Amazon launches its first fitness band in bid to take on Fitbit, others

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Amazon.com Inc on Thursday launched a fitness band and app, “Halo”, as the e-commerce giant looks to take on Apple, Fitbit and Samsung in an increasingly crowded fitness tracker market.

The Halo band would be priced at $99.99 while the app membership would cost $3.99 per month, according to Amazon.

The market for wearables is highly crowded, with Apple Inc being the leader with a 29.3% share in the first quarter of 2020, according to data from market research firm International Data Corp.

Rivalry for a greater share of the fitness band market has prompted Apple and Samsung to add features for health tracking, including electrocardiogram and blood pressure sensor.

Alphabet Inc-owned Google said in November it would buy Fitbit Inc for $2.1 billion. Shares of the fitness tracker maker fell marginally in morning trading.

Amazon said the water-resistant band, with a battery life of up to 7 days, contains an accelerometer, a temperature sensor and a heart rate monitor, among other features.

Twitter takes down Beijing-backed influence operation pushing coronavirus messages

Reuters

June 12, 2020

Twitter <TWTR.N> on Thursday said it removed more than 170,000 accounts tied to a Beijing-backed influence operation that deceptively spread messages favorable to the Chinese government, including about the coronavirus.

TikTok Ads - The new kind of advertising

Sandy Austin

April 4, 2020

Currently TikTok provides a strong advertising opportunity because it’s extremely popular and is not as overburdened by ads as some of the older social media platforms.

Google takes down Indian app that removed Chinese ones

Reuters

June 3, 2020

Alphabet Inc's Google has taken down an Indian mobile application from its app store that allowed users to remove other Chinese apps from their phones as it violated certain company policies, a spokesman said on Wednesday.