Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday January 8

• Samsung expects revenue down 12% Y/Y, operating profit down 40% Y/Y in OND as smartphone marketshare slumps; stock is up 1% though - on semiconductor business strength, Won weakness:  Thursday, Samsung said it operating profit and revenue probably fell almost 40 % and 12% in October to December 2014 compared with the same period in 2013. Marking the fifth consecutive quarter of decline in operating profit, Samsung’s forecast reflected continuing troubles for the company’s mobile division. Though it makes more smartphones than any other company, Samsung has had difficulty competing with a swarm of new Chinese rivals, which are offering ever more competitive phones at cheap prices in their home market, now the world’s largest for smartphones. In the period from July to September, Samsung’s global market share for smartphone sales fell 8 percent from the same period a year earlier to 24 percent, according to the research firm IDC. The only handset vendor in the top five to lose market share, Samsung is a sharp contrast to the Chinese upstart Xiaomi, which saw its market share jump 211 percent during the same period. Final fourth-quarter results are expected to be released at the end of January.

• Bad news for Google #1: US Search Marketshare at lowest level in years on Firefox's switch to Yahoo: Google dominance of the U.S. Internet search market slipped last month in the biggest drop since 2009 while Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) posted its largest share gain, as the companies grappled with the fallout of a search deal on Firefox browsers. Google’s slice of the U.S. search market fell to 75.2 percent in December from 79.3 percent a year ago, while Yahoo jumped to 10.4 percent from 7.4 percent, according to analytics firm StatCounter. That put Google at its smallest share of the U.S. Web search market since at least 2008, when StatCounter first started tracking the numbers, and the highest share for Yahoo since 2009. The changes were spurred by a deal in November where Yahoo replaced Google as the default search engine on Firefox browers in the U.S. Google had been the automatic search option for Firefox, which was developed by Mountain View, California-based Mozilla Corp., since 2004.

• Bad news for Google #2: Facebook video is freaking YouTube out (Also, 65% of Facebook's Video Views Are Now on Mobile Devices) Here are the other numbers the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company released in a blog post: In the last 12 months, the number of video posts per Facebook user has increased 75 percent globally and 94 percent in the United States. Internationally, clips from consumers and marketers in the newsfeed have risen 3.6 times year over year. On average, more than 50 percent of U.S. users who visit Facebook daily watch at least one video. From a HawkPartners study commissioned by Facebook that surveyed 2,418 Facebook users in the U.S., 76 percent said Facebook is the place where they most often discover videos. Other choices included YouTube, "directly from a friend," Google, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest and others. While self-reported, the numbers lend themselves to a narrative that emerged at the end of 2014: Facebook has given Google's YouTube serious cause for concern after the latter dominated the online video space for years. Facebook is also evidently attempting to poach YouTube talent. "Google is freaking out," a media agency executive recently told Adweek.

• Bad news for Google #3: A TechCrunch columnist rips YouTube's product as stagnant and compares it to Yahoo: The great story of Silicon Valley: A company, once ahead of its time, ceases to innovate for almost a decade while continuing to make billions off its legacy business model — ad sales. Then that once-great company dies. In the proud American tradition of AOL, Yahoo, and GeoCities, I present YouTube. Ever notice how its homepage looks almost the same as it did in 2008? For the first time in a decade, YouTube’s dominance as the destination for video content is being challenged by rivals like Facebook. While the press admires the success of Bethany Mota and tours the lush new coastal YouTube studios, Facebook has spotted the company’s many weaknesses and is going on the attack 1. The dominant image is an advertisement (gross). 2. I have no interest in any of that recommended content. 3. I have no idea how that content surfaced to my main pain in the first place, which makes me think YouTube is kinda dumb. 4. I have no way to feed back into YouTube’s algorithm and say I hate their content, as suggested, for “me.” 5. The content is presented void of any context. How about some editorial, ratings, written jokes, or any other myriad ways that it could be made more meaningful? 6. Even BuzzFeed knows point No. 5, and they are the intellectual toilet of the Internet. Fix: Copy the Gawker “bored at work” business model; hire some editors. YouTube should challenge itself to perform more like BuzzFeed, which, for all its faults, does immediately engage the user off of its homepage content and context.

• CES loses its lustre - as smartphones lead, consumer electronics follow: “Today, what every customer expects is for their device to be a platform”: Technology fanatics descend every January on Las Vegas for the International CES, a colossal gathering of gadgetry and geekery where some of the world’s largest companies show off their best ideas for the future. This year, as in every recent year, the show has been burdened by existential angst, with many tech writers saying they planned to skip an event no longer seen as vital. It has been ages since anything momentous was unveiled at CES. But the travails of CES are a symptom of a larger transformation in tech. The era dominated by consumer electronics — what most of us call gadgets — is in turmoil. One reason is that many devices have been superseded by a single, all-powerful tool: the smartphone. Today, just about everything that once required a small, dedicated electronic device — from cameras to portable game consoles to GPS navigators to music players to too many others to name — works better as an app on a phone. At the same time, smartphones have created new categories of capabilities that have eclipsed gadgets as the tech industry’s center of energy and innovation. Photo apps like Instagram, messaging companies like WhatsApp and Snapchat, transportation systems like Uber and Lyft, and Apple Pay, the wireless payment system created by a company best known for its hardware. These services, powered by smart software, use our phones’ constant connection to the cloud, and their powers to connect us with one another, to create tech experiences that wouldn’t have been possible with the gadgets of yesteryear. None of them would ever have graced a stage at CES, because none of these things are really gadgets; they’re way more exciting than that. Here’s the important lesson for consumer electronics companies: The future of tech may not be in flashier, more powerful hardware, but instead in services enabled by clever software. The gadgets matter, but only if they allow for software that can create useful, perhaps groundbreaking services that work across all our gadgets. “Today, what every customer expects is for their device to be a platform,”

• India tech action: social/messaging product features are going mainstream: CommonFloor acqui-hires a college hyperlocal network, and Quikr adds instant messaging to its mobile app: CommonFloor.com has acqui-hired Bakfy, a hyper local Twitter-like social app for college campuses, from city-based Nativebeta Pvt Ltd in a cash-cum-equity deal. As per the agreement, Bakfy team will join CommonFloor as Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIRs), and will work closely with its founders to build products at the intersection of social and mobile. Bakfy is a mobile app that connects different college campus. It acts as a local Twitter for campuses where students can chit-chat about the daily happenings in their campuses or on any other topics. Bakfy puts the entire college under one roof, without any friend requests. It also connects disconnected colleges by providing an option to post to other college campuses. Students can also post anonymously and share stuff, which they can’t do on Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. Typical use cases are gossip about day-to-day stuff, information sharing, college events/fests, jobs/internships, share secrets/feelings, share exam notes, etc. Bakfy is live in over 50 colleges across India. The startup was backed by Yogender Chhibber of Zinnov Management Consulting. Quikr has added instant messaging feature to its classifieds site Quikr.com that allows buyers and sellers to connect with each other. Named Quikr Nxt, the feature enables users to chat with multiple users and share images. Offline consumers get a notification so that they can chat once they are back online. Users can safeguard their privacy by opting to not share their mobile numbers. The new feature is also available on its mobile apps. Last September, Quikr had secured $60 million in funding from Tiger Global, Matrix Partners, Nokia Growth Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Omidyar Network, Warburg Pincus and eBay Inc, besides Swedish investment firm Kinnevik. It competes with the likes of OLX among others.

• Small/Specialty Retailers were big winners in US December 2014 eCommerce sales analyzed by respected blog ChannelAdvisor: Other Winners: Amazon, Google Product Listing AdsLosers: eBay, Google Search: December 2014 Same Store Sales Results Amazon - Amazon’s December SSS came in at 21.8%, a decrease compared to November’s 35.7% . eBay - eBay’s December came in at 5.8% down from November’s 9.8% and below the e-commerce growth rate. Further in the report, we have details of the eBay internals. Other 3PM -3PM continued strong growth in December coming in at 28.5% a decrease from November’s 41.6%. CSE - Comparison Shopping Engines came in at -2.3% for December down from November’s 12.3%. This was largely driven by weakness in the traditional CSE segment that overshadowed strength in Google Shopping / PLA (details later). Search - Search came in at 9.4% for December a decrease from November’s 15.6% y/y growth. Later in the report we have more search details. The winning channels (those that grew in-line or ahead of this trend line) were: Other 3PM – Other 3PM grew more than 2X the baseline holiday growth rate, coming in at 34% y/y this year; and the fastest-growing e-commerce channel we track. I always get questions on this one so will restate here that ‘Other 3PM’ includes those marketplaces that are not eBay and Amazon such as NewEgg, Sears, BestBuy, Rakuten, Play, LaRadoute, etc.