Monday, November 17, 2014

• Snapdeal in India claims to be aggressively investing in assisted kiosks (similar news also from Kudo in Indonesia): Snapdeal is planning to set up assisted outlets across over 70,000 rural areas and 65 cities by the end of March 2015 in partnership with FINO PayTech, who has thousands of business correspondents on the ground, especially in rural areas. Under the partnership, Snapdeal.com is trying to expand its access to consumers in the hinterland with an assortment of over 1000 products through assisted kiosks which would be operated by FINO Paytech. This would enable the target segment to shop online. Apart from Dharavi, Varanasi, Valsad (Gujarat), urban villages of Noida, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Jaipur are the targets of the e-commerce player to begin with. The company has already started the pilot project in these places. The products would be on display at the digital kiosks curated on an exclusive page requiring login by FINO agent, who would place an order, collect payment, receive and deliver to people who have no permanent address. “Together we aim to provide innovative, yet simple ways to reach and service those end-consumers who are still not exposed to the benefits of online shopping,” Kunal Bahl, co-founder and CEO Snapdeal.com said in a statement. FINO will assist in sales, payments and delivery of ordered products to customers through its network, he added.

• Google Glass seems to have lost its mojo: Many developers and early Glass users are losing interest in the much-hyped, $1,500 test version of the product: a camera, processor and stamp-sized computer screen mounted to the edge of eyeglass frames. Google Inc itself has pushed back the Glass roll out to the mass market. While Glass may find some specialized, even lucrative, uses in the workplace, its prospects of becoming a consumer hit in the near future are slim, many developers say. Of 16 Glass app makers contacted by Reuters, nine said that they had stopped work on their projects or abandoned them, mostly because of the lack of customers or limitations of the device. Three more have switched to developing for business, leaving behind consumer projects. Google Glass now sells on eBay for as little as half list price.

• Meanwhile, Apple marches on inexorably - (i) links to UnionPay, China's largest bankcard network; (ii) Apple Pay is flirting with AliPay, and (iii) is gaining unprecedented traction in the US: App Store customers in China can now link their UnionPay debit or credit cards to their Apple IDs for purchases, Apple announced today. This is significant for Apple and Chinese consumers because China UnionPay, a bankcard network approved by China’s State Council and the People’s Bank of China, enjoys a virtual monopoly. It has issued more than 4.5 billion cards in China, and is available in all cities, as well as in overseas market. China (which has an estimated 100 million iPhone users) is Apple’s most important growth market; in its recent fourth-quarter earnings report, the company reported that the market generated $29.8 billion, or 16 percent, in net sales in 2014.

• Behavior-tracking app ClassDojo is going mainstream in the US - and attracting critics: ClassDojo is used by at least one teacher in roughly one out of three schools in the United States, according to its developer. The app is among the innovations to emerge from the estimated $7.9 billion education software market aimed at students from prekindergarten through high school. Although there are similar behavior-tracking programs, they are not as popular as ClassDojo. Many teachers say the app helps them automate the task of recording classroom conduct, as well as allowing them to communicate directly with parents. But some parents, teachers and privacy law scholars say that the carrot-and-stick method of classroom discipline is outmoded, and that behavior apps themselves are too subjective, enabling teachers to reward or penalize students for amorphous acts like “disrespect.” They contend that behavior databases could potentially harm students’ reputations by unfairly saddling some with “a problem child” label that could stick with them for years.