Amazon Prime launched in India
Amazon’s premium Prime service, which gives members special priveleges such as free one day delivery and early access to deals, has launched in India. The Prime members can avail one day delivery, which costs Rs. 100 for regular users, for free. The memberships also gives users 30 minute early access to the store’s Lightning Deals, apart from special Prime offers. Amazon already runs a Prime Day offer in the Untied States where Prime members can purchase products at deep discounts, and this might be introduced in India in future. Prime delivery options are available in over 100 Indian cities, with Bengaluru Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad being among cities that can avail same day, morning and scheduled deliveries at discounted rates.
A 60 day trial followed by an introductory price of Rs.499 for a year is being offered, though other Prime services like Prime Music and Video are not available yet. Amazon has confirmed that Prime Video will be introduced in India shortly.
After years of struggle, Internet giant Yahoo has been acquired by Verizon Wireless for $4.6 billion. To put things into perspective, messaging app WhatsApp was purchased by Facebook for $19 billion. Once one of the Internet’s biggest names with a valuation of over 100 billion dollars, this marks a low-key exit for Yahoo, which has been on the decline for years despite the efforts of Marissa Mayer, who joined the company as CEO in 2012. This marks Verizon’s second high-profile acquisition, after taking over AOL last year.
After the success of the Nexus 6P, Huawei found favour with its dual camera flagship, the P9. The company is now gearing up to launch the phone, which uses a leica-branded dual camera setup with one of the sensors dedicated to capturing monochrome information, in India on August 17. The P9 features 5.2 inch display of the AMOLED variety and runs on the company’s custom Kirin 950 octa-core processor. Other notable features include a 3,000 mAh battery and USB Type-C, all overseen by Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi’s event on July 27 may see the launch of the company’s foray into notebooks. The often leaked Mi notebook, which is said to come in regular and Pro variants with the latter rumoured to include the Intel Core i7 and nVidia GTX970 video processor, could also be unveiled at the event. The device has already been leaked in images and configurations have been revealed in product sites. Online retailer Banggood even has a Xiaomi ultrabook listed at Rs. 48,511, with the option to notify buyers when it is available.
