- SoftBank is bidding to buy ARM for $32 billion — because everything’s a computer now: apan’s SoftBank is buying U.K.-based chip design firm ARM Holdings for about $32 billion, according to the FT. Why? Everything is a computer now, and ARM has been one of the winners of the mobile revolution. ARM designs chips — but doesn’t actually make them — for a huge variety of devices. It dominates the market for smartphones — Apple is a big client, as is Samsung — and its chips shows up in other consumer gadgets, as well as more-industrial-like devices and “internet of things” sensors. The number of chips containing ARM processors reached almost 15 billion in 2015, up from about 6 billion in 2010.The move is a big one for SoftBank CEO Masa Son after his would-be successor, former Google executive Nikesh Arora, stepped away from the company last month. (Talks presumably started while Arora was still there.) One key question is whether other firms will let SoftBank purchase ARM or if there will be a bidding war. Apple, arguably ARM’s most important client, and Intel, which lost the mobile chip war to ARM, are both potential buyers.
- ATMs Spit Out Cash Without Cards as Smartphone Apps Take Over: Forgot your bank card at home? No worries. Many ATMs will soon dispense cash with help from a smartphone and banking app. A growing number of banks are letting consumers arrange withdrawals via their mobile app and pick up the cash at a nearby automated teller machine. Customers authenticate the transaction by scanning a QR code with their phone, entering a one-time security code or tapping their device on the machine. The idea is to help customers who have forgotten their cards or worry about thieves stealing their card data via ATMs. While so-called cardless cash access is only available at about 2,000 of the half a million or so U.S. ATMs in use today, it’s expanding rapidly and will be at as many as 95,000 machines by year end, according to payments researcher Crone Consulting LLC. JPMorgan Chase & Co. plans to roll out the feature later this year. Bank of America Corp.said it will extend the technology to 5,000 ATMs by year end. And Wells Fargo & Co. is letting some users of mobile wallets like Apple Pay authenticate through their phone, and expects more than 40 percent of its ATMs to be enabled for this technology by year end. In possibly the largest deployment to date, Payment Alliance International, the nation’s largest closely held provider of ATM processing and maintenance services, plans to announce Friday that it will start rolling out the technology in August or September, and plans to have cardless cash access at 25,000 machines in stores and gas stations by the end of 2017.The technology has cut transaction times at ATMs to about 10 seconds from 45 seconds, he said, adding that more than 8 percent of the bank’s mobile customers use the service. Smartphone-based ATM transactions have also helped combat skimming, where criminals insert a device in an ATM that steals customers’ credentials and lets them make withdrawals later. Last year, the number of ATMs compromised by criminals in the U.S. jumped 546 percent, according to FICO Card Alert Service. Upgrading an ATM with software for such smartphone-based withdrawals cost about $800, Ormseth said.
- Artificial Intelligence Swarms Silicon Valley on Wings and Wheels: For more than a decade, Silicon Valley’s technology investors and entrepreneurs obsessed over social media and mobile apps that helped people do things like find new friends, fetch a ride home or crowdsource a review of a product or a movie. Now Silicon Valley has found its next shiny new thing. And it does not have a “Like” button. The new era in Silicon Valley centers on artificial intelligenceand robots, a transformation that many believe will have a payoff on the scale of the personal computing industry or the commercial internet, two previous generations that spread computing globally. Computers have begun to speak, listen and see, as well as sprout legs, wings and wheels to move unfettered in the world. The shift was evident in a Lowe’s home improvement store here this month, when a prototype inventory checker developed by Bossa Nova Robotics silently glided through the aisles using computer vision to automatically perform a task that humans have done manually for centuries. The robot, which was skilled enough to autonomously move out of the way of shoppers and avoid unexpected obstacles in the aisles, alerted people to its presence with soft birdsong chirps. Gliding down the middle of an aisle at a leisurely pace, it can recognize bar codes on shelves, and it uses a laser to detect which items are out of stock.
- Success of Pokemon GO adds impetus for change at Nintendo: The phenomenal success of Pokemon GO and the surge in Nintendo Co's (7974.T) market value by $17 billion in just over a week has been seized upon by one of its most vocal investors to press for a change of strategy at the company. Until Pokemon GO, a mobile game, was launched just over a week ago, Nintendo had taken every opportunity to say its main focus was still gaming consoles, and games for smartphones were just a means to lure more people to them. But the success of Pokemon GO - unforseen even by its creators - has shown the potential for augmented reality and for Nintendo to capitalize on a line-up of popular characters ranging from Zelda to Super Mario. Seth Fischer, founder and chief investment officer at Oasis Management, is one of Asia's best known hedge fund managers and has long been a small but loud shareholder. Encouraged by the success of mobile games like "Candy Crush", he has campaigned for years for the Japanese console maker to develop and sell games for platforms run by Apple and Google. "I hope they will now understand the power of smartphones," Fischer told Reuters. "And as a result, I hope this means there is a whole change in strategy." "My next focus with Nintendo is for them to focus on monetizing the rest of their 4,000 patents for mobile gaming, multi-player gaming, et cetera. I think they could be making 30 to 60 billion yen ($290 million to $570 million) annually from licensing."
