Daily Tech Snippet: July 21, 2016

• Dollar Shave Club hit the jackpot when Unilever agreed to buy the online men's razor merchant for $1 billion. Other e-commerce startups such as Birchbox and Stitch Fix can't necessarily expect their own suitor to sweep in with such sweet deals. That's because the key to Dollar Shave Club's appeal is not so much its online prowess but the fact that it built a powerful brand in four years.  Dollar Shave Club upended the industry's traditional business model by offering a subscription service that sells blades for as little as $3 a month (including shipping and handling). The day Dollar Shave Club started selling subscriptions in March 2012, the company released a YouTube video starring founder Michael Dubin. He tells viewers the product is f***ing great, "so gentle a toddler could use it." The website crashed, but the blades sold out in six hours. The video has been viewed about 23 million times. The company reached $150 million-plus in sales in 2015, Unilever said in a press release announcing the deal. That despite the fact that the blades lack many of Gillette's high-tech enhancements. Few other e-commerce startups can claim to have built a brand so quickly. Unilever and P&G are masters at traditional marketing, mostly offline, but they struggle with the direct-to-consumer brand-building at which upstarts like Dollar Shave Club excel.

• Intel's slowing data center growth overshadows strong profit: Intel on Wednesday reported slower revenue growth at its data center business, which makes semiconductors used in high-end servers, overshadowing a better-than-expected quarterly profit. Shares of the world's largest chipmaker fell 3 percent in after-hours trading. Hurt by weak demand from enterprises, revenue at the highly-profitable unit rose 5 percent to $4 billion, but lagged the previous quarter's 9 percent increase and remained below Intel's annual target of low double-digit growth.Net revenue rose 2.6 percent to $13.53 billion, narrowly missing the average analyst estimate of $13.54 billion.Intel reported a better-than-expected profit as its cost-cutting begin to pay off. In April it announced plans to slash 12,000 jobs, or 11 percent of its global workforce, of which it said about half was already complete. Intel's forecast for $14.9 billion in current-quarter revenue topped the average analyst expectation of $14.63 billion. Net income fell to $1.33 billion, or 27 cents per share, in the second quarter, from $2.71 billion, or 55 cents per share, a year earlier

• Uber Investors Said to Push for Didi Truce in Costly China Fight: Uber Technologies Inc. investors have a message for management: It’s time to wrap up the costly fight in China. Several institutional investors are pushing the ride-hailing company to ink a partnership agreement with China’s market leader Didi Chuxing, according to people familiar with the matter, stemming the billions of dollars Uber is spending to expand in the region.Uber and Didi are bleeding cash in China as they fight for dominance in the world’s most populous country. Uber has said that it is spending at least $1 billion a year to expand its business in the country. Both are giving out incentives for drivers and free rides to compete for market share.Benchmark’s Bill Gurley -- an Uber investor and board member -- spoke briefly with Didi President Jean Liu at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, a few months ago, according to a person familiar with the matter. Didi is in the lead on its home turf, with 14 million drivers signed up in 400 Chinese cities. Uber has set a target of operating in 100 cities this year. Uber set up a separate corporate entity to insulate its Chinese business, which has gathered local Chinese investors. Still, the parent company has also invested its own money, keeping the units financially intertwined. Among private technology companies, the rivals are giants. Uber, which was last valued at nearly $68 billion, says it has access to more than $11 billion in cash and equity. Didi, which was last valued at $28 billion, says it has more than $10 billion at its disposal in cash and equity.

• Strong demand from China buoys Qualcomm forecast: Qualcomm Inc forecast current-quarter profit largely above market estimates as it sees strong demand for its mobile chips in China and expects to sign more licensing deals. Shares of the company, which also posted a better-than-expected third-quarter profit, rose about 7 percent in extended trading on Wednesday.The company, whose chips are used in Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd smartphones, is focusing on its flagship mobile processors to regain the market share. Qualcomm expects to launch Snapdragon 821, an advanced and a faster version of Snapdragon 820, which powers Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge smartphones."I think it is pretty straightforward...Samsung is back as their customer and...more people in China are ready to pay to license their technology...so it looks like the company is well positioned for the coming quarters," said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy.Revenue rose to $6.04 billion quarter ended June 26 from $5.83 billion a year earlier. Net Income attributable to Qualcomm rose to $1.44 billion, or 97 cents per share, from $1.18 billion, or 73 cents per share.

• EBay beats revenue estimate, bumps up forecasts: Online retailer eBay Inc reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue and raised its sales forecast for the year as efforts to revamp its online marketplace start to pay off. EBay shares were up 8 percent after the bell on Wednesday after the company's board also authorized an additional $2.5 billion stock buyback program. The company, which spun off PayPal last July, has tackled slowing growth by focusing on small business sellers, while offering a bigger selection of products. Gross merchandise volume, or the total value of all goods sold on its sites, was up 4 percent at $20.9 billion in the second quarter ended June 30, helped by strength in its U.S. business. The number of active buyers rose 4 percent to 164 million. The company's revenue also got a boost from robust sales at Stubhub, which won a 6.5 year revenue-sharing deal to resell tickets for the New York Yankees last month.The company's net income rose to $435 million, or 38 cents per share, in the latest quarter from $83 million, or 7 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 5.7 percent to $2.23 billion, ahead of analysts' average estimate of $2.17 billion. Up to Wednesday's close, shares of the San Jose, California-based company had fallen 5.6 percent in the past 12 months.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, July 20

• Microsoft Earnings Are Up, Cushioned by Its Cloud Business: On Tuesday, in its quarterly earnings results, Microsoft offered strong signs that its cloud business was growing quickly. Revenue from Azure, a business Microsoft started to compete in cloud computing with Amazon, the market leader, rose more than 100 percent in the quarter. Revenue from Office 365, a subscription version of the old Office software, rose 54 percent from commercial customers and 19 percent from consumers.Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, has made cloud computing a priority for the company since becoming chief executive two years ago. Many believed it was a move that Microsoft had long needed to make but was held back by the reluctance of its previous boss, Steven A. Ballmer. There is risk in this transition. The profit margins from renting software in the cloud are not as high as selling a license to customers, and Microsoft investors have always counted on the company to generate exceptional profits. But the cloud business model tends to be more stable — a trade-off for slimmer margins. After Microsoft’s misadventures in the smartphone market, it is a necessary trade-off. Last week, the company said it would fail to meet a goal of getting its Windows 10 operating system running on one billion devices before June 2018, largely because of its retrenchment in the mobile phone business.Now the company has laid off most of the thousands of people who joined Microsoft through the deal, written off the value of nearly all of the acquisition and whittled back the number of smartphones it sells. On Tuesday, Microsoft said that its phone revenue had declined 71 percent from a year ago. For years, people have put off purchases of new machines or avoided them entirely in favor of smartphones and tablets. Last week, IDC, the technology research firm, said worldwide PC shipments fell 4.5 percent in the most recent quarter compared with a year earlier.For the quarter ended June 30, Microsoft reported net income of $3.12 billion, or 39 cents a share, compared with a loss of $3.2 billion, or 40 cents a share, during the same period a year earlier. Revenue fell to $20.61 billion, from $22.18 billion a year ago. The decline was partly the result of a $2 billion deferral of revenue related to Windows 10, its latest operating system. Accounting rules require Microsoft to recognize revenue from the software to be recognized in pieces over time. Without the deferral, Microsoft’s revenue rose 2 percent from a year earlier to $22.64 billion. The company’s shares jumped about 4 percent in after-hours trading following the release of its results.

• Google has found a business model for its most advanced artificial intelligence: Two years ago, Google spent over half a billion dollars for the tiny artificial intelligence startup DeepMind. Since then, the unit has walloped Atari video games and beaten an impossible board game. Impressive stuff, that. But those AI demonstrations have yet to spell actual revenue. Until now — although the efforts are helping Google save money on its most expensive part. DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis told Bloomberg that his unit recently began applying its advanced AI to Google’s data centers, finding ways to reduce the company’s sizable energy bill. Google started using machine learning for its data centers two years ago, searching for ways to reduce costs for one of the company’s top expenses. A month ago, it aimed the more specialized AI tools from DeepMind at the problem of cooling these server farms. That cut the energy needed for cooling by 40 percent, the company said. It didn’t offer a dollar figure for that, but it’s safe to assume that it means hundreds of millions in savings over the long haul.DeepMind technically sits outside of Google in Alphabet. (I’ve heard people describe it as in the “Alphaverse,” whatever that means.) But a rep said that Google was not paying DeepMind for its cost-cutting research here.

• Facebook Pilots Offline Video for India in Duel With YouTube: Facebook Inc. is piloting a feature in India allowing users to save videos to watch offline, chasing a similar program from Google’s YouTube, as the companies attempt to crack a market ridden with poor internet connectivity. The move followed feedback from users in the country citing poor video experiences because of limited mobile coverage, Facebook said in a statement. “We’re testing an option for people to download videos to Facebook while they’re online on good internet connections, to view the video at anytime, online or offline, without using extra mobile data,” the company said. YouTube introduced offline video in 2014 to cater to Indians crazy about watching Bollywood song sequences, cricket snippets and comedy sketches. Despite the cost of downloads, an estimated 40 percent of data consumption on phone networks is video, said Nikhil Pahwa, editor of the New Delhi-based Medianama.com, which monitors news on the digital industry.Facebook, which has 142 million users in India, said the new feature helps users get through the lag between downloading and playing a video by saving it for later, similar to the YouTube feature. Only original videos posted on personal Facebook accounts and on the social network’s pages can be downloaded. The program is being tested on a small percentage of Indian users, the company said without providing details on broader rollout.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, March 17 2016

• Flipkart and Amazon may have explored sale talks, say sources: Flipkart reportedly considered selling itself to Amazon, upending the notion that India’s largest online retailer would go full distance as an independent Internet giant. half-a-dozen sources told ET of the discussions between Flipkart and Amazon, and emphasised there is no reason to believe that a deal will be struck or that talks are still ongoing between the two. The talks were held until as recently as the last quarter of 2015, one of the sources said. ET was not able to determine the exact timeline of these talks or if they were initiated by one of Flipkart's investors. Flipkart itself denied that it is up for sale, or that it is in the market for capital. Three of the sources, who are top-level executives in venture capital and private equity firms, said Amazon made a preliminary offer of up to $8 billion to acquire Flipkart, nearly half of its previous stated valuation of $15.2 billion. A mutual fund managed by Morgan Stanley slashed the value of its Flipkart shares by 27% last month to about $11 billion, increasing speculation that new investors will back the company at a lower valuation. Flipkart-Amazon talks went cold after the offer was perceived to be too low, but the sources said the situation can change given Alibaba's interest in Flipkart.


• What AlphaGo’s sly move says about machine creativity: AlphaGo, the computer system Google engineers trained to master the ancient game of Go, needed only one move to make it abundantly clear that it has left humans in its dust. The move came Thursday, in the second game of AlphaGo’s 4-1 landmark victory over South Korean Lee Sedol, one of the world’s best Go players. About an hour into the match, AlphaGo placed one of its stones in a nontraditional spot on the board that surprised those watching. “I don’t really know if it’s a good or bad move,” said Michael Redmond, a commentator on a live English broadcast. “It’s a very strange move.” Redmond, one of the Western world’s best Go players, could only crack a smile. “I thought it was a mistake,” his broadcast partner, Chris Garlock, said with a laugh. Sedol, however, was more serious. He stared at the board, then got up from the table and left the room. As Sedol returned after a few minutes and pondered his next move, it became clear that AlphaGo’s move was no mistake. It might be strange, but it definitely wasn’t bad. It was brilliant.  Sedol would take almost 16 minutes to make his next move. He would never recover, losing the match. “Almost no human pro would’ve thought of it, I think,” Redmond said after the match. Pedro Domingos, a computer science professor at the University of Washington and author of “The Master Algorithm,” saw a parallel between AlphaGo’s style and how chess prodigy Bobby Fischer was feared because his early moves were considered too foolish to even be made. But as Fischer’s matches wore on, the ill-advised moves suddenly looked genius. “If that’s not creative, then what is?” Domingos asked. He sees machines delivering creative results, and they’re just getting started. Domingos believes a computer eventually will write a best-selling book. And he thinks there’s a 50-50 chance that a computer writes a hit pop song in the next decade, given advances in artificial intelligence techniques and computing power.Domingos said such advances shouldn’t come as a surprise, as machines increasingly demonstrate that creativity isn’t magical and distinctly human.

• Apple looks to Google’s Cloud Platform as it diversifies its infrastructure: Rumors are flying today that Apple is moving part of its cloud business from AWS to Google’s Cloud Platform. We did some asking around and yes, it does appear that Apple has made some moves to diversify its iCloud storage, tapping Google for some of that business. This is another huge win for Google and a — at the very least perceived — loss of ground for AWS, which has watched as Dropbox moved large parts of its US storage business in-house and Spotify moved at least part of its business to Google, too. If you’re keeping score, it’s been a good month for Google and especially the new head of its cloud business Diane Greene. High profile clients like Spotify and Apple would certainly make it more attractive to other enterprise customers. Google’s Cloud Platform may have the power of Google’s data center technology behind it, but that hasn’t yet helped the company in competing against AWS and Microsoft’s Azure platform. AWS has the advantage of an early start and Azure profits from Microsoft’s existing sales channels and it’s focus on hybrid cloud technologies. And even with the power of Microsoft behind it, though, Azure remains a distant second in the cloud business. One industry insider who chose not to be identified, however, told TechCrunch that Apple was definitely exploring its options around public cloud vendors, looking at Microsoft Azure and Google, but it had not made any firm decisions yet. It’s worth noting that Apple already uses  Azure (and AWS) for iCloud services and media serving. Whether Apple will continue moving off of AWS and onto other platforms is anyone’s guess. But at the moment it appears that this is a matter of diversifying its portfolio of cloud suppliers. Another wrinkle here is that Apple is currently expanding its data center in Prineville, Oregon, and is also expected to invest heavily in new data centers in both the U.S. and Europe. If that’s the case, moving from AWS to Google, then Google to Prineville wouldn’t seem to make sense. Why not just wait until the data center construction is complete?If Apple is indeed simply looking to diversify its infrastructure, though, then adding Google (on top of Azure, AWS and its own data centers) would be a fairly logical move. It’s also possible that Apple is only looking at some very specific services on the Google cloud, with theBigQuery data analytics platform being the prime suspect here.


• Morgan Stanley Downgrades LinkedIn, Slashes Price Target by 34 Percent: Why we were wrong" isn't a phrase one might want to include when sending out a note to clients, but it's what Morgan Stanley analysts were forced to deploy on Wednesday morning as they downgraded LinkedIn Corp. The shift from "overweight' to "equalweight," is the latest in a series of cuts for LinkedIn after it reported lackluster earnings last month that sent shares tumbling by more than 40 percent the following day.  "With its current product offering, LinkedIn isn't likely to be as big of a platform as we previously thought," the team, led by Brian Nowak, said. "We are reducing our price target to $125 [per] share (from $190) as well, driven by our lower long-term cash flow forecasts and increased execution uncertainty." Two key factors that had kept Morgan Stanley bullish are now abating. The first was growth in LinkedIn's Talent Solutions segment, which includes such things as subscription revenue. Nowak and his team now believe that growth has slowed both domestically and internationally for this segment and that the increased focus on small- and medium-sized businesses betokens that LinkedIn is hitting a peak when it comes to larger companies. The second was the monetization potential in new segments, known as Lynda and Sales Navigator. Recent events have caused the team to grow skeptical.

• Oracle Increases Buyback Program by $10 Billion:  Oracle reported a higher-than-expected quarterly profit and increased its stock buyback program by $10 billion. Oracle, like other established tech companies, is moving its business to the cloud by providing services remotely through data centers versus selling installed software. Total cloud revenue rose 39.5 percent to $735 million, accounting for about 8 percent of Oracle’s total revenue. Net income fell to $2.14 billion, or 50 cents a share, in the third quarter, from $2.50 billion, or 56 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company reported a profit of 64 cents a share. Revenue fell 3.4 percent to $9.01 billion. Shares rose more than 4 percent in after-hours trading.

• Beyond Swipe Right: The Pickup Line Gets a Makeover: Thanks to the popular dating app Tinder, a one-size-fits-all gesture of approval, swipe right, has in theory replaced awkward fumbles at an opening conversational gambit. But in fact, the migration of courtship online has resulted in a refinement of pickup lines far beyond ’70s singles-bar relics like “Hey baby, what’s your sign?” and “Are those space pants? Because your butt is out of this world.” The simple “Hi” and its variations are the surest ways to end a conversation; they’re too generic and, lately, indistinguishable from the way bots initiate contact. Only those with the most flattering profile pictures can get away with generic questions like “How was your weekend?” A more common approach in Tinder-land is to quickly skim the other person’s profile and find something to comment on — a detail from a photo, or a line of profile text. Statements tend to work better than questions as conversation starters; they’re less personal and invite reactions and commentary rather than disclosure. With the help of a friend, Brent Bailey, 24, a programmer in New York, came up with a successful opener to someone who mentioned her life being “a bit messy” in her profile. “I could make your life a whole lot messier,” he responded. Mr. Bailey said he was more successful with crowd-sourced pickup lines. “As a rule, my friends are way less concerned about my dignity, so they usually come up with something way more interesting than I would,” he said. On the dating service Bumble, where women must initiate all conversations, Ms. Smothers decided to try what she called a “dumb troll-y” gimmick — asking every match if he was a feminist. Men loved it, and she got a high response rate she has yet to match.

• LivingSocial is laying off more than half of its workers: LivingSocial will cut more than half of its workforce, according to anannouncement from the company saying it has completed its "initial phase of turnaround." The move is the latest sign of the decline of "daily deal" sites once thought of as the next big thing for online shopping. The sites typically offered users heavily discounted vouchers at local businesses in exchange for a cut of deal sales. But some business complained that the model wasn't actually a good deal for them -- and consumers seemed to tire of the flood of emails sent by the services. The latest job cuts are part of a series of layoffs. The local company cut 400 jobs in 2014 and another 200 in October of last year. Competitor Groupon has also struggled: In September it announced it would lay off 1,100 people -- roughly 10 percent of its workforce -- and close operations in six countries. LivingSocial plans to move away from the voucher business, but hopes to expand "card-linked" discounts, according to the press release. The company is trying out a program called Restaurant Plus in handful of cities that works by letting customers reserve a deal with payment card information on file, but not charging them for it until it's actually used.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, February 1st 2016

• Microsoft Plumbs Ocean’s Depths to Test Underwater Data Center: Microsoft has tested a prototype of a self-contained data center that can operate hundreds of feet below the surface of the ocean, eliminating one of the technology industry’s most expensive problems: the air-conditioning bill. Today’s data centers, which power everything from streaming video to social networking and email, contain thousands of computer servers generating lots of heat. When there is too much heat, the servers crash. Putting the gear under cold ocean water could fix the problem. It may also answer the exponentially growing energy demands of the computing world because Microsoft is considering pairing the system either with a turbine or a tidal energy system to generate electricity. The effort, code-named Project Natick, might lead to strands of giant steel tubes linked by fiber optic cables placed on the seafloor. Another possibility would suspend containers shaped like jelly beans beneath the surface to capture the ocean current with turbines that generate electricity. Such a radical idea could run into stumbling blocks, including environmental concerns and unforeseen technical issues. But the Microsoft researchers believe that by mass producing the capsules, they could shorten the deployment time of new data centers from the two years it now takes on land to just 90 days, offering a huge cost advantage. The underwater server containers could also help make web services work faster. Much of the world’s population now lives in urban centers close to oceans but far away from data centers usually built in out-of-the-way places with lots of room. The ability to place computing power near users lowers the delay, or latency, people experience, which is a big issue for web users. The company recently completed a 105-day trial of a steel capsule — eight feet in diameter — that was placed 30 feet underwater in the Pacific Ocean off the Central California coast near San Luis Obispo. Controlled from offices here on the Microsoft campus, the trial proved more successful than expected. The researchers had worried about hardware failures and leaks. The underwater system was outfitted with 100 different sensors to measure pressure, humidity, motion and other conditions to better understand what it is like to operate in an environment where it is impossible to send a repairman in the middle of the night. The system held up. That led the engineers to extend the time of the experiment and to even run commercial data-processing projects from Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service.

• Tech Valuations In 2016: The End Of The Line For Sloppy Growth: What’s going on in technology investing right now? Is this another 2001, when tech imploded? Another 2008, when the wider world crashed but tech powered through? Or is it like Facebook in 2012, a valuation blip and a chance to buy? High-growth companies have attracted  high valuations, which allowed them to raise capital, which was then spent to generate still more growth and raise the valuation again. The result has been a self-perpetuating cycle of high burn, higher growth, still higher valuations and a strong positive feedback loop. The slop has been showing up in the numbers. The valuations of public companies already reflect this - valuations of public tech companies crashed 18 months ago. In March 2014, these high-growth companies were being valued at 12x run-rate revenues, but by mid-2014, this had declined to around 6x revenues, which is where it has remained since. The long-expected crash has, in fact, already happened — almost 18 months ago.  Unlike the private markets, the public markets get to rethink investment decisions every day. Over time, public investors either explicitly or implicitly realized that customer economics and the quality of growth have declined and, consequently, reduced the premium paid for excess growth. Capitalism works. The private markets, where decisions only get made once a year, have been slower to react; hence, the dearth of IPOs and the price adjustments seen as high-priced private companies come to the public markets. In 2016, any private tech company where the last percentage points of growth have only been generated at the expense of profit will no longer be able to attract capital at a high valuation. Smart companies will respond by cutting marginal investment, thus raising sales efficiency — even at the expense of having a lower growth rate. We will then see the same feedback loop kick in, but in reverse. Lower valuations will result in less capital being raised, which will result in lower growth and still-lower valuations. In contrast to the rise, the decline will happen much more quickly. Bubbles build up slowly, crashes happen fast. Eventually it will bottom out as growth rates become sustainable at acceptable levels of customer economics. Sloppy growth will be out. Sustainable, smart growth will be back — at least until the next time.

• Theranos is running out of time: When Elizabeth Holmes, chief executive officer of Theranos Inc., sat down for an interview last month, she sought to address reports that sparked serious doubts about her company's innovative blood-testing technology. “What we need to do now is focus on the technology and focus on the science and the data and put that out there,” Holmes said in an interview for a Bloomberg Businessweek cover story. “Because that speaks for itself.”: Since then, investors, critics, and members of the medical community have been waiting. And waiting. And the news just keeps getting worse. The most recent blow comes from an inspection report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which found that Theranos's lab facility in Newark, Calif., is in violation of regulations on five counts. As Bloomberg News reported, the company's testing center inside a Walgreen's pharmacy in Palo Alto, Calif., has been temporarily shuttered and turned into a ghost town with a sign taped out front saying it's closed "until further notice." The company's response to this new crisis is the same as it has been all along: It says it is on top of it. How much longer it can keep saying this without losing its credibility is unclear, but it's safe to say that time is running out.Holmes and her story of upending the blood testing market were so powerful that Theranos was granted a $9 billion valuation through recent investment rounds and attracted a VIP roster of politically connected board members from outside the medical field, such as Henry Kissinger and William Perry. Theranos did much of its fundraising from 2003 to 2015, in the midst of an inflating Silicon Valley bubble, when billions of dollars in investor money was sloshing around. The environment has become much more difficult over the past six months, and the company may be running out of time.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, January 6

• 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.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, August 21

Twitter shares hit an all-time low: Twitter stock dropped below its initial public offering price in intra-day trading Thursday as the company looks for a new chief executive. The social media titan has watched stocks slide for weeks after a disappointing earnings call with analysts last month that highlighted the company's troubles with growth and focus. On the call, interim chief executive and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said that the company would need time to hit "mass market" growth — a message that didn't sit well with investors. The Pew Research Center reported Wednesday that 23 percent of all American adults online use Twitter, but that user growth among U.S. adults has slowed to a halt. The stock closed at $26 per share, down more than 5 percent for the day, and was relatively flat in after-hours trading.

Google, Amazon in fray to buy Tata's India Data centres: Google and Amazon are among those in talks with the Tata Group to buy the data centre business of Tata Communications in a deal expected to fetch about $650-700 million. They are competing with bulge-bracket private equity funds including the Blackstone Group, Carlyle, KKR, Bain Capital and Advent International, who are all looking to buy up to 74% stake in the data centre unit and take control of the business that is spread across 44 locations in India and abroad. Besides India, Tata Communications has data centres in the US, UK and Singapore, with over 1 million sq ft of co-location space, offering managed hosting and storage services. In India, it has facilities in leading metros such as New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata and Pune, besides some tier-II and tier-III locations. The data centre business addedRs 436 crore to Tata Communications' FY15 revenues and has about 27% EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), the company said in an investor presentation last month after its June quarter earnings.

Salesforce raises full-year revenue forecast again: Salesforce.com reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue and profit, helped by an increase in demand for its Web-based sales and marketing software, and raised its revenue forecast for the full year for the third time. Revenue rose 24 percent to $1.63 billion, beating analysts' average estimate of $1.60 billion, and the company's net loss narrowed to $852,000 in the second quarter from $61.1 million a year earlier. The company's shares rose about 4 percent in extended trading after the world's biggest maker of online sales software also forecast current-quarter revenue and adjusted profit above the average analyst estimates. "... We'll go from being the sixth largest software company in the world to the fourth largest next year," Chief Executive Marc Benioff said on a conference call, adding that the company would only lag Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. Salesforce raised its revenue forecast for the year ending January 2016 to $6.60 billion-$6.63 billion from $6.52 billion-$6.55 billion. San Francisco-based Salesforce has been gaining market share from Oracle and SAP in customer relationship management software that helps companies organize and track sales calls and leads. Salesforce, which provides its services online, with no software directly installed on PCs, leads the global customer relationship management market, which is valued at $23 billion annually, according to tech research firm Gartner.

Global Smartphone Sales Growth Slowed in Second Quarter: The research firm Gartner said worldwide sales of smartphones in the second quarter grew at the slowest pace since 2013 as sales in China declined for the first time. Sales grew 13.5 percent to 330 million units in the second quarter compared with a year earlier. While demand continues to increase in emerging markets, Gartner says overall smartphone sales were mixed. Smartphone sales in China fell 4 percent year-over-year. China accounted for 30 percent of total smartphone sales in the second quarter, but Gartner says its phone market has reached saturation.

HP revenue falls on weak PC sales, lower demand for services: The 76-year-old company, which has struggled to adapt to mobiles and online computing, is splitting into two listed companies later this year, separating its computer and printer businesses from its faster-growing corporate hardware and services operations. HP is nearing the end of a multi-year restructuring under Whitman, who has been cutting costs and focusing on higher-margin sales. The plan includes the elimination of about 55,000 jobs. The decline in global PC sales was exacerbated in the second quarter of 2015 as customers awaited the release of Windows 10 in July. As a result, revenue at HP's personal computer and printer businesses, its largest, fell 11.5 percent in the third quarter ended July 31. Enterprise services division sales dropped 11 percent, while revenue at the enterprise group rose 2 percent. For the full-year ending October, the company said it expected adjusted profit of $3.59-$3.65 per share, largely below the average analyst estimate of $3.64 per share. Total revenue fell 8.1 percent to $25.35 billion in the third quarter, also hurt by a strong dollar.

After Years Of Restraint, Facebook Tries Allowing GIFs In Ads And Page Posts: Facebook refused to fill its site with flashy animated banner ads for a decade. Zuckerberg thought these interrupted the user experience, and could stunt growth. But after reaching near ubiquity and acclimating users to video ads, today the company tells me it’s relaxing its standards and starting to allow businesses to post GIFs as ads and Page posts. Wendy’s and Coca-Cola’s Brazilian brand Kuat are the first businesses with the ability to share them. Wendy’s ad shows a salad being constructed, while Kuat’s is basically the rainbow-shooting poptart meme Nyan Cat with a brand name slapped on. GIFs can’t go in the tiny sidebar ads Facebook is phasing out, only “Boosted” Page posts, which make up most of the ads you see in your feed. The social network started supporting GIFs in user posts starting in May, but hadn’t allowed businesses to try the hip graphic interchange format all the kids are Tumbling over. Facebook tells me “GIFs can be a fun and compelling way to communicate, so we’ve started testing GIF support in posts and boosted posts for a small percentage of Facebook Pages. We will evaluate whether it drives a great experience for people before rolling it out to more Pages.” So basically, if users hate them and they don’t perform well, Facebook will scrap them. But if the eyegrabbing ads and Page posts drive business without annoying the hell out of people, all companies might soon get the option to animate your News Feed. GIFs are the visual equivalent of shouting. You have to really care about the message or you’d prefer they just shut up.

Google Express Plans to Shut Down Its Two Delivery Hubs: Google Express, the search giant’s same-day delivery service, is shutting down its two delivery hubs in San Francisco and Mountain View, Calif., according to sources. The move is part of a broader push within Google to revamp the service, which launched in March 2013, after it failed to make a serious dent in a market crowded with Amazon and a myriad of on-demand startups. The service is not shutting down, but seems to be recalibrating a logistical plan it was testing in California. Express was hatched out of Google’s commerce plans, formed, in part, to hedge against Amazon’s growing foray into product searches. It is now in seven major cities. In most of them, Google delivers goods from retail and shipping partners. When the service arrived in the Bay Area, Google tried out a hub model. Customers would order from Google’s retail partners, and drivers delivered the goods from the two locations on the same day or overnight. Now, Google is changing course. And the change comes after a tumultuous year for the company’s commerce initiatives: It lost the exec atop Express, Tom Fallows, then the exec atop all of commerce, Sameer Samat. After Fallows’s departure, Google shook up the Express leadership multiple times, putting the business development lead for Google Shopping, Brian Elliott, at its helm in July. Rising costs of the drivers and vehicles are likely one rationale. According to multiple sources, Google is trying to curb these by outsourcing its delivery to other on-demand startups and has held initial talks with multiple companies, including Postmates and Flywheel.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, July 23

• Archived snippets are here, and MP3 versions are here

• Qualcomm Reports Lower Earnings and Says It Will Cut Jobs: Qualcomm had one of the best playbooks in tech, but it looks like the game is changing. The semiconductor designer and maker helped develop much of the technology used in mobile communications, particularly in smartphones. Qualcomm was a pioneer in the radio technology that makes it possible to send enormous amounts of data over wireless networks without clogging them. Virtually every maker of phones and wireless infrastructure needs to draw off Qualcomm’s intellectual property, which the company leases. The knowledge and profits Qualcomm earned from that business gave it both capital and a head start in building chips for phones, first in advanced third-generation, or 3G, digital networks, then in the succeeding 4G systems.With a market capitalization of $100 billion, over the last 15 years it became the world’s third-largest chip company in terms of revenue. Little of that was on display Wednesday, when Qualcomm reported lower earnings, and, under pressure from Wall Street, announced it would cut about 15 percent of its staff, or somewhere between 4,500 and 5,000 people. Spending will be reduced by $1.4 billion, the company said, including $300 million in shares that Qualcomm has been giving to its top executives and employees. Three new board members, approved by Jana Partners, a Wall Street investment firm that had been pressing for changes, will be put on Qualcomm’s 15-member board. Qualcomm said its third fiscal quarter’s net income was $1.2 billion, down 47 percent from a year earlier. Net income was 73 cents a share, down from $1.31 a share. Revenue fell 14 percent, to $5.8 billion, from $6.8 billion last year. The numbers were slightly higher than analysts had expected. The price of Qualcomm shares was down about 1.8 percent in after-hours trading.


• Amazon is expanding its on-demand home services business -- "Amazon Home Services" -- to 15 new cities: Amazon announced Wednesday that it's expanding its on-demand home services business -- transparently named "Amazon Home Services" -- to 15 new cities. The program was already operating in New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles, offering users an easy way to book plumbers, electricians, cleaners and other people who can handle the things you may need around the house. The company announced that it is also expanding the service to let people request help with custom jobs, rather than just the pre-packaged services previously offered. The competition in the on-demand space for home tasks is heating up. Companies such as TaskRabbit jumped in early to the "gig" economy -- in fact, it integrates with Home Services -- and now a host other of cleaning, laundry and other service companies such as Handy, Thumbtack and others have found success providing on-demand workers to take care of your home needs. Amazon says its Home Services "pros," as the service calls them, are vetted and required to keep all appropriate licenses to continue working with the service. Some use Amazon to expand their own businesses. Google is also thought to be jumping into the space. The company recently hired the technical team from Homejoy, a home-cleaning startup that shut down in part because it faced a lawsuit for classifying its workers as contractors rather than employees, Recode reported. The report suggested that Google may try and bake some sort of services link into its search results -- a sort of instant referral from the search page.


• Intel Issues $7 Billion in Bonds to Help Fund Takeover of Altera: Intel tapped the bond market for $7 billion to finance part of its $16.7 billion takeover of Altera Corp. at lower rates than initially offered to investors. The world’s biggest chipmaker sold the longest portion of the four-part deal, $2 billion of 30-year, 4.9 percent securities, to yield 1.85 percentage points more than similar-maturity Treasuries, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The spread tightened as the day went on, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Similar-maturity debt was traded at a 1.8 percentage point spread in the secondary market on Tuesday, Bloomberg data show. Intel may have offered generous terms to appease investors dealing with a turbulent market, CreditSights analysts led by Erin Lyons wrote in a research note Wednesday, as a disappointing earnings forecast from Apple sent technology stocks tumbling. Speculation that Intel peer Qualcomm would split may have also “soured investors’ opinions of highly rated tech companies,” they wrote.


• Amazon’s Latest Prime Perk: A Five Percent Cash-Back Credit Card: Amazon continues to make a concerted effort to add new perks to Amazon Prime as it tries to funnel new shoppers into the membership program that turns casual shoppers into Amazon addicts. Here’s another Prime benefit that many people might not know about: Access to an Amazon credit card that pays back 5 percent on every Amazon.com order. Amazon quietly introduced the card, the Amazon Prime Store Card, in March and has been slowly rolling out marketing for it on Amazon.com since then. But the company hasn’t done any PR around it, which is why I first learned of the Prime card by seeing a message on the site last week. The card has no annual fee and allows Prime members to get 5 percent back in the form of a statement credit on all Amazon.com orders — not just Prime purchases — that they place with the card. The card also comes with some promotional financing options, but you should read the fine print yourself because credit card application fine print ain’t nothing to mess with. The card is obviously great for Amazon if it attracts new shoppers to the Prime program, which costs $99 a year and comes with two-day shipping and media streaming, or helps retain current ones. But it’s also important because Amazon will likely be paying lower transaction fees on purchases made with Prime cards compared to purchases made with mainstream credit cards. That’s because store-branded cards typically carry low processing fees when they aren’t associated with Visa, MasterCard or American Express’ networks. As a result, expect Amazon to try its best to get cardholders to make the Prime Store Card the default payment option.


• Tata Communications plans to sell data centre business: Tata Communications plans to sell a 74% stake in its subsidiary Tata Communications Data Centre Pvt Ltd, reports indicate. Talks with some private equity and strategic investors have begun, and the deal size would likely be around $300 million and help Tata Communications reduce debt on its books. According to Tata Communications’ 2014 annual report, the data centre subsidiary is profitable, and returned a net profit of Rs. 23 crore for 2013-14 on a revenue of Rs. 375 crore. The company is yet to announce its numbers for 2014-15. “In the long run, unless the company is able to raise equity funding, its ability to raise additional debt funding may be restricted. This, in turn, could adversely affect the capital expenditure programme in the long run,” the annual report said. Tata Communications Data Centre has facilities in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata and Pune and some tier-II, and tier-III towns. The company also provides data centre services in the US, the UK and Singapore. It owns over 1 million sq. ft of data centre and co-location space across 44 global locations and also has eight partner sites in Australia, Malaysia, Germany and the Netherlands, according to the company’s website. In 2013-14, the Tata Communications had a 28% market share of the Indian data market and a 25% market share of the Indian data centre market, according to the company’s annual report. Several global and Indian firms are in the process of setting up data centres in India.

Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, June 26

• Here is an MP3 version of this snippet

• Marketers Will Drool Over Facebook’s New Signup Ads That Auto-Fill Your Email Or Number: Businesses desperately want your email address, but it’s annoying to enter it on mobile. Cue Facebook’s latest News Feed ads. A marketer can buy an ad asking for you to sign-up for a newsletter or request a sales call, and with two-taps you can auto-fill your email address, phone number, or other info you’ve registered with Facebook. Facebook is testing these “Lead Ads” with a small group of businesses around the world to gain feedback before considering rolling them out. Google has tested similar contact form ads for years, but they always required users to manually enter their info. To make Facebook’s ads privacy-friendly, Facebook won’t just hand your info over. You have to click the call-to-action button like “Subscribe,” and then “Submit” your info once you’ve reviewed what was auto-filled. Users can edit that info inside the ads, and businesses only get what’s voluntarily submitted. From there, advertisers can only use the data in accordance with a mini-privacy policy they embed in the ad, and can’t resell it to anyone else. Rather than ads that lead you offsite to fill out sign-up forms, it’s pulling that experience into the News Feed, so when you’re done, you keep right on social networking. Removing the click away and manual data entry could drastically boost conversion rates on these kinds of ads, making them easier to sell at higher prices.


• Alibaba affiliate launches Internet bank for small enterprises: Alibaba's financial affiliate launched on Thursday Internet bank MYbank, targeting the small- and medium-sized Chinese enterprises that have struggled to obtain credit from major financial institutions. MYbank, which is 30-percent owned by Alibaba-linked Ant Financial Services Group, has 4 billion yuan ($644 million) of registered capital and will offer loans of up to 5 million yuan. It will only be able to take in deposits when regulators approve a facial recognition technology that allow its customers to remotely open bank accounts, an Ant Financial spokeswoman told Reuters. MYbank follows in the footsteps of Alibaba arch-rival Tencent Holdings Ltd, which began trial operations of its WeBank, China's first online bank, in January. Credit conditions have remained tight for SMEs, despite a series of policy easing, as banks avoid the companies worst hit by an economic slowdown. State-owned banks have also avoided customers such as farmers and smaller businesses because of the difficulties in assessing their credit worthiness and they have little to offer as collateral.


• Clashes Erupt Across France as Taxi Drivers Protest Uber: Irate taxi drivers blocked roads, burned tires and attacked drivers who they thought were working for Uber, the ride-hailing company, during a day of protests Thursday that disrupted Paris and slowed traffic to a crawl. Fights broke out on streets, a couple of cars were burned and travelers were frustrated all over Paris and in major cities elsewhere in France, where the labor battle snarled several cities’ streets. “Economic terrorism” is the favored term of Parisian taxi drivers for Uber’s lower prices, flexible hours and the way it is operating outside French law. In France the UberPop service is illegal. It allows anyone who wants to become a driver to sign up without a professional chauffeur license and to pick up fares through the Uber smartphone app. Other Uber services are permitted under strict conditions, and the company is contesting the constitutionality of parts of the law limiting UberPop. The company has instructed its drivers to keep working. The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, who met Thursday evening with the taxi unions, deplored the violence, but saved his most angry words for Uber. He said the company behaved with “arrogance” in its flouting of French law and declared that “the government will never accept the law of the jungle,” referring to Uber’s stark form of competition.


• Amazon wants the Echo to be your personal robot butler: Amazon's fuller ambitions for the Echo and its Alexa cloud-based voice software have become a little clearer. The company announced Thursday that it is opening up the system to developers, so that anyone can design their own programs to work with the sleek cylindrical in-home assistant. The company announced that its new developer's kit will make it easy for programmers to work with the device, even without previous knowledge of how to work with voice-recognition systems. That means amateur and professional developers alike can make programs for themselves. That means they could make custom commands for smart appliances such as thermostats and sprinklers, or custom programs that work with Web sites so you can get news updates fed to your Echo. It also means Amazon's set up the Echo to potentially be the central point from which you run your whole life. The Echo itself can't vacuum your home, but it could theoretically tell your vacuum when to start going. It may not do your dishes, but it can prompt your dishwasher to fire up as well. So while it won't be your robot maid, it could theoretically be your robot butler. Earlier this week, Amazon began selling the Echo widely -- it had previously been an invite-only device. Those moves set Amazon up a little more solidly as a competitor to Apple and Google, which have also laid out ambitions to create hubs for the smart homes of the future. Earlier this week, Apple released a new set of home-related prompts that will work with its Siri voice assistant for individual smart devices -- "turn on the coffee maker" -- as well as for groups of smart devices. So you can tell Siri to "turn off the upstairs lights," for example, if you want to save a little energy while your family is gathered in the living room.


• IBM Pushes Networking and Research to Catch Rivals in the Cloud - Mulls India Data Center: IBM will expand the networking services available through its SoftLayer cloud technology, trying to catch up with deep-pocketed rivals. IBM researchers and engineers are now making regular trips to SoftLayer’s headquarters in Dallas to discuss product plans and get educated about cloud operation, said Marc Jones, SoftLayer’s chief technology officer. Increasing cloud revenue is critical for IBM. It has tried to boost sales for operations like cloud computing and data analytics but that hasn’t been enough to make up for declines in longstanding operations -- such as services and hardware -- and revenue lost from divestitures. The initiative comes almost two years after the Armonk, New York-based company acquired SoftLayer for $2 billion to help IBM compete against Google, Microsoft and Amazon. SoftLayer also plans to open a data center in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and is looking at a location in India.


• Uber growing 40% month-over-month in India: Uber’s Asia Head: Uber may have had its share of challenges in the Indian market, but the ride sharing app has been growing at over 40 per cent month-over-month here. In fact, Bangalore and Kolkata are some of the fastest growing cities for Uber globally, Eric Alexander, Head of Business, Asia, Uber told Techcircle. The team at Uber India has their work cut out. The regulatory overhang over Uber, which started after a passengers’ sexual assault by an Uber driver in December, continues to play out. It has been facing ban calls in Delhi and other places. Earlier, it came under the RBI scanner over its payment system which automatically debited a user’s credit card after a ride.


• Amazon Puts a Store on Wheels, Continues to Flirt With Physical Retail: Amazon continues to explore new ways to bridge the gap between online and offline retail, even if the most recent example seems stunt-ish. The company today is introducing the Amazon Treasure Truck in Seattle, which will carry a limited quantity of one product each day that shoppers can order on Amazon’s app and then collect from the truck at a designated pickup location. The company said the truck will feature hard-to-find, heavily discounted or limited edition products and food, ranging from paddle boards to beach bikes to steak — yes, steak. The Treasure Truck introduction comes as Amazon flirts with physical retail: Amazon product vending machines have popped up in some airports, and a recent patent application lays out a vision for a new kind of technologically advanced retail store.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, June 2

• Here is an audio (MP3) version of this snippet on SoundCloud.

• The Chip Industry Consolidates - In The Third Big Chip Merger of the Year, Intel Agrees to Buy Altera for $16.7 Billion. Recent months have seen a flurry of deals in the semiconductor sector, a business that has become prohibitively expensive for all but the biggest players. On Monday, Intel, the world’s largest maker of chips, said it would pay $16.7 billion for chip company Altera. Last week, Avago Technologies agreed to pay $37 billion for Broadcom. And in March, a company called NXP Semiconductors paid $11.8 billion for Freescale Semiconductor, which began life as part of Motorola and specializes in chips for sensors and cars. “Ten years ago the cost from designing a new chip to making it a product was $10 million to $50 million,” said Mark Hung, an analyst with Gartner. “Today it’s $100 million to $200 million. Solving weird and challenging physics problems at this small size requires a lot of expensive equipment. That’s why there’s all this M.&A.” Besides gaining so-called economies of scale, Intel hopes Altera puts it in better shape for two of the biggest emerging markets, large data centers and the so-called Internet of Things, or computer-enriched machines that work with other devices. Altera’s primary chips help Intel target that market. The San Jose, Calif., company’s chips can be reprogrammed once they leave the foundry, altering some of their functions. Intel’s semiconductors are more powerful, but lack that flexibility. By combining the two types on a single chip, Intel thinks that by late next year it can start offering its big business customers ways of fine-tuning performance to suit specific needs. Also, Intel has fallen behind another big chip company, Qualcomm, in the market for low-powered chips that run mobile devices even as sales of chips for personal computers have slowed. For Intel, improving what it can do in newer, growing sectors is essential. Shares of Altera closed Monday up 5.8 percent. Intel shares were down about 1.6 percent.

• Intel’s $16.7 Billion Altera Deal Is Fueled by Data Centers: Intel Corp. agreed to buy Altera Corp. for $16.7 billion to defend its presence in data centers, forging a deal that will add to a record year for industry consolidation. The world’s largest chipmaker will pay $54 a share in cash for the maker of programmable logic semiconductors, Intel said in a statement Monday. That’s a premium of 11 percent over Altera’s closing share price on Friday and 56 percent from March 26, the day before the possibility of a transaction was first reported. Intel, like other chipmakers, is seeking to contend with growth and rising costs, while trying to defend its most profitable business. The largest deal ever in the $300 billion semiconductor business was announced last week when Avago Technologies Ltd. agreed to buy Broadcom Corp. for $37 billion. Acquiring Altera may help Intel defend and extend its most profitable business: supplying server chips used in data centers. While sales of semiconductors for PCs are declining as more consumers rely on tablets and smartphones to get online, the data centers needed to churn out information and services for those mobile devices are driving orders for higher-end Intel processors and shoring up profitability. Sales at Intel’s data-center division rose 19 percent in the first quarter as Internet companies such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. built out their server operations. As a part of Intel, Altera will continue to support designs that couple its chips with others designed on ARM Holdings Plc technology. Companies such as Qualcomm Inc. are preparing to use that to try to break Intel’s dominance in data-center chips, where it has more than 98 percent of the market.

• The history of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) - the long life of a quick fix: Internet protocol from 1989 leaves data vulnerable to hijackers: “Short-term solutions tend to stay with us for a very long time. And long-term solutions tend to never happen.” Such is the story of the “three-napkins protocol,” more formally known as Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP. At its most basic level, BGP helps routers decide how to send giant flows of data across the vast mesh of connections that make up the Internet. With infinite numbers of possible paths — some slow and meandering, others quick and direct — BGP gives routers the information they need to pick one, even though there is no overall map of the Internet and no authority charged with directing its traffic. The creation of BGP, which relies on individual networks continuously sharing information about available data links, helped the Internet continue its growth into a worldwide network. But BGP also allows huge swaths of data to be “hijacked” by almost anyone with the necessary skills and access. The main reason is that BGP, like many key systems on the Internet, is built to automatically trust users — something that may work on smaller networks but leaves a global one ripe for attack. Hijackings have become routine events that even experts struggle to explain: What made traffic between two computers in Denver take a 7,000-mile detour through Iceland? How could a single Pakistani company crash YouTube? Why did potentially sensitive Pentagon data once flow through Beijing? To these questions, there are technical answers. But they all boil down to this fact: BGP runs on the honor system, allowing data to get pushed and pulled across the planet in curious ways, at the behest of mysterious masters. In 1989, when BGP was devised, the big issue of the day was the possibility that the Internet might break down. A halt in its furious expansion would have hurt the network’s users and the profits of companies supplying gear and services. Rekhter at the time worked for computing giant IBM; Lougheed was a founding employee of Cisco, maker of networking hardware. “We needed to sell routers. And we had a strong economic motive to make sure this party would continue,” Lougheed said. “When Yakov and I showed up with a solution and it seemed to work, people were quite willing to accept it because they didn’t have anything else.” There were other efforts underway to build routing protocols. BGP won out because it was simple, solved the problem at hand and proved versatile enough to keep data flowing as the Internet doubled in size, again and again and again. Networks across the world embraced the protocol, giving it an edge it has never relinquished. Once technologies are widely deployed, they become almost impossible to replace because many users — including paying customers of technology companies — rely on them and resist buying costly new hardware or software. The result can be a steady buildup of outdated technology, one layer on top of another. It’s as if today’s most important bank vaults sit on foundations of straw and mud.

• Just Dial’s Q4 revenue up 26%: mulls buy-back of shares: Online local business search engine company Just Dial Ltd reported earnings: Annual operating revenue increased by 28 per cent to Rs 589.80 crore over FY14 for the full year ended March 31, 2015. The firm’s operating income rose 25.8 per cent at Rs 156.28 crore during the quarter against Rs 124.21 crore in Q4 FY14. Founded by Mani in 1994, Just Dial is a local search firm that provides listings of small and medium businesses across the country. Lately it has been expanding its business by adding transaction services for its merchants allowing consumers to buy products and services from third-party vendors like a marketplace. With the most recent addition of products, it has become the first significant listed firm involved in product e-commerce marketplace. Last month, one of the early investors of the company, Tiger Global exited from the firm. Meanwhile, the company said that a meeting of the board of directors will be held on June 4, to consider the proposal to buy-back the fully paid-up equity shares of the firm.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, May 13

• Tango, Messaging Startup and Alibaba Investee, Makes Big eCommerce Play with Alibaba's Backing: Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has been investing quite literally all over the map. In March of 2014, the company sunk a huge sum – US$215 million – into American messaging app Tango. At the time it seemed a bit odd: why would Alibaba invest so much into an American chat app with no real footprint in China? The picture has become a bit clearer today with the announcement of Tango shops. Tango VP Chi-Chao Chang told Tech in Asia that the goal is to make the in-app shopping experience convenient and social: Tango users will be able to browse and search merchandise. They will be able to share personalized catalogs or collections of merchandise with other Tango users, and securely purchase from millions of products available. To start, Tango shops will feature products from two partners: Wal-Mart and AliExpress. AliExpress, of course, is Alibaba’s consumer-facing global ecommerce platform, and Tango users will have access to the entirety of AliExpress’s offerings via the in app-search feature. Chang said that Tango will also curate special deals from both providers that will be made available to users on a daily basis. It should come as no surprise that as an investor and now a partner, Alibaba has been heavily involved in the development of Tango’s new shops feature. Chang said Alibaba has even given Tango “special access” to products most other companies don’t have access to, and I got the impression that without Alibaba, the launch might look quite different. “They have been extremely involved,” Chang said of Alibaba. More here: Tango Offers Shopping on Its Messaging Service: Tango, a peer-to-peer mobile messaging service, planned to announce on Tuesday it would start offering shopping services. Its catalog includes most of what is sold by Walmart and Alibaba, a total of two million products.Tango, which last year received an investment of about $250 million from Alibaba, may be making the strongest move yet. The shopping application involves a button on the screen that opens access to a wide range of products.People can browse the catalog in a number of ways, create personal selections for friends to browse, buy items, or message the details to friends. Payments are handled through credit card information stored in Tango. The company appears more interested in gathering customers, and data on them, rather than profiting directly on commerce. It is taking no commission on the mobile sales.Out of the gate, it is quite a range of goods. In a brief test of the service, from Walmart I found a casket with Yankees logos on the lining, for $2,399. There was also a $4.58 box of honey nut breakfast cereal. Alibaba had women’s dresses and antifreeze, among many products (things like guns and alcohol are not available.)Should this method of commerce catch on, it could have profound implications for brands that make their own mobile apps, hoping to attract shoppers. “Would you keep a Levi’s app and a Best Buy app, and an app for every merchant, or would you go to one place where it’s all there?” Mr. Setton said. “I’m biased, but I think this interface rules.”Maybe, but only over a limited empire. The catalog will initially be available only in the United States. Tango has about 300 million registered users, about one-quarter to one-third of whom are in the United States. It seems to be the first such messaging commerce app for the American audience, though Japan’s LINE and WeChat of China offer commerce capabilities.Tango, which started in 2009, has previously offered video calling, games and photo sharing, among other things. Tango’s technology enables it to send a lot of data at low cost to the company, offering free services to customers.

• Aliyun, Alibaba's Cloud Unit, Makes Push in the Middle East, to set up Data Center in Dubai: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s cloud-computing subsidiary is teaming up with Dubai-based Meraas Holding LLC as the company uses its technology to extend its influence beyond China. The joint venture of Alibaba’s Aliyun and Meraas will provide a broad swath of technology to businesses and governments in the Middle East and North Africa. Jack Ma, Alibaba’s executive chairman, and the rest of the Hangzhou, China-based multinational’s management team, laid the groundwork for the deal in a meeting last September with the ruler of Dubai, Aliyun President Simon Hu said in an interview. The joint venture will provide technical services for transportation, communication, urban infrastructure, electricity service, economic development, and urban planning, as well as cloud computing, Hu said. In a presentation to investors this month, Alibaba said that an expansion of cloud computing services was a priority for the coming fiscal year. “At the end of this year or next year, no matter where you are when you go to Dubai, no matter whether eating or sightseeing, you will encounter one of the infrastructures that is provided by Aliyun,” Hu said. As part of the venture, Aliyun and Meraas will build a technology hub consisting of a data center, along with hospitality, residential and commercial spaces. By expanding its cloud abroad, Aliyun ratchets up competition with companies such as Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. These U.S. firms haven’t put large data centers in the Middle East. More here

• After Big-Bang Start, Can Tesla's Battery Hit $1 Billion Faster Than the iPhone? Tesla’s new line of big, stackable batteries for homes and businesses started with a bang. The reservations reported in the first week are valued at roughly $800 million, according to numbers crunched by Bloomberg. If Tesla converts even a fraction of those reservations into actual sales, the battery roll-out could measure up as one of the biggest ever for a new product category. The new line of storage batteries is designed to extend solar power into the night and save companies money on its electric bills during expensive peak hours. Any comparison of batteries to smartphones and erection pills is, of course, a stretch. Most of Tesla’s battery revenue will come from utilities, not the consumers who snapped up iPhones and Viagra. The price of the new batteries is also much higher. Tesla’s Powerwall units designed for home users cost $3,000 to $3,500 per unit, not including installation, while the commercial batteries are sold in roughly $25,000 incremental blocks. Tesla hasn’t even defined what qualifies as a "reservation" at this point. Of the $800 million in reservations from the first week, almost $625 million came from businesses and utilities that would seem likely to complete the transaction. The remaining reservations from home users are little more than expressions of interest made through a no-strings online reservation system. Manufacturing giant batteries will also be much more difficult to scale than Pfizer’s little blue pill, which was filling 46,000 prescriptions a day by the end of its first month on the market. Tesla won't begin shipping batteries until this summer, and it’s already sold out through mid-2016. Still, approaching $1 billion of interest, just days after introducing path-breaking product, marks a significant achievement. Tesla is going to need that battery revenue as soon as it can get it: The company is burning through cash to invest in the Model X electric SUV due later this year, the more affordable Model 3 slated to arrive 2017, and a $5 billion battery factory to power it all. In a call with analysts last week, Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the battery business could someday exceed electric-car revenue. Electricity storage products aren't new. But Tesla’s price, power, and packaging set these batteries apart in a way that echoes the gap between the first iPhone and the smartphones that came before it. Now Musk has brought an Apple-launch level of public interest to what's essentially a infrastructure product, albeit one with potential to transform the way electrical grids are managed and the speed that solar power is adopted. The next daunting challenge will be to turn that interest into bookable revenue for Tesla.

• Verizon Bets on Video Ads in $4 Billion Deal for AOL: The nation’s biggest wireless operator sees its digital future in a company that still offers dial-up Internet service. However backward that may seem, Verizon Communications’ $4.4 billion all-cash deal for AOL, announced on Tuesday, illustrates how the communications industry has changed — even if the underlying rationale has not — from the days when the Internet pioneer told users “You’ve got mail.” AOL may be known for its dot-com rise and fall and for current web content like The Huffington Post , but Verizon is looking to gain the company’s powerful but little-known mobile video and advertising technology. That could make Verizon’s own phone and Internet offerings more appealing to consumers, and to advertisers. The motive is clear. Consumers are increasingly watching videos — from YouTube to HBO — on mobile phones, tablets and laptops. And big media companies and advertisers are only beginning to grapple with this rapidly evolving market. By layering AOL’s technology atop its 109 million wireless connections and growing cable television business, Verizon is betting that it can make billions of dollars by selling ads against streaming video. Comcast, the biggest cable operator, acquired NBCUniversal, the big television and movie studio company. AT&T, Verizon’s nearest rival, is acquiring DirecTV, the satellite television business. And Sprint, another wireless operator, is making its own forays into content. “The telecoms are clearly saying, ‘We’re not going to be dumb pipes,’ ” said Jonathan Miller, the chief executive of AOL from 2002 to 2006, who is now a venture capitalist. Yet in acquiring AOL, Verizon gets more than just new advertising technology. It also takes ownership of a company with a troubled legacy and a muddled present. AOL operates the dwindling but still profitable dial-up Internet business, runs a collection of news websites and employs big personalities including Arianna Huffington and its chief executive, Tim Armstrong. Verizon covets two main pieces of AOL’s mobile and video technology offerings. One is its big network of original video content, which is home to lucrative online video advertising. The other is its so-called programmatic advertising business, a system that matches online advertisers with consumers across different platforms, and collects valuable data along the way.

• Will It Be a Summer of Consolidation in Ad Tech? AOL could just be the beginning as rumors fly. Verizon's $4.4 billion purchase of AOL spark a summer of acquisitions in the ad-tech space? It depends on whom you ask. Yahoo has reportedly considered making Foursquare a big offer in recent weeks. The Google-purchasing-Twitter chatter has gone on for months and won't die. Yelp is reportedly entertaining suitors from Yahoo to Google and Amazon, with some analysts speculating that foreign companies Alibaba and Rakuten are in the mix. Even mighty Salesforce.com has found itself the subject of speculation about a Microsoft takeover. Rich Guest, president of North American operations, Tribal Worldwide, said the Twitter-to-Google hubbub makes the most sense. "I think that there were first rumors of an AOL-Verizon tie-up during CES 2015, which gives credence to the school of thinking that believes 'where there is smoke, there is likely fire,'" Guest explained. "Twitter is an amazing platform, which could add value to the product portfolios of many media or technology companies. Given all of the rumors of a Twitter-Google tie-up, I wouldn't be surprised if that happened sometime in 2015." MediaCom CMO Stephanie Fierman said, "I think many expect a transaction involving Yahoo at some point in the foreseeable future."

• GoDaddy Earnings: Quarterly Revenue $376M, +17% Y/Y; Net Loss Narrows to $43M; Shares Gyrate, end 3% down: Web-hosting company GoDaddy Inc (GDDY.N) posted a 17.5 percent rise in revenue in its first quarterly report as a public company, helped by customer additions and an increase in revenue per average user. GoDaddy forecast revenue of between $390 million and $395 million for the second quarter and between $1.60 billion and $1.61 billion for the full year. The company, which manages about 59 million Internet domains, nearly a fifth of the world's total, said it had 13.1 million customers at the end of the first quarter ended March 31, compared with 11.9 million a year earlier. Average revenue per user rose to $115 from $105. GoDaddy, known for its racy TV commercials, said bookings rose about 14 percent to $498.7 million in the first quarter. The company's net loss narrowed to $43.4 million, or 34 cents per share, for the first quarter ended March 31, from $51.3 million, or 40 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose to $376.3 million from $320.2 million. The company's shares rose as much as 5.5 percent in after-market trading, before reversing course sharply to trade down as much as 3.7 percent. Up to Monday's close, the stock had risen more than 33 percent since GoDaddy went public on April 1.