Impact Of Mobile Internet On News Corp Australia And RBS | Analysis

Summary of News Corp Australia

Discuss About The Technologies Leadership In Global Business?

Mobile internet has been identified as one of the most disruptive technologies. Mobile internet allows access to World Wide Web through by the use of portable handheld devices (Williams, 2014). The convenience of these mobile devices has made it a very significant technology in the 21 century and most people have adopted it. By the use of mobile internet, most people nowadays are able to access the internet and very cheap costs (Murdoch & Beahm, 2012). This report reviews News Corp Australia to examine the effects that this disruptive technology management has had on the media companies and especially newspaper companies in Australia and globally.

News Corp Australia is one of the leading and largest media companies in Australia. It employs more than 8000 staff throughout the country and more than 3000 journalists are contracted to the company. The company is listed on the Australian stock market with interests in newspaper publishing, the internet, subscription television and market research. The company is also on the business of television production trading assets. The company owns about 142 Sunday, weekly and daily newspaper with a wide range of distribution and hence reaching a wide audience throughout the country. Some of the products under its product portfolio include Daily Telegraph, Sydney morning Herald, The Australian, The Advertiser, and Mercury. The company mainly depends on publishing business eve thou it has an investment in digital media and in subscription television.(Kim, 2010) The company has been performing perfectly well over the years. Recently, the company recorded a loss of US$219 million. The loss was mainly attributed to a decrease in advertising revenue and decline in sales of the company’s publications. It is important to analyze the impact that the disruptive technology of mobile internet has had on the media company. The loss has also been attributed to the impairment of the fixed assets used in the printing of newspapers due to technology becoming obsolete.

Mobile internet technology has brought a lot of benefit to many people and companies globally. The advancement of this technology has helped people to have access to information at a very fast rate and at a reduced cost. The use of mobile phone has become increasingly popular over the last decade. The innovation of the Smartphone technology has made internet connection through mobile phones even faster with lightning speeds of connection. Due to this technological advancement, the business of online newspaper started. People are now able to obtain up to date information using their mobile phone in their sitting rooms. This has brought about a decline in sales of most online newspapers and therefore leading to decrease in revenues for the newspaper printing companies.

Evaluation of the impact that mobile internet technology has had on News Corp Australia

The mobile internet technology has become an important source of information and news for most people since people can get minute by minute updates on what is happening around the globe and does not have to wait for the periodical publications. The mobile internet technology also resulted in social media technology where many applications have been developed which play the role previously reserved for traditional journalism.

Despite the benefits that have come as a result of this technology, there are also many negative implications of this disruptive technology. This technology has resulted to many people being laid off in organizations across the world. This is because, the tasks that were previously carried out by many people can be easily and more efficiently be undertaken using technology (Naughton, 2013). Companies in the newspaper publishing business have also suffered losses due to the sharp decrease in the demand for newspapers due to the online newspapers. News Corp is one of such companies that have suffered loss attributed to the mobile internet technology. The company made a loss amounting to US$219 million. The continuous losses coupled with high costs for the company have resulted in massive layoffs. In the year 2015, News Corp layoff 55 newspaper editors including those working at The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun. The company’s Chief executive in Australia blamed the decline in advertising revenues by the newspaper as the main reason for the layoff. This decline has been due to companies preferring to advertise on digital platforms such as Google and Facebook and hence affecting the newspaper industry. The company in the year 2017 alone has laid off more than 100 employees due to redundancy to help cut on costs. Queensland masthead will cut its staff size by 45 workers. 42 other journalists were laid off in December 2016. The Gold Coast Bulletin was set to lose 10 jobs at the time of writing this paper. This, therefore, explains the huge effect that mobile internet technology has had on jobs across the media industry.

The selected consolidated and combined financial data should be read in conjunction with “Item 7—Management’s Discussion and Analysis

	As of June 30,
	2016	2015	2014	2013 (e)	2012
	(in millions)
BALANCE SHEET DATA:
Cash and cash equivalents	1,832	1,951	3,145	2,381	1,133
Total assets	15,483	15,035	16,351	15,523	12,991
Total borrowings	372	—	—	—	—
Redeemable preferred stock	20	20	20	20	—

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is a British banking and insurance holding company. The bank is based in Edinburg, Scotland (Armstrong, 2017). The bank has many brands under it and it offers various types of banking services to its customers. Some of the types of banking services offered by the RBS include; personal banking, investment banking, business banking, private banking, insurance and corporate finance services. It operates in various countries in Europe, North America and Asia. The bank was founded in the year 1727 and it has been operating for more than 290 years (Dobbs, Manyika & Woetzel, 2015). The financial report of the company indicates that the company recorded revenue of $12.590 billion in the year 2016.As at June 2017; RBS had 77,900 employees on its payroll. In 2009, RBS was listed as the largest company in the world in terms of assets. The majority stake in the bank is owned by the UK Financial investment which is government owned.

Summary of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)

In the recent years since the year 2008, the bank has been restructuring its operations due to changes in industry trends in the banking industry (In Smith, P. A. C., & In Cockburn, 2014). The bank has also been angling for better profit margins by reducing its costs of operations

The banking industry globally has undergone a metamorphosis over the last ten years. The advancement of technology has helped banks in cutting costs especially by reducing wages. The development of the mobile internet has had a very big impact on the banking industry and many other industries in general. This technology has also changed the behavior of consumers and it has made it mandatory for banks to innovate or otherwise they are kicked out of the market. Customers are no longer interested in visiting banking halls and queuing for long hours just to get little information such as their bank account balance (Hwang & Chen,2017). The RBS has been able to adopt technology in its operations. The most significant technologies in the banking industry are the mobile internet technology. Most the bank’s customers have smart phones that are able to access the internet easily and at high speeds. The consumers, therefore, demand banking products through their mobile phones to help save them time and effort as well as other costs that are involved with visiting the bank (Ekekwe & Islam, 2012). RBS has created a portal to enable its customers to access important information as well as other products offered by the bank. Customers can borrow loans, check their bank balances, send and receive money internationally as well as make account withdrawals. The company has also used mobile internet technologies to design apps that help their customers pay for services using their bank accounts. In addition to this, the bank is able to send monthly bank statements to account holders who can easily access them provided they have smart phones.

RBS has become the leading bank in technological innovations in the United Kingdom. The bank has employed a large number of IT staff in order to achieve its agenda of becoming automated and the leader in banking technology. The company employed 2,200 workers as IT staff in the year 2015(Lund, 2015). However, despite the increase in the number of jobs in the IT department, the other sectors of the bank have been undergoing job cuts due to redundancies. The jobs that were previously performed by a number of staff members are now being performed by a single machine. The company reduced the number of Cashiers and other junior employees of the company by more than 4,600 employees in the year 2015(Heinemann& Gaiser, 2015). The increase in popularity of electronic, mobile phone banking and online banking has made many branches to become idle. Due to this reason, the bank is planning to shut down more than 150 branches in the UK alone. The bank is also expected to reduce the number of staff in the IT department by about 880 jobs due to the efficiency that is expected to have been achieved by that time.

Conclusion

Mobile internet technology has brought an evolution in various industries globally. Mobile internet banking has brought about increased efficiency in the operations of many companies. Customers too have been quick to adopt mobile internet technology to perform various functions (Christensen, 2007). Companies like News Corp Australia have been affected by the mobile internet technology and they have adapted to that by introducing electronic news and advertising to help fulfill the needs of customers. The technology has resulted in losses for the company to decrease in demand for newspapers and this has resulted in job loss in the company (Burbank, 2013). RBS has also been quick to adopt mobile internet technology. It has contributed to increased efficiency and cost reduction since most customers prefer to use their mobile phones to transact with the bank.

Strategy goal	2016 target	2016
Strength and sustainability	Maintain Bank CET1 ratio of 13%	CET1 ratio of 13.4%
?2 billion AT1 issuance	?2 billion equivalent AT1 issued in Q3 2016
Capital Resolution RWAs around ?30-35 billion	RWAs down ?14.5 billion to ?34.5 billion
Customer experience	Narrow the gap to No.1 in NPS in every primary UK brand	Year on year Commercial Banking have narrowed the gap. NatWest Personal, Ulster Business & Commercial in Northern Ireland and Ulster Business Direct in Republic of Ireland have seen improvements in NPS.
Simplifying the bank	Reduce operating expenses by ?800 million	Operating expenses down ?985 million(1)
Supporting sustainable growth	Net 4% growth in PBB and CPB customer loans	Net lending in PBB and CPB up 10%
Employee engagement & cut in wage bill	Raise employee engagement to within two points of the Global Finance Services (GFS) norm	Down 3 points to be 6 points adverse to GFS norm

References

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Williams, K. (2014). Rules of engagement. Carlton, Victoria: The Miegunya Press, an imprint of Melbourne University Publishing.