Daily Tech Snippet: Friday February 27

• Google story#1: Finally, Google will test ads on the Google Play Store: More coverage here and here : Google Inc. plans to show search ads targeting customers who use its application and media store for Android devices under a pilot program, as the company looks for new ways to generate revenue from mobile devices. In the next few weeks, Google will let application developers buy advertising spots that consumers can see when they search for software in the Google Play store, Michael Siliski, a product management director, said in a blog post Thursday. So, a query for coupon or travel options in the marketplace may show a sponsored result at the top of the query page, the Mountain View, California-based company said. Google, grappling with competition from Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc., is looking for new ways to boost interest from businesses in advertising on wireless devices, where prices for promotions often are less than they are on desktops. The company’s share of the mobile ad market dropped to 41 percent last year from 46 percent in 2013, according to recent research by EMarketer Inc. “We’ve seen how search ads shown next to organic search results on Google.com can significantly improve content discovery for users and advertisers, both large and small,” Siliski said. “Search ads on Google Play will enable developers to drive more awareness of their apps and provide consumers new ways to discover apps that they otherwise might have missed.” Google, the world’s biggest Internet services company, is looking to expand its mobile ad presence as users favor applications such as those from Priceline Group Inc.’s Kayak on handheld devices, which bypass browser-based ads. The new service aims to bolster its appeal to developers that are looking for new ways to attract new consumers. Smartphones using Android dominate the global market with more than 80 percent of the share in 2014, according to IDC. Separately, the company also announced today it has paid out more than $7 billion to developers of games and apps on Google Play in the past year.

• Quantity and value of data is an overlooked benefit to delaying an IPO: It’s taking longer for startups to get to IPO, but that’s not necessarily bad news for investors in private companies. Why? Because startups today aren’t just valuable for their future exit potential, but for the proprietary data they produce while still private. Market statistics clearly show companies are staying private longer. The average time to IPO has doubled to nine years today from four in 1999, and the median amount raised prior to IPO has increased steadily from $48 million in 2008 to $101 million in 2013. Of the 100 largest VC rounds in history, 90 have occurred in the last five years. There are several reasons startups are staying private longer, including volatile public markets, healthy secondary markets, and a preference by some for mega-M&As. Whatever the reason startups don’t seek IPOs early, there is a real and often overlooked benefit to investors when startups stay private longer – the value of their data.

• Google story#2: Google moifies Search algorithm to increase weight of mobile-friendliness, expand indexing of app deep links: Google today announced two notable changes that will affect the rankings of search results for users accessing Google search on mobile devices. It will now take into consideration a site’s mobile-friendliness as one of its ranking signals, and information from indexed mobile applications will also begin to influence ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed on their smartphone. “As more people use mobile devices to access the internet, our algorithms have to adapt to these usage patterns,” explains Google in its announcement. The changes follow a number of previous efforts Google has made to improve its search results for mobile users. In 2013, for example, it rolled out ranking changes that would affect sites that were misconfigured for smartphone users, including those frustrating situations where a specific URL would redirect all smartphone users to the website’s mobile homepage instead of their preferred destination. This was common among news sites, in particular, as users would often click a link to read a certain story and would end up landing on the site’s main webpage, the story nowhere to be found. Last summer, meanwhile, Google began flagging sites that wouldn’t display on mobile devices due to the technology they used – like those built with Adobe Flash, which meant they wouldn’t display on iOS devices or Android 4.1 and higher. And in November, Google began adding a “mobile-friendly” label to its search results accessed on mobile devices to indicate they would display well on your smartphone’s small screen, after first testing “warning labels” earlier in the year. It noted at the time it was also testing the use of the mobile-friendly criteria as a ranking signal. In a blog post detailing the changes, the company points website owners to a number of resources that can help them prepare for this shift, including its guide to mobile-friendly sites, its Mobile-Friendly Testing tool, and its Mobile Usability Report. In addition, the company also said it will begin taking advantage of its efforts with deep-linking technology to begin to surface information from mobile apps higher in its search results. Deep links, for those unfamiliar, point to specific pages within mobile applications themselves. That means developers who implement these links in their apps allow Google to index their apps in a similar way as it does websites today.

• The future of health care is a dongle attached to your smartphone: app-based diagnostics are taking off The latest development in this new direct-to-consumer health model is a new breakthrough from a team of biomedical engineering researchers at Columbia University in New York City that makes it possible to test for both HIV and syphilis in 15 minutes after hooking a plastic dongle into your smartphone’s headphone jack. You simply insert a pinprick of blood onto a disposable plastic collector, connect the plastic collector to a microfluidic chip used to analyze the sample and insert the chip with the blood sample into the dongle. Once you’ve logged into an app, your smartphone can start to determine the presence of HIV or syphilis in your blood and display the results on your smartphone’s screen 15 minutes later. More than its ease of use, the cost factor of the dongle is what makes it possible to speculate that this type of smartphone diagnostics could one day lead to a new direct-to-consumer model for health care. The equipment needed to perform a laboratory-quality HIV test can cost upwards of $18,450 apiece. Contrast that to the cost of a cheap plastic dongle, which costs an estimated $34 to make. That makes it possible to imagine a future where tests are faster, simpler and cheaper than anything available today. What makes the lab-on-a-smartphone so innovative is that, even though you’re significantly reducing cost, you’re not sacrificing power. The results delivered by the new device suggest that a full laboratory-quality immunoassay can be run on a smartphone accessory. Moreover, in a small field study in Rwanda, the team of researchers found that patient preference for the dongle was 97 percent compared to laboratory-based test

• Why the U.S. Has Fallen Behind in Internet Speed and Affordability: Downloading a high-definition movie takes about seven seconds in Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Zurich, Bucharest and Paris, and people pay as little as $30 a month for that connection. In Los Angeles, New York and Washington, downloading the same movie takes 1.4 minutes for people with the fastest Internet available, and they pay $300 a month for the privilege, according to The Cost of Connectivity, a report published Thursday by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. The report compares Internet access in big American cities with access in Europe and Asia. Some surprising smaller American cities — Chattanooga, Tenn.; Kansas City (in both Kansas and Missouri); Lafayette, La.; and Bristol, Va. — tied for speed with the biggest cities abroad. In each, the high-speed Internet provider is not one of the big cable or phone companies that provide Internet to most of the United States, but a city-run network or start-up service. The reason the United States lags many countries in both speed and affordability, according to people who study the issue, has nothing to do with technology. Instead, it is an economic policy problem — the lack of competition in the broadband industry. “It’s just very simple economics,” said Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School who studies antitrust and communications and was an adviser to the Federal Trade Commission. “The average market has one or two serious Internet providers, and they set their prices at monopoly or duopoly pricing.”

• India Startup Action: Five startups showcased at Techcircle E-commerce Forum 2015: Pumpkart.com: It is an online store for agricultural and domestic pumps. It offers a variety of pumps that include basement toilet pumps, booster pumps, car cleaning pumps, drainage pumps, hydropneumatic pumps, borewell pumps, rainwater pumps, waste water pumps, monoblock pumps, high pressure pumps, solar pumps etc. Crunch Commerce: It extends a layer of m-commerce tools to traditional e-commerce backend. Its flagship product is Crunch Adaptive, a mobile-web platform which works across mobile devices and brings an app like experience in mobile web browser. NGA Technologies Pvt Ltd: It has developed AUTOnCAB, an Android/iOS based mobile application which provides on demand one tap hailing of autorickshaws. The app also calculates distance/fare for a ride. It has the ability to monitor all drivers and rides in real time. Voconow Enterprises: Voconow’s mobile ad-tech product makes static print ads interactive and transactional and transforms them into a sales channel and a revenue centre. It connects the offline print media to the online digital media. In that sense, it operates at the intersection of print and digital. Retail Labs: It has developed Getnow.at which seeks to change how people shop in India by bringing local shopping online. Consumers can order products from stores in their city with guaranteed delivery in six hours. Local stores list their products on our marketplace and the firm handles distribution for them.

• Google story#3: Google Acquires Mobile Startup That Manages Facebook Ads: Google Inc. agreed to acquire Red Hot Labs Inc., a mobile startup that helps companies manage advertising on rival Facebook Inc., bolstering its marketing tools on wireless devices. Red Hot Labs, which provides the Toro service for application developers, will join the mobile ads team at Google, the search giant said, declining to disclose terms of the deal. San Francisco-based Red Hot Labs helps software makers boost their user numbers through Facebook, owner of the world’s largest social-networking service. “With greater resources and distribution now available at our disposal, we’re excited to join Google and continue our mission of making the lives of app developers easier,” the start-up said on its website. Google, expanding beyond its desktop-based tools, is investing in new ways to help companies market on smartphones and tablets as users increasingly access digital services via wireless devices. The Mountain View, California-based company last month reported fourth-quarter sales and profit that missed estimates as its advertising business faced more competition on mobile gadgets.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday February 26

• Apple suffers shock loss in gaming patent infringement suit, ordered to pay $533M to small Texas firm; will appeal: (more coverage here and here)Apple Inc. was told to pay $532.9 million after a federal jury said the company’s iTunes software used a Texas company’s patented inventions without permission. Closely held Smartflash LLC, which claimed that Apple infringed three patents, was seeking $852 million in damages, while Apple said it was worth $4.5 million at most. A federal jury in Tyler, Texas, where Smartflash is based, on Tuesday rejected Apple’s arguments that it didn’t use the inventions and that the patents were invalid. The dispute is over digital rights management and inventions related to data storage and managing access through payment systems. Smartflash claimed that iTunes used the inventions in applications such as Game Circus LLC’s Coin Dozer and 4 Pics 1 Movie. Apple pledged to appeal. “Smartflash makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no U.S. presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented,” said Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman. “We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system.” In asking for $852 million, Smartflash argued it was entitled to a percentage of sales of Apple’s devices, including the iPhone, iPad and Mac computers, that were used to access iTunes. It claimed that Apple had intentionally infringed the patents, in part because one of its executives had been given a briefing on the technology more than a decade ago. “Apple doesn’t respect Smartflash’s inventions,” the company’s lawyer, John Ward of Ward & Smith in Longview, Texas, told the jury. “Not a single witness could be bothered with reviewing the patent.”

• China's state procurement agency pushes to buy local; has dropped several global brands from approved lists - Cisco, McAfee and Citrix worst hit: China has dropped some of the world's leading technology brands from its approved state purchase lists, while approving thousands more locally made products, in what some say is a response to revelations of widespread Western cybersurveillance. Others put the shift down to a protectionist impulse to shield China's domestic technology industry from competition. Chief casualty is U.S. network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O), which in 2012 counted 60 products on the Central Government Procurement Center's (CGPC) list, but by late 2014 had none, a Reuters analysis of official data shows. Smartphone and PC maker Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has also been dropped over the period, along with Intel Corp's (INTC.O) security software firm McAfee and network and server software firm Citrix Systems (CTXS.O). The number of products on the list, which covers regular spending by central ministries, jumped by more than 2,000 in two years to just under 5,000, but the increase is almost entirely due to local makers. The number of approved foreign tech brands fell by a third, while less than half of those with security-related products survived the cull. An official at the procurement agency said there were many reasons why local makers might be preferred, including sheer weight of numbers and the fact that domestic security technology firms offered more product guarantees than overseas rivals.

• Salesforce stock up 12%, at all-time high after strong earnings: 2014 revenue $5.3B, +32% Y/Y: Salesforce.com Inc. raised its revenue forecast for fiscal 2016, thanks to Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff’s push into new businesses and bigger deals with long-standing customers. Sales will be $6.48 billion to $6.52 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday, up from its prior prediction for $6.45 billion to $6.5 billion. Analysts had projected $6.5 billion, according to the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Billings rose 32 percent to $2.54 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended Jan. 31, exceeding analysts’ average projection for 25 percent. Salesforce’s expansion into data analytics, corporate social networks and marketing services is starting to deliver results, with sales in the company’s Marketing and Salesforce1 Platform divisions up from prior quarters. President Keith Block, who joined the company in mid-2013, has been leading the push to generate new revenue from large companies, building on Salesforce’s position as the largest maker of customer-management software. The shares of Salesforce rose as much as 12 percent in extended trading. The stock advanced 1.6 percent to $62.90 at the close in New York, leaving it up 6.1 percent this year, compared with a 2.7 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Salesforce’s fourth-quarter net loss narrowed to $65.8 million, or 10 cents a share, from a loss of $116.6 million, or 19 cents, a year earlier. Profit excluding some costs was 14 cents and sales for the period rose 26 percent to $1.44 billion, with both results matching analysts’ predictions. For the just-ended fiscal year, revenue rose 32 percent to $5.37 billion, the third straight period of slowing growth as the business matures.Today after the bell, Salesforce reported $1.44 billion in fourth quarter revenue, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.14. Both were dead in-line with market expectations. The company’s shares are up more than 6 percent in after-hours trading. The company is currently trading at an all-time high. Tomorrow morning should be a watershed moment for the SaaS firm. Is strong guidance pushing Salesforce higher? To a certain extent. The company raised its guidance, but only to levels that match market demands. Salesforce expects $1.48 billion to $1.50 billion in current-quarter revenue. The market expects the company to post $1.5 billion, so, both teams are mostly in agreement. It’s the same story when it comes to the company’s fiscal 2016 (current calendar year), with the company anticipating $6.47 billion to $6.52 billion in top line. The market? $6.5 billion.

• Buggy Bluetooth and unreliable voice recognition systems are now top drivers of car-buyer dissatisfaction, JD Power survey reveals: As communications systems proliferate in cars, they are becoming the biggest source of aggravation for owners, according to a study by the market research firm J.D. Power. From buggy Bluetooth systems to voice recognition systems that do not recognize voices, the problems with in-car computer systems have surpassed excessive wind noise as the most-cited issue. Of owners who had problems with their Bluetooth systems, 55 percent said their vehicle would not recognize their phone and 31 percent said the phone would not automatically connect when they entered the vehicle. The No. 2 problem was voice recognition systems misinterpreting commands. Effective voice recognition is seen as a critical function in cars if consumers are to be discouraged from distracted driving. Google and Apple are poised to enter the market widely, with new dashboard computer systems that will allow consumers to use their smartphones. The study also showed that technology was playing an increasingly important role in buying decisions. Fifteen percent of new-car buyers said they avoided a model because it lacked certain technological features, up from 4 percent in last year’s study. The study covered 177 specific problems grouped into eight major vehicle systems like exterior, seats, steering, suspension, braking and engine and transmission. J.D. Power then ranked brands by the number of problems reported per 100 vehicles; the lower the number of problems, the higher the ranking.

• Uber is offering UberX free in Seoul in a bid to defuse regulatory pressure; also faces potential of IP blockage in India: Global online car hire service major Uber’s IP address may get blocked in India if it does not obtain a radio taxi licence to ply its cabs in the national capital, according to a The Economic Times report citing unnamed Delhi Transport Department official. This will effectively shut down the company’s operations across all 11 cities in India. U.S. taxi service provider Uber Technologies Inc on Wednesday said it will make its low-cost uberX ride-sharing service available free of charge in Seoul, in its second bid this month to operate legally in South Korea. Uber started charging a fee last year for the taxi-like service, which matches passengers via a smartphone app with private drivers who do not hold commercial transport licenses. Prosecutors subsequently indicted Uber's chief executive, Travis Kalanick, as well as its South Korean unit for violating a law prohibiting individuals or firms without proper commercial licenses from providing or facilitating transportation services. "We want to actively work towards a consensus, and the first step to that process is switching off the fare," Uber's head of north Asia Allen Penn said in a statement. Uber proposed a new registration system for its drivers in South Korea earlier this month in a bid to operate legally. But the transport ministry rejected the proposal and said it would stop the company offering its services. Uber has been the subject of similar regulatory ire in countries around the world, even as it expanded into more than 290 cities. In January, the city of Seoul declared Uber's services illegal and started offering rewards of up to 1 million won ($911) for people who reported private drivers providing transport through the company.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday February 25

• IBM announces plans to build corporate cloud centers in India and other new geographies; IBM shrank employee count 12% last year but is hiring in analytics, the cloud and security: IBM Monday announced at a conference in Las Vegas a series of technologies and investments designed to win business customers over to IBM’s version of modern computing. IBM also said it was opening corporate cloud centers in Australia, Canada, India and Italy. These follow a company effort to best Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft by renting computation in more locations. “Mega clouds are great, but not that great if you’re not in their geography,” Mr. Diaz said. Rebalancing workforce: IBM’s employee count shrank 12 percent last year as Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty has tried to reinvent the 103-year-old technology giant into a more nimble competitor. It’s the second straight annual drop for IBM’s workforce, the first two-year decline since 1993 and 1994 when the company was pushed to the edge of bankruptcy. Rometty has been seeking to transform International Business Machines Corp. to keep up with newer competitors in an industry undergoing what she’s called “unprecedented change.” IBM had 379,592 employees at the end of 2014, down 12 percent from a year earlier when the company posted the first decline in a decade, according to a filing Tuesday. Excluding a 35,000 reduction from divestitures, headcount fell about 3.9 percent last year. To help boost earnings-per-share, Rometty has fired and furloughed workers, cut IBM’s tax rate and bought back shares. She has also offloaded less-profitable business units last year, like the low-end server business sold to Lenovo Group Ltd., a customer-care business and the chip-making unit, which IBM paid Globalfoundries Inc. $1.5 billion to take off its hands. “IBM has 15,000 open positions right now, many in areas such as analytics, cloud, security where we are rebalancing skills to meet the evolving needs of our clients,” said Ian Colley, a spokesman for IBM.

• HP Q4 earnings: $26.8B -5% Y/Y, net income $1.4B, -4% Y/Y; stock down 7% on earnings miss: Meg Whitman, Hewlett-Packard‘s chief executive, says she thinks her company did almost everything well in its most recent fiscal quarter. Except make money. HP shares tumbled about 7 percent in after-hours trading on Tuesday, after the release of first-quarter earnings that showed drops in revenue and net income, and flat to lower sales in almost all product areas. The company also sharply lowered its outlook for annual earnings. For the quarter ending Jan. 30, HP reported revenue of $26.8 billion, a fall of 5 percent from a year ago. Net earnings were $1.4 billion, down 4 percent. Using nonstandard accounting popular in the tech business, per-share earnings were 92 cents. The revenue numbers were worse than expected in a survey of Wall Street analysts by Thomson Reuters. They thought HP’s revenue would be $27.3 billion. Per-share were 91 cents. Ms. Whitman said that HP was not cutting back on research and development, despite the lower earnings, and said valuable new products were on the way, particularly in business computing. Another bright area, she said, was HP’s security software business, thanks to the hacking last year on Sony Pictures. While there had been earlier violations of corporate computers, she said, Sony took the business up to a new level. “We’re sold out — 5,000 security professionals.”

• Facebook active advertisers stand at 2M, up 33% since July 2014 on small-business strength: Facebook Inc said on Tuesday that its active advertisers rose to 2 million, a 33 percent increase from the 1.5 million it had in July 2014. The vast majority of the advertisers, defined as those that have placed an ad on the social media platform in the last 30 days, represent small- and medium-sized business owners. "Small business owners are really hard to reach and they are not tech savvy usually," Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, said in an interview. She added that 30 million small business owners have Facebook pages. Facebook also launched a mobile app for advertisers to use to manage their campaigns. Of Facebook's newly acquired advertisers in the 2014 fourth quarter, 80 percent started by paying for a promoted post. Facebook does not break out the actual number of small business advertisers versus big brands, but they tend to spend on average $5 to $50 a day. That compares to the millions spent annually by big companies. Sandberg said that the fastest areas of growth of small business advertising are in regions of Europe-Middle East-Africa and Asia Pacific. Getting more advertisers onto its platform is critical for Facebook as it tries to increase global share. Facebook's fourth-quarter revenue grew 49 percent to $3.85 billion from the same period a year ago, with mobile accounting for 69 percent of advertising revenue. Google is the worldwide leader in digital advertising market share, at 31.1 percent, according to estimates from research firm eMarketer. But Google's slice has shrunk slightly, down from 33.6 percent in 2013. Facebook, on the other hand, increased its share to 7.8 percent in 2014 from 5.8 percent in 2013, according to eMarketer. It is unknown how many advertisers Google currently has. In 2007, it said it was used by 1 million advertisers.

• Google Guns for Apple in Mobile Payments Race: Google announced on Monday that it has cut a deal with three wireless carriers — AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon — as well as their jointly-owned payments company, Softcard, to have its Google Wallet payment application preinstalled on Android phones sold by the carriers. As part of the deal, Google said, it acquired “technology and intellectual property” from Softcard. The move will allow Google to get its Wallet app in front of a whole lot more people, but it is facing an increasingly crowded field. Last week, Samsung acquired Loop Pay, signaling its move into mobile payments. Apple’s Apple Pay, meantime, has been available for only a few months but has already signed up dozens of companies that report consumers are finally starting to warm to paying for things with their phones.

• Opera offers new feature for free access to mobile Web apps: Norway's Opera, whose browser software has helped mobile operators sign up millions of users for free or low-cost Internet access, said on Tuesday it was introducing features that let operators offer subscribers free access to selected apps. Opera Max was first introduced last year for Android smartphone users to download free-of-charge. Opera browser users could gain access to an hour or a day of free time on Facebook or music on Spotify using the software. What's different with the new feature, called Opera Max with App Pass, is that it is no longer confined solely to Opera browser users. Instead, App Pass works with any browser or mobile app that an Android phone user may choose to use.

• India smartphone shipments (distinct from sales to end-customer) fell QoQ in Q4 2014 on holiday-related inventory buildup in Q3: For the first time ever, smartphone shipments fell in India during the last quarter of 2014. The smartphone market contracted by 4 percent, while the feature phone market plummeted by 14 percent in relation to the previous quarter, according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC). The 64.3 million units shipped by vendors to sales channels in Q4 2014 was also 5 percent lower than the number of phones shipped in the corresponding period of the previous year. This includes both smartphones and feature phones. It’s worth noting here that the contraction was in shipments from phone vendors, and not necessarily in phone sales from retailers. The main reason for the drop in shipments has been attributed to the big inventories built up with sales channels during the third quarter. That was due to the strong surge in sales during the festive season. While the overall phone market contracted by 11 percent quarter-to-quarter, the decline was mainly in feature phones. On the positive side, smartphones formed 35 percent of the overall mobile phone business in Q4 2014, compared to a 13 percent share in the same quarter a year earlier. This confirms a strong shift from feature phones to smartphones. Samsung maintained its leadership position in Q4 2014, with Apple presenting stiff competition, but “online exclusive” brands like Xiaomi are making big inroads in the value-for-money category. Homegrown vendor Micromax shipped fewer phones in Q4 2014 owing to high inventories pumped into sales channels during the previous quarter in the festive season.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday February 24

• Alibaba's online mutual fund is struggling as China's appetite for online financial products stagnates: Alibaba’s Yuebao, one of the largest online mutual funds in China, started to stagnate and even shrink in 2014. Assets fell from US$92 billion to US$87 billion in the third quarter of last year. A combination of heightened competition, stricter government regulations, and declining interest rates likely contributed to the fund’s dip.China’s appetite for online financial products has slowed dramatically, according to a report from the China Internet Network Information Center (via Xinhua). Products like online mutual funds, peer-to-peer loans, and insurance only showed 2 percent growth in the second half of last year. Between the time these products began to hit the market in early 2013 through the first half of 2014, CNNIC says 12.1 percent of Chinese internet users subscribed to or bought some sort of online financial product, but the rate of growth slowed in the second half of 2014 and only reached about 14 percent. As of December 2014, 78.5 million bought into these non-traditional finance options, up 1.5 million on the previous semester. The initial boom of consumers buying into online financial products stemmed from bottlenecks in the traditional banking system. In contrast to state-owned banks that cater more to businesses and state-owned enterprises, these privately owned and peer-to-peer alternatives offered a much lower barrier to entry. That includes no minimum deposits for mutual funds and loans for people without established credit ratings.

• Apple to spend $1.9 billion on 2 new European data centers: Apple Inc said it would spend 1.7 billion euros ($1.9 billion) to build two data centers in Europe that would be entirely powered by renewable energy and create hundreds of jobs. The company said the centers, in Ireland and Denmark, will power Apple's online services, including the iTunes Store, App Store, iMessage, Maps and Siri for customers across Europe. The investment is set to be evenly divided between the two countries, with the Irish government confirming that 850 million euros would be spent in Ireland. The two data centers are expected to begin operations in 2017.

• Watch out - Gmail’s Autocomplete is suggesting the wrong addresses: Sending email to the wrong person is probably among the top five most awkward things you can do in a professional context. Whether you’ve accidentally let confidential info slip to a third party or simply aired frustration to someone who doesn’t need to hear it, dealing with mis-sent email is never fun. Hence the frustration coming from Gmail power users dealing with an auto-complete bug in the recipient field. Over the last few days, a number of venture capital and startup folk have come forward with complaints ranging from mild frustration to anger: Google confirmed that there is in fact an issue in Gmail’s auto-complete function. A Google spokesperson gave us the following comment: “We’re aware of an issue with Gmail and auto-complete and currently investigating. Apologies for any inconvenience.”

• As Paris forms a special police unit to spot clandestine taxis; Uber gives drivers tips on how to avoid detection: Uber Technologies Inc. drivers in Paris are adding a new word to their vocabulary: Boers. That’s the nickname of a special police unit whose responsibilities include spotting clandestine taxis. The 70-person squad has now the added task of enforcing a taxi law that bans practices including some used by the car-hailing smartphone application’s UberPop rides with unlicensed chauffeurs. Since January, some 110 drivers have been handed tickets. The fines start from a few hundred euros and can theoretically reach several thousands, according to a police official, who asked not to be named citing department policy. In France, where Uber says it has signed up a million users -- including 250,000 for UberPop -- in just over three years, the crackdown is the latest episode in a long legal battle where cab drivers say the startup unfairly threatened their livelihoods. Uber disagrees with the ban, backed by a Paris judge who studied the taxi law and ruled in December not to block the service. To avoid police attention, at least seven UberPop drivers Bloomberg News spoke to in the past week said they had been told by the company not to position their smartphones in plain sight when running the app, and to ask passengers to ride in the front seat. They declined to give their full names for fear of reprimand by Uber. Uber’s Simphal confirmed those guidelines. The company also regularly e-mails newsletters to drivers with advice on regulation and other topics, he said. “We always support the drivers,” Simphal said, when asked whether Uber reimburses them for fine tickets.

• Circle of Life - LivingSocial spawns a new generation of startups even as it shrinks: The tendency for start-ups to give rise to other start-ups is a self-sustaining cycle that excites technology enthusiasts. It can create a concentration of companies that generate well-paying jobs and attract skilled workers, as well as give well-heeled financiers a reason to invest money in the region. Nowhere is this more evident than Silicon Valley, where high-growth technology companies spin off new ventures, recycle engineering talent and grab billions of dollars from the world’s biggest venture capitalists. It’s the kind of ecosystem, built over decades, that other locales now strive to emulate. LivingSocial’s ability to spawn a next generation of companies may be among its most significant contributions to the local economy, especially as its own promise to become one of the region’s banner tech companies has faded. After raising hundreds of millions of dollars from investors to expand globally, LivingSocial in recent years has shrunk from 4,000 to 1,300 employees worldwide and retreated from countries in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday February 23

• Apple wants to start producing cars as soon as 2020, and is hiring accordingly: Apple Inc., which has been working secretly on a car, is pushing its team to begin production of an electric vehicle as early as 2020, people with knowledge of the matter said. The timeframe -- automakers typically spend five to seven years developing a car -- underscores the project’s aggressive goals and could set the stage for a battle for customers with Tesla Motors Inc. and General Motors Co. Both automakers are targeting a 2017 release of an electric vehicle that can go more than 200 miles on a single charge and cost less than $40,000. “That’s the inflection point -- the proving ground -- that brings on the electric age,” Steve LeVine, author of “The Powerhouse,” a book about the automotive battery industry, said on Bloomberg TV Thursday. “Now you have Apple coming in and this is critical mass. Was GM really going to be able to match Tesla? Apple can.” Apple, which posted record profit of $18 billion during the past quarter, has $178 billion in cash with few avenues to spend it. The Cupertino, California-based company’s research and development costs were $6.04 billion in the past year, and Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is facing increased pressure to return cash to shareholders. The CEO has been pushing the iPhone maker to enter new categories to further envelop users’ digital lives with Apple’s products and services. Apple’s possible foray into cars follows a similar path it’s taken to break into other industries. The company wasn’t the first to make a digital-music player or smartphone, and only entered those markets once it had a product that redefined those categories. hiring an auto team : A year and a half ago, Apple Inc (AAPL.O) had applied for just eight patents related to auto batteries. Recently, it has hired a bevy of engineers, just one of whom had already filed for 17 in his former career, according to a Thomson Reuters analysis. The recent spate of hires and patent filings reviewed by Reuters shows that Apple is fast building its industrial lithium-ion battery capabilities, adding to evidence the iPhone maker may be developing a car.

• Winning the Buy Box is at the top of most Amazon retailers’ wish lists; here is a look at how it works; To understand how Amazon views the Buy Box, it’s worth putting yourself in the shoes of a shopper to see how they experience the Buy Box. Let’s imagine that as a buyer you’re searching for a Sony H300 digital camera on Amazon.com and come across the listing below. You go to the product page, and the price is in your range so you click ‘Add to Basket’. You’ve just used Amazon’s Buy Box. Did you pay attention to who was selling this item? Probably not. You assume it’s sold by Amazon. But in this case, it’s not. A third-party seller sells it and Amazon fulfills it. As a consumer, you had 31 other third-party options on this product page, including 8 other Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) offers. Amazon itself wasn’t selling this item through its first-party offering. Now that we know how consumers interact with the Buy Box, we have a clearer picture of how Amazon narrows down eligibility. Over at Amazon, a team is working on deciding Amazon’s Buy Box algorithm. Their mission is to define what buyers consider to be the ‘best’ offer when shopping on the marketplace. It’s truly a customer-centric attitude: Amazon’s top priority is to earn buyers’ trust, as Amazon believes that this maximizes profits in the long term. Predicting which offer is best for consumers at a product’s ASIN level is extremely complex. Amazon can’t allow this formula to be transparent for third-party sellers, and Amazon is okay with that. Overall, Amazons goal isn’t to increase retailers’ trust, but buyers’ trust. Since seller performance requirements can vary by category and are subject to change, Amazon does not disclose specific targets needed to win the Buy Box. However, we do know that becoming eligible requires meeting very high standards. To be in with a chance of winning the Buy Box, excelling in the qualifying criteria of pricing, availability, fulfillment and customer experience is the best way to work toward achieving this status. Pricing: Amazon looks at the total price the customer will pay for a product, including delivery, so make sure you price your products competitively, including the delivery rates. The lowest price doesn’t guarantee winning the Buy Box, as pricing is just one factor that is evaluated. Availability: Make sure you keep stock available, if you have no current stock for a product, you cannot win the Buy Box! Use inventory planning to keep your popular products in stock and make sure you maintain a consistent quantity threshold. Fulfillment: If you can, offer multiple shipping options on your products. Customer Experience: As a customer-centric company, it is no shock that customer metrics play their part in the Buy Box allocation. Make sure you keep on top of your Order Defect Rate, A-to-z claims, returns and other seller performance and delivery metrics (such as lead-time-to-ship time). Time and experience: In most categories you are not eligible for the Buy Box right away. You need to develop your business on Amazon and build a strong, positive reputation before you can qualify for the Buy Box. Your sales history is an important aspect – both number of sales and customer satisfaction on those sales. Amazon’s challenge is not just confirming that buyers prefer offers with low prices, fast delivery and sellers with better feedback. The key is providing each input with a value. To get the Buy Box algorithm right, a lot of testing is needed, with Amazon’s team updating and testing new releases, measuring success by monitoring GMV, unit uplifts and the percentage of items bought so that the best products are available to customers on the Buy Box.

• Mobile app-install ads have fueled the rise of Facebook and Twitter, now Pinterest wants in: Mobile app-install ads have been fundamental to Facebook and Twitter's rise as mobile advertising players over the past two years, and now Pinterest wants in on the action. Last week, Pinterest teamed up with Apple to roll out App Pins—a feature that lets users save and share apps to boards. For example, someone looking for a recipe on Pinterest may see a meal-planning app pop up in search results. Clicking on the posts then lets a user download the app straight from Pinterest. With 75 percent of the social network's traffic coming from mobile, the new tool seems like a natural fit for Pinterest marketers. But Pinterest may also be too late to capitalize on the tactic since Facebook and Twitter are already bolstering their revenues with app-install ads. "They're definitely a little behind, but there is still a massive opportunity for them to integrate an app-install format," said Guillaume Lelait, general manager at mobile marketing agency Fetch. "Pinterest is different in that users are already coming to the platform with a discovery and purchasing mindset." As part of the partnership, social media-averse Apple has also set up an account with a few boards of themed apps. App Pins are the latest attempt from Pinterest to make it easier for users to find things they're interested in. In 2013, the company started packing more text into pins. And last year, Pinterest started testing Promoted Pins—ads that are bought based on keywords. The San Francisco company told The New York Times it doesn't plan to make money off App Pins. But app install ads have been a boon for Facebook and Twitter, and it's hard to imagine that Pinterest isn't interested in tapping into the lucrative opportunity. Mobile accounted for 69 percent (or $2.5 billion) of Facebook's revenue during the fourth quarter, while smartphone and tablet ads generated 85 percent of Twitter's third-quarter ad money. While Pinterest doesn't plan to use its new tool for advertising, a new case study from financial savings app Acorns shows that app-install ads pay off. Acorns launched in August as an app that saves spare change on credit and debit card purchases. Users first link a credit card number to the app, which then rounds up the amount of a transaction to the next dollar. The extra money is then saved away to use later. The financial startup used mobile app install ads on Facebook, Twitter and mobile ad networks to drive downloads of the app. Promoted Tweets on Twitter ran from August to November 2014, targeting money-related keywords. The paid tweets generated a 3 percent engagement rate. "Basically we were able to find who was our audience and serve the ads directly to them," said Sami Khan, director of user acquisition at Acorns. In the first 90 days that Acorns launched, one in five of the company's downloads came from Twitter. The company paid less than $4 per app install, which it claims is significantly lower than the $8 to $10 that financial companies typically pay to acquire users. The Acorns team also experimented with the ad's creative, changing up images on the fly. Khan said pictures that were simple and to the point performed well. "Twitter ads for mobile app installs work better when they have pictures attached," Khan said. "So we needed to create images that related to our value proposition."

• Pinterest is in talks to raise $500M at valuation of $11B, twice its previous valuation: US-based visual discovery startup Pinterest Inc. is in talks to raise $500 million at a valuation of $11 billion, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal , citing sources. The new funding will more than double the valuation of the company from its last round, when it had raised $200 million at $5 billion valuation. To date, Pinterest has raised a total of $764 million in funding from SV Angel, Bessemer Venture Partners, Fidelity, Andreessen Horowitz, FirstMark Capital, and Valiant Capital Partners. In October 2013, Pinterest had raised $225 million led by Fidelity Investments at a valuation of $3.8 billion. Previously, the company had bagged $100 million from Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten.

• India startup action: Payments firm Citrus Pay crosses a milestone: $1B in gross transaction runrate: Citrus claims of having crossed $1 billion in gross transactions as a run rate from its 11 million registered users, according to a top executive of the company. It crossed the milestone in December which means it processed transactions worth over Rs 515 crore in that month. “We process more than 1.6 lakh transactions per day compared with 278 transactions in January 2011 when we started operating,” said Satyen Kothari, co-founder, Citrus. This means it is doing roughly 5 million transactions per month with an average ticket size of around Rs 1,000. It says it now has over 2,500 merchants using its services and it is adding more than 100 every month. Airtel, IndiGo, Sun Direct, Tata AIA, Fun Cinemas, Pepperfry and Delhi Metro are among its clients. The firm charges 2.5 per cent fee of the transaction from the merchants, which means it is now generating around Rs 13 crore as net revenues a month. The firm has launched direct-to-consumer app which is a personal payments manager that tracks, pays & reminds users of their bills. Called Cube, it gives a dashboard on what’s late, what’s due and what’s already paid. “Most Indian pay about 8-10 bills every month. RBI has estimated that Indians pay 30 billion bills in a year. These could be paid by physical means or going online on different websites which is a waste of time. Going to banks for paying it is not meant for our fast moving lifestyle and so we came up with Cube,” said Kothari. “Besides paying bills, it can create analytical graphs that helps the user track spending habits, brings exhaustive billing history to the users fingertips and ‘automagically’ adds reminders for payments made by users,” he explained. For circumstances where users cannot pay through the app, the tracking history does not break as it also allows users to manage bills that are paid offline or on other sites by manually adding that data. The unique quotient is that it also allows users to track micro bills like maid’s salary etc and make notes. The app also allows users to ask friends or spouse to pay for it. Presently, the app operates in seven categories including mobile, DTH, power, credit card, data card, landline and gas and also other miscellaneous categories. This is the company’s second direct-to-consumer app. It had earlier launched an app called Death of Chutta which allows users to exchange money with friends. The money in that wallet can also be used to pay across 700 portals which Citrus has partnered. According to the founder, these products were launched for making India’s digital currency. The idea is also to gear up for the payments banking license, for which it has applied. “There are infinite things that we can do with the consumer’s money. Right now we are restricted to Rs 5000 per transaction and Rs 10,000 per month which really hits the ceiling to how much we can automate and innovate very fast. With the license, we can hold up to Rs 1 lakh,” said Kothari. In December 2013, the Mumbai-based company had raised about $5.5 million from econtext Asia Ltd, a Japanese online payments firm, and Beenos Asia Pte Ltd, a subsidiary of Japanese e-commerce and incubation company Netprice, with participation from existing investor Sequoia Capital. Prior to that, it has raised $1.8 million from Sequoia Capital in January 2012. Citrus competes with CCAvenues, ibibo Group’s PayU, One97’s Paytm Payments, ZaakPay and PayPal.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday February 20

• A Year Later, $19 Billion For WhatsApp Doesn’t Sound So Crazy: Without WhatsApp, Facebook’s international situation would look a lot dicier. And if a competitor like Google acquired it instead, it could have been disastrous. Instead, Facebook possess the most popular messaging app, and has neutralized the biggest threat to its global domination of social networking. No apps get opened as often as messaging apps. While you might spend longer in total scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest, the frequent short sessions with chat apps make them a vector for other experiences. That means they’re more valuable than they might first appear. How do you monetize chat? It’s a tough question. Sure there’s stickers, but there’s too much competition to charge much upfront for an app and its too interruptive to show ads. But platforms, hubs, portals — whatever you want to call them — hold plenty of opportunities to cash in. The messaging apps from Asia are proving this as we speak. China’s WeChat also lets you call a taxi, pay friends, search, shop, buy movie tickets, and more. Japan’s Line hosts Line Pay, Line TV, and an identity platform for games. Why fumble with a bunch of different apps, passwords, and payment methods when you can do it all while you chat? Even Snapchat is expanding far beyond messaging. Its Stories product for broadcasting sequences of photos and videos is a hit with star content creators. Its Snapcash feature lets you quickly pay friends through Square Cash. And its new Discover portal collects Snap-formatted content from premium producers like Comedy Central, CNN, ESPN, and Vice. A lot of critics wondered how Facebook could earn money from messaging on WhatsApp, considering it’s vowed not to show ads and only charges its skimpy $1 subscription fee in a few markets. The answer is it doesn’t have to. By taking a cut of commerce, or charging for promotion of content, it could keep chat lean and clean while monetizing other parts.

• HP becomes a reseller of networking equipment; move away from hardware in quest of software-company margins takes aim at Cisco: Hewlett-Packard said on Thursday that it would sell a new line of networking switches that are manufactured by a Taiwanese company and depend on Linux-based, open-source software from another company. HP, once at the center of high-tech manufacturing, will not make the new networking equipment but will act as a reseller, providing both online ordering and worldwide support for the product. It is the most consequential announcement from HP since its chief executive, Meg Whitman, announced last October that the company would split into two separate enterprises. One will be focused on business, and the other on consumer-type products. The networking move, firmly in the area of business technology, shows the type of changes HP and other older tech giants must make to survive in a transforming marketplace. In its last fiscal year, HP took in $2.6 billion from its proprietary networking business, which started in earnest in 2009. In the long term, cheap, open-source networking equipment could threaten HP’s existing business, particularly if the open-source products make expected gains in power and capability. HP is not the only networking equipment maker threatened by the changing marketplace. Cisco Systems is still by far the biggest maker of networking gear, with $47 billion in annual revenue, and it depends heavily on proprietary products. Networking gear has been considered an important part of HP’s future, however. “We see a shift,” said Mark Carroll, the chief technology officer of HP’s networking business. “The traditional market, the one-vendor market, is transitioning to many suppliers.” By offering an open-source product consisting largely of mass-market chips, the thinking runs, HP will be in a position to dislodge Cisco. Mr. Carroll called HP’s embrace of open source “an evolution” of his company’s strategy. “You look at which markets are growing and go there,” he said. Sold complex and proprietary combinations of servers, data storage, networking and software for decades, customers are now demanding systems that can be arranged in different ways, with open-source software they can tinker with in-house. The new methods promise advantages in speed, cost and innovation. In addition, new entrants are affecting the business. Companies now rely on Amazon’s computing-rental business for many needs. Facebook last week announced an open-source switch intended to undermine prices and speed innovation in the industry. Mr. Carroll said HP “absolutely” sees Facebook’s switch “playing in the same space” as HP’s open-source networking. The actual manufacturer of the HP boxes, Accton Technology, has been making gear for HP for 20 years. The open-source software will be supplied by Cumulus Networks, which last year announced it would supply Dell with software for inexpensive networking boxes. The Cumulus relationship with HP is not exclusive, and HP could add more suppliers in the future. HP “wants the software and service margins and to get rid of being in the hardware business,” said JR Rivers, chief executive and one of the founders of Cumulus. “You’ll see other networking providers get on board with this.” The initial target customers for the product, available in March, are telecommunications and financial companies. Both use a lot of cloud computing, mobility, social media and big-data resources in their data centers.

• Being fully transparent in pricing can be costly, finds online ticket seller StubHub : In January 2014, StubHub attempted something radical. Addressing the frustration of its customers, the online ticket reseller began including its bevy of fees in the first price a customer sees, rather than tacking them on just before purchase. Now when you click “buy,” a pair of tickets listed at $100 will cost $100, not $125. According to StubHub, customers said they wanted—and say they love—the transparency. But the change hasn’t improved sales. Because StubHub, which generated $500 million in revenue last year, baked its fees into the list price, its tickets looked more expensive than those of rivals. Sales for the company fell more than 10 percent in the months that followed the pricing change, according to Wedbush Securities, as competitor Ticketmaster gained market share. StubHub further trimmed its profit margins by cutting its take from each sale. By November, Chris Tsakalakis, who championed the new pricing, was out as president. (He declined to comment.) Still, the ticket reseller has stuck with the policy, which spokesman Glenn Lehrman says is among the most popular moves the 15-year-old company has ever made.

• Startups continue to try and crack the attribution problem of omnichannel shoppers and cross-device conversions: The proliferation of smartphones and tablets has given rise to the “omnichannel shopper,” a retail industry term for a customer who might scope out a product from their phone, computer and local store before making a purchase. Major retailers are waging advertising wars across an increasing number of screens and storefronts in an effort to win these shoppers’ business. After all, that customer could decide to buy at any point. But serial entrepreneurs Hemang Gadhia and Christopher Brown discovered a simple albeit significant problem: Retailers have a hard time tracking when that customer using their app, visiting their Web site and entering their store is actually the same person. The pair’s latest venture, District-based Revmetrix, uses software to identify omnichannel shoppers as they move from smartphone to computer to tablet to store, then helps retailers determine what will motivate that specific customer to actually spend money. How will Revmetrix track omnichannel shoppers? Data, of course. As customers visit retailers online and in stores, they leave digital footprints along the way, such as the make and model of a smartphone, an IP address and a geographic location. That information can then be matched with information the retailer may already collect about its customers, such as their online shopping habits, purchase history and demographic data. At present, Gadhia said the Revmetrix software can identify the same customer on different devices with more than 80 percent accuracy. The more data that’s collected, the more accurate the technology becomes. “The problem that we’re solving is a problem that exists for every single large retailer on the planet,” Gadhia said.

• Flipkart is valued at more than AirBnB, as billion-dollar startups proliferate; as Snapchat proves, though, these rankings change very quickly though: Flipkart Internet Pvt. is now valued at $11 billion, making it the fifth-most valuable startup on the list. That puts Flipkart ahead of Airbnb, a company that is challenging the business models of global hotel giants with its online room rentals, and online storage firm Dropbox. These rankings are volatile though: Less than 12 months after investors valued Snapchat, the red-hot messaging app, at about $10 billion, the start-up is again in the market for money — and poised to nearly double that valuation. A range of other popular start-ups are also poised to propel their net worths to similar multibillion-dollar heights, including the virtual scrapbooking service Pinterest and the ride-hailing app Lyft. Uber, Lyft’s top competitor, has raised more than $3 billion in the last year and now has an eye-popping valuation of $40 billion. Giant sums of money and sky-high valuations are nothing new in the technology industry. But the latest burst of activity has put on clear display the frenzied pace of investors, who are eager to catch the next blockbuster company like Facebook. The action is also again spurring talk that overeager investors are poised to relive the dot-com boom and bust at the turn of the century, when overinflated start-ups led to a quick and painful downturn. For investors, the hunt is for the next proverbial so-called unicorn, a nascent business worth $1 billion or more — on paper, at least. Just last year, 38 privately held companies backed by venture capital joined the billion-dollar club, putting the membership of that group at 54, according to the data firm CB Insights. Digi-Capital, a mobile Internet advisory firm, estimates that the total value of mobile Internet start-ups worth $1 billion or more increased $28 billion in just the last quarter of 2014.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday February 19

• Uber expands Series E by $1B to $2.8B; Baidu among investors as Alibaba invests in rival Lyft: Facing overwhelming demand from institutional investors, Uber has expanded its Series E round of venture financing by $1 billion, according to documents filed Wednesday with the Delaware secretary of state, bringing the total capacity for the round up to $2.8 billion. The move, which was confirmed by Uber, occurred just weeks after the company closed a $1.2 billion round of financing. At the time, Uber said it had left capacity for about $600 million in additional strategic investments, according to a Delaware filing. The company is incorporated in Delaware and based in San Francisco. But the appetite for a piece of Uber has proved to be greater than the company had imagined. The $600 million was quickly oversubscribed, and Uber decided to raise the amount. Baidu, the Chinese Internet giant, accounts for part of the additional investment beyond the $1.2 billion round. The most recent expansion is on top of some $4 billion Uber raised, including a recent $1.6 billion round of convertible debt financing from the clients of the private wealth arm of Goldman Sachs, the investment bank previously confirmed. Uber’s $40 billion valuation, extraordinary by any private technology company’s standards, remains unchanged since the company announced the first part of the round in December. Uber is one of the most richly valued private technology start-ups, second only to Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer. Meanwhile, Uber’s largest United States competitor is also raising money. Lyft, identified by its signature pink mustache logo, is trying to raise at least $250 million in private capital, with participation from at least one previous investor, the Alibaba Group of China.

• Google is set to launch a subscription model for YouTube in a few months, CNBC quoted Robert Kyncl, the online video service's head of content and business operations as saying at the Code/Media conference. The company was "fine-tuning the experience", Kyncl said at the conference in California. (cnb.cx/1zOXElH) YouTube has been exploring a paid, ad-free version of its service for some time. The company launched a pilot program in May 2013 that allowed individual content creators to charge consumers a subscription fee to access a particular "channel" of videos. The plan would represent a significant change for the world's No. 1 online video, whose free videos, often accompanied by short commercials, attract more than 1 billion users a month.

• Snapdeal aims for $2B in fashion in 2015; acquires designer apparel e-tailer Exclusively.com: E-commerce major Snapdeal.com, run by Delhi-based Jasper Infotech Pvt Ltd, has acquired Indian luxury and lifestyle products site Exclusively.com (formerly Exclusively.in). The financials of the deal are not disclosed. According to Snapdeal, the acquisition has been made with an aim to strengthen its fashion business and reach $2 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) in the category in 2015. “We have witnessed a surge in the demand from consumers across the country for premium and luxury products. However, given that access to luxury brands is limited in our country, we have acquired Exclusively to provide our users with access to a range of aspirational, high end products and services,” said Kunal Bahl, co-founder and CEO, Snapdeal.com. As part of the acquisition, Exclusively will complement Snapdeal’s existing ecosystem and will provide a consolidated offering for the luxury and lifestyle shopper. It will continue to function as an independent site and all aspects of Exclusively’s online shopping experience will remain intact — with new collection and service augmentations in the pipeline. Snapdeal on the other hand will help the company scale up and expand its current business and reach. As of now, Exclusively retails products from designers like Manish Malhotra, Tarun Tahiliani, Manish Arora, Anita Dongre, Rohit Bal, Shivan & Narresh, Gaurav Gupta, JJ Valaya, Ritu Kumar, Varun Bahl, and Neeta Lulla, to name a few. This year, the company plans to launch leading international luxury brands and designers on its site. Founded in June 2010, Exclusively.com offers products in a number of categories including apparels, jewellery, handbags and accessories. While it started off targeting the US and the UK markets, the company now caters to the Indian market. Interestingly, the company was reported to have been acquired by fashion portal Myntra.com in 2012. At the time, Myntra had acquired Shersingh.com. The two sites (Shersingh.com and Exclusively.com) were functioning under the same umbrella back then. Exclusively.com could not be reached out to for an immediate response.

• Samsung Buys LoopPay, a Competitor to Apple’s Mobile Wallet: Samsung, the South Korean technology giant, announced Wednesday it had acquired LoopPay, a mobile payments company, signaling its interest in controlling smartphone-based purchases. The move comes just months after the release of Apple Pay, Apple’s mobile payments product, which allows consumers to buy things with little more than a wave of a smartphone. Though it has been available for only a handful of months, Apple Pay has gained significant traction with retailers and consumers. Whole Foods, the high-end grocery store, said it had processed thousands of Apple Pay transactions. Apple has also persuaded dozens of credit card issuers to sign up to support Apple Pay. LoopPay, however, believes its reach will extend far beyond that of Apple Pay. LoopPay’s underlying technology relies on a magnetic transmission sent from a user’s phone to a merchant’s payment terminal, mimicking a credit card swipe. The technology, according to LoopPay, can be accepted in more than 90 percent of existing point-of-sale terminals. It is unclear if LoopPay will work on chip-and-pin terminals, which use a more secure form of credit card technology and are being widely phased in this year. Apple Pay relies on near-field communication technology, which Apple says is available at approximately 220,000 American locations. MST v NFC: LoopPay uses magnetic secure transmission (MST) tech works with around 90 percent of existing payment terminals currently deployed in U.S. stores. “If you look at other competitor solutions in mobile payments [Apple Pay included], it’s actually based on near-field technology, which has very limited coverage in the U.S. We see the MST technology that LoopPay owns has a lot of potential to really solve the end-user coverage issues with respect to point-of-sale terminals.” Samsung spotted the potential early: LoopPay launched a Kickstarter project in November of 2013, and was contacted by Samsung only “shortly thereafter,” according to Graylin.

• Why Google Should Fear Facebook's New Product Ads Social network's targeting threatens retail search dominance: Yesterday, Facebook revealed that it's starting to serve ads for retailers' goods that use the targeting and personal-interest information it has on its 1.4 billion users. These product ads are an answer to a service that Google has offered businesses since 2013 with Shopping Ads (which were initially called Product Listing Ads). Google Shopping Ads show up as paid posts atop retailer-focused search results and render pictures and prices of items for sale. They are highly visual compared with text-based search results and have become a lucrative piece of Google's search business. In fact, according to Q4 2014 research from Adobe Digital Index, 20 percent of clicks on Google search links for retailers were on Shopping Ads. Also, Adobe said that merchants spent 47 percent more on Google Shopping Ads year-over-year last quarter, meanwhile they decreased spending on text-based ads by 6 percent during the same period. The interest in the format, which entails more dynamic creative, shows how digital advertisers prefer more visual marketing over simple text. Now, Facebook has the opportunity to mimic that success with its troves of consumer data while siphoning from its rival's digital dollars. Its product ads will let businesses zero in on users based on elements such as clothing preferences, musical tastes and location. "Facebook has the best targeting capabilities, so it can take some of the limelight from shopping ads on Google," said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst for Adobe Digital Index (ADI). Facebook has made dynamic visuals a priority—not just with its new product ads—but with the whole design of the platform, encouraging more video and photos. And there's a bottom-line reason behind such moves. Gaffney and her ADI team's quarterly research last month read: "Advertisers are gravitating toward creating an image-based Web shopping experience for consumers. Facebook is also attracting more retailers, which means there will be a likely increase in demand for more effective shopping ads. By the second half of 2015, Adobe predicted that shopping ads will account for 30 percent of all search dollars. Also, Google and Facebook are not alone going for that market—Yahoo and Bing have a version; however, for now they control only a small market share.

• Chinese online education startup raises $100M: On the eve of the Chinese new year, online education platform 17zuoye has announced that it has raised a series D round worth US$100 million, according to Duozhi. This brings the company’s total valuation to US$600 million. The round was led by H Capital (which also invested in 17zuoye’s series C), and other investors included Temasek, Yuri Milner/DST, and Lei Jun’s Shunwei (which has invested in every 17zuoye round starting with its series A). 17zuoye is an online learning platform for students K-12, as well as teachers and parents. The name means “homework together” in Chinese, and the site aims to serve as a nexus for all three groups to facilitate the educational experience, focusing on English and Math classes. For example, for students one service it offers is an automated system that allows them to record English sentences and get instant feedback on pronunciation. Teachers can then listen to their students’ recordings at any time. Parents can even get real-time reports on their kids via WeChat. Online education is a hot market in China right now, but 17zuoye, which was founded in 2007, has shown especially explosive growth. Two years ago the site had just over 1 million students; now it has more than 7 million. In July of last year alone, for example, the site added more than 130,000 students to its rolls.

• Sony seeks to re-invent itself: sees 25-fold profit jump by 2018; could exit TVs, phones: Sony aims to boost operating profit 25-fold within three years by growing its camera sensors and PlayStation units, its chief executive said, outlining a strategy that could see the company exit the cut-throat TV and smartphone sectors. CEO Kazuo Hirai said on Wednesday the Japanese consumer electronics firm would no longer pursue sales growth in areas such as smartphones where its has suffered competition from cheaper Asian rivals as well as industry leaders like Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Samsung Electronics (005930.KS). Sony would instead focus its spending on more profitable businesses such as camera sensors, videogames and entertainment as it seeks to return to growth after forecasting for this financial year its sixth net loss in seven years. The comments, made just as the Tokyo market was closing, helped Sony's shares (SNE.N) rise 1.4 percent in New York. "The strategy starting from the next business year will be about generating profit and investing for growth," Hirai told a briefing, adding that Sony's units would be given greater autonomy to make their own business decisions. Asked about the TV and mobile phone units, Hirai said he would not "rule out considering an exit strategy", Sony's clearest statement to date about the possibility of selling or finding partners for these struggling units. Sony is in the midst of a restructuring that has so far seen it sell off its personal computer division and spin off the TV business. It has also axed thousands of jobs. Sony shares have risen more than 80 percent over the past year as investors applauded the restructuring, which accelerated since Hirai appointed Kenichiro Yoshida as his chief strategy officer in late 2013. Hirai said Sony would target return on equity of more than 10 percent by the end of March 2018, adopting a yardstick Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been promoting as a way to attract foreign investors. He also said Sony aimed to post an operating profit of at least 500 billion yen ($4.2 billion) for 2017/18, a jump from the 20 billion yen forecast for the year ending March 31. Sony's revamp is starting to pay off. This month, it forecast an operating profit instead of a loss for the financial year ending March 31. But it still expects to book a net loss in 2014/15, albeit a smaller amount than previously estimated.

• Microsoft seeks to re-invent itself: has suddenly gotten serious with mobile. This is the same Microsoft that spent almost a half-decade trying to offer a credible alternative to Apple’s iPhone and mobile devices running Google’s Android. And it’s the same Microsoft that paid more than $7 billion to buy Nokia’s once-mighty handset business, only to see its mobile business sink further. The company now clings precariously to a 3 percent share of new smartphone sales. Make no mistake, Microsoft still wants its mobile operating system, Windows, to be the software in our smartphones. But mobile developers continue to focus on making apps for Apple or Android devices instead, making Windows phones an increasingly hard sell. That reality has finally sunk in at Microsoft, and a new strategy is afoot. When Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, took the top job at the company about a year ago, he signaled that the company’s priorities were shifting. Microsoft, he said, was in a “mobile-first, cloud-first world.” Since then, the company has brought more of its apps and services to the Apple and Android devices people actually use, rather than the ones Microsoft would like them to use — those that run Windows. What’s even more surprising is that Microsoft’s heart seems to be in the effort. Over the last several months, Microsoft has been taking up more and more space on my own iPhone’s home screen. I’ve installed mobile versions of its Office apps as well as OneDrive, the company’s answer to Dropbox, Google Drive and other cloud storage services.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday February 18

• Winds of economic change in India: as rivals falter, India’s economy is surging ahead: China’s economy is slowing. Brazil is struggling as commodity prices plunge. Russia, facing Western sanctions and weak oil revenue, is headed into a recession. As other big developing markets stumble, India is emerging as one of the few hopes for global growth. The stock market and rupee are surging. Multinational companies are looking to expand their Indian operations or start new ones. The growth in India’s economy, long a laggard, just matched China’s pace in recent months. India is riding high on the early success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a raft of new business-friendly policies instituted in his first eight months. Small factories no longer need to shut down every year for government inspectors to spend a day checking boilers. Foreign investment rules have been relaxed for insurers, military contractors and real estate companies. A broad tax overhaul is underway. Renewed optimism from outside investors is spurring business expansion in cities around the country like Tiruppur, a hub of India’s yarn and textile industry. “Most of the factories in Tiruppur are doubling or tripling their capacity, and these are huge factories,” said Pritam Sanghai, the director of Arjay Apparel Industries.

• Alibaba's stock price has dipped below its first day close; is down 27% from its Nov 2014 peak: Alibaba, which held one of last year’s most high-profile initial public offerings, has drawn investors wanting to benefit from e-commerce traffic in China, the world’s largest Internet market. The company has come under pressure from shareholders in recent weeks after it reported quarterly revenue that failed to meet analysts’ estimates. The stock fell 2.5 percent to $86.85 at Tuesday’s close in New York, less than the closing price of $93.89 on Sept. 19, its first day of trading, though still above the initial sale price of $68. Starboard Value LP, an activist hedge fund, also acquired an Alibaba stake of 400,000 shares in the fourth quarter. The investor earlier took a stake in Yahoo! Inc., which owns about 15 percent of Alibaba, and pushed for the Web portal to monetize the stake in a tax-friendly manner. Last month, Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo said it would spin off the Chinese holdings in a deal that should wrap up by the end of the year. Hedge fund Tiger Global Management acquired 5.8 million shares, or 0.24 percent of Hangzhou, China-based Alibaba, at the end of last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Sands Capital Management more than doubled its stake to 19.6 million shares, or 0.8 percent. T. Rowe Price reduced its holdings by 17 percent to 22.3 million shares, a 0.9 percent stake.

• Snapchat seeking $500M in funding, at $19B valuation; would make it the 3rd most valuable venture-backed firm, after Xiaomi and Uber: (More coverage here and here) Snapchat is looking to raise as much as $500 million in a new funding round that would value the mobile messaging company at up to $19 billion, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing a person with knowledge of the matter. The latest valuation is a massive increase for the company, which Facebook Inc offered to buy for $3 billion in late 2013. Snapchat's previous funding round, completed late last year, valued the company at more than $10 billion. Executives of the company, which allows its more than 100 million users to send messages that disappear after a few seconds, are in advanced talks with fund managers, the person told Bloomberg. (bloom.bg/1AiWtif) The investments being discussed would value Snapchat between $16 billion and $19 billion overall, Bloomberg reported. The drastic increase in valuation comes as Snapchat continues to add to its active user base and extends its service. Last month it added videos and articles by mainstream media outlets such as CNN and ESPN, bringing Snapchat into closer competition with Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc. It is also the latest evidence of a surge in venture capital financing for technology companies, that has produced some eye-popping valuations. Even at $19 billion, Snapchat would only be the third-most valuable tech startup that does not trade its shares publicly. According to research firm CB Insights, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is worth $46 billion and app-based taxi service Uber is valued at $41 billion.

• Kickstarter secret to its reputation for accurate reviews: Lots of human intervention: Kickstarter Sheds Some Light On The Mechanics Of Its Semi-Automated Review Process Kickstarter has provided a look at how the reconfigured review system the put in place last year has worked out for them, providing some counterarguments to the opinion held in some corners of the Internet that Kickstarter has done away with a review system entirely, throwing open the gates to the wildlings of the north and other nefarious characters. In fact, Kickstarter says that the new process still results in the vast majority of projects submitted getting in front of human eyes, based on over six months’ worth of data. The system uses an algorithm as a first line of automated review, which is designed to select for things that are mostly cookie-cutter and overwhelmingly likely to get the nod form a real person anyway, according to the site. That means that of 69,015 submissions made since the introduction of this system, 27,897 were cleared by the algorithm for direct activation, and a further 6,265 of those actually requested human feedback from Kickstarter before pressing the big green button, meaning only 31 percent of projects launched without human involvement post-approval process change. That leaves 69 percent of projects benefiting from some kind of human intervention, and Kickstarter wants users to know that the human side is still a key part of what it’s offering. The blog post detailing the pool of stats from Yancey Strickler also talks about how the algorithm in use is continually being refined, and the purpose of it in the first place was to free up human reviewer time to give them more attention to offer help when and where it’s most needed. A recent investigative report from Yahoo! Tech’s Dan Tynan found that Kickstarter was the most resistant to attempts to create fake funding campaigns aimed at potentially defrauding backers, and with this much human intervention it begins to make sense why. But that doesn’t change the fact that Kickstarter can often resemble a pre-order mechanism, despite the fact that it very clearly isn’t.

• Apple orders 5-6M watches from its Asian suppliers: Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has asked its Asian suppliers to make 5-6 million units of its three Apple Watch models for the first-quarter, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Taiwan-based Quanta Computer Inc (2382.TW), the sole assembler of the Apple Watch, started mass production earlier this year to get ready for an April launch, the Journal said. (on.wsj.com/17MpwkR) Thousands will work round the clock during the Chinese New Year holidays at Quanta's factory in Changshu, China, the newspaper reported, quoting one person. Apple said it does not comment on rumor or speculation. The iPhone maker's shares rose as much as 1.9 percent to a record $129.45 on the Nasdaq on Tuesday morning. The entry-level Apple Watch Sport model accounts for half the production order, while the mid-tiered Apple Watch will count for a third, one person told the WSJ. The high-end Apple Watch Edition with 18-karat gold casing, is expected to have relatively small orders in the first quarter, but Apple plans to produce more than 1 million units per month in the second quarter, the Journal reported, citing the person. The Apple Watch, starting at $349, can receive phone calls and messages, play music, serve as a digital wallet to pay for goods and monitor heart rates via special sensors.

• Facebook edges yet closer to eCommerce with Dynamic Product Ads for Data-Minded Retailers: Merchants like Target can upload catalogs and then zero in on consumers.Facebook is giving Target and other retailers a new way to market to its 1.4 billion users. It's called product ads—yet another ad format that Facebook says sets it apart from rivals like Google because it can harness the social network's popularity and behavioral and location data on consumers. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company announced the marketing offering today, calling product ads "a solution designed to help businesses promote multiple products, or their entire catalogs, across all the devices their customers use: phones, tablets and desktop computers." Businesses will be able to upload their product catalogs and let Facebook generate ads for items while targeting them to users. These product ads could rival Google's shopping ads, which have evidently performed well for retailers in search. In a blog post, Facebook explained further: "Advertisers can curate ads as they see fit. For instance, they can highlight products that were viewed on their website/mobile app or showcase best-selling products. Or they can create a multi-product ad that highlights the different benefits of a single product." Like Google, Facebook's system will also recognize when products are out of stock and stop advertising them. Target and Shutterfly are among the first merchants testing Facebook product ads.

• JCPenney's 4 Cent Video Ads on Twitter Could Threaten YouTube's Longtime Dominance Retailer shows how social is changing: JCPenney's Twitter was behind its most successful social program—not Facebook or YouTube—and credited the platform's new video creation and viewing capabilities. The retailer only paid 4 cents for every view, an astoundingly low sum for digital video ads. Ad industry insiders familiar with social media rates said video ads elsewhere cost up to $1 a view. "Some brands are seeing 2 cents per view on Twitter, which is very effective," said one ad industry exec not authorized to speak about rates on the record. JCPenney's holiday campaign "Just Got Jingled" featured videos of customers receiving surprise gifts from strangers in stores. Needless to say, the Internet is fond of such random acts of kindness, even when they are part of a branded marketing stunt. The retailer caught the results on camera and promoted them on Twitter, which recently developed in-app, native video tools. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has made video capabilities for brands, celebrities, media and everyday users a priority, which is why the company bought SnappyTV last year and Niche last week. The former is a technology that powers Twitter's in-house video, and the latter manages Web celebrities to help them make money by selling ads against their videos. In its JCPenney report, Twitter revealed a rare peek at how one of its first Promoted Video ad campaigns performed. Here's how it worked: JCPenney let strangers pick fellow shoppers in stores and paid for their items at checkout. The retailer promoted the videos on Twitter and targeted them based on users' shopping profiles and interest in holiday deals. The retailer sent promoted tweets to Twitter users discussing the holidays, and adjusted messaging on the fly. The video generated more than 3 million views on the social media site (more than on YouTube), according to JCPenney. At 4 cents a view, the campaign would add up to about $120,000. Nine out of 10 impressions were unpaid, organic tweets viewed by users without the promoted tag. There were 16 million impressions, in all, on the promoted tweet.

• Samsung has $56B in cash, and is looking to do acquisitions rather than return money to investors: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd aims to use its $56 billion cash pile to fund growth including acquisitions, the tech giant's investor relations chief said, even as more shareholders clamor for bigger dividends. While the South Korean company's profit declined in 2014 for the first time in three years as its lead in smartphones was challenged by Apple Inc, investors were cheered by a 40 percent dividend boost and its first share buyback since 2007. But Robert Yi, Samsung's head of investor relations, signaled that shareholders should not expect the same in 2015 as the company keeps its focus on growth. "Dividends and other forms of shareholder returns are responsibilities that the company has for shareholders, so we will make efforts to meet them. But our primary objective is growth and that is what we are communicating to our shareholders," Yi told Reuters in an interview. Samsung has become an increasingly active shopper, striking 10 deals in two years. Even so, its purchases have been small, prompting calls from some investors for bigger deals to revive growth momentum. "We are primarily focused on M&A deals for companies that would be good fits to Samsung's current businesses, and we believe that know-how and experience accrued from such transactions will make bigger M&A deals possible going forward," Yi said. Samsung Electronics held cash of 61.8 trillion won ($56.14 billion) at the end of 2014.