Apple Is Stumbling To Keep Pace

Decrease in the demand of Apple iPhone has caused panic among investors.

Apple Inc. stocks have been struggling to keep pace since quite some time. This is due to the increasing concerns pertaining to the growth of the iPhone. Investors are extremely concerned about the staggering demand of the iPhone 6s since the market for expensive phones is saturating.

Apple stocks have experienced a 11% drop over a time span of the past six months. Considering this situation, the company is geared up to report it earnings for the second quarter of FY16. The analysts at The Street are expecting revenues worth $52 billion whereas the company’s adjusted earnings are likely to be $2.00 per share.

Brian White an analyst at Drexel Hamilton has come up with his prediction of the earnings. He forecasts a decline on a year over year (YOY) basis in terms of the iPhone shipments for the present trimester. This is due to the tough competition and the closure of the iPhone 6 product cycle.

However, at this point, the analyst is optimistic since the launch of the iPhone 7 is scheduled in fall. Moreover, he is also intrigued by the updates from the capital return program. Mr. White stated, “We continue to look forward to a new iPhone cycle with the iPhone 7, the potential for an enhanced capital return program for shareholders and new geographic opportunities (e.g., India, Tier 3-5 cities in China). Moreover, Apple trades at just under 8x (ex-cash) our CY:17 EPS projection.”

At this point there is some volatility in the Apple market since the iPhone 6s series has finally come to an end of its two yearlong product cycle. He is of the view that the users are waiting for the iPhone 7 to make its debut. Moreover, the analyst talked about his recent visit to China and Taiwan where there was a surge in the demand of iPhone SE.

For the quarter in June, the analyst is predicting sales worth $44.44 billion and the earning per share to be $1.6. However, the estimates by Street’s are $47.32 billion and $1.76. It is assumed that the management will be extremely particular in the third quarter due to the macro environment and end of iPhone 6 cycle.

“That said, we expect Apple to expand its capital return program from the $200 billion ($153 billion used as of 1Q:FY16) through March 2017. If Apple maintains a March 2017 expiration, we believe a $30-$40 billion expansion is possible, including a 10-12% cash dividend increase,” Mr. White explained. Analysts at Drexel Hamilton have maintained a Buy rating on the company’s stocks with a price target of $200.

Considering the present sales graph of the iPhone, AAPL decided to come up with iPhone SE that had a small screen for growing markets like China and India. The phone is priced $399 which is rather expensive for the targeted nations. However, it has been deduced that the company has hiked old iPhone prices in India to circulate iPhone SE. Analysts believe that by marginalizing the price of iPhone SE, sales can bolster even further.

Cisco Fixes A Dangerous Problem With Its WLAN Software

Cisco has managed to fixed a vulnerable problem that was seen in its wireless LAN controllers WLC software.

Cisco Systems noticed a highly vulnerable problem with its Wireless LAN Controllers (WLC) software and has managed to fix it. This critical problem might have caused major cyber-attacks and breach of security, which was not only seen in WLAN softwares but also the ASA software and Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol that were utilized in numerous products of the IT organization.

The IT giant’s negligence to at least three out of five software issues, which was noticed in the WLAN Controller, were used for securing wireless networks and even managing them. The most threatening issue was the incorrect handling of the HTTP traffic, which enabled attackers to send requests to any device and overflowing buffering.

Cisco Systems WLC devices were badly affected from this issue, such as the ones running on 7.3, 7.2, 7.4 and many others. The first top-rated vulnerability was the chances of exploitation by any attacker, while the second vulnerability was the handling of HTTP traffic with chances of exploitation in the same manner. Another DOS issue was indicating similar threats of security breaches in the Cisco AireOS, which enabled attackers to access URLS that are not accessible and even supported by the interface of the device.

The Information Technology organization’s vulnerability with the library was in the encryption subsystems, which was failing to validate fields and opening it to hacking and cyber-attacks. Twenty products of the company consist of this library problem affecting almost all of the versions of 1.5.3. The Product Security Response Team of the IT giant is claiming that it was not aware of these issues but is still working with the users and customers to update the software and fix these dangerous problems.

Software updates can be expected to provide solutions to these problems the company has noticed. The list of products that have been affected is too long, such as the Cisco Jabber, ASA software, WebEx Meetings Servers and many more.

Cisco has always been conscious of security in its products and will manage to fix the issues shortly. It has even introduced anti viruses for its users, so that hackers do not victimize them. Most of the work is done online. Users now have almost all of their data on their computers and phones, which has attracted even more hackers to take advantage and attain the sensitive data for their own benefits putting the users in a vulnerable position. In the world, today, internet and electronic is more important than anything, which the tech company is well aware of, and is now trying to fix the problems as soon as possible.

Alibaba To Open Office In Australia

Alibaba announced last week that it will make its way in the Australian market as a part of its global expansion plan.

Australia is one of those countries that have never gotten much traction and many Internet companies of the United States have not established operations in the region. These companies are always in the limelight one way or the other. On the other hand, Alibaba Group Holdings Limited decided to open an office in Australia recently and it did not get any traction whatsoever.

Alibaba is trying very hard to expand its global footprints one way or another. It was currently focused to make its mark in the Indian e-commerce market but without establishing operations there.

The e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group managed to process transactions worth at a massive $149 billion in the December quarter. Last week, the company officially announced at an event held in Guangzhou that it is exploring possibilities to inaugurate an office in Australia in the coming times.

According to the reports published by the Sydney Morning Herald, the company has already completed one senior hiring for its future office in the region. Fairfax Media learned that the chief executive of the NSW branch of the Australia-China Business Council, James Hudson, would be joining the business from next month. The media group further added that a famous entrepreneur John O’Loghlen has also joined Alibaba’s team for the Australian office.

It will not be wrong to say that the expansion of Alibaba in the region is significant development for the retail sector. Jack Ma, who was an independent entrepreneur, founded the company. It listed on NYSE with a market value of $200 billion. The Chinese tech giant went public in what is said to be the largest Initial Public Offering (IPO) in history valued at $25 billion. Maggie Zhou is a senior executive in charge for the past two years in New Zealand and Australia.

As always, the purpose of opening an Alibaba office in the region is to help the local Australian brands feature themselves in the huge Chinese market. Alibaba marketplaces have nearly 407 million active buyers and SMBs in the region can benefit from this opportunity. Hence, by establishing an office there, BABA can increase the number of sales through Australian customers.

The company said in a statement, “We aim to have dedicated country operations to work closely with Australian merchants and partners, and it is our plan to establish an office in Australia in late 2016 to better help local brands and merchants to access to the Chinese consumer market.”

The online retailer refused to provide more details.

Boeing Awards Contract To Texton For Its 777X Simulators

Texton Inc. wins a contract from Boeing to build flight simulators for its 777X.

Boeing Corporation awards a contract to Texton Inc. to build flight simulators for its product, 777X, according to the announcement on Tuesday. The airplane maker deal is expected to last for ten years with the first training suites expected to be in full operation by 2019.This deal is also going to help both the parties build better relationships with one another. 

This is the second contract the aerospace company has awarded to Texton; the first one was to build simulators for its 737 MAX back in 2014. The recent deal is also of great significance as the 777X is one of the company's signature airplanes, whose flight training in the past was attained by many rivals such as CAE Inc. The financial details of this recent contract have not been revealed as yet by either party. However, Texton is ecstatic about this contract and even said that such major manufacturers are hard to get and even tougher to win. 

Boeing Co. now has four training simulators that are operational including TRU. The fuselage and other products for the 777X are manufactured and supplied by Spirit AeroSystems Inc. This jet is expected to be on sale and service by 2019, which is when the simulators will be all set. For now, the training is going to take place in 777 simulators. The aerospace giant has already managed to get approximately 320 orders from countries including the US, Singapore and many others for the 777X, according to the data in its books. The production and development of these full class simulators for the 777X are going to be done by TRU, which is also going to give the company an engineering simulator for use. 

In the past, TRU has also sold FFS to Boeing's biggest rival in the market, Airbus, for its A320NEO. It even installed an A320 simulator at Asia's training center in Taiwan. According to Boeing, the 777X is going to be the largest two-engine airplane around the globe once it is complete. 

In news regarding the aircraft manufacturer, it is crossing all innovative boundaries by making efforts to manufacture 3D printed artificial ice. The company is doing this so that approval from the FAA and certifications, verifying that the jet can travel in tough icy weather conditions, is made cheaper and easier to attain without causing any damages to the plane. It has filed a patent to achieve this and  might be successful in doing so, making tests much less time-consuming and inexpensive in the future. Airbus is trying to come up with new way to make certification attainment easier too.

Alibaba Invests $1.25 Billion In Ele.me

Alibaba Group confirms its investment in the Chinese food delivery startup Ele.me.

Alibaba Group Holding Limited is currently focused to expand its global footprints in the Indian e-commerce market as well as bolster its already dominating position in the Chinese market. Last week, it spent big to enter in the Southeast Asian market by signing a multi billion dollar deal with Lazada, a venture of Rocket Internet. Apart from this, the Chinese e-commerce giant confirmed its investment of $1.25 billion in a Chinese food delivery start up, Ele.me. For a long time, the company is trying to improve its presence in the online to offline (O2O) market.

It was reported by the Wall Street Journal that Alibaba Group along with its financial arm is all set to invest up to $1.25 billion in Ele.me. Alibaba, on his own, agreed to invest $900 in the Chinese food delivery start up where as the rest will be provided by its financial arm. Initially, the news about this potential move started back in December 2015 where the Chinese tech giant desperately wanted to expand in the online to offline market which currently is the latest thing attracting the online shoppers.

The O2O platform basically allows the traditional and conventional retailers to benefit from the internet technology and expand their reach in the online market. Previously, Alibaba held stake in Dianping Meituan which is the largest Chinese provider of ticket reservations, booking hotels, and other services. The e-commerce leader sold shares which it had in the local deals giant in order to further invest in Ele.me. Alibaba sold $900 million in shares and the move came in as the company found out that its domestic Internet rival Tencent Holdings also has a stake in Meituan Dianping. With Ele.me, Alibaba has a different plan to take things forward.

Tech Crunch reports that Alibaba also has other organizations and synergies on its portfolio. Koubei is one of the joint ventures of the Chinese online retailer that allows the restaurants in the region to offer promotions through smartphone. For that matter, the company signed a $3 billion loan deal for numerous deals. It has a lot of cash on its hands therefore it can surely make several acquisitions in the coming times.

Irrespective of a billion dollar investment by Alibaba and its financial affiliate, Ele.me remains as an independent company for now. The executive vice chairman John Tsai also joined the board of Ele.me.

Analysts believe that Alibaba would surely benefit from this deal sooner or later as it will help the company to take an early lead in the market.

Fill In Your Tummies With Unlimited Fries At McDonalds

McDonald might offer all you can eat fries at its futuristic outlet.

McDonald’s Corporation has been stumbling since a long span of time. The company had to deal with several years of weak sales but they have finally realized now that by retaining to its forte can become their key to success.

During the start of this week, the fast food giant made an announcement that it has removed Premium McWraps from its menu throughout the United States. They initially came with these wraps to appeal to the likings of the young, health conscious audience in which tortilla wraps were filled with grilled chicken and vegetables.

The spokesperson for McDonald’s, Ms. Lisa McComb reported to Bloomberg that the company has started to give up on the snack sized and large variants of the wraps at almost 14,000 outlets in the United States. However, they will be still offering the chicken ranch snack wrap at some outlets.

When the company came up with these wraps in 2013, the idea was to present the consumer with lesser calories, lean meats and more vegetables which is contrary to other items on the McDonald’s menu. As per Bloomberg, when these wraps were launched initially, they were said to be Subway Busters as they could give tough time to their counterpart.

However, these wraps turned out to be a pain for the company instead of adding to their glory. An analyst at Edward Jones, Mr. Jack Russo stated, “A lot of people who eat at restaurants aren’t interested in health and wellness.” He is of the view that consumers should be given what they actually want.

As per a report by the St. Joseph’s News-Press, a franchise owner belonging to Missouri, has revealed about his plans to come up with a new McDonald’s outlet spanning an area of 6,500 square foot being the largest in the region. The restaurant will be different than other outlets having kiosks enabling you to customize the burgers and desserts with all you can eat fries. So far the pricing mechanism of the all you can eat fries has not been shared but many analysts believe that it will be available for those customers who visit at late night.

An important thing that has resulted in a game changer for the company renewing its success trajectory is the roll out of the all-day breakfast across the US. Back in October, the company started to offer its breakfast menu all day long which was received very well amongst consumers. Since the past two quarters, sales have bolstered for the company on the whole.

Steve Easterbrook, the chief executive officer at MCD is devoted to making the company’s menu simpler. He also wishes to pump up the cooking process by minimizing the prep time. The efforts will lead to making the service efficient and help them cater to the large influx of customers who visit their outlets daily. Mr. Easterbrook’s strategic moves have not only helped the company in emerging out of its turmoil but have also added to the net worth of the company.

Twitter Users Can Now Enjoy Music Via Moments

Audio cards from SoundCloud are now compatible with Moments and users can enjoy their playlist on Twitter Moments.

Twitter is making its service, moments even more attractive than before. Users now have the option of listening to music via the service and enjoy their playlists when they are using the micro blogging platform. Audio cards from SoundCloud are now compatible with Moments, enabling users to make their own ‘tweetable’ playlist.

Tweets on the social media network will have a musical sound of their own; the social media giant does not just give a voice to users around the world but even music. Users can even share their playlists and tracks enjoyed by them on their accounts. The music platform, SoundCloud, made an announcement of this feature in collaboration with the company through a blog post that said, people will be able to hear more music thanks to this addition on ‘Moments’. The tweets will have embedded audio cards in order for users to listen to music.

This addition of audio cards by Twitter Inc. works perfectly well in the Moments interface for users making it easier for even the ones who do not know how this format works. SoundCloud is a huge music platform with approximately 125 million sound tracks, thus users will have a wide variety of options. This is amazing news for high profile singers and bands that publicize their music on the social media platform to inform their fans about the new albums. They can now even give a demo and add tracks in their tweets taking publicity to completely new level.

Support is available of audio cards for SoundCloud since 2014, but with this recent Moments development makes things even better. This is a great strategy by Jack Dorsey to make the platform as trendy, entertaining, and catchy as possible so that inactive users return to the platform. It wants to grow its user base, which has reportedly been a massive problem. It failed to keep its music app entertaining and fun, thus this addition is more than an appropriate effort.

Twitter music application faced many problems when it was introduced. This might have made it realize that updating the application is not a solution. Instead, coming up with an entirely new idea and platform must be the key.

In order to try out this new feature, users can go their accounts from today onwards but not so fast, they will first have to make their own playlists. Users can even recommend music to their friends on the social media platform, helping the company get into the music world this time.

Alibaba Exploring Opportunities To Directly Enter Indian Market

Alibaba is the new Wal-Mart for Indian retailers as it wants to directly enter the Indian e-commerce market.

Alibaba Group Holding is looking to improve its international market presence in the coming times. It already dominates more than 80% of the domestic market share and is a dominant force irrespective of the competitor. Now it wants to build its business outside China and aim for global domination. The company’s main target is to expand in the Indian e-commerce market, which is currently the fastest evolving market in the world. On many previous occasions, it mentioned to not directly enter the Indian market.

Recent news indicates that Alibaba indeed is ready to directly enter the market and it seems to be the similar case that happened in Wal-Mart a decade ago. Alibaba Group has brought the Wal-Mart ghost for the Indian retailers. In April 2006, the US retailer ‘Wal-Mart’ hinted to enter the Indian retail market, which made most headlines during that time. On top of it, it threatened other retailers. Exactly seven months later of the announcement, Wal-Mart showed its intention to enter the Indian market but through a joint venture with the Bharti group.

During that time, Wal-Mart wanted to enter the wholesale domain. The direct entry was stopped by the foreign investment rules of the Indian market hence it had to work its way to enter through different means. Its entry set off the alarms in the retail sector as the entrance of a multinational retailer could mean sidelining the local established online or brick and mortar business.

Now the fear factor is similar in 2016, as Alibaba has provided a slight hint of directly entering the Indian e-commerce market. As it announced, panic buttons were pressed by the local businesses as the Chinese tech giant explores opportunities for directly entering. However, Wal-Mart has still not managed to enter as a multi brand retail or direct selling. The executives and the analysts who know the Indian e-commerce market agree on the fact that Alibaba is the new Wal-Mart for Indian retailers.

Alibaba is pitched against Wal-Mart in international market as well like never before. It recently announced that it had surpassed the Gross Merchandize Volume (GMV), which is the total value of goods sold on the online marketplace which Wal-Mart previously set in a fiscal year. Furthermore, the company also posted more sales than Wal-Mart and broke records. It is yet to announce its fourth quarter results in the coming time.

Analysts believe that Wal-Mart posted revenues of $482 billion in 2015 whereas Alibaba has done enough to touch revenues of $490 billion at the end of its fiscal year.

The executive chairman of Flipkart, Sunil Bansal, and the CEO of Snapdeal Kunal Bahl took this matter to Twitter. Mr. Bansal tweeted, “Alibaba deciding to start operations directly shows how badly their Indian investments have done so far.”

On this, Bahl replied, “Didn't Morgan Stanley just flushes $5 billion worth market cap in Flipkart down the toilet? Focus on your business, not commentary.” 

Walmart Caught In Fire Of Mistreating Worker Again

Walmart is the center of criticism once again when it comes to its workers, as it fired an employee for giving free hugs.

Walmart has received criticism in the past for mistreating its employees, from giving them less wages to no holidays. This recent headline takes issues to a completely new level, when the US retailer decided to fire a mentally challenged employee who was hugging the customers free.

Walmart Stores former employee, Frank Swanson was fired this Saturday, partially for hugging the customer, the retailer says that was not the reason it decided to fire this particular employee. The free hugging act ended on Saturday just when Frank was about to reach the celebration of his 20^th anniversary of working at the retail store. It started in November, which Frank believed was a nice manner of thanking the customer for doing business with the store.

The 52 year of age former worker was asked by the manager of the store to come at his office, informing him that these hugs were not a nice gesture but was being considered inappropriate. After this, Frank received the news of being fired for breaking the policies of Walmart Wholesale, which was not just because of the hugs but also for price. He discounted a jug of tea at the store by $0.50.

The policy of Walmart clearly states that the cashiers can only give discounts on items if any of the competitors in the area are selling those specific items at a cheaper rate. The retail chain failed to consider that Frank was mentally challenged and even had an accident when he was younger which led to him being partially paralyzed from his right side. He even admitted his fault and said that he did not follow the policy every time.

Walmart Stores Inc. says that it did not let the employee go due to the hugs or even the discounts; it claimed that letting workers go is not easy. It further added that Frank was not doing his job well; hence, he was fired. Since he was the cashier, his job was to make sure customers pay for the items before they left the store, which was not happening. Frank did not agree to this statement of the company and rejected the company’s claims, which was not the case.

Frank’s brother said that the former worker is a very selfless human being. Being polite is not a crime and should not be punished as such, which is making many people angry who are now rallying behind Frank. The former Walmart worker has managed to get many supporters who are now planning to protest outside the store at West Plains, showing their disagreement with the retailer’s decision.

The former Walmart worker is shocked at the support received by him. He considers himself special since it is coming from strangers. He even said that he has moved on from the blow given by Walmart and now, interviewing for other possible jobs.

Google Has A Device Centric Approach

Google talks about its device centric approach.

Alphabet Inc. business segment Google has revealed about its recent approach when it comes to corporate security. This approach might lay the basis for a model that can be used by other companies.

According to search engine giant, they have now deployed a device centric security in contrast to the conventional model that governs on the physical location of users resulting in  “substantially improved the security posture of Google.”

In the Spring issue of ;login, a paper was published that talks about the company’s Beyond Corp initiative in detail. The company had a conventional approach initially that made use of perimeter security firewalls. Back in May, 2015 CIO Journal revealed about the presence of BeyondCorp.

As per the recent model, the access on the resources is linked to the user credentials and device with no regards to the employees network location. This actually means that an employee will be treated as same regardless of what his location is: be it a home, café or office.

The shift however was not that easy to implement and there were numerous challenges associated with it like to manage the complexities whilst dealing with the asset data in the new system as per the paper, every employee device needs to be tracked by Google seamlessly to identify data the employee devices are used to garner corporate apps with relevant information regarding the software on the device has been patched or not. Moreover, even if the device is repaired then even that would be notified.

The authors at Google namely Justin McWilliams, and Max Saltonstall, Barclay Osborn and Betsy Beyer claimed that if the data quality is poor when it comes to asset management then the device loses access unintentionally to the corporate resources. Thus the system will not recognize the user devices then. The problems associated to data quality can happen at a frequent rate when devices are repaired. The components and physical parts of a device are thus replaced or moved within. 

The tech giant has refused to comment on the matter except the information that has surfaced in the published paper pertaining to the obstacles for BeyondCorp.

However if any company succeeds in managing data and overcomes the challenges regarding the device from numerous sources then the new system will subsequently help the company in improving the security claims an analyst.

A renowned analyst and Vice President at Gartner Research, Avivah Litan told the CIO Journal, “With rapid growth in online services, devices are in essence the new identities that must be assessed in order to enable secure access.” She further explained, “It’s very smart to build access policies and control engines around inventoried devices, and to continuously assess the risk and trust level of a device’s state before granting that device access to different resources.”