Today: Starbucks is officially on board with Apple Pay, and will start allowing customers to pay for their beverages with just a tap of their iPhone or Apple Watch. Also: Google Drive suffers outage, and Tesla gets a vote of confidence.
The lead: Apple Pay coming to Starbucks
Starbucks is officially on board with Apple Pay, and will start allowing customers to pay for their beverages with just a tap of their iPhone or Apple Watch.
The service will be available at all 7,500 Starbucks in the U.S. by next year.
Starbucks will run pilot tests at selected stores over the next few months, but it wasn’t immediately known which stores would be in the test program.
In addition, Chili’s restaurants have also signed up with the Apple Pay program. People will be able to conduct transactions at their tables with their iPhones using Apple Pay.
Separately, Kentucky Fried Chicken also is on board with the Apple payments service. KFC will start accepting Apple Pay transactions by next spring.
“We’re seeing a lot of support for quick-service restaurants with a need for fast payment,” Jennifer Bailey, head of Apple Pay, told the Code/Mobile conference in Half Moon Bay on Thursday.
Shares in Cupertino-based Apple rose 2.4 percent Friday.
SV150 market report: Google Drive suffers outage, Tesla gets vote of confidence
Google Drive apps were unavailable for some users on Friday. Many people were able to reach the Drive site, but the apps didn’t load. Mountain View-based Google reported it was investigating issues with its Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides apps. Google owner Alphabet shares were up 0.6 percent Friday.
Emeryville-based Pixar says its upcoming “The Good Dinosaur” film will feature twice as many special effects as any Pixar film that the studio has produced. The film, featuring a young dinosaur separated from his family who befriends a human boy, is due out in November. Stock in Pixar owner Walt Disney rose 0.9 percent.
Palo Alto-based Tesla Motors is getting a vote of confidence from an analyst about its new Model X SUV, being produced in Fremont. The Tesla Model X is not priced too high, according to Global Equities Research’s Trip Chowdhry. Chowdhry predicts much of the upside could come in 2016 for Tesla, whose shares have fallen 11 percent since the Model X event in Fremont recently. Tesla shares still fell 2.7 percent Friday.
Sunnyvale-based Yahoo said Friday it’s banning employees from playing in paid fantasy-sports contests, following similar moves earlier this week by the two biggest daily fantasy-sports sites in the nation, FanDuel and DraftKings. The National Hockey League also banned employees from participating. The issue is under scrutiny after a DraftKings employee, allegedly with insider sports data, won a big prize on FanDuel.
San Jose-based Super Micro Computer plunged 15.5 percent on Friday after warning that its profits for the first quarter of 2016 would be below expectations. Super Micro expects to earn 44 cents to 45 cents a share, down from prior guidance of 49 cents to 59 cents. Wall Street had been expecting a profit of 54 cents. The company also lowered revenue estimates.
Silicon Valley tech stocks
Up: The biggest winners by percent change were Quantum, Pandora Media, Aemetis, Yelp, GoPro.
Down: The biggest losers by percent change were SuperMicro Computer, Mattson Technology, Polycom, Infinera, Coupons.com
The SV150 index of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies: Up 7.42, or 0.46 percent, to 1,623.23.
The tech-focused Nasdaq composite index: Up 19.68, or 0.41 percent, to 4,830.47.
The blue chip Dow Jones industrial average: Up 33.74, or 0.2 percent, to 17,084.49.
And the broad-based Standard & Poor’s 500 index: Up 1.46, or 0.07 percent, to 2,014.89.
Sign up for the 60-Second Business Break newsletter at www.siliconvalley.com.
