How Toyota Plans To Work On Automotive Technology
The auto making company is currently taking a slow and gradual approach towards establishing itself in the autonomous industry, which is being looked at by analysts in a very positive manner.
Toyota Motors seems to be progressing in the auto industry in a very quick pace and is believed to be leaving all the other giants behind in how it is building up strategies to establish it in rolling out autonomous cars before a lot of other prominent companies. Currently, companies like Google and Tesla are making the big moves in the industry and are constantly in the news for trying out the technology in new and improved ways, which actually shows how much both the giants have penetrated into the market. However, analysts believe that the Japanese auto maker is not far behind either, and might actually be in a better place than any of the rivals.
Recently, Toyota management reported a massive profit turn out, which was around $10 billion, in a period of six months only. This has changed the way the investors and shareholders of the company felt about its stock, as now the giant is reportedly speeding the process of making a space for itself in the autonomous car industry, and will be launching its own version of the famous driverless technology soon enough for the rivals to start worrying. Analysts who are covering the stock activities of the hybrid car maker believe that the unique and cautious strategy that is being followed by the Japanese company is expected to make it more successful than the other companies, as it is taking the autonomous road slowly and gradually, which is going to prove as a great idea to make its roots strong before coming out in the open properly.
Toyota business is reportedly making a huge investment of $1 billion in another company to work under it and has been named Toyota Research Institute Inc in Silicon Valley. This new venture of the smart car maker is for the company to run a detail research and study on not only the driverless technology, but also on artificial intelligence, which clearly indicates that the company has plans to incorporate the technology in its upcoming cars and that too, in a much proper way than any of the other companies.
The Institute will also be carrying out researches in order to determine if the driverless car technology being developed for the Toyota cars are safe and accessible enough, without any loopholes or drawbacks. On the other hand, reports suggest that the company has planned to present its first autonomous car on the road by 2020 and will be supported by the Olympics taking place in Tokyo at that time.
Microsoft Bids Farewell To Sunrise App
Microsoft revamps the look for Outlook on iOS and will makes changes to Android soon.
In a recent blog post by Microsoft Corporation published on Thursday, the company announced that they have now upgraded the mobile application for Outlook for Google Android and Apple iPhone. The company has officially announced that they will completely shut down their Sunrise app soon. This update has already penetrated on iOS although the App store and will soon make its way to Android in November.
In January Microsoft came up with its Outlook apps that were launched on both the operating systems. This was done right after the company had acquired the email startup for $200 million. Soon after that, the company acquired Sunrise which is a calendar based startup.
In the announcement which was made yesterday, the software behemoth also explained the the Outlook app at this time has almost 30 million active users on mobile users among which a good chink uses more than one account. So on an average, there are 1.2 billion sessions that happen on the app on a monthly basis. The latest design owes a great deal to the Accompli and Sunrise team which are now a part of Outlook.
So this is what the Outlook revamp boasts of, the latest design for the iOS positions the mails, people, places, files and calendar on the center of the screen. The interface has now been tweaked where additions have been made through visual cues. The team has made the application more efficient and user friendly allowing the viewers to get more glance now a compared to the past. Moreover, more functionality has now been added to it where it now does a lot more with fewer taps. Moreover, the navigation features have also been enhanced to give more limelight to the core features.
Apart from this, the message list shows clearly the invitations for events since the event icon has been modified in a way that makes it more noticeable. The flag icons along with attachments are arranged similar to the way they are done on Windows- that is present on the right side of the message list. The feature that will be extremely handy is that the users are navigated back to the top of the inbox once the button has been pressed. The files and photographs can now be attached by a single tap.
The recent move by the company is actually good news for Microsoft users on other operating systems since now they can enjoy a more interactive experience.
Facebook Introduces A New Plan For Providing Privacy
The social media site has rolled out a new privacy plan for its users to make sure they are secure from all kinds of hacking threats.
Recent news about Facebook Inc talks about the measures that have been taken by the social media giant in order to ensure that it is providing its users with the best kind of privacy control on their profiles on the network. The media company announcement a day back that it will now be making sure of letting all of its affected users know of any kind state sponsored terrorism that they happen to face through the networking platform. This news has been released in order to grant the users the perfect platform where they can carry out their social activities without being targeted by any kind of terrorism, whether it is funded by the state or not.
If in a case the social media company finds out that a user’s profile has been targeted or hacked by the state, Facebook management has vowed to inform the user right away. Since the involvement of the state can be done through unknowingly hacking the user profile, the social networking giant will be in the position of letting the user know right away of activities on the profile which the company might find to be a little unusual, and in that case the user will also be advised to adapt to the login approval option on the website which will allow him to approve every login that is being done with or without his knowledge.
Once the login approval option has been turned on by the user, the media company will be sending out an alert to the particular user every time a user enters the right credentials to login into his profile. This works out in a great way if someone else is trying to hack into the account, as the user will know right away given he’s given an alert right away.
For all such logins that are deemed unauthorized by the browser or the networking company, Facebook has been designed in such a way that a security code is sent to the user on the secret numbers he has updated on his personal information on the website, and by using the special code is the only way that a login will be able to proceed further. In case there is a hacker on the other hand, he will naturally not receive the code which will hinder his chance of hacking the user profile, which will automatically make it easier for the Facebook users to ensure the best kind of privacy on the media site.
IBM Introduces "Cognitive Business Solutions" Department
IBM launches its own Cognitive Business Solutions unit to advise other businesses on the best way to gain from its artificial intelligence software, Watson.
International Business Machines Corp. has now established a new business segment that has been named as “Cognitive Business Solutions”. A recent boom has been observed when it comes to artificial intelligence, which the New York based cloud computing company wishes to capitalize.
The department for Cognitive Business Solutions will be under the able leadership of Stephen Pratt who was initially offering his services to TPG Capital- a private equity firm. The company also came up with a press release according to which that this business unit would recruit almost 2000 employees. The job of these employees will be to advise the companies on board so that they can extract the best out of their AI software named as Watson.
Watson is named after Mr. Thomas J. Watson who was the first chief executive officer at IBM. The Artificial Intelligence software is similar to a question answer system that encompasses techniques of “advanced language processing” which is designed based on a popular AI technique known as “deep learning”. David Ferruci was the lead investigator for the software who made sure that the software was developed in his supervision so that he could answer questions on Jeopardy- the popular quiz show.
In the press release published by IBM, the firm encompassed the International Data Corporation (IDC) – a market research firm estimated that by the fiscal year of 2018, almost 50 per cent of the users would be able to interact with services regularly using cognitive computing.
IBM at this point believed in the future of this technology is considering the growth prospects and thus invested a hefty amount of almost $1 billion in Watson. The software is classified in the company’s analytics business whose net worth is $17 billion. So far, at this point of time, the company has not revealed the share of Watson in their business. As per Wall Street Journal, Watson is likely to contribute $1 billion to the company’s profit by 2018.
Stephen Pratt, stated, "Over the next decade, this transformation will be very personal for professionals as we embrace learning algorithms to enhance our capacity. For clients, cognitive systems will provide organizations that adopt these powerful tools outperform peers."
The Watson venture is futuristic and has immense growth potential making it a stable revenue churning business for IBM in the times to come. The new unit will further add more support to Watson increasing its user accessibility in the times to come.
Tesla Sales Report Fails To Impress Due To Slow Quarterly Growth
The company has been growing its sales yearly but the changes on a quarterly level have turned out to be quite slow and unsatisfactory.
Tesla Motors has announced its sales report for the third quarter of the current financial year and the numbers have not come around to be very well this time. The automotive producer is working hard towards achieving the targets it has set for itself for the coming couple of years, and the reports that have emerged show that it has failed to impress itself as much as it would have wanted.
The sales report that came around for all the auto companies in the industry showed that the smart car makers managed to sell around 11,580 electric cars in the third quarter alone which was informed to the investors and analysts on Friday, in a press release.
If compared to the sales of the same quarter of the previous year, the increase has been recorded at around 49%, a massive jump for the company to take. However, there was a rise seen even on a quarterly level as compared to the quarter before the third one, the auto giant sold 50 vehicles less than the present one, which was a small improvement from the company's side, but one nonetheless.
On the positive side, the sales figures that have been announced by Tesla business are almost in line with the guidance that was provided by the company to its investors at the end of the second quarter of the year. Analysts, on the other hand, have shown concerns about how the auto maker seems to be working fine if its stock is looked at from a distance, but keeping in mind the growth it has been showing on a quarter to quarter level, the figures that have been extracted are not quite satiable for the investors on the whole.
Analysts are also of the opinion that the major reason for the low sales figures on a quarterly level that has caught attention of the market pundits is how the luxury car makers halted operations at one of their factories which brought about a major lacking in the deliveries. As per a press release made by the management of the firm, the halt of production at the factory to take a few steps ahead and make a comeback in a much better way, working on the efficiency of the plant as well. This was informed to the investors in the earnings and sales release that the company made in the last quarter.
Apple Inc. Wrist Watch Saves A Life
The heartbeat monitoring wristwatch by Apple has played a great role in saving a football player's life as the teenage guy gets the instant first aid because of the notifications by watch.
It is expected that smart watch by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) might have actually rescued the life of the teenager (17 years old boy). The wristwatch gave him high reading continuously, which indicated that the boy need to have some kind of medical checkup. If there is no watch in the boy’s wrist, he might not be notified regarding his heartbeat, which would be dangerous for his life.
The boy, Paul Houle, plays football for Tabor Academy. He bought the wristwatch few days earlier, as he felt something wrong considering his heartbeat because his heart was beating beyond normal pace and even strange was that his heartbeat followed the same pattern after the football practice also and this same condition stayed for hours.
Paul Houle described his whole condition during his first pre-season football practice and his condition after that. He said that he played from 10 to 12 during first practice, while second practice session was from 3 to 5. During this practice session, he started to have respiratory problems and felt back pain, which resulted in its kidneys failure.
The coach of the football checked the reading from the watch in the boy’s wrist, which indicated the matter going on and he took the boy to the school nurse straight away. She again noted some readings and took the patient to the hospital for further treatment. It was found that he was suffering from rhabdomyolysis, which revealed a muscular injury. This injury occurs when the soft tissues break down, which causes internal bleeding and discharge of protein into the blood stream.
It is observed that this disease is very common and especially cricket, football, and Rugby players suffer from such injuries, but the critical cases, as Mr. Paul’s, would led to the death. He has very good luck on his side that he was wearing Apple’s watch that indicated the instant reading at the time about the boy’s condition. This is great Apple news for its company as well as for its products that its device saved a life.
This is the first case in the history that a smartphone company put forward a device that provides the benefit to the suffering patient. The organization is looking forward to serve more and facilitate the humanity by introducing more innovative devices in future.
Apple always seems devoted to its products. It feels pride in its wide range of quality devices. Competitors look forward to the company.
Large Inflow Witnessed By Shares of Ford Motor Company
Shares of Ford Motor Company observed large inflow of net money and consensus based estimations from stock specialists regarding the target prices and its insider selling report.
It is noticed that the automotive association, Ford Motor Company (NYSE:F), share price traded negatively as compared to the current trading session. The last update regarding the share price was $13.54 per share with a loss of -0.13 points or by -0.95%. The organization’s net money flow was $5.58 million and the evaluated ratio between the fluctuation was 1.13.
The inflow was around $47.21 million in the upticks and the outflow was $41.21 million in downticks. The variation is observed by -0.15% in the past seven days. The shares saw a block trade with a net flow of $4.51 million. The total money in up and down ticks was $12.72 million and $8.21 respectively, and the concluded ratio between the up/down ticks stood at 1.55.
In the past three months, Ford Motor Stock has slid by 9.06%. The year-to-date stock performance stood at -10.08%. During the past five days, the automobile giant has lost approximately 1.38% and collectively showed a decline of 9.74% during the four weeks.
Moreover, Ford Motor Company has released its insider selling and purchasing activities to the SEC. With respect to the information leaked by the SEC in a form 4 filing, Lechleiter John C, the director of reputed automotive company, had bought around 3,000 shares during the transaction held on September 3, 2015, which gave the amount worth at $41,550 at the price per share of $13.85.
Ford’s insiders hold 0.1% of the company’s share. During the past six months, fluctuation is observed in the total insider holding by -5.23%, while 59.8% of its share is held by the institutional investors. Throughout the past three months, 0.77% of the total institutional holding has changed in company’s share.
According to the conclusion presented by 12 stock experts on consensus, Ford should move towards $17.25 per share. It is expected that it may show variation and slide to $15 per share or reach the height of $20 as its peak level. During Wednesday’s trading session, when the trading session started, the stock price was placed at $13.81. As the time passed, it showed variations with the upward peak at $13.84 and downward to $13.47. Throughout the day, the price fluctuated in between this range. The company gathered the amount of $52,726 in terms of market capitalization.
Ford loyalists are favoring the company, which motivates the management to step ahead and strive towards excellence. Thus, the corporate management seems optimistic about its future endeavors.
