Amazon shows off its new Prime Air drone, Blackberry pulls out of Pakistan, Apple Music
is coming to Sonos, and more...
It's Monday, Nov 30th, and this is Crunch Report.
Amazon updated its Prime Air’ project today — just about two years after it showed the
first iteration of its delivery drone, which has now moved to a hybrid design... so it's
still a quadcopter and takes off and lands vertically, but it also switches to a regular
horizontal flight mode, which is more efficient. Amazon says the new design allows the drone
to cover over 15 miles and fly over 55 mph, and that it's working on a family of drones
for different environments and purposes.. The new style is definitely bigger than in
previous renderings, which is potentially problematic if it's flying through the air
and people don't understand that it is not, in fact, an alien. Once it arrives at its
intended location, it’ll scan the area and look for a landing spot, for example, an Amazon
logo in your backyard. The drone then lands, drops off the package and takes off again.
An Amazon spokesperson tells TechCrunch “One day, seeing Prime Air vehicles will be as
normal as seeing mail trucks on the road.”
Oh hey, Happy Cyber Monday.. the day that sounds so much like porn, but is actually
about shopping. Let's get caught up on how online retail is doing... According to Adobe
which has been tracking 4,500 sites including 80% of the top 100 retailers, the first two
days of the U.S. holiday sales period, which was Thanksgiving and Black Friday, totaled
$4.45 billion in online purchases, with mobile devices, the majority being smartphones — accounting
for a record $1.5 billion of that amount. Mobile still lags behind desktop computer
sales, but the gap is shrinking...IBM says that mobile accounted for 60% of all online
traffic on Thanksgiving, which is up 14.8% over a year ago; and it took 54.4% of traffic
on Black Friday, up 16.6%. As for actual sales, mobile devices made up for 40% of them on
Thanksgiving, and Black Friday saw 35.3%. ComScore also predicts that mobile will account
for most of the growth in e-commerce holiday shopping this year.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced last night that he and his wife Priscilla
Chan have launched the Breakthrough Energy Coalition with Microsoft founder Bill Gates
to invest in zero-carbon energy technology around the world.. trying to solve the problem
of climate change. The organization’s members include other big names like Richard Branson,
Jeff Bezos, and Alibaba's Jack Ma. The U.N. Climate Control Conference is taking place
in Paris this week, where Gates and U.S. President Barack Obama are expected to launch a new
initiative called Mission Innovation, to double public investments in energy research over
the next five years. The Washington Post reports that 19 countries have already joined Mission
Innovation and will increase their annual spending on clean-energy research and development
to $20 billion by 2020. The Breakthrough Energy Coalition, which is a separate program, aims
to cover gaps in government funding in countries by commercializing the most promising and
scalable ideas to come out of public research institutions... including electricity generation
and storage, transportation, industrial use, agriculture, and energy system efficiency.
BlackBerry is throwing in the towel on Pakistan, for now.. the company confirmed that because
of Pakistan's national government continuing to demand to monitor user data, Blackberry
chose to withdraw from the country of 180 million people. Back in July, the Pakistan
Telecommunications Authority (PTA) said it would shutter BlackBerry Enterprise Services
(known as BES) by December 1st for “security reasons.” BlackBerry encrypts emails, BBM
messages and other data from its users which prevents authorities from gaining access to
information, even when it's necessary for national security. In a statement, Blackberry
explained “Pakistan’s demand for open access to monitor a significant swath of our
customers’ communications within its borders left us no choice but to exit the country
entirely.” Blackberry previously gave Indian authorities access to data from BBM and Blackberry
Internet Services back in 2013, and believed to have made similar concessions in Russia
and China before that.
My fellow music lovers, I've got good news. That speaker company you like is going to
come back in style. Sonos just announced it'll be adding an Apple Music beta on December
15th at no extra charge for users. A reminder that Sonos doesn't use Bluetooth, or AirPlay,
or Chromecast Audio to hook into services.. Sonos speakers are connected to your Wi-Fi
network, which you control via the Sonos app on your phone or computer. It's great if you
use mulitple music apps, bevause then you just control everything from one place. And
for those of us who loved playing our carefully curated Rdio stations via Sonos, Apple Music
might be a great alternative... along with Spotify, which is also Sonos compatible. As
is Pandora. And SoundCloud. Now that Apple Music's on Android as well as iOS, Sonos support
checks off all the major availability boxes. And there's always music in the air.
That’s the report for today. I’m Sarah Lane.
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