Previous governments’ incompetence crippled India’s semiconductor growth, deputy IT minister says

July 27, 2023
In an indictment of past administrations, a senior Indian minister blamed their strategic and political vision and “a big dose of incompetence” as significant contributors to the country’s underdeveloped semiconductor industry. “India has missed the bus repeatedly on electronics and semiconductors. There was a lack of strategic and political vision and a big dose of incompetence,” […]

EU opens competition probe of Microsoft bundling Teams with Office 365

July 27, 2023
The European Union has finally announced a formal antitrust investigation of Microsoft’s bundling of Teams with Office 365 and Microsoft 365. The move comes two years after rival workplace comms company Slack complained to the bloc that Microsoft was unfairly bundling the collaboration and comms software with its popular cloud-based productivity suites for business. Announcing […]

Why air-conditioning is a climate antihero

July 27, 2023
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The unending heat this summer has kept the air conditioners in my apartment windows wildly busy. When I’m not taking guesses about what my electric bill might look like this month, I’ve…

Upgrade acquires travel-focused BNPL startup Uplift for a song

July 27, 2023
Upgrade, a provider of personal credit lines and other consumer financial products, today announced that it’s agreed to acquire Uplift, the buy now, pay later (BNPL) vendor, for $100 million in cash and stock. It’s likely not the exit Uplift was hoping for — and a sign of serious consolidation in the BNPL space, which […]

Patently messy: How a $6B deal may spur more IP lawsuits

July 27, 2023
A megabucks enterprise acquisition that closed six months ago could lead to thousands of patents landing on the open market. Last August, Canadian enterprise technology giant OpenText announced plans to acquire U.K.-based IT software vendor and consultancy Micro Focus for a chunky $6 billion, a deal that closed on January 31. In our coverage at […]

Reddit is testing its own verification mark and new accessibility features

July 27, 2023
After Twitter’s (now X) rollout of a new paid plan offering verification, other social media companies like Meta, LinkedIn, and Tumblr have tried to implement their own badges. Reddit is now joining the bandwagon by testing a new “official” badge. The company said it is testing these labels with a small set of profiles as […]

Terragon’s $9M raise gives credence to the market maturity in Africa’s cloud and martech space

July 27, 2023
As one of the well-known data and cloud martech companies in Africa, Terragon, via several products, gives its clients (primarily telecommunications and financial services companies) data on the continent’s growing consumer markets. Adrenaline, its main product, is a telco-data monetization solution that lets telcos diversify their income and marketers access specialized audiences who are otherwise […]

Samsung extends cut in memory chip production, will focus on high-end AI chips instead

July 27, 2023
Samsung Electronics continues to cut back its memory chip production, including NAND flash used in smartphones and PCs, after reporting a $3.4 billion (4.36 trillion won) operating loss in the second quarter of this year in its memory chip unit. The world’s biggest memory chip maker posted a roughly $7 billion operating loss in its […]