- Apple falls on Nikkei report of ~30% iPhone production cuts: Apple is expected to cut production of its latest iPhone models by about 30 percent in the January-March quarter, the Nikkei reported. As inventories of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have piled up since they were launched last September, production will be scaled back to let dealers go through their current stock, the business daily reported. Apple's shares were down 2.2 percent at $102.97 in afternoon trading. The stock has lost about a quarter of its value from record highs in April, reflecting worries over slowing shipments. "This is an eye-opening production cut which speaks to the softer demand that Apple has seen with 6s out of the gates," FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives said. "The Street was bracing for a cut but the magnitude here is a bit more worrisome." Apple shares fell on the report. Tepid forecast by Apple suppliers such as Jabil Circuit, which manufactures casings for iPhones, and Dialog Semiconductor GmbH in December stoked fears that iPhone shipments could fall for the first time. Wall Street has also tempered its view on the high-flying stock in recent months. Since early December, about a third of the analysts tracked by Thomson Reuters have trimmed their estimates on Apple.
- Stuff from CES that you may actually want to buy: CES, the largest consumer electronics show in the world, kicked off Monday with a sneak peek at what some companies will be exhibiting on the show floor this week. Even with a smaller sampling of exhibitors, there was a dizzying amount of tech to take in -- everything from drones to laser-powered gizmos that promise to regrow your hair. We walked the floor and picked out five items that might be worth buying if they ever get to the market. There is a catch: Like so much of the gadgetry on display at CES, all of these items aren't for sale yet. They also don't have some of the finer details, such as price, worked out yet either. Parrot drones have been a highlight of CES for many years, and this year is no different. The company is showing off a new model called the Parrot Disco, a fixed-wing drone that you can launch by hurling it into the air like a Frisbee. Ili, the wearable translator: This little translator is about the size of a thumb drive, has one button and is described as the world's first wearable translator. The idea is that users speak into the device while holding down the button, let go, and then have the Ili translate into another language in real time. The whole thing is designed to work offline -- so no connection needed. It instead draws on a database of words and phrases stored locally in the device. Stabilo Digipen: Moving from the high-flying to the everyday, Stabilo's Digipen promises to be the modern notetaking instrument of my dreams. Made by an established German pen company, this souped-up ballpoint reads and learns the way you write and converts it into digital text for you. Unlike other smart pens, the Digipen is designed to work with any kind of paper.
- India’s most funded hyperlocal startup Grofers shuts shop in 9 cities: Hyperlocal grocery and fresh food delivery startup Grofers India Pvt Ltd, which ran a massive expansion drive four months ago, has shut down its operations in nine cities. The cities where it has stopped services are Bhubaneswar, Ludhiana, Bhopal, Kochi, Mysore, Nashik, Rajkot, Coimbatore and Visakhapatnam. Grofers reportedly withdrew from the nine cities as it didn’t see much uptake even after running massive marketing campaigns. A company spokesperson told Mint that all the employees in these cities are being relocated to other centres. The company’s founder Albinder Dhindsa did not respond to Techcircle.in calls to confirm the development.
- Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Shows Users Why 10,000-Character Tweets Aren’t So Crazy: Show, don’t tell. It’s a general rule for writers and it was a helpful tool for Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Tuesday afternoon just a few hours after Re/code reported that the company is working on a feature that would allow people to send tweets that are 10,000 characters long. (The current limit is 140 characters.) As expected, Twitter users freaked out, so Dorsey tweeted an explanation for the potential change, and he did so in many, many characters. Because Twitter can’t accommodate more than 140 characters in a single tweet, Dorsey shared his much-too-long explanation as a photo instead. This is the closest Twitter has ever come to speaking publicly about the feature, referred to internally as “Beyond 140.” The product could launch as early as March, according to sources, but Dorsey didn’t acknowledge a launch date in his post. It’s clear, though, that Twitter isn’t afraid to make drastic changes to the product in its effort to jump-start user growth and its sagging stock price.
- In reversal of strategy, Verizon launches auction to sell data centers - sources: Verizon has started a process to sell its data center assets, hoping to fetch more than $2.5 billion, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, as the U.S. telecommunications conglomerate focuses on its core business. A sale would represent the latest effort by Verizon, the No. 1 U.S. wireless carrier, to streamline its portfolio following a divestment last year of a chunk of its landline business and a portfolio of wireless towers. It would also mark a reversal of its strategy to expand in hosting and colocation services after it acquired data center operator Terremark Worldwide Inc in 2011 for $1.4 billion. The so-called 'colocation' portfolio up for sale includes 48 data centers, and generates annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of around $275 million, one of the people said.
- Fitbit Takes On the Apple Watch With the Blaze - Stock Falls 18% on News: The fitness tracking leader goes for a full-on, fashionable smartwatch. Fitbit has come out swinging by introducing the Blaze, the company's first smartwatch with some fashion sense. The Blaze isn't a smartwatch that you can weight down with apps or customize to organize your entire digital life. It is primarily meant to be a detailed fitness tracker that can be worn all the time, offering a few additional features for convenience. Apart from interacting with Fitbit's own fitness app, the Blaze can push calendar appointments, calls, and texts, but it doesn't get into the weeds with such things as e-mail or Twitter notifications. The Fitbit Blaze will set you back $200 for the tracker and the rubber strap that's included. Additional rubber straps will cost $30, leather options are $100, and the steel bracelet is the most expensive, at $130. The Fitbit Blaze is now available for pre-order via Fitbit and will go on sale January 6 via Fitbit's larger retailers such at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target in the United States. Global availability isn't yet set, but the Blaze will start rolling out outside the U.S. in March. After the announcement, shares fell throughout the day before ending down 18 percent. The Fitbit Blaze, starting at around $200, represents not only new competition with smartwatch makers, but also potentially a lack of focus for the company — which investors may be punishing. Fitbit had carved out a strong niche in the fitness tracking market, setting itself up for one of the strongest stock performances from companies that went public last year.
- Expanding push into ad-tech, Oracle Buys Audience Tracking Firm AddThis For Around $200M: Oracle continues to ramp up its business in the area of marketing tech. Today the enterprise software giant announced that it has acquired AddThis, which makes sharing features (i.e., those buttons on web pages that let you share stories or follow accounts on Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and audience tracking technology for online publishers and marketers. AddThis says it currently covers activity data for 1.9 billion monthly unique visitors and over 15 million mobile and desktop web domains. Oracle and AddThis are not disclosing the terms of the deal, but we have been digging around, and sources with knowledge of the company tell us that it was in the region of $100 million to $200 million, closer to the latter. The acquisition underscores a couple of bigger developments in the world of advertising and marketing tech. The first of these is the growing role that Oracle is playing in this area. Oracle says that it will continue to serve existing clients of AddThis, but it is currently evaluating the future product roadmap. More concretely, AddThis will become a part of Oracle’s Data Cloud business, a division that also includes assets from two other recent Oracle acquisitions: BlueKai (advertising data) and Datalogix (marketing data). Taken together, the technology and big data portfolios that Oracle has amassed in this division give the company a strong play for more business from brands and ad firms, as well as from online content companies that want better tools to make better sense of their audiences and to monetise them more effectively. Secondly, the deal points to a wider trend for consolidation in marketing tech and ad tech. While AddThis has been around for more than a decade, it’s interesting to see that it finally made the leap to join a bigger company. On its own, AddThis had developed some interesting, but also somewhat controversial, technology. One example, “canvas fingerprinting,” was being tested by AddThis last year as a potential replacement for cookies, by way of a digital image created by each browser to follow users wherever they went online. As Pro Publica described it, canvas fingerprinting was “extremely persistent” and nearly impossible to block, raising concerns from privacy advocates. It’s not clear whether canvas fingerprinting is something that AddThis uses today, or whether Oracle plans to market the tech in future. AddThis is Oracle’s 96th acquisition.
