HiTechEdge

Category: Business

All news related to business.

  • US Consumer Spending Continued to Grow in April

    US Consumer Spending Continued to Grow in April

    US consumer spending continued to grow in April, albeit at a slower pace, fueling optimism for a recovery.

    According to the Associated Press, recent data from the Commerce Department shows consumer spending up 0.5% in April. That’s down from the 4.7% increase in March, an increase that was largely fueled by stimulus spending.

    Nonetheless, a 0.5% increase indicates the economy is continuing its recovering from the pandemic recession, and provides evidence that consumer confidence is headed in the right direction.

    Interestingly, individual incomes dropped a whopping 13.1% in April, but that is another data point largely caused by stimulus checks. With many Americans receiving a boost in March, a drop in April was to be expected.

    Overall, the government estimates the economy grew 6.4% in the January to March quarter.

  • JPMorgan CEO: ‘Stay Away From Cryptocurrency’

    JPMorgan CEO: ‘Stay Away From Cryptocurrency’

    JPMorgan’s CEO isn’t likely to win friends in the crypto market, slamming it as not ‘having much value.’

    Traditional financial institutions are still trying to figure out cryptocurrency. Some, such as Visa, have begun accepting crypto. Others are still trying to figure out the best way to support it.

    JPMorgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, is cautioning investors not to invest in crypto. In a congressional hearing, Dimon didn’t mince any words regarding his thoughts on crypto.

    “Put aside blockchain and put aside stable coins, which is support by assets. Something that is not supported by anything, I do not believe has much value,” the JPMorgan CEO said.

    “My own personal advice to people is stay away from it,” Dimon continued. “That does not mean the clients don’t want it – this goes back to how you have to run a business. I don’t smoke marijuana, but if you make it nationally legal, I’m not gonna stop our people from banking it, etc. I don’t tell people how to spend their money, regardless of how I might personally feel about some of the items that people might buy with their money.”

    Dimon then said JPMorgan is debating the best way to safely integrate crypto, but ultimately believes unsupported cryptos are dangerous.

    “We’re debating should we make it available in some way, in a safe way that people can buy and sell it and put it in their statement systems,” Dimon added.

    “My one personal view: It’s nothing like a fiat currency, it’s nothing like gold. Buyer beware.”

  • NVIDIA Posts Record Quarter on Gaming and Data Centers

    NVIDIA Posts Record Quarter on Gaming and Data Centers

    NVIDIA has posted its quarterly report, beating estimates on record revenue, thanks to its Gaming and Data Center business.

    Unlike many companies that have been hurt by the pandemic, NVIDIA has experienced significant growth. Multiple factors have helped the company, including people turning to gaming more during lockdowns and quarantine.

    NVIDIA’s GPU chips are also popular with cryptocurrency miners, leading the company to cripple them when mining is detecting, in an effort to preserve its GPU supply for gamers. The company has even announced a processor designed specifically for miners to help address the issues.

    All of the above has helped propel the company to a record quarter, bringing in $5.66 billion, an increase of 84 percent from a year earlier. Gaming revenue accounted for $2.76 billion, an increase of 106%. Data Center revenue accounted for $2.05 billion, an increase of 79%.

    “We had a fantastic quarter, with strong demand for our products driving record revenue,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA.

    “Our Data Center business continues to expand, as the world’s industries take up NVIDIA AI to process computer vision, conversational AI, natural language understanding and recommender systems. NVIDIA RTX has reinvented computer graphics and is driving upgrades across the gaming and design markets. Our partners are launching the largest-ever wave of NVIDIA-powered laptops. Across industries, the adoption of NVIDIA computing platforms is accelerating.

    “Mellanox, one year in, has exceeded our expectations and transformed NVIDIA into a data-center-scale computing company. We continue to make headway with our planned acquisition of Arm, which will accelerate innovation and growth for the Arm ecosystem. From gaming, cloud computing, AI, robotics, self-driving cars, to genomics and computational biology, NVIDIA continues to do impactful work to invent a better future.”

  • CEO of TikTok’s Parent Company Stepping Down

    CEO of TikTok’s Parent Company Stepping Down

    The founder of TikTok’s parent, ByteDance, is stepping down as CEO amid some of its biggest challenges.

    TikTok drew the ire of the Trump administration over privacy and security concerns. The company has had a number of major missteps, including being accused of sending data to China, violating child privacy and running afoul of EU privacy laws. The Trump administration approved a ban against the platform in an effort to force ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American company. Oracle and Walmart eventually emerged as the winning candidates.

    Ultimately, the ban and forced sale was tied up in court. The change in administrations added to the chaos, with the Biden administration wanting to evaluate whether a ban was warranted.

    With the platform’s future still in question, ABC News is reporting that founder Zhang Yiming is stepping down, to be replaced by Liang Rubo, another co-founder. Zhang said the change would allow “enable me to have greater impact on longer-term initiatives,” although he did not detail what those initiates may be.

  • Robinhood ‘Democratizing IPOs,’ Helping Users Get a Piece of the Action

    Robinhood ‘Democratizing IPOs,’ Helping Users Get a Piece of the Action

    Robinhood is looking to shakeup the IPO market by helping the average user buy shares of companies at IPO prices.

    IPOs are often where the biggest portion of wealth is made for many investors. Unfortunately, many IPOs are dominated by major investors and institutions, with the average person left out in the cold.

    Robinhood wants to change that with a new product that will put IPOs within the reach of anyone.

    Today, we’re starting to roll out IPO Access, a new product that will give you the opportunity to buy shares of companies at their IPO price, before trading on public exchanges. With IPO Access, you can now participate in upcoming IPOs with no account minimums.

    The company says IPO Access will be rolling out gradually over the next few weeks. In the meantime, customers wanting to learn more can check out the Help Center.

  • Vizio’s Ad Business Nearly Rivals Its Hardware Sales

    Vizio’s Ad Business Nearly Rivals Its Hardware Sales

    Vizio, known for its TVs, is now making nearly as much money off of the data it collects and ads it sells — at the consumer’s expense.

    Vizio has a troubled history of collecting data from its smart TV viewers, with the FCC fining it in 2017 for collecting and selling viewer data without consent. Although the company is now more transparent about its practices, profiting off of viewer data has become a major part of its business.

    According to the company’s quarterly results, it had a gross profit of $38.4 million for its Platform+ business, the part of its business that collects data and sells advertising. In contrast, the company had a gross profit of $48.2 million from Devices.

    Even more telling, Devices gross profit grew 48%, considerably less than the 152% increase in Platform+ gross profits. The disparity demonstrates how the collection of data, and profiting from it, will continue to be a major focus for the company.

    While some customers may be ok with their viewing habits data being collected and sold to advertisers, privacy-conscious consumers would do well to choose a different brand, or take measures to disable data collection.