amazon Palm – Pay with your hand

科技精选——三星新任史上最年轻总裁,亚马逊拟推出手掌付款系统
Published on: January 20, 2020
Author: Amy Liu

New smartphone chief at Samsung Electronics

  • Samsung Electronics (OTC:SSNLF) has appointed Roh Tae-moon, its youngest-ever president at 51, the head of its smartphone division, tasking a veteran executive with oversight of the world’s largest mobile device business.
  • Roh joined Samsung in 1997 and has been a key player in the R&D side of the Galaxy device lineups. He’s also been instrumental in cutting costs through the outsourcing of production to better compete with Chinese handset makers like Huawei.

Amazon Palm – Pay with your hand

  • Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is working to allow customers to connect their credit card information to their hands, WSJ reports, creating retail checkout terminals that could work with the technology.
  • The company recently began partnering with Visa (NYSE:V) to test out transactions, and has discussed the project with Mastercard (NYSE:MA), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) and Synchrony Financial (NYSE:SYF).
  • Patent ready… Amazon has even filed a an application for what it described as a “non-contact biometric identification system” that includes “a hand scanner that generates images of a user’s palm.”

Digital tax in the spotlight this week

  • French economy minister Bruno Le Maire hopes to resolve a row with the U.S. over a planned French digital tax by Wednesday evening, adding he would meet American counterparts at the Davos World Economic forum in Switzerland.
  • The digital tax imposes a 3% levy on digital revenues of companies like Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), which have more than €750M in global revenue, including at least €25M in France.
  • Washington has threatened to impose taxes on key French products in response, triggering fears of a new transatlantic rift.

IBM Q4 2019 Earnings Preview

  • IBM (NYSE:IBM) is scheduled to announce Q4 earnings results on Tuesday, January 21st, after market close.
  • The consensus EPS Estimate is $4.69 (-3.7% Y/Y) and the consensus Revenue Estimate is $21.62B (-0.6% Y/Y).
  • Over the last 2 years, IBM has beaten EPS estimates 100% of the time and has beaten revenue estimates 50% of the time.
  • Over the last 3 months, EPS estimates have seen 5 upward revisions and 6 downward. Revenue estimates have seen 5 upward revisions and 6 downward.
  • Recent earnings Analysis from our contributors:IBM: Cost Containment Efforts Could Drive The Narrative

The Dewey Electronics Corporation reports Q1 results

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