Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, June 1

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• Snapchat Said to Be Valued at $16 Billion in New Fundraising: Snapchat raised $537.6 million in a sale of common stock, with the funding round valuing the messaging startup at about $16 billion. The company may raise as much as $650 million in the round, according to a filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That would bring Snapchat’s total financing to more than $1.2 billion, according to Crunchbase, as the company builds its business in pursuit of an eventual initial public offering. By raising the latest funding in common stock, Snapchat is bucking convention for later-stage venture deals, which tend to include preferred-stock provisions that allow investors to decrease their risk. “Investing in common stock, especially at a $16 billion valuation, is not normal,” said Anand Sanwal, chief executive officer of venture-capital data firm CB Insights. “It highlights the leverage that Snapchat had in these negotiations because the investors aren’t getting the protections they normally ask for.”

• Intel is close to clinching a takeover of fellow chip maker Altera for more than $15 billion, the latest sign of consolidation in the semiconductor industry. Intel is expected to pay about $54 a share for Altera, whose specialized chip designs would help Intel expand beyond chips for personal computers. An agreement could be announced as early next week, though sources cautioned that talks are continuing and might still collapse. The two sides had been in talks already this year, though the discussions were eventually delayed when Altera rejected an offer in the ballpark of $54 a share. But after the talks ended, Altera reported quarterly earnings that fell below expectations. Meanwhile, one investor, TIG Advisors, began to publicly campaign for a resumption of talks with Intel. If completed, a takeover would be the latest among chip makers as companies seek larger scale and more diversified offerings. Growing and having more products can give those manufacturers greater savings and negotiating leverage with customers. On Thursday, Avago Technologies struck a roughly $37 billion acquisition of Broadcom to break into the top tier of semiconductor companies. Intel and Altera both make semiconductors, but vastly different types. Intel is known primarily for the standard chips that go into personal computers and computer servers. They consist of millions of transistors, and once created, their performance can be adjusted only slightly by changing the software that works with them. Altera’s chips — known as field programmable gate arrays, or F.P.G.A.s — are lower in power and performance but can be altered after manufacturing to carry out different functions. That gives them far greater flexibility. Intel may be seeking Altera to create computers that combine the power of a standard semiconductor with the flexibility of an F.P.G.A., by means of a board with both types of chip. This could potentially give Intel the ability to build, for example, a computer server that can add functions so it lasts longer inside a corporate data center. This move would reflect several recent trends in the industry. Giant cloud computing centers have become an increasingly large part of Intel’s business, made even more significant as smartphones have lowered the demand for “Intel Inside” personal computers. Intel now has dedicated sales teams working with big chip consumers, like Amazon.com, that tell the company its specific computing needs for its giant cloud systems. In addition, Intel is now concentrating on at least 200 companies that are building significant computing clouds. Adding F.P.G.A.s might be a good way to help companies customize those data centers.

• Social Networking App Path Sells Itself To Korean Messaging Heavyweight Daum Kakao. It isn’t often that a company in Asia acquires a U.S. rival, particularly one that has surfed a wave of hype in Silicon Valley. But that’s exactly what happened this week after Path announced the sale of its flagship app to Korea’s Daum Kakao. The deal is undisclosed, but, as a real acquisition involving two consumer messaging apps, it is notable, particularly as the mobile messaging space transitions from a period of hyper growth to one of consolidation and services. Most people interested in tech are familiar with Path. The five-year-old service burst onto the scene as a beautifully designed, mobile-first alternative to Facebook with a number of features to set it apart from the social network. Ultimately, Path didn’t break out of Silicon Valley and go mainstream in the U.S., but it did make inroads in Asia — particularly in Indonesia. The company is said to have 23 million registered users, four million of whom are in the Southeast Asia country, as of October last year. Path began to focus more intently on Asia with its redesign in 2013, while it took money from Indonesia’s Bakrie Global Group as part of a $25 million Series C last year. Daum Kakao is less known, particularly in the U.S.. The organization was formed when Korean internet firm Daum merged with domestic messaging app company Kakao in a $2.9 billion deal last year. The company’s Kakao Talk app is perhaps the best example of how a messaging app has impacted media and internet distribution — which is where the trend is moving in the U.S. and other countries. Though it has a small global presence — its 160 million registered userbase is far lower than key rivals — the app is installed on over 95 percent of smartphones in its native Korea, where it offers free texts and calls, games, a payment service, taxi-hailing and more. The 2015 Mary Meeker internet trends report, released this week, ranked Kakao Talk as the top messaging app worldwide based on user engagement. Another indicator of its stickiness is that its games business utterly dominates Korea’s iOS and Android app stores, according to data from App Annie. Indonesia is the largest country in Southeast Asia with a population of over 250 million. It was well-known for being the last major market where BlackBerry had any kind of mainstream presence but that’s changed now. The rise of affordable Android smartphones — particularly glamorous sub-$300 devices from the likes of Xiaomi — sent BlackBerry’s sales plummeting. But, the result of BlackBerry’s years of dominance is that there is no single messaging app that dominates Indonesia. That’s unlike other parts of Asia — China (WeChat), India, Singapore and Malaysia (WhatsApp), Japan, Thailand and Taiwan (Line), Philippines (Viber) — where the leadership has been established. With a large population up for grabs and the sizable following that Path enjoys in the country, Daum Kakao is buying itself a larger chunk of the market with this deal. It may also bolster its presence in other parts of Asia, where Daum Kakao claimed Path has 10 million registered users.

• Netflix now accounts for almost 37 percent of American Internet traffic: Netflix's share of Internet traffic is exploding. The streaming service now accounts for 36.5 percent of all bandwidth consumed by North American Web users during primetime, according to the Canada-based network firm Sandvine. That's way up from even last November, when Sandvine estimated Netflix's bandwidth footprint at 34.9 percent of Internet traffic. Sandvine's regular reports on Internet usage — based on traffic as it passes through its systems — have become a reliable indicator of which services are taking up the most bandwidth. Both the season five premiere of "Game of Thrones" and the most recent "Call of Duty" downloadable content led to massive spikes in data consumption, the latest report also finds.

• Netflix, for better or worse, has become the symbol for net neutrality, which has become a key issue in how regulators analyze proposed cable and telecom mergers. To many in the cable and broadband businesses, the invisible hand of Netflix has been apparent in the failed Comcast-Time Warner Cable combination; in likely restrictions on the merger between AT&T and DirecTV; and in the Obama administration’s embrace of net neutrality, to cite just three prominent examples. A pivotal moment in the net neutrality struggle came last year when Netflix agreed to pay Comcast so-called interconnection fees, a deal that Netflix’s Mr. Hastings last month called a “deal with the devil.” (While Comcast has drawn the brunt of Mr. Hastings’s ire, Netflix also reached similar interconnection deals with every other major Internet service provider.) But securing payment from Netflix for fast and more reliable access may have been a Pyrrhic victory for Comcast and the other the broadband providers. Until then the notion of net neutrality had been something of an abstraction. But when Netflix subscribers found their programs constantly interrupted for “buffering” (an interruption to download more data), the ability of Internet providers to play favorites seemed all too real. Once Netflix started paying fees to Comcast, its customers suddenly found their service improved substantially. Netflix’s experience with Comcast became Exhibit A with the F.C.C. when Netflix opposed the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. “The combined company would possess even more anti-competitive leverage to charge arbitrary interconnection tolls for access to their customers,” Netflix said in a letter to shareholders opposing the merger. It probably didn’t hurt Netflix’s case that just about everyone in Washington watches the hit Netflix series “House of Cards,” and Comcast is the dominant Internet provider there. Tom Wheeler, the F.C.C. chairman, said he, too, had suffered buffering problems, which he called “exasperating.”

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, May 29

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• Amazon offers limited free shipping on same-day delivery orders; a study shows same-day delivery, free returns get shoppers online: Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it will offer limited free same-day delivery under its Prime shipping service as retailers try to outdo each other on delivery deals, and expanded the service to San Diego and the Tampa Bay Area. Amazon offers same-day delivery to Prime members for $5.99 per order and non-members for $8.99, plus 99 cents per unit. The online retailer will allow Prime members free same-day shipping on orders over $35, Greg Greeley, head of Prime, told Reuters. "We know same-day delivery volumes will grow dramatically now that we are making it free," he said. Amazon's announcement comes within days of rival Wal-Mart Stores Inc saying it plans to test a new unlimited online shipping service this summer for $50 per year, a move that may hurt Amazon, which has an annual $99 Prime shipping service. Prime has become the cornerstone of Amazon's growth - and a testing ground for new services ranging from television programs and movies to delivery-by-drone. In 2014, Amazon spent billions of dollars on Prime shipping and has invested $1.3 billion in its Prime video service. Earlier this year Amazon said U.S. Prime membership increased 50 percent in 2014. In December, it said customers ordered more than 10 times as many items via same-day delivery this holiday season, compared to a year earlier. A recent study of 1,400 online shoppers by Walker Sands Communications found that free shipping was the feature most likely to get people to shop online, followed by free returns and one-day shipping.

• As usual, a slew of announcements at Google I/O: Google introduced technologies ranging from a brand new mobile-payments system to a virtual-reality camera rig in front of more than 6,000 software engineers at the Web company's I/O developer's conference in San Francisco. A security makeover for Android: Android M: The next iteration of Google's operating system, which runs on 79 percent of smartphones around the globe, is getting a security makeover, with more robust privacy controls and restrictions on apps' data access. Fingerprint scanning will also become a more integral part of Android, adding another layer of security. Google plays catch-up in virtual reality with Cardboard: Of all the gadgets Google unveiled at last year’s event, Google Cardboard was a surprise hit, putting virtual reality into the hands of everyday users without the high costs that come with specialized devices, such the Oculus Rift. Now, Google is taking the gadget more seriously, seeing it as a way to catch up to Facebook and Microsoft in virtual reality. It's also a way to get affordable, wow-factor technology into more peoples' hands, drawing them closer to Google's Web-based services. Unlimited free storage on Google Photos: While it might seem like a minor upgrade, Google just solved a major problem for mobile users in one fell swoop by enabling unlimited free storage for photos and videos. Google Take Maps Offline: With all the talk of cloud services and streaming media, it's easy to forget that for many people around the world, a mobile data connection is a scarce, expensive resource. To make such existing products as Maps better suited to these customers, Google is adding both search and turn-by-turn directions to the app's offline mode. An OS for the Internet of Things in Project Brillo: Google unveiled Project Brillo, a set of technologies to connect more household items to the Web. The platform aims to make it simpler for developers to build applications for everyday devices.

• Google's announcements on Android Pay and Google Wallet pit it squarely against Apple once again: Google lays out its ambitions for your phone, your home, your car and your wallet: Google made clear Thursday that it's still fighting a multifront war against its old rival, Apple -- and that the battles are as heated as ever. Google on Thursday confirmed the arrival of Android Pay and a revamped Google Wallet, an overhaul of the company’s mobile payments products. Both products are a shift from the company’s past mobile commerce efforts, which largely flopped. The new services, like the world of payments in general, are not simple. Here is how they work. Android Pay is essentially a digital payments system that consumers can use to buy things online or in stores from retailers and others who also use the service. It works almost the same way that Apple Pay, Apple’s mobile payments product, functions both in online and offline transactions. To use Android Pay, smartphone users with up-to-date versions of the Android operating system will be able to load Visa, MasterCard, American Express or Discover cards onto their phones. From there, they will be able to wave the phone over the terminals in more than 700,000 stores around the United States to pay for items. Android Pay will also work inside mobile apps from participating developers. Google will use a technology called tokenization to provide merchants with a customer’s payment information without having to hand over their actual credit card number. As with Apple Pay, Google will let customers verify their identity using their fingerprint, a technique which will be built into the next version of Android. Android Pay will also integrate with loyalty programs from a handful of retail partners, which will mean that any points or credits earned at —the point of sale will automatically be added to any loyalty card a customer enters. To date, Apple Pay does not offer this service, an issue that many merchants have asked for privately. Apple plans to discuss its loyalty integration plans at the company’s developer conference next month. Google Wallet, the company’s unsuccessful attempt at a mobile wallet, is not going away. It is just going to serve another purpose. Google Wallet is being reintroduced as a peer-to-peer payments app, which is a way for customers to quickly and easily transfer money to each other’s debit or bank accounts. That once again pits Google against PayPal, which offers its own popular peer-to-peer payments app called Venmo. It also clashes with Square Cash, yet another peer-to-peer payments app offered by Square. Such services have become popular with younger users. Now all Google, Apple and PayPal have to do is persuade consumers that these new payment methods are better than paying the same way they have always done — smartphone-free.

• Avago to buy Broadcom for $37 billion in biggest-ever chip deal: Avago Technologies agreed on Thursday to buy Broadcom Corp for $37 billion in the largest merger of chipmakers ever, turning a lesser known company run by a ferocious dealmaker into one of the biggest industry players. Avago, which serves the wireless and industrial markets, is offering Broadcom shareholders $17 billion in cash and Avago shares valued at $20 billion. Broadcom is best known for its connectivity chips, which are used widely in smartphones made by Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics. The deal is the biggest so far by Avago Chief Executive Hock Tan, who has developed a small chipmaker into a $36 billion company through acquisitions since taking the helm nine years ago. Tan, a serial deal-maker, has trimmed Avago's portfolio by divesting units while bulking up in faster-growing areas. The combined company, to be based in Singapore and known as Broadcom, will be the third-largest U.S. semiconductor maker by revenue, behind Intel Corp and Qualcomm. The merger is the industry's second megadeal this year and is unlikely to be the last, analysts said. The merger will help the companies improve their bargaining position with manufacturers. Irvine, California-based Broadcom has been struggling to grow as competition in the mobile chip business intensifies. The company's revenue increased by just 1.5 percent last year. The new Broadcom would have annual revenue of $15 billion and an enterprise value of $77 billion, the companies said in a statement. Broadcom shareholders will own about 32 percent of the combined company. They would also have the option to choose between various combinations of cash and stock. Avago, which is incorporated in Singapore and also has headquarters in San Jose, California, said it intended to fund the cash portion of the deal by using funds from the combined company and new debt of $9 billion.

• Avago's $37 billion deal to buy chipmaker Broadcom Corp may force Qualcomm, the world's largest mobile chip maker to radically rethink its own strategy: Qualcomm, which has dominated the market for connectivity chips on smartphones, has been looking to extend its reach into data centers and network infrastructure, but may find its way blocked by an enlarged competitor combining Avago's strength in storage and Broadcom's power in networking. "Qualcomm has aspirations of moving into Intel's data center processor incumbency that the Avago storage and now enterprise networking (from Broadcom) capability directly overlays," said Drexel Hamilton analyst Richard Whittington. That could result in Qualcomm creating some sort of partnership with Intel Corpx he said, to combat the reach of the new company. Wall Street analysts generally cheered the deal on Thursday, despite some fretting about price, saying Broadcom's strength in wireless networking, WiFi and Bluetooth chips is a good complement to Avago's presence in industrial and wired devices. That presents a challenge to Qualcomm, which finds itself in a tough spot in the maturing microprocessor business, as smartphone makers such as Samsung, Apple and Huawei put more effort into producing their own chips. Now a Avago/Broadcom tie-up - which will take the name of Broadcom - potentially gives handset makers another viable supplier, giving them more leverage and putting even more pressure on Qualcomm, said IDC analyst Mario Morales.

Onager's Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday May 28

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• Mary Meeker's 2015 Report is Out, and Calls Out that India Tech is at an Inflection Point: Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker’s yearly Internet Trends report is the ultimate compilation of essential tech statistics. Here is her 2015 report, which  calls out that India could be at a tipping point. India's Internet penetration in 2014 was where China was in 2008 and the U.S. was in 1996. If India's curve follows the same pattern, get ready for big things in the next five years. One thing India is lacking is the catalyst companies that will lead its Internet revolution.

• Nielsen to measure digital ads in partnership with Tencent: Nielsen announced on Wednesday that it is partnering with Tencent Holdings to measure its digital audience in a move that could direct more ad dollars from companies in the United States to China's biggest social network. Nielsen said it is launching its Digital Ad Ratings, which tracks unique users, reach and frequency of a digital ad across computers, tablets and smartphones for the first time in China. Comscore, which offers a similar service and competes with Nielsen, said it is already available in China. The online gaming company Tencent, which also operates the popular mobile messaging app WeChat with 500 million monthly active users, has been making a big push to increase its advertising revenue especially through mobile. Nielsen will measure an ad campaign in a combination of surveys, consisting of 46,000 Chinese consumers, and aggregated, anonymous data from Tencent's hundreds of millions of active users. Tencent, which has a market value of $190 billion and reported first-quarter online advertising revenue of $438.4 million competes with Alibaba and Baidu.

• Its a Small World: Ola-owned TaxiForSure integrates Alibaba-investee Paytm wallet as cashless payment option, joining its arch-rival Uber: TaxiForSure, has tied up with Alibaba-backed online payments platform Paytm. The move will allow users of TaxiForSure to go cashless and pay through Paytm’s pre-paid wallet, the company said in a statement. Customers can link their debit card or bank account via a Paytm wallet or recharge their Paytm wallet and use it to pay for their rides. In March, cab hiring startup Ola had acquired TaxiForSure in what largely a stock transaction. Interestingly, Ola also has a prepaid wallet called Ola Money. Last November, on-demand car service Uber, Ola's arch-rival in India's ride-hailing space had joined hands with Paytm.

• Google and Apple Adjust Their Strategies on Mobile Payments: The battle for mobile software dominance revolves around two companies: Apple and Google. Now both giants are also going head-to-head in mobile payments, as they prepare to push deeper into digital wallets. Google is set to unveil plans at its annual developer conference on Thursday for an overhaul of its mobile payment products. Changes include a service called Android Pay that will let merchants accept credit card payments from inside their mobile apps and can be integrated with loyalty programs at retailers, the people said. Google Wallet, a mobile commerce app, will also be reintroduced as a peer-to-peer payments app that consumers can use to send money to each other directly from their debit accounts, they said. Apple is preparing to announce details about enhancements to Apple Pay at its software conference next month. Those include a rewards program for the mobile wallet service. The moves are the latest advances in mobile payments as several players jockey for an edge. With more consumers willing to make purchases using smartphones, companies are rushing to take the lead in the market, spurring eBay’s PayPal to heavily market a suite of mobile apps, while start-ups like Square and Stripe expand their payments processing software to small and midsize businesses. The stakes are also high for Apple and Google, which are entering mobile payments later than others in the industry. For Apple, mobile payments tie people more directly to its main product, the iPhone. For Google, payments are a hook to reel people into its ecosystem of services and another way to gain insight about consumers. The challenge for Apple and Google, along with rivals, is that the mobile wallet is generally a technology in search of a problem. Cash and credit cards are easy to use and accepted broadly worldwide. As a result, the mobile wallet is typically more of a supplementary service than a replacement. Nonetheless, mobile payments are growing quickly. Forrester Research predicts they will balloon to $142 billion by 2019 in the United States, almost tripling from $52 billion in 2014. Still, Google and Apple offer something that few others can: Hardware, software and an insatiable desire to win. “Google and Apple have deep pockets and the appetite to invest,” said Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester Research. “They may create something that is a lasting disruption.”

• Despite Its Dominance, Analysts See A Murky Road Ahead for Android: Android is now not just the globe’s most popular smartphone operating system but the most popular operating system of any kind. More than a billion Android devices were sold in 2014, a c cording to the research firm Gartner. That’s about five times the number of Apple iOS devices sold, and about three times the number of Windows machines sold. Yet all is not well on planet Android. On the eve of Google IO, the company’s annual developer conference that starts Thursday, where Android will once again be a primary topic of discussion, cracks are emerging in Google’s hold over the operating system. Google’s version of Android faces increasing competition from hungry rivals, including upstart smartphone makers in developing countries that are pushing their own heavily modified take on the software. There are also new threats from Apple, which has said that its recent record number of iPhone sales came, in part, thanks to people switching from Android. Hanging over these concerns is the question of the bottom line. Despite surging sales, profits in the Android smartphone business declined 44 percent in 2014, according to one estimate. Over the holidays last year, according to the research firm Strategy Analytics, Apple vacuumed up nearly 90 percent of the profits in the smartphone business. The stark numbers prompted a troubling question for Android and for Google: How will the search company — or anyone else, for that matter — ever make much money from Android? Google faces several major Android-related headaches. First, while Google makes most of its revenue from advertising, Android has so far been an ad dud compared with Apple’s iOS. iOS users tend to have more money and spend a lot more time on their phones (and are, thus, more valuable to advertisers). Because Google pays billions to Apple to make its search engine the default search provider for iOS devices, the company collects much more from ads placed on Apple devices than from ads on Android devices. A recent analysis by Goldman Sachs estimated that Google collected about $11.8 billion on mobile search ads in 2014, with about 75 percent coming from ads on iPhones and iPads. A brighter spot for Google is the revenue it collects from sales via Android’s app store, called Google Play. For years, Android apps were a backwater, but sales have picked up lately. In 2014, Google Play sold about $10 billion in apps, of which Google kept about $3 billion (the rest was paid out to developers). Apple makes more from its App Store. Sales there exceeded $14 billion in 2014, and rising iPhone sales in China have led to a growing app haul for Apple. Still, Google’s app revenue is becoming an increasingly meaningful piece of its overall business, and it is also growing rapidly. But how long Google can expect Play to keep paying remains an open question, thanks to the second Android-related headache. Google’s strategy of giving Android to phone makers free has led to a surge of new entrants in the phone business, several of which sell high-quality phones for cut-rate prices. Among those is Xiaomi, a Chinese start-up making phones that have become some of the most popular devices in China. Because Xiaomi and others don’t make much of a profit by selling phones, they’re all looking for other ways to make money — and for many, the obvious business is in apps offering mail, messaging and other services that compete with Google’s own moneymaking apps. Android has always been a tricky strategy; now, after finding huge success, it seems only to be getting even trickier.

• Twitter Is Giving Advertisers More User Data In The Hope That They Spend More: Twitter is hoping to help marketers better understand their Twitter audience by adding a tool that will give them deeper user behavior around organic tweets. The audience insights dashboard tool adds some similar insights as the Facebook advertising platform with aggregate information on user demographics, interests, and purchasing behavior as well as what television shows users watch and their mobile usage. These new insights are expected to help advertisers identify a more relevant audience for upcoming campaigns on the platform. Will these new insights help boost advertising on Twitter? The company needs it right now. It had slower than expected growth in advertising sales this last quarter and even die-hard fans and early investors think the company needs some help. Early investor Chris Sacca recently scribed a blog post warning Twitter that he would soon be sharing a few thoughts on what the company needs to do now. Offering more profound insights about organic user behavior may be an answer to some of this frustration and may help to lure brands to spend more ad dollars on the platform. The audience insights tool is now available to all Twitter advertisers and analytics users. Twitter-specific information can be accessed within the U.S., with plans to roll this out more broadly over the next few months.

• Cisco Predics that in 5 years, 80 percent of Internet Traffic will be online video: We already know that Netflix accounts for one-third of Internet traffic at peak hours. Toss in YouTube, and that figure rises to roughly half of all bandwidth consumed. But even that's small potatoes compared with what's coming. In five years, 80 percent of the entire world's Internet consumption will be dominated by video. That number will be even higher in the United States, approaching 85 percent. That's according to the latest projections from Cisco, which publishes an annual study peering into the near future of the Web. The newest report, out Wednesday, predicts that by 2019, the Internet will have become more or less a big video pipe. Part of the growth will come from adding new people to the Internet — for the first time, over half the world's population will be digitally connected. But individual Internet users are also expected to consume more video over time, and at a higher quality, which will put tremendous new burdens on the world's Internet infrastructure. When you see the Internet as a huge distribution channel for video, it puts virtually everything that tech and communications companies are doing into perspective. Telecom firms like Verizon are racing to expand their cellular networks so that they can deliver video over LTE. Cable companies are fleshing out their public WiFi hotspots so users can watch videos outside their homes. Content providers like HBO and CBS are putting their programming on the Internet so that customers don't have to be tethered to their television sets. Implicit in this idea is that mobile devices will be the primary way users will access all this video. And researchers agree on that point. Five years ago, Americans were spending less than an hour a day on mobile devices. Today, it's more like three hours a day, accounting for more than half of the time we spend consuming digital media in general, according to the latest in an annual report released Wednesday by Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, May 27

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• Foxconn Unit Seeks the Next Xiaomi in India: For FIH Mobile Ltd., being the unit of Foxconn Technology Group that doesn’t make iPhones has been a challenge. Its former name, Foxconn International Holdings Ltd., was constantly being confused with the parent, while its business model was tied to fading phone labels including Nokia and Sony. So it changed both. Two years later, FIH has a new marquee client in fast-growing smartphone brand Xiaomi Corp. and vastly-improved earnings. In anticipation of shipments climbing 50 percent this year, it’s now looking to India in its hunt for the next big thing after profit doubled in 2014. FIH will assemble its first smartphones in India before the end of this year, prompted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to raise import tariffs, Tong said. The company will have multiple sites in the country, none employing more than 10,000 workers, he said. “We still see the growth rate will be in the emerging market brands,” he said. India could see smartphone sales of 85 million to 100 million this year in a region where emerging Asia-Pacific markets will collectively outpace China over the next four years, Tong said, citing figures from Gartner Inc.

• Oppo of China to Start Handset Assembly in India for Local Push: Guangdong OPPO Electronics, a Chinese maker of smartphones, will start having its own-brand handsets manufactured in India in August as a saturated home market pushes it to seek growth abroad. Oppo will have its handsets assembled by a partner in the South Asian country, rather than replicate its experience in Indonesia, where it owns a factory, said Vice President Sky Li, who oversees the company’s international mobile business. He declined to identify the partner. “India is the top priority in our expansion in South Asia,” Li said in interview in Beijing on May 20. The company “plans to boost sales volume in the country to a comparable level with China market in five years.” The Chinese phone maker is betting on demand from consumers abroad to drive growth after the domestic market recorded first decline in smartphone shipments in six years in the first quarter, with a year-on-year drop of 4 percent to 98.8 million units, market research company IDC said on May 10. Oppo isn’t alone in seeing India in its future. Xiaomi , the world’s third-largest smartphone maker, released the MI 4i model in the South Asian country last month. Rivals Huawei Technologies and Lenovo Group are also targeting India.

• In Bid to Revive Itself, EBay to Roll Out Cost-Per-Sale Ads for Web Merchants: EBay Inc. is introducing ads that merchants will pay for only if they lead to actual sales, seeking new revenue opportunities for the online marketplace before a planned split from the PayPal payments division. The service, called Promoted Listings, will let EBay sellers specify what percent of a product’s sale price they’re willing pay in order to run an advertisement. The higher the percentage, the more prominent the ad will be, although EBay will also consider a product’s popularity and the seller’s reputation. The cost-per-sale approach is unusual because websites risk running ads that don’t generate revenue. Instead, most companies, such as Google Inc., rely on cost-per-click ads, which charge marketers each time someone clicks on a link. EBay’s new ad offering will help smaller merchants, which make up the bulk of the company’s 25 million sellers, because they won’t have to track the effectiveness of ads or pay before a sale, according to Alex Linde, EBay’s vice president of advertising and monetization. “This way, there’s no upfront risk for the seller,” Linde said. “The only lever these sellers had in the past was price, and nobody wants to grow only by discounting.” While Linde didn’t specify any revenue goals for promoted-listing ads, he said EBay’s extensive data on consumers and sellers will help it direct ads to the most likely buyers. “It’s risky to guarantee a return on an ad,” said Lauren Fisher, an analyst at EMarketer Inc. “They could end up giving away a lot of advertising.” The advertising push is part of a larger effort to reinvigorate EBay’s e-commerce business, which is lagging behind the rest of the industry. Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co., sees marketplace revenue falling 4 percent to $6.7 billion, while EMarketer predicts that global e-commerce sales will rise 21 percent to $1.59 trillion in 2015. Advertising hasn’t been a priority for EBay in the past. Ad revenues are lumped into a segment that brought in $2.76 billion last year. Most of that came from banner ads promoting brands, rather than particular products. Promoted Listings will be rolled out gradually, starting in June with a few hundred sellers in the U.S., U.K., Australia and Germany. EBay also plans to come up with ways for larger merchants to promote special deals more effectively, Linde said.

• Your Instagram photos aren’t really yours: Someone else can sell them for $90,000: This month, painter and photographer Richard Prince reminded us that what you post is public, and given the flexibility of copyright laws, can be shared — and sold — for anyone to see. As a part of the Frieze Art Fair in New York, Prince displayed giant screenshots of other people’s Instagram photos without warning or permission. The collection, “New Portraits,” is primarily made up of pictures of women, many in sexually charged poses. They are not paintings, but screenshots that have been enlarged to 6-foot-tall inkjet prints. According to Vulture, nearly every piece sold for $90,000 each. How is this okay? First you should know that Richard Prince has been “re-photographing” since the 1970s. He takes pictures of photos in magazines, advertisements, books or actors’ headshots, then alters them to varying degrees. Often, they look nearly identical to the originals. This has of course, led to legal trouble. In 2008, French photographer Patrick Cariou sued Prince after he re-photographed Cariou’s images of Jamaica’s Rastafarian community. Although Cariou won at first, on appeal, the court ruled that Prince had not committed copyright infringement because his works were “transformative.” In other words, Prince could make slight adjustments to the photos and call them his own. This is what he did with the Instagram photos. Although he did not alter the usernames or the photos themselves, he removed captions. He then added odd comments on each photo, such as “DVD workshops. Button down. I fit in one leg now. Will it work? Leap of faith” from the account “richardprince1234.” The account currently has 10,200 followers but not a single picture — perhaps so you can’t steal his images in return? “New Portraits” first debuted last year at Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue, the same location where the artist displayed the Rastafarian images he was sued for. Knowing that more legal action is unlikely, Prince appears to be enjoying the attention. He has been re-tweeting and re-posting his many critics.

• TiVo earnings: Revenue $44M, +16% Y/Y. Share Rise 6%: Digital video recorder maker TiVo reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue and profit, helped by higher subscriptions. Shares of the company, which also said it bought Poland-based Cubiware, rose 6.2 percent in extended trading on Tuesday. TiVo's set-top boxes are in high demand from cable users as they also allow access to online video services such as Netflix , Hulu and Google 's YouTube. TiVo, whose clients lude DirecTV, is trying to partner with more cable TV operators to grow its business. TiVo sells subscriptions directly to consumers with its video recorders and also licenses its technology to cable TV operators that rent recorders to subscribers. The company sells its products through cable TV partners such as Virgin Media in the UK, ONO in Spain and Com Hem AB in Swede Total revenue costs rose about 16 percent to $44.1 million. Net revenue rose about 7.2 percent to $114.7 million.

• In Freewheeling Interview Snapchat CEO Outlines Monetization Plans, Talks Tech Bubble, IPO: Evan Spiegel is the co-founder, chief executive officer, and profane enfant terrible behind one of the largest and fastest-growing social networks on the Internet. At 24, he runs a startup with 330 employees and a valuation north of $15 billion, which claims more than 100 million mostly young users. He’s also incredibly secretive about his business plans and an unknown (and arguably underestimated) figure in the intersecting gossip circles of Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Now he’s ready to talk about a major turning point for his company. More than three years after Spiegel founded Snapchat at Stanford with his fraternity brother, Bobby Murphy, 26, he’s trying to turn it into a real business. After starting to run select video ads earlier this year, Snapchat is about to begin soliciting other big advertisers with some new numbers that assert its audience is bigger, younger, and more obsessive than anything on television. In a 23-page sales pitch it’s sending to ad agencies this month, the company says more than 60 percent of 13- to 34-year-old smartphone users in the U.S. are active on the service and together view more than 2 billion videos a day. That’s already about half the number of videos people watch on Facebook, which is seven years older and has 10 times as many members. The service isn’t accessible on the conventional Web, only via smartphones, and a central tenet of the company is that video and photos should take up the entire smartphone screen. He “believes his audience is young people on mobile,” Lasky says, “and he does not believe that the audience is being appropriately serviced by the existing Silicon Valley elites.” Actual teen behavior tells a slightly different story. Seventy-one percent of all U.S. teens age 13 to 17 use Facebook, while only 4 in 10 use Snapchat, according to a study this year by the Pew Research Center. And Snapchat’s rivals aren’t sitting still. Twitter has acquired the video-sharing services Periscope and Vine, and Facebook has another way it taps young Internet users—the photo-sharing service Instagram, which it acquired in 2012. Half of all teens use Instagram, according to Pew. Snapchat may have overestimated the pull it has with advertisers. It started its program by charging about $100 per 1,000 views, or more than $750,000 for a day-long campaign, more than double the rates of YouTube or Hulu. Big advertisers with large experimental budgets chalked the rate up to research and development costs and fell in line, just to be first with a chance at wooing a millennial audience. Occasionally the ads do find a satisfying symbiosis with the content. Earlier this month, for example, spots from Coca-Cola and the jobs site Indeed.com congratulated students in ads that were interspersed in daily stories culled from snaps on college campuses during graduation day. Snapchat may have overestimated the pull it has with advertisers. It started its program by charging about $100 per 1,000 views, or more than $750,000 for a day-long campaign, more than double the rates of YouTube or Hulu. Big advertisers with large experimental budgets chalked the rate up to research and development costs and fell in line, just to be first with a chance at wooing a millennial audience. Occasionally the ads do find a satisfying symbiosis with the content. Earlier this month, for example, spots from Coca-Cola and the jobs site Indeed.com congratulated students in ads that were interspersed in daily stories culled from snaps on college campuses during graduation day.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, May 26

• Audio version of this post on SoundCloud (experimental)

• Smartphone ‘Cold War’ Seen in Asian Moves on Patent Licensing: South Korea and China are adopting antitrust policies that may require companies such as Apple and Qualcomm to license inventions to rivals more easily and cheaply, potentially giving Asian companies a leg up against foreign competitors. Brazil and India are considering similar paths. The clampdown on patents has the potential to alter the balance of power in the global mobile-phone industry, which generated $412 billion last year, according to IDC. These new rules may weaken the ability of Apple, Microsoft Corp. and Qualcomm -- typically among the top 15 U.S. patent recipients each year -- to compete in China, the world’s largest mobile-phone market, and other countries that follow. “We’re going back to the Cold War and the domino theory,” said Bradley Lui, an antitrust lawyer with Morrison & Foerster in Washington. “The authorities in China see the potential use of patents that might affect companies in China, including state-owned enterprises. It might be an impetus for drawing rules more broadly than we would in the U.S.” Asian regulators were spurred by the smartphone wars, in which tech giants battled over billions of dollars on four continents for more than four years. Foreign governments including Korea and China have been looking more closely at their patent policies, emboldened by debates in Washington over whether patents hinder rather than spur innovation. Qualcomm, which got 63 percent of profit from patents last year, has been investigated on three continents for its licensing practices. It struck a deal with China in February that gives domestic Chinese manufacturers a discount on the royalty charges while fining the company $975 million. Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia Oyj’s handset business has been approved by every country except Korea, which is looking for concessions on some of Nokia patents. In China, Microsoft had to accept lower royalties for patents that read on Google's Android operating system, which runs most of the world’s phones including those made by Chinese manufacturer ZTE. The Redmond, Washington-based company simply excluded Korean assets -- where it didn’t have many sales anyway -- from the Nokia deal.

• Snapdeal buys mobile commerce platform MartMobi: In a bid to strengthen its mobility platform for merchants, Snapdeal has acquired Hyderabad-based technology startup MartMobi for an undisclosed amount. The MartMobi platform enables e-commerce businesses, brands and retailers to have an instant mobile presence without writing a single line of code. A self-service platform, MartMobi can be used to create custom applications for retailers across all major mobile platforms, thus ensuring a new source of revenue for online ventures. MartMobi was founded in December 2012 by Satya Krishna Ganni (CEO) and Pramod Nair (CTO) – both serial entrepreneurs, who had earlier co-founded LearnSocial, aP2P learning platform that brings together people who want to teach something they are passionate about. Snapdeal has been on an acquisition spree as it seeks to compete with players such as Flipkart and Amazon for a slice of the $3 billion Indian e-commerce industry. In the recent past, Snapdeal has acquired payments and mobile recharge startup FreeCharge in a cash-and-stock deal while picking up stakes in digital financial services platform RupeePower and logistics venture GoJavas.

• Apple Names Jony Ive ‘Chief Design Officer’: Apple’s Jony Ive, the design genius often credited for Apple’s innovative and unique industrial design language over the past couple of decades, has taken on a new role at the company: Chief Design Officer. The new role elevates him above his previous SVP status, and also installs Richard Howarth as the new head of Industrial Design, and Alan Dye as head of User Interface. Ive’s new role should actually give him more time to actually design, the newly minted C-level executive told the Telegraph. He’s shedding some administrative and management duties to his two new lieutenants, he told the newspaper, and will instead be in charge of both UI and ID, as well as take direct control over retail store design around the world. In a book detailing Ive’s life and work at Apple, Leander Kahney has noted that the British designer has sometimes been uncomfortable with the administrative side of business, and instead prefers to focus on the craft of the actual design process. Ive also notably remains off-stage during Apple’s signature press events, and instead often narrates passionate paeans the company offers during the show in the form of video on the process of designing the products announced by other execs at the events.

• Baihe, a Chinese dating site where users flaunt their financial standing, bags $241M: Chinese dating site Baihe has announced it recently raised RMB 1.5 billion (US$241 million) in series D funding, according to Sina Tech. The investors have not been disclosed. Baihe approaches dating from an empirical and practical – some might say materialistic – perspective, with the end goal being marriage. Users are required to use their real names and are encouraged to share information like their property status and education. In other words, does this person own a home and have a good degree? Posting videos is also encouraged as they are more difficult to manipulate than photos. Members can verify their marital status to prove they aren’t seeking affairs. Recently, the site added a feature wherein users can post their credit score, as rated by a third-party private agency, to show they are in good financial standing. A member can only see information on other people’s profiles that they have shared themselves.

• As Facebook Sweeps Across Europe, Regulators Gird for Battle: Move over, Google. Facebook is the latest American tech giant that Europeans love to hate. For decades, European policy makers have taken aim at America’s giant tech businesses, trying to force them to play by European rules. In the past, Microsoft and Intel were found guilty of abusing their dominant positions to shut out rivals. Google has most recently been under the microscope, and it now faces accusations that it unfairly promoted some of its search products over those of competitors. In recent months, though, regulators’ gazes have turned to Facebook, raising questions about whether the social network has learned from the past mistakes of companies like Intel, Microsoft and Google when dealing with Europe’s policy makers and its legal system. And as Facebook runs into an increasing number of regulatory hurdles here, the scrutiny could potentially distract the company from its ambitions of becoming a one-stop shop for Internet messaging, online publishing and digital advertising. Facebook’s core business, its social networking service, is especially popular in Europe. The company has almost doubled its number of European users to the service, to around 260 million, since 2010. Facebook also has more users in Europe than in the United States, according to eMarketer, a research company. Regulators in Europe, however, are especially focused on how the company collects and handles those users’ data. The region has some of the world’s toughest data protection rules, and policy makers from France, Germany and Belgium are investigating whether Facebook broke Europe’s laws after the company announced a new privacy policy this year. If found to have breached the privacy rules, Facebook may face fines or demands that it change how the company handles people’s data, though the company says it complies with the region’s data protection laws. Taking a page from the playbooks of other American tech companies, Facebook has not stood idle as regulators steadily lined up against it. The company has hired a number of prominent former lawmakers and regulators, including Erika Mann, a former German member of the European Parliament. This month, the company also chose Kevin Martin, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to champion its cause in Washington, Brussels and beyond. Facebook increased spending on lobbying 25 percent, to roughly $570,000, in 2013 compared to the previous year, according the latest figures available from the European Union’s voluntary database of lobbying interests, which may not include all of Facebook’s activities in the region.

• Chinese E-Commerce Giant JD Leads $70M Round In Online Produce Retailer FruitDay: Chinese e-commerce site JD.com is putting its money into fresh fruit and vegetables after it led a $70 million Series C round in FruitDay, a company that sells fresh produce across China. The investment in six-year-old FruitDay, which claims to be China’s largest online produce firm, also included participation from previous backers Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and ClearVue. FruitDay imports over 80 percent of its produce from overseas, and it claimed to be on course to hit 10 million customers before the end of the year — up fourfold from last year. The company said in a statement that it will use the new capital to develop its infrastructure and logistics, hire new management and for general business development. It stands to benefit from more than just JD.com’s money through this alliance, however, since the duo have agreed to “a strategic cooperation” which will allow FruitDay to tap into JD.com’s own logistics and fulfilment network across China to help widen its service in the country. JD.com is commonly thought of as a lesser rival to Alibaba. That’s a pretty hard comparison to shake when you consider that Alibaba was responsible for the largest IPO in U.S. history last year — its current market cap exceeds $230 billion — but JD.com is different in key areas. The company, which is listed on the Nasdaq, and has attracted investment from Alibaba’s fierce rival Tencent, is building out an Amazon-like delivery model which includes its own warehouses — something that Alibaba does not — as this recent New York Times piece points out. Things start to get even more interesting if you pair JD.com’s infrastructure efforts with WeChat, the dominant messaging app in China which is owned by JD.com investor Tencent. JD.com already has a store on WeChat were customers can make purchases without leaving the app, and it could be an interesting medium for fresh fruit and vegetable orders — that’s something Line, another chat app, is pioneering in Southeast Asia right now.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, May 25

• Google adds a Buy Button to YouTube "TrueView" Pre-Roll Ads - Initial Results Very Positive: Google today announced that its YouTube TrueView ad product will now come with an optional "click to shop" button on pre-roll spots. The new button will often appear adjacent to the "Skip" button that YouTube fans know very well. A few brands have been testing the ads, which allow viewers to click through to e-commerce pages and add items to their shopping carts. Per Google, home goods merchant Wayfair has been getting three times the digital revenue compared to previous YouTube campaigns, while the cosmetics retailer Sephora saw more than an 80 percent jump in brand consideration and a 54 percent lift in ad recall. The move for Google is designed to shift YouTube's ad business into a higher gear as the site faces increased digital video competition—chiefly from Facebook, although Snapchat, Kik and other mobile startups also pose a threat. Jonathan Opdyke, CEO of HookLogic, predicted the feature would be a hit with merchant brands. Sridhar Ramaswamy, svp of ads and commerce at Google, revealed the new feature while speaking earlier this afternoon at the ad:tech conference in San Francisco.

• Amazon to Stop Funneling European Sales Through Low-Tax Haven: In a move that could put pressure on its rivals to follow suit, Amazon will start paying taxes in a number of European countries where it has large operations, instead of funneling nearly all its sales through Luxembourg, a low-tax haven that is the home base in the region for Amazon and many other large tech companies. Several European countries, including Germany and France, have criticized the tax strategies of some American tech companies, including Google, which use complicated structures that sharply reduce the amount of tax they pay in individual European countries. The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, is also investigating whether Apple and Amazon receive unfair state support through low-tax agreements in Ireland and Luxembourg, respectively, where the companies run their European operations. On May 1, Amazon said that it had started reporting revenue from its operations in Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain. By altering how it reports its revenue, the online retailer may become liable for larger tax charges in certain nations, though it may still be able to reduce its tax burden through other complex accounting practices.Amazon reported a 14 percent rise in European revenue, to 13.6 billion euros, or $15 billion, in 2013 (the latest full-year figures available), according to company filings.The changes to the company’s tax arrangements, however, are likely to put pressure on other tech companies in the United States that funnel the majority of their European revenue through low-tax countries like Ireland and the Netherlands. In Britain, George Osborne, the country’s finance minister, has championed a so-called Google Tax that imposes a 25 percent tax on the local profits of international companies that are perceived to route money unfairly overseas. The new policy came into effect last month. And in response to mounting criticism from other European countries, Ireland announced late last year that it would phase out a tax loophole called the “Double Irish” that would often be used by tech companies. The structure allows corporations with operations in Ireland to make royalty payments for intellectual property to a separate Irish-registered subsidiary. That subsidiary, though incorporated in Ireland, typically has its home in a country that has no corporate income tax. The Double Irish policy has allowed companies like Google to limit how much tax they pay on their international operations. The policy was phased out for new companies at the beginning of 2015, and will be stopped entirely by the end of the decade. Yet, despite the growing clampdown on tax structures used by American tech companies and others, analysts say that European countries are still vying to attract international companies through low-tax policies. Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands have already created new policies that allow companies to apply for a lower tax rate on profits that result from certain patents that are held locally. The European Commission, however, is currently reviewing the legality of these so-called patent boxes.

• Contest for Nokia's maps business heats up; German carmakers, Uber and Baidu, and Tencent are all in the fray: The contest for Nokia's maps business has become a three-way race between German carmakers, a consortium including Uber and Baidu, and a third group including China's Tencent and Navinfo, people familiar with the process said. Finland's Nokia has started an auction of its maps business HERE while it completes its 15.6 billion euros ($17.2 billion) takeover of network equipment maker Alcatel Lucent. German automakers Daimler , BMW and Volkswagen's premium brand Audi have teamed up with private equity firm General Atlantic to form what is being described as the "Industry consortium", two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday. Nokia, Daimler, BMW and General Atlantic declined to comment. The automakers have agreed to contribute potentially more than 700 million euros, but below 1 billion euros, said one auto industry source, who declined to be named. The consortium could be widened to include more carmakers, the source added. Another group consists of Chinese media, mobile and Internet services firm Tencent Holdings, Chinese map maker Navinfo, and Swedish buyout firm EQT Partners, three sources who declined to be named said. Navinfo and Tencent were not immediately available for comment. EQT declined to comment. Private equity firm Apax has joined U.S.-based taxi service Uber and China's Baidu in a third consortium, a financial source who declined to be named said. Apax and Uber declined to comment. Baidu was not immediately available for comment. Analysts put the potential value of HERE at 2 billion euros to 4 billion euros.

• Chinese Car-Hailing App, Backed by Both Alibaba and Tencent, Gives Away Free Rides to Fend Off Uber: Chinese car-hailing app operator Didi Kuaidi will give away 1 billion yuan ($161 million) worth of rides to commuters starting next week to promote its new chauffeur service. The company, backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., is expanding into the market for ride-sharing and carpooling after winning an estimated 99 percent of the taxi-hailing market share. The giveaway is expected to hit Uber Technologies Inc. and Yidao Yongche, two other companies competing for the estimated $1 trillion-a-year market for transportation services in the world’s most populous country. China’s car-hailing industry is currently dominated by Didi and Kuaidi, which together account for a combined 78 percent of ride bookings, with Uber a distant third at 11 percent, according to Analysys International, an industry researcher. “Three years from now, our goal is to allow everyone to hail a taxi or get a ride within three minutes and to serve 30 million people per day,” Cheng Wei, chief executive officer of Didi Kuaidi, said in a statement. The company hopes to meet the demand by supplying more cars in a more flexible way, he said in the statement. Starting May 25, commuters in 12 Chinese cities will enjoy free rides for Didi Kuaidi’s chauffeur service every Monday for a month, according to the company. Didi Kuaidi aims to create the largest “one-stop transportation platform” in the world, the company said. The goal is to cover commuting needs from hailing taxis through mobile apps, to carpooling and booking premium cars with chauffeurs, it said. Formed out of an alliance of two competing apps, the two former rivals had engaged in intense competition, giving out subsidies to drivers and riders, before agreeing to work together in February. Alibaba and Tencent own 10 percent and 13 percent, respectively, in the merged company. Didi Kuaidi won a breakthrough this month after Shanghai said it will include the company in a new taxi-booking platform, the first official recognition of mobile-booking apps. The company is in talks with more local governments about cooperating on car-hailing services, Cheng said, declining to name the cities. By contrast, local media reported Uber’s offices in Guangzhou in southern China were raided by local authorities.

• EBay Plots European Growth With Click-and-Collect Expansion; Surplus Space at Supermarkets Adds to Opportunity: EBay Inc. plans to expand its click-and-collect service in the U.K. and across Europe, after buyers on its site collected 1.5 million parcels from British store chain Argos in the first 18 months of the service. Click and collect is becoming “the dominant way that consumers want their online purchases to be fulfilled” in the U.K., EBay’s senior vice president for Europe Paul Todd said in an interview at Bloomberg’s London headquarters. EBay, based in San Jose, California, is looking at all kinds of partnerships to boost its presence, Todd said. The Argos service, covering about 750 stores across Britain, is used by about 160,000 EBay merchants. Click-and-collect services are booming in Europe as more shoppers choose to fetch their purchase from a store rather than risk missing a home delivery. More than half of online orders placed with John Lewis department stores in the U.K. last Christmas were picked up from a store. France’s Darty Plc said Thursday that 20 percent of all Web sales in the fourth quarter were collected, up from about 10 percent a year ago. Surplus space in U.K. supermarkets may be one avenue that the company explores to boost its collection capabilities. J Sainsbury Plc said this month that about a quarter of its stores will have some under-utilized space in the next five years. The need for grocers to fill that space presents a “huge opportunity” for EBay, Todd said.

• Tinder Gets Into Music by Offering Zedd's New Album for $3.99: Tinder users who spot Zedd's fake profile and "swipe right"—which indicates interest in someone—receive a link to download his new True Colors album for $3.99 (compared to $7.99 on iTunes or Google Play). The profile is also tied to a contest to win an autographed CD. It may be the initial foray for Tinder in terms of selling music, but it's not the first time the red-hot dating app has linked up with music. Earlier this year, pop singer Jason Derulo created a profile to drive views of his YouTube music video. A Tinder rep confirmed to Adweek that the Zedd promo is not an actual ad—it's a partnership that the dating app has been testing with a number of marketers, such as Twentieth Century Fox, E!, and New York's Urban Mudder event on July 25. Bud Light was the first and only brand to run Tinder ads last month as part of its "Whatever, USA" campaign.

• Consolidation in China's online travel sector: Expedia gives up on China partner, sells off $671M majority stake in eLong: Ctrip, China’s top travel site, this afternoon announced it has taken a US$400 million stake in long-time arch-rival eLong. The deal, which closed today, was done by acquiring eLong shares from Expedia. Ctrip now has a 37.6 percent stake in its erstwhile rival. Expedia has sold off its entire 62.4 percent stake in eLong, worth US$671 million, by selling the remaining shares to three other buyers (Keystone Lodging Holdings, Plateno Group, and Luxuriant Holdings), the US-based company said today. As a result of this deal, Ctrip says that it and Expedia have agreed to cooperate with each other on “certain travel product offerings for specified geographic markets.” Expedia’s brief statement did not make clear why it’s exiting eLong. The huge Expedia sell-off marks a major sea-change in China’s highly competitive travel ecommerce sector. It seems to be a huge win for Ctrip, which has now tamed its closest competitor. That leaves Ctrip freer to focus on newer and fast-growing rivals such as Baidu-owned Qunar, Tuniu, and LY. Ctrip has US backing of its own in the form of Priceline, which owns about eight percent of the company.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, May 22

• HP sells $2.3 billion China unit stake to forge partnership with elite Chinese university-linked group: Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N) will sell a controlling 51 percent stake in its China-based data-networking business to China's Tsinghua Unigroup for at least $2.3 billion, forming a partnership designed to create a Chinese technology powerhouse. State-backed Tsinghua Holdings' subsidiary Unisplendour Corp Ltd 000938.SZ will acquire 51 percent of HP's H3C Technologies for at least $2.3 billion, Unisplendour said in a statement to the Shenzhen stock exchange late on Thursday. The U.S. company also said in a statement on Thursday it will form a partnership with Tsinghua Holdings, affiliated with China's elite Tsinghua University, to create a group in China to house H3C's networking operation alongside its China-based server, data-storage and technology-services businesses.

• Report/Rumor: CommonFloor and Quikr in preliminary talks which may lead to a merger: After recent mergers in India’s e-commerce and taxi businesses, it appears that online real estate is set to see a winnowing of weaker players. Bengaluru-based Maxheap Technologies Pvt Ltd, which owns online real estate portal CommonFloor, is believed to be in preliminary conversations with classifieds company Quikr about teaming up, according to three people familiar with the developing situation.

• PayPal’s Instant Checkout “One Touch” Aims to Boost Conversion Rates on Mobile, No Longer Requires PayPal’s App: PayPal’s instant checkout service called OneTouch is now being extended to support all merchants using the e-commerce platform Bigcommerce, as well as on mobile devices – even in cases where the consumer doesn’t have the PayPal native application installed. The service, which allows customers to check out from an online merchant without having to enter their username and password, launched publicly last fall on mobile devices then expanded to the web in April. One Touch was originally designed to improve the conversion rates for online transactions. On mobile in particular, consumers tend to abandon purchases simply because of the challenges associated with entering in their personal information payment card details on mobile’s small screen. PayPal’s move to counter this trend was OneTouch for Mobile, which allows a customer’s information to be stored and shared between supported apps. That means that customers would only have to enter their PayPal credentials for their first mobile purchase, but subsequent purchases could be made with just one tap. The system is currently being used by a number of merchants including Jane.com, ParkWhiz, StubHub, Threadless, Airbnb, Lyft and Munchery, for example. In April, PayPal announced that it would offer similar functionality to web-based merchants as well, which meant the product now had the potential to reach PayPal’s 165 million customers. Despite being an older player in the ever-changing payments industry where newer contenders including Stripe, and now Apple Pay, are finding their ways into mobile apps and online stores, PayPal’s payments business is still growing. The company reported its net total payment volume rose 18 percent to $61 billion, it said in April, and it added 3.6 million new accounts in the quarter. The company says that today, online and mobile shopping accounts for $2.5 trillion in annual retail sales, and PayPal processes nearly 12.5 million payments for its customers daily. The move towards digital payments over physical payments is also a factor in PayPal’s growth. It notes that a couple of years ago, half of transactions involved checks or cash, but in a couple years’ time, they’ll account for only 25 percent of transactions.

• HP earnings: quarterly revenue $25.5B, down 7% Y/Y; earnings down too as company prepares for split; shares up 2.3% on asset sales: Hewlett-Packard, the computer and printer giant, reported continued declines in profit and sales on Thursday as it prepared to split into two companies later this year. HP, based in Palo Alto, Calif., said on Thursday that net income in the fiscal second quarter fell 21 percent to $1 billion, or 55 cents a share, from the same quarter a year earlier. Revenue fell 7 percent to $25.5 billion. Sales fell short of Wall Street analysts’ revenue expectations of $25.63 billion for the quarter, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. Excluding some items, the company reported a profit of 87 cents a share, beating analyst estimates on that same basis of 86 cents. The results give investors a progress report on Ms. Whitman’s plan to split HP into two companies: One will focus on enterprise-computing technologies like servers, and the other will sell products like personal computers and printers. The separation is set to happen at the end of October. HP said the split remained on track and would initially incur operations costs of $400 million to $450 million. The two independent companies will each be large enough to enter the Fortune 500 and may be better able to react quickly to changing markets than within a large organization. Yet investors question whether the split will slow HP’s product creation and sales, as assets and roles are allocated, and whether competitors will exploit customer confusion to seize market share. Since announcing the plan to split, HP has reported declining profit. In March, the company sharply lowered its outlook for annual earnings. In anticipation of the separation, HP is shedding some assets. The company said on Thursday that it sold a 51 percent stake in its Chinese network business to Tsinghua University for about $2.3 billion. The move lets HP continue to sell equipment to businesses in China, which face government restrictions on use of foreign technologies. Shares were up 2.3%.

• Two IPOs: Shopify pops 69%, Alibaba-backed Baozun's shares gyrate after overly aggressive IPO pricing: Canadian software maker Shopify valued at $2 billion in U.S. debut: Canadian e-commerce software maker Shopify Inc's (SHOP.N) (SH.TO) shares rose as much as 69 percent in their U.S. debut, valuing the company at about $2.14 billion. Shopify, which also debuted on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Thursday, is the first Canadian company to be listed on a U.S. exchange this year. Alibaba-backed Baozun's shares seesaw in choppy debut: Shares of China's Baozun Inc, in which Alibaba holds a nearly 20 percent stake, traded erratically in their debut on Thursday, sending the e-commerce services company's valuation seesawing. The company's American Depository Shares (ADSs) touched a high of $11.28, valuing it at $548.3 million, before reversing course all the way down to $9.23 per ADS. The 11 million ADSs offered were priced at $10 each, well below the $12-$14 range initially set by the underwriters. "They priced it too aggressively," Francis Gaskins, president of IPO research firm IPOpremium.com said, adding that at the midpoint of the initial range, the shares would have been valued at 500 times annual earnings. Baozun provides website design, digital marketing and logistics services for retailers and brands hopping onto China's e-commerce bandwagon. It counts Haagen Dazs, Nike, Guess and Microsoft among its more than 100 clients that are competing fiercely in China's thriving online market, dominated by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Alibaba's investment arm is Baozun's top shareholder, with an 18.2 percent stake. The company, which raised $110 million from the IPO, falling well short of its initial $129 million target, said it intended to split the proceeds between improving existing operations and making acquisitions. The company reported a net loss attributable to ordinary shareholders of about $25.1 million and total net revenues of about $255.4 million last year.

• New patent lawsuits are down for the first time in five years on tighter patent processes. For months, Congress has moved steadily toward a bill that targets patent trolls — companies that own patents but don't make any products with them. The problem, critics say, is that the patent holders will sue innocent companies in hopes they'll simply settle for a bunch of cash. But even as firms like Etsy and Kickstarter hit Capitol Hill this week to press the case against abusive patent lawsuits, a new study shows that the pace of litigation has actually slipped — for the first time in five years. This is a big deal for a whole range of industries, not just the tech sector. It's happening at a time when the spotlight on frivolous patent lawsuits has never been brighter. And that makes it a surprising find. You can see that in 2014, there was a sharp drop in the number of new patent cases. There were about 5,700 filed last year, according to PwC. That might sound like a lot, but it's actually a 13 percent drop from the year before. We haven't seen anything like this since 2009 — which is about when many companies started getting hit with their first demand letters. The letters are often vague about which patents have allegedly been infringed, leading to confusion and fear among the victims about what they may have done wrong. They can fight the suit and go to court, but defending a case is costly and unaffordable for many companies. The congressional legislation being debated would try to address some of these issues. But here's what else could wind up curtailing patent litigation: The Supreme Court. According to PwC, the sharp decline in new patent lawsuits can be traced almost directly to the outcome of a major case last year known as Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank. Most analysts at the time said that Alice didn't matter much. The Court ruled that the software patent Alice Corp. used to sue CLS didn't pass the smell test. That much was obvious to many people watching the case; what they really wanted from the Court decision was a more concrete outline as to what kinds of software patent were patentable. But the fact that Alice put some limits on software patents at all appears to have put major pressure on those who are considering bringing a patent lawsuit, said PwC.Alice effectively "raised the bar for patentability and enforcement of software patents," PwC's report reads.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, May 21

• API-for-payments Startup Stripe In Talks For Up To $500 Million In New Funding That Could Value the Firm at $5B: Stripe is raising a new round of funding, according to sources with knowledge of the talks. One source with direct knowledge of the talks tells us that one of the leading investors in the deal is Yuri Milner’s DST Global. While all sources maintained that the round was “big,” there wasn’t a consensus on how much Stripe is looking to raise. The aforementioned source said that the round could be as big as $500 million and another source said the financing round would raise Stripe’s valuation to $5 billion. A Stripe spokesperson declined to comment on rumors and speculation. Stripe has seen rapid growth and is known for being very developer-friendly, having impeccable customer service, and being easy to implement. Processing payments can be quite a headache for young startups, and Stripe tries to make the process as easy as possible so that they can focus on what’s important: building a company. So far, the company has raised $190 million from some high-profile investors, including PayPal cofounders Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, Box CEO Aaron Levie, Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital. Stripe has been adding products and high-profile partners over the past year as it expands across the globe. Earlier this week, Stripe announced a private beta program for Japan, and there are rumors that the company is looking to move to Singapore as well. It also added a new product called Stripe Connect to help marketplace companies — like Lyft, which needs to accept payments from customers and send payments to drivers —and partnered with Twitter and Facebook to power the respective companies Buy buttons. Stripe also inked a deal to support AliPay, which might be coming to the US soon. The fundraising round could be used to further spur global expansion. Milner has invested in social media giants Facebook and Twitter, and more recently turned his focus to international e-commerce and marketplace companies, like FlipKart and Ola Cabs. International expansion costs money — Stripe currently operates in 20 countries, while competitors like Braintree support worldwide coverage. That being said, Stripe will be facing some increased competition from an independent PayPal when the latter spins off from parent company eBay sometime during the Q3 of this year. PayPal acquired payment processor Braintree in 2013 for $800 million, which has some big clients, like Uber and Hotel Tonight, and launched v.zero, a new payment API to help developers. Smaller competitors are itching to go abroad as well — WePay raised $40 million to expand marketplace payment processing across the globe.

• Spotify Takes on Apple and YouTube: to start offering videos: Spotify just laid out its plans to be more than a streaming music service, moving to add videos and podcasts in a new service that will now be available in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Sweden. The changes chart a path that puts Spotify into direct competition with YouTube at a time when Apple is planning to relaunch its own streaming service. Spotify touted a wide roster of content partners that include Comedy Central, Vice News, NBC, ABC, ESPN, and MTV The focus is on short clips. Digital video is a much bigger business than streaming music. Subscription revenue from audio service will top $5 billion in 2020, according to Generator Research, and by that date 100 million users will be paying for streaming music. This year, however, advertisers are already set to spend $7.8 billion on digital video, according to market research firm EMarketer. By adding video, Spotify is asking users to interact with its service in a new way: Stare at the app on your phones; don't just press play and stick it back in your pocket. Podcasts are an easier connection. While the podcasting industry can hardly match the financial heft of online video, it is having a bit of a moment. Spotify is launching with a number of high-profile partners in podcasting and radio. Slate, Radiolab, and American Public Media have all signed on. Spotify will also offer some original programming in both video and audio, including radio shows hosted by the rap group Odd Future, a video series showing a new dance move each day, and a podcast about new music. Spotify is taking a cue from Songza, an online radio startup acquired by Google last June, and will offer playlists that correspond to specific moods or activities (such as “chill” or “travel”). The company also announced a new feature that will use the sensors in a user’s phone to determine their pace when they’re out on a jog and then play music with beats that complement the workout. The timing of Spotify’s announcement isn't an accident. Next month Apple is expected to unveil its own streaming service built on its $3 billion acquisition of Beats. Sure, Spotify faces plenty of competitors already, but it hasn’t faced a serious rival since it broke away from the streaming music pack several years ago. Apple is hardly guaranteed success. It launched a music-based streaming service, Ping, which failed. Then it tried a Pandora competitor, iTunes Radio, which has been underwhelming. Nor is it clear how Apple can fundamentally improve on music subscription services that are a pretty good deal for serious music fans. “Subscription music is a good category. There really isn’t a problem here for Apple to fix,” says Andrew Sheehy of Generator. “The only actual advantage that Apple has is the install base and its market power.”

• Canadian eCommerce software maker Shopify valued at $1.27 billion at IPO price: Canadian e-commerce software maker Shopify Inc said its U.S. initial public offering was priced at $17 per share, valuing the company at about $1.27 billion. The company's IPO of 7.7 million class A subordinate shares raised about $131 million, after it was priced above the top end of the expected range of $14-$16. The offering was earlier expected to be priced at $12-$14. The company sold all the shares in the offering. "Pricing reflects big enthusiasm for these type of deals. It's a unique company in a hot area with lots of growth," said Josef Schuster, founder of IPO investment firm IPOX Schuster LLC. "There's going to be a big pop coming tomorrow." Ottawa-based Shopify, which is also expected to debut on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Thursday, makes software that helps small and medium-sized retailers to set up online storefronts. Shopify charges a monthly subscription fees of $29-$179. The company has also created online stores for a variety of retailers ranging from tattoo companies to fashion boutiques and vintage book sellers. Shopify said 162,261 merchants had subscribed to its platform from about 150 countries as of March 31. Shopify's biggest investors are venture capital firms Bessemer Venture Partners, with a 30 percent stake, and FirstMark Capital LP, which has a nearly 12 percent stake.

• Cinematic Pins: Pinterest has launched a new ad format - a new kind of Promoted Pin—one that is animated. The ad updates come more than a year after Pinterest first started selling Promoted Pins, and the changes are a big step for its ad technology. Brands will be able to target about a dozen audience types from foodies to gardening enthusiasts to millennials. The new animated ads are called Cinematic Pins, and they are a bit different from the moving ads developed by rivals like Facebook and Twitter. On those platforms, videos start when you stop scrolling over them and stop when you scroll away. On Pinterest, the opposite happens. The Cinematic Pins are seen in motion as the user scrolls, but the motion stops when the scrolling stops. "Users want to feel like they're in control, and we've done a bunch of user testing—users are delighted by this experience," said Tim Kendall, Pinterest's gm of monetization. "They wind up scrolling back and forth. They love controlling the motion." A number of brands already have tested the feature, including Unilever, The Gap, L'Oreal, Nestlé, Walgreens, Target, Visa and Wendy's. The Cinematic Pins and audience targeting are part of Pinterest's new three-stage advertising offering that starts with awareness marketing. The advertisers pay on a cost-per-thousand-view basis. Then there's a marketing model based on consumer intent—when they're still deciding on a potential purchase. This type of marketing lets brands buy ads based on a cost-per-click or cost-per-engagement basis—they pay when users click on or share a Promoted Pin. In the third phase, ads are sold on a cost-per-action basis when an app is installed or a sale completed. "We only want them to pay us when the ads create that value," Kendall said. "It takes the risk out of it for marketers." Kendall said Pinterest is showing brands impressive engagement rates—for every 100 Promoted Pin impressions, brands see 30 free views thanks to repinning. "That's a really high rate of earned media," he said. Pinterest does not say how much revenue it generates in ad sales annually, and it still is a private company. But, it gets about 76 million monthly visitors, according to comScore. The platform, which lets people curate digital pin boards for projects and wish lists, is seen as an accurate marketing window into consumer behavior.

• Salesforce Earnings: Quarterly Revenue $1.5B, +23% Y/Y Despite Dollar Strength: Shares Up 3%: Salesforce today reported adjusted profit of $0.16 per share on revenue if $1.51 billion in the first quarter of its fiscal 2016. The market had expected the SaaS firm to report $0.14 in adjusted, per-share profit on revenue of $1.5 billion. Shares of Salesforce are up around 3 percent in after-hours trading, a gain that is tempered by the firm’s 1.85 percent decline in regular trading. For the current quarter, the second of its fiscal 2016, Salesforce expects revenue of $1.59 billion, generating adjusted profit of between $0.17 and $0.18. A $7 billion run rate implies fourth-quarter revenue of $1.75 billion, or around $250 million more than in the now-past period. Salesforce’s revenue grew 23 percent in its most recent quarter. For the full fiscal year, Salesforce expects revenue of between $6.52 billion, and $6.55 billion, numbers that it calculates to include $175 million to $200 million in “FX headwind.” In short, the company is taking a hit, as is nearly every U.S.-based tech shop that sells abroad. The strong dollar can hurt revenue growth, given that top-line earned overseas converts more weakly into dollars. All told, it seems that Salesforce is on solid footing.