- Xiaomi Confirms It Has Suspended Sales In India, “open to working with Ericsson to resolve this matter amicably”: Hugo Barra revealed the temporary pause in India, which is triggered by a patent suit brought against the company by Ericsson, via an update on Google+. Initially, Xiaomi told media it had not received a notice from the high court, but that situation has changed now. Xiaomi told TechCrunch yesterday that it is “open to working with Ericsson to resolve this matter amicably” so this situation may yet be remedied quickly and without too much disruption to its sales in India. Indeed, Ericsson has struck recent patent deals with a number of India-based phone makers, and it may be holding out for a similar arrangement with Xiaomi.
- Snapdeal has acquired Wishpicker, a recommendations platform for gift purchases: Snapdeal says this is the fifth acquisition it has made so far. Back in April, the company, whose competitors include Amazon India and Flipkart, announced that it had purchased Doozton. Since folded into Snapdeal’s main site, Dootzon, a fashion products discovery site, was also geared toward matching shoppers with products they are likely to purchase. Other companies Snapdeal has acquired include group buying site Grabbon in 2010; sports retailer esportsbuy.com in 2012; and Shopo.in, a marketplace for handmade items, in 2013.More on the target: Founded in 2013 by IIT Delhi graduates Apurv Bansal and Prateek Rathore, Wishpicker offers users smart gifting options based on different parameters like relationship with the recipient, their age, personality, and various other parameters. Users can also find gift suggestions based on Facebook likes and interests of recipient.
- More India startup action: mobile app dev firm Apps Daily close to $15M in Series C funding, and big data firm Qubole raises $13M Series B funding: Qubole offers a platform to empower developers and non-developers to access Big Data generated by their companies to gain insights at a cost-effective rate. Its flagship product, QDS, runs on Hadoop infrastructure where users can analyse and collaborate with their company’s data. QDS helps IT organisations use cloud infrastructure (Google Compute, Amazon Web Services or Azure) to access data while eliminating expenditures associated with maintaining hardware. Qubole’s clients include Pinterest, Quora, MediaMath, TubeMogul, Answers.com, Videoplaza and Pubmatic; Mobile app development firm Apps Daily in advanced talks to raise $15M in Series C funding. Apps Daily develops and markets mobile apps across India and abroad. The company also focuses on developing and distributing software for mobile phones. Unlike traditional companies that simply launch apps on Google Play or iTunes app stores, Apps Daily follows a unique model of selling and distributing its own and third-party products through retail outlets across India. The products are sold under the brand name ‘daily’.
- Google launches offline viewing of YouTube videos in India, Indonesia, or the Philippines: This new feature will allow users to download a movie over wi-fi at home, and then watch it offline on a mobile device during the long commute to work, or watch their favorite videos over and over again for up to 48 hours after downloading them just once – without having to stream it repeatedly. They simply have to sign in, pick the video they want to watch later, and tap the offline button to download it. Besides India, the feature is available on Android devices in Indonesia and the Philippines too.
- Amazon and Google spare on app stores - brings to mind this post by Ben Evans on the future of Android: In October, we spotted that Amazon had quietly launched a hidden and functional app store within its main Android application which was available for download on Google Play. Now, according to new reports from varying sources, Amazon’s flagship application’s listing is no longer available via search from within Google Play, though its direct link is still live. Additionally, there’s now a newly launched application called Amazon Shopping which looks much like the original application, but no longer includes the Appstore section. The change was first spotted by German site Caschys Blog who also received a statement from Amazon which claims that this is related to a September update that brought Amazon’s Prime Instant Video to Android users. That update involved having users update to or install the newest version of the main Amazon app, then download the Amazon Instant Video Player app afterwards, in order to watch Prime Instant Video on their Android devices.
