Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, November 13

• Cisco quarterly forecast misses expectations, shares down 5%: Network equipment maker Cisco forecast adjusted profit and revenue growth for the second quarter below analysts' estimates, citing a slowdown in order growth and weakness in its enterprise business outside the United States. Shares of Cisco, considered a bellwether for the performance of the broader network gear industry, fell 5 percent to $26.41 in extended trading on Thursday. Revenue rose 3.6 percent to $12.68 billion, while analysts were expecting $12.65 billion. Net income rose 33 percent to $2.43 billion, or 48 cents per share, in the first quarter ended October 24. Needham & Co analyst Alex Henderson attributed Cisco's disappointing forecast to its exposure to emerging markets. "It has a much higher percentage exposure to those emerging markets than most companies," Henderson said. Cisco is beefing up its enterprise and wireless security businesses to counter lower spending by telecom carriers, its traditional customers, and nimbler rivals who are quickly grabbing market share through their software-focused networking products. In August, Cisco teamed up with Apple to improve the performance of iPads and iPhones on its network.

• Uber Signs Digital Mapping Deal With TomTom: Uber, the ride-hailing service, agreed on Thursday to use digital maps provided by the Dutch technology company TomTom in its smartphone applications. The move is the latest foray into digital mapping for Uber, which had offered to buy Nokia’s mapping business for around $3 billion early this year but lost out on the deal to a consortium of German automakers. Uber, which is increasingly using digital maps to run its fast-expanding global operation, has also acquired a portion of Microsoft’s map technology and hired a number of engineers from Microsoft’s mapping team. As part of the latest deal, Uber will license TomTom’s mapping and traffic management services in the more than 300 cities where it operates. Uber did not say how much it would pay for the licensing rights. The agreement represents a lift for TomTom, which also provides the core mapping services used in Apple’s Maps app, as well as in its own mapping products. TomTom has faced stiff competition from the likes of Google Maps and Nokia’s former mapping unit, called Here, which is now owned by Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler. Both of those competitors have greater financial resources to invest in their mapping services, though analysts said the Dutch company could benefit as people who do not want to rely on Google or the German carmakers look for alternatives. That appears to be the case with Uber, which has shown increased interest in developing its own mapping operations despite maintaining close ties to Google. In February, for instance, Uber announced plans to open a research and development center in Pittsburgh, where the company said it would study autonomous cars.

• Facebook Is Now Selling Virtual Reality-Like Video Ads: Facebook will start publishing more 360-degree video content into your News Feed — and it’s also going to start including 360-degree video ads. You don’t need a virtual reality headset to watch these videos, but they simulate what it’s like to look anywhere in a scene. Facebook first launched 360-degree video in News Feed back in September — you can see how it works down below — and now it’s bringing that functionality to iOS devices and opening it up to advertisers for the first time. It’s also creating tools to make it easier for people to share 360-degree content to their profiles. It added a resource hub so people can learn more about how to upload 360-degree videos, and it’s partnering with camera manufacturers like Theta and Giroptic to add “publish to Facebook” features directly into the camera. It also poached three Microsoft researchers last month to handle this very challenge — to get people sharing more VR-like content to Facebook.

• Apple is working on a person-to-person payments service that may give iPhone owners another reason to use their Apple Wallets. The company is in talks with banks about the new service, which would let people use their smartphones to send money to one another as easily as they send messages, according to a person with knowledge of the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The service, which could be ready as soon as next year, would compete with PayPal’s peer-to-peer payments app Venmo, and Square’s Square Cash. Apple started Apple Pay, a mobile payments service, in October 2014. This summer it combined payments with Passbook, an app that stored digital tickets and airline boarding passes, as the rebranded product Wallet. Apple has said that it wants a bigger slice of the payments industry. Jennifer Bailey, vice president of Apple Pay, said at the company’s annual developer conference in June that Apple’s goal was “replacing the wallet.” Peer-to-peer payment services, which can foster consumer loyalty, are growing. This year, users of Facebook Messenger were offered a payment service akin to one that users of China’s popular messaging app WeChat use to send payments to friends. Google has also experimented with payments in its messaging service. Banks are trying to create peer-to-peer payment products within their own mobile banking apps using a bank-owned digital payments network called clearXchange, which covers about 80 percent of all of the banks. And Square Cash has processed more than $1 billion in money transfers since the peer-to-peer program was introduced about two years ago, according to Square’s recently filed prospectus for its initial public offering. Venmo, the money transfer app owned by PayPal and popular among younger users, processed nearly $2.4 billion in 2014. To date, few of these efforts are direct moneymakers for the companies. Square Cash and Venmo are free to use when linked to a customer’s checking account, and consumers are charged only a small fee when using a credit card. For companies like Apple and Facebook, peer-to-peer payments are a way to involve customers more deeply with their products and to encourage them to leave their wallets at home.

• Amazon might export delivery model from India: E-commerce giant Amazon.com is taking lessons learnt from its daily battles with India's choked roads and cramped cities to some of its largest developed markets, exporting a model of cheaper deliveries and reduced warehousing costs. Online shopping is booming in India, where millions of consumers are newly able to access the Internet thanks to cheap smartphones. For Amazon, it is already the largest contributor of new customers outside the United States. More than two years on from its arrival in India, Amazon says it is now ready to apply some of the innovations applied here to markets including the United States, Mexico and Brazil. Britain, for example, could get a delivery service called Easy Ship, where orders are picked up by Amazon's crew directly from sellers, cutting out the time and cost of sending goods to a warehouse and the need for more space. Launched in India in 2014, Easy Ship, for example, cuts out costs of storing, packing and separately shipping goods. "This probably cuts your overall transportation cost at least by half," said Samuel Thomas, Amazon India's director of transportation, adding that it trains sellers to provide the service, now used by 30,000, or more than 75 percent of them. Another service introduced in India in May and considered for export to other markets, Seller Flex, allows sellers to have the flexibility to store goods and ship them to customers on their own, instead of routing them through Amazon. Amazon provides technology and training to ensure goods are packed, labeled and delivered as the company would. While Amazon in developed markets may not want to tweak its model for best selling goods, analysts said, it could consider the made-in-India seller solution to cut down on warehousing and delivery costs for thousands of "non core" products which are offered, but infrequently bought.