By Courtney Wirths
Features Editor
• Apple Inc. sold over four million iPhone 6 devices within the first 24 hours of the preorder period — a figure the company is calling a record order. Many will have to wait until October to receive their phones due to the unexpectedly high demand. Wireless carriers, such as Sprint and Verizon Wireless, are taking advantage of the Apple craze by offering special deals on the iPhone 6 if a customer begins a usage contract.
• Online quizzes are increasingly becoming a source of information for marketers looking to provide more specific and appealing ads to consumers. Companies like VisualDNA offer users a quiz that will tell them their personality type and then license information gathered such as gender, number of children and if the user drives a vehicle. This information is then paired with Cookies to determine consumers’ travel patterns across the internet. Popular sites Buzzfeed and Zimbio say they do not gather information from quizzes.
• Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the Chinese e-commerce firm, has raised the price range of its initial public offering deal to $66 to $68 from the initial $60 to $66 a share. The company did not change the number of shares it plans to make available. The price increase is due to continuously increasing demand leading up to what will most likely be the world’s largest IPO.
• Sears Holdings Corp. needs a loan after burning through cash this summer. The retailer plans to borrow $400 million from Chief Executive Edward Lampert’s hedge fund. The loan is part of a plan to reevaluate the company’s capital structure and raise additional cash along with selling off some of its assets and closing stores.
* All information according to the Wall Street Journal.
