Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, April 16

• Boomerang Commerce Launches A/B Testing Platform For Pricing: Boomerang Commerce, a startup that helps online retailers optimize their pricing and a 2014 Disrupt NY Startup Battlefield finalist, today announced the launch of its A/B testing service for pricing. Marketers love A/B testing to see which message works best, but when it comes to pricing, offering two different customers two different prices for the same product can quickly become a recipe for disaster. You’re bound to upset some customers, after all, when they find out they paid more for a product than somebody else. Boomerang CEO Guru Hariharan acknowledges as much. “You can’t just use standard tools,” he said. “If you do that, you’ll lose trust. More often than not, it’s a bad idea.” So what Boomerang does is allow retailers to test different pricing strategies and algorithms across a small group of products, for example, to test which ones maximize the retailers revenues and profits. The idea here then is less about charging customer A one price and customer B another, but to see which pricing strategies work better. Say you have 100,000 products in your inventory (the company only works with very large retailers that do $25 million or more in online sales). Boomerang now lets them take a representative set of 500 of these and test different pricing strategies on them. “Merchandizers and analysts at click and mortar retailers have had to wait months to draw conclusive results from price tests,” Hariharan said. “In the digital world, you don’t have that kind of luxury with time and need to make decisions as quickly as possible – often with limited data. This is why we believe that facilitating rapid testing of pricing strategies would help them figure out a way to set the right prices for their products in a timely manner.” Besides A/B testing, Boomerang also launched a number of other new products over the last couple of months, including a price optimizer that helps retailers manage a product’s pricing lifecycle from introductory pricing all the way to clearance markdowns. The company also recently launched an improve competitive pricing intelligence service that helps retailers stay on top of what their competitors are charging. The company has grown from 15 employees a year ago to 70 employees now. Hariharan tells me Boomerang’s software now manages about $2 billion in sales every year.

• Six percent of U.S. adults plan to buy Apple Watch - that would out-pace Wall Street estimates - according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll: About 6 percent of U.S. adults plan to buy Apple Inc's smartwatch according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, with men twice as likely as women to purchase Apple boss Tim Cook's first new major product. If calculated based on 2014 U.S. Census projections, and excluding younger teens, this could mean potential sales of about 15 million watches, if those who said they intended to buy follow through with an actual purchase. Wall Street estimates had varied widely between 10 million and 32 million worldwide sales in 2015. Van Baker, an analyst at tech research firm Gartner, said the Reuters poll results indicated a "pretty high percentage" was interested in buying. "It should serve Apple well if they can even get close to that," he said. The poll showed the watch, marketed by Apple as a high-fashion item as well as a new frontier in technology, appealed to fewer than 4 percent of women compared with 9 percent of men Samsung Electronics, Sony Corp and LG Electronics have all released their own smartwatches, many of them powered by software developed by Internet company Google Inc. None have given sales figures but independent researcher Smartwatch Group estimates that 6.8 million smartwatches were sold worldwide last year, led by Samsung with about 1.2 million units. The Apple Watch, priced from $349 for a basic Sport model to a $17,000 gold timepiece, lets users check email, listen to music and make phone calls when paired with an iPhone. Reviews have generally praised its style but criticized battery life and slow-loading apps. According to the poll, adults aged between 30 and 39 were the most likely buyers, with 13 percent saying they planed to buy an Apple Watch, followed by 10 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds. Just under a third of respondents said they already own an iPhone. Not surprisingly, iPhone owners are more likely to spend money on the new Apple gadget, with about 15 percent saying they planed to buy.

• The EU formally accused Google of abusing its dominance: The European Union’s antitrust chief on Wednesday formally accused Google of abusing its dominance in web searches, bringing charges that could limit the giant American tech company’s moneymaking prowess. How Google responds in the case — the biggest since the case against Microsoft in the 2000s — and to what degree the accusations hamper its own business or aid its rivals remain to be seen. Google holds a roughly 90 percent share in the region’s search market, and the company contends that in both web searches and Android software it plays fair. If Google fails to rebut the formal charges, Ms. Vestager could levy a fine that could exceed €6 billion — about 10 percent of Google’s most recent annual revenue. But the largest single fine yet levied in such a case falls well short of that mark: The record is €1.1 billion in 2009 against Intel for abusing its dominance of the computer chip market. The Google case is the most weighty decision by Ms. Vestager since she took office late last year. But the decision to open a separate investigation, into whether Google’s use of its Android operating system, might turn out to be as significant. Regulators will look into whether Google abused its dominant position by pre-installing its apps and services onto Android smartphones that potentially gave Google preferential treatment compared with its rivals. The investigation could take years. More here: The European Union accused Google Inc on Wednesday of cheating consumers and competitors by distorting Web search results to favor its own shopping service, after a five-year investigation that could change the rules for business online. It also started another antitrust investigation into the Android mobile operating system, a key element in Google's strategy to maintain revenues from online advertising as people switch from Web browser searches to smartphone apps. Europe is very important to Google: The European market contributes about 35 percent of Google’s revenue, according to Carlos Kirjner, a New York-based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Its market share in search exceeds 90 percent in most European markets, compared with about 65 percent in the U.S. Google dropped as much as 1.4 percent to $523.22 in New York trading. The shares fell 1 percent to $525.30 at 10:25 a.m. local time.

• Netflix Q1 earnings: Revenue +24% at $1.57B, shares soar 12% as subscriber count stands at 62M: Netflix Inc. said its video-streaming service topped 62 million subscribers worldwide, as original shows such as “House of Cards” drew new viewers globally. The shares soared to a record high. U.S. subscribers jumped by 2.28 million in the first quarter, while international accounts rose 2.6 million, the Los Gatos, California-based company said Wednesday on its website. Both figures beat the company’s Jan. 20 forecast. Sales grew 24 percent to $1.57 billion, matching analysts’ projections. Netflix is investing heavily in original programming to keep the U.S. business growing and support Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings’s international expansion. While new shows such as “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” and “Bloodline” drove U.S. viewing, the rise of the U.S. dollar trimmed sales and contributed to losses overseas, the company said. “Netflix remains a subscriber growth momentum story,” Paul Sweeney, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, said in an e-mail. “As long as domestic and international subscribers continue to grow, bulls will have a reason to buy the stock.” Netflix rose 12 percent to $534.07 in extended trading after results were announced. If that holds Thursday, it will mark an all-time high, with the market value of the company exceeding that of CBS Corp. The stock fell 0.7 percent to $475.46 at the close Wednesday in New York. So far this year, Netflix has advanced 39 percent, fourth-most among members of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. First-quarter net income fell to $24 million, or 38 cents a share, from $53.1 million, or 86 cents, as the strong dollar contributed to losses outside the U.S. Excluding that, profit was 77 cents, the company said. Analysts forecast profit of 63 cents, the average of 35 estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Original programming is taking larger slice of Netflix’s content budget. The company’s obligations, which grew 30 percent last year, now total $9.8 billion. The growth in subscribers justifies the increasing costs, according to Rich Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research. Netflix extended its service to Australia and New Zealand in March. It rolls out its streaming service in Japan later this year, its first market in Asia. The company plans to offer its service worldwide by the end of 2016, though it is unclear if that will include China. A report this week by UBS AG projected Netflix would reach 87 million subscribers outside the U.S. by 2020. That total now stands at 20.9 million. In total, Netflix forecasts 2.5 million new subscribers this quarter, including 600,000 in the U.S. and 1.9 million overseas.

• Hyperlocal grocery delivery startups are hot in India: Grofers raises $35M in Series B round, and PepperTap bags $10M two days after ZopNow’s $10M round: Hyper-local grocery and fresh food delivery platform Grofers, has raised $35 million (Rs 218 crore) from its existing investors Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital, the company said on Wednesday. Its second round of funding comes just two months after it closed a Series A fundraise worth $10 million from Tiger Global and Sequoia. The startup had previously raised seed funding from Sequoia and Deepinder Goyal, co-founder and CEO of Zomato. Separate media reports, citing sources, pegged Grofer’s valuation in the new funding round in the $110-115 million range. The company said it will use the funds to add products in addition to expanding services to more cities. Founded by Saurabh Kumar and Albinder Dhindsa, Grofers allows users to order products ranging from grocery to pet supplies and baby care products online and enables delivery within 90 minutes. It allows consumers order products available at brick and mortar stores through the Grofers mobile app. The smartphone-based grocery delivery platform currently partners with more than 400 merchants in Bangalore, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai. It expects to start delivering products in Hyderabad and Pune by next month. Grofers claims to have witnessed a sharp increase in the number of orders and expects to execute over 20,000 orders this month.