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<ul><li><keyword id="15116818" type="General" weightage="80" keywordseo="redmi-pad" source="Orion">Redmi Pad</keyword> starts at a price of ₹14,999.</li><li>The tablet features a 10.6-inch LCD with 90Hz of refresh rate.</li><li><keyword id="2415488" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="redmi" source="Orion">Redmi</keyword> Pad is powered by MediaTek Helio G99 SOC.</li></ul>Redmi today launched a new tablet - Redmi Pad - in India. Priced under ₹15,000, the Redmi Pad is the brand's alternative for a budget tablet aimed at the populated segment. This ambition can be credited to the success of the<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/news/xiaomi-pad-5-review-is-it-best-android-alternate-to-ipad-air/articleshow/91647787.cms"> Xiaomi Pad 5</a>, a premium tablet that is priced slightly higher and has slightly superior internals. Redmi claims this tablet is developed with both performance and content consumption in focus. A case in point is the MediaTek Helio G99 gaming SoC and 10.61-inch screen with 90Hz refresh rate. The composition looks good on paper, but there are several such options in the market. The real question is whether it can turn out to be the best of all in its segment. Is it? Let’s find out. Price &amp; Availability Redmi Pad is available in 3 configurations. There is a base variant with 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage offered at ₹14,999 Then there is a variant with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage offered at a price of ₹17,999. Finally, a variant with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage is coming for ₹19,999. All the variants are WiFi only. It is available on Amazon and Redmi’s D2C websites. Design Redmi Pad borrows design language from the Xiaomi Pad 5. Like the Mi Pad 5, Redmi Pad feels solid to hold, and its flat edges provide an additional grip without digging into hands. Sporting a slate design, the Redmi Pad is thin at just around half an inch and feels premium. I asked my peers to guess the price based on design; most thought it to be a more expensive tablet when they held it for the first time. <div type="image" title="Redmi Pad sports a slim build" msid="94644220" hostid="261"></div> Given the massive screen size, it has a considerable amount of real estate. This is taken care of with the even weight distribution that Redmi has done on the tablet. Another important characteristic when it comes to holding a tablet. <div type="image" title="Redmi Pad is easy to hold" msid="94644260" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Redmi Pad 5 is easy to hold&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> I am using the Graphite Grey colour variant; for me, it is the best out of the options available. The tablet looks fine in this colour scheme. There is a moonlight silver and a mint green colour available as well. The tablet comes with IP52 water and dust resistant rating, which is re-ensuring since you can travel with it without any worries. Redmi will also be providing cover cases for the Redmi Pad. I have yet to get my hands on it, but I will update the section if I get to use them. Other design elements include a power button on the top right of the tablet while holding it in portrait orientation. It changes its position to the top left when you put the tablet in landscape. In both cases, the power button is easy to reach. Similarly, there are volume rockers on the right when the tablet is in portrait orientation, meaning the top left in landscape orientation. Like the power button, they are also tactile and easily accessible. I would like to point out that Redmi Pad 5’s power button doesn’t house a fingerprint sensor. The tablet comes with face unlock instead. Yes, this is in line with the budget tablet segment, but I would have liked Redmi to raise the bar here as well. <div type="image" title="There is a quad speaker setup on the tab" msid="94644311" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;There is a quad speaker setup on the tab&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> Moving on, the tablet has four speaker grills. You don’t get a 3.5mm headphone jack on the tablet, which is fine with me, but it could be an important feature for some. I use TWS buds and prefer them over wired earphones. But if you want to use wired earphones, you can use a Type-C to 3.5mm converter. When asked about skipping the 3.5mm jack here to the Redmi product team, they answered that it is a solvable concern. We also see a micro SD card slot on the tablet, which supports upto 1 TB of storage. Spoiler alert, there is no SIM card slot here, I share my opinions on this in the performance section. Display Perhaps the most important aspect of a tablet is its display. The more common use case for a tablet is content consumption, and Redmi has taken care of it. The Redmi pad has a 10.6-inch LCD with a resolution of 2000x1200 pixels. <div type="image" title="Redmi Pad retains natural colours" msid="94644481" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Redmi Pad retains natural colours&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> I used the Redmi Pad over the weekend to binge on all my favourite content, and the display didn’t disappoint me. The massive screen size, colour accuracy, and generally favourable HDR results in the beautiful image output. The cherry on top is that Redmi Pad supports HD content for OTT apps like Prime Video and Netflix. So, there are no major compromises on the visual quality. Watching Andor on Disney+ Hotstar was fun on the Redmi Pad. The space battles, chase sequences and low-light shots all looked great. This surprised me, considering darker frames didn’t have a milky tint to them despite it being a budget LCD screen. The screen is also great for reading, especially with the right weight and design. I surfed through multiple web pages and read books on the tablet, the experience of which was satisfying. Redmi Pad has a peak brightness of 400 Nits which is apt for a tablet. The screen can get really bright indoors. But it might look underwhelming on a bright day if you plan on taking it to a picnic and watching something there. A hit and a miss is the keyboard on the Redmi Pad. I have never been comfortable typing on a tablet; unfortunately, Redmi Pad couldn’t change that either. The situation improves if you put it flat on a table and type. But punching the screen while holding it upright is a task. Hence I avoided typing notes here and mostly relied on voice prompts. A solution to this is using a compatible Bluetooth keyboard with the tablet. I, however, would suggest using a laptop to save time. Another point to note is the lack of a bundled stylus with the Redmi Pad. This is not a surprise since the competition in this price bracket also skips it. However, the tablet does work with 3rd party stylus’ available in the market. I would like to point out that the auto-brightness feature feels choppy on the Redmi Pad. It usually misses out on adjusting the brightness according to the frame on the tablet. Forcing me to shut it off altogether. I feel this can be taken care of with an OTA update. Redmi Pad 5’s display supports a max refresh rate of 90Hz. Which I found to be useful for both reading and gaming. My only gripe with the display is the lack of an adaptive refresh rate. It would have made the transition between a web page and a game much smoother. <div type="image" title="Redmi Pad sports 90Hz of max refresh rate" msid="94644539" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Redmi Pad sports 90Hz of max refresh rate&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> Complimenting this display is a quad-speaker set-up, and I can gladly say that Redmi has nailed it here. The speaker set-up here is fairly loud and provides even sound distribution. In my experience, the speakers here felt louder than the ones on Xiaomi Pad 5. They do retain a certain amount of oomph to them and also retain details in the audio at low to mid-volume levels. The detail might get lost at higher volumes, but if you are watching something with your peers, you won’t complain. User Experience Redmi Pad 5 runs on Android 12 out of the box paired with MiUI. As we observed on the Xiaomi Pad 5, the MiUI skin here is optimised to work for a tablet. For instance, you won’t find an app drawer by default; instead, the apps remain on the home screen. Widget optimisation also adds to the experience since it adds to productivity. <div type="image" title="Redmi Pad runs on Android 12 out of the box" msid="94644568" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Redmi Pad runs on Android 12 out of the box&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> I have set my Google suite on the Redmi Pad. And since then, it has been my primary device for setting up calendars. Given the real estate on the screen, the split screen functionality works like a charm. <div type="image" title="MiUI is optimized for productivity on the Redmi Pad" msid="94644605" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;MiUI is optimized for productivity on the Redmi Pad&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> The MiUi allows you to open upto two apps simultaneously along with two floating windows. A general consumer might rarely use it, but it’s always better to have a feature of this nature on board. Over the years, Xiaomi has refined the MiUI, and this product keeps up with the tradition. There is no unnecessary bloatware on the tablet, a surprising sight. It’s clean and easy on the eyes as well. The animations are classic Xiaomi, but I am not complaining since they look good on this screen. However, there is one area where the Redmi tablet suffers from the same problem as the Xiaomi Pad 5. The lack of a fingerprint sensor. The Redmi tab uses face unlock or pin, but it is not a fancy mechanism. It employs the front camera to unlock, and as expected, it doesn’t work 100% of the time. And I found myself punching in my password more often than not. Performance Redmi Pad 5 runs on MediaTek Dimensity G99 SoC. Indeed a fresh chipset in the tablet space, it delivers a fiery performance on the tablet. In my six days of usage, I am yet to see lags or ugly app crashes. The variant with me packs in 6GB of RAM, which is more than enough to handle the applications on board. Considering most of them are, in fact, OTT apps. But beyond that, switching between web pages or multi-tasking with multiple apps in the background was also not a problem. The RAM is also able to hold applications for longer periods. I would generally hop between Netflix and Youtube. And even with the constant switching, I would land up on the exact frame where I had left. Now Redmi claims that the Redmi tab can handle gaming as well. I gave it a shot, and the experience was just about okay. Yes, the tablet can handle games like COD Mobile, with respectable graphic settings of HD. But the form factor, by default, limits the experience of truly enjoying a game. This isn’t a complaint but a fact, Tablets of this size are not meant for gaming. Or at least serious gaming. I also ran a Geekbench 5 computing benchmark test on the tablet to check the gaming prowess. It did fairly well for a tablet with a single core score of 551 and a multi-core score of 1894. <div type="image" title="Geekbench score for the Redmi Pad" msid="94644678" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Geekbench score for the Redmi Pad&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> Frankly, the game I enjoyed playing here was Hill climb racing since I could place the tablet over a table and enjoy it. Another fun game to play with my peers was Ludo. Yes, these are basic, boring games, but playing them on a big screen adds to the fun. The storage on my variant is 128GB. It is enough to store around 20+ movies in Full HD resolution across apps and games. If you are planning to go for the Redmi Tab, I would also suggest going with 128GB. Now the Redmi pad doesn’t have an option for a SIM card slot. Yes, there are certain benefits of having a SIM on board, primarily data connectivity. It allows you to watch or download content on the go. Yes, you can also make phone calls, but tablets have never been the best option to dial up a number, in my opinion. To me, skipping on the option entirely shows the priority here. Redmi Pad has all the features to make it a content consumption device. Hence you can download all your movies or TV shows and go about your day. Also, I feel the majority of the usage for the Redmi Pad will be indoors. This doesn’t mean skipping the SIM card slot on Xiaomi Pad 5 was justified. Before closing this section, it’s important to talk about battery life. The Redmi Pad features an 8000 mAh battery. And in all fairness, it is very difficult to kill it. For the last five days, it is my primary device to watch content, and I have plugged it in only twice. If you are a light user, the mileage can come up to 3 days. The tablet supports 18W fast charging but considering it is a big cell, it takes about two and a half hours for a 0-100% charge. Camera Cameras are never a strong point in a budget tablet, and the case here is no different. The Redmi tab has an 8MP primary camera on the back, which reads super camera on the module. <div type="image" title="Images from the primary camera are undersaturated" msid="94644739" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Images from the primary camera are undersaturated &amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> <div type="image" title="Indoor shots from the Redmi Pad are oversaturated" msid="94644782" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Indoor shots from the Redmi Pad are oversaturated&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> The camera by itself is not very impressive. The shots lose out on details with the colours generally oversaturated. The performance does improve a bit in natural lighting conditions, but in no means are they worthy of being posted on your social media. The primary camera can record 1080P videos at 30fps. The footage lacked detail, and the colour tones were warmer. However, the audio quality was clear. All’s not bad here, though. The camera app comes with an in-built scanner which can be used to scan documents. Considering we do use our tablets to store files and documents, this comes in handy. The front camera is an 8MP sensor as well. The images also lack detail, and the colours are cooler. Opposite to the primary camera, here, the images are under-saturated. <div type="image" title="The 8MP wide sensor upfront is great for video calls" msid="94644962" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;The 8MP wide sensor upfront is great for video calls&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div> However, if I strictly talk about video calls, then it is definitely better than most webcams that we find on laptops. Verdict Circling back to the title of this review, the Redmi Pad is indeed the tablet for the masses. Aggressively priced and packed in just about the right features you seek in an entertainment device. If you are looking for a tablet to watch content on strictly, then this can be a great choice. It’s a good alternative for kids or students to watch videos or for home studies. However, if you are a creative looking for a device for editing pictures or creating illustrations, then this isn’t the right choice for you.

Redmi Pad Review: A decent tablet for the masses

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<ul><li>In Q3, Signify was 64% carbon neutral and 79% of its revenue came from sustainable products. It will be executing the same programs to reduce its carbon footprint in India to drive sustainable revenues. </li><li>On the other hand, the brand also aims to become an intelligent software company that offers lighting solutions designed for the IoT world. It invests 4.5% of its global budget on R&amp;D and its latest bet is LiFi. </li><li>Signify currently spends only 5% on digital and 55% of its overall marketing spends on TV, here is why...</li></ul>Philips Lighting, for more than a century, has remained synonymous to bulbs across the globe. Being one of the first in its category, Philips started its operations in India back in 1931 and now, after renewing its brand name to Signify Innovations, aims to become an intelligent software company that offers lighting solutions designed for the IoT world. ‘Lighting can now make every home smarter, cities safer and offices more energy efficient’ and Signify aims to drive this change across the world. Currently, the Indian lighting industry is worth Rs 15,000 crore with LED lighting constituting almost 80% of this. Last year, Signify invested 4.5% of its global sales on Research and Development (R&amp;D) and its latest innovative bet is on Light Fidelity (LiFi), a technology in which high quality LED lighting provides a stable and fast broadband Internet connection through light waves. The company has installed 7 LiFi pilot stations in India across different segments and on the other hand, it also aiming to gain 80% of its revenues from sustainable products. While the company is focusing more on innovation and technology, it continues to spend 55% of its marketing monnies on television and only 5% goes to digital. Sumit Padmakar Joshi, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, <keyword id="7600657" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Signify-Innovations-India">Signify Innovations India</keyword>, has led the company through this transformation. He talks to us about the vision for Signify, its plan to recover from the ‘slightly muted’ quarter, making the company sustainable, and much more. Excerpts: Q. What have some of the key highlights of your journey with the brand been? One of the key highlights of my journey here has been the transformation of the company from a bulb manufacturer to a software company, now offering lighting solutions designed for the IoT world. Our new company name – Signify reflects our company’s purpose – the meaning of light. Light is now a language and can be used to transmit data via LiFi or communicate with other devices via the IoT. Moving away from a pure hardware manufacturer, we have transformed into a company that offers not just lighting but also important business insights and data that can help our customers become smarter and more productive. Leading the company through this phase has been an exciting journey so far. Q. Why did the brand change its name from Philips to Signify, considering Philips is a household name in India? Founded as Philips in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, we’ve led the lighting industry with innovations that serve professional and consumer markets for over 127 years. In 2016, we spun off from Philips, becoming a separate company, listed on Amsterdam’s Euronext Stock Exchange. The renaming of our company was the next logical step in our transformation journey since we became a standalone company in 2016. We changed our company name in line with contractual requirements of the Company Name License agreement with Royal Philips, which requires that we change our company name after Royal Philips, who no longer has a controlling interest. Signify will continue to use the Philips brand for its products, under the existing licensing agreement with Royal Philips. The choice of our new company name originates from the way light has become an intelligent language, which connects and conveys meaning. It’s a clear expression of our strategic vision and purpose to unlock the extraordinary potential of light for brighter lives and a better world. We believe that our new name will further shape our company’s profile as both the world leader in lighting and the lighting company for the Internet of Things. Q. We have seen advanced technology and innovations at Signify now, where did Signify source that new technology? We invest heavily in R&amp;D to stay at the forefront of technological developments. In 2018, we invested 4.5% of our global sales in R&amp;D. We spot an opportunity which nobody focuses on and grow in that segment by coming up with futuristic solutions. As a leader in lighting, we innovate, design, build, and deliver world-class lighting systems embedded with intelligence and connected through software to deliver capability to manage, monitor and control lighting assets, enable data harvesting and analysis for improvement of lighting operation and business performance. We are positioning ourselves as the lighting company for the Internet of Things. We recently announced the launch of our Interact IoT platform for connected lighting, which will enable our professional customers to unlock the full potential of their connected lighting assets. The platform delivers new insights to help customers drive operational efficiencies and take more effective decisions. It also supports our company’s strategy to deliver new data-enabled services as value expands from lighting products and systems to services. Q. Talking about innovations, are you seeing LiFi changing the game in India? How has the response been so far? Light Fidelity (LiFi) is a technology in which high quality LED lighting provides a stable and fast broadband Internet connection through light waves. Unlike other forms of wireless communications (WiFi, 4G/5G, Bluetooth, etc.) that use radio waves, LiFi uses the broader spectrum of light waves to transmit and receive data wirelessly. LiFi’s bandwidth is more than 1,000 times the size of the radio spectrum. LiFi works in such a way that each luminaire is equipped with a built-in modem that modulates light at speeds imperceptible to the human eye. The light is detected by a USB access key/dongle plugged into the socket of a laptop or tablet (in the future such technology will be inbuilt into laptops, mobile phones, and devices). The USB access key returns data to the luminaire through an infrared link. While radio frequencies are becoming congested, with more devices trying to connect and overloading networks, the visible light spectrum is an untapped resource with a large bandwidth suitable for stable simultaneous connection for a vast array of Internet of Things devices. With our efforts and constant drive for LiFi in the market, we already have 7 pilot installations in India across different segments, including banks, Information technology, Co-Working spaces, B2G, Infrastructure amongst others. We were also specially invited by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and Government of Gujarat to showcase LiFi as a Futuristic Technology at the Vibrant Gujarat summit which received a footfall of 25,000 delegates, including Central and State Ministers, several corporate houses and government officials. Q. Globally, Signify has been talking about becoming Carbon-neutral. How successful have you been so far? What exactly are you doing in India to become Carbon-neutral? We are taking a leading role to bring better light to the world and to help provide a more sustainable future. We do this by delivering light which is energy efficient, saves resources, and improves lives. At Signify, we also ‘walk the talk’ and commit to becoming carbon neutral by 2020. We are already carbon neutral in 9 markets as of 2019. We have made some bold promises that we’ll deliver on by 2020. 80% of our revenues will be sustainable and we’ll also deliver 2 billion LED lamps and luminaires to the world. As of Q3, 2019, we are 64% carbon neutral and already 79% of our revenues come from sustainable products. 89% of our purchased electricity comes from renewable sources and we are recycling 82% of our manufacturing waste. We are executing the same programs to reduce our carbon footprint in India as well, including driving sustainable revenues, zero waste to landfill, striving for a zero-injury workplace, and building a sustainable supply chain. Q. With your brand repositioning and new brand endorsers, we have seen your focus shifting to smart lighting. What part of revenue do you make from that category now? Which category brings the lion’s share home? In India, smart lighting for homes is a Rs 100 crores+ category and is expected to grow by 45% over the next 3 years as many more houses adopt connected lighting in a major way. We are by far the market leader in this segment as well, as we virtually created this category when we launched our Philips Hue range in India 4 years back. While smart lighting constitutes a very small share of our overall business right now, it has a lot of potential for growth in the future owing to increasing urbanization and internet penetration. Ultimately our focus is on new homes and renovations, where we see a lot of consumers trying out connected lighting for the first time. The biggest categories for our company are LED lighting in both professional and consumer applications. We recently introduced a range of new products for the consumer segment, including our Philips T Beamer, Philips CeilingSecure and Philips EyePro Bulb. For our professional users, we recently introduced lighting solutions such as Interact and LiFi. Q. How has the year been, in terms of business? We witnessed high single digit growth in the first half of this calendar year, and expect growth to be ‘slightly muted’ during the remaining half of this year due to overall economic slowdown in the country. In Q2 we saw some projects getting delayed due to elections in the country, however, we were expecting a recovery but it looks like it is getting slightly delayed. It will take another three-to-six months for things to start picking up in the Indian lighting sector. The current economic slowdown has impacted industries across sectors in India and we are no different. Q. People in rural areas are still not ready to accept LEDs in their lives because of high costs. What are you doing to bring down the cost of your products? Government electrification schemes like Suabhagya are helping even remote towns and villages to have access to electricity. Moreover, with rising rural incomes and penetration of media, aspirations and awareness about new products amongst rural households has increased over the past few years. While rural households still use conventional lighting in a big way, we’re witnessing a steady and growing demand for LEDs from these areas as well, owing to its reduced prices and enhanced awareness about its advantages, such as high durability and lower power consumption. We have launched an LED range of products, Philips Ujjwal, to cater to this audience, offering a better price value suited to their budget. The technical specifications of these products have been specially designed keeping in mind rural lighting requirements and preferences. Q. Can you walk us through your larger marketing strategy for the brand? India is amongst the top 5 markets for Signify globally and we invest a lot in marketing to support our brand and activities. Our spends on TV Advertising in India are by far the highest across all Signify markets, keeping in mind that India has traditionally been a TV-advertising-focused market. 55% of our overall marketing spends in India are towards TV advertising to reach out to our target audience. Our TV advertising in India is biased towards promoting our new product categories like TBulb, Ceiling Secure. In the last two years, we have launched 2 major TV ad campaigns for these two products. 5% of our overall marketing spends are on digital marketing in India, whereas the lighting category’s digital spends in India stand at 3-4%. Majority of our digital marketing spends are towards SEM and lead generation, highlighting our IoT products like Interact, LiFi and Philips Hue. 26% of our overall marketing spends in India are directed towards creating brand awareness and preference. Q. What areas will you focus on going ahead, to amplify growth? The overall market size of the Indian lighting industry is Rs 15,000 crore with LED lighting constituting almost 80% of this. The LED portion of the industry is expected to grow in high single digits. The conventional lighting market is, however, expected to decline in double digits, owing to faster conversion towards LED. It is not possible for companies to deliver on their top-line as well as bottom-line costs without category-first innovations. As a result, we don’t see many companies in India being able to manage that equation successfully. We’ve managed to increase our profitability over the last 3-4 years, thanks to new innovative products like Philips T Beamer, Philips EYE PRO and Philips Smart WiFi LED bulb. We will also focus on expanding our presence in the rural channel with our customized offerings. Our focus is on innovation and expanding the premium segment where nobody focuses on right now. We believe that companies that don’t innovate, that are entering the lighting industry from other backgrounds are going to have a difficult time surviving in this market. However, if the government continues to allow cheap and sub-standard products to be sold in the market, we foresee that it will become a big roadblock for the industry, which can further impact the price point for the whole industry. We are also investing significantly to grow our smart home lighting business in both offline and online channels, through our exclusive Philips Smart Light Hubs and with our presence on all major e-commerce portals. By the end of the year, we expect to double our retail presence for smart lighting in the country with new Philips Smart Light Hubs opening across various cities. In the professional lighting space, we will strive to grow our Interact connected lighting installations in offices, public buildings, retail stores, hotels and landmarks. Signify has already installed 53 million connected light points worldwide and plans for every new LED product it produces to be connectable by 2020. The highly secure, scalable cloud-based Interact platform uses sophisticated and modern data management and data processing capabilities, including machine learning, to bring sense to all manner of data – creating data-enabled services for customers that will deliver benefits beyond illumination. In the coming year, we will focus on new LiFi installations, trying to expand to new user applications. There is a lot of potential for LiFi in India, with millions of internet devices being added into the connected ecosystem every day.

Signify to make 80% of its revenue from sustainable products in 2020; will continue investing 55% of its marketing monnies on TV

<div class="image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"><keyword id="56712" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Christies">Christie's</keyword>"Colorado Boots" has a starting bid of $800 at Christie's <keyword id="22508" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="online">online</keyword> auction</div></div></div>Today is the last day to get a piece of Andy Warhol for as little as $800.
The late blue chip artist <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/andy-warhol-painting-sets-a-new-record-with-105-million-sale-2013-11">recently broke auction house records with a $105.4 million sale</a> from his oeuvre.
Now Christie's has collected 99 original Warhol photographs, prints, Polaroids and drawings, which are currently for sale in an online-only <a href="https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/andy-warhol-at-christies-a-christmas-thing/lots/37?showMode=10000&amp;Source=&amp;SelectedAttributeValueIds%5B0%5D=&amp;SelectedAttributeValueIds%5B1%5D=&amp;SortBy=LotNumber">holiday-themed auction</a>. All bidders have to do is create an online account to bid for the "approachably priced" Warhols.
While "<a href="https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/andy-warhol-at-christies-a-christmas-thing/colorado-boots-78/2928/">Colorado Boots</a>," a print, is the only work under the virtual hammer for less than $1,000, the rest of the lots hover around the relatively inexpensive $1,200 mark. That's a dream price range for a first-time collector looking to break into established artists. 
The sale started Dec. 2 as an extension of Cyber Monday, one of the first times Christie's decided to do such a targeted holiday promotion. Most lots, featuring everything from Santas to snow angels, only have one bid on them with less than 24 hours to go. 
"The last 24 hours are always where we see the most online activity," Amelia Manderscheid, head of e-commerce for post-war and contemporary art at Christie's, said to Business Insider. "If someone bids in the last couple seconds, the lot time (a countdown clock above each image on the web page) will keep extending on that item as long as clients keep bidding. It gets competitive at the end just like being in the sale room."
Manderscheid offered some advice for scoring a reasonably priced Warhol this holiday season:
<ul>
<li>Pay attention to the dynamic calculator on your profile page while bidding. It shows the real price of your item with each bid, including the cost of shipping the work to your address on file and the buyer's premium (at Christie's that's 25% for works under $100,000). </li>
<li>Remember the bidding increments: $100 - $2,000 bids increase by $100, $2,000 - $3,000 bids increase by $200. Anything higher for the Warhol sale usually goes up in $1,000 increments</li>
<li>Call a Christie's representative if you have a question while you bid</li>
<li>You'll get texts or emails throughout the day if someone outbids you, but make yourself available for the last 15 minutes before your most desired lot closes. Bid on your tablet or phone if you have to be away from your computer.</li>
</ul>
The Warhols that aren't sold will most likely be held for future <keyword id="53361" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="auctions">auctions</keyword> or a private sale with a client.
If you miss the pop frenzy, there's one week left on Christie's <a href="https://onlineonly.christies.com/c/s/1#1">Unwrapped</a> sale, which the auction house stocked with holiday gift ideas from all its departments at flat prices, so there's no saleroom anxiety.
Highlights include a David Hockney lithograph for $15,000 and an American flag flown from Apollo 11 that Buzz Aldrin signed for $32,000. Most things you can buy outright, but there are two charity lots: A game-day date with Derek Jeter has a starting bid of $90,000, and the chance to accompany the Clinton Foundation to a handful of African countries has a starting bid of $75,000.

A Warhol Painting Just Sold For $105 Million, But You Can Pick Up One Of The Artist's Works For Around $1,200

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Loadsmart; Shayanne Gal/Business InsiderLoadsmart CEO Ricardo Salgado.</div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>Loadsmart, founded in 2014, is a startup in the red-hot digital freight brokerage industry. It has a valuation of $169 million and raised $19 million earlier this month. </li><li>A spate of techies have jumped into <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/trucking">trucking</a> brokerage - including <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/uber-freight">Uber Freight</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/convoy">Convoy</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/transfix">Transfix</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tariffs-record-volumes-to-west-coast-warehouses-2018-12">NEXT Trucking</a>, and so on. </li><li>Loadsmart takes a different tack on freight brokerage. Rather than attracting thousands of independent truckers and small companies, the New York-based startup aims for strategic partnerships with large industry leaders.</li><li>CEO and cofounder Ricardo Salgado told Business Insider more about his vision for Loadsmart. Salgado previously spent nearly 14 years at Goldman Sachs.</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/prime?module=article&amp;area=summary">Click here for more BI Prime stories.</a></li></ul>Rachel Premack: There are so many startups in the digital freight marketplace industry. What makes Loadsmart different? Ricardo Salgado: So, number one is that we lead with technology complimented with strategic partnerships to move more with less. And what that means is if you look at our DNA, 40% of our team are engineers and data scientists, so everything that we look at, every problem that we try to solve for is prioritizing or is from a technology lens.How can we automate all these flows and processes, right? How can we aggregate all this data so that we can overlay these networks between shippers and carriers and makes sense of them in a digital format so we can move more with less?If you look under the hood, you see that our engineering firepower is pretty strong. That's number one. Now that has allowed us to attract industry leaders because ultimately if this is not just software, we're also moving a physical asset.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesLoadsmart has raised $54.2 million to date.</div></div></div>Salgado: And as we're moving a physical asset, part of our strategic IP, if you can compliment or can put software with strategic assets that are scarce in value then that's an ideal situation.Our technology has allowed us to attract industry leaders. Those would include the largest ocean shipping line in the world, Maersk. Depending on the trade flow, they have a 18 to 22% market share of all containers coming in.You have our partnership or investment from Ports America, which is the largest ports operator in the United States. Roughly 30% of the containers come in and out through their ports.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-trucking-digital-freight-brokerages-solve-biggest-problem-trucking-industry-2019-7">Oracle is joining Amazon and Uber in the race to digitize the 'antiquated' $800 billion trucking industry</a>You see our partnership with the largest TMS out there - Oracle and One Network - and others down the pipeline as well. There's our announcement with, for instance, self-driving trucking company Starsky and there's more that we haven't announced in that element.(Our) Nerd Herd, which is what we call it here internally, has attracted or built phenomenal technology to attract these ecosystem of strategic partners, and I think that that's something that we haven't seen out there as well.<h2>Loadsmart is focusing on 'industry leaders' - not attracting as many shippers and carriers as possible</h2>Salgado: For us, the land grab hasn't been, "Let me acquire as many clients as possible instantly." For us, the land grab has been, "Let me actually attract the industry leader."Because once you're in there, you're very entrenched with that and you can do some powerful things with them. We prioritize attracting these industry leaders versus just acquiring customers.Having said that, we've acquired these customers. Loadsmart has 22% of Fortune 100 clients that use full truckload services have registered with Loadsmart, (including Coca-Cola and Kraft Heinz). When we meet with the right person at any Fortune 500 client, 82% of the time we acquire the customer. That's massive.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Rachel Premack/Business InsiderCoca-Cola uses Loadsmart technologies.</div></div></div>When they see the technology, they look under the hood and then they see the ecosystem strategic partnerships, that magic formula helps us attract them. They see it's not just another freight broker. There's nothing wrong with another freight broker, that has been done before and done very successful. It's just not us.<h2>Loadsmart's leadership doesn't see freight startups Uber Freight or Next Trucking as competition</h2>Premack: Given all that, who is Loadsmart's competition?Salgado: We actually don't view the other digital free broker companies as are our biggest competitors or the incumbents. It's actually, funny enough, our own clients that decide not to digitize.What's good for other digital freight brokers or the incumbents is good for us. And I think there's space for absolutely everybody. It's not a one winner-take-all type of market, but we all need to push toward digitization. It makes our whole industry much better.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fedex-ecommerce-amazon-c-suite-2019-9" data-analytics-position="5">FedEx is pivoting to e-commerce. A C-suiter explained to us how the delivery giant is doing it differently than everyone else -and what's behind dumping Amazon.</a>So, it's the decision not to digitize that is our competitor. That 18% that decides not to digitize or do something in that format (are the competitors). That's how we view the competitive landscape.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Associated Press</div></div></div>Premack: So, would you even consider yourself part of the DFM industry or outside of it? Salgado: I mean, we're just doing it differently, let's put it that way. We definitely are within the DFM world, we have similar customers, similar carrier base, we just are tactical and strategic in doing it more via technology by digitizing, by building those highways programmatically and by attracting this ecosystem of strategic partnerships<h2>Loadsmart isn't focused on attracting mom-and-pop truckers like other startups</h2>Premack: We were talking earlier about B2B versus B2C, and the way other freight startups talk is almost a little more B2C, like they're trying to attract especially as many truck drivers as possible. So your stance is definitely different from what they're taking.Salgado: I can share with you that 50% of motor carriers that have 4,000 trucks or more have registered with Loadsmart. That's insane.If you have the demand like we have, they want that. They want a shipment in the right direction at the right time for the right price. And if you have the capability of accessing that, not only via an Excel or an email or a CSV, but programmatically, it becomes more scalable. Right? What we're trying to do is build a true trucking platform, not just another freight brokerage operation.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</div></div></div>I'm not saying that the incumbents are going away. There is a need for them. But I do think that you're going to see that movement where there's massive consolidation. There are 15,000 freight brokers in the United States. It's still a massive number, even though obviously it's super fragmented. We know the largest one is a public company, C. H. Robinson and they have 2.2% of the FTL market out there. But if you look at that middle piece, it's even much more fragmented.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fedex-ditched-amazon-walmart-ecommerce-2019-9" data-analytics-position="7">Here's why FedEx ditched Amazon and is throwing itself into powering Walmart's e-commerce aspirations</a>They need to adopt certain technology to automate as much as possible, then that will push them toward even further consolidation than what you've seen historically.<h2>Major brokerages don't care about Loadsmart - or any other freight startups. Here's what Salgado thinks about that.</h2>Premack: When I've listened to the earnings calls of those incumbents, analysts don't really press them on these new startups. Do you find that kind of interesting that these traditional freight brokers aren't really worried about these new startups that are entering? Salgado: My comments are around what incumbents, and this is not exclusive to this market, but I think that in today's world, if you're not paying attention to the technology you're going to be left behind.The response of the market, and this is traditional, is that they'll go out there and say, "Listen, we have the brand, we have capital, we're massive, and we spend significant amount of cap-ex in that industry. We spend multiples of what all these startups spend." That's what you'll go out there and do.I think that it's not only about the amount of capital that you have to deploy in research and development, it's about the culture that you have, the DNA, and the legacy systems that you have to maintain.See also: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ignition-transportation">Apply here to attend IGNITION: Transportation, an event focused on the future of transportation, in San Francisco on October 22</a>.If you've been operating for 100 years or 50 years, there's certain amount of legacy code - or if you aggregated and consolidated a bunch of different codes that don't talk to each other, there's a ton of maintenance that happens. You can easily spend 80 to 85% of your R&amp;D spend just maintaining these 22 systems that don't talk to each other. That's very different.In China, they skipped going from desktop to laptop to tablet to mobile. They went directly to mobile. They don't have any of these legacy systems, so they're faster to bring the latest technology and it's more nimble and flexible to do and innovate ultimately. We're a relatively new company. We don't have these legacy systems. We just look at it with today's eyes and with the latest technology. So, 100% or 95% of our R&amp;D capital goes to innovate.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">REUTERS/Alberto Berti</div></div></div>It's similar to SpaceX. SpaceX was the first one to put a rocket out there and land it safely. That's a company that was born in 2002. It's a 17-year-old company. Now, why couldn't others go out there and do it? There were others that were built in 1916 and 1906 that have the brands, have all the engineers, have access to the contracts and they could have gone out there and deployed that, but they did not have the DNA and that culture to go out there and do that type of innovation. Premack: But then on the other hand, J.B. Hunt 360, for instance, does have quite a bit of market share. Some say 360 is actually the technological leader. So what about when these incumbents have actually been succeeding in the DFM area? Salgado: If I asked the question, who had industry leading rocket technology in 2005? They would say, "It's actually a Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman or Boeing." Those companies were born in 1916, 1906, in the early 1900s. They would have said, "Yeah, Tesla doesn't have it." I have 50,000 engineers, a budget of $10 billion, and I know the government.But who was the first one to go out there and do that? So that's how I respond to that. I'm not saying that they don't, it's just that we live and breathe pushing the boundaries of innovation.<h2>Profitability has been elusive for many DFM startups - and it is for Loadsmart too</h2>Premack: Another big question about DFMs in general is the profitability side. Is Loadsmart profitable now and if not, when do you see that panning out?Salgado: So in our strategy, historically there's two strategies, right? So to answer your question directly, we are profitable. We do generate a gross margin.(Note: Loadsmart's press team later clarified to Business Insider that the company is not profitable. It refuses profit-losing loads and maintains profitable margins on the shipments it does take. Salgado told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month that Loadsmart is on track to achieve profitability <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/freight-matching-startup-loadsmart-adds-19-million-from-maersk-ports-america-11567684801">by 2023</a>.)One model is - let's raise a lot of capital to hire an army of people to get some customers to scale to $300, $400 million in gross revenues at a negative gross margin and then turn it on and then have some profitability. To get wholesale pricing, you need some type of wholesale volume. So, there's a move to go out there and I think that's the journey that some of the historical players in this industry have gone out there and done that.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-freight-trucking-200-million-chicago-2019-9" data-analytics-position="4">Uber's trucking division has hemorrhaged hundreds of millions of dollars. Here's why the tech giant is betting another $200 million on freight and opening a dedicated Uber Freight HQ.</a>And here you're seeing us saying that we just haven't subscribed to that. Ours has been more - let's do it from a tech perspective, not by brute force through capital to subsidize initially to go out there and do it. But there's nothing wrong with either way.<h2>Loadsmart is about moving more with fewer assets</h2>Premack: What else should I know about Loadsmart?Salgado: We're the nerds. We're the nerds. Like seriously, we are the nerds. We're the nerd herd. We're the geeks. We're the nerds. And we love to geek out. We have a quarterly hackathon and we all get together and build phenomenal products and look at our capital structure.Our mission is how do we move more with less? And what that means is how do you wake up in a world in five years and move 20% more goods with 20% less assets, right? And it's all a data problem, right? It's aggregating this fragmented, poorly visible data between shippers and carriers to really overlay them and match them so that we can optimize the asset utilization.<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">AP Photo/Elaine Thompson</div></div></div>It makes no sense that human beings buy cars that are, on average, used by 1.1 people, but their capacity is five people and they sit in their parking like 95% of its life. So for us, if you overlay that from a trucking perspective, the same thing. If you look at a truck, that truck is manufactured to run 24 hours a day. But the reality is it's actually run 35%, 40% of the day, right? Part of the time obviously the driver can't drive it because he needs to sleep for obvious reasons.But part of it is because it's running empty, right? Premack: Or detained, or whatever.Salgado: All those things. But how do we create that? How do we build everything programmatically so you're connected to the warehousing management systems, so you're connected to the TMS sites.You can really scale up and live in a world that is much more autonomous, self-driving, and do autonomous shipments with no human intervention. That's at the core of what Loadsmart is on.<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/fedex-ecommerce-amazon-c-suite-2019-9" data-analytics-position="4"></a><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/intelligence/future-of-retail?IR=T&amp;itm_source=businessinsider&amp;itm_medium=ctgr_bii&amp;itm_term=ctgr_leadgen&amp;itm_content=transportation&amp;itm_campaign=future-of-retail"></a> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/chevrolet-corvette-c8-2020-mid-engine-supercar-sports-car-2019-9">How the new Chevrolet Corvette went from sports car to supercar</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

Loadsmart is quietly dominating the digital freight-brokerage industry. The CEO explained to us how its take on technology has helped secure partnerships with huge names like Daimler, Oracle, and Coca-Cola.

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div></div></div>Amazon just reported its Q3 earnings. 
Here are the numbers:
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li2">EPS: -$0.95 (analysts were expecting a loss of $0.74).</li>
<li class="li2">Revenues: $20.58 billion (analysts were expecting $20.84 billion). That's an increase of 20% year-over-year.</li>
</ul>
This is a miss on both the top and bottom line.
 
Operating loss was $544 million in the third quarter (the company had predicted between $410 and $810 million). The company reported an operating loss guidance of between $430 million and $570 million for Q4.
The stock is down nearly 8% after-hours. 
Operating cash flow increased 15% year-over-year to $5.71 billion and free cash flow increased to $1.08 billion.
Here's the full report:
<blockquote class="blockquote">
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced financial results for its third quarter ended September 30, 2014.
Operating cash flow increased 15% to $5.71 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $4.98 billion for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2013. Free cash flow increased to$1.08 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $388 million for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2013. Free cash flow for the trailing twelve months ended September 30, 2013 includes cash outflows for purchases of corporate office space and property in Seattle, Washington, of $1.4 billion.
Common shares outstanding plus shares underlying stock-based awards totaled 481 million on September 30, 2014, compared with 475 million one year ago.
Net sales increased 20% to $20.58 billion in the third quarter, compared with $17.09 billion in third quarter 2013. The favorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter on net sales was $13 million.
Operating loss was $544 million in the third quarter, compared with operating loss of $25 million in third quarter 2013.
Net loss was $437 million in the third quarter, or $0.95 per diluted share, compared with net loss of $41 million, or $0.09 per diluted share, in third quarter 2013.
"As we get ready for this upcoming holiday season, we are focused on making the customer experience easier and more stress-free than ever," said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. "In addition to our already low prices, we will offer more than 15,000 Lightning Deals with early access to select deals for Prime members, hundreds of millions of products across dozens of categories, curated gift lists like Holiday Toy List and Electronics Holiday Gift Guide, new features like #AmazonWishList, and a great new lineup of products like Kindle Voyage and Fire HD Kids Edition. And if you order your gifts on AmazonSmile, we'll donate a percentage of your purchase price to your favorite charity."
Highlights
<ul>
<li>Amazon announced the new Kindle Voyage, our thinnest, most advanced Kindle ever. Kindle Voyage has our highest resolution, highest contrast, and brightest display, reimagined page turns, and all of the features customers love about Kindle - books in seconds, no eyestrain or glare, readability in bright sunlight, and battery life measured in weeks, not hours. Amazon also launched the all-new $79 Kindle with a 20% faster processor, twice the storage, and new touch interface. Both e-readers feature customer favorites Kindle FreeTime, Goodreads, and Smart Lookup, plus new features like Word Wise, Family Library, FreeTime Unlimited, and more. These features will also be made available on Kindle Paperwhite as part of a free, over-the-air software update.</li>
<li>Amazon introduced the all-new Fire HD - the most powerful tablet under $100. Fire HD features a quad-core processor, front- and rear-facing cameras, an HD display, incredible reliability, and a world-class ecosystem of exclusive features, services, and content. Fire HD is available in five color choices and in 6" and 7" sizes.</li>
<li>Amazon introduced Fire HD Kids Edition, the first tablet built from the ground up for kids and parents, and featuring the first-ever 2-year worry-free guarantee - if anything happens, Amazonwill replace it for free, no questions asked. Fire HD Kids Edition is a real tablet, not a toy - it features a quad-core processor, a vivid HD display, front- and rear-facing cameras, Dolby Digital Audio, a kid-proof case, and access to Amazon's unmatched content ecosystem. Fire HD Kids Edition also comes with a year of FreeTime Unlimited, which provides unlimited access to 5,000 age-appropriate books, movies, TV shows, educational apps, and games.</li>
<li>Amazon introduced the all-new Fire HDX 8.9, which combines a startlingly light design and stunning HDX display with a new, more powerful processor, exclusive Dolby Atmos and the latest Dolby Audio, and the all-new Fire OS 4 "Sangria," Amazon's next-generation software and services that power Amazon Fire devices.</li>
<li>Amazon Fire TV is now the best-selling streaming box on Amazon for the U.S., U.K., and Germany.</li>
<li>Amazon Game Studios unveiled its latest round of games launching this year exclusively on Amazon Fire tablets and Fire phone - Til Morning's Light, CreepStorm, and Tales From Deep Space. These are creative, hand-crafted games that are fun to play, deliver interesting new customer experiences, and utilize exclusive Amazon content and technology, such as Fire phone's Dynamic Perspective, Amazon AppStream, and comiXology.</li>
<li>Amazon announced that all 10 episodes of the critically-acclaimed dark comedy series Transparent are now available for Prime Instant Video customers in the U.S., U.K., and Germany. Since its debut, Transparent is the #1 ranked TV series on Prime Instant Video. Also proving popular with critics, the new show clocked in a near perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes with a 98% critic rating, and a 91 metascore on Metacritic, making Transparent one of TV's top three highest-ranked, currently-airing shows.</li>
<li>Amazon announced it will premiere all 10 episodes of the second season of Garry Trudeau's critically-acclaimed political comedy series Alpha House exclusively on Prime Instant Video starting tomorrow. Additionally, two more original pilots, dramatic thriller Hand of God and coming-of-age comedy Red Oaks, will return for full seasons following rave customer reviews.Amazon Studios has also greenlit five additional kids pilots for 2015: The Stinky &amp; Dirty Show, Buddy: Tech Detective, Niko and the Sword of Light, Table 58, and Just Add Magic.</li>
<li>Amazon launched KDP Kids and Kindle Kids' Book Creator to help children's book authors prepare, publish, and promote both illustrated and chapter books in Kindle Stores worldwide.</li>
<li>Amazon acquired Twitch Interactive, Inc. With an average of over 55 million unique monthly visitors in the last quarter, and content produced by more than one million broadcasters per month, Twitch is the leading live video platform and community for gamers.</li>
<li>Amazon Prime members now receive 30 minutes of early access to select Lightning Deals on Amazon.com and daily sales events on MyHabit.com. By taking advantage of this early access, members can find great deals this holiday and all year long.</li>
<li>AmazonFresh expanded its service to Brooklyn. For a limited time, Prime members in eligible Brooklyn areas can use AmazonFresh for free, getting access to same-day and early next-day delivery of fresh groceries as well as over 500,000 Amazon.com items.</li>
<li>Amazon launched Local Register, a mobile app and secure credit card reader, that enables individuals and small businesses to quickly and easily accept credit and debit cards from a smartphone or tablet at an industry-leading low, flat rate with no hidden fees or long-term contracts. Local Register customers also benefit from access to the Amazon.com award-winning, fully-dedicated customer support team, and in-app reporting tools.</li>
<li>Amazon launched the 3D Printed Products store, a marketplace that gives customers access to more than 200 unique print-on-demand products, many that can be customized by material, size, style, and color, and personalized with text and image imprints. The store includes convenient search tools, interactive 3D preview functionality, and a product personalization widget.</li>
<li>Purdue University and Amazon launched the Purdue Student Store on Amazon, a co-branded experience where students can purchase lower-cost textbooks and other college essentials.Amazon also will bring staffed customer order pickup and drop-off locations to Purdue's campus, as well as expedited shipping benefits, in early 2015.</li>
<li>Amazon launched Pay with Amazon in India to help sellers of all sizes across the country grow their online businesses. Sellers can outsource their financial transactions to a world-class payments platform, and customers can shop with confidence due to a 100% buyer protection guarantee. This new Amazon service will further aid and support the growth and integration of small and medium businesses in the new digital economy. Pay with Amazon is mobile-optimized across all operating systems including Android, iOS, and Windows.</li>
<li>Amazon.in became the exclusive marketplace in India to find Xbox One, Xbox 360, Kinect, Xbox Live, Xbox Accessories, and all Microsoft-published Xbox game titles. With the roll-out of Xbox One, Amazon unveiled Release Day Delivery, a service committed to delivering customers new product offerings on their release day. Microsoft's offerings join other global products including Coke Zero, Blackberry Passport, and the first Android One phone that have launched exclusively in India on Amazon.in.</li>
<li>Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the AWS Directory Service, making it easier for enterprise customers to integrate their AWS environments with existing on-premises access control systems and security policies.</li>
<li>To help customers build more secure and efficient cloud environments, AWS announced it is offering four of its popular AWS Trusted Advisor security checks for free. AWS Trusted Advisor is an automated service that inspects a customer's AWS environment and finds opportunities for customers to save money, improve system performance and reliability, and close security gaps. Since the beginning of 2013, customers have viewed more than 1.7 million AWS Trusted Advisor recommendations, and realized more than $300 million in estimated cost reductions.</li>
<li>AWS announced the launch of its AWS EU (Frankfurt) Region, the second AWS Region in Europe and the 11th AWS Region globally. This allows organizations who want to ensure that their data resides inside of Germany the ability to do so.</li>
<li>With over 350 significant service and feature releases year-to-date, and substantial price reductions (28% to 51% depending on the service) for customers starting in April 2014, AWS continues to grow strongly, with usage growth close to 90% year-over-year for the third quarter.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.

LIVE: Amazon Shares Are Tanking After Disappointing Earnings 

Dylan Martinez / ReutersA largely invisible and vulnerable community of migrant workers clean London's offices at night.London, UK - From Monday to Friday between 9 and 11pm, Ramona* works at an office building near Finsbury Square, in the commercial heart of London.As the last employees trickle out through the rotating glass doors, she puts on her uniform.Then she begins cleaning: vacuuming five storeys along with another cleaner, clearing out all the rubbish, and washing and drying all the used cutlery and crockery in the communal kitchens which are often filthy by the time she arrives. She has just two hours to complete her work.Her least favourite task, she says, is cleaning the toilets."If the stench of human waste doesn't bother you, the bleach will," the 36-year-old explains.REUTERS / Nacho DoceIt is exhausting work, particularly as she has another cleaning job in the afternoons. But Ramona tries to lighten her mood by putting on earphones and listening to salsa music.Apart from the awkward greetings of those who pass her on their way out, Ramona barely speaks to anyone, but she says she doesn't mind."My life now is not so good, but still much better from when I first arrived in London," she says.Ramona, who is pink-cheeked and jovial, and wears her dyed blonde hair in pigtails, came to London in search of better employment opportunities.She left her native Bolivia in 2006, shortly before Evo Morales became president, when the country's extreme poverty rate was at an all-time high of 38.2 percent. For almost a year, she shared a flat with her sister and cousin, taking on commercial cleaning jobs at night in different offices on an informal basis. She'd learn about the work through word of mouth, usually from fellow Latin Americans in her neighbourhood."No contracts, no uniforms, nothing when I first started," Ramona, who was paid in cash, recalls. "Sometimes when I called my manager to ask when I would be paid after working for a week, he or she would respond, 'So, do you want this job or not?'"Patrycja Ebis / ShutterstockShe hadn't yet met her husband and working such unsocial hours meant that days or even weeks could pass without her speaking to anybody.Ramona is just one in a largely invisible and vulnerable community of hundreds of migrant night cleaners in London. Her journey to the UK is characteristic of others in the industry. They often enter the country as tourists looking for a way out of poverty, working illegally at first under informal arrangements, which leave them vulnerable to job insecurity and abuse. Undocumented migrants have some avenues for legal advice but taking a case to court puts them at risk of deportation.Ramona qualified to be a resident of the UK when she met and married her husband, a Spanish citizen of Ecuadorian descent. But the road can be just as tough for those workers who enter the UK legally. Several cleaners that Al Jazeera spoke to had spent a number of years working both legally and illegally first in another EU country, exposed to the same problems, before exercising their right to move to the UK under the principle of the single market. All nine cleaners that this reporter spoke to were legal residents in the UK at the point of their interviews.<h2>English classes</h2>The precariousness that Ramona faces is similar to that of Colombian sisters Gloria, 43, and Desdemona, 47.Matt Cardy / Getty ImagesBut their path to London was far more arduous. In 2001, they smuggled themselves to Spain where they worked undocumented as fruit collectors and then as domestic cleaners until three years ago.Then, after securing EU citizenship, a brother-in-law living in London invited them to the UK. They stayed with him for a short period of time and began working as commercial cleaners."Life is hard," Gloria says in Spanish. "I wake up at 1am to take the bus to work, and my office is near St Paul's Cathedral. My shifts are between 2[am] to 4am, and 5[am] to 7am every day.""When we first came here," Desdemona laughs, "we had this impression of London as a city full of blond people with blue eyes, who were rich and had a lot of money. We didn't know there were other poor people like us, too."Neither sister speaks any English."It's difficult even going to buy groceries at a supermarket because I'm too scared to ask for help," Gloria says.Their older sister died in Cali in Colombia in September 2016, but they couldn't afford to return home for the funeral. Gloria was also worried that she wouldn't be able to re-enter the UK if she left.Most of the time, the cleaners say they don't know where exactly they are going to work until their first day."I really wanted to learn English, and after saving for over a year, I finally paid 1,400 pounds (roughly $1,760) to attend morning classes at a language centre," Ramona says.She remembers the exact amount she paid because she ended up failing the course.<a href="http://pictures.reuters.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0FCIZZGBOJS&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1440&amp;RH=716#/SearchResult&amp;VBID=2C0FCIZZGBOJS&amp;SMLS=1&amp;RW=1440&amp;RH=716&amp;PN=7&amp;POPUPPN=374&amp;POPUPIID=2C0BF172TMQI">REUTERS/Toby Melville</a>"I slept through every lesson. It was so difficult to keep focus when I'd been cleaning for 14 hours through the night."After that came a particularly painful period of time when one of Ramona's several employers did not pay her for three months straight.Calls to the cleaning company went unanswered, and when she finally got hold of her manager, she was told that she had been dismissed."He said, 'We lost your contract. Don't call again,'" she says ruefully. There was nothing she could do as she was working illegally at the time and feared being sent back to Bolivia. Her savings were being depleted at an alarming rate, and she would walk from office to office to save on bus fares, even if it took over an hour.She didn't consider seeking legal aid or exposing the employment abuse she was suffering. "It's better to be exploited than to have no job," she reflects.Desdemona and Gloria see their work as a trap."We have no TV and no internet in our home. If we're not catching up on sleep in our free time, we go to the park and eat outside in the cold," Desdemona says. "How is this life?"<h2>Migration and exploitation</h2>The stories of Ramona, Gloria and Desdemona are all too ubiquitous. There are hundreds of night cleaners like them living in London.There are no official statistics for the total number of people cleaning London's offices at night.According to a 2014 report published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation in the UK that advocates and enforces equality and non-discrimination laws, the non-domestic cleaning sector as a whole contributes more than $10bn (PDF) to the economy each year and comprises "a largely invisible workforce of around half-a-million people" predominantly made up of women and ethnic minorities.ShutterstockLikewise, there are no hard numbers on the extent of the abuse specific to the night cleaning industry, but social justice advocates interviewed for this article say they have no doubt that it is rampant. According to the EHRC report, abuses include workers being harassed and treated as "the lowest of the low", being underpaid, unfair dismissal as a result of pregnancy, and the lack of facilities to take breaks. The Office for National Statistics states that the minimum wage for workers above the age of 21 is 6.50 pounds (about $8) an hour. Almost all nine cleaners interviewed for this article were paid this bare minimum.Carolina Gottardo, director of the Latin American Women Rights Service (LAWRS) based in central-east London, told Al Jazeera that anecdotal evidence points to a large percentage of night cleaners being Latin American."Just go to any office in the evening, and you'll see," she says.According to No Longer Invisible, a report jointly published by Queen Mary, University of London, LAWRS and the Trust for London, an independent funder focused on poverty and inequality in the city, the first wave of Latin Americans arrived in the UK in the early 1970s.They quickly filled up work permit quotas for the hospitality and cleaning industries. These migrants were frequently from countries facing political and economic turmoil, including Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. After the work permit scheme for unskilled workers was tightened in 1979, the migration pattern for Latin American workers to the UK changed significantly. A sizable number of asylum seekers, notably those from Colombia and Ecuador, were given permanent residence in the UK under the Family Indefinite Leave to Remain scheme in 2003, a one-off attempt by the British government to grant residency to 15,000 asylum-seeking families.Since 2000, with stricter enforcement of immigration policy, secondary migration from EU countries has driven the growth of the Latin American community in the UK.It is also quite common for Latin American migrants to first apply for a Spanish passport or citizenship due to the shared language, and work in Madrid for a few years before moving to the UK, some illegally. Most settle in the boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth, the neighbourhoods with the highest concentration of Latin American workers in London according to the No Longer Invisible report. Of more than 1,000 respondents almost 40 percent has experienced workplace abuses, such as not receiving pay, and 11 percent earn less than the minimum wage."They think employment prospects here are better, and they [can] easily find jobs in cleaning and hospitality. But in truth, exploitation is endemic, and women are the most vulnerable of all," Gottardo says. She adds that "female night cleaners are a target for sexual harassment because there are no witnesses to the crime".Gottardo, who is from Colombia, is determined to change the status quo and explains that LAWRS uses a holistic approach to target these issues. Aside from offering English classes, housing and immigration advice, counselling and therapy, LAWRS is also engaged in advocacy and high-level policy work to push for increased regulation of the cleaning industry in London.She stresses that the aim of LAWRS is not to empower Latin American women in blue-collar jobs.REUTERS / Jae C. Hong / Pool"We just provide them with the tools to empower themselves," she tells Al Jazeera.A range of other government-affiliated sources is available to cleaners seeking support, including the Citizens Advice resource and the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), a public body that arbitrates disputes within organisations with the aim of facilitating more robust employment relations practice. Workers can also file a complaint directly to HM Revenue and Customs about their employers.<h2>In 2016, a cleaners' union </h2>This message of empowerment is gaining traction with London's cleaning community.Alberto Durango is the National Organiser with the Cleaners and Allied Independent Workers Union (CAIWU), formed to collectively target problems faced by contracted cleaners and other workers across the service sector. Durango was a cleaner for more than a decade after he arrived from Colombia.He says he has been blacklisted by most cleaning companies due to his political activities organising support for workers who have been discriminated against, so he has decided to spend time on negotiation and advocacy work for CAIWU instead. "They treat us like machines," Durango says. "Jobs used to be eight pounds [$10] per hour, but now most cleaning companies try to get away with the national living wage [an informal benchmark] of 7.20 pounds [$9], which is obviously not enough if you're living in London. There are so many tactics they can employ to trick cleaners of their wages. For example, they say that you [the cleaner] have to finish cleaning a certain number of rooms or floors within two hours, and deliberately pack so many tasks in that it's impossible."If you don't finish, you just don't get paid. One company even makes cleaners pay 60 pounds [$75] out of their own pocket for training."Night cleaners, Durango says, have it even worse.REUTERS / Stefan WermuthAccording to him, they are more susceptible to depression due to their work hours, and the manual labour is often left to them, meaning that they can develop an array of physical ailments, including spine problems and back pain.CAIWU was officially registered as a trade union in March 2016. It already has 700 members and is steadily growing in strength. Durango believes that the main draw of the union is the fact that it is egalitarian and has no elected leaders.They have already staged several walkouts and protests, and Durango says that the most notorious offenders among the cleaning companies are beginning to take notice and show a grudging willingness to comply with their demands.Speaking to Al Jazeera in November last year, he was in the middle of negotiations to reinstate employment for Gabriel*, a Nigerian cleaner who had been working in different cleaning jobs since 1971, including night shifts.Gabriel said that he had been unfairly dismissed because he protested against racial discrimination to his bosses while contracted to clean by an external firm at one of the biggest insurance companies in the city. He claims his Ecuadorian supervisor consistently showed favourable treatment to fellow Latin American cleaners and blatantly ostracised him at work."I'm Latin American, and I think that's wrong," Durango says. "So I will do everything within my power to make sure that Gabriel can go back to work."<h2>'Modern-day slavery'</h2>Maria Gonzalez-Merello, 43, is an employment lawyer who is also working assiduously to empower night cleaners in London and to ensure that they know their rights.REUTERS / Stefan WermuthEvery Thursday between 10am and 2pm, she holds free legal counselling sessions at St George's Cathedral in south London for Spanish-speaking migrants. A large number of those who attend are night cleaners."What is happening to cleaners in this country today is essentially modern-day slavery," she says.Laura*, a 51-year-old cleaner from the Dominican Republic who has returned to Gonzalez-Merello's legal session for a follow-up consultation, works only night shifts which begin at 8pm and end at 8am.She had just emerged victorious from an acrimonious attempt to secure over 500 pounds (about $627) worth of unlawfully withheld wages, thanks to Gonzalez-Merello's help."They pretended that they couldn't communicate with me because my English isn't good," Laura says as Gonzalez-Merello translates. "And when Maria got in touch with them on my behalf to claim my wages, they said I never contacted them at all. I had to show them screenshots of my phone records to prove that I had called them numerous times."Laura says that she is owed more than $2,500 by the same company for cleaning various sites, but is too exhausted to continue the legal battle and would rather focus on finding a new job. She is grateful to Gonzalez-Merello for her assistance, but the ordeal has left her feeling resentful."When I worked in Spain," she says, "the pay was lower. But at least I felt respected. I felt like a real human being."But there has been some hope for workers' rights.In 2014, Gonzalez-Merello was involved on a pro bono basis in a widely-publicised case involving 35 unpaid workers contracted by an external company to clean at the advertising company Saatchi &amp; Saatchi. Although Saatchi &amp; Saatchi itself was not legally responsible, it eventually paid each cleaner 30 percent of what they were owed until the cleaners' contracts were properly taken over by the new cleaning company. The company that violated the workers' rights is now insolvent.<h2>Hanging on to hope</h2>It's a cold, gloomy Saturday afternoon in November, but not even the overcast weather can affect Ramona's good mood, as she sits in her home in Camberwell, a neighbourhood in south-east London.REUTERS / Kieran Doherty"Mi casa es su casa (my home is your home)," she greets me cheerily. She shares the apartment with her husband Basilio, who is also a night cleaner like her, and three other migrant workers from Jamaica. The couple pays a total of $880 for their room, which is crammed with a lifetime's worth of belongings.Ramona thinks that the rent is exorbitant, but is happy that she is finally seeing peaceful days. Before they moved here, she and Basilio shared an apartment with a mutual friend. One day while she was at work, Basilio called her in a panic. Two men claiming to be the police had entered their home, damaged their bedroom door and rummaged through all their clothes and belongings."Don't come home," Basilio had implored her. "It's not safe."Ramona remembers breaking down at work. They still have video footage of the mess that the men left behind. To this day, neither of them have dared to report the incident to the police since they don't know if the intruders were just anti-immigrant troublemakers. Ramona and other migrant workers remain reticent about contacting the police for help, fearful of not being able to articulate themselves fully in English and of being laughed at. Ramona enjoys inviting people over and cooking for them, making hearty Bolivian fare including sancocho (chicken soup) and cerdo al horno (a roast pork dish). Mealtimes are accompanied by catchy, upbeat Latin American music, and when she gets homesick, she plays Andean tunes. Over the last 10 years, Ramona has become more confident with her English language skills and is good friends with the receptionists at one of the offices she cleans. Even with the uncertainty surrounding, among many things, the future of migrant workers in the UK with the country's plan to leave the EU, Ramona remains hopeful. "I am tired of cleaning," she says over lunch. "If you had told me 10 years ago that I could do anything else but cleaning, I wouldn't have believed you. But now, I am ready. I think it is possible… First, a receptionist job, maybe, then better things."*Pseudonyms have been used at the request of the subjects who wish to protect their identity. <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/marines-corps-machine-gun-wielding-robot-controlled-by-tablet-2017-4">The Marine Corps is testing a machine gun-wielding robot controlled with just a tablet and a joystick</a></h3> Please enable Javascript to watch this video

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