Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, January 10

• Parrot is laying off a third of its drone division: Drone makers are having a tough time competing with China’s DJI. Parrot, the French drone maker, announced today it is planning to lay off one-third of its drone-related workforce — about 290 employees — after poor performance in its fourth quarter caused it to miss sales estimates by 15 percent. Specifically, Parrot said margins are so low in the consumer drone business that it wouldn’t be able to generate “profitable growth ... over the medium and long term.”

• Why Flipkart has turned to Kalyan Krishnamurthy: New CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy’s main objective will be to make the budding Flipkart turnaround last. On Monday, Flipkart said Krishnamurthy, who was parachuted to the company for a second spell only last June, will replace Binny Bansal as chief executive officer (CEO) of Flipkart, exactly one year after Binny had replaced Sachin. Binny will become Flipkart group CEO. Ananth Narayanan, CEO of Flipkart’s fashion units Myntra and Jabong, and Sameer Nigam, CEO of Flipkart’s payment unit PhonePe, will continue reporting to Binny. Krishnamurthy will now control all of Flipkart and report to Binny. Krishnamurthy’s elevation marks a major landmark for the start-up ecosystem: he has become the first so-called professional CEO at a large Indian start-up.

• Ten years after the iPhone, Apple is still looking for something to top it: As Apple celebrates 10 years since the introduction of the iPhone, investors and consumers alike are impatiently waiting for Apple’s next big hit. But it turns out topping the iPhone is no easy task. After all, Apple has sold a billion of the suckers and, in the process, redefined mobile computing and became the world’s most valuable company. The 2007 debut of the iPhone showed Apple at its best — entering a new category and completely changing the rules of the game. Apple did so with the iPod in 2001 and again a few years later with the iTunes Music Store. But, as revolutionary as those products were, Apple wasn’t alone in seeing those opportunities — it just had a far better answer than anyone else. When the iPod debuted, there were other MP3 players on the market, even others with a hard drive — they were just big and clunky. Similarly, others tried to sell music before and after iTunes, but Apple’s simplicity won the day. Even with the iPhone, plenty of people saw the collision of the phone, internet and iPod coming, but Apple was alone in its vision of how that combination should work. For its next act, though, it is highly likely the company will have to go further afield. Whether it’s a car or something in digital health or augmented reality, it is clear that Apple will have to acquire at least as many outside skills as those it already has.