Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, April 5

• SoftBank moots Snapdeal sale to Flipkart, proposed deal set to be biggest in Indian e-commerce: SoftBank, the largest shareholder in Snapdeal, held boardroom discussions on the proposed sale of the online marketplace to rival Flipkart on Tuesday, according to two people aware of the development. According to the terms proposed by the Japanese media and telecom conglomerate, Snapdeal shareholders will get one share of Flipkart for every ten they own, said the people cited above. Early investors in Snapdeal — Kalaari Capital and Nexus Venture Partners — have also asked for about $100 million each from the sale, the sources said. The proposed sale could see SoftBank pick up a 20% stake in the country's largest ecommerce company for about $1.5 billion, in the process buying out $500 million to $1 billion worth of Tiger Global's holding in Flipkart, according to two people aware of the matter.  Alibaba-backed Paytm E-commerce has also discussed a potential acquisition of Snapdeal, but the valuation offered was much lower than that offered by Flipkart, added another source.  The meeting signals easing of tensions between Kalaari and Nexus, and SoftBank, said one of the sources mentioned above. 

• Troubled Chinese Giant LeEco Said to Delay Paying U.S. Employees: Chinese technology conglomerate LeEco Inc. delayed payroll for U.S. employees this month, people familiar with the matter said, another sign that billionaire Jia Yueting’s media and Internet empire is grappling with a cash squeeze. LeEco’s U.S. employees are normally paid on the 15th and last day of every month, but the company has told employees that March 31 paychecks would be delayed until April 4, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private matters. LeEco told employees in the U.S. the delay was due to issues with moving money from China, according to one of the people. After rapid expansion of his tech empire, Jia admitted late last year that the company was struggling to raise cash. Some suppliers said that LeEco was behind on payments and the company was stripped of some sports broadcasting rights after defaulting. The paycheck delays are stoking frustration at a U.S. operation that’s suffered key executive departures in the last few months. Jia said in October that LeEco employs more than 500 people in the country “with more being added each week,” but the company hasn’t disclosed its latest U.S. headcount.

• Apple aims for more control, less cost as it accelerates in chip design: Apple's decision to stop licensing graphics chips from Imagination Technologies Group Plc is the clearest example yet of the iPhone maker's determination to take greater control of the core technologies in its products - both to guard its hefty margins and to position it for future innovations, especially in so-called augmented reality. The strategy, analysts say, has already reduced Apple's dependence on critical outside suppliers like ARM Holdings Plc, now owned by SoftBank Group Corp. Apple once relied heavily on ARM to design the main processor for the iPhone, but it now licenses only the basic ARM architecture and designs most of the chip itself. More recently, when Apple bought the headphone company Beats Electronics, part of a $3 billion deal in 2014, it ripped out the existing, off-the-shelf communications chips and replaced them with its own custom-designed W1 Bluetooth chip. "Apple clearly got rid of all the conventional suppliers and replaced about five chips with one," said Jim Morrison, vice president of TechInsights, a firm that examines the chips inside electronics devices. Most vendors of consumer electronics products rely on outside suppliers for chip design and development, primarily because it is extremely expensive. That has created huge opportunities for companies like ARM, Qualcomm Inc and Nvidia Corp, which have developed core technologies for processing, communications and graphics that are used by scores of vendors. Now, though, Apple is so big that it can economically create its own designs, or license small pieces of others' work and build on it. As with ARM and Qualcomm, the actual manufacturing of the chips is still contracted out to a semiconductor foundry, such as those run by Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd.