Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Apple Watch sales are in freefall

Apple Watch sales are in freefall

  • Oct. 24, 2016, 9:58 AM
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Apple shipped 1.1 million Apple Watches in the third quarter of 2016, which is down 71.6% from the year-ago period, according to an estimate from IDC.
Last year, during the third quarter, Apple shipped 3.9 million Apple Watches.
That's a bigger drop than in the second quarter of this year, in which shipments were down 56.7% on an annual basis. 
This trend towards lower sales is obviously a bad sign for Apple's smartwatch, but it is worth noting that Apple did not ship a new version of the device with GPS until September, towards the end of the quarter. 
The well-telegraphed launch of Apple Watch Series 2 in September could have muted sales as customers waited for the new model. 
Apple also redesigned the device's software and gave the original model a price cut to $269, which should help holiday sales. "With lower price points and improved experiences, Apple could be heading for a sequential rebound in 4Q16," write the IDC researchers.
Apple likes to compare the Apple Watch to the iPod, and suggests that the device should see strong seasonal sales as it makes for a good holiday gift. But Apple has never reported its own internal sales numbers, leaving shipment estimates like the IDC tracker as the best guide. 
It's important to note that Apple still has the best-selling smartwatch worldwide, beating the likes of Garmin, Samsung, and Lenovo. And Google's own smartwatch project seems to be stuck in neutral. 
But 71% drops in year-over-year sales is not good for any product no matter which way you slice it, especially for a new product without a clearly established market.
Here are the 3Q shipments stats, via IDC: 

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Greece just got permission to be massively bailed out again

Greece just got permission to be massively bailed out again

AFP
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Alexis TsiprasGreek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras delivers his speech during a congress of leftist Syriza party in Athens, Greece, October 13, 2016.REUTERS/Michalis Karagiannis
Luxembourg (AFP) - Eurozone officials announced Tuesday they have approved 2.8 billion euros for Greece from its huge third bailout after the cash-strapped nation delivered the needed reforms.
Following the latest disbursement approved by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), Greece will have received 31.7 billion euros of the 86-billion-euro bailout granted in July 2015, its third since being engulfed by debt in 2010.
"Today's decision to disburse EUR2.8 billion ($3.0 billion) to Greece is a sign that the Greek people are steadily making progress in reforming their country," the ESM's managing director Klaus Regling said in a statement.
The Greek government has reached milestones in pension reform, bank governance, the energy sector, and revenue collection, according to the director of the ESM, the Eurozone body controlling Greece's bailout loans.
"It has also taken further steps in making the new privatisation and investment fund operational," Regling said.
If Greece implements more of the reforms under the bailout programme, its economy could "accelerate next year and the government may be able to start issuing bonds again next year," Regling said.
On October 10, Eurozone finance ministers unlocked 1.1 billion euros for Greece but held back the other 1.7 billion over Athens's mountain of unpaid bills amid doubts from Germany.
The eurozone had demanded more data before approving disbursement.
Athens is eager to win the latest bailout cash and complete a second review by the end of the year, which would then trigger talks on reducing the country's huge debt load despite reluctance from powerhouse Germany.

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South Korean economic growth slowed last quarter, thanks in part to the Galaxy Note 7

South Korean economic growth slowed last quarter, thanks in part to the Galaxy Note 7

Business Insider Australia
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samsung galaxy note 7AP
South Korean economic growth decelerated in the September quarter, according to the advance GDP estimate released by the Bank of Korea (BoK) earlier today.
After seasonal adjustments, the economy grew by 0.7% for the quarter, down on the 0.8% pace of Q2 but ahead of forecasts for an increase of 0.6%.
It left the year-on-year expansion at 2.7%, down on the 3.3% rate reported in the previous quarter.
According to the BOK, private consumption increased by 0.5% during the quarter, down from 1% in Q2, while construction investment grew by 3.9% thanks to a lift in both residential and non-residential building, accelerating from the 3.1% growth recorded previously.
Government consumption grew by 1.4%, in part due to an increase in health insurance benefits.
Those positive were partially offset by a 0.1% drop in capital investment, a sharp reversal on the 2.8% growth of the previous quarter.
Despite the beat on both quarterly and year-on-year GDP, the Bank of Korea suggests growth could have been even better, citing troubles atelectronics giant Samsung following the release, then recall, of the Galaxy Note 7, along with industrial action at Hyundai.
“When you take away the effects from Samsung and Hyundai, third-quarter growth was considerably better than expected,” said Chung Kyu-il, a director at the Bank of Korea.
According to the Asia Times, Chung added the economic effects of Samsung Electronics decision to scrap the Note 7 were nearly all reflected in third quarter GDP data.
This table from the BoK breaks down the advanced GDP reading into individual components.
Read the original article on Business Insider Australia. Copyright 2016. Follow Business Insider Australia on Twitter.

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Obamacare premiums are going up by an average of 25% next year

Obamacare premiums are going up by an average of 25% next year

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obama minnesota frownLarry Downing/Reuters
The Obama administration says that Obamacare health-insurance premiums will go up by an average of 25% in 2017.
This, it argues in a new report, is because prices are slowly getting in line with costs.
Notably, Marketplace rates through 2016 remained 12 to 20 percent below initial projections from the independent Congressional Budget Office. In addition, Urban Institute researchers recently found that 2016 Marketplace premiums were well below premiums for comparable employer coverage. Even with this year's increases, Marketplace premiums in 2017 will still be roughly in line with the projections by the Congressional Budget Office.
OBAMAcare premiums going upHHS
The news comes as another blow to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which critics have argued simply doesn't work. And over the past year, many companies large and small have agreed. The country's largest insurer, UnitedHealth, has said that it would roll back some of its Obamacareofferings.
Oscar, a startup created specifically to facilitate the ACA, is pulling out of markets in Dallas and New Jersey.
Additionally, while 15 insurers will be joining the ACA exchanges, 83 are leaving, according to the administration.
But President Barack Obama remains optimistic that the plan will get through these growing pains.
"You're getting better quality, even though you don't know that Obamacare is doing it," Obama said before a crowd in Florida last week.
"Thanks, Obama," he added.

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Monday, October 24, 2016

Elon Musk is about to test the 'trickiest' part of his Mars spaceship — a giant, potentially explosive black orb

Elon Musk is about to test the 'trickiest' part of his Mars spaceship — a giant, potentially explosive black orb

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spacex mars spaceship its flickr 29343909374_cbaa807fd1_oElon Musk's spaceship is designed to take people beyond Mars.SpaceX/Flickr (public domain)
Less than a month ago, Elon Musk shared his audacious plan to launch a million people to Marsand beyond, all in hopes of backing up humanity for if and when some future apocalyptic calamity dooms Earth.
Musk's 63-minute presentation showed off intricate computer renderings of rockets and spaceships, all parts of his so-called Interplanetary Transport System.
Because he had to skip over a lot of technical details, however, Musk logged on to Reddit on Sunday afternoon to let his most discerning fans squeeze information from him in an "Ask Me Anything" session.
During that Q&A session, Musk shared news of a very important test that SpaceX has planned "in the coming weeks": filling up an enormous carbon-fiber fuel tank, shown below, that will be essential to making the ITS spaceship work.
The tank, which happens to be the spaceship's core structure, has to withstand incredible pressures and stresses at blisteringly cold temperatures — otherwise it might leak or even explode.
Musk shared images of the massive structure toward the end of his September 27 talk at the International Astronomical Congress.
When user nalyd8991 asked Musk for more information about it on Sunday in the r/SpaceX subreddit, Musk said the gargantuan carbon-fiber tank "was really the big news" of his IAC talk — or at least "for those that know their stuff."

'The hardest part of the spaceship'

"This is really the hardest part of the spaceship," Musk said at the September IAC talk. "The other pieces ... we have a pretty good handle on, but this was the trickiest one. So we wanted to tackle it first."
In short, the entire spaceship will be built around such a tank — so getting it right is crucial. Here's where designs place it in the spaceship:
Carbon-fiber fuel tanks for spacecraft aren't a new concept, as Boeing and NASA began work on a huge ones 2014, but we've never seen one this enormous at roughly 40 feet wide.
Here's what it looks like from the inside:
inside tank spacex elon musk mars colonizationSpaceX/YouTube
Engineers most likely chose to make the tank out of carbon fiber because that material is lighter, shrinks less, and is stronger than the metal alloys that many cryogenic fuel tanks are made out of. So it will presumably make for safer transport to Mars while using less fuel (though at a considerably higher cost of construction).
The material isn't easy to work with, though, as Musk explained during his IAC talk:
"Even though carbon fiber has incredible strength-to-weight, when you want one of them put super-cold liquid oxygen and liquid methane — particularly liquid oxygen — in the tank, it's subject to cracking and leaking and it's a very difficult thing to make.
"Just the sheer scale of it is also challenging, because you've gotta lay out the carbon fiber in exactly the right way on a huge mold, and you've gotta cure that mold at temperature, and then it's ... just really hard to make large carbon-fiber structures that can do all of those things and carry incredible loads."
During his Reddit AMA on Sunday, Musk dropped a few bits of new information about the tank as well:
  • "The flight tank will actually be slightly longer than the development tank shown, but the same diameter," Musk said.
  • He also said it was "built with latest and greatest carbon fiber prepreg," or carbon fiber that's pre-impregnated with a resin to make it tougher. "In theory, it should hold cryogenic propellant without leaking and without a sealing linker," he said. "Early tests are promising."
  • Finally, he teased a much grander test: "Will take it up to 2/3 of burst pressure on an ocean barge in the coming weeks."
Though Musk didn't answer any follow-up questions about this mysterious ocean test, we assume that by "barge" he means one of the robotic drone ships that have caught a handful of SpaceX's self-landing Falcon 9 rocket boosters in the recent past, such as the one shown below.
We also don't yet know how SpaceX plans to pressurize the giant black tank. It could be with plain old air, but it might be its fuel of choice for Mars: flammable (and explosive) methane gas.
Several things might suggest this: First, lugging a giant orb out into the middle of the ocean sounds like no simple effort, which implies the company is doing so out of an expectation that the device could not just merely leak but burst or explode. If no one is around and it blows up, its shrapnel (and possibly flames) can't hurt anyone. SpaceX's ocean barges, however, have proved capable of withstanding punishing explosions in the past:
Second, Musk said SpaceX performed "initial tests with the cryogenic propellant" that "actually look quite positive."
"We have not seen any leaks or major issues," he added.
If the company has already pumped methane into the spherical tank before, it stands to reason that it will try again to get even more data on its performance for incorporating into a flight version.
SpaceX representatives declined to provide Business Insider with more details on the test, including what would be pressurizing the orb or when it might happen.

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Crude oil slides below $50 per barrel

Crude oil slides below $50 per barrel

Reuters
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iraq oilA worker walks at the Nahr Bin Umar field, north of Basra, southeast of Baghdad, November 16, 2014. REUTERS/Essam Al-Sudani
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices fell on Monday as Iraq said it wanted to be exempt from any deal by producer cartel OPEC to cut production to prop up the market, and as U.S. drillers stepped up work.
At 12:33 p.m. ET, US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was down $1.12, or 2.2%, at $49.73.
Brent, the international benchmark for crude, was down $1.16, or 2.3%, at $50.62 a barrel.
Traders said the price falls were a result of comments from Iraq, which said it wanted to be exempt from a production cut by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that the group plans to decide at its Nov. 30 meeting.
OPEC plans to reduce production to a range of 32.50 million to 33.0 million barrels per day, down from 33.39 million bpd in September.
That would be harder to achieve if OPEC-member Iraq, which is the group's second-biggest producer after Saudi Arabia, didn't participate.
Iraq 's deputy oil minister Fayadh al-Nema said on Sunday that the country's oil production stood at 4.774 million bpd, with exports standing at 3.87 million bpd.
"We are not going back in any way, not by OPEC not by anybody else," said Falah al-Amri, the head of Iraq's State Oil Marketing Company.
"Comments by Iraq over the weekend that it may not join the OPEC agreement to cut production could see oil prices come under pressure in today’s session," ANZ bank said on Monday.
Also pressuring the market, oil services firm Baker Hughes reported that U.S. oil rigs rose by 11 this week, the first double-digit growth since August. [RIG/U]
On the demand side, Japan's crude imports fell 4.6 percent in September from the same month a year earlier, to 3.27 million bpd, the Ministry of Finance said on Monday.
Despite the doubts over OPEC's ability to cut output and weak consumption in the world's biggest importer, analysts said that oil markets, which have been dogged by two years of oversupply, might be rebalancing in terms of production and consumption.
"Statistical balances suggest that conditions have improved markedly. We suspect that the market is moving more quickly into balance than is generally recognized," Barclays bank said in a note to clients on Sunday.
"The market moved into a small deficit in Q3, will remain so in Q4 and then the deficit will expand significantly in 2017," it added.
(Reporting by Henning Gloystein; Editing by Joseph Radford)
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Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

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