Apple and Cisco Team Up on iPhone and iPad Sales: Apple Inc. is teaming up with Cisco Systems Inc. to make its mobile devices work better with corporate networks using Cisco’s equipment, part of a push by Apple to expand sales to business customers. The partnership, announced on Monday by Cisco Executive Chairman John Chambers and Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook at Cisco’s annual sales meeting in Las Vegas, will make it easier to use iPhones and iPads together with Cisco’s products, including videoconferencing systems and the WebEx online meeting service. Last year, Apple and International Business Machines Corp. set aside a three-decade-old rivalry to create business software for iPhone and iPad users, seeking to cater to an increasingly mobile workforce. While Apple is pursuing a bigger slice of the market for corporate users of smartphones and tablets, IBM and Cisco are looking for opportunities in the mobile-computing boom. Engineers from both companies have been working together for 10 months, and Cisco and Apple salespeople will go on joint sales calls, he said. For example, iPhone users could click on a calendar appointment, and immediately start a videoconference or Cisco’s Spark chat application, instead of having to pull up each separately. IPhone users’ personal contacts can be integrated with directories on their desk phones. And since workers are increasingly mobile, calls from work colleagues would automatically ring on both the desk phone and iPhone.Apple and Cisco are also working on behind-the-scenes networking enhancements. Using a feature called Fast Lane, a videoconference that’s critical to closing a deal can be given more bandwidth priority over YouTube video streams to desktops. Cisco is also developing ways to help companies prevent network slowdowns when Apple releases updates to its iOS software, by storing parts of Apple’s software code so that iPhone owners on Cisco networks won’t have to download it from a far-off data centers.
India’s Antitrust Commission Accuses Google Of Rigging Its Search Results: Less than a week after it responded to anti-competition claims laid down by the EU, Google is under-fire once again for its business practices. This time in India. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has charged the U.S. company with rigging search results to benefit its many businesses, as The Economic Times reports. Google copped a $166,000 fine last year for failing to cooperate with this probe, but this time around, the worst case scenario could see it fined up to 10 percent of its revenue — the company posted a net income of $14 billion on $66 billion in revenue for 2014 — according to reports. TechCrunch understands that the CCI’s document is over 600 pages in length, although the chief concerns center around how Google positions and uses its own services with its search engine. Like the initial European investigation, Indian authorities appear to believe that its search engine is favoring the company’s maps service, travel sites, and advertising products, at the expense of competitors and those that use its advertising services. As part of its probe, the CCI sought out industry opinions on Google’s position. Economic Times reported that a bevy of high-profile technology companies — including Flipkart, Facebook, and Nokia — corroborated the complaint, which was initially filed by matrimony service Bharat, nonprofit Consumer Unity and Trust Society. TechCrunch understands from sources, though, that it wasn’t all one-way traffic. Other companies had voiced no complaint in response to the various accusations levied against Google, and those include Times Internet, Make My Trip, Group M, and Rediff.
U.S. developing sanctions against China over cyberthefts: The Obama administration is developing a package of unprecedented economic sanctions against Chinese companies and individuals who have benefited from their government’s cybertheft of valuable U.S. trade secrets. The U.S. government has not yet decided whether to issue these sanctions, but a final call is expected soon — perhaps even within the next two weeks, according to several administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Issuing sanctions would represent a significant expansion in the administration’s public response to the rising wave of cyber-economic espionage initiated by Chinese hackers, who officials say have stolen everything from nuclear power plant designs to search engine source code to confidential negotiating positions of energy companies. Any action would also come at a particularly sensitive moment between the world’s two biggest economies. President Xi Jinping of China is due to arrive next month in Washington for his first state visit — complete with a 21-gun salute on the South Lawn of the White House and an elaborate State Dinner. There is already tension over a host of other issues, including maritime skirmishes in the South China Sea and China’s efforts to devalue its currency in the face of its recent stock market plunge. At the same time, the two countries have deep trade ties and the administration has sometimes been wary of seeming too tough on China.
Hotels Fight Back Against Sites Like Expedia and Priceline: For years, travelers have been drawn to online sites like Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and Priceline to find and reserve hotel rooms, flights and rental cars. Hotels welcomed the system — or at least learned to live with it — even though the business came at the cost of substantial commissions. But now they are fighting back. With the online giants consolidating and potentially tightening their hold on travel bookings, major hotel chains are offering a host of benefits to lure travelers to book with them directly: digital check-in, free meals, Wi-Fi and even the ability to choose a specific room. At the same time, the industry has been outspoken with regulators this year in an attempt to block a merger of two of the largest online booking companies, Expedia and Orbitz. Hilton has introduced a number of services for guests who book directly, including a digital check-in option that eliminates waiting in line. Quickly adopted by its customers, the app is now used by over one million people each month, according to Geraldine Calpin, who oversees Hilton’s worldwide digital efforts. Hilton also offers direct-booking guests the ability to choose their exact room, a feature similar to an airplane’s seat-map function. “The guest can see the plan of each floor and click on the room they want,” Ms. Calpin said. Loyalty programs also help steer consumers toward booking directly with hotels, with rewards points and “elite” level benefits like concierge lounges, free meals and upgrades. Some chains are also trying to beat online travel agencies at their own game. Marriott has arranged for some rooms to be booked directly through the travel review site TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor gets a commission, but only about half what Expedia would charge. Expedia has been on a takeover binge this year: In January, it snapped up Travelocity, for $280 million, and last year it acquired a popular Australian site, Wotif.com. Its proposed takeover of Orbitz would give the combined company control of roughly 75 percent of the entire domestic market for third-party online booking, according to the research firm Phocuswright, potentially giving it enormous leverage over the commissions that hotels pay for their listings.
Russia’s Fist Just Clenched Around the Internet a Little Tighter: Global Internet firms operating in Russia wake up on Tuesday to a new era in Kremlin regulation. A law now forces tech firms with Russian customers to operate local servers to handle Russian personal data. It’s the latest in a string of about 20 laws tightening government control of the Internet, all put into place since President Vladimir Putin’s re-election in 2012. Taken at face value the new program is aimed at protecting the privacy of Russian citizens. It’s not a uniquely Russian idea, and is something Brazil and Germany are also exploring in the post-Snowden era. Yet human rights activists fear the regulation will be misused, allowing officials to spy on citizens and suppress political activists. It comes into force days after Wikipedia was briefly blacklisted because of an article about cannabis. All eyes are now on Facebook, Google and Twitter, which have been meeting with the Kremlin in private to make sense of the law. At this stage it’s not clear whether they will agree to comply.
Venture capital cash surfers may see waves recede in market turmoil: The waves of cash surfed relentlessly by some of Silicon Valley's largest venture-backed businesses are showing signs of receding amid concern the companies may already be worth more than their likely valuations once they finally go public. Investors have created 132 privately held companies valued at $1 billion or more each, according to tracker firm CB Insights, including ride-hailing service Uber [UBER.UL], accommodation service Airbnb and messaging app Snapchat. After a turbulent week for equities, prompted by worries about the faltering Chinese economy, it may take longer for companies aiming to join their ranks to raise multimillion-dollar funding rounds, and they may not get the investment terms they want. "Many companies in the market for funding right now are struggling to meet their valuation expectations and are going to have to reassess," said Jon Sakoda of venture firm NEA. "Investors are now being much more selective identifying which companies can succeed under the scrutiny of the public markets," said Roger Lee, an investing partner with Battery Ventures. One indicator could be GSV Capital, a Nasdaq-traded fund that buys shares of private companies from early employees and others. The fund, which as of June 30 held 12.5 percent of its assets in data-analysis company Palantir and 7.7 percent in storage company Dropbox, has dropped 6 percent since Aug. 20. One late-stage venture investor said that five to six startups he declined to fund last quarter - because of what he considered pricey terms - came back willing to re-enter negotiations after being turned down elsewhere.
The CEO of the company behind Ashley Madison is resigning: The chief executive of the parent company of Ashley Madison, a dating site targeting people looking for extra-marital affairs, resigned Friday after a massive hack exposed the personal information of millions of its users. Earlier this month, personal information about millions of Ashley Madison customers, including e-mails, member profiles, credit-card transactions and other sensitive information, showed up online. A group known as Impact Team took credit for the hack, which is now under investigation by the FBI and Canadian authorities.The information was initially only accessible on the dark Web, where users must use anonymous browsing tools. But soon after the hack, databases showed up on the broader Web allowing people to search some parts of the data. Analysis of that data seemed to suggest that most of the female profiles on the site were fake. Those millions of Ashley Madison men were paying to hook up with women who appeared to have created profiles and then simply disappeared. Were they cobbled together by bots and bored admins, or just user debris? Whatever the answer, the more I examined those 5.5 million female profiles, the more obvious it became that none of them had ever talked to men on the site, or even used the site at all after creating a profile. Actually, scratch that. As I’ll explain below, there’s a good chance that about 12,000 of the profiles out of millions belonged to actual, real women who were active users of Ashley Madison. When you look at the evidence, it’s hard to deny that the overwhelming majority of men using Ashley Madison weren’t having affairs. They were paying for a fantasy.
Uber hires two security researchers who hacked a moving Jeep to improve car technology: Uber has hired two top vehicle security researchers, the company said on Friday, high-profile additions that come as the ride-hailing service ramps up its work on technology for self-driving cars. Charlie Miller, who had been working at Twitter Inc, and Chris Valasek, who worked at security firm IOActive, have resigned from their jobs and will join Uber next week. Miller and Valasek won wide attention this month after demonstrating that they could hack into a moving Jeep. Uber on Tuesday announced a partnership with the University of Arizona, offering the school grant money to fund research into the mapping and safety technology needed for autonomous vehicles, which Uber will test on the streets of Tucson, Arizona. This partnership follows the more tumultuous effort earlier this year at Carnegie Mellon University that resulted in Uber hiring away more than 40 of its top scientists and researchers, leaving one of the world's top robotics research institutions reeling.
Jet.com CEO: We May Have the Lowest Prices, but Many Shoppers Can’t Figure That Out: Jet.com may have the lowest prices on the Web, but a lot of people who visit the site still don’t realize it. That is something CEO Marc Lore acknowledged when asked about confusion among people who hear about Jet.com’s low prices but don’t see them displayed clearly when they visit a Jet.com product page. “Believe me, we have this discussion every single day,” Lore said in an interview Thursday evening. “We keep tweaking the [user experience] to make it more clear and are bringing in research groups. But you’re right, it’s still frustrating to [some].” Before we get to the confusion, a reminder about how Jet works: Jet marks down most of the products it sells below the lowest price elsewhere on the Web. How? The retailers that sell goods through Jet give Jet a fee for each sale, but Jet doesn’t pocket that fee, as competing online marketplaces do. Instead, it gives a large portion of it back to shoppers in the form of discounts on each item they buy. Lore has said the company will simply break even on the actual sale of goods, and then generate a profit through the $50 membership fee Jet shoppers have to pay each year. Many smart people in the industry are skeptical that Jet can become big enough to make this model work.The confusion among potential shoppers stems from how Jet displays these discounted prices. Lore said the reason it doesn’t show the fully discounted price is straightforward: Some of the product brands that sell on Jet have asked Jet not to display the discounted price because it is angering other retailers they sell their products to. Lore didn’t name these brands, but said the company wanted to do good by them even if it led to some short-term confusion among shoppers. For now, Jet has opted for a uniform design strategy even though it has only heard complaints from some of the brands they sell. That said, Jet is considering making a change so that the fully discounted price will be shown for brands that don’t object and leave the pricing display as is for the brands that do, Lore said.
Is the Tech Market Hitting Middle Age?: First it was PCs. Now it’s tablets. And very soon, it will be smartphones. Each of these markets has — or will — hit its peak in both revenue and unit shipments in short order. Each has moved (or will soon move) from the soaring grandeur of youth and young adulthood to the dowdiness of mature middle age. As these inevitable market developments occur, important shifts are starting to happen. Not only will device manufacturers and their key component suppliers have to evolve their businesses — as many have started to do — but very soon, so will companies offering software and services used by those devices. While some argue that these software and services companies are taking over the world, it’s naive to think that their growth can be maintained completely independent of the devices. At a fundamental level, the two are linked, and when the device numbers peak, so too do the potential users of any software or service. Admittedly, there’s more of a growth opportunity over the short term for these software and service companies, but that won’t last forever, either. As with any major industry transformation, this means that some of the biggest industry players may not survive in their current form (or at all), while others are likely to go through some dramatic transformations. This also means that there will be tremendous opportunities for today’s smaller or even yet-to-be started companies. The tech industry’s transition to a more mature market does bring with it the opportunity for some potentially boring baggage when it comes to things like stagnant unit-growth rates. However, instead of viewing this as a midlife crisis, smart, innovative companies will figure out ways to see these developments as a midlife celebration that can open up new opportunities.
Your First 10 Customers Can Make Or Break You: Early in a startup’s life, the main focus is building the right product for the right market. For most B2B startups, this is the period when you start winning your first 10 customers. These 10 customers are unlike any others you’ll have over the course of your company. You’ll sell to them differently, charge them differently and try to get different things out of the relationship than you will from those that follow. This is the group that will teach you how to refine your product, whether or not you are targeting a large enough market and how to craft a scalable sales process that will help you land your next 100 customers. You’re The First Head Of Sales. It will be tempting to hire an experienced sales veteran when you’re busy trying to get the product right and grow the company, but there is a strong argument against that. The first 10 customers should be sold by you, the CEO or founder. Look For Young And Ambitious Customers. While it’s admirable to target big-name customers, the chances are unlikely that they’ll take a meeting or make a bet on a brand new product. Similarly, a potential customer who is far along or at the end of his career may not have a high tolerance for risk or change. Focus On Engagement, Not Revenue. As you land more customers and add them to your client roster, it is essential that each initial customer uses your product at the engagement level to be considered an active user. Engagement levels — not revenue numbers — are often a stronger indication of long-term product adoption. This should be your top priority. Your first set of customers will inevitably serve as reference accounts — and the more engaged users are, the better references they’ll provide. Know Who To “Sign” And When To Walk Away. Focus your initial sales efforts on prospects who aren’t your friends. To be scalable, your product will need validation outside of your network, and you need the type of honest feedback that friends don’t often provide.
IZettle, a Swedish Payments Start-Up, Begins a Lending Program: Jacob de Geer, who is a Swedish entrepreneur and the co-founder of iZettle, a payments service that offers merchants a device for processing credit card transactions, says banks don’t meet the needs of many small businesses. “Financial institutions focus more on their large clients than on the small ones,” he said. “Most of them were founded way before the invention of the Internet or the smartphone.” But he thinks he has a solution. On Friday, iZettle announced a program to lend money to small businesses that use its service, providing cash advances to companies for a one-time fee. IZettle, which operates in 11 countries from Britain to Brazil, raised a further $67 million from its existing backers, including Intel Capital and American Express, to take its total fund-raising to roughly $180 million. The steps by iZettle follow similar announcements from Square, the six-year-old American payments start-up, that also has expanded from its payments roots to offer additional financial products for its small-business customers. Square also offers a device to process credit card transactions. For iZettle, the new lending program will initially be available only in Europe, and the company will charge small businesses a flat fee ?equivalent to roughly 10 to 15 percent ?of each cash advance. To recoup the money it lends to businesses, the start-up will take a small percentage of each transaction that small businesses process through its payments system. To reduce defaults, the company says it will crunch data from businesses’ existing transactions to determine their credit risk.
Uber China closes $1 billion fundraising round at $7 billion valuation: sources: Uber’s China arm has closed its $1 billion fundraising round early, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, with investors still hopeful for the U.S.-based ride service despite strong domestic competition in the car-hailing market. The deal was oversubscribed, said the second source directly familiar with the fundraising. According to a fundraising document seen by Reuters last week, this round values Uber China at $7 billion, with the unit planning to list on the mainland by 2020.
One Billion People Log In to Facebook for First Time: For the first time, a billion people used Facebook in a single day on Monday. Facebook’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg, observed the occasion with a post on his Facebook page, saying that one out of seven people on Earth logged in to the social network to connect with their friends and family. The one billion figure is different from the daily user numbers Facebook discloses each quarter when it reports its financial results. Those are the average number of daily users, counted over a 30-day period. Facebook had 968 million daily active users in June. Most people on Facebook live outside the United States and Canada.
YouTube gets super serious about gaming videos: Enter player two: YouTube stepped into the world of game-streaming Wednesday with the official launch of YouTube Gaming -- its answer to Amazon's popular gaming site, Twitch. The new section of YouTube allows gaming companies and everyday gamers to share live or recorded videos about the games of the moment. It also gives YouTube an official home for video game content as the business of watching other people play video games continues to gain popularity. Google first announced it would launch YouTube Gaming early this summer, ahead of the industry's big Electronic Entertainment Expo trade show, known more widely as E3. The debut comes a year after Google lost a bidding war with Amazon to buy Twitch, the Web's current leader in video game streaming. Amazon bought Twitch last August for nearly $1 billion dollars. Twitch is Google's main competition here. But YouTube isn't starting from scratch: it already has a huge amount of gaming content across its site. The company boasts "billions" of views across its site and says that time its users spend with gaming videos is up 75 percent in the past year. ZEFR, a technology firm that crunches YouTube data, estimates that videos of the walkthrough genre of what is known as "Let's Play" has garnered 40 billion views in the lifetime of YouTube.
Shazura: A More Efficient Way to Search Images: While most image-search software finds photos using keywords or phrases, Shazura’s binary system behaves more like the human brain, visually matching images that look the same with greater speed and efficiency. Pérez de la Coba, an electrical engineer by training, began coding Shazura in 2011 out of frustration. She’d snapped a photo of a pair of shoes she wanted but had trouble finding them online with existing image-comparison services such as Google’s. Upload a file, outline what you want to search for, and Shazura’s algorithm converts the image to a lengthy “numeric signature” containing extensive descriptive information. The number for a willow, say, is distinct from that for a cypress, or a green bag from a blue one. By cutting out the intermediary translation steps, Shazura sifts through a customer’s image database more quickly and accurately and uses less computing power than traditional search engines. Without having to rely on keyword tags or extensive if-then instructions, Shazura can make large-scale image searches much easier for government agencies, advertisers, or social networks, says Pérez de la Coba. Shazura has raised $1.2 million from investors and so far the 10-employee company has licensed its technology to clothiers El Corte Inglés and RichRelevance.
Facebook's Instagram adds new photo sizes to keep users, attract ads: Instagram has added new layout options in addition to its signature square for pictures and videos in a bid to attract more advertisers and to stop users defecting to more flexible services such as Snapchat. The move is the first major alteration to the photo-sharing, social media service since Facebook Inc bought it for $1 billion in 2012, and addresses the wishes of many of its 300 million users, who have been constrained by the square format. One in five photos and videos posted on the service do not fit the square format, Instagram said in a blog post. "Friends get cut out of group shots, the subject of your video feels cramped and you can’t capture the Golden Gate Bridge from end to end," it said. From Thursday, Instagram's web-based service and its mobile apps running on Google Inc's Android system and Apple Inc's iOS will allow portrait and landscape formats, giving both users and paying advertisers more options. The move should help Instagram in its battle with newer rivals such as Snapchat for users in the fast-moving messaging and media-sharing market. At the same time, it should attract more advertising revenue for Instagram, which said in June it would open its platform to all advertisers by the end of the year, rather than just to select brands. Instagram is expected to generate nearly $600 million in advertising revenue by the end of this year and $2.8 billion in 2017, according to projections from research firm eMarketer.
Apple is closing in on Fitbit: Apple, which launched the Apple Watch in June, is within striking distance of leader Fitbit Inc in the wearable devices market, market research firm IDC said. Apple shipped 3.6 million Apple Watches in the second quarter of 2015, just behind Fitbit's 4.4 million wearable fitness and health trackers, IDC said. The Apple Watch, which sports many health-related features and apps, is seen as the biggest rival to Fitbit's trackers. Shipments of wearable devices more than tripled to 18.1 million units in the second quarter, IDC said. "It's worth noting that Fitbit only sells basic wearables - a category that is expected to lose share over the next few years, leaving Apple poised to become the next market leader for all wearables," the IDC report said. Fitbit Inc's stock market listing in June got a rousing response from investors, with shares jumping as much as 60 percent. They closed at $38.40 on Wednesday, nearly double their IPO price.
Facebook Goes Nuclear On The Messaging War With Its M Assistant: All messaging apps are the same no more. A few years ago, there were few differences between SMS and a slew of chat apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, Kik, Line, KakaoTalk and Facebook Messenger. But each have slowly defined themselves differently, whether through simplicity, connections to businesses, media, stickers, games, location, and other features. But today, Facebook escalated the battle for chat with the official announcement of M, its new personal assistant built into Messenger. It can actually complete tasks for you, such as buy things, deliver gifts, make reservations, arrange travel, or just about anything else you ask of it. What’s truly unique, though, is what’s behind M. Specifically, a lot of live bodies. M isn’t just artificial intelligence. Facebook has contracted real people to help M answer people’s requests while teaching the technology how to handle them automatically in the future. M is still in early beta testing, so it’s hard to assess just how well it accomplishes this grand ambition. But if it works, Facebook may have developed a product so useful yet so complex and resource-intensive that it could differentiate Facebook Messenger in a way its competitors can’t or won’t follow. There are digital assistants like Google Now and Siri. But those are so mechanized that they can only provide rote answers and reminders. There are personal assistants like Magic and Operator that use humans to answer complex requests, but they’re independent apps without massive scale. And there are messaging apps fighting to grow their already-huge audiences, but that still look similar despite their attempts to differentiate.
Google Now’s Staff Exodus Reveals Hurdles for New CEO Pichai: On Thursday, Microsoft fired up an old rivalry. The Redmond giant released an update to its Bing search app that allows other apps to tap into its information architecture. See something in one mobile app — a nice location shot in Instagram, say — and, with a tap, you can summon information about that something via Bing. Nothing earth-shattering. But Microsoft happened to put out the release on Android first, and did so right before Google is set to launch Now on Tap, a nearly identical feature. Google teased the product with some fanfare in May, at its I/O developer conference, as a breakthrough iteration of Google Now, its personal assistant and one of the twin bedrocks for CEO Larry Page when he returned as executive in 2011. What went unannounced was that most of the original team that built Now had departed, many of them just before I/O, according to multiple sources. Some had grown frustrated that the product, born within Android, was shuttered into search inside of Google, they said. And Sundar Pichai, Google’s SVP and incoming CEO, did not prioritize the product as much as Page. The exits reveal the hiccups Google has incubating new products that reach across multiple units of the tech giant. They also expose some key traits of Pichai’s leadership style — and some of the many hurdles he has ahead as he marshals Google’s core business. At some point last year Amit Singhal, the SVP who heads search, requested that Now move from Android into his division, multiple sources said. Several engineers objected. According to multiple sources, their initial vision of Now — as a mobile assistant tailored to particular users — works best living on the mobile operating system, not within search. Also, Google is a political place and search is Congress. Big, necessary, stodgy. Pichai approved Singhal’s request. In part, perhaps, because Google must balance products like Now, which push information to users, with its central business problem: It makes less money from mobile searches. Google has started to deploy Now as a primary vehicle for indexing apps. Two of the engineers who created Now left the company in March; several others left around the same time. Only one of the founding team remains at Google, according to multiple sources. (Google, again, declined to comment on this.) For several, the experience of seeing their product steered in an unwanted direction was too dispiriting, they said. “Google’s a big company,” said one person who departed. “This is how big companies work.”
Amazon to launch video streaming service in Japan: Amazon.com said on Wednesday it plans to launch its video streaming service in Japan for members of its Prime paid service as it gears up for Netflix Inc's planned entry into the country in September. Amazon's Prime members get unlimited access to videos under its Prime Instant Video service. Prime membership, which costs 3,900 yen ($32.50) a year in Japan, provides members other services such as the option to choose a delivery date for online purchases for free. Amazon plans to offer a broad video lineup including U.S. and Japanese films, TV shows and cartoons in Japan.
In-Flight Wi-Fi Prices Jump as Demand Surges: Many travelers are experiencing sticker shock from in-flight Wi-Fi these days. While there are several in-flight Wi-Fi providers, including ViaSat and Global Eagle Entertainment, Gogo is the top provider, equipping more than 2,000 planes from airlines like American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Virgin America with its service, up from 1,300 in 2011. Gogo’s prices often change depending on when and where you are flying. But on some flights — especially transcontinental routes crammed with business travelers who may have cushy expense accounts — prices have doubled from three years ago. Gogo’s prices are not just higher now; they are also more unpredictable. The company uses a method called dynamic pricing, in which it tries to forecast the demand for Wi-Fi on each flight and scale pricing accordingly. So the prices for the full durations of transcontinental flights also change each day: Gogo charges the most, $40, on Mondays and Thursdays; Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays cost $34; and Saturdays are the cheapest, at $28. Driving the uneven prices on certain routes is Gogo’s reliance on higher fees to ease overcrowding of its network. With passengers packing a growing number of Internet-connected electronics like smartphones, gaming devices and tablets in their carry-on luggage, the amount of bandwidth they consume on popular flights keeps expanding. Consumers can take heart because there are several ways to pay less for in-flight Wi-Fi. If Internet in the sky is that important, you can always pick an airline offering cheaper Wi-Fi, like Southwest or JetBlue. Or if you’re flying on a Gogo-equipped airplane, you can choose a day of the week when Wi-Fi prices are lower. Another way to get a cheaper rate for Gogo is o rdering the service before boarding the plane. People can buy an all-day pass to use Wi-Fi on any Gogo-equipped flight for $16, while frequent travelers can purchase a monthly subscription for $50.
Back-to-School Apps for the Organized Student: Among the apps worth considering is gFlash+, which takes flashcards to a whole new level. You can create digital cards and write facts that you need to remember on them (“e to the power of i times pi is 1,” or some such). Use those cards to quiz yourself. You can embed photos, audio files or videos, or all three, into flashcards to make them more visual and interactive. Users can share their flashcard sets with others through email, so a whole study group could benefit. The core app, which allows users to create unlimited card sets, is free on iOS and Android. The pro version, which costs $4, gets rid of ads and includes organizing features and more. You can also pay to get access to card sets from third-party publishers, including big names in education like McGraw-Hill. StudyBlue is an alternative flashcard app with many of the same features, including quizzes and card sharing, but a cleaner, more minimalistic look. Users can see millions of flashcards created and shared by other students and teachers. To use most of the app’s features, StudyBlue users need to create a free account on iOS and Android. Upgrading to the pro edition gives users access to extras like the ability to customize the formatof your flashcards. StudyBlue’s pro level is somewhat pricey at $18 a month or $80 a year. Note-taking is a vital part of student life, which is one reason to check out the Notability app. Notability, $6 for iPhones and iPads, lets users sketch on their screens, take handwritten notes or type notes. Typed notes don’t have to be in a linear document style — text boxes can be added anywhere on the page. Students can also annotate source material that is in PDF form directly from the app. And the app lets users make audio recordings of lectures or discussions so they can review a lesson later. Notability also remembers the order in which you made your sketches and notes, and shows them at the appropriate points when you play the audio back. The app integrates with cloud services like Dropbox and iCloud and social media platforms like Twitter, making it easier to share notes with classmates. On Android, Papyrus is a great alternative to Notability, providing many of the same functions. Users can take handwritten notes, make sketches using drawing tools, type in text and annotate images.
Alibaba CEO Urges Workers to Ignore Share Plunge, Keep Focus: Alibaba’s chief executive officer exhorted employees Tuesday to ignore plunging stock markets after the e-commerce giant’s shares fell below their initial public offering price for the first time. Daniel Zhang, who took the helm of Asia’s largest Internet company three months ago, wrote a memo urging his 35,000 workers to brush aside the market turmoil. Alibaba has lost about $128 billion in market value since its November peak amid a slowing Chinese economy. “This is not the first time that the global stock market has plunged,” Zhang wrote in the e-mail. “It is not the last time, either. I hope everyone can shift the focus from the stock market to customers.” Alibaba fell 3.5 percent Monday to close at $65.80 in New York, dropping below its September IPO price of $68 as a global market rout revived investors’ concerns about the company’s sales growth. The company’s shares rose 4.2 percent to $68.57 at Tuesday’s close in New York, outlasting a rally in U.S. stocks that evaporated in the final hour of trading. “Let’s forget about the stock prices,” Zhang wrote. “We should not be distracted by short-term obstacles, but plan for the future and stick to it.” The Hangzhou-based company’s shares peaked at $119.15 in November, with investors eager to reach Alibaba’s more than 300 million customers. Their subsequent decline has been fueled by concerns about the decelerating Chinese economy, increased competition from JD.com Inc. and government reports that Alibaba wasn’t doing enough to weed out counterfeit goods on its site.
Amazon expands Prime Now, offers U.S. alcohol for first time: Amazon.com said on Tuesday it will begin delivering wine, beer and spirits to U.S. customers for the first time as part of its speedy delivery service, Prime Now. The online retailer is expanding Prime Now, its one- and two-hour service, to Seattle, where the company is headquartered, and offering alcohol deliveries there. Amazon Prime, the company's $99 per year shopping membership program, offers free two-day delivery on millions of items. It is a key testing ground for the retailer's new services, ranging from TV and on-demand video to fast delivery. Amazon has said it has "tens of millions" of Prime subscribers. Analysts estimate the program to have around 40 million users worldwide. The company has steadily expanded Prime Now since it launched the service in New York City last year. It facilitates integration of the retailer's grocery delivery service, Amazon Fresh, which has been slower to expand to new markets. On-demand grocery delivery is a growing and competitive market in the United States. Instacart, a grocery delivery company, announced on Tuesday that it had expanded to Indianapolis, its 17th city. Other startups, like Postmates, which focuses on meal delivery, also deliver personal care goods and alcohol for customers using a network of couriers.
Gmail To Auto-Populate Google Calendar With Things Like Flights, Hotel Bookings And Ticket Details: Google announced today that it’s starting to roll out features that will place ticket, flight, hotel and restaurant info onto Google Calendar. Automatically. For example, if you buy a flight, rent a car, book a hotel and set reservations for the day you get into town for business, all of those items will be added to your Calendar if the exact time for those events are available. Your flight would show up at 4, reservation at 9, etc.
Hulu Teams With Facebook's LiveRail and Oracle to Sell Ads This Fall Tests programmatic advertising waters: The streaming-video service, owned by Fox, NBCUniversal and Disney, is partnering with Oracle Data Management Platform and Facebook-owned video-ad platform LiveRail to offer programmatic advertising options—automating the buying, placement and optimization of ads—for the first time. The rollout will happen this fall and won't be specifically tied to any of Hulu's major fall premieres. The Oracle DMP will combine first-party and third-party data, which Hulu says will help it increase reach, scale and efficiency for marketers as they personalize their Hulu campaigns. And LiveRail's Video Private Exchange will allow Hulu to complete direct deals with advertisers programmatically. The news comes as Hulu is also prepping an ad-free option, which would reportedly launch this fall and be priced between $12 and $14 per month. That would be at least $4 more than Hulu's current $7.99 monthly subscription free, which includes ads but fewer of them than Hulu's free version. Hulu still isn't commenting on its ad-free plans. While advertisers undoubtedly won't like being shut out of Hulu's priciest tier, the streaming service hopes its new programmatic offering will help them get the biggest bang for their buck.
- A Plunge in China Rattles Markets Across the Globe: Concerns about China’s ability to be a powerful engine of global economic growth have added to worries about the potential impact of higher interest rates in the United States, driving stocks sharply lower in Asia and Europe on Monday. When trading opened in New York, the major market measures went into what was essentially a free fall. While the steepest losses ended within minutes, share prices spent the rest of the day sharply rising and reversing course multiple times. When the day’s roller-coaster ride ended, the benchmark for stocks, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, was down 3.9 percent. That left the index off 11 percent from its May high, in what in market parlance is called a “correction,” its first since 2011. On Monday, the Shanghai composite index closed down 8.7 percent. In Europe, benchmark indexes in Germany, Britain and France fell nearly 5 percent or more. A number of emerging markets were also lower, with leading indexes in Brazil and Indonesia both down around 4 percent. In the United States, the Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 1,000 points before regaining ground. Major US indices recovered some ground but still ended the day down over 3.5% each. The Treasury market was a beneficiary of the fear in stocks. The demand for bonds pushed the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note to as low as 1.90 percent before it settled at 2.01 percent. The recent market tumult began two weeks ago when the Chinese government unexpectedly allowed the value of its currency to drop, partly in response to indications that the country’s economy is weakening. The Chinese moves played into the continuing drop in the price of oil, which has taken the price of a barrel of crude oil down 65 percent over the last year. On Monday, the price of oil, as measured by a benchmark New York contract, dropped below $40. The selling in China has accelerated despite extraordinary government intervention in the last two months aimed at propping up share prices. On Sunday, the Chinese government said that the country’s pension funds would be allowed to invest in stocks for the first time. But the slide on Monday highlighted that the new policy, and several similar recent moves, have not been successful. Many investors are now hoping that the central bank, the People’s Bank of China, will cut the ratio of deposits that banks are required to keep on reserve in a bid to encourage lending and spur economic growth.
- How the stock selloff could kill off some tech unicorns: With so much uncertainty and market volatility, Silicon Valley firms could postpone initial public offerings, cooling a white-hot market for venture funding that has fueled the most lucrative environment for startups in history. Already, executives at RainDance Technologies, a firm that makes genomic tools to detect cancer and other diseases, announced Monday they have pulled their plan to go public, according to Reuters. And the big question is what will happen to the hundreds of startups -- a record 131 are valued at more than $1 billion -- that are now all dressed up for IPOs but with no place to go. "Tech stocks have been getting crushed the past 6 weeks. Many names are down 25-50% from their highs. Today was very tough," Gurley wrote in a tweet last week. "One might reasonably assume that this would have an adverse impact on late stage private market liquidity and valuation. I certainly do. If so, we may be nearing the end of a cycle where growth is valued more than profitability. It could be at an inflection point." Known as "unicorns," the venture-funded firms with valuations of more than $1 billion have exploded in number to 131 companies valued at a total of $485 billion, according to venture capital research firm CB Insights. The sheer quantity of unicorns has for months caused concern of a startup-bubble, with investors racing to put money into bleeding edge innovators and their many imitators, when logically not all will thrive or even survive.
- Visa says its users more likely to complete online purchases than those using PayPal: Visa said on Monday online shoppers using its payment service are 17 percentage points more likely to complete their purchases than those using PayPal. Visa Checkout, which allows shoppers to store their payment information without having to re-enter it every time they make a purchase online, said 66 percent of its enrolled customers completed their transactions after putting items in their shopping cart compared to 49 percent of PayPal's Express Checkout customers. The data was collated for Visa by retail analytics firm ComScore. PayPal's online payment service offers a similar convenience by allowing customers to log into their accounts on a merchant's website. Paypal has not seen this report yet, said Anuj Nayar, senior director of platform, merchant and next gen commerce engagement. Nayar said in addition to PayPal Express Checkout the company has launched a new online payment service called PayPal One Touch, which makes using PayPal faster on any device with a single touch. "Initial reports indicate that One Touch radically improves checkout conversion for merchants and time to checkout for consumers beyond anything else available in the market today," he said. Retailers and payment industry experts have often blamed the high rates of unfinished online transactions, after shoppers add items to their shopping carts, on the tiring process of re-entering payment information every time one makes a purchase. "What has become more and more pronounced is as the size of the screen gets smaller, whether it's a tablet, mobile or a watch, the less likely it becomes a consumer will finish his purchase," Sam Shrauger, senior vice president of Visa's digital solutions, told Reuters.
- Jabong biggest loss-maker among top Rocket Internet ventures: Rocket Internet-incubated Indian fashion and lifestyle venture Jabong has become the top money losing initiative for the German emerging markets and Europe focused internet company. Jabong’s operating loss margin rose far ahead of Southeast Asian lifestyle e-commerce firm Lazada and Latin American e-commerce marketplace Linio in the first quarter of 2015, making it the most operating loss making property among Rocket Internet’s top ventures. Jabong had EBITDA loss margin of (-) 56 per cent last year, an improvement from 2013 when it posted (-) 68.5 per cent. This possibly signals how the firm is trying to push its sales faster with more discounting. This could also possibly reflect net revenues are failing to keep pace with operating expenses. Last year, in the same quarter Lazada sported the biggest EBITDA (earnings before interest tax and depreciation and amortisation) loss margin with Jabong and Linio being neck to neck, as per data shared by Rocket Internet. Also the average selling price of third-party vendors appears to be around 15 per cent higher than that of what Jabong direct e-tails to the customers. The average transaction value (including what it sells directly and products sold by other merchants) in Q1 stood at Rs 1,690 compared with a tad over Rs 1,500 in Q1 2014 and for full calendar year 2014. In the same period, average basket value of products sold directly by Jabong has risen marginally to around Rs 1,423. Third party vendors now represent around one in three transactions on Jabong every day. Meanwhile, Jabong was valued at around $480 million as of last December in its last funding round, according to Rocket Internet’s annual report. This means the firm was valued at around Rs 3,050 crore or 2.3 times its GMV for the year.
On Friday, US Stocks Fell Most in 4 Years as China Dread Sank Global Markets: Turbulence in financial markets gathered momentum amid intensifying concern over slowing global growth, pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average into a correction and giving other stock gauges their worst losses since 2011. Oil sank below $40 a barrel for the first time since 2009 and was set for its longest losing streak since 1986. More than $3.3 trillion has been erased from the value of global equities after China’s decision to devalue its currency spurred a wave of selling across emerging markets. The worries over slower economic growth come as a strong dollar and plunge in oil prices take a toll on corporate earnings at the same time the Federal Reserve is contemplating the first boost to interest rates since 2006. Investors are selling the biggest winners of 2015. Companies that have come to be known as the Fab Five -- Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple --have seen $97 billion in market value erased over two days. Losses have pushed the Nasdaq 100 Index down 7 percent, the biggest two-day decline since 2008. Apple entered a bear market, dropping 20 percent from a February high.
Hewlett-Packard Bucks Market’s Plunge After Earnings Report: Hewlett-Packard squeezed out a gain amid Friday’s market plunge after issuing an earnings report that kept negative surprises to a minimum.“For the first time in several quarters HP did not mention unexpected bad news,” Jim Suva, an analyst at Citigroup Inc., wrote in a note to investors advising they buy the stock. “Previous quarters HP reduced cash flows, stated higher separation costs, more unplanned restructuring and costs, etc. We now believe the bad news is over.” Hewlett-Packard’s shares rose less than 1 percent to close at $27.47 after advancing as much as 7.6 percent earlier in the day. The stock gave up most of the increase as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index tumbled 3.2 percent, marking the gauge’s worst day in almost four years. Hewlett-Packard sales declined across most divisions in the fiscal third quarter. PC shipments fell 9.5 percent in the second quarter, and companies are spending less on software and services.
A small Canadian city tries to drag intersections into the 21st century: Have you ever sat pointlessly at a red light? There’s no cross-traffic, but the traffic light is clueless, so you’re forced to wait. Miovision chief executive Kurtis McBride feels your pain. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve been sitting at a red light with no cars around me and just wondering, ‘Why am I stuck in this situation,’ ” McBride said. His Canadian start-up is bringing modern technology to an industry that is years behind. Smart intersections could learn the traffic patterns and adjust the length of red and green lights to optimize the flow of traffic. Sitting at a pointless red light would be a thing of the past. Miovision envisions full automated intersections that are powered by algorithms. One Canadian transportation agency is currently testing Miovision’s technology in seven intersections on major arteries in Cambridge, Canada. The Waterloo Region wasn’t ready to go all-in on automated intersections, but is trying the technology to learn of malfunctioning lights, and adjust the timing of its lights. Miovision, which is based near Waterloo, raised $30 million earlier this year from investors.
Apple Raises $1.6 Billion in Record Corporate Bond Deal: Apple raised A$2.25 billion ($1.6 billion) with a debut Australian debt sale that’s the largest bond deal ever Down Under by a non-financial company. The iPhone maker sold A$1.15 billion of seven-year notes at a yield of 110 basis points more than swap rates and A$1.1 billion of four-year securities at a 65 basis point spread. Apple, which until November had only sold U.S. currency bonds, has since expanded its debt issuance to euros, yen, pounds and Swiss francs as well as Aussie dollars. The proceeds of Apple’s Kangaroo bond sale may be used to return capital to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends, sale managers said in an earlier statement announcing plans to do an Aussie transaction. The Cupertino, California-based company announced in April it was boosting its capital-return program by $70 billion through March 2017 and would be accessing both U.S. and international debt markets to help pay for it. All of the longer maturity notes from Apple will be fixed-rate securities, while at the shorter tenor they are set to issue a fixed-rate portion of A$400 million and a floating-rate tranche of A$700 million. Initial price guidance on the four-year debt was for a spread of about 70 basis points, while the price talk on the seven-year notes was a gap of about 115 basis points.
Mobile language apps help millions learn less, more often: Smartphone apps that help people learn languages for free or nearly free, a few sentences at a time, are piling pressure on established education firms and setting the pace for how to make lessons more engaging. Phone and tablet-based mobile products from newcomers like Germany's Babbel, Britain's Memrise and U.S.-based Duolingo have overtaken names like Berlitz and computer self-learning pioneer Rosetta Stone in terms of audience, if not yet sales or teaching sophistication, market researchers say. Tens of millions of users are being drawn to the flexibility of practising vocabulary or conversation on the go, either as part of a serious course of study or simply a more productive alternative to casual video gaming. "It is a matter of incremental convenience: smartphone apps offer a wide selection of content that is more easily accessible, anytime, anywhere," said Ed Cooke, founder of London-based Memrise, whose language apps are mostly free. "Binge learners tend not to come back," he said. "People who learn a little tend to come back more regularly."The best mobile apps use voice recognition, email reminders and insights from the psychology of mobile games and cognitive science to keep entry-level as well as advanced users coming back for a few minutes of practice each day. Under pressure from new competitors, Rosetta Stone, which popularized language self-learning with CD boxsets selling for$200, has been restructuring to focus more on business and school sales rather than consumers. To catch up in mobile, it bought LiveMocha, a free online learning site, and created Apple and Android phone apps that give away a bit of content for free in a bid to draw intermediate users to commit to longer courses. Virginia-based Rosetta's share price has plunged 77 percent since its stock market flotation in 2009. Recently, it saw its second-quarter revenue fall 10 percent to $51.4 million, with sales at its consumer business dropping 26 percent.
Dropbox’s Wall Street Challenge: Dropbox boasts a valuation in the $10 billion range. Last February the company hired a new CFO, which for many startups is a signal that their IPO moment is coming sooner rather than later. Nobody knows for sure of course, and Dropbox isn’t talking, but if the company does decide to move forward with a flotation, it could face several challenges in spite of its strong market presence. Dropbox could still have trouble persuading a doubtful Wall Street money machine, which has shown little love for cloud companies, that it can overcome several hurdles: For starters, it will need to convince them that the subscription business model with a different reporting methodology is viable. It must defend its hybrid consumer/enterprise approach — and perhaps face questions where it will concentrate its resources moving forward. Finally, the company with its core business in storage and file syncing has to find a way to overcome the commoditization of these services and the race to the bottom with some of the biggest names in the business.
One of Tech’s Best Investors Keeps Passing on Deals Because Valuations Are Too Damn High: Jeremy Levine knows a good deal when he sees one. As a top venture capitalist at Bessemer Venture Partners, he has invested in Pinterest, LinkedIn, Yelp and Shopify well before they reached peak popularity and watched as the last three went public. But over the last 20 months, Levine has led just one new investment, which has yet to be announced. The reason for the pause? Valuations are still just too damn high, he says. “Prices — especially for late stage deals — have been extraordinarily high for a while now and demand flawless execution and a lot of luck,” Levine said in an email following an in-person meeting. “The former is extremely hard to achieve, and the latter is obviously outside anyone’s control. Therefore, I believe a lot of the private deals that have [been] getting done recently are providing very poor risk-adjusted-returns for investors.” “Perhaps the dramatic cool-off in the public markets over the last week will start to change things in the private markets,” he added.
Farewell To Flash: What It Means For Digital Video Publishers: It’s been more than five years since Steve Jobs wrote his infamous “Thoughts on Flash” letter citing the high level of energy consumption, lack of performance on mobile and poor security as the reasons his company’s products would not support Adobe Flash technology. Finally, it appears we’re getting closer to the curtain closing on Flash. Over the years, Flash has become famous for a few less-than flattering features that can all play a role in hindering user experience, including intrusive experiences, increasing page-load times, lowering a site’s search engine optimization (SEO) and security flaws. Despite all these grievances, the digital-video advertising industry has been forced to use Flash because of VPAID (Video Player-Ad Interface Definition), a standard that allows a video ad and a video player to communicate with each other. VPAID provides a way to dynamically swap or customize video-ad creative based on ad decisions, and has long been used for Flash-based video ads on desktops. When you consider the fact that Flash needs to be installed (as opposed to HTML5, which requires no installation), it’s easy to see why in the long term, it didn’t stand a chance. This means that if publishers don’t upgrade their format specification, some or all of their video content may no longer be available for people to view; this will certainly affect viewer loyalty and monetization efforts. For example, Flash video ads served in a desktop Chrome browser will load in a paused state, then the user will have to click the ad for it to play. These ads will still register as impressions. However, it won’t take long for programmatic buyers to scale back their bids on video ad inventory garnering a high number of impressions with no quartiles. Publishers need to urge their buyers to prepare for the upcoming Flash-pocalypse because, despite the publishers‘ level of preparation, if their buyers don’t have the proper HTML5 creative assets, it will impact their ability to transact, having an impact on publisher revenue and the ability to successfully implement advertiser campaigns. The most crucial thing for publishers is going to be ensuring that their advertisers and demand partners (ad networks, ad exchanges and advertisers) are providing and hosting HTML5 ad creatives moving forward. Publishers themselves will also need to migrate their tech stack. Not having a complete HTML5 advertising technology stack can potentially impact their ad revenue as buyer bids will eventually subside for non-compatible inventory.
The ‘Unicorn’ Club, Now Admitting New Members: The $1 billion valuation metric was popularized two years ago by the venture investor Aileen Lee. She found that many of the start-ups that reaped the hugest riches for venture capital investors — Facebook and LinkedIn, for example — often reached a valuation of $1 billion or more while they were privately held. Because of their rarity, Ms. Lee called those companies “unicorns,” after the mythical creatures. Since then, numerous start-ups have attained the $1 billion distinction — and topped it. With investors rushing to bet on the next big thing, the ride-hailing service Uber received a valuation of around $51 billion, while Airbnb, the online room-rental service, is pegged at about $24 billion. And every month, more companies are jumping into the unicorn echelon. To find out which companies might be next to ascend, CB Insights, which tracks venture capital and start-ups, conducted an analysis for The New York Times. CB Insights used a proprietary software tool called Mosaic, which analyzes dozens of factors about a start-up, including the amount of money raised by a company, employee turnover, news and social media mentions, awards, customer growth and partnerships. It also examines the overall health of the industry in which the start-up competes, as well as what can be known about the quality of a company’s investors. CB Insights won a grant from the National Science Foundation to build Mosaic, using machine learning and data science to turn unstructured text into a quantitative tool to measure company health. The CB Insights analysis resulted in a list of 50 companies that cover the globe and span different tech sectors but speak to some of the trends from the current boom. Half of the companies on the list are based in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, the cradle of tech start-ups, but 10 are international, with several hailing from China and India. Ms. Lee, who coined the term unicorn, said there were more $1 billion private companies these days partly because big industries like hotels and taxis were now considered fair game for start-ups. The thing to watch, she said, is whether companies meet the expectations and goals they set when they became unicorns before they burn through the money they raised. “If they don’t do that, they’re in a dangerous position,” she said.
Twitter shares hit an all-time low: Twitter stock dropped below its initial public offering price in intra-day trading Thursday as the company looks for a new chief executive. The social media titan has watched stocks slide for weeks after a disappointing earnings call with analysts last month that highlighted the company's troubles with growth and focus. On the call, interim chief executive and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said that the company would need time to hit "mass market" growth — a message that didn't sit well with investors. The Pew Research Center reported Wednesday that 23 percent of all American adults online use Twitter, but that user growth among U.S. adults has slowed to a halt. The stock closed at $26 per share, down more than 5 percent for the day, and was relatively flat in after-hours trading.
Google, Amazon in fray to buy Tata's India Data centres: Google and Amazon are among those in talks with the Tata Group to buy the data centre business of Tata Communications in a deal expected to fetch about $650-700 million. They are competing with bulge-bracket private equity funds including the Blackstone Group, Carlyle, KKR, Bain Capital and Advent International, who are all looking to buy up to 74% stake in the data centre unit and take control of the business that is spread across 44 locations in India and abroad. Besides India, Tata Communications has data centres in the US, UK and Singapore, with over 1 million sq ft of co-location space, offering managed hosting and storage services. In India, it has facilities in leading metros such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata and Pune, besides some tier-II and tier-III locations. The data centre business addedRs 436 crore to Tata Communications' FY15 revenues and has about 27% EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), the company said in an investor presentation last month after its June quarter earnings.
Salesforce raises full-year revenue forecast again: Salesforce.com reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue and profit, helped by an increase in demand for its Web-based sales and marketing software, and raised its revenue forecast for the full year for the third time. Revenue rose 24 percent to $1.63 billion, beating analysts' average estimate of $1.60 billion, and the company's net loss narrowed to $852,000 in the second quarter from $61.1 million a year earlier. The company's shares rose about 4 percent in extended trading after the world's biggest maker of online sales software also forecast current-quarter revenue and adjusted profit above the average analyst estimates. "... We'll go from being the sixth largest software company in the world to the fourth largest next year," Chief Executive Marc Benioff said on a conference call, adding that the company would only lag Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. Salesforce raised its revenue forecast for the year ending January 2016 to $6.60 billion-$6.63 billion from $6.52 billion-$6.55 billion. San Francisco-based Salesforce has been gaining market share from Oracle and SAP in customer relationship management software that helps companies organize and track sales calls and leads. Salesforce, which provides its services online, with no software directly installed on PCs, leads the global customer relationship management market, which is valued at $23 billion annually, according to tech research firm Gartner.
Global Smartphone Sales Growth Slowed in Second Quarter: The research firm Gartner said worldwide sales of smartphones in the second quarter grew at the slowest pace since 2013 as sales in China declined for the first time. Sales grew 13.5 percent to 330 million units in the second quarter compared with a year earlier. While demand continues to increase in emerging markets, Gartner says overall smartphone sales were mixed. Smartphone sales in China fell 4 percent year-over-year. China accounted for 30 percent of total smartphone sales in the second quarter, but Gartner says its phone market has reached saturation.
HP revenue falls on weak PC sales, lower demand for services: The 76-year-old company, which has struggled to adapt to mobiles and online computing, is splitting into two listed companies later this year, separating its computer and printer businesses from its faster-growing corporate hardware and services operations. HP is nearing the end of a multi-year restructuring under Whitman, who has been cutting costs and focusing on higher-margin sales. The plan includes the elimination of about 55,000 jobs. The decline in global PC sales was exacerbated in the second quarter of 2015 as customers awaited the release of Windows 10 in July. As a result, revenue at HP's personal computer and printer businesses, its largest, fell 11.5 percent in the third quarter ended July 31. Enterprise services division sales dropped 11 percent, while revenue at the enterprise group rose 2 percent. For the full-year ending October, the company said it expected adjusted profit of $3.59-$3.65 per share, largely below the average analyst estimate of $3.64 per share. Total revenue fell 8.1 percent to $25.35 billion in the third quarter, also hurt by a strong dollar.
After Years Of Restraint, Facebook Tries Allowing GIFs In Ads And Page Posts: Facebook refused to fill its site with flashy animated banner ads for a decade. Zuckerberg thought these interrupted the user experience, and could stunt growth. But after reaching near ubiquity and acclimating users to video ads, today the company tells me it’s relaxing its standards and starting to allow businesses to post GIFs as ads and Page posts. Wendy’s and Coca-Cola’s Brazilian brand Kuat are the first businesses with the ability to share them. Wendy’s ad shows a salad being constructed, while Kuat’s is basically the rainbow-shooting poptart meme Nyan Cat with a brand name slapped on. GIFs can’t go in the tiny sidebar ads Facebook is phasing out, only “Boosted” Page posts, which make up most of the ads you see in your feed. The social network started supporting GIFs in user posts starting in May, but hadn’t allowed businesses to try the hip graphic interchange format all the kids are Tumbling over. Facebook tells me “GIFs can be a fun and compelling way to communicate, so we’ve started testing GIF support in posts and boosted posts for a small percentage of Facebook Pages. We will evaluate whether it drives a great experience for people before rolling it out to more Pages.” So basically, if users hate them and they don’t perform well, Facebook will scrap them. But if the eyegrabbing ads and Page posts drive business without annoying the hell out of people, all companies might soon get the option to animate your News Feed. GIFs are the visual equivalent of shouting. You have to really care about the message or you’d prefer they just shut up.
Google Express Plans to Shut Down Its Two Delivery Hubs: Google Express, the search giant’s same-day delivery service, is shutting down its two delivery hubs in San Francisco and Mountain View, Calif., according to sources. The move is part of a broader push within Google to revamp the service, which launched in March 2013, after it failed to make a serious dent in a market crowded with Amazon and a myriad of on-demand startups. The service is not shutting down, but seems to be recalibrating a logistical plan it was testing in California. Express was hatched out of Google’s commerce plans, formed, in part, to hedge against Amazon’s growing foray into product searches. It is now in seven major cities. In most of them, Google delivers goods from retail and shipping partners. When the service arrived in the Bay Area, Google tried out a hub model. Customers would order from Google’s retail partners, and drivers delivered the goods from the two locations on the same day or overnight. Now, Google is changing course. And the change comes after a tumultuous year for the company’s commerce initiatives: It lost the exec atop Express, Tom Fallows, then the exec atop all of commerce, Sameer Samat. After Fallows’s departure, Google shook up the Express leadership multiple times, putting the business development lead for Google Shopping, Brian Elliott, at its helm in July. Rising costs of the drivers and vehicles are likely one rationale. According to multiple sources, Google is trying to curb these by outsourcing its delivery to other on-demand startups and has held initial talks with multiple companies, including Postmates and Flywheel.
Uber Gets Investment From Tata Fund to Expand in India: Tata Capital said a fund it advises will make a “significant investment” in Uber. to help the ride-sharing service expand in India. The investment by Tata Opportunities Fund will allow Uber to benefit from its network in the country, Tata Capital said in an e-mailed statement on Wednesday, without elaborating. Tata Capital is part of the $109 billion coffee-to-cars conglomerate with over 100 group firms. The fund typically invests up to $100 million in its deals, its managing partner Padmanabh Sinha said. Uber in July said it would spend $1 billion to fan out to more Indian cities as the ride-hailing company targets to reach 1 million trips per day in the next six to nine months. Microsoft Corp. is said to have agreed to invest about $100 million in Uber valuing it at about $50 billion.
Taxi app GrabTaxi raises $350 million from CIC, others: Taxi-booking app GrabTaxi said it raised over $350 million from investors including sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation, in the Southeast Asian company's largest ever fundraising round. Other investors include hedge fund Coatue Management LLC and China's mobile car-ride hailing company Didi Kuaidi, GrabTaxi said in a statement, adding that it would use the funds to expand its private vehicle hire and motorbike booking services and invest in technology. Singapore-headquartered GrabTaxi competes with the likes of Uber and Rocket Internet's Easy Taxi in the city-state and some of the other Southeast Asian markets in which it operates.
Hacker's Ashley Madison data dump threatens marriages, reputations: Love lives and reputations may be at risk after the release of customer data from infidelity website Ashley Madison, an unprecedented breach of privacy likely to rattle users' attitudes towards the Internet. Hackers dumped a big cache of data containing millions of email addresses for U.S. government officials, UK civil servants and high-level executives at European and North America corporations late on Tuesday, the latest cyber attack to raise concerns about Internet security and data protection. The hacker attack has been a big blow to Toronto-based assignation website firm Avid Life Media, which owns Ashley Madison and has indefinitely postponed the adultery site's IPO plans. The data dump began to make good on the hackers' threat last month to leak nude photos, sexual fantasies, real names and credit card information for as many as 37 million customers worldwide of Ashley Madison, which uses the slogan: "Life is short. Have an affair." The hackers' move to identify members of the marital cheating website appeared aimed at maximum damage to the company, which also runs websites such as Cougarlife.com and EstablishedMen.com, causing public embarrassment to its members, rather than financial gain.
Chinese Consumers are skipping straight from cash to mobile finance: Financial innovation is bubbling up around the globe, but China is where digital banking, investing, and lending have gone mainstream. Technology companies armed with financial apps are challenging banks and other intermediaries for a market with 1.3 billion people and $7.8 trillion of deposits. Tencent’s WeChat (called Weixin in Chinese), Alibaba’s Alipay arm, and Baidu are leading the way with digital wallets that let consumers manage their money via their phones. Traditional banking in China is balky, backward, and inefficient—creating ample opportunities for nimble tech companies such as Alibaba and Baidu. The huge, state-owned banks do some lending to consumers and private businesses, but they typically prefer making loans to state-owned enterprises that provide implicit government guarantees. For consumers, the government banks offer low interest rates on savings accounts, making new online funds and financial products with higher rates attractive. Regulators have indicated they are open to innovation. For one thing, digital banking leaves a trail that cash doesn’t. And it might help the Chinese government get a clearer snapshot of economic activity.
Mood-based playlists: How Spotify reinvented the playlist: Increasingly, music listeners are shifting away from genre labels like Hip-hop, R&B and Jazz, according to Spotify. What they really want is a set of tunes to fit their mood. It took Spotify a great deal of testing and data-crunching to arrive at that revelation. And it isn't stopping there. It's taking what it's gleaned from millions of users' listening habits to craft a new kind of song entirely: One that intensifies along with your running workout, matching its beats to your precise pace. When you speed up, it speeds up. When you slow down, it does, too. When Spotify began mixing its own playlists and tagging them ("Focus" for people who needed music to work to, or "Dinnertime Acoustic" for unwinding) it noticed a big uptick in interest, particularly when mood-based playlists were displayed right beside a traditional genre, according to Mark Silverstein, Spotify's head of product, tech and policy. Mood-based playlists aren't just different collections of songs; in the case of Spotify's commuting playlists, the company will occasionally mix in news, weather reports, even audio clips of Jimmy Fallon for some comedic diversity. As a result, fewer people began selecting genre playlists, and many more began opting for the mood-based playlists. And that carried over into the playlists people were making for themselves. That prompted Spotify to begin thinking about running more closely. For years, scientists have theorized about a link between music and exercise. One 2007 study suggested that fast, loud music was associated with faster running speeds and an increased heart rate. Another found in 2011 that music helped triathlon runners stave off exhaustion and run nearly 20 percent longer than their peers who ran in silence.
Snapchat’s leaked financials show just how big a bullet Facebook dodged: Snapchat may be the best $3 billion Facebook never spent.: People are all abuzz about Snapchat's financials, which were leaked online Wednesday. If you haven't seen them, the outlook isn't good: Snapchat lost $128 million during the first 11 months of 2014. And it took in just $3 million in revenue over the same period, according to records obtained by Gawker. It's clear whom the leaked numbers hurt the most: chief executive Evan Spiegel and his investors. But if there's a winner in all this, it's Mark Zuckerberg. Snapchat, of course, was the company that famously rebuffed Facebook's offer of a $3 billion acquisition. Spiegel could have walked away with a huge sum of money. Instead, he's managing a struggling business that — almost four years, a big data breach and a Federal Trade Commission settlement later — still lacks a clear road to profitability. There's also nothing particularly surprising about a startup losing money; it would be unreasonable to expect massive profits right out of the gate. But of course, Snapchat has been out of the gate for some time now, and it's part of an ecosystem that's only grown more crowded and less compelling as a representation of The Future. Snapchat is also struggling because it's working in a market that's grown increasingly commoditized. There's an app for everything these days. Tell the average consumer you've come up with a hot new app and they're as likely to roll their eyes as to download it. Snapchat may be valued at $15 billion, but it's also part of a recent explosion in so-called "unicorns" (companies valued at $1 billion or more) that some venture capitalists think is unsustainable. Snapchat may be the best $3 billion Facebook never spent.
Adoption of ad blockers is rising steeply, and could have serious consequences for the online advertising industry: Ad blocking has been around for years, but adoption is now rising steeply, at a pace that some in the ad industry say could prove catastrophic for the economic structure underlying the web. That has spurred a debate about the ethic of ad blocking. Some publishers and advertisers say ad blocking violates the implicit contract that girds the Internet — the idea that in return for free content, we all tolerate a constant barrage of ads.But in the long run, there could be a hidden benefit to blocking ads for advertisers and publishers: Ad blockers could end up saving the ad industry from its worst excesses. If blocking becomes widespread, the ad industry will be pushed to produce ads that are simpler, less invasive and far more transparent about the way they’re handling our data — or risk getting blocked forever if they fail. In a report last week, Adobe and PageFair, an Irish start-up that tracks ad-blocking, estimated that blockers will cost publishers nearly $22 billion in revenue this year. Nearly 200 million people worldwide regularly block ads, the report said, and the number is growing fast, increasing 41 percent globally in the last year. Today ad-blocking is mostly restricted to desktop web browsers. But iOS 9, Apple’s latest mobile operating system, will include support for ad blockers when it becomes available in the fall. Several ad-blocking firms are already creating apps for the new OS; when it’s out, you’ll simply download an ad blocker and no longer have to see ads on the iPhone’s version of Safari and possibly in other apps that open web links. PageFair also sells technology that allows web publishers to determine if users are running blocking software — and then serves them ads anyway, going around the blockers. PageFair’s software, which Mr. Blanchfield said is currently being tested with a number of large websites, circumvents ad blocking by using “low-level networking” technology that he declined to detail in order to stay ahead of ad companies. Showing ads to people who have downloaded ad blockers sounds a little spammy. But in a twist, it may also lead to better ads. Here’s how: PageFair’s canny strategy to mitigate users’ outrage is that it will only show ads that aren’t “intrusive,” Mr. Blanchfield said. That means the ads won’t feature animations, they won’t block content, and they won’t load “trackers” that monitor and report back to some unknown server what you do on a web page.
