The one-year hiatus on required withdrawals from most 401(k) plans or individual retirement accounts is over. Barring another unlikely reprieve from Congress, taxpayers with these retirement plans must resume those withdrawals this year.
ViacomCBS had a compelling presentation Wednesday to illustrate why TV lovers should sign up for its newly branded flagship streaming service, Paramount+. But the most important point company executives referenced — one that will define the success of the service — came fairly late in the nearly 3-and-a-half-hour investor day event. ViacomCBS showed a slide showing the uptick in the average amount of subscription streaming services to which American families subscribe. That number, the company said, has gone from 1-to-2 in 2016 to 2-to-3 in 2019 to 3-to-4 in 2020. ViacomCBS suggested it won’t be long before households subscribe to five or more services.
Apple shipped more smartphones in the fourth quarter of 2020 than any other company, according market research firm Gartner. Apple shipped nearly 80 million units in the quarter, surpassing all other smartphone makers including Samsung. It’s the first time Apple has been on top since 2016, according to the report released Monday.
Disney’s “WandaVision” is so powerful and popular, it appeared to take down the company’s streaming service on Friday. Disney+ experienced a brief outage early Friday morning, around the same time the latest episode of “WandaVision” premiered, according to Downdetector, a site that tracks reports of outages from internet services. There were also numerous complaints across social media from frustrated Disney+ subscribers. Disney+ was operational again within about 10 minutes. Disney did not comment on the outage.
Disney reported strong growth in paid streaming subscribers and its first quarterly profit since early last year in its earnings report for its fiscal first quarter of 2021 after the bell Thursday. Disney said it now has almost 95 million paid subscribers to its Disney+ streaming service as of the quarter ended Jan. 2. This comes during the first quarter after Disney’s free-trial period ended for some subscribers who are also Verizon customers. Disney CFO Christine McCarthy told analysts on the company’s earnings call that executives are “really happy with the conversion numbers that we’ve seen there going from the promotion to become paid subscribers.”
The new game, EA Sports College Football, will be the company's first college football title since it discontinued the NCAA Football franchise in 2013. That year, college players filed a class-action lawsuit against EA for using their likeness without compensation.