Nqobile Dludla | JOHANNESBURG
South Africa&#8217;s Vodacom said on Monday it will buy a 35 percent stake in Safaricom from its parent company Vodafone for 34.6 billion rand ($2.59 billion), expanding its reach into Kenya.
Safaricom, which is 40 percent owned by Britain&#8217;s Vodafone and 35 percent by Kenya&#8217;s government, has the largest subscriber base in its home market and dominates the thriving mobile financial services sector through its M-Pesa platform.
&#8220;The proposed transaction will expose Vodacom Group to the attractive high growth Kenyan market, being one of the largest and most advanced economies in east and central Africa that has made significant strides in technological innovation,&#8221; Vodacom said in a statement.
Vodafone will retain a 12.5 percent interest in Vodafone Kenya, equivalent to 5 percent interest in Safaricom, after completion of the proposed transaction, the company said.
($1 = 13.3415 rand)
(Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; Editing by Joe Brock)
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Vodacom agrees $2.6 bln Safaricom deal to tap Kenyan market

<div id="article-byline"> Dustin Volz and Eric Auchard | WASHINGTON/FRANKFURT</div>
Officials across the globe scrambled over the weekend to catch the culprits behind a massive ransomware worm that disrupted operations at car factories, hospitals, shops and schools, while Microsoft on Sunday pinned blame on the U.S. government for not disclosing more software vulnerabilities.
Cyber security experts said the spread of the worm dubbed WannaCry &#8211; &#8220;ransomware&#8221; that locked up more than 200,000 computers in more than 150 countries &#8211; had slowed but that the respite might only be brief amid fears new versions of the worm will strike.
In a blog post on Sunday, Microsoft President Brad Smith appeared to tacitly acknowledge what researchers had already widely concluded: The ransomware attack leveraged a hacking tool, built by the U.S. National Security Agency, that leaked online in April.
&#8220;This is an emerging pattern in 2017,&#8221; Smith wrote. &#8220;We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world.&#8221;
He also poured fuel on a long-running debate over how government intelligence services should balance their desire to keep software flaws secret &#8211; in order to conduct espionage and cyber warfare &#8211; against sharing those flaws with technology companies to better secure the internet.
&#8220;This attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem,&#8221; Smith wrote. He added that governments around the world should &#8220;treat this attack as a wake-up call&#8221; and &#8220;consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits.&#8221;
The NSA and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the Microsoft statement.
Economic experts offered differing views on how much the attack, and associated computer outages, would cost businesses and governments.
The non-profit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit research institute estimated that total losses would range in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but not exceed $1 billion.
Most victims were quickly able to recover infected systems with backups, said the group&#8217;s chief economist, Scott Borg.
<div id="attachment_123471" style="width: 970px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-123471" class="size-full wp-image-123471" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Cybersecurity-Pixabay.jpg" alt="" width="960" height="678" />Photo: Pixabay.</div>
California-based cyber risk modeling firm Cyence put the total economic damage at $4 billion, citing costs associated with businesses interruption.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday night ordered his homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, to convene an &#8220;emergency meeting&#8221; to assess the threat posed by the global attack, a senior administration official told Reuters.
Senior U.S. security officials held another meeting in the White House Situation Room on Saturday, and the FBI and the NSA were working to help mitigate damage and identify the perpetrators of the massive cyber attack, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The investigations into the attack were in the early stages, however, and attribution for cyber attacks is notoriously difficult.
The original attack lost momentum late on Friday after a security researcher took control of a server connected to the outbreak, which crippled a feature that caused the malware to rapidly spread across infected networks.
Infected computers appear to largely be out-of-date devices that organizations deemed not worth the price of upgrading or, in some cases, machines involved in manufacturing or hospital functions that proved too difficult to patch without possibly disrupting crucial operations, security experts said.
Microsoft released patches last month and on Friday to fix a vulnerability that allowed the worm to spread across networks, a rare and powerful feature that caused infections to surge on Friday.
Code for exploiting that bug, which is known as &#8220;Eternal Blue,&#8221; was released on the internet last month by a hacking group known as the Shadow Brokers.
The head of the European Union police agency said on Sunday the cyber assault hit 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries and that number would grow when people return to work on Monday.
MONDAY MORNING RUSH?
Monday was expected to be a busy day, especially in Asia, which may not have seen the worst of the impact yet, as companies and organizations turned on their computers.
&#8220;Expect to hear a lot more about this tomorrow morning when users are back in their offices and might fall for phishing emails&#8221; or other as yet unconfirmed ways the worm may propagate, said Christian Karam, a Singapore-based security researcher.
The attack hit organizations of all sizes.
Renault said it halted manufacturing at plants in France and Romania to prevent the spread of ransomware.
Other victims include is a Nissan manufacturing plant in Sunderland, northeast England, hundreds of hospitals and clinics in the British National Health Service, German rail operator Deutsche Bahn and international shipper FedEx Corp
A Jakarta hospital said on Sunday that the cyber attack had infected 400 computers, disrupting the registration of patients and finding records.
Account addresses hard-coded into the malicious WannaCry virus appear to show the attackers had received just under $32,500 in anonymous bitcoin currency as of (1100 GMT) 7 a.m. EDT on Sunday, but that amount could rise as more victims rush to pay ransoms of $300 or more.
The threat receded over the weekend after a British-based researcher, who declined to give his name but tweets under the profile @MalwareTechBlog, said he stumbled on a way to at least temporarily limit the worm&#8217;s spread by registering a web address to which he noticed the malware was trying to connect.
Security experts said his move bought precious time for organizations seeking to block the attacks.
(Additional reporting by Jim Finkle, Neil Jerome Morales, Masayuki Kitano, Kiyoshi Takenaka, Jose Rodriguez, Elizabeth Piper, Emmanuel Jarry, Orathai Sriring, Jemima Kelly, Alistair Smout, Andrea Shalal, Jack Stubbs, Antonella Cinelli, Kate Holton, Andy Bruce, Michael Holden, David Milliken, Tim Hepher, Luiza Ilie, Patricia Rua, Axel Bugge, Sabine Siebold, Eric Walsh, Engen Tham, Fransiska Nangoy, Soyoung Kim, Mai Nguyen and Nick Zieminski; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Peter Cooney)

More disruptions feared from cyber attack; Microsoft slams government secrecy

Nigeria&#8217;s government should simplify taxes and reduce fees involved in laying fibre optic cables to encourage development of infrastructure for the technology industry, Google&#8217;s manager in the West African country said on Tuesday.
Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazor told Reuters boosting the technology industry would help diversify Nigeria&#8217;s oil-dependent economy, the largest in Africa and which is now in its second year of a recession caused mainly by low crude prices.
The Budget and National Planning Ministry said in March the government should encourage local production of technology hardware to reduce dependence on imports and generate foreign exchange. The government aims to create 2.5 million new technology jobs in 2017-2020 via a state-run training programme.
&#8220;The private sector can play a very strong role,&#8221; Ehimuan-Chiazor said, adding that internet service providers regularly complained that multiple taxes at the federal and state level raised the cost of expanding the required infrastructure.
&#8220;Where the government can help is just removing some of those obstacles &#8211; for example, bringing down right of way fees and removing this challenge around multiple taxation,&#8221; she said.
Right of way fees are the charges paid when securing permission to lay cables. A reduction of fees by Lagos state government helped bring fast broadband to Yaba, a district of commercial capital that is now Nigeria&#8217;s technology hub.
Ehimuan-Chiazor said Google had laid fibre optic cables in Uganda&#8217;s capital Kampala and in Abidjan in Ivory Coast, but said it had no similar plans in Nigeria.
A spokesman for the Communications Ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.
(Editing by Edmund Blair)

Nigeria should simplify taxes, cut fees to boost tech sector: Google

The mining of social media and the use of big data (vast amounts of available internet data that can be analysed and exploited) by insurers to analyse consumer behaviour will change the face of insurance. The basic principles of insurance include the good faith sharing of information between insurer and insured, a pooling of good risks with bad risks, and assessing a fair premium for policyholders. Paradoxically regulations, that require insurers to price more competitively and estimate their reserves more precisely to see that they are sufficiently capitalised, are leading insurers to find ways to price insured risks more accurately.
It is possible using computer algorithms to tap data from social media posts and other internet sources to evaluate the risks of insuring a particular person. The information that is posted and an individual’s “likes” can help assess personality traits. It is claimed that people who use superlatives like “always” or “never” imply overconfidence and are bad driving risks. What you like and don’t like, how you write and how many exclamation marks you use could be used against you in assessing your motor premium. It is possible by mining big data to find out all sorts of information about what people eat, what they do, how they drive and what they buy from the pharmacy. Devices such as sensors in vehicles and health-monitoring watches and step-counters will reveal data relevant to motor, life and disability risks. What you post about yourself on social media could in future determine what premiums you pay for insurance or whether you can get insurance at all. If you have a genetic test to predict possible future illness, that information should be disclosed to your insurers when you take out a new policy and could be used to discriminate against individuals whether you disclose the information or not. If you don’t disclose the information, your policy could be cancelled from inception because of the failure to make the disclosure. If you do, you may pay higher premiums or struggle to find insurance.
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The Equality Act does not label discrimination as unfair if it is based on objectively determinable criteria “intrinsic to the activity concerned”. The question is going to be asked whether discrimination between policyholders on prohibited grounds, such as disability or health status based on the analysis of social media and big data to find out intimate details about each individual, is based on evidence intrinsic to the activity of insurance. Insurers, in terms of their duty of good faith, will have to reveal to a potential insured the basis of any discrimination which could lead to challenges against the use of internet sources under equality legislation. In 2014 insurers in the UK agreed not to take account of predictive genetic tests when deciding on insurance cover unless it is to the insured’s advantage and undertook to be transparent when they do use that data. Some compact is going to be necessary between insurers and regulators.
A balance will have to be found in order to keep the principles of insurance alive without any unfair discrimination. If a balance is not found, compulsory pooling of risks may be the result in relation to certain kinds of insurance which will undermine the social value of insurance and its role in the economy.
Likes and dislikes is the stuff of discrimination, so we need to find ways of balancing the ways that we deal with other people, not the least in the world of insurance.
*Patrick Bracher is from Norton Rose Fulbright South Africa

How insurers are using your social media profile to spy on you

Tiisetso Motsoeneng | JOHANNESBURG
South Africa&#8217;s MTN Group has agreed to invest more than $295 million in Iranian Net, a fixed line broadband network in which it is to buy an initial 49 percent stake.
The outline deal announced on Monday extends MTN&#8217;s interests in the Iranian telecoms market that has opened up to foreigners following the lifting of international sanctions, which has also allowed MTN to repatriate $1 billion in accumulated dividends from its 49 percent stake in wireless network operator Irancell.
The latest agreement, which is still at a non-binding stage, is the second for MTN in Iran this year after Africa&#8217;s biggest wireless networks group invested in Iran Internet Group, which runs a car hailing app called Snapp.ir.
MTN said it will pay 540 million rand ($40 million) to buy a 49 percent stake in Iranian Net and will invest an additional 3.4 billion rand in both equity and loans to help the Iranian company develop a fibre network over the next five years.
&#8220;This investment, should it be completed, represents an opportunity to capitalise on the continued strong growth expected in the Iranian broadband market, with an initial focus on eight of the main cities,&#8221; MTN said in a statement.
($1 = 13.5535 rand)
(Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by Jason Neely, Greg Mahlich)

South Africa’s MTN to invest $295 mln in Iranian Net broadband network

<a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/BTC%3D-USS" target="_self" data-gdsid="76662810" data-inline-quote-symbol="BTC=-USS" rel="noopener">Bitcoin</a> is &#8220;fully valued&#8221; and could see a pullback in the short term after hitting $1,600 for the first time on Monday, according to one investor, but the price could go as high as $4,000 over the next 14 months.
The cryptocurrency has been on an <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/27/bitcoin-jumps-to-a-new-all-time-high-above-1300-capping-20-april-surge.html" target="_self" rel="noopener">upward move since April</a> and was trading around $1,575.52 by early afternoon trading in London after hitting an all-time high $1,601.05 during morning trade, according to the Coindesk bitcoin price index.
In the last 30 days, bitcoin has risen over 33 percent.
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Negative bitcoin news
The rally may seem perplexing given that there have been a number of setbacks for the cryptocurrency.
These include:
<ul>
<li>The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/10/reuters-america-us-sec-rejects-application-to-list-bitcoin-etf.html" target="_self" rel="noopener">deciding to reject</a> a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. This is now <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/26/bitcoin-price-sec-winklevoss-etf-review.html" target="_self" rel="noopener">under review</a> however. An ETF would have given further credibility to bitcoin and helped more institutional investors get involved.</li>
<li>A fierce debate over the future of bitcoin&#8217;s structure. The <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/17/bitcoin-price-blockchain-fork-ethereum.html" target="_self" rel="noopener">full explanation can be read here</a>.</li>
<li>Issues with some exchanges, particularly Bitfinex, which cut off their access to the banking system meaning customers couldn&#8217;t make withdrawals in fiat currency.</li>
</ul>
So why the rally?
At the same time, there have been some positive developments.
Firstly, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/12/bitcoin-price-rises-japan-russia-regulation.html" target="_self" rel="noopener">Japan legalized the cryptocurrency</a> as a payment method recently and this has led to a greater amount of bitcoin being bought with yen, according to Aurelien Menant, founder and CEO of Gatecoin, a regulated blockchain assets exchange based in Hong Kong.
The second reason could be to do with a change in the code of another cryptocurrency called litecoin.
What happened with litecoin and why does it matter to bitcoin?
Last month, there was a change in the code behind the technology that underpins litecoin. It is known as Segregated Witness (SegWit) and it allows the speed of transactions using the cryptocurrency to increase.
This has given hope that bitcoin could see a similar thing.
Fork debate recap
To understand the issue, it&#8217;s key to look at how bitcoin transactions are processed. Transactions by users are gathered into &#8220;blocks&#8221; which is turned into a complex math solution. So-called miners, using high-powered computers work these solutions out to determine if the transaction is possible. Once other miners also check the puzzle is correct, the transactions are approved and the miners are rewarded in bitcoin.
But there is a big backlog in transactions and the speed at which these are processed is slowing. That&#8217;s because the rules of bitcoin only allow a certain amount of transactions through in one block.
In mid-March, the price of bitcoin saw a big drop because the community was afraid of a so-called &#8220;hard fork&#8221; which could <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/17/bitcoin-price-blockchain-fork-ethereum.html" target="_self" rel="noopener">have led to two blockchains forming</a>, and therefore two separate cryptocurrencies.
But the example of litecoin shows that a so-called &#8220;soft fork&#8221; can happen which would increase the block size for bitcoin without major disruption.
&#8220;That example of a successful soft fork in litecoin has made people start to think that we could get a successful SegWit implementation in bitcoin and that could increase capacity and move us to the next level,&#8221; Daniel Masters, director at Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment Fund (GABI), told CNBC by phone.
GABI is an investment fund that is listed on The International Stock Exchange on the Channel Islands.
And what does this mean for price?
While bitcoin has seen a recent rally, previous peaks have seen sharp pullbacks in prices. Masters said the price rise has been &#8220;violent in the short-term&#8221; with bitcoin &#8220;fully valued for the moment&#8221;. This could lead to a pullback to around $1,100.
However, the long-term outlook remains strong.
&#8220;In the 8- to 14-month horizon, my forecast would be around $4,000,&#8221; Masters told CNBC.
Others also expect high prices. Gatecoin&#8217;s Menant said prices should climb beyond $3,000 this year.

Bitcoin hits $1,600 for the first time and one investor says it could rally to $4,000 in a few months

<div class="inline-player"> By Anita Balakrishnan | @MsABalakrishnan</div>
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<ul>
<li>Apple&#8217;s market capitalization hit a new record of $800 billion</li>
<li>It remains the world&#8217;s most valuable public company after earnings</li>
<li>Warren Buffett praised the iPhone</li>
<li>Drexel Hamilton says Apple could be a trillion-dollar company with iPhone 8</li>
</ul>
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<a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/AAPL" target="_self" data-gdsid="8016" data-inline-quote-symbol="AAPL">Apple</a>&#8216;s stock continues to hit new highs — and on Monday, investors pushed Apple&#8217;s total market value to over $800 billion.
Apple shares briefly surpassed a price of $153.44 a share, and with Apple&#8217;s 5.214 billion shares outstanding, according to its <a class="inline_asset" title="http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/3444379778x0xS1628280-17-4790/320193/filing.pdf" href="http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/3444379778x0xS1628280-17-4790/320193/filing.pdf" target="_self">latest quarterly report</a>, that makes its total market capitalization just over $800 billion.
Shares hit a high of $153.70 on Monday, before closing at $153 a share, up 2.7 percent.
The iPhone maker reported <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/02/apple-earnings-q2-2017.html" target="_self">mixed quarterly earnings</a> last week, selling fewer phones than expected, though at more expensive prices. But chief executive <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/tim-cook/" target="_self">Tim Cook</a> attributed some of the slowdown to the fact that consumers are holding out for the next launch, anticipated in September.
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Wall Street seems to agree — analysts have upped the stock&#8217;s 12-month price target nearly 30 times so far this May, according to FactSet. Drexel Hamilton analyst Brian White released Apple&#8217;s highest price target on the Street on Monday, which at $202 a share would put Apple over the <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/08/apple-just-got-its-most-bullish-forecast-yet-worth-1-trillion-in-a-year.html" target="_self">$1 trillion mark this year.</a>
While that number may seem eye-popping, the company is already 80 percent of the way there — at least in the view of investors, who consider the company&#8217;s future earnings and cash, as much as its current product line up.
&#8220;What we&#8217;re starting to see here are dark clouds around this valuation of Apple — which has been with the company for several years — starting to part ways,&#8221; White told CNBC&#8217;s &#8220;<a href="http://www.cnbc.com/halftime/" target="_self">Fast Money: Halftime Report</a>&#8221; on Monday.
Despite the company&#8217;s <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/02/apple-record-market-cap-776-6-billion-ahead-of-earnings.html" target="_self">record-high market capitalization</a>, the iPhone 8, repatriation of foreign cash and new innovations on the horizon could fuel more upside for Apple shares, White said. Plus, the company&#8217;s weak performance in China could be turning a corner, White predicts.
<blockquote>Shares of Apple popped on Monday, after famed investor <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/warren-buffett/" target="_self">Warren Buffett</a> also praised the company, calling the iPhone &#8220;<a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/08/billionaire-investor-warren-buffett-says-its-very-easy-to-see-where-apple-is-with-consumers-at-any-time.html" target="_self">a very, very, very valuable product</a>.&#8221;</blockquote>
Apple is also one of many technology companies that have been buoyed by a recent rally in the stock market. The Nasdaq 100, for example, closed at an all-time high on Friday.
<blockquote>&#8220;Our numbers are actually pretty conservative going into what I think will be a big cycle,&#8221; White said.</blockquote>
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<h4 class="subtitle">Apple&#8217;s rise to $800 billion</h4>
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Apple market cap tops $800 billion for the first time

Technology has come to schools. All over Africa, schools and teachers are faced with the dilemma of how to use technology in the classroom. Technology enhances both teaching and learning but rapid technological advances mean that teachers, even in schools with meagre resources, can be faced with a bewildering array of systems and software that they are told will make teaching much easier.
It doesn’t matter what the system or software is, or who the manufacturer is. It has to be evaluated properly so teachers know what effect it will or can have on teaching and learning in the classroom.
That may seem obvious, but it doesn’t always happen. All too often, schools buy technology without evaluating it properly for its contribution to their teaching and learning goals. And then, even when the technology is potentially useful, the schools might not give any support to teachers that have to deliver that technology, which means it can become a waste of time and money.
The classic example is a rule that every child must have a laptop in school, or a tablet. If the school hasn’t evaluated the technology, and particularly the software programs available against teaching goals, and if the teachers haven’t thought about how the technology can lead to better learning outcomes, it can be a poor purchase.
Before taking on a decision that will cost a lot of money, schools need to find out how effective it will be. Yes, many students are familiar with smartphone or tablet technology, and can navigate them with ease, but the question is how will it enhance their learning experience in school?
This is not a decision for the schools alone. Teachers have a crucial role to play, not only in evaluating and recommending technology, but in working out how it can improve classroom learning and examination results.
I’ve come across a number of examples where teachers are instructed to use laptops or tablets for up to 20 minutes per lesson. Again, teachers need support in working out how to do so.
Technology is only effective if teachers plan their lessons to incorporate technology. They must frame everything from the perspective of learning outcomes – what do they want students to do, and how will technology help them to do it?
This applies irrespective of whether exams have to be hand-written. Teachers need to focus on how they can use a laptop and software to enhance the learning experience, so that when students come to write the exam, they are betted prepared to do it.
Many schools teach children how to use computers, including simple things like how to use a word processor or how to use a spreadsheet. It’s the teachers who must think about the possibilities of using these skills in the classroom, across a range of subjects, to improve learning. For example, homework is usually set to reinforce a lesson. The technological approach could be to ask students to research something on the internet, and prepare a brief presentation to share with the class to show that they can apply the technology.
It’s not necessary to use technology for every lesson. But in the modern world, you do need to incorporate technology in at least some of the teaching that you do. Teachers have to evaluate the benefits of technology for teaching a subject, or aspects of the subject. The beauty of this approach is that it is not teacher or subject specific. It applies to all teachers, wherever they are, whatever the technology available and whatever subjects they are teaching.
Around the world, and particularly in Africa, the level of technology and how it is used in schools crosses a wide spectrum. The top schools are incredibly well connected, they have super-fast broadband and they can have multiple classes all accessing the internet at once. Down at the other end of the spectrum, the only computer may be the teacher’s computer in the classroom, or the one in the staffroom.
Africa is particularly well connected to mobile telephone technology. Students, and especially the younger students, are much more comfortable with mobile telephones and smartphones than they are with using laptop computers.  There are smartphone apps than can aid learning.
Technology is available, at all levels. It is up to the teachers to use it effectively to assist learning and achieve better results.

Teaching with Technology

Arjun Kharpal
<ul>
<li>Nintendo is aiming for operating profit of 65 billion yen this fiscal year, which if realized, would represent a 121 percent rise from the 29.4 billion yen operating profit it reported for the year ended March 31, 2017.</li>
<li>Nintendo said it is aiming for 10 million units of sales for the new Switch console this fiscal year.</li>
</ul>
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<a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/7974.T-JP" target="_self" data-gdsid="6767" data-inline-quote-symbol="7974.T-JP">Nintendo</a> said on Thursday that it expects profit for its current fiscal year to jump by 121 percent, hitting a seven-year high, thanks to strong sales of its new Switch console, older hardware and mobile gaming efforts.
The Japanese gaming giant forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2018:
<ul>
<li>Net sales of 750 billion yen ($6.7 billion)</li>
<li>Operating profit of 65 billion yen</li>
<li>10 million units of the Switch consoles to be sold</li>
</ul>
On Thursday, Nintendo reported earnings for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. The key figures are:
<ul>
<li>Net sales of 489.1 billion yen, a 3 percent year-on-year decline, but beating its own guidance</li>
<li>Operating profit of 29.4 billion yen, a fall of 10.7 percent year-on-year</li>
</ul>
Nintendo&#8217;s forecasts, however, set it up for a strong year ahead. Its forecast of 65 billion yen of operating profit, if realized, would mark a 121 percent increase. It would also be the biggest profit since the fiscal year ended March 2011. The company is aiming to sell 10 million Switch units. The console, which went on sale last month, has already seen 2.74 million units sold, with 5.46 million units of software sold.
It&#8217;s a positive announcement to kick of the fiscal year for Nintendo, after spending much of the previous 12 months trying to consolidate its business. The company has launched a number of mobile games including <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/08/pokemon-go-earns-200-million-in-first-month-beating-candy-crush.html" target="_self">last summer&#8217;s hit &#8220;Pokemon Go&#8221;</a> and more recently &#8220;Super Mario Run&#8221;. Mobile had been an area Nintendo had previously lost out on, but it is now making strong progress and expects it to be one of its &#8220;major pillars of profits&#8221; in the mid-to-long-term.
Thanks to its efforts in mobile, Nintendo&#8217;s brand has also seen a strong revival, and the company has managed to tap into some of the nostalgia around its past games and consoles. Last year, the company released a <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/11/nintendo-nes-classic-short-supply-buy-one-online-ebay-for-1000.html" target="_self">Nintendo Classic Edition</a>, which came with pre-installed games and cost $59.99. It quickly sold out with some going on eBay for <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/20/nintendo-snes-mini-release.html" target="_self">as much as $5,000</a>. Nintendo said the NES Classic launched to &#8220;widespread popularity&#8221;.
And the knock-on effect has been seen in sales of Nintendo hardware. The company said the 3DS handheld console, which was released in 2011, saw a 7 percent year-on-year rise in sales. This was helped by strong titles such as &#8220;Pokemon Sun&#8221; and &#8220;Pokemon Moon&#8221;, which gained popularity because of &#8220;Pokemon Go&#8221;.
&#8220;The release of the smart device application &#8216;Pokemon Go&#8217; led to increased sales of software in the Pokémon series and drove the Nintendo 3DS family hardware sales growth outside of Japan,&#8221; Nintendo said in its earning statement.
Investors have been supportive of Nintendo&#8217;s turnaround efforts with shares up 60 percent in the last 12 months. The stock also has 5 strong buy ratings, 10 buy ratings, 5 holds, 1 sell and 1 strong sell, showing the bias is generally positive towards the company&#8217;s shares. The mean price target on the stock is 31,175 yen, which represents around 14 percent upside from Thursday&#8217;s close, Reuters data shows.
&#8220;The brand has been reinvigorated and now with that revitalized branding of the licenses, this year and into next year is about pushing on with new differentiated cutting edge tech,&#8221; Neil Campling, head of global technology, media and telecom research at Northern Trust Capital Markets, told CNBC by phone.
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Nintendo’s comeback is starting to take hold as it forecasts a 121% profit surge this year

Sophia Yan
Robots are likely to replace 50 percent of all jobs in the next decade, according to Kai-Fu Lee, founder of venture capital firm Sinovation Ventures and a top voice on tech in <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/china/" target="_self">China</a>.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the wave of the future, the influential technologist told CNBC, calling it the &#8220;singular thing that will be larger than all of human tech revolutions added together, including electricity, [the] industrial revolution, internet, mobile internet — because AI is pervasive.&#8221;
<blockquote>&#8220;It is the decision engine that will replace people,&#8221; Lee said, adding that AI capabilities far exceed those of humanity.</blockquote>
For example, he said, companies in which his firm has invested can accomplish feats such as recognizing 3 million faces at the same time, or dispersing loans in eight seconds.
<blockquote>&#8220;These are things that are superhuman, and we think this will be in every industry, will probably replace 50 percent of human jobs, create a huge amount of wealth for mankind and wipe out poverty,&#8221; Lee said, later adding that he expected that displacement to occur in the next 10 years.</blockquote>
Lee&#8217;s views on technology are widely followed in part because he previously headed Google China before founding his venture capital firm. He has also held executive posts at many other major tech companies, including Apple and Microsoft, and he has celebrity status in the industry and in China — with millions of social media followers on multiple platforms.
Speaking with CNBC from the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, Lee tackled the big question: Will human still have a place in the world as machines grow more intelligent?
The answer, he said, is that nothing can replace human-to-human interaction.
&#8220;Touching one&#8217;s heart with your heart is something that machines, I believe, will never be good at,&#8221; he said, explaining that service jobs should be considered &#8220;first-class&#8221; employment.
And while all of this change is happening, traditional companies like banks, insurance firms and hospitals, are simply moving to slow, Lee said. And it&#8217;s too bad, he added, because they &#8220;possess the biggest treasure&#8221; in the form of troves of data.
&#8220;Because AI is about taking data into insight and decision, so I anticipate [the] internet sector, entrepreneurial sector, to continue to grow and in many cases displace and even wipe out traditional companies in China,&#8221; he said.
Chinese tech tycoons like <a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/700-HK" target="_self" data-gdsid="2284" data-inline-quote-symbol="700-HK">Tencent</a> and <a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/BABA" target="_self" data-gdsid="" data-inline-quote-symbol="BABA">Alibaba</a>, for instance, have forged the way in mobile payments — it&#8217;s become pervasive for consumers to pay for everything from rent to transportation through mobile wallets and transfers. Meanwhile, China&#8217;s giant state-owned banks are just barely starting to catch on, Lee said.

Artificial intelligence will replace half of all jobs in the next decade, says widely followed technologist

<a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/NFLX" target="_self" data-gdsid="26444" data-inline-quote-symbol="NFLX">Netflix</a> is to introduce original content in <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/china/" target="_self">China</a> in a licensing deal with local video streaming service <a class="inline_asset" href="http://iqiyi.com/" target="_self">iQiyi.com</a>, the U.S. company said on Tuesday.
Netflix has struggled to break into the Chinese market, where streaming services are subject to strict data storage regulations and foreign films and television are routinely censored.
Content air times will parallel other regions, a spokeswoman said, who declined to say comment further on the tie-up.
Netflix has played down the possibility of its entry into China in the past year despite its otherwise rapid global expansion.
In October co-founder and Chief Executive Reed Hastings said that prospects for a direct streaming service in the country were slim, and the firm had made no progress in obtaining government approvals.
<a class="inline_asset" href="http://iqiyi.com/" target="_self">iQiyi.com</a> is one of China&#8217;s largest streaming services and is backed by search giant <a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/BIDU" target="_self" data-gdsid="44607" data-inline-quote-symbol="BIDU">Baidu</a>. In February it raised 1.53 billion to take on local rivals in a hotly contested market.
This month Netflix forecast a global increase of 3.2 million subscribers in the second quarter, far outpacing analysts&#8217; estimates of nearly 2.4 million.

Netflix breaks into China’s massive market with new deal

<a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/BABA" target="_self" data-gdsid="" data-inline-quote-symbol="BABA">Alibaba</a> Chairman Jack Ma warned on Monday that society could see decades of pain thanks to disruption caused by the internet and new technologies to different areas of the economy.
In a speech at a China Entrepreneur Club event, the billionaire urged governments to bring in education reform and outlined how humans need to work with machines.
&#8220;In the coming 30 years, the world&#8217;s pain will be much more than happiness, because there are many more problems that we have come across,&#8221; Ma said in Chinese, speaking about potential job disruptions caused by technology.
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The Alibaba founder warned that social conflicts could have a &#8220;huge impact&#8221; on all walks of life. Ma&#8217;s company has invested in areas such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence as it expands into new sectors beyond its e-commerce business.
Ma said around 15 years ago he gave two or three hundred speeches warning about the impact of e-commerce and the internet on traditional businesses, but not many people listened as he wasn&#8217;t well-known.
The billionaire warned that any business not linked to the internet could suffer in the future.
Ma also spoke about the rise of robots and artificial intelligence (AI) and said that this technology will be needed to process the large amount of data being generated today, something that a human brain can&#8217;t do. But machines shouldn&#8217;t replace what humans can do, Ma said, but instead the technology community needs to look at making machines do what humans cannot. This would make the machine a &#8220;human partner&#8221; rather than an opponent.
But he did admit that AI was likely to lead to people living longer and fewer jobs around. And robots could also replace chief executives of companies.
&#8220;30 years later, the Time Magazine cover for the best CEO of the year very likely will be a robot. It remembers better than you, it counts faster than you, and it won&#8217;t be angry with competitors,&#8221; Ma said.

CEOs could be robots in 30 years

Tesla Inc (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TSLA.O">TSLA.O</a>) founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.
Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.
&#8220;If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy,&#8221; Musk said in the interview published on Thursday. <a href="http://bit.ly/2oWJcMw">bit.ly/2oWJcMw</a>
Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant &#8220;neural laces&#8221; in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.
&#8220;There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing,&#8221; Musk said in the latest interview.
&#8220;If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person.&#8221;
The technology could take about eight to 10 years to become usable by people with no disability, which would depend heavily on regulatory approval timing and how well the devices work on people with disabilities, Musk was quoted as saying.
In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had launched a company through which computers could merge with human brains. Neuralink was registered in California as a &#8220;medical research&#8221; company last July, and he plans on funding the company mostly by himself.
(Reporting by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)

Elon Musk on mission to link human brains with computers in four years: report

Duncan Miriri | NAIROBI
Kenya&#8217;s KCB Group, the country&#8217;s biggest lender by assets, said it has offered employees voluntary early retirement in a bid to save 2 billion shillings ($19.36 million) each year.
KCB, which also operates in five neighbouring countries, had already said it would cut an unspecified number of jobs, mainly due to technological changes and the capping of commercial rates in Kenya last September.
Kenya has been a global pioneer in technological innovations in finance, launching the M-pesa mobile phone cash transfer system a decade ago and the first mobile phone-based bond last month.
The cost of the proposed buyouts, which are being offered in line with local laws, will take a year and a half to recover, KCB said on Thursday.
Staff have a month to apply, and the group plans to complete the exercise in the middle of June, sources at KCB told Reuters.
KCB said the cuts would help it align its staff with a banking industry that had &#8220;been dimmed by legislative and regulatory reforms&#8221;. It also said technological changes were now attracting non-traditional firms into the sector.
The government set a commercial interest rate limit of 400 basis points above the central bank rate, which stands at 10 percent. The cap, which also set a minimum deposit rate, has curbed bank earnings and private sector credit expansion.
The government argued lending rates were too high, a position opposed by banks who argued the cap could lead to credit rationing.
($1 = 103.3000 Kenyan shillings)
(Reporting by Duncan Miriri; Editing by Alexander Smith)

KCB begins job cuts to counter technology and Kenya rate cap

By Chantel McGee
Add to the list of problems at Uber: Driver retention. Only 4 percent of people who sign up to drive for the ride-hailing service are still driving a year later, according to a report in <a class="inline_asset" title="https://www.theinformation.com/how-uber-will-combat-rising-driver-churn" href="https://www.theinformation.com/how-uber-will-combat-rising-driver-churn" target="_self">The Information.</a>
The company&#8217;s accelerating driver drop off rate is partially due to increased competition from companies like Lyft. But the number one complaint among Uber drivers is the pay, according to undisclosed data seen by The Information. Many Uber drivers have complained about unfair compensation for long trips, and not being able to accept tips.
An Uber spokesman told The Information: &#8220;We recognize we need to improve our relationship with drivers and their experience using Uber. We&#8217;re working on a range of improvements across our products, our policies, our customer support and how we communicate.&#8221;
The company is considering things like better targeting financial bonuses to certain drivers and allowing tipping, which could allow drivers to earn more, according to <a class="inline_asset" title="https://www.theinformation.com/how-uber-will-combat-rising-driver-churn" href="https://www.theinformation.com/how-uber-will-combat-rising-driver-churn" target="_self">The Information.</a> Lyft, its main competitor, already gives riders the option to leave a tip.
Read the entire <a class="inline_asset" title="https://www.theinformation.com/how-uber-will-combat-rising-driver-churn" href="https://www.theinformation.com/how-uber-will-combat-rising-driver-churn" target="_self">The Information</a> report.
&nbsp;

Only 4% of Uber drivers remain on the platform a year later, says report

<div class="inline-player dyother dyMonitor" data-adid="1009204||522|||"></div>
<div class="group">
By Vaibhavee Sinha
<a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/593%27A-KR" target="_self" data-gdsid="12103572" data-inline-quote-symbol="593'A-KR">Samsung&#8217;s</a> newest smartphone, the Galaxy S8, hit shelves Friday, and analysts told CNBC they&#8217;re impressed by the tech, which initial market reaction appeared to confirm.
The S8&#8217;s edge-to-edge OLED &#8220;infinity&#8221; screen has piqued the interest of many, and that includes Bob O&#8217;Donnell, founder and chief analyst at Technalysis research.
<blockquote>&#8220;What&#8217;s great about it is, it&#8217;s got a great hand feel … it really does make a difference,&#8221; O&#8217;Donnell told CNBC&#8217;s &#8220;Rundown&#8221; on Friday.</blockquote>
Samsung Electronics jumped by 2.38 percent on Friday as the Galaxy S8 smartphone was unveiled in Seoul and ahead of its slated debut in the U.S. The company said last week that pre-orders for the Galaxy S8 had surpassed those for the S7.
In addition to the tactile element noted by O&#8217;Donnell, other key features include a new Bixby voice assistant, an iris scanner and facial recognition.
<blockquote>&#8220;I think that the phone is perceived as the next generation phone, the quality seems to be excellent &#8230; a lot of things have been resolved,&#8221; said Daniel Yoo, head of global strategy at Kiwoom Securities, echoing O&#8217;Donnell&#8217;s sentiment.</blockquote>
The only prominent complaint so far about the phones has centered on its screen, which some have deemed pinkish — or the <a class="inline_asset" title="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/samsungs-galaxy-s8-draws-criticism-in-first-launch-since-note-recall-2017-04-20" href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/samsungs-galaxy-s8-draws-criticism-in-first-launch-since-note-recall-2017-04-20" target="_self">&#8220;cherry blossom edition.&#8221;</a> Samsung reportedly addressed the issue, saying it could be fixed by adjusting the display options.
Addressing that, O&#8217;Donnell said, &#8220;They&#8217;ve had a few glitches on the software early on, but it&#8217;s early days and I think we will see some improvements … coming as well.&#8221;
However, acknowledging the distrust that may have been engendered by the Note 7 problems, O&#8217;Donnell added, &#8220;We&#8217;re not going to really know for a couple of months, to be honest with you, how safe and how reliable it is.&#8221;
Pre-orders reportedly exceeded 1 million units in <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/south-korea/" target="_self">South Korea</a>, Samsung&#8217;s domestic market, surpassing the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7&#8217;s comparatively meager 400,000. Reportedly, the phone pre-sold 550,000 units in the first two days it was available.
Samsung hopes sales of the phone will make up for the company&#8217;s disastrous recall Note 7 last year. The company has said it is targeting 60 million unit shipments this year, compared to about 48 million S7 units sold in 2016, according to multiple reports.
</div>

Samsung’s Galaxy S8 rolls out, and analysts are positive

<a href="http://www.cnbc.com/arjun-kharpal/" rel="author">Arjun Kharpal</a> | <a href="http://twitter.com/ArjunKharpal">@ArjunKharpal</a>
<a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/27/inside-adyen-the-2-billion-start-up-backed-by-mark-zuckerberg-silicon-valley-elite.html" target="_self">Adyen, the start-up that processes payments</a> for the likes of <a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/NFLX" target="_self" data-gdsid="26444" data-inline-quote-symbol="NFLX">Netflix</a>, Uber and <a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/FB" target="_self" data-gdsid="139619" data-inline-quote-symbol="FB">Facebook</a>, saw a 99 percent surge in revenues in 2016, the company announced on Wednesday.
The Dutch firm, which is valued at $2.3 billion, posted revenues of $727 million last year, up from $365 million in 2015. Adyen also recently announced that it <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/08/adyen-company-behind-facebook-and-uber-payments-reveals-huge-transaction-growth.html" target="_self">processed $90 billion worth</a> of transactions in 2016, an 80 percent year-on-year rise.
Pieter van der Does, chief executive of Adyen, said the growth has been driven by higher volumes in the U.S., a territory it has not typically had a big footprint in.
<blockquote>&#8220;Historically we were stronger in Europe now the U.S. is very strong in terms of growth. We have been expanding our footprint in Asia and Latin America. Part of the growth is down to more volume, part of it is the increase of geographical footprint,&#8221; van der Does told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday.</blockquote>
A lot of American clients who had been trusting Adyen to process their international payments gave their domestic volume to the company, the CEO added.
Selling point of sale (POS) systems – hardware such as card readers – has also boosted the company&#8217;s top line but still only accounts for &#8220;single-digit revenue&#8221; percentage, van der Does said.
Adyen is going to focus on investing in Asia and so-called &#8220;omnichannel&#8221; – serving customers both online and in-store.
The Dutch start-up has been profitable since 2011 but said that it&#8217;s not the focus this year. Van der Does also said that an initial public offering is not on the cards.
<blockquote>&#8220;Currently I think it would be extremely bad timing because we are investing so much and focusing so much on the business,&#8221; the CEO told CNBC.</blockquote>
Van der Does admitted that due to the rapid pace of growth the company has seen in past years, revenues rises in percentage times will slow down, but &#8220;absolute growth&#8221; will remain strong.

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Samsung’s Galaxy S8 rolls out, and analysts are positive

The $2.3 bn firm that processes payments for Uber and Netflix, saw 2016 revenues surge 99%

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Technology

Vodacom agrees $2.6 bln Safaricom deal to tap Kenyan market

More disruptions feared from cyber attack; Microsoft slams government secrecy

Nigeria should simplify taxes, cut fees to boost tech sector: Google

How insurers are using your social media profile to spy on you

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Bitcoin hits $1,600 for the first time and one investor says it could rally to $4,000 in a few months

Apple market cap tops $800 billion for the first time

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Nintendo’s comeback is starting to take hold as it forecasts a 121% profit surge this year

Artificial intelligence will replace half of all jobs in the next decade, says widely followed technologist

Netflix breaks into China’s massive market with new deal

CEOs could be robots in 30 years

Elon Musk on mission to link human brains with computers in four years: report

KCB begins job cuts to counter technology and Kenya rate cap

Only 4% of Uber drivers remain on the platform a year later, says report

Samsung’s Galaxy S8 rolls out, and analysts are positive

The $2.3 bn firm that processes payments for Uber and Netflix, saw 2016 revenues surge 99%

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