Here’s How Apple Added a Bit of 'Star Wars' to Its Empire -- Tech Roundup
Our week of Star Wars-related tech news continues with confirmation from TechCrunch that Apple (AAPL) - Get Report has picked up Faceshift. The Swiss startup's motion-capture technology translates people's facial expressions onto avatars or CGI figures in real time. And yes, you'll see some of its handiwork in The Force Awakens in a few weeks, making alien faces look more realistic and natural. Apple closed Wednesday down 0.7% at $118.03.
The acquisition dovetails with other motion capture, facial recognition and augmented reality technology Apple already owns, thanks in part to previous purchases. While Apple hasn't commented on how it plans to use Faceshift's tech, it could be useful in user identification and security applications, as well as its obvious gaming and entertainment applications. Sounds like the sort of purchase other aggressive tech giants might have been interested in. But, once again, Tim shot first.
Speaking of Apple, word has been circulating for a while that the world's largest tech company was angling to bring Apple Pay to the world's most-populous market.
Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Apple has come to a preliminary agreement with China UnionPay, which operates China's No. 1 payment network, and could launch Apple Pay there as soon as early as next year. It will go head to head in the market with two of China's biggest e-commerce operators: Alibaba (BABA) - Get Report subsidiary Alipay holds 83% of China's third-party mobile payment market last year, while Tencent's (TCEHY) Tenpay controls 10%.
Everyone knows video games get harder the further into them you go, and you might expect the business of selling game consoles would, too. But it ain't necessarily so: Sony (SNE) - Get Report revealed this week it sold another 10 million Playstation 4 consoles in the past eight months, on top of the 20 million it moved between their arrival in stores in November 2013 and March of this year, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Do the math, and it's clear the gaming system's blistering sales pace hasn't even begun to slacken. And in player-vs.-player mode, Sony's sales numbers have been trouncing Microsoft's (MSFT) - Get Report Xbox One and Nintendo's (NTDOY) Wii U, even before last month's price cut, specifically intended to juice Playstation sales during the holiday shopping season.
Sony closed Wednesday down 1.7% at $26.52.
Goldman Sachs (GS) - Get Report still likes eBay (EBAY) - Get Report , it just doesn't love it anymore. Analysts at the investment bank dropped the e-commerce pioneer from their conviction buy list this week, though they kept it a buy, and raised the price target from $30 a share to $33.
Long story short, seems like eBay has been doing plenty right, and is expected to keep making progress with "a more focused strategy after the PayPal separation, renewed investment in technology and marketing to support Marketplaces, and ongoing capital returns," as Wednesday's note explained.
Problem is, the market has already rewarded the stock for much of that good corporate behavior: It closed Wednesday at $29, only 12% or so below that boosted price target, and Goldman saves its serious affection for investments with more upside left in them.
This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.