Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, February 17

• Snap lowers valuation expectations in highly awaited IPO: Snap Inc, owner of the popular messaging app Snapchat, set a lower-than-expected valuation range on Thursday, amid mounting investor concern over its unproven business model, slowing growth and tight founder control. The company, which filed for an initial public offering earlier this month, was widely expected to be valued at between $20 billion and $25 billion. However it said on Thursday it was targeting a valuation between $19.5 billion and $22.3 billion, ahead of an investor roadshow due to start on Monday in London. The lower valuation range reflected initial investor feedback. Snap wants to ensure there is sufficient demand for shares of the company that it trades up on its first day in public market. Investors have been poring over the filing for Snap's upcoming IPO to assess whether the still-unprofitable company will be the next Facebook, which has figured out how to make money from its social media platform, or if it will be more like Twitter, which is struggling to achieve the same goal.

• Apple Vowed to Revolutionize Television. An Inside Look at Why It Hasn’t: Apple has essentially settled for turning the television set into a giant iPhone: a cluster of apps with a store. "That's not what I signed up for," says one of the people, who requested anonymity to talk freely about internal company matters. "I signed up for revolutionary. We got evolutionary." Gene Munster, who covered Apple for more than a decade as a Piper Jaffray analyst and now runs Loup Ventures, echoes the criticism. "Apple TV begs the question: Why does Apple do hobbies?" he says. "Either do it right or don't do it at all."The Apple TV's history is a study in gradualism. Previewed by Steve Jobs in 2006, the first box was designed simply to stream iTunes video from a Mac to a TV set. The next version, launched in the fall of 2010, let users stream content from the internet. The latest box was announced in September 2015, a few months later than originally scheduled. Widely considered an improvement by consumers and product reviewers, the Apple TV features the App Store, voice control and a glass remote that enables motion-controlled gaming, which for example lets players use the remote like a steering wheel for a car-racing title.  But the latest Apple TV sells for $149, more than twice as much as its predecessor, $60 more than Amazon's Fire TV and $20 more than the priciest Roku. What's more, little about the viewing experience has changed. Apple TV users still have to buy an individual episode via the iTunes Store, pay extra for services like Hulu, or download an app tied to a particular channel and log in with an existing cable subscription. The Apple TV's software is also less ambitious than originally envisioned. The current model features an iPhone-like app grid, but designers had prototyped more novel interfaces. One idea, dubbed "Intentions" internally, put the four tabs in the center of the screen: three for the Apple TV's main content types (video, music, and gaming) and one for everything else. Another idea: letting viewers pull up previews of content by hovering on each icon (a feature currently reserved for apps in the top row). To a certain extent, the Apple TV is handcuffed by its parent's addiction to fat margins. Apple is constitutionally allergic to losing money on a product—even if it can make up the difference by selling content.

• Snapdeal’s cash squeeze adds to funding pressure: Jasper Infotech which runs Snapdeal, had about Rs1,100-1,200 crore cash left in the bank and Rs300-400 crore at its payments unit Freecharge at the end of 2016, making it critical for the company to secure funds immediately, according to official documents and three people familiar with the matter. Snapdeal has gone into cash-conserve mode after talks for a bridge round of funding with existing investor SoftBank were deferred because of differences over valuation, the three people cited above said. Snapdeal is still in talks with at least two other existing investors, the people said, declining to be identified. Snapdeal’s dwindling cash reserves crimp its ability to compete with rivals Flipkart, Amazon and Paytm and also raise questions about how long it can survive without fresh capital.