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