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Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Friday. Apple's revenue growth ground to a halt in the first three months of the year, as the coronavirus pandemic shuttered its retail stores, dampened consumer demand for iPhones and rattled the company's global manufacturing operations. Apple reported fiscal second-quarter revenue of $58.3 billion, up less than 1% from the same period one year ago, and well below the company's initial projection of between $63 billion and $67 billion. Amazon reported huge growth in first-quarter revenue but a miss on earnings on Thursday. The mixed results show how the coronavirus outbreak is leading to more shoppers on Amazon, albeit at an increased cost as the company is dealing with a number of costly changes, including supply chain lockdowns and warehouse safety upgrades.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos told investors to 'take a seat' as he told them that he's dedicating the entire current quarter's $4 billion profit and then some to COVID-19 related expenses. COVID-19-related worker protection expenses include the creation of its own COVID-19 test, which Amazon's CFO says will cost $1 billion this year. Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company is "looking at other areas" when it comes to health and the Apple Watch. The comment comes after reports have suggested that Apple is bringing features like sleep tracking and blood oxygen monitoring to the Apple Watch. WeWork has started global layoffs as the coronavirus pandemic ravages the office industry, with sales, physical product, operations, and other groups seeing cuts on Thursday. The layoffs came via Zoom calls, as has become the norm across downsizing companies under shelter-in-place orders. Coronavirus pushed Twitter to a record 24% growth in daily users last quarter, but the social media giant swung to a loss. The company's first-quarter revenue and earnings beat the consensus forecast of Wall Street analysts polled by Bloomberg. Softbank is taking a $6.6 billion hit on its WeWork investment. SoftBank is embroiled in a legal dispute with directors at WeWork after backing out of a $3 billion tender offer agreed when it bailed out the office-sharing firm following a flopped IPO attempt last year. The UK has published blueprints for COVID-19 immunity passports, a controversial route out of lockdown. Most of the submissions outline how ID documents could be used alongside facial recognition, QR codes, and test results, to verify an individual's health before allowing them to enter private premises.
Microsoft's big bet on a 'Netflix of gaming' is paying off and the service now has over 10 million users. The service has been a major hit with critics and consumers and is regularly heralded as the best deal in gaming. California's health department website crashed a minute after Elon Musk linked to it in Twitter tirade about empty hospitals. The CHHS data portal crashed just one minute after Musk tweeted a link to the website, California officials confirmed Business Insider. Have an Amazon Alexa device? Now you can hear 10 Things in Tech each morning. Just search for "Business Insider" in your Alexa's flash briefing settings. You can also subscribe to this newsletter here — just tick "10 Things in Tech You Need to Know. |
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