By Eric M. Johnson, David Shepardson and Tracy Rucinski

SEATTLE/WASHINGTON/CHICAGO (Reuters) – U.S. air safety officials have asked Boeing Co to supply fresh analysis and documentation showing numerous 737 MAX subsystems would not be affected by electrical grounding issues first flagged in three areas of the jet in April, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The extra analysis injects new uncertainty over the timing of when Boeing’s best-selling jetliner would be cleared to fly by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The electrical problems have suspended nearly a quarter of its 737 MAX fleet.

U.S. airlines have said they expected Boeing to release the service bulletins as soon as this week that would allow them to make fixes and soon return the planes to service, but this latest issue will likely push that timelime back.

“We continue to work closely with the FAA and our customers to address the ground path issue in affected 737s,” a Boeing spokeswoman said.

Asked about the status of the planes, a FAA spokesman said “we are continuing to work with Boeing.”

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The BCCI stands to lose over Rs 2000 crore of the broadcast and sponsorship money earmarked for this year’s Indian Premier League which was indefinitely postponed on Tuesday due to Covid-19 cases in its bio-bubble.

The BCCI was forced to postpone the IPL after multiple cases of Covid-19 among players and support staff emerged from Ahmedabad and New Delhi in the past couple of days.

“We would be losing anything between Rs 2000 to Rs 2500 crore for the midway postponement of this season. I would say something in the range of Rs 2200 crore will be closer to accurate estimation,” a senior BCCI official told PTI on conditions of anonymity.

The 52-day 60-match tournament would have concluded in Ahmedabad on May 30. However, only 24 days of cricket was possible with 29 completed games before the virus halted proceedings.

The biggest loss for BCCI is the money it gets from Star Sports for the broadcast rights of the tournament.

Star has a five-year contract worth Rs 16,347 crore which is Rs 3269.4 crore per year. If there are 60 games in a season, the per match valuation comes to approximately Rs 54.5 crore.

If Star pays per match, then the amount for 29 matches would be Rs 1580 crore approximately out of what would have been Rs 3270 crore for a full tournament. This means a loss of Rs 1690 crore for the Board.

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Ola Electric on Tuesday announced the appointment of Wayne Burgess, as head of vehicle design for its entire product range including scooters, bikes, cars and more.

Burgess brings a wealth of international automotive design experience, having worked on some of the most legendary and iconic cars in automotive history including the Bentley Arnage in 1998, Aston Martin’s DB9 in the mid 2000s and more recently, the Jaguar XF, F-Type, F-Pace SUV, XE and many others.

“Wayne is a fantastic addition to our leadership team and will bring global appeal, and design aesthetic to our industry changing electric vehicles. As the world moves to EVs, the vehicle form factors will be fundamentally reimagined. Wayne’s expertise in designing some of the most legendary vehicles will also be helpful in bringing these new form factors to consumers. I look forward to collaborating with him to build the most iconic range of EVs in the world,” said Bhavish Aggarwal, chairman and group CEO, Ola.

Burgess has spent almost three decades designing vehicles for the majority of British premium automotive manufacturers, from Rolls Royce and Bentley in his early career, to Aston Martin and Jaguar Landrover to, more recently, Lotus. Notably, he was the chief designer for the Jaguar F-Type sports car, and then studio director for the Jaguar F-Pace SUV.

Expressing a keen interest in taking charge of vehicle design at Ola Electric, Burgess said, “I am looking forward to my work at Ola Electric and to the opportunity to lead a team that will work on designing cutting-edge electric vehicles for the world. I am thrilled to be part of Ola as it accelerates on its path to become a leader in global EV solutions.”

Ola is gearing up to launch the first in its range of electric scooters in the coming months.

The Ola Scooter will roll out from the Ola Future factory which is being built at record-speed in Tamil Nadu. The Ola Future factory will be the world’s largest two-wheeler factory when fully operational with 10 million-a-year capacity next year. The factory will start manufacturing the Ola Scooter as soon as its first phase of 2 million annual capacity is ready this summer.

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India on Monday notified a revenue threshold of Rs 2 crore and a limit of 300,000 users for non-resident technology firms such as Google, Facebook, Netflix, to pay tax in India under new or revised bilateral tax pacts.

This is part of the Significant Economic Presence (SEP) principle, which was introduced in the Finance Bill 2018-19, and which widened the scope of ‘business connection’ to include provision of download of data or software, if aggregate payments from such transactions exceed a prescribed amount, or if a multinational’s interaction is with a prescribed number of users.

“…the amount of aggregate of payments arising from transaction, or transactions of goods, services or property carried out by a non-resident, with any person in India…including download of data or software in India during the previous year, shall be Rs 2 crore…the number of users with whom systematic and continuous business activities are solicited or who are engaged in interaction shall be three lakh,” said the notification issued by the ministry of finance.

This will come into effect from April 1, 2022.

However, the existing double taxation avoidance agreements will not be covered under the proposed change, implying that in order to tax Facebook, Google and the like, India will require to renegotiate the tax treaty with the US.

The digital companies will come under India’s tax net only when the existing treaties get reviewed or when new ones are signed.

“Considering that the threshold has been kept quite low, many non-residents would come under the ambit of SEP. However, a non-resident can still take shelter under the tax treaties since India’s existing treaties contain the conventional concept of permanent establishment (PE) for taxing business profits of a non-resident and the inclusion of SEP in the Act will not be read into the tax treaties unless they are amended,” said Rakesh Nangia, managing partner, Nangia Anderson LLP. “Though the residents of treaty countries can claim the beneficial provisions of treaty, non-treaty jurisdictions and non-residents not eligible for treaty benefit, may have to review their position on taxability and compliances,” he added.

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Taiwanese tech giant ASUS is set to reportedly launch Zenfone 8 smartphone with a 3.5mm audio jack on May 12.

When the Zenfone 7 series was announced last year, the two phones were missing the audio jack that was present on the Zenfone 6, reports GizmoChina.

Apart from the audio jack, the Zenfone 8 is set to feature a punch hole at the top left corner of the screen for the front-facing camera, which means that the flip cameras will not make a comeback.

The phone will also have a high refresh rate and OLED displays with 1080p resolutions.

It has been reported that the Zenfone 8 Mini which is expected to be a compact model will have a 5.92-inch screen, a 4000mAh battery and support for 30W fast charging.

Ahead of the launch, a second ASUS model has appeared on GeekBench, this time around the Zenfone 8.

The model appears with the model number ASUS_I004D which corresponds to the model number of the Zenfone 8 spotted on a kernel source code breakdown done by the guys at XDA Developers.

The GeekBench listing shows the Zenfone 8 will also pack a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset just like the Zenfone 8 Mini.

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Apple reportedly registered profits as high as 78 per cent from its App Store in 2018 and 2019, an expert witness for Epic Games has testified, as the Cupertino-based tech giant and Fortnite game developer prepare for a legal battle in the US beginning Monday.

According to The Verge, expert Ned Barnes testified that “information from Apple’s Corporate Financial Planning and Analysis group show the App Store had a 77.8 percent operating margin in 2019, and 74.9 percent in 2018”.

Apple has contested that interpretation of the data, saying “we don’t have a separate profit and loss statement for the App Store”.

“Epic’s experts calculations of the operating margins for the App Store are simply wrong and we look forward to refuting them in court,” an Apple spokesperson was quoted as saying in the report on Saturday.

Epic Games will defend its stance during a lawsuit hearing against from May 3. The companies got involved in a legal battle over the use of an in-game payment system.

While Epic Games argues about Apple’s monopoly over the app market and treats 30 per cent standard fee amount to anti-competitive behaviour that must be regulated by antitrust law, Apple contends that “the whole antitrust allegation and associated dust-kicking is little more than a PR stunt”.

Apple CEO Tim Cook as well as Epic Games Founder and CEO Sweeney may testify in the trial.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – The chief executive of the biggest U.S. chip-maker, Intel Corp, said the company is going to curb its focus on buying back its own stock.

“We will not be anywhere near as focused on buybacks going forward as we have in the past,” Intel Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger said in an interview on the CBS news magazine “60 Minutes” to air on Sunday night.

Gelsinger’s comments were in response to a question comparing how much Intel has spent buying its own stock compared to its investment in research and development.

A global shortage of semiconductor chips, critical in cars, laptops and other major consumer products, has put a spotlight on Intel, the only major U.S. chip manufacturer.

In the first quarter, Intel spent $2.3 billion on share repurchases, according to Bloomberg, which first reported Gelsinger’s comments.

The new CEO said in March that Intel will spend up to $20 billion to build two new factories in Arizona, greatly expanding its advanced chip manufacturing capacity. The majority of chips are currently produced in Asia.

According to a transcript of the “60 Minutes” interview, Gelsinger said Intel is also planning to reconfigure some factories to make chips for cars. Ford Motor Co, General Motors Co and other automakers have cut production due to the shortage.

Intel’s board of directors support the move to curtail stock buybacks, Gelsinger said.

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By Stephen Nellis

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Epic Games faces an uphill legal battle against Apple Inc in an antitrust trial starting Monday, and a defeat for the maker of “Fortnite” could make it harder for U.S. government regulators to pursue a similar case against the iPhone maker, legal experts said.

But win or lose at the trial, Epic, which has pursued an aggressive public relations campaign against Apple alongside its court pleadings, may have already accomplished a major goal: Drawing Apple squarely into the global debate over whether and how massive technology companies should be regulated.

Apple has mostly succeeded in staying out of the regulatory crosshairs by arguing that the iPhone is a niche product in a smartphone world dominated by Google’s Android operating system. But that argument has become harder to sustain with the number of iPhone users now exceeding 1 billion.

Epic alleges Apple has such a strong lock on those customers that the app store constitutes a distinct market for software developers over which Apple has monopoly power. Apple is abusing that power, Epic argues, by forcing developers to use Apple’s in-app payment systems – which charge commissions of up to 30% – and to submit to app-review guidelines the gaming company says discriminate against products that compete with Apple’s own.

“It’s not a super-strong suit – I don’t think they are likely to win,” said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a law professor at Vanderbilt Law School. “But it has already achieved a lot of its purpose, which is drawing attention to some of Apple’s practices that many developers see as abusive.”

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Amazon said Wednesday that it plans to give more than 500,000 of its workers a raise as it seeks to attract new workers.

The online shopping giant, which already pays new hires at least USD15 an hour, said it will start increasing pay between 50 cents an hour to USD3 an hour starting next month.

Those getting raises include warehouse workers, who pack and ship orders, as well as those who work in Amazon’s package sorting centers and other facilities.

Amazon said the pay raise is part of its push to hire more workers. The company has needed more people to get orders to shoppers during the pandemic as Americans increasingly shop online.

It hired 500,000 people in 2020 alone, bringing its total workforce to nearly 1.3 million people worldwide.

The pay announcement also comes after a failed union push at a Alabama warehouse, which put a national spotlight on working conditions at Amazon.

Pro-union workers and organisers in Alabama said they wanted better pay and more breaks in their 10-hour shifts.

Earlier this month, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos acknowledged in a shareholder letter that the company could to do better for its workers and said he didn’t take comfort in the outcome of the union election in Alabama.

Other retailers have been boosting pay, too. Costco, for example, recently raised its minimum wage to USD16 an hour. And Target recently raised its starting pay to USD15 an hour.

Seattle-based Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the U.S. behind retail rival Walmart.

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End-user spending on public cloud services in India is expected to touch USD 4.4 billion in 2021, an increase of 31.4 per cent over the previous year, according to research firm Gartner.

This is expected to grow further to USD 5.62 billion in 2022, Gartner said in a statement.

The continued trend of increased remote workers in 2021, will lead to an increase in spending on desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).

These segments are forecast to grow 47.7 per cent (to USD 73 million) and 52.2 per cent (to USD 1.44 billion), respectively.

Indian chief information officers (CIOs) saw the benefits of cloud during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, Gartner research vice president Sid Nag said.

“To build business resilience and minimize the impact of continued disruptions, investing in cloud is unavoidable. India has experienced consistent double-digit growth in cloud spending over the last three years, the pandemic only expedited the shift,” he added.

Spending on Cloud Business Process Services (BPaaS) is expected to grow 9.2 per cent to USD 207 million, Cloud Application Infrastructure Services (PaaS) by 30.5 per cent to USD 997 million, Cloud Application Services (SaaS) by 20.8 per cent to USD 1.41 billion, and Cloud Management and Security Services by 18 per cent to USD 317 million in 2021.

Gartner said spending on SaaS and cloud management and security services will experience double digit growth in India for the first time.

“SaaS has been pivotal in supporting the sudden increase in the mobile workforce, as well as customers, in 2020. Learning from this, Indian CIOs will continue to build on the above trend as they move towards a composable business environment,” Nag said.

Within SaaS, customer experience and relationship management and content services will be the highest growing segments in 2021, forecast to grow 24.9 per cent and 26.1 per cent, respectively, as per Gartner.

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