Monday, June 9, 2014

New India govt eyes rapid reforms; Supermarket price wars a 'race to the bottom'; Sony v/s Facebook in virtual reality

1 New India govt eyes rapid reforms (BBC) India's new government has unveiled a programme for rapid economic reforms aimed at creating jobs and boosting foreign investment. The announcement by President Pranab Mukherjee included plans designed to simplify taxation and reduce inflation. Industrial reforms included attracting private investment to the coal and defence sectors.

The President's parliamentary address was made to lawmakers elected in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's landslide victory last month. Mr Mukherjee said that the government would introduce a general sales tax, encourage foreign investment and speed up approvals for major business projects. It would also tackle bottlenecks that make India's food inflation the highest among major economies.

The anti-inflationary message will be welcomed by central bank governor Raghuram Rajan, who has made lowering India's growth-stifling high interest rates contingent on containing consumer prices. India's economic expansion has slowed markedly, growing by 4.7% in the 2013-14 financial year and marking the second year of sub-5% growth.


2 Supermarket price wars a ‘race to the bottom’ (Katie Allen in The Guardian) Supermarkets are being warned they are locked in a "race to the bottom" in a new report showing that a food price war dragged sales lower last month. The British Retail Consortium said like-for-like food sales fell by an annual rate of 2.2% during March to May, in contrast to a year earlier when turnover grew 0.7%.

On one measure, it was the worst quarter for food sales since BRC records began in 2008. While non-food retailers are seeing steady sales growth, the grocers appear locked in a race to the bottom, imposing price cut after price cut to maintain their sales volumes," said David McCorquodale, head of retail at the report's co-authors, KPMG. "This price war is hindering the retail sector's overall recovery."

This latest research pointed to a growing divide between food and non-food sales. The BRC said clothing was the best performing category in May, helped by warmer weather. Aside from the usual boost to televisions, the World Cup saw demand pick up for collectibles and sticker magazines.

"Overall food and grocery sales for May were a further disappointment. For food retailers, it will be essential to capitalise on opportunities provided by the summer events and the World Cup in particular," said Joanne Denney-Finch, chief executive at IGD, the data company providing the BRC report's food figures.


3 Sony v/s Facebook in virtual reality (Cliff Edwards in San Francisco Chronicle) Now it's Sony versus Facebook. After being knocked around by Apple and Samsung for more than a decade, Sony Corp. is up against yet another tech rival, attempting to build the PlayStation 4 into an entertainment powerhouse and develop a virtual-reality headset for the gaming market. And in this fight at least, Sony, which has lost money in five of the last six years, might have an edge. Its commanding lead in sales of video-game consoles could give a boost to the Project Morpheus headset. The chief competition is Oculus VR Inc., the virtual-reality goggle pioneer being acquired by Facebook Inc.

The video-game division at Sony is one of the few bright spots for a company whose television business hasn't been profitable in about a decade and whose smartphone and tablets are perennial also-rans to those from Apple and Samsung. Gaming is just the first killer application for virtual-reality headwear, which could become standard gear for experiences that put users closer to or even inside the action, from watching sports to taking classes online.

Sony's movie and television studios can feed its consoles with virtual reality-ready fare, and the Project Morpheus headset could help attract non-gamers. CEO Kazuo Hirai's idea is to deliver an array of offerings via the Web to challenge Apple, Samsung, Google Inc. and, now, Facebook.

The Oculus headset, called the Rift, has to connect to a high-powered PC to perform well. Morpheus works with the PS4, which has souped-up hardware and high-definition audio. More than 7 million PS4s have sold since its debut in November, and there are more than 100 million PlayStations operating around the world.

While virtual-reality goggles have been demonstrated for decades, it's only now that screen technology has gotten cheap and light enough for mass-market opportunities. Facebook said in March that it planned to buy Oculus for $2 billion. "The technology opens up the possibility of completely new kinds of experiences," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post.

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