IBM And ADA Collaboration

The American cloud computing company partners with the Association to develop tools for helping diabetes patients and their caregivers

IBM Watson Health has collaborated with American Diabetes Association to integrate artificial intelligence in research. The duo intends to develop healthcare providers and diabetes advisor for patients based upon the Association’s repository of research and clinical data, in addition, they’re giving a challenge to cognitive computing-based application developers to enhance diabetes management and prevention.

In recent times, Watson Health signed a similar kind of agreement with the American Cancer Society, intended to better advise oncology patients as well as their providers based upon the AI system’s ACS information analysis. And it has also signed a series of agreements for the application of cognitive computation to clinical trials as well as oncology genomics data.

The ADA venture intends to meet the needs of 3 main groups:  patients and caregivers, researchers and healthcare providers. It’s designated to enable the cognitive diabetes database development to guide healthcare treatment decision as well as the research database population health management and tools, which can offer personalized details depending upon a number of variables. These include treatment regimen, disease stage, behaviors and demographics.

Population health management is a research database designed to elicit concealed patterns for guiding therapeutic discovery.  CEO of ADA Kevin Hagan stated . "By combining the Association's enormous body of valuable data with Watson's cognitive computing capabilities, we will empower people living with diabetes, clinicians and researchers with better data and better insights, which ultimately can lead to better outcomes."

In their demand for cognitive applications, the partners are considering to include Watson- analyzed, ADA data. The aim of the challenge is to play a helpful role for the integration of the data into lives of persons with prediabetes or diabetes; it starts this summer. 

Beyond ADA and Medtronic, the AI system is also involved in a number of other diabetes ventures.

In 2015, data was presented by IBM Research on a predictive model to offer individualized ranks of risk factors of diabetes. And it just developed a research tie up with the Israel based HMO Maccabi for studying the prediction of diabetic retinopathy based on 2 decades of data for over than 2 million members.

In other news, the American cloud computing service provider has opened its IBM Watson center in Singapore. Mobile Health news has reported that the New York based company is also working with Medtroninc to help the cause of diabetes patients as the two organizations are working to use Watson's Cognitive computation abilities along with data from the medical tech development company to predict hyperglycemic -and hypo events and provide diabetes guidance and coaching to people for avoiding those events.

Uber Forwards Commendable Gestures For Drivers

\

The American application based cab service provider will charge passengers for the time its drivers need to wait for them

Uber has received quite negative criticism over how it treats its driving partners. Now, the American application based cab service provider is amending its ways and expanding a few goodwill gestures to the drivers, in form of quicker payment options, worker-loyalty coupons along with other new features.

In most of the cities, driving partners will be allowed to stop incoming requests from passengers before the completion of their shifts. To log off in the present system, they should manually refuse ride requests until they’ve dropped their last consumer. Also, passengers in a larger number of cities will begin getting charged 2 minutes following the arrival of their car to compensate drivers for long waiting. The organization had been conducting experiments with shorter time periods in certain cities and will extend the same to 12 more in June 2016.

On the road, driving partners can look for gas prices from Uber’s application at proximate stations and search for lower priced options. The California based organization stated that in the future, it could hold negotiations with gas stations to provide discounts in return for promotions inside the application. The American search engine developer Google’s navigation application Waze that is famous amongst Uber driving partners shows gas prices as well as provides coupons in a similar manner.

The changes tell us that Uber –$68 billion market valuation following its recent investment –is interested in simultaneously appeasing the two sides of its market: drivers and riders. In January, the company reduced fares in many US cities, a change not popular with a large number of drivers. The organization had been finding out means to win drivers without raising prices. CEO of Uber Travis Kalanick, pledged shareholders that his organization would become lucrative in the North American region by this year’s second quarter, an attainment it stated it has reached in Canada and US.

In the meantime, last week the taxi company received a sum of $5.5 billion from the soverign wealth fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to help finance aggressive growth in the Asian region. Harry Campell, who is a writer of a famous blog relating to Uber, stated the changes do not address the top priorities of drivers. They are interested in the tipping option for riders inside the application and higher fares, he stated.

Uber agreed under a planned $100 million settlement in the states of Massachusetts and California to permit drivers to ask for cash tips, but employees have stated in complaints with the US court that the plans do not go that much far way. Whereas the changes in the future might not put address the biggest complaints of drivers, Campbell stated they must positively affect them.

Samsung Takes The Role As Tesla's Supplier

The South Korean battery maker has turned into Tesla's new supplier in the competitive market

Samsung SDI and Tesla Motors have entered into a business relationship. The South Korean giant has become the new battery supplier for the electric car maker. For a long time, Japanese battery maker Panasonic Corporation has been Tesla Motors battery cell partner. The supplier has been unchanged till last year when the Palo Alto Calif. firm gave an approval to another cell maker, LG Chem. The deal has been for a short time and only to upgrade its Roadster 3.0.

At the Oakland port, a bill of lading between Samsung SDI and the California based company shows that the car maker received a delivery of Samsung SDI 18650 battery cells weighing over 120 tones- the same format the electrically powered car maker sources from the Osaka based organization. Electrek contacted the automaker’s representatives, but hasn’t received a response yet, and asked them if the organization could confirm which cells will be used for as the number seems to be extreme for testing (sufficient for more than 100 vehicles) or a venture such as the upgrade of the Roadster battery pack( though possible).

The acquired battery cells could also be used in Tesla Energy devices such as Powerwalls as well as Power packs. On 19^th April 2016, the deliveries reached Oakland. Unconfirmed reports regarding the battery delivery negotiation between the South Korean electronics maker and Tesla came into lime light in October last year- right when the organization confirmed that it was using LG’s cells for upgrading its Roadster battery pack.

In May 2016, latest report published in the South Korean region suggested that in recent times the car manufacturing organization’s executives had a meeting with the nation’s leading 3 battery suppliers, SK Innovation, Samsung SDI and  LG Chem, for negotiating new battery delivery contracts. Whereas Panasonic continues to be the automaker’s main battery partner and vendor in the huge Gigafactory, the car maker always clarified that the organization will look to expand its battery supply chain.

Since in 2015, the automaker has filed to the SEC its capability to acquire battery cells from a number of suppliers. It believes on its capability to change cell chemistry and vendors of batteries whereas retaining its current investments in manufacturing equipment, electronics, software, testing and automobile packaging, will enable it to rapidly deploy a variety of battery cells into its products and leverage the recent progresses in battery cell tech.

The organization has also filed that it had currently chosen many battery cell sources, but qualified just 1 cell  (18650 from the Corporation) for its battery pack and the automaker expects qualifying extra cells from the rest of the makers.  LG chem’s cells for the Tesla Roadster were probably amongst those.        

Alibaba invests in an Isreali E-commerce startup

The Chinese online retailer is investing in Twiggle to help its online shoppers shop on its marketplaces

Alibaba Group Holding Limited is funding an Israel based tech company that intends to enhance item searches on its online trading websites.  On 31^st May 2016, the Chinese E-commerce company participated in its recent investment round, being headed by South African company Naspers. The round will bring aggregate financing for the E-commerce search engine operator to around a sum of $20 million, revealed sources aware of the deal.

Twiggle will use the funding to expand its R&D team. Before investment by the online retailer, Twiggle had received a total equity funding of $14.7 million. The online retailer, which runs the Chinese large online marketplace Taobao, refused to specify the money or state why it’s investing in the organization. Twiggle is not the only organization backed by the online retailer as it has previously backed a QR start- up in which it invested a small amount of money in 2015.

Amir Konigsberg, co-founder and CEO of Twiggle stated that the company was hoping to collaborate with an investor who can assist Twiggle in having better understanding of the industry. He added, “With nine million different sellers, Taobao is one of the biggest and most challenging sites out there.”

Twiggle’s largest appeal for the web retailer is its own query language tool, which uses artificial intelligence and behavioral data to narrow down search results to help online shoppers shop on the marketplaces. “What our system is able to do is adapt itself to specific retailer data and structuring patterns,” Mr Amir stated. That could amend the means employed by consumers to find what they are interested in buying amongst over 1 billion items for sale on Alibaba’s TMall and Taobao marketplaces.

An improved query tool could do result refining so that when a search would be conducted for, say “camera” would not return results for lenses or camera cases. The search tool will be also able online buyers to further narrow down results- say, to cameras equipped with innovative night- shooting abilities.

The importance of Better-target search results is rising as mobile turns into the web retailer’s larger source of revenue. Twiggle also could help the Hangzhou based organization spin off its growing cloud-computation facility to other online trading website, analysts state.

Mr Amir stated Twiggle, established 3 years ago by Ex Google workers will use money to build its Israeli engineering group and set up its offices inside the United States. He stated it will begin collaborating with 2 big organizations in late 2016 to use the newly introduced query language, though he refused to elaborate.

Twiggle is also mapping to find out how items relate to each other as well as their attributions, to help lower down the mistake rate in product search results.

Alibaba Focused On Eliminating Counterfeit From Platform

Alibaba is spending heavy amount of money to remove fakes from its online marketplaces.

On several previous occasions, Jack Ma’s e-commerce empire Alibaba Group Holding was accused of counterfeiting goods on a couple of its online marketplaces. This was noted by the luxury brand owners who filed a complaint against the e-commerce giant to the US Trade Group. On numerous close instances, Alibaba saved itself from entering the blacklist of the US Trade Group from which the company’s two online platforms, Alibaba.com and Taobao Marketplace, just freed. The problem of fake goods has become a major problem for the company in the past four to five years.

The Chinese e-commerce organization was under fire from western brand owners over fakes on its online marketplaces, but the founder and chairman of Alibaba Group, Jack Ma, said recently that his company is working and will leave nothing to get rid of counterfeit goods on its platforms. A Chinese online news website first reported the speech of the founder and chairman of the firm on Monday and on Tuesday it was obtained by the Wall Street Journal.

Jack Ma and his company have been fighting fakery for more than a year now and according to him, it is a difficult task to eliminate counterfeiting online. At this point, it is essential for the company to focus on it. The image of Alibaba, China, and the Chinese e-commerce market would be affected among investors and luxury brand owners of the West.

Mr. Ma added, “For so many years, we have been using traditional methods and measures to fight fakes, but the harder we fight, the more pop up. Now is the time to let Internet companies to have a try… and solve the issue with big data technology.”

Alibaba Group is known for several amazing feats of which the largest Initial Public Offering (IPO) holder in the US market is one of them. The online retailer raised a massive $25 billion from investors in its IPO in 2014. It reportedly employed a massive 2,000 workforce who works full time to eliminate counterfeit from the platforms. In 2015, it invested nearly $154 million (1 billion Yuan) over two years to battle fake goods.

For a long time, the Chinese e-commerce industry has been alleged to have counterfeit goods on their platforms. Not only the companies but also China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce, also known as SAIC, is working to eliminate fakery from the industry. Western luxury brands that came forward and sued the e-retailer include Balenciaga, Gucci, and Yves Saint Laurent.

“Just rooting out counterfeits from Alibaba’s platforms is not being responsible to consumers. To be really responsible, (the industry) needs to fight them to the extent that they can’t survive on WeChat and JD. We need to fight them so they will have no distribution channels, no means to produce, and that they will be tracked down,” said Jack Ma.

Netflix Should Fear HBO Original Programming Plans, Says Analysts

HBO has announced to bring in 600 hours of original video programming this year to compete against Netflix in the market.

Netflix Inc. came into the streaming industry as an online video content service provider. The streaming giant is significantly growing in the TV market. In the beginning of this year, it made itself a global TV network. 

Netflix is available in more than 190 countries now with having almost 75 million subscribers. With the increase in number of the countries in its portfolio, the company decided to expand and diversify its content as well. Late last year, with the news of global expansion plan, it said that they would double the original programming slate in 2016.

Whatever Netflix has done in the past year or so, it has earned the right to be called as the uncrowned king of the TV industry; but this is not all. The streaming giant faces tough competition from its market rivals, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu. The recent news suggests that the company should fear its long time market rival.

Major pay TV cable networks such as HBO, Fox, and Starz etc. were already sidelined by the streaming services when they started providing services in 2007. TV networks tried chasing them for long but failed. HBO is bringing the biggest change of all that TV networks usually do not go for, i.e. investing billions of dollars on content.

According to sources, HBO is all set to offer nearly 600 hours of original content this year. The CEO of Time Warner, Jeff Bewkes, said in a conference that HBO will add 50% more original content this year, which would be approximately 600 hours of video programming. The CEO did not mention the amount of investment to bring in the new original content but it was previously known that $2 billion budget was allocated for the content last year. This suggests that the investment would be near to the previous year’s budgeting.

On the other hand, Netflix allocates a $6 billion budget for its content. However, the budget it spends on original programming is still unclear. It has almost 31 in-house shows planned for 2016.

Netflix and HBO are in a collision course where a network, which previously focused on driving viewership, is now expanding its standalone streaming app ‘HBO Now’, whereas Netflix is deeply exploring its opportunities to produce more original content.

As far as the business of HBO is concerned, a former host of The Daily Show has signed a deal with the TV network for making a short digital content for HBO GO and HBO Now. There will be an option to further expand the digital content in a series or a movie. HBO is well known for the biggest hit show in TV industry, Game of Thrones, and irrespective of how big Netflix or any other business has become, no one so far has managed to come up with such a show in all these year. 

Alibaba Sets Fees On Loan For Financial Institutions

Alibaba has announced to set fees on the loan deal agreed from a group of eight banks.

Last week, Alibaba Group Holding announced that it has asked for a loan up to $4 billion from eight Chinese banks, which would be used in funding its expansion plans. The expansion plans usually would be done through several deals and acquisitions from the loan. A couple of days ago, Reuters reported that the eight banks have raised money up to $3 billion, which is just a million shy of its requested $4 billion loan. The Chinese tech giant closed the deal and agreed the $3 billion loan for the next five to seven years.

Alibaba Group was already strong-armed while it was investing in startups in domestic and international markets. Currently, the company is making its presence in the Indian e-commerce market by holding significant stakes in Snapdeal and PayTM. It is also in talks with Flipkart, the biggest e-commerce platform, for investment purposes. Thus, it is further beefed up on the investments part with the new funding it received from the banks.

Alibaba has set the fees that it will be offering to the banks on $4 billion loan. It has decided to offer 60 basis points to its lenders who commit to the $200 million or above to the facility. The banks will begin marketing this facility from the agreed loan of $3 billion. The people with the knowledge requested to not be identified because the dealings of this matter were confidential. The people added that 50 basis points will be offered to lenders committing between $150 million to $190 million and 40 basis points to lenders committing between $100 million to $140 million.

The Chinese e-commerce giant has planned a roadshow in Hong Kong. It has agreed to pay an early bird fee i.e. offering five basis points to those banks who participate before April. The final deadline date for participating in the syndication is April 8. The spokesman of Alibaba, Bob Christie, refused to comment on this matter as of yet.

In a US regulatory filing held on March 9, Alibaba announced that it has signed a deal with eight banks agreeing a five-year $3 billion loan to fund its plans. The size of the loan can be boosted if there is a demand from other lenders. The filing reported that this loan to Alibaba has offered a fee of 110 basis points more than what London interbank offered initially.

The group of eight banks includes Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Mizuho Financial Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley as reported by the people familiar to the matter. 

Airbus Plans To Compete With Boeing's 777-9

The European air plane maker is not standing behind its American rival

In the business, the most common notion is –the bigger the better. In the line of it Boeing introduced its new and more powerful 777-9. The proposed jet will be the largest after qualifying to be 406-seaterwith popular twin-engine and a wider body. However, the European rival, Airbus, is not falling behind its American counterpart. Reportedly, the European plane maker is working on its 400-seat twin engine jetliner. The move is likely to create a dynamic competition between the two entities to create the world’s biggest and largest twin-engine commercial jet.

According to the Airbus sales representative who gave the statement to the Reuters, the Toulouse, France headquartered company is searching for an airliner support for new variant of A350. The company’s A350 had an extended seating capacity, wider body and better seat mile economics than the rival’s 777-9. American based Boeing has already been successful with its 777-9 who, since 2013, has taken into its credit more than 250 orders from airlines like Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar Airways.

For the time being, the anticipated jet has been named the A350-8000. This new jet is likely to cater to the need of those airlines which are seeking the high-capacity and long range aircraft but are not on the watch for high-performance characteristics –which are generally embedded in 777-9 make it highly popular among Middle Eastern airlines. The current Airbus jet A350 has seating capacity of 360 passengers at most. Therefore, through the higher capacity twin jet, the European plane maker can efficiently compete in the market and attract the customers which are searching for high-capacity jets without jumping up on Airbus’s four-engine, double-decker A380—currently the world’s largest passenger airliner.

However, turning the concept of a larger airliner into reality is very difficult. It’s not as simple as attaching some additional seats or extending the fuselage. On the basis of the assumption that the Airbus finds significant airline support which could push its proposed plan of A350-8000 even then it ought to persuade the engine maker Rolls-Royce to come up with a new derivative of the engine slated for the A350-1000, currently the largest of the A350 variants. In the second half of 2016, the very first flight of the A350-1000 is scheduled.

Coming up with a new derivative isn’t convenient for even Rolls-Royce who may not have the bandwidth or budget to do so. Moreover, the proposed development is exorbitantly expensive—almost, according to an estimation by unnamed analyst, half-a-billion dollars expensive. Nevertheless, the exorbitant investment will reap good benefits in the future. Although, Airbus’s gigantic A380 orders have been a little on the softer side than what the company had initially expected however the

But that investment could be worth it in the long-term. While orders for Airbus’s massive A380 have been far softer than the company anticipated, the high-capacity, twin-engine jets market has been valued to have worth of around $1.9 trillion over the next two decades.

In July, at the Farnborough International Air Show outside of London, the France based Airbus is scheduled to give in more details and update about the future of its highly anticipated A350-8000s jet line. 

Hedge Funds Are Reducing Or Adding To Their Stakes In Apple

The tech giant's stock has been trading up due to variation in its stock held by different investment companies.

According to the latest 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the New York based investment firm, Neville Rodie & Shaw Inc., during the fourth quarter, has brought down its position in Californian based Apple Inc. by 4.3%. The firm now currently owned 324,234 shares after selling off 14,478 shares of the most valuable company. The tech giant makes about 4.1% of the firm’s portfolio which ultimately turn the stock in having the second largest position in Neville Rodie & Shaw Inc. As of the most recent SEC filing, the investment firm’s holding in the Silicon-Valley business is worth $34,129,000.

Apart from the New York based company, other hedge funds have also either reduced or added to their stakes in the company. In the fourth quarter, Manning & Napier Advisors increased its stake in the tech giant by a significant 51%. Resultantly, the company now owns a colossal 3,937,063 shares which now, after the company bought additional 1,330,218 shares, worth $414,414,000. Moreover, Boston Advisors added 171.5% more to its stake in Apple Inc. The company’s shares now have a worth of $129,850,000 and totaled 1,233,608 shares.  

Moreover, in the fourth quarter, the Atlanta based asset management firm, Cornerstone Investment Partners brought its stake in the $580 billion company up by 2,818%. The firm now owns iPhone maker’s stock worth $61,108,000, and accumulated shares of 580,539. In the similar fashion, Simplex Trading increased its stake by 782.8% and it now owns 343,422 shares worth $36,148,000. Lastly, during the fourth quarter, the investment managers, Verde Servico Internacionias took into its credit Apple’s stock worth$50,228,000.

During the trading which carried out on Friday, the Cupertino, Calif. firm’s stock increased by 1.49% and hit $103.01 mark. Apple’s stock had a trading volume of 46,055,100 shares. The market capitalization of the company which entitled it to be the most valuable company is $579.64 billion and a PE ratio of 10.96. The firm has a 50 day moving average price of $96.86 and a 200-day moving average price of $108.55. Apple Inc. has a 1-year low of $92.00 and a 1-year high of $134.54.

Recently, the company has also declared a quarterly dividend, whose payment was carried out on Thursday, February 11, 2016. On February 8, 2016, the investors of record were given a $0.52 dividend. Through this, the payment highlights the company $2.08 annualized dividend and a yield of 2.02%.

The stock of the company has been under scrutiny of multiple analysts. Analysts at Piper Jaffray reduced the price target to $172 from previous $179. They also rated the stock as “Overweight.” $145 price target, however, has been set by Sterne Agee CRT analysts who further maintained the “Buy” rating for the stock. In the similar fashion, Credit Suisse and Barclays retained their “Buy” rating for tech giant’s stock while the former set the price target of $140. Lastly, Raymond James gave “Hold” rating to the stock and set the price target at $120.