It’s been a rough year for Pandora. The service followed its relaunch as an on-demand streaming service by looking to get bought, but soon closed shop in Australia and New Zealand and got sued by PayPal to boot. Finally, CEO Tim Westergren stepped do…
Investment research company Bernstein has said in a note to investors that Google is paying Apple billions of dollars every year just to remain the default search engine on iOS devices. It expects Google to pay Apple $3 billion this year just for this privilege while pointing out that the licensing fees from Google likely account for a large percentage of Apple’s services business.
In its recent earnings results, Apple has been highlighting the stellar performance of its services business. It has frequently been pointing out that the services business alone would soon be as large as a Fortune 500 company.
“Court documents indicate that Google paid Apple $1B in 2014, and we estimate that total Google payments to Apple in FY 17 may approach $3B,” said Bernstein analyst A.M. Sacconaghi Jr.
Google’s payments are nearly all profit for Apple which is why the fees from the internet search giant may account for almost 5 percent of Apple’s total operating profits this year.
Google could decide to stop paying the fees if it feels that its search engine is popular enough with iOS users that Apple won’t risk including another option by default. However, since there are hundreds of millions of iOS devices out there, they contribute around 50 percent of Google’s mobile search revenue.
If Google were to decide to play hardball with Apple on this, it may prove to be a double-edged sword for the company. This might be one of the main reasons why Google hasn’t walked away from this licensing deal with Apple. It may view these billions of dollars in payments to Apple as the cost of doing business.
Google Pays Apple Billions To Remain The Default iOS Search Engine , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Facebook baked its intelligent assistant M inside Messenger several months ago. It has enabled Facebook to enhance the functionality of its messaging service substantially. M’s latest trick is to enable Facebook Messenger to provide users with Spotify suggestions based on their conversations. Whenever music is brought up in a conversation, it will offer a Spotify recommendation.
This is merely an extension of the Spotify integration with Facebook Messenger that was revealed earlier this year in March. The Spotify recommendations in Facebook Messenger can be triggered with specific words and phrases. Users can type “listen to music” in Messenger and it will offer to “Find Music” for them in Spotify.
If a specific artist is named in a conversation, M will prompt the participants if they want to listen to music from that artist in Spotify. The artist-specific prompts are often displayed without contextual words like “listen.”
Tapping on the prompt brings up a webview with the relevant content from Spotify. If users ask Messenger to Find Music, then the webview will display their recently played Spotify songs, playlists, and even offer a suggestion to create a group playlist.
For artist-specific prompts, the webview will show all of the songs from that artist that are popular on Spotify, their albums, and the playlists that they can be found on.
Facebook Messenger Now Delivers Spotify Suggestions , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Aetna, one of the leading insurers in the United States covering 23 million people, has reportedly been holding secret discussions with Apple to bring the company’s health and fitness tracking-focused Apple Watch smartwatch to its customers. Aetna already offers the Apple Watch to its 50,000 employees as part of its corporate wellness program.
Citing three people familiar with the matter, CNBC reports that Aetna is now negotiating with Apple on a plan that will offer a free or discounted Apple Watch as an incentive to those who are insured by it.
The meetings between Aetna and Apple are said to have been invitation-only. They reportedly took place in Southern California last week. Those in attendance included executives from both companies aside from hospital chief medical information officers.
The discussions are said to be led by Apple’s Myoung Cha who has the “special projects, health” job designation at the company. Aetna is reportedly pushing for this deal as it wants to increase customer interest in healthier lifestyles and better diet tracking.
Apple Watch is already one of the best-selling smartwatches on the market. If this deal does happen, it’s going to bring about a major surge in Apple Watch sales as Aetna will actively begin offering the wearable device as an incentive to its over 23 million customers across the country.
Apple and Aetna have not officially commented on this report as yet.
Apple May Bring Apple Watch To Aetna’s 23 Million Customers , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
It’s not just a southern or midwestern problem.
Company CEOs denounced the violence over the weekend but had less to say when one of its members protested Trump.
MetroPCS has revealed that it will be the home of a new 6-inch smartphone from ZTE called the ZTE Blade ZMax. While the phablet isn’t yet available to purchase, interested buyers can ‘pre-register’ for the phone; as well, the carrier is offering a new promotion where buyers get a $25 gift card for the Google Play Store. You’ll only get … Continue reading
A couple of weeks back, Sony announced some bad news for PlayStation Plus users in the EU. At the end of August, prices on PlayStation Plus subscriptions are going to rise, somewhat significantly in some cases. This price hike follows a similar one in the US last year, and as you can probably imagine, PlayStation Plus users aren’t exactly happy … Continue reading
Snapchat Stories may finally serve a purpose beyond shameless self-promotion and giving advertisers another route into your wallet. A new Snapchat feature, previewed at Lorde’s concert at Outside Lands this weekend, promises to turn the photo messaging app into a crowd-powered media tool. Dubbed Crowd Surf, it takes multiple snaps and then seamlessly combines them. Quietly launched as part of … Continue reading
Drone-maker DJI has added a new offline mode for privacy-minded pilots, cutting its quadcopters’ internet connection for more surreptitious flights. The new Local Data Mode comes, DJI says, after repeated requests from enterprise and government pilots for a setting which would limit communications to just those between the drone and the controller. It comes amid security precautions by the US … Continue reading
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