News
Spotify Adds To Big Tech Layoffs With Highest Job Cuts Since 2000
The popular music streaming company has seen its share price fall by nearly half over the past 12 months.
Swedish music streaming giant, Spotify, is set to cut 6% of its entire workforce — a move which will amount to laying off around 600 employees.
The cuts come as part of efforts to increase efficiencies in a “challenging macro environment”, the tech company announced on Monday, January 23rd. Spotify reported net losses of $181 million in the third quarter of 2022, compared with a $2 million profit the year before, with share prices falling by a monumental 49% in a single year.
Spotify was forced to take the decision after soaring costs and growing operational expenditure began to rapidly outpace revenue generation, and followed the firing of 38 staff from Gimlet Media and Parcast podcast studios in October, which are also owned by the Swedish streaming service.
“In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth,” admitted chief executive Daniel Ek. “That would have been unsustainable long-term in any climate, but with a challenging macro environment, it would be even more difficult to close the gap”.
Also Read: The Best Video Streaming Services In The Middle East
Ek went on to confirm that chief content officer Dawn Ostroff would also be leaving the company, whose workforce numbered 9,800 employees in mid-2022.
A total of 97,171 jobs were axed in the technology sector in 2022, a 649% increase over 2021 and the highest since the fateful dot-com crash of the early 2000s. Spotify’s layoffs mirror those of other corporations in the technology sector, including Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google’s Alphabet. Part of those cuts can be explained by the extra hires required during the height of the Covid pandemic, though rising interest rates and growing fears of a recession are also influencing the somber atmosphere.
News
Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power
Egypt’s telecom regulator says $57.6 billion moved through more than 57 million wallets in six months. And one operator handled 77% of the value.
Egypt’s mobile wallets handled EGP 2.96 trillion ($57.6 billion) in transactions in the first half of 2026, according to the National Telecom Regulatory Authority – a 56% rise on the EGP 1.90 trillion ($36.9 billion) recorded a year earlier. Transactions grew faster still, up 62% to 2.22 billion, while registered wallets climbed 23% to 57.01 million.
On one reading, that is exactly what Egypt’s regulators have been pushing for: a payments system that runs through telecom-linked wallets rather than banknotes. But the same data shows how far cash still reaches into it. Cash withdrawals made up just 12% of the transactions taking money out of wallets, yet 75% of the value withdrawn or spent.
Money arrives mostly from bank accounts: transfers through InstaPay accounted for 78% of deposit transactions and 58% of the value deposited, while incoming remittances from abroad made up 3% of deposit transactions but 10% of their value. Once inside, it largely moves between wallets – wallet-to-wallet transfers accounted for 54% of all transactions and 67% of total value, with mobile and internet top-ups a distant second at 25% of volume. In effect, the wallet is serving as a transfer layer: the place money passes through between the bank account and the banknote.
That layer also runs predominantly through one operator. Vodafone Cash held 53% of registered wallets and 57% of active ones, but handled 69% of transactions and 77% of their value. Its nearest rival, e& money, held 23% of registered wallets but 14% of transaction value; Orange Cash 20% and 8%; WE Pay 4% of wallets. How many of the 57.01 million are active is not stated.
Also Read: Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
Adoption is rather uneven in other respects. Men held 38 million wallets, or 67% of the total, against 19 million held by women. Users aged 26 to 45 accounted for half of all wallets, and Cairo alone had 10.6 million, or 19% of the national total, with Giza next at 6.5 million.
The NTRA says it is continuing to work with telecom operators on the regulatory framework for wallet services, part of a wider effort to expand electronic payments and financial inclusion. Its own figures show that effort succeeding on the way in. On the way out, three-quarters of the value still leaves as cash.
Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power
Apple’s First Folding iPhone Arrives Late To A Shrinking Market
Apple’s Latest Product Releases Make The Headlines
Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon
RØDE’s New DS3 Studio Arm Is Built For Heavier Creator Setups
Anghami’s New Elite Program Starts With A Three-Decade Catalog
Dubai’s aradus Wants AI To Run The Back Office Of Physical Trade
Qatar Is Getting Its First EV Plant, Built To Cope With Gulf Heat
Qatar Airways Flies The World’s First Starlink-Equipped 787-9
Former Rockstar Director Dismisses GTA 6 Leaks As “Nothing Burger”
-
News3 weeks agoFormer Rockstar Director Dismisses GTA 6 Leaks As “Nothing Burger”
-
News3 weeks agoRØDE’s New DS3 Studio Arm Is Built For Heavier Creator Setups
-
News3 weeks agoDubai Turns AI On Its Own Civil Service To Measure Productivity
-
News3 weeks agoVisa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon