Hasta La Gadget!

Buying a flagship phone outright can be a rather expensive affair, which is why carriers typically offer up plans in which customers sign a contract, typically for 24-months, and then just a monthly repayment along with the price of a phone plan. Ultimately this makes it easier on the wallet, at least upfront.

In recent times we’re starting to see carmakers lean towards such a pricing plan, and Volvo is the latest of them. During the 2017 LA Auto Show, Volvo unveiled a plan to sell customers the company’s latest XC40 crossover SUV, where instead of paying a huge sum upfront, customers will just have to pay $600 a month.

This cost will cover pretty much everything that one can expect in terms of vehicle expenses, which includes the cost of the car, tax, delivery, access to Volvo’s concierge service, and insurance, which is apparently regardless of your age and location. Volvo’s Chief Digital Officer, Atif Rafiq told Engadget that this makes it easier to own a car, even compared to getting a lease.

According to Rafiq, “But a subscription is entirely different that because it solves for a bunch of wider things in actually owning a car. It’s not just getting the car, it’s maintaining it, it’s paying for additional things it needs like insurance. That’s all that in one flat fee is something simpler but is also more transparent.” Like we said, Volvo isn’t the first to offer up such services. Porsche has launched a similar program at $2,000 a month, while Ford also has a similar scheme, although in both these cases it feels more like you’re renting rather than owning.

Volvo Wants To Sell Cars Through A Subscription Model , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

The way we consume music has changed over the years, where it used to be we would be physical copies of music in the form of vinyl, cassette tapes, CDs, and so on, before we moved into the digital age where we would buy digital singles and albums. In more recent times, it seems that music streaming is the new form of delivery.

However it seems that while music streaming is on the rise, it might not necessarily be as profitable as one would think. This is according to Jimmy Iovine, the head of Apple Music and also an industry veteran. Speaking to Bloomberg in an interview, Iovine suggested that music streaming services have little to no margin, and that streaming services aren’t actually making money.

“The streaming services have a bad situation, there’s no margins, they’re not making any money.” He also claims that services such as Spotify could be in trouble because unlike Apple or Google or Amazon, they don’t sell anything else. “Amazon sells Prime; Apple sells telephones and iPads; Spotify, they’re going to have to figure out a way to get that audience to buy something else. If tomorrow morning [Amazon CEO] Jeff Bezos wakes up and says, ‘You know what? I heard the word “$7.99″ I don’t know what it means, and someone says, ‘Why don’t we try $7.99 for music?’ Woah, guess what happens?”

He adds, “The streaming business is not a great business. It’s fine with the big companies: Amazon, Apple, Google… Of course it’s a small piece of their business, very cool, but Spotify is the only standalone, right? So they have to figure out a way to show the road to making this a real business.”

Apple Music Boss Claims Music Streaming Isn’t Making Money , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

“To expect China to be able to solve the problem by having tougher sanctions is unrealistic,” an expert warns.

The former employee who had shut down The Donald for 11 minutes says he loves Twitter and America.

Earlier this month, Trump’s Twitter account was briefly deactivated, making it impossible to access it or any of its content. The suspension was a brief one, lasting only 11 minutes, but they were enough to inspire both rants and praise. Some had speculated that the deactivation was the result of a rogue employee, but extensive details on what went down … Continue reading