Air travel’s sudden collapse will reshape a trillion-dollar industry
LIKE MOST international jamborees these days the Farnborough air show wrapped up on July 24th as a virtual event. Webinars featuring grim-faced…
LIKE MOST international jamborees these days the Farnborough air show wrapped up on July 24th as a virtual event. Webinars featuring grim-faced…
ONE OF THE most intriguing questions in business is what happened to GE, a company once so dear in America that its near-collapse in 2018 beggared belief. It still limps on, but the suspects behind a destruction of $500bn in value over little more than 20 years are so many that the mystery feels like…
IT IS SUPPOSED to be the “Tesla killer”. Volkswagen’s new ID.3 is the firm’s first mass-produced all-electric car—and the first step in the German carmaker’s attempts to reinvent itself for an electrified world. That makes it perhaps the most important model since the original Golf, launched in 1976. The ID.3 is also late. Mechanically, the…
Appetite for chips—and chipmakers—is strongSOFTBANK IS reportedly mulling the sale or flotation of Arm, a chip designer it bought for $30bn in 2016. Luckily for the tech group, appetite for chips—and chipmakers—remains strong. On July 13th Analog Devices bid $20bn for Maxim Integrated, an American rival.This article appeared in the Business section of the print…
Two wheels good. Two wheels plus a motor betterVANMOOF, A DUTCH bicycle-maker, is known for sleek designs and clever advertising. In a television spot for its newest model, images of the evils of car culture—accidents, gridlock and pollution—are projected onto the skin of a luxury car, which melts, turning into one of the company’s elegant…
Back on the chain gangREMEMBER THE 7am alarm? The rushed goodbye with spouse and children as you dash out of the house? The nervous patting of pockets to check for keys, season ticket, security pass and phone? And the clogged traffic or crowded train carriage?Most office workers have escaped those familiar rituals for the past…
NOTHING IS MORE likely to sabotage a brand’s reputation than a customer complaint that goes viral. Social media often blow the problem out of proportion, leading television programmes and newspapers to pick up the story, which is invariably one that pits plucky members of the public against some heartless corporate Goliath. Consumer gripes—and stories about…
Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hubBOB CHAPEK, Disney’s boss, sounded a cheerful note as he announced the entertainment giant’s quarterly results on August 4th. Its newish streaming service, Disney+, has acquired over 60m…
What does a middle-aged tech giant want with a teenage sensation?ON JULY 29TH the bosses of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook endured a five-hour videoconference with a congressional subcommittee on antitrust. Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft, America’s other technology titan, spent the day talking to investors, recruiting new hires and reviewing the latest quarterly…
Shanghai’s tech-focused STAR Market is benefiting from Sino-American tensionsTO SEE THE world of technology shift before your eyes, look at the short history of the Shanghai Stock Exchange Science and Technology Innovation Board. China’s president, Xi Jinping, unveiled plans for the new exchange, modelled on New York’s Nasdaq and known as the STAR Market, in…