Gadgets
Supreme Court Halts $3.4 Billion Reliance-Future Deal in Big Win for Amazon
The outcome of the tussle involving two of the world’s richest men, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Reliance’s Mukesh Ambani, is seen reshaping India’s pandemic-hit shopping sector and deciding if Amazon can blunt Reliance’s dominance of the country’s nearly trillion-dollar retail market.
Amazon and Future have been locked in legal battles over the Future Group deal, with the US firm accusing the Indian group of violating pre-existing contracts when it sold its assets to Reliance. Future has denied any wrongdoing.
A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court said that an interim decision by a Singapore arbitrator in October – that put the deal on hold after finding merit in Amazon’s objections – was valid and enforceable in India.
Amazon had argued that the order is binding, while Future had argued it was not. Both sides had agreed to use the Singapore arbitrator in case of disputes when Amazon invested $200 million (roughly Rs. 1,480 crores) in a unit of Future in 2019. The arbitration proceedings are still ongoing.
Shares in Future Retail were up 6 percent ahead of the ruling, but tanked 10 percent and hit a lower-circuit breaker in Mumbai trading after the order. Reliance Industries fell as much as 2.3 percent.
Future Retail said in a statement it had been “advised that it has remedies available in law, which it will exercise.” It did not elaborate on the legal options, but said it will take steps to conclude the deal and protect the interests of its stakeholders and workforce.
Amazon said in a statement that it welcomed the court’s ruling, adding: “We hope that this will hasten a resolution of this dispute with Future Group.”
Reliance did not respond to a request for comment.
India strictly regulates its retail and e-commerce sector. That has made it difficult for foreign giants like Walmart and Amazon to rapidly expand in one of the world’s fastest growing consumer markets, whose retail landscape is dominated by brick-and-mortar retailers.
Liquidation fears
Future had previously said the deal’s failure would push the company towards liquidation and impact livelihoods of 50,000 employees and 6,000 small- and medium-sized vendors.
But the arbitrator in October said “economic hardship alone is not a legal ground for disregarding legal obligations”.
Future is still trying to convince a Singapore arbitration panel to revoke the October interim decision stalling the deal, a lawyer involved in the case told Reuters on Friday. That decision is expected in coming weeks.
“Everything is clear for Amazon, it is a big win for them. It’s for the arbitration panel to decide now,” said the lawyer, who declined to be identified.
The dispute started after Future, India’s second-largest retailer with over 1,700 stores, entered into a deal last year to sell its retail, wholesale, logistics and certain other businesses to Reliance for $3.38 billion (roughly Rs. 25,060 crores), after COVID-19 hit its operations hard.
Amazon, which had its sights set on ultimately owning part of Future’s retail assets itself, argued the 2019 deal it had with a unit of Future contained clauses prohibiting the Indian group from selling them to anyone on a “restricted persons” list including Reliance.
Around 1,300 of Future’s retail outlets in 400 cities sell groceries. Its budget supermarkets cater to middle-class shoppers, while its upmarket stores offer products like imported cheese and fresh guacamole, relatively rare in India’s retail landscape. That makes Future a prized asset for both Reliance and Amazon.
Though the Supreme Court ruling is a shot in the arm for Amazon, it faces another challenge from India’s antitrust regulator which recently accused the US firm of concealing facts when it sought approval for the 2019 investment in the Future unit, Reuters has reported. Amazon has said it is confident of addressing those concerns.
© Thomson Reuters 2021
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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