Apple Revenues Up 12% After iPhone Launch

Apple has posted a 12% jump in revenue - exceeding expectations following its best ever iPhone launch.

Sales of the smartphone hit 39.27 million in the quarter ending in September, up 16% on last year.

This surpassed the roughly 38 million some on Wall Street had expected, and excluded sales in China, its largest market outside of the United States.

The new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models went on sale last month and have already surpassed the previous-generation model in volumes, according to chief financial officer Luca Maestri.

This helped Apple record sales of $42.12bn (£25bn) and profits of $8.5bn (£5.2bn).

"Our fiscal 2014 was one for the record books, including the biggest iPhone launch ever with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus," Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, said.

"With amazing innovations in our new iPhones, iPads and Macs, as well as iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, we are heading into the holidays with Apple's strongest product lineup ever."

However, the iPad continued to struggle amid a general decline in tablet sales.

The device slid more than 13% to 12.3 million units.Apple hopes its recent alliance with IBM will help drive more tablet and phone sales to corporate customers.

Shares in Apple were roughly flat at about $100 (£62) in after-hours trade

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella gets $84m pay package

Microsoft boss Satya Nadella has been given a pay package worth $84.3m (£52m), making him one of the top earners in the tech industry.

The total pay package is largely made up of share awards, and most of the payments will be made over several years.

News of the package comes less than a month after Mr Nadella advised women not to ask for a pay rise but to have "faith in the system".

He later apologised for the remark.

In a regulatory filing, Microsoft said the promotion of Mr Nadella had meant it had a chief executive without a major equity stake in the firm for the first time.

Its previous chief executives, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, both had multi-billion dollar holdings in the company.

"In approving the initial annual total compensation opportunity for Mr Nadella, our board was mindful of both the fierce competition for talented executives in the technology sector and the demands on and responsibilities of the leader of a global organization with the scope and stature of Microsoft," it said in the filing.

Excluding the long-term share awards, Mr Nadella's pay package for this year totals $11.6m.

Mr Nadella was named as chief executive in February, and is only the third chief executive in the firm's history.

Yahoo profits surge on earnings from Alibaba sale`

Investors have long been hoping that Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer can turn the tech giant around

Technology giant Yahoo has reported profits of $6.8bn (£4.2bn) for the three months to September, buoyed by earnings from the firm's stake in Alibaba.

Yahoo was required to sell part of its stake ahead of the Chinese firm's stock market floatation, netting it $6.3bn.

That made up for a continuing fall in advertising sales at Yahoo.

The search company has struggled to maintain market share against rivals like Google.

Revenue from ads decreased by 5%.

But overall revenues increase by 1% to $1.15bn from the same period a year earlier, and despite the lion's share of its earnings coming from Alibaba, Yahoo's numbers were better than expected, cheering investors.

Shares in the technology giant rose over 2% in after-hours trading, following the close of the US markets.

Mobile boost

In a statement accompanying the earnings release, Yahoo's chief executive Marissa Mayer touted the firm's investments in its mobile offerings.

"We have invested deeply in mobile and we are seeing those investments pay off," she said.

"Not only are our mobile products attracting praise and engagement from users and industry awards, they are generating meaningful revenue for Yahoo."

Yahoo said revenue from its mobile products was over $200m for the quarter, and estimated that mobile revenues could top $1.2bn by the end of the year.

Ms Mayer has been under pressure from investors and analysts to demonstrate that Yahoo can continue to grow now that it no longer has a significant stake in Alibaba, which had been providing a steady stream of revenue to the company.

Twitter Turns Money-Transfer App as BPCE Starts Service

A Twitter Inc. (TWTR) account and a bank card is all you’ll need in France to tweet money to a friend or a charity. The transfers will be based on a simple rule: no retweets.

Groupe BPCE, France’s second-largest bank by branches, is unveiling today its new offer to provide “easy, rapid, secure and free of charge” money transfers through Twitter accounts, betting hashtag payments can help boost its basis of e-users, Nicolas Chatillon, head the Paris-based bank’s e-payment unit S-Money, said in an interview.

“Naturally retweets are blocked” for security reasons and payments will happen in “a language familiar on the tweets,” that will generate on smartphones a proprietary S-Money verification, Chatillon said. “It is free of charge and it will remain so for individuals, while today the corporate side is under construction.”

BPCE’s unit, which isn’t in a partnership with San Francisco-based Twitter, is offering tweet payments mostly for crowdfunding, charity fundraising and also pooled payments like gifts for friends, Chatillon said. To start with, payments will be made through visible tweets and money transfers may also be possible through direct messaging, he said.

Apple Creates an iMac Screen So Sharp There's Almost Nothing to Watch on It

Apple just released an insanely high-resolution screen with a computer inside of it. Here are the highlights of what you can do with the new iMac, according to Phil Schiller, the company's head of marketing: edit video and photos, read magazines ... um, look at the pretty app icons.

"There has never been a display to show off that great new user interface as beautiful as this new Retina 5K display," Schiller says on stage at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California. "When you read text, it looks incredible, crisp and sharp, with magazine quality. If you work with photos, you'll have never worked on a desktop display with this level of detail."

You may have noticed a major omission: watching video. That's because there's basically nothing available in 5K definition. Most movies and television shows are made for mainstream high-definition TVs like the one you probably have in your living room. The iMac's screen is seven times sharper than that. You can still watch an HD movie full-screen on the new 27-inch iMac, but it'll just blow the picture up to fit. You won't be able to see every pore on Daenerys Targaryen's cheek.

If you're the kind of person who drops a lot of money on fancy new things, you might have an Ultra-HD TV at home. That has a 4K resolution. (In technical terms, that's one less K than the iMac.) But even 4K content won't take full advantage of Apple's new computer. Apple declined to comment.

Schiller is right that the new iMac is "an incredible feat of engineering." It's just not a very practical product for regular people — in case the $2,499 price tag didn't give that away. They should have just called it the iMac Pro. Film editors and professional photographers will spill gallons of saliva when they see this thing in the Apple Store, especially the ones who can expense it.

"It's really for high-power creatives," says J.P. Gownder, an analyst at Forrester Research. "It's not really pitched to the average user, not by price point. The days of the $2,500 computer is long past for the mass market."

As a consumer product, the 5K iMac stumbles for the same reason most people aren't buying 4K TVs. There's nothing to watch. Gownder points out that networks don't broadcast the Super Bowl in 4K. Or just about anything else, really. You can't buy a Blu-ray that supports 4K today, and one isn't expected to hit the market until late-next year at the earliest. HBO Go, Hulu Plus, Major League Baseball? No Ultra HD.

Amazon.com has a tiny selection of video available in that format. Netflix’s 4K roster is limitedmainly to Sony’s newer film releases, "Breaking Bad," NBC's "The Blacklist" and Netflix’s own shows. Despite those slim pickings, Netflix just upped the cost of Ultra-HD access to $11.99.

"The cost to deliver those bits is so expensive," says Dan Rayburn, an analyst at market researcher Frost & Sullivan. "You have a lot of issues with 4K. You have a device problem — most people don't have devices that support it. You have a bandwidth problem. And you have a content problem. On top of that, you have a business problem."

Shooting in 5K is very expensive, Rayburn says, and few Americans have a fast enough Internet connection at home to stream the video. An Ultra-HD iMac or Apple TV set or some other pretty screen isn't going to solve those problems. But man, would you look at those icons.

Square Encircled as Apple, PayPal Aim for Mobile Payments

Jack Dorsey founded payment startup Square Inc. with a mission ofrethinking the way people buy and sell stuff with their mobile phones.

Rising competition may get some merchants to rethink using Square.

Consider Fabrice Yopa, who used Square to collect payments for his online-video business. Yopa ditched the service a month ago, saying he’s fed up with how Square handled $4,000 in frozen subscriber payments.

“We’ve never had these kind of problems with any other companies we use, including PayPal,” Yopa said. “I would not recommend Square to anybody.”

With today’s debut of Apple Pay, a service that lets shoppers buy goods in stores using Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhones, and the coming spinoff of EBay Inc. (EBAY)’s PayPal, more Square customers could be lured away by rival services that offer lower fees, easier transactions and a deeper pool of buyers and sellers.

The stiffening rivalry among Square, Apple, PayPal and other payment-technology providers -- all betting on a future when digital wallets replace cash and credit cards -- reflects the rising stakes in a market that EMarketer Inc. estimates will be worth $118 billion by 2018, from $3.5 billion this year.

Square, co-founded by Twitter Inc. Chairman Dorsey, was one of the first companies to introduce technology that turns smartphones and tablets into credit-card readers. While Square appealed to smaller merchants seeking an easy way for customers to pay for goods and services, the startup is seeking to expand into bigger retailers.

Square Up

The key question is whether almost $600 million in funding over five years has given Square enough of an edge to fend off rivals, according to Scott Jacobson, managing director at Madrona Venture Group in Seattle.

“Square is going to have to figure out how to live or die on its own means,” Jacobson said in an interview.

To do that, the company will have to keep customers like Leighton Morrison happy. Morrison said he signed up with Square to collect $3,000 in payments for a rental property, only to have the company freeze his funds, even after he sent documents to prove his identity and receipts of the transaction.

“I would never recommend them,” Morrison said. “It’s impossible to get someone on the phone.”

A key challenge for all payment providers is to balance the need to serve customers quickly while complying with regulations and credit security.

“Holds on funds are extremely rare -- a fraction of a fraction of a percentage point -- and may occur when we need additional information to protect our buyers and sellers from potential chargebacks, high-risk transactions, or violations of our Terms of Service,” said Aaron Zamost, a spokesman for Square.

Apple Pay Day: Dispatch From a Post-Wallet Future

                        
             The Apple Pay mobile payment system at a Whole Foods store in Cupertino, Calif. on Oct. 17, 2014.

Apple released a software update for the iPhone 6 today that activates Apple Pay. The feature is designed to let users pay for stuff in stores or online by tapping their phones and authenticating the transaction using a fingerprint. Since I own an iPhone 6, I decided to see if the future has arrived. Here's what I found.

7:20am I check for software updates in my iPhone's Settings app. "Your software is up to date." OK, I guess the future isn't ready yet. So I walk my dog Goron. It's raining outside, and he hates the rain. I wonder whether the pet store down the road carries dog ponchos and whether they accept Apple Pay.

9:04am On my way into the office, I stop into a bodega to buy an overpriced organic juice. Although I'm not yet equipped with Apple Pay, I check the register to see if this particular corner store is ready for the future. It's not. I pay with cash.

9:09am I head underground and tap my wallet against the turnstile to enter the subway. It would be cool if I could use my iPhone 6 to board, since it uses roughly the same wireless technology to do payments as the subway card in my wallet. Apple doesn't let outside developers access the near-field communications chip right now. Bummer. Also a bummer: The subway is all backed up and over-capacity due to the rain.

9:56am A train finally comes, and I arrive at Embarcadero station downtown. There's a trailer parked near my office where Wells Fargo and Visa are promoting Apple Pay. It's packed with people around cash registers getting demos on how the new software works. San Francisco is weird.

An Apple Pay trailer in San Francisco on Oct. 20, 2014. Photographer: Mark Milian/Bloomberg

10:01am I stop for a cup of coffee at Blue Bottle. It's one of the hipsterest joints in the city, but even this place doesn't accept Apple Pay. They use Square. While I wait for my coffee, I check to see if the software update is online. It is! But I need Wi-Fi to get it.

10:51am After the typical lengthy update process, iOS 8.1 is ready. I open the Passbook app and try to activate the American Express card I have on file with iTunes. “Could Not Add Card: Try again later or contact your card issuer for more information.” OK. I add my Visa instead. I simply take a picture of the front of the card and punch in my security code. After a few seconds, it's ready to use. I try adding my Amex again, this time by taking a picture of it. That works. I also try to add my corporate card, but it isn’t supported by Apple Pay. If you add multiple cards, make sure to go into the Settings app and review your preferences in the Passbook & Apple Pay section. I had to tell it which is my preferred card.

11:01am I read the terms of service so you don’t have to. One thing that sticks out is that if you have the “location services” feature enabled on your phone — if you use maps, you do — Apple may collect your GPS coordinates when you pay to help improve its services. This means Apple Maps could get better at showing where stores are.

1:16pm I'm running low on toothpaste at home, so I stop at a Walgreens near my office. I tell the cashier, "I'm going to try this new thing." She is unfazed. I tap the phone against the terminal, and it lights up with a message asking me to place my finger on the home button. I do, and the credit-card terminal prompts me to confirm the transaction. The cashier acts like this is all completely normal, hands me my receipt and tells me to have a good day. So this is what the future feels like.

1:23pm Apple Pay doesn't work at my usual lunch spots, and I can't bring myself to eat at McDonald's or Subway. I pull up the Apple Pay Web page on my phone and see that Panera Bread is a launch partner. There's one a little more than a mile from me. French onion soup, here I come.

1:25pm A new version of Uber just came out that supports Apple Pay. The company says in a statement, “The beauty of Apple Pay is that it simplifies Uber’s signup process to a single tap.” Since I’m already an Uber user, I have to switch my billing method to Apple Pay. There's actually another step involved when using Apple Pay in Uber. I need to authenticate with my thumb print like all other Apple Pay transactions. The rest is the same.

1:33pm I arrive at Panera and order a Bacon Turkey Bravo. After telling the cashier my name and that I don't have a Panera card, I tap my iPhone against the payment terminal and place my thumb on the phone's Touch ID sensor. The process is even quicker this time because I don't have to approve the transaction on the machine. I ask the very nice cashier named Sherin if anyone else has used an iPhone to pay today. "Oh yes," she says. "Only works on the iPhone 6." Am I in an Apple commercial?

1:49pm On my way out, I run into Harry McCracken, a technology journalist at Fast Company. I ask, "Are you here to try out Apple Pay?" He says he's been running around the city all day using it. I wish him luck, and call another Uber. I better file this story soon.

3:02pm Apple Pay comes up a few times on the company's earnings call. Apple CEO Tim Cook says the top priorities were to create a good experience and to protect people's information. He also mentions that he used Apple Pay over the weekend and that it worked great, which makes me a little bit jealous that he was living in the future a couple of days before me.

3:55pm I file my story, and pledge to treat myself to taking an Uber car home tonight. If I ride the subway again today, I might throw my iPhone into the bay. Then how will I buy a dog poncho?

Morgan Stanley profits soar 87% as trading rebounds

US investment bank Morgan Stanley has posted an 87% jump in profits to $1.65bn (£1bn) in the three months to the end of September.

Trading of currencies, commodities and bonds was a big driver of profits, as was wealth management - advising high earners on their finances.

On Thursday, rival bank Goldman Sachs reported a 50% rise in profits.

Banks' bond trading activities have reportedly benefitted from problems at bond giant Pimco.

In September, trading superstar Bill Gross made a surprise exit from the world's biggest bond firm.

The departure of Mr Gross from Pimco reportedly prompted investors to withdraw billions of dollars from the company, money which has found its way to other trading businesses.

Morgan Stanley's total revenue for the quarter rose 12% to $8.91bn.

Bond trading revenues were up 19.4% to $997m. Wealth management revenue rose 9% to $3.79bn.

"We are well positioned to create superior returns for our shareholders, particularly as the US economy continues to strengthen," chief executive and chairman James Gorman said in a statement.

Google profits slide 5%, missing analyst estimates

Google has reported third-quarter profits of $2.8bn (£1.7bn), down 5% from the same period a year earlier.

That sent shares in the internet giant down over 3% in after-hours trading.

A closely-watched figure - the average cost-per-click that Google - decreased by 2%.

The company also missed analyst expectations for revenue, which increased by 20% to $16.52bn for the period, which was for the three months ending on 30 September 2014.

"We continue to be excited about the growth in our advertising and emerging businesses," said Google chief financial officer Patrick Pichettein a statement accompanying the earnings statement.

Google's profits were also hit by increasing costs of real estate, such as data centres, and hardware inventory costs, which increased by 37% to $3.35bn from the same period a year earlier.

Although Google makes the majority of its revenue from the advertising it places on its search site and others, the technology giant has been looking to expand its offerings.

On Wednesday, it unveiled new models of its Nexus phone and tablet devices, as well as a new version of its Android operating system.

Apple's iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3 tablets are unveiled

Apple has announced a new version of its tablet, the iPad Air 2, which it said was the thinnest device of its kind on the market.

It is 6.1mm (0.24in) thick, and also gains a Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

It has an anti-reflective coating on the screen for the first time, and the A8X - a faster version of the processor featured in the firm's latest iPhones.

However, some analysts have questioned whether the upgrade will be enough to turn around iPad sales.

An upgraded version of the firm's smaller tablet - called the iPad Mini 3 - was also announced.

Like its bigger sibling, it gets the company's fingerprint recognition component. But it uses the older A7 processor and has a lower-resolution rear camera.

Some of the details were published by Apple, reportedly by mistake, on Wednesday.

Apple's last earnings release revealed that it had sold 13.3 million iPads in the April-to-June quarter. That marked a 9% fall on its tally for the same period in 2013, despite the fact the company saw sales of iPhones and Mac computers rise.

It also contrasted with an 11% rise in the number of tablet shipments across the market as a whole - with Lenovo and Asus making some of the biggest gains - according to data from IDC.

The market research firm said that the iPad remained the bestselling tablet brand, but that its market share had dropped over the year from 33% to 26.9%.

Five Reasons Icahn Says Apple Is Worth $1.2 Trillion

The world’s biggest company isn’t big enough for Carl Icahn.

That’s essentially the activist investor’s message to Apple Inc., which had a market capitalization of $603.6 billion at the close of trading on Oct. 8. In a letter yesterday to Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, Icahn made the case for why the Cupertino, California-based company should be trading at $203 a share, about twice the current price, which would boost its valuation to $1.2 trillion.

Apple, Icahn said, is on the verge of seeing tremendous revenue growth as it brings out a new product lineup, including larger-screen iPhones, smartwatches and mobile payments. So if the market is undervaluing Apple at the moment, Icahn argued, now is the time for Cook to push for a stock buyback of as much as $100 billion.

“These factors combine to reflect a massive undervaluation of Apple in today’s market, which we believe will not last for long,” Icahn wrote in the letter.

Here’s a rundown of Icahn’s arguments:

-- IPhone Trumps Android.

The new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are like Mercedes-Benz luxury cars, except that they’re affordable enough for the mass market, Icahn argued. That means the handsets will grab market share from phones based on Google Inc.’s Android, especially in the premium device market “to form an increasingly dominant mobile ecosystem,” he wrote.

The new iPhones should help boost Apple’s earnings per share by 44 percent next year while increasing revenue by 25 percent, Icahn said.

“Considering the increasing amount of time users spend with their mobile devices, and thereby the practical value of a noticeably superior product, it is hard to imagine why a consumer would choose an inferior phone when the marginal cost difference is so small,” he wrote.

-- Watch the Watch.

Apple Watch, which the company revealed last month and promised for sale in the U.S. early next year, should have “a significant impact on Apple’s growth,” Icahn wrote. He estimated 20 million of the smartwatches will be sold in the next fiscal year, rising to a total of almost 120 million in 2016 and 2017 combined. The investor said he estimates the average selling price of $450 per watch.

-- IPads Win Over Businesses.

New iPads and the partnership Apple announced in July with International Business Machines Corp. should help boost the company’s tablet business by 13 percent in each of the next three fiscal years, Icahn said.

-- TV Takes Off.

Though Apple hasn’t announced plans to sell a TV set, Icahn is convinced the company is on the verge of doing what it did in the smartphone market to televisions, saying the company may introduce an ultra-high-definition TV set in fiscal year 2016.

He hedged a little, saying Cook might decide against doing a TV. Still, Icahn said selling 55-inch and 65-inch TV sets could mean sales of 12 million units in 2016 and 25 million in 2017.

“Televisions are a centerpiece to the modern living room and thereby a promising gateway into the home for Apple’s growing ecosystem,” he wrote.

-- Apple Pay Pays.

Apple’s new mobile payment system that’s being rolled out this month has the potential to generate $2.5 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2017 if it takes 30 percent market share of U.S. credit and debit card spending, Icahn said.

“Apple, dominant in the premium market, has customers who spend more on average than its peers, and it is therefore unusually well positioned to succeed with Apple Pay where others could not,” he wrote.

Sony Looks to PlayStation to Sell Smartphones

Sony Corp. is turning to the booming PlayStation business to help its struggling smartphone division, unveiling a new mobile device with Verizon Communications Inc. that streams video games.

The new Xperia Z3v phone will go on sale in the U.S. on Oct. 23 at Verizon stores, Kunimasa Suzuki, Sony’s mobile chief, said yesterday at an event in New York. The agreement adds the largest U.S. carrier for its Xperia smartphones, joining fourth-ranked T-Mobile US Inc.

“We know the challenges of building up our business,” Suzuki said. “The U.S. is one of the most exciting smartphone markets in the world and of course one of the toughest.”

Sony is looking for ways to bolster the flagging mobile phone division, which led the company to record a 180 billion yen ($1.7 billion) charge this year, cut employees and cancel its dividend for the first time. Sony’s devices have about 3.1 percent of the global market for smartphones, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data.

The new phone will let users access PlayStation 4 games remotely if they own the console and software. The Tokyo-based company said in August that more than 10 million consoles have been sold worldwide, marking the fastest growth in PlayStation’s hardware history.

Shares of Sony rose 0.1 percent to 1,883.5 yen as of 9:55 a.m. in Tokyo. The stock has gained 3 percent this year compared with a 4.7 percent decline in the Topix index.

Microsoft CEO Links Women's Pay Rises To Karma

                          

The newly installed boss of Microsoft has come under fire for telling women they do not need to ask for pay rises, relying instead on "karma".

The comments were made by CEO Satya Nadella while he was speaking in Arizona at an event for women in computing.

Mr Nadella was asked to give his advice to women who are uncomfortable requesting a salary raise.

He replied that women should have faith that the system will give them the right raises as they go along.

"It's not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along," Mr Nadella told the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

"Because that's good karma... It'll come back because somebody's going to know that's the kind of person that I want to trust."

The comments by India-born Mr Nadella, who has a remuneration package of around $7m (£4.3m), sparked a torrent of criticism on social media.

Fears UK Will Be Hit By New Euro Recession

The euro crisis is back. But this time it’s different.

That’s the general gist of the discussions at the International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington this week.
For this time around the meetings - a key opportunity for policymakers to catch up on the state of the global economy - have coincided with a fresh bout of fear over the euro area.

This isn’t the same kind of crisis the single currency faced a couple of years ago, when there were genuine worries that it might break up.Instead, the concern is that it simply hasn’t recovered fully from the recessions of recent years. Worse: it may soon slump back into another recession.



Why? In large part because of long-term problems in the continent: weak growth, poor demographics and unreformed regulatory systems.

The problem is that this time around there is even less clarity about what to do about it.

The French are determined to borrow and spend more to try to boost growth.So are the Italians. The problem is that doing so will mean they will break the supposedly iron-clad fiscal rules laid down by eurocrats in the teeth of the crisis.

The Germans are determined to keep control of their public finances, but are being urged by most of their neighbours to spend a bit more and boost demand. Though no-one is courageous enough to tell them to their face.

That’s the real reason why the IMF has spent most of the past week telling European countries to spend more on infrastructure.
You only have to watch our interview with IMF deputy managing director David Lipton to see how delicate a dancing act the Fund is having to perform here.
Meanwhile everyone, including George Osborne, has been looking towards the European Central Bank, indicating that they might be wise to consider going all in and doing full-scale quantitative easing.

Except that the ECB and central banking insiders insist they have already done enough - and that it’s up to the politicians to do more.

High Street Decline Continues With Shop Closures (UK)

The decline of the high street has accelerated in the first half of the year, according to new figures.

Experts suggest betting shops and discount stores gained increasing footholds at the expense of traditional retailers

While the recession has hit high street businesses hard, the changes have been put down to the rise of digital commerce.



Matthew Hopkinson, director of the Local Data Company, told Sky News: "Significant changes are continuing to take place across Britain's town centres.

"The transaction element is between people and not on product.
"The UK leads in terms of the impact online."

Town centres saw 406 net store closures compared to 209 in the same period last year, research from accountancy firm PwC, compiled by the Local Data Company, showed.

The collapse of businesses such as Phones 4u and lingerie chain La Senza saw this rise to 964 for the year to date at the end of September - two-and-a-half times the number for the whole of 2013.

There were 953 net closures in the first half of 2012 which reflects a closure rate of about 16 shops each day.
Traditional goods retailers such as shoe and clothes shops saw a net decline of 365 in the first half while leisure chains - encompassing food, beverage and entertainment - grew outlets by a net 215.

About 80% of the UK's national output comes from services, which includes retail, hospitality and financial industries.

The figures showed the changing face of the high street with coffee outlets, banks, pound shops, charity shops and convenience stores on the rise, together with American-style eateries.

Meanwhile, video libraries were wiped out, as were many mobile phone shops.Mark Hudson, retail leader at PwC, said: "This data shows that we are now really starting to see the full effects of the digital revolution and consequent change in customer behaviour play out on the high street.

"We're heading for a high street based around immediate consumption of food, goods and services or distress or convenience purchases."

Gap chief executive to resign in February

The chief executive officer of US retail clothing chain Gap is stepping down, the company said on Wednesday.

Glenn Murphy will resign as its chairman and chief executive in February after being in the role for over seven years.

He will be replaced by its current digital leader Art Peck, who has been with the retailer since 2005.

News of the management shakeup came as the firm reported weak same-store sales in September.

The company said weak sales in its Gap brand were expected to hurt margins in the third quarter.

The San Francisco based firm also owns clothing retail chains Old Navy and Banana Republic.

Samsung Electronics forecasts 60% fall in quarterly profit

Samsung Electronics has forecast a 60% fall in quarterly operating profit from a year ago because of slowing Galaxy smartphone sales.

The world's biggest mobile phones and TV maker said it expects an operating income of 4.1tn won ($3.8bn; £2.5bn) for the three months to September.

That is below analysts' expectations for earnings of 5.2tn won.

The South Korean company will publish full financial results later this month.

Samsung's mobile division, its biggest business, has been struggling to maintain its dominance against rivals such as Apple and Chinese smartphone-makers Xiaomi and Lenovo.

Its flagship Galaxy smartphone line has been losing market share to cheaper models that also have large screens and multiple features.

The firm said quarterly sales amounted to 47tn won, which was below analyst estimates for 50.3tn won.

"Smartphone shipments increased marginally amid intense competition," Samsung said in a statement.

"However, the operating margin declined due to increased marketing expenditure and lowered average selling price."

The company also said it is "preparing new smartphone line-ups featuring new materials and innovative designs, as well as a series of new mid-to-low end smartphones".

Samsung shares rose about 1.6% in Seoul despite the weak profit outlook.

Twitter sues US government over spying

Twitter has sued the US government over surveillance laws.

Under current regulations, Twitter cannot reveal certain information about government requests for users' data relating to national security.

Twitter argues that this violates the right to free speech, as defined by the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

The firm said it brought the case in an effort to force the government to be more transparent about personal data requests.

"It's our belief that we are entitled under the First Amendment to respond to our users' concerns and to the statements of US government officials by providing information about the scope of US government surveillance," Twitter's lawyer, Ben Lee, wrote in a blog post.

Twitter brought the action against the US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a northern California court on Tuesday.

In April, Twitter submitted a Transparency Report to the US government for publication; however, so far officials have denied the firm's request to share the full report with the public.

That report includes specific information about the nature and number of requests for Twitter user information relating to national security.

"The US government engages in extensive but incomplete speech about the scope of its national security surveillance activities as they pertain to US communications providers, while at the same time prohibiting service providers such as Twitter from providing their own informed perspective as potential recipients of various national security-related requests," wrote Twitter.

Yahoo to cut jobs in India in downsizing

Tech giant Yahoo plans to cut jobs in Bangalore, India, which is considered one of its largest engineering hubs.

A Yahoo spokesperson said the company was "making some changes to the way we operate in Bangalore leading to consolidation of certain teams into fewer offices".

About 400 employees will be affected by the cuts, according to reports.

But Yahoo told the BBC that the majority of the more than 1,000 workers in Bangalore will not be "impacted".

"Bangalore will certainly continue to remain an important centre for Yahoo," the spokesperson said.

It also added that relocation packages will be offered to some employees, suggesting that some jobs may be moved to its US headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

Yahoo 'growth'

News of the redundancies comes after reports this week that the California-based company was close to investing millions of dollars in mobile messaging service Snapchat.

Yahoo has been making headlines for acquisitions under chief executive Marissa Mayer, who has been trying to boost its stalling revenue growth since joining in 2012.

The company sold about $8bn (£4.9bn) worth of shares in Chinese firm Alibaba's public listing last month, prompting the shopping spree talks.

The company did say it was on a path of "sustainable growth".

"We're looking at ways to achieve greater efficiency, collaboration and innovation across our business," it said in a statement.