Tech World: A $24bn HealthTech acquisition, Twitter’s share spike and Uber’s latest ban

Welcome to Tech World, your quick roundup of some the top technology news stories from across the globe. This month, we have a $1.4bn funding round, a $24bn HealthTech acquisition and announcements from Instagram and Twitter. You can also find out which country Uber has now been banned in.

For this episode’s Hot Topic interview, we spoke with Amber Mace from EY about why women are the least likely adopters of VR. We discuss why fewer women than men are adopting VR and what can be done to encourage more women to use this type of technology.

Flipkart raises $1.4bn

Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart raised $1.4bn to take on Amazon and Alibaba. The firm gained a post-money valuation of $11.6 billion with investors including eBay, Microsoft, and China’s Tencent.

C R Bard acquired for $24bn

C R Bard, a US developer, manufacturer, and marketer of medical technologies, was acquired by Becton Dickinson for a massive $24bn. This marked the second acquisition in April 2017 by Becton Dickinson, with the medical technology company acquiring Caesarea Medical Electronics at the start of the month.

Twitter shares up 10%

Twitter shares opened 10% up after the firm revealed its latest results, which beat expectations with its strongest user growth for more than a year. The firm reported 328 million active monthly users in Q1 2017, a 6% increase on Q1 2016.

Instagram’s 100m users

Instagram, on the other hand, announced it now boasts 700 million monthly active users, double the amount it had two years ago. Facebook is still top dog, though, with a whopping 1.86bn monthly active users globally.

Uber ban in Italy

Uber faced another setback after being banned from operating in Italy. A Rome court ruled the ride-hailing app represented unfair competition for traditional taxis. The company was given ten days to shut down its services in the country.

That’s it for our top global tech news roundup, but keep watching to see this episode’s Hot Topics interview.

Hot Topic: Women and VR

In this episode, we also sit down with Amber Mace from EY about why women are the least likely adopters of VR. We discussed a new VR report from EY, why fewer women are interested in this tech than men and what can be done to redress the balance.

That’s all for this episode. To get more top tech news straight to your inbox subscribe to our updates and follow us on Twitter.