Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, January 17

• Samsung Succession in Disarray as Lee Criminal Case Advances: The long-orchestrated plan to cement Jay Y. Lee’s position atop Samsung Group may put him in jail instead, raising questions about who would step in to run South Korea’s biggest conglomerate in the aftermath. Prosecutors are seeking Lee’s arrest on allegations including bribery and embezzlement, which if proven could prompt him to relinquish duties at the family business. Potential replacements include executives running key divisions of the dominant electronics business, as well as a sister -- hotel executive Lee Boo-jin. While a long shot, her anointment would mark a seismic shift in the way the nation’s patriarchal empires are run.Even if the accusations against him involving South Korea’s president are proven in court, it’s still possible Lee could return to the company later or even call the shots from behind bars, just as executives from Hyundai Motor Co. and SK Group have done. “Chaebol executives have a history of managing from the jail, whether it be via lawyers or secretaries visiting them,” said Lee Kyung-mook, a professor at Seoul National University’s Graduate School of Business. Lee’s potential arrest in the scandal surrounding President Park Geun-hye is another calamity for the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics Co., the largest maker of mobile devices. Last year, the company pulled its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone off the shelves because some devices burst into flames. The debacle cost Suwon-based Samsung an estimated $6 billion and a competitive advantage before Apple Inc. released its iPhone 7 models. Lee, 48, has had trouble matching the success of his father, Lee Kun-hee, who transformed Samsung Electronics from a copycat appliance maker into a global powerhouse in TVs, smartphones and memory chips. The elder Lee -- South Korea’s richest man -- suffered a crippling heart attack in May 2014, and Samsung shares fell that year and the next before recovering in 2016.

• China's Baidu opens augmented reality lab to boost waning profits: Chinese search engine Baidu Inc on Monday launched an augmented reality (AR) lab in Beijing as part of a $200 million effort to revitalize the company's shrinking profits with cutting edge technology. The lab, which currently employs 55 people, will initially aim to drive revenue through AR marketing, though will later explore healthcare and education. Popularised in 2016 by Nintendo Co Ltd's Pokemon Go game, augmented reality involves rendering virtual images over real life settings viewed on a smartphone, headset or other device. In marketing, the software can be used to animate a product or a branded space. Baidu's AR launch comes as the company gears up to report full-year earnings next month. It has forecast a revenue drop of around 4.6 percent as it grapples with the aftermath of new government curbs on medical advertising. Those curbs have slashed into the profits of its core search business and saw ad customers drop 16 percent in the quarter ended in September.