Apple's upping its game with iOS 14... Apple has shared some light at the end of the lockdown tunnel, with the release of iOS 14 in September. The new mobile operating system was revealed during their virtual Worldwide Developer's Conference AKA WWDC (AKA Geek heaven). Shiny new features?... Scrollable 'App Library', default third-party browsing, App info widgets, picture in picture, and... ...wait for it... CarKey - a software that will enable you to unlock your car with your iPhone. Now here's your weekly round-up of the business and finance news you need-to-know... | In a flashAmazon's 'Prime'ier League ExtravaganzaVirgin Galactic Is Dropping The 'Sub' From 'Sub-orbital'Tesco's Β£9.9bn First Quarter Amazon's 'Prime'ier League Extravangza | What happened and why... Amazon (+2.67%) has caught the bug. The tech giant will air four Premier League football matches for free on Prime and its live video streaming service, Twitch. The live top-flight football will be available to everyone, including non-prime members... No first-timer... Amazon's first live broadcast of a Premier League match landed with last year's Boxing Day, airing all 10 football matches played up to New Year's Eve.The "Stadium Atmosphere"... With Coronavirus pandemic constraining games behind closed doors, viewers can enable the "Stadium Atmosphere" feature which mimics the noises of a crowd. π Free up your calendar... Amazon will be live streaming Crystal Palace vs. Burnley on June 29, Everton vs. Southampton on July 6, and Watford vs. Newcastle on July 11 with the fourth game yet to be announced. | The Takeaway One for the books?... With Sky, BT, Amazon, and even the BBC now showing an unprecedented array of free games, the Premier League has become an accessible commodity. This time last week the 2012 Manchester derby sat as the most-watched premier league game of all time... a week on, and that record has been smashed with Sunday's Merseyside derby between Everton vs Liverpool claiming the crown with 5.5million tuning.πΊ Streaming Wars... The arrival of tech giants like Amazon into the bidding wars for viewing rights of the Premier League jeopardises the health of the Cable TV players, particularly Sky and BT in the UK. With Apple also rumoured to be interested in a slice of the Premier League pie, these are deep-pocket players that can afford to run this side of their business on razor-thin margins. Virgin Galactic Is Dropping The 'Sub' From 'Sub-orbital' | What happened and why... Virgin Galactic (-15.87%), the space tourism pioneer (yes that is a category now), saw its share price spike nearly 16% after signing off a Space Act Agreement with NASA. π©βπ π¨βπAll aboard... The company has been using VSS Unity, a rocket-powered plane, to give any customer with a spare $250k a taste of the space experience by flying them to the edge of the atmosphere.π Bridging the gap... The new agreement will be shifting their focus on "low earth economy", by getting non-NASA astronauts ready for space travel through a βnew private orbital astronaut readiness program". A step further... Virgin Galactic's CEO, George Whitesides, said the program is βnot just for potentially private space travellers, but could also be for researchers or even government researchers.β | The Takeaway Space is going commercial... NASA is seeking more and more help from private companies to prop up its $22bn budget. Elon Musk's Space X is one example, having made history in May through a couple of firsts, including the unprecedented use of a commercially built spaceship to send two NASA astronauts into space from US soil, something that hasn't happened since 2011. π Next on NASA's list... Through this new agreement, Virgin Galactic could revolutionise and accelerate the move towards what could become the next hottest destination... Space. Tesco's Β£9.9bn First Quarter | What happened and why... The news we all saw coming... the rush on toilet paper and canned goods caused by the pandemic led to a rise in sales of almost 9%, or Β£9.9bn, for Tesco's (+1.71%) first quarter. π The bright side... The UK has seen an average increase of 48% in online sales - with May alone gaining 91% compared to last year. Tesco has been ramping up its online capacity, with the company expanding the number of slots allocated for home delivery from 600k to 1.3m per week.π¦ The dark side... Meanwhile, the company's banking sector is feeling the pinch with an expected loss of Β£200m has bad debts turn sour at Tesco Bank. And then there's the other thing... the remuneration policy. Outgoing Tesco CEO, Dave Lewis, and his remuneration committee decided to make some tweaks to its policy just before he walked off into the sunset... The norm... Tesco execs are partly remunerated and incentivised based on the performance of the company's share price against its rivals.But not that one... With Ocado's stock soaring in recent years, the committee decided to remove Ocado's stock price from the group of rivals which Tesco benchmarks itself against. Enter... A lot of inflamed investors. By excluding Ocado, Tesco's underperformance saw at 3.3% (instead of 4.2%) over a three-year period. Which would have served up remuneration at two-thirds of the maximum amount... but with two-thirds of shareholder voting against the policy, Dave Lewis' successful reign just got tainted on its way out. | The Takeaway It's all about balance... Shopping frequency has decreased by 32% as the majority of Brits tried to obey the lockdown rules. However, the size of the average transactions has increased by 64%. Tesco CEO, Dave Lewis, has been championing the return of the weekly shop and with the germophobe culture sticking around, expect those old habits to do so to, even as normality returns.
