Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, 17 July

• Uber Rival’s $28 Billion Valuation Shows Size of China’s Ride-Sharing Market: The Chinese car-hailing app Didi Chuxing said on Thursday that it had brought in $7.3 billion in its latest round of fund-raising, which included Apple, Alibaba, and SoftBank as investors. The new funds give the company a total of $10.5 billion in disposable funds, and put its valuation at $28 billion, according to a person familiar with the fund-raising. That Didi’s valuation is now almost half that of the $62.5 billion valuation of its main rival in China, Uber, shows how much potential investors see in China. Yet the size of the cash infusions also underscores the market’s difficulties. In part because of China’s widespread blocking of foreign websites, the competition between Uber and Didi marks the first time in recent history a major foreign tech company has vied so intensely with a local Chinese business. In other markets the contest over ride-sharing has focused on regulation and technology, but in China it has been much more about cash, with the two companies spending billions. The most recent round has also pulled in Apple, pitting America’s biggest tech company against America’s best-known start-up, Uber, in a tricky Chinese market. Both see China as critical to growth. The fund-raising comes as executives from Didi and Uber have signaled that they are focusing on profitability in China. Since then both companies have been locked in a spending war. Though it has primarily taken the form of subsidies, both companies have also tried to develop technology specific to China, and have actively wooed both local and national government officials. Didi has focused on technology that better predicts car arrival times, given China’s unruly traffic, while Uber has developed a commute function that links drivers with riders based on where they live and work.

• Why back-up cameras haven’t stopped drivers from backing into stuff: With or without eyes in the back of their heads, drivers keep hitting things. Despite the growing prevalence of back-up cameras, federal data shows that this technology hasn't significantly cut down on cars backing into people and causing them harm. That research on so-called "back-over incidents" comes as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration moves to make back-up cameras standard and presses automakers to add a bevy of new technologies -- from automatic braking to lane collision warnings -- to even entry-level cars to reduce accidents on the road.As car companies and even regulators increasingly lean on technology to make roads safer, the tepid success of the back-up camera is a red flag. Sure, drivers can see more of what's behind them -- the cameras reduce blind zones while in reverse by 90 percent, according to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety -- but they keep hitting things.Even with back-up cameras, drivers still don’t look around their vehicles enough when in reverse and sometimes get distracted by any number of things as their cars roll backward. Back-up cameras also often beam images to display screens in the front of the car, and drivers can become too reliant on them. Instead of looking backward and through their rearview window or checking mirrors, their eyes are glued to a screen.

• LG Electronics sells mosquito-repelling TV in India: The Indian arm of South Korea's LG Electronics Inc has begun selling a TV with a feature that it says repels mosquitoes, which can spread diseases such as malaria, Zika and dengue. The TV's "Mosquito Away Technology" uses ultrasonic waves that are inaudible to humans but cause mosquitoes to fly away, according to the company. It was released in the country on Thursday, LG said. The same technology, which was certified as effective by an independent laboratory near Chennai, India, has been used by LG in air conditioners and washing machines, the company said. The technology, which also functions when the TV is switched off, is available in two models, priced at 26,500 rupees and 47,500 rupees ($394 and $706). The TV is targeted at lower-income consumers living in conditions that would make them vulnerable to mosquitoes. It will go on sale next month in the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Kim Sang-yeol, an LG Electronics official, said there are no plans for now to market it elsewhere.

• Oracle's cloud strength boosts quarterly revenue: Business software maker Oracle Corp reported a higher-than-expected quarterly revenue as sales in its cloud business surged due to more customers. Shares of the Redwood City, California-based company rose as much as 3.8 percent to $40.10 in extended trading on Thursday. Like its rivals such as SAP SE, IBM Corp and Microsoft Corp, Oracle has focused on moving its business toward the cloud-computing model, essentially providing services remotely via data centers rather than selling installed software. Total revenue from the company's cloud-computing software and platform service rose 49.1 percent to $859 million in the fourth quarter ended May 31. It contributed 8 percent of Oracle's total revenue during thequarter. The company's total revenue fell 1 percent to $10.59 billion, beating analysts' average estimate of $10.47 billion. Oracle's net income rose to $2.81 billion, or 66 cents per share, in the quarter ended May 31, from $2.76 billion, or 62 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, it earned 81 cents per share, meeting average analysts' estimate. Up to Thursday's close, Oracle's stock had risen 5.8 percent this year.

• Salesforce also made a bid for LinkedIn, CEO Benioff confirms: Salesforce was also a serious bidder for LinkedIn, the business networking site that sold to Microsoft for $26 billion this week, said CEO Marc Benioff. While he would not give details of the effort, sources said Salesforce was primarily interested in LinkedIn's recruiting business, which makes up the bulk of its revenue. Sources said LinkedIn was already deep into negotiations with Microsoft when Salesforce made its approach, which would have required both debt and stock financing. Microsoft was able to buy LinkedIn in cash and also promised to let it operate independently. Interestingly, sources confirmed numerous reports that Microsoft had tried to buy Salesforce earlier this year, and both price and the way it would be operated within the company were among the issues that resulted in it not happening. Indeed. Salesforce recently bought Demandware for $2.8 billion.

• InMobi Technologies to discontinue use of mascot function on Miip platform:  InMobi on Thursday said it has shuttered the animated-discovery commerce part of Miip for now, a product it launched amid much fanfare in July last year. Instead, the firm will look to help e-commerce companies reach inactive customers using more traditional ad formats, using the underlying technology it built for the platform. In July, InMobi launched a beta version of Miip, which took the form of an animated monkey, that tracked users’ browsing habits across various mobile apps and showed ads in the forms of bubbles and animations instead of traditional display ads. It allowed consumers to interact with the mascot and tell it what they liked, and how they felt about the products and ads they saw. The promise of such a technology was that first, it enabled personalised discovery of products, and second, the completion of purchases within the ad itself as InMobi had tied up with payments providers like Stripe, AliPay and Paytm. This hasn’t worked out. “The larger vision behind Miip is to enable consumers to buy products and complete transactions through ads. The mascot was conceptualized simply as a ‘face’ to the Miip platform. Over the course of testing, users responded better to an advertiser’s brand as against the Miip branding on an ad unit,” said Arun Pattabhiraman, vice president and global head of marketing, InMobi