Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, May 11

• Amazon and YouTube get ready to rumble over online video:  Amazon is moving into the space long held by YouTube, announcing on Tuesday thelaunch of a new platform that allows anyone to post original content. Called "Amazon Video Direct," the site offers creators a way to make money in a variety of ways, including royalties on videos streamed by paying Amazon Prime members, revenue shares for videos rented or purchased, ad impressions for free-to-watch videos, and any combination of these models. The new platform places Amazon in direct competition with Google's YouTube, the firm leader in the video upload space that counts 1 billion users. YouTube has its own revenue sharing model for its top creators. Starting in 2007, it launched its Partners Program, which gave popular content creators a cut of the ad revenue earned from views to their pages. But there has been controversy in connection with the cut that YouTube takes, which is 45% of the revenue, and the site does not offer to cover any video creation costs, leading some YouTube creators to speak out about comparatively unfair profits. Amazon has not yet detailed what percentage of revenue creators will get with the Video Direct service. But it is offering a pay-to-subscribe option direct to each individual channel, similar to Twitch, which allows users to “follow” specific content creators for a fee. The owner of the channel would make a percentage of the profit from those subscriptions. Amazon will also pay out $1 million as a bonus among the creators of the top 100 videos viewed by Prime members each month.

• Three More Signs Smartphone Downturn Is Going From Bad to Worse: Three suppliers that seldom command much attention, working behind the scenes to make devices sold under the brands of better-known customers, put out back-to-back earnings reports Tuesday. They spell trouble ahead for smartphone makers and other companies that once thrived on mobile mania. Pegatron Corp., which assembles iPhones, missed profit expectations and said April sales dived 16 percent. Minebea Co., which makes LED lights for mobiles, lagged its own forecasts for revenue and earnings. Japan Display Inc., which supplies screens to Apple and others, said profit has deteriorated so rapidly it will lose money for the fiscal year and suspend a promised dividend. Adding to the gloom, Lenovo Group Ltd. tumbled to a four-year low as analysts warned of rising competition. Pegatron and its peers are merely the latest in a string of ill omens for a market facing its worst pace of expansion since Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007. Much of the gloom centers on China, the phenomenal growth engine that’s now headed for an epicshakeout. Smartphones are no longer a novelty and most domestic brands target the mid- and low-price ranges, where buyers don’t upgrade as frequently as those for high-end Apple and Samsung phones.

• WhatsApp launches desktop apps for Mac and Windows: WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned messaging service that claims a billion users, has launched desktop clients for Mac and Windows. The release comes about 15 months after WhatsApp released its first web app. People who have already been using WhatsApp on their web browsers will find that software isn’t significantly different. The company said in an announcement “our desktop app is simply an extension of your phone,” with all messages synced between devices. WhatsApp’s success in countries like India, Brazil, and South Africa is of course driven by the high penetration of smartphones in those markets, but giving power users–including people who rely on WhatsApp for work communications–desktop options helps it competes against other messaging services, like iMessenger, WeChat, and Skype. WhatsApp is currently testing out B2C accounts, which would give it a new revenue source after dropping its 99 cent annual subscription fee.