Ocado powers Coles warehouses
There was news earlier on this morning that Ocado had signed a deal to provide logistics technology to Australian supermarket chain Coles.
Coles will spend up to $107m to build automated warehouses and use Ocado’s tech platform for grocery delivery. This sounds like a great development for Ocado and follows similar deals struck with Kroger in the US, ICA in Sweden, Sobeys in Canada, Casino in France and, of course, the joint venture it announced with Marks & Spencer last month. Shares in both Ocado and Coles were up initially on the news.
Ocado certainly seems to be on a roll at the moment!
Apple’s new services
The other thing I wanted to talk about today was Apple’s unveiling of its new services. The company has been suffering a maturing of its core iPhone product in the last few years and has been trying to diversify revenues away from hardware to services. Yesterday’s announcement was part of that attempted migration as it announced the TV+ app, Apple Card, News+ and Apple Arcade.
The TV+ app is notable because it heralds some new proprietary content being made available on non-Apple devices, Apple Card is a new credit card, News+ is a newspaper and magazine subscription service and Apple Arcade is a new games service which gives subscribers access to over one hundred games.
I think this all sounds good, but spend on the TV app is dwarfed by the money spent by Amazon and Netflix, Apple Card is just another card, News+ sounds pretty good and Apple Arcade could be a success, but it will depend on the games line-up, the gameplay and its price point which is yet to be announced.
Overall this is positive but I don’t see any of these services being an overnight success.
Other than that, in today’s edition of Watson’s Daily, I talk about the latest Brexit developments, German manufacturing, Nintendo’s new consoles, Majestic’s drastic actions and Airbus’s massive Chinese order among other things…
