HELSINKI (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp on Friday confirmed it will close Nokia Oyj’s former handset product development unit in Salo, Finland, and will cut a total of up to 2,300 jobs in the Nordic country. The cuts, initially announced in July, are part of Microsoft’s plan to cut 7,800 jobs globally, most from the phone hardware business that it bought from Nokia last year. Two Finnish sites, in Espoo and
By Eric Auchard FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Smartphone apps that help people learn languages for free or nearly free, a few sentences at a time, are piling pressure on established education firms and setting the pace for how to make lessons more engaging. Phone and tablet-based mobile products from newcomers like Germany’s Babbel, Britain’s Memrise and U.S.-based Duolingo have overtaken names like Berlitz and computer self-learning pioneer Rosetta Stone in terms
By Shu Zhang and Gerry Shih BEIJING (Reuters) – Uber Technologies Inc’s [UBER.UL] global bookings are projected to rise nearly threefold to $10.84 billion this year and reach $26.12 billion the next, according to a recent presentation for potential investors seen by Reuters. The ride-hailing service, which operates in over 50 countries, keeps 20 percent of booking revenue, showed a confidential slideshow prepared by Chinese bankers with input from Uber,
Sales of smartphones in China declined 4 percent in the quarter, the first year-over-year fall, the company said. “China has reached saturation — its phone market is essentially driven by replacement, with fewer first-time buyers,” said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. Gartner also said worldwide smartphone sales grew at the slowest pace since 2013.
By Curtis Skinner SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – California prosecutors have broadened their civil lawsuit against popular online ride-sharing service Uber, alleging that its background checks missed people previously convicted of murder and sex crimes, court records show. The district attorneys of San Francisco and Los Angeles filed an amended complaint against Uber Technologies Inc on Tuesday, which said “systemic failures in Uber’s background check process” came to light after their
By Josephine Mason and Alastair Sharp TORONTO (Reuters) – Love lives and reputations may be at risk after the release of customer data from infidelity website Ashley Madison, an unprecedented breach of privacy likely to rattle users’ attitudes towards the Internet. Hackers dumped a big cache of data containing millions of email addresses for U.S. government officials, UK civil servants and high-level executives at European and North America corporations late
(Reuters) – ZocDoc, which helps users book doctor appointments online, said on Thursday it raised $130 million in funding, valuing the U.S. digital healthcare company at $1.8 billion. The funding was led by Baillie Gifford and Atomico, with participation from existing investor Founders Fund. The proceeds would be used to develop products and expand beyond its scheduling capability, the company said. (http://bit.ly/1J6Tspr) ZocDoc, founded in 2007, is used by millions
U.S. digital health startup Grand Rounds, which connects patients with medical experts mainly for a second opinion, said it had raised $55 million in new capital. Grand Rounds’ app and website connect patients in more than 120 countries with doctors, surgeons and other specialists in over 110 U.S. institutions. The company, whose customers include Comcast Corp, Costco Wholesale Corp and Evernote, said on Thursday it would use the funds to
Avid Life Media, the company behind infidelity website AshleyMadison.com, confirmed on Wednesday that some legitimate data has been stolen from it and published online, but said it has never stored credit card information on its servers. Hackers dumped a massive cache of data about Ashley Madison users online late on Tuesday, posting it on a part of the Internet that is only accessible by using a specialized browser. The release
China has resumed work on a set of banking cyber security regulations it suspended earlier this year, reviving a potential source of friction with the United States just weeks before Xi Jinping makes his first trip to Washington as China’s president, people with knowledge of the matter said. At a meeting last week in Beijing, officials from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) told representatives from several Western technology companies,
