Technology & CSR

Agricultural robots, sometimes known as agribots, are seen as one of the key trends that will deeply influence agriculture in 2019.

Smartphone innovation may have stuttered to a halt in recent years, but HTC has a plan to reinvent the ubiquitous device while simultaneously reshaping the entire internet.

Hot weather saw solar briefly take over from gas as the number one energy source

Amazon has tightened its grip on the UK retail market by taking more than five times as much new warehousing space this year as the next fastest growing rival.

Learn how Kotter's Change Model can help you prepare for change thoroughly so that you can implement it successfully.

Alan Selby went undercover at the firm's Tilbury warehouse in Essex where ambulances are regularly called and where workers face the sack if they fail to pack at least two items per minute

When you run the numbers it doesn’t make sense for Apple to buy Netflix.

Netflix has 102 million more subscribers today than when they first started their streaming service in 2007. Today, they stream to customers in more than 190 countries.

This year’s Halloween confectionery will contain palm oil grown on land that should lawfully be habitat to orangutans, rhinos and clouded leopards, despite commitment to clean up supply chains

A SWOT analysis helps identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Here's the step-by-step guide to SWOT analysis (with examples and templates).

A Japanese business will begin paying its workers partially in bitcoin, in a bid to gain a better understanding of how the digital currency works, Agence France-Presse reports. Tech firm GMO Internet said it will pay up to 100,000 yen (£660) a month to approximately 4,000 employees via bitcoin from February next year, according to the agency. Company spokeswoman Harum Ishii told AFP that employees are free to choose whether or not they want a part of their salary to be paid in bitcoin.

Digital technology can transform the lives of farmers as they discover how apps and blockchain offer new ways of doing business.

Silicon Valley giants are focusing heavily on artificial intelligence and its future applications.

Learn how to apply Ansoff's Matrix to understand the risk of different strategic options using our free worksheet.

Sooner or later, this was bound to happen, right? Starting in October, Netflix started raising prices on U.S.-based subscribers to its most popular streaming plan, from $9.99 to $10.99 monthly. And it also raised the price of its premium streaming plan, from $11.99 to $13.99 monthly. The only subscribers who will get a break – at least for now – are the subscribers to the basic $7.99 plan. So why exactly is Netflix raising its prices? Netflix is raising its prices to pay for more original content The most obvious reason why Netflix has decided to raise prices is to help defray the costs of all the original content it is now producing. All of those fantastic new shows ripe for binge-ing cost money, and those costs are starting to spiral out of control. Right now, Netflix spends an estimated $6 billion per year on original content, and according to the company’s head of content, plans to ramp that figure up to $7 billion in 2018. So, let’s do the math here. Right now, Netflix has an estimated 52.7 million subscribers. If it raises prices for all of them by an average of $2 per subscriber, that’s approximately an extra $100 million per month and just over $1.2 billion per year. So you can see that simply raising prices won’t cover the full cost of new content, but it can certainly help to defray the costs. Right now, Netflix wants to invest not just in dramas, but also in comedies, documentaries and even feature-length films. So its aspirations have become much larger from the days of just producing one “House of Cards” original show each year. In many ways, Netflix is more like HBO these days, dependent on a constant stream of new hits to keep the subscriber momentum alive. Netflix is raising prices to help pay for more product features In order to stay one step ahead of competitors like Hulu and Amazon Prime, Netflix needs to consistently roll out compelling new features. While these innovations might not be as groundbreaking as moving from red envelope DVD rentals to digital streaming, they are still very much in demand. For example, Netflix consistently highlights two major changes that are changing the way you experience the streaming service. One of these is the ability to download movies and watch them offline. This means that you can watch a full-length movie even when you don’t’ have an Internet connection. This is a real relief for people who dread the thought of trying to stream a Netflix movie over a very slow Wi-Fi connection. The other big change that’s coming is 4K Ultra HD, which is a step up from 1080 HD (which, in turn, was a real step up from SD). In coming months and years, there will be more and more 4K content available, especially as movie studios begin filming in 4K. So Netflix needs to make all the technical changes to usher in this new era of streaming. Today, you get the choice of watching an SD or HD stream; in a year or two, the choice will be between HD and Ultra HD. Netflix is raising prices to help create a superior customer experience The third major reason why Netflix is raising prices has to do with the overall customer experience. One key part of this experience, of course, has to do with the streaming quality of films on your digital devices. There’s actually a lot of behind-the-scenes magic that goes into making sure that streaming a Netflix movie is an enjoyable experience. Who wants to watch a movie that constantly buffers, or that starts and stops all the time? You want the streaming experience to be completely seamless, right? And it’s not just the stream quality, either. Netflix is also working on better ways to help you find the right movie to watch at the right time. There are many algorithms that go to work as part of the Netflix recommendation engine, with the goal of presenting the very best movies that you’d actually want to watch. For example, Netflix has experimented with different rating systems (like the thumbs up/thumbs down system) to see if those ratings systems can offer greater predictive value than traditional five-star rating systems. Netflix is raising prices because it can OK, here’s the reason you were really looking for, right? Netflix is raising prices because it can. Think of it this way – a rival like HBO still charges $15 per month for HBO content, so why can’t Netflix charge the same amount? From that perspective, increasing a premium plan from $11.99 to $13.99 might seem like a huge rate hike at first – but it’s actually a discount to what you’d have to pay for HBO. So Netflix is essentially betting that […]

Netflix has no plans to launch a linear channel, according to Maria Ferreras, the company’s VP business development EMEA.

Knowing your target audience is only half the battle. We’ll show you how to truly connect with them by crafting a tailor-made marketing strategy.