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: Thursday, January 28

• Facebook shares soar as mobile drives big jump in ad sales: Facebook smashed investors' expectations with a 52-percent jump in quarterly revenue as it sold more ads targeted at a fast-growing number of mobile users, sending its shares sharply higher after hours. Facebook shares rose almost 12 percent in after-hours trading to $105.32. The company said sales in the fourth quarter rose 52 percent from a year ago, to $5.84 billion, while profit increased to $1.56 billion, more than doubling from $701 million a year ago. For the full year, the company reported $3.69 billion in profit on $17.93 billion in revenue, an increase of 44 percent from 2014. The company has also begun monetizing some of its other units, such as photo-sharing app Instagram, which surpassed 400 million users last year and began selling ads in September. Facebook said mobile ads accounted for 80 percent of total ad revenue in the quarter, compared with about 78 percent in the third quarter and 69 percent a year earlier.The results offer a bright spot in a tumultuous climate for many American technology stocks. Shares of Twitter, Facebook’s most visible social networking competitor in the United States, have tumbled more than 55 percent during the last year. Yelp, the local-review service, is down about 60 percent. LinkedIn, the professional social networking service, is off more than 15 percent. Facebook is a much larger company than many of its peers, yet it is able to keep its growth rate high. The company has notched double-digit jumps in ad revenue and in the expansion of its user base. Facebook now has 1.59 billion monthly visitors, up 14 percent from a year ago. About 1.44 billion of those people visit the site on a mobile device; 1.04 billion visit Facebook every day. 

• EBay's disappointing forecast fuels stock decline: EBay forecast weaker-than-expected revenue and profit for the current quarter and full year, as the e-commerce company struggles against a strong dollar while trying to revamp its core marketplace business. Shares of the retailer fell more than 12 percent to $23.51 in extended trading on Wednesday. The online retailer, which faces intense competition from e-commerce giant Amazon.com, has also been hit by brick-and-mortar rivals like Wal-Mart Stores that are aggressively boosting their online presence. The company said its gross merchandise value, or the total value of all goods sold on its site, rose 5 percent after accounting for foreign exchange impact. In its second quarter without PayPal, eBay's revenue was $2.32 billion in the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, flat with a year earlier during the crucial holiday shopping season and in line with analysts' average expectations. EBay began testing a paid shipping membership program in Germany last year, responding to shoppers' increased demand for faster delivery. Wenig on Wednesday said there were "no plans for now" to expand the program. EBay derives nearly 60 percent of its revenue from overseas and faces headwinds from a strong dollar.

• PayPal's revenue beats Street view on higher transactions, customers: Revenue rose about 17 percent to $2.56 billion.  Payment processor PayPal Holdings Inc on Wednesday reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue, as new customer additions and payment processing volumes surged, and it announced a buyback of $2 billion of its stock. PayPal said it expects 2016 full-year earnings of $1.09 to $1.14 per share, and revenue growth of 16-19 percent on a currency neutral basis. It expects currency fluctuations to impact net revenue by 3 percentage points during the year. The company's share buyback program was a reminder of the strength of its free cash flow. PayPal ended the year with $5.7 billion in cash reserves. PayPal's net income rose to $367 million, or 30 cents per share, from $286 million, or 23 cents per share. Shares of PayPal, which completed its spin-off from eBay Inc in July, rose 6.4 percent to $33.66 in extended trade.

• Samsung Electronics warns of difficult 2016 as smartphone market peaks:  Tech giant Samsung on Thursday warned of possible weaker earnings this year compared with 2015 due to softer sales of gadgets such as smartphones, a trend that is also hurting rival Apple and major chipmakers. The South Korean firm's warning came a day after Apple shares fell more than 6.5 percent, the biggest percentage drop in two years, as the iPhone maker forecast its first quarterly sales drop in 13 years.

• Qualcomm forecasts weak profit as demand slows for mobile chips:  Qualcomm forecast current-quarter profit below analysts' expectations as demand weakens for its chips used in mobile devices in a slowing market. Revenue fell 18.7 percent to $5.78 billion. The company, whose customers include Apple, said it expected its mobile chip shipments to fall by 16-25 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier. Qualcomm also expects 3G and 4G device shipments to decline by 4-14 percent, hurting its licensing revenue. The chipmaker's weak outlook comes a day after Apple forecast its first quarterly revenue drop in 13 years and reported the slowest-ever rise in iPhone shipments as the critical Chinese market shows signs of weakness. Qualcomm shares fell 3 percent in extended trading on Wednesday.

• Google ships five million Cardboard virtual reality devices: Alphabet's Google said it had shipped 5 million units of the Google Cardboard viewer, a wearable device that allows users to experience virtual reality through mobile apps. Oculus, the virtual reality company Facebook Inc (FB.O) bought in 2014, started accepting pre-orders this month for its much-awaited headset, Rift, which will ship in first quarter. Google said in November that its video-sharing site, YouTube, supported virtual reality videos. Viewers can watch virtual reality videos using a mobile device and the Google Cardboard viewer. Google said more than 350,000 hours of YouTube videos had been watched in virtual reality.

• Theranos Lab Poses ‘Immediate Jeopardy to Patient Health,’ Says U.S. Agency:  The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has decided that Theranos’ Newark, Calif., facility poses “immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety.” A letter sent to the company on January 25th says that the lab has been given 10 days to provide “acceptable evidence of correction.” Specifically, the document cites problems with the laboratory director, the technical supervisor, hematology and the lab’s analytic systems. CMS has not released the laboratory inspection report that led to this letter, so the details of these infractions remain unclear. But the level assigned to these determinations — “Condition-level deficiencies” — are among the most serious that CMS can make. They mean that Theranos’ Newark lab was found to be in violation of accepted professional standards. CMS declined to comment on the letter.

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: Wednesday, June 24

• Here is an MP3 version of this snippet

• Gloves Off in China as Banks, Alibaba Invade Each Other’s Turf: This week, Alibaba is launching MYbank, an online lender that will tap into Chinese savers’ record $7.8 trillion of deposits and a banking revenue stream that’s forecast to double by 2020. Banks have been striking back by pushing into the business Ma pioneered in China, online malls. The moves are blurring the lines between banking and e-commerce as China’s government continues encouraging competition in the finance industry and as Chinese increasingly use computers and mobile phones to bank and shop. “China’s banks have woken up and realized that the challenge from Alibaba’s entry into banking is for real,” said David He, a Hong Kong-based partner and managing director at Boston Consulting Group Inc. “For them, doing e-commerce is a defense as well as a counterattack.” Banking giant ICBC, which as the world’s most profitable company dwarfs Alibaba’s net income by more than 10 times, set up a platform allowing retailers to sell the bank’s customers wine, shampoo, appliances and more. China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China and others are also getting into the action. ICBC’s site, called Easy to Buy, is forecasting sales of 300 billion yuan this year, after tallying 130 billion yuan so far since January. By comparison at Alibaba, its Tmall logged 763 billion yuan in sales last year. JD.com ranked second at 260 billion yuan.


• Google launches free streaming service ahead of Apple Music debut: Google launched a free version of its music streaming service on Tuesday, as it sought to upstage the debut of Apple's rival service next week. Google Play Music has offered a $9.99 per month subscription service for two years but Tuesday's launch is the first free version of the streaming service. It is available online and will be available on Android and iOS by the end of the week, Elias Roman, Google product manager, said. Apple said earlier this month it would launch a music streaming service on June 30 for $9.99 per month along with a $14.99 per month family plan, with a free three-month trial. As with other streaming services, such as Spotify and Rhapsody, Google Play Music curates playlists. Users can tailor playlists based on genre, artist or even activity, such as hosting a pool party or "having fun at work. Unlike Google's subscription music service, the free service will carry ads, be unavailable offline and exclude certain songs.


• Instagram Overhauls Search Feature to Surface More Trending News: Instagram unveiled a massive overhaul to its search feature on Tuesday in an effort to bring users into the app more often, particularly during breaking news events. The new feature lets users search for images by location and includes a section for trending places and hashtags, none of which was available before. The trending places feature will surface both local and national trends so topics will differ based on your location. Instagram is also getting into the curation game that has become popular with other social networks like Snapchat and Twitter over the past few months. Instagram will feature two themed, rotating categories at a time with titles like “Extreme Athletes” or “Towering Rocks.” The images in these feeds will be selected based on a mix of computer algorithm and human curation by the company’s community team. Instagram is often lauded for its simplicity. But in the case of Instagram’s old search feature, simplicity may have actually been holding the app back. The old version of the app allowed for hashtag and people searches, but required different tabs for each. The new search feature will return hashtags, people and locations all from the same search bar in addition to the new trending sections. A useful search tab should benefit Instagram in multiple ways. For starters, it’ll help people find more content they want to see and make the app more useful in the process. More importantly may be the trending places and hashtags feature. Systrom says that Instagram can be a place for news, where people go to learn about and follow along with the day’s important trending topics.


• Report suggests millions of Uber rides in China are fakes reported by drivers in order to collect Uber’s high driver subsidies.: A new report on Chinese tech site Tencent Tech suggests that millions of Uber’s booked rides in the country are fakes – fraudulent fares reported by drivers in order to collect Uber’s high driver subsidies. Faking fares – which some drivers refer to as “acupuncture” – works like this: first, you buy an Uber driver account. There are plenty available for sale on sites like Taobao, and many even come with helpful “how to fake rides” guides. Once you’ve got your account, you partner up with a passenger using the consumer Uber app. With location services turned off, the passenger submits a fare from point A to point B. You drive the fare with no passenger, return the money paid by the passenger, and then split the driver subsidies Uber will pay you – which may be several times the price of the fare itself. This “acupuncture” phenomenon it doesn’t only affect Uber. But drivers told Tencent Tech that because Uber’s subsidies are the highest, virtually all of the faking right now is taking place on Uber’s platform because it is the most profitable. Uber reportedly does have the technological capability to shut down fake rides entirely, but is concerned that doing so would slow its genuine organic growth because being overly strict could result in false positives, banning real drivers and passengers who aren’t cheating the system.


• Qualcomm in Venture With Chinese Chip Maker: China’s largest maker of chips has a new plan to help it close a wide gap with rivals, and the company has found some unlikely partners to help. The company, the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, also known as S.M.I.C., said on Tuesday that it would form a new company with a leading Belgian microelectronics research center and Qualcomm, the American chip giant, to help it develop and produce new generations of advanced semiconductors that work as the brains of numerous electronics products, like smartphones and servers. Four months ago, China imposed a $975 million fine on Qualcomm, saying it violated anti-monopoly law, and forced it to reduce sharply the licensing fees it charges Chinese smartphone makers for its communications chips. This really is Qualcomm playing nice with the Chinese government,” said Mark Hung, a semiconductor analyst with Gartner. Chinese companies like SMIC. have greatly lagged behind rivals like Samsung Electronics and Intel, partly because of export restrictions on the sophisticated tools and machines required to produce the most advanced chips. In 2013, China imported $232 billion worth of semiconductor materials, more than it spent on petroleum. To close the gap, Beijing has pledged a huge amount of resources. “The Chinese government has been very persistent and insistent in their policies. They want local chip manufacturing there, and this is another leak in the dike. It’s another part of the steady progress on their side.”

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, May 26

• Audio version of this post on SoundCloud (experimental)

• Smartphone ‘Cold War’ Seen in Asian Moves on Patent Licensing: South Korea and China are adopting antitrust policies that may require companies such as Apple and Qualcomm to license inventions to rivals more easily and cheaply, potentially giving Asian companies a leg up against foreign competitors. Brazil and India are considering similar paths. The clampdown on patents has the potential to alter the balance of power in the global mobile-phone industry, which generated $412 billion last year, according to IDC. These new rules may weaken the ability of Apple, Microsoft Corp. and Qualcomm -- typically among the top 15 U.S. patent recipients each year -- to compete in China, the world’s largest mobile-phone market, and other countries that follow. “We’re going back to the Cold War and the domino theory,” said Bradley Lui, an antitrust lawyer with Morrison & Foerster in Washington. “The authorities in China see the potential use of patents that might affect companies in China, including state-owned enterprises. It might be an impetus for drawing rules more broadly than we would in the U.S.” Asian regulators were spurred by the smartphone wars, in which tech giants battled over billions of dollars on four continents for more than four years. Foreign governments including Korea and China have been looking more closely at their patent policies, emboldened by debates in Washington over whether patents hinder rather than spur innovation. Qualcomm, which got 63 percent of profit from patents last year, has been investigated on three continents for its licensing practices. It struck a deal with China in February that gives domestic Chinese manufacturers a discount on the royalty charges while fining the company $975 million. Microsoft’s purchase of Nokia Oyj’s handset business has been approved by every country except Korea, which is looking for concessions on some of Nokia patents. In China, Microsoft had to accept lower royalties for patents that read on Google's Android operating system, which runs most of the world’s phones including those made by Chinese manufacturer ZTE. The Redmond, Washington-based company simply excluded Korean assets -- where it didn’t have many sales anyway -- from the Nokia deal.

• Snapdeal buys mobile commerce platform MartMobi: In a bid to strengthen its mobility platform for merchants, Snapdeal has acquired Hyderabad-based technology startup MartMobi for an undisclosed amount. The MartMobi platform enables e-commerce businesses, brands and retailers to have an instant mobile presence without writing a single line of code. A self-service platform, MartMobi can be used to create custom applications for retailers across all major mobile platforms, thus ensuring a new source of revenue for online ventures. MartMobi was founded in December 2012 by Satya Krishna Ganni (CEO) and Pramod Nair (CTO) – both serial entrepreneurs, who had earlier co-founded LearnSocial, aP2P learning platform that brings together people who want to teach something they are passionate about. Snapdeal has been on an acquisition spree as it seeks to compete with players such as Flipkart and Amazon for a slice of the $3 billion Indian e-commerce industry. In the recent past, Snapdeal has acquired payments and mobile recharge startup FreeCharge in a cash-and-stock deal while picking up stakes in digital financial services platform RupeePower and logistics venture GoJavas.

• Apple Names Jony Ive ‘Chief Design Officer’: Apple’s Jony Ive, the design genius often credited for Apple’s innovative and unique industrial design language over the past couple of decades, has taken on a new role at the company: Chief Design Officer. The new role elevates him above his previous SVP status, and also installs Richard Howarth as the new head of Industrial Design, and Alan Dye as head of User Interface. Ive’s new role should actually give him more time to actually design, the newly minted C-level executive told the Telegraph. He’s shedding some administrative and management duties to his two new lieutenants, he told the newspaper, and will instead be in charge of both UI and ID, as well as take direct control over retail store design around the world. In a book detailing Ive’s life and work at Apple, Leander Kahney has noted that the British designer has sometimes been uncomfortable with the administrative side of business, and instead prefers to focus on the craft of the actual design process. Ive also notably remains off-stage during Apple’s signature press events, and instead often narrates passionate paeans the company offers during the show in the form of video on the process of designing the products announced by other execs at the events.

• Baihe, a Chinese dating site where users flaunt their financial standing, bags $241M: Chinese dating site Baihe has announced it recently raised RMB 1.5 billion (US$241 million) in series D funding, according to Sina Tech. The investors have not been disclosed. Baihe approaches dating from an empirical and practical – some might say materialistic – perspective, with the end goal being marriage. Users are required to use their real names and are encouraged to share information like their property status and education. In other words, does this person own a home and have a good degree? Posting videos is also encouraged as they are more difficult to manipulate than photos. Members can verify their marital status to prove they aren’t seeking affairs. Recently, the site added a feature wherein users can post their credit score, as rated by a third-party private agency, to show they are in good financial standing. A member can only see information on other people’s profiles that they have shared themselves.

• As Facebook Sweeps Across Europe, Regulators Gird for Battle: Move over, Google. Facebook is the latest American tech giant that Europeans love to hate. For decades, European policy makers have taken aim at America’s giant tech businesses, trying to force them to play by European rules. In the past, Microsoft and Intel were found guilty of abusing their dominant positions to shut out rivals. Google has most recently been under the microscope, and it now faces accusations that it unfairly promoted some of its search products over those of competitors. In recent months, though, regulators’ gazes have turned to Facebook, raising questions about whether the social network has learned from the past mistakes of companies like Intel, Microsoft and Google when dealing with Europe’s policy makers and its legal system. And as Facebook runs into an increasing number of regulatory hurdles here, the scrutiny could potentially distract the company from its ambitions of becoming a one-stop shop for Internet messaging, online publishing and digital advertising. Facebook’s core business, its social networking service, is especially popular in Europe. The company has almost doubled its number of European users to the service, to around 260 million, since 2010. Facebook also has more users in Europe than in the United States, according to eMarketer, a research company. Regulators in Europe, however, are especially focused on how the company collects and handles those users’ data. The region has some of the world’s toughest data protection rules, and policy makers from France, Germany and Belgium are investigating whether Facebook broke Europe’s laws after the company announced a new privacy policy this year. If found to have breached the privacy rules, Facebook may face fines or demands that it change how the company handles people’s data, though the company says it complies with the region’s data protection laws. Taking a page from the playbooks of other American tech companies, Facebook has not stood idle as regulators steadily lined up against it. The company has hired a number of prominent former lawmakers and regulators, including Erika Mann, a former German member of the European Parliament. This month, the company also chose Kevin Martin, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to champion its cause in Washington, Brussels and beyond. Facebook increased spending on lobbying 25 percent, to roughly $570,000, in 2013 compared to the previous year, according the latest figures available from the European Union’s voluntary database of lobbying interests, which may not include all of Facebook’s activities in the region.

• Chinese E-Commerce Giant JD Leads $70M Round In Online Produce Retailer FruitDay: Chinese e-commerce site JD.com is putting its money into fresh fruit and vegetables after it led a $70 million Series C round in FruitDay, a company that sells fresh produce across China. The investment in six-year-old FruitDay, which claims to be China’s largest online produce firm, also included participation from previous backers Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and ClearVue. FruitDay imports over 80 percent of its produce from overseas, and it claimed to be on course to hit 10 million customers before the end of the year — up fourfold from last year. The company said in a statement that it will use the new capital to develop its infrastructure and logistics, hire new management and for general business development. It stands to benefit from more than just JD.com’s money through this alliance, however, since the duo have agreed to “a strategic cooperation” which will allow FruitDay to tap into JD.com’s own logistics and fulfilment network across China to help widen its service in the country. JD.com is commonly thought of as a lesser rival to Alibaba. That’s a pretty hard comparison to shake when you consider that Alibaba was responsible for the largest IPO in U.S. history last year — its current market cap exceeds $230 billion — but JD.com is different in key areas. The company, which is listed on the Nasdaq, and has attracted investment from Alibaba’s fierce rival Tencent, is building out an Amazon-like delivery model which includes its own warehouses — something that Alibaba does not — as this recent New York Times piece points out. Things start to get even more interesting if you pair JD.com’s infrastructure efforts with WeChat, the dominant messaging app in China which is owned by JD.com investor Tencent. JD.com already has a store on WeChat were customers can make purchases without leaving the app, and it could be an interesting medium for fresh fruit and vegetable orders — that’s something Line, another chat app, is pioneering in Southeast Asia right now.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday December 29

• Snapdeal ties up with Hungama for a co-marketing deal, similar to its Saavn tie-up from last month: Snapdeal, and Mumbai’s Hungama Digital Media Entertainment have joined hands to roll out bundled offerings such as premium music videos with every purchase on the e-tailer’s mobile app. To begin with, Hungama.com is currently offering shoppers on Snapdeal a free access to its premium PRO service which consists of HD quality music videos with lyrics of songs for nine weeks. Hungama PRO, is an ad-free paid subscription service whose content can be accessed offline as well. After this offer, customers will be charged Rs 120 per month for the service. Early this month Hungama had also come out with a similar offer for subscribers to Aircel. The PRO services was launched six months ago with a free one month trial. Last month Saavn had sealed a similar co-marketing deal with free two months subscription to its premium service to Snapdeal shoppers on Android

• Qualcomm earns billions each year from its patent licensing, drawing Chinese telecom regulatory scrutiny: The settlement of China's anti-trust probe into Qualcomm Inc is likely to intensify global scrutiny of the firm's highly profitable patent licensing business, and may even call into question its worldwide contracts with smartphone makers such as Apple and Samsung. Qualcomm is the top patent holder for cellphone technology, including many that form industry standards like CDMA and LTE. Charging royalties based on the cellphones' selling prices, even those made with competitors' chips, provided more than half of its $8 billion net income in 2014. As growth tapers in developed markets, the smartphone industry has turned to China, where the rollout of LTE technology is driving demand, and where the majority of the world's smartphones are also manufactured. The NDRC, one of China's anti-trust regulators, has said it suspects Qualcomm of overcharging and abusing its market position in wireless communication standards. Qualcomm is expected by industry sources to agree to changes in how it charges royalties on cellphones sold in China, which will hurt its bottom line in its fastest-growing and most significant market. Qualcomm earned about half of its global revenue of $26.5 billion in China for the fiscal year ended Sept. 28. An agreement to lower royalty rates charged by Qualcomm on phones sold in China could affect its contractual relationships not just with local manufacturers such as Huawei, Lenovo, ZTE and Xiaomi Inc, but also with bigger global players that make and sell phones in China, such as Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics, said patent lawyers consulted by Reuters.

• Pinterest expands Promoted Pins to all advertisers after a successful beta: The firm announced today that its Promoted Pins program, which it made available in beta to certain brands eight months ago, has performed “just as good and sometimes better than organic Pins,” and it will make the program available to all advertisers on January 1. Pinterest claims that brands who participated in the Promoted Pins beta program saw a 30 percent increase in “earned media” — or the amount of people who save a Promoted Pin to one of the boards. Promoted Pins are repinned an average of 11 times, the same as a normal pin made by one of the site’s users. Furthermore, Promoted Pins continued to get more pins in the month after a campaign, or a 5 percent increase in earned media. Once the Promoted Pins program rolls out, Pinterest says advertisers will have access to more ad formats and advanced targeting. In addition, it’s also launched the Pinstitute, a twee name for a program that will show advertisers how to leverage Promoted Pins through workshops and webinars. The Pinstitute follows the launch of Pinterest’s analytic dashboard in August, which lets advertisers track how their pins performed and how much content is being pinned from their sites through Pinterest’s Pin It buttons. Pinterest has been focused on monetizing its site since raising an impressive $225 million Series E in October 2013, which valued the company at $3.8 billion. At that time, Pinterest said one of the key uses of the capital would be to continue development of monetization, which it first began testing around the same time it closed its Series E, into a global program.

• Oracle's purchase of Datalogix highlights the rising importance of attribution: This week, Oracle showed just how important attribution services have become: It agreed to buy Datalogix, one of the leading players in the attribution, for what the analyst Brian Wieser estimated was in the high hundreds of millions of dollars. (Neither Oracle nor Datalogix would disclose the deal terms.) With their services in high demand, the attribution companies are a rare bright spot in an otherwise brutally competitive market among companies that provide the technical services for digital advertising. Even though you’ve probably never heard of Datalogix, it’s almost certainly heard of you. It buys purchase data from supermarket loyalty cards and other retail channels and also tracks what people do online. That data is vital to digital platforms, particularly Facebook and Twitter, which are trying to prove to marketers that ads on their services lead to sales in the store. Using a complex system that anonymously matches Datalogix’s profiles with Facebook or Twitter IDs and aggregates that data, the social networks can show that, say, a three-month ad campaign on Facebook for MegaRed krill oil actually prompted more people to buy the health supplement. How Datalogix does the matching is a bit of a black box, but brands and publishers believe that it works, with Datalogix boasting about 650 customers. The company’s biggest competitor, a partnership between Nielsen and Catalina Marketing, is more oriented towards measuring the impact of television ads on purchases, while Datalogix is more focused on digital platforms, according to Mr. Wieser.

• Amazon.com Inc said on Friday it drew more than 10 million new members to Prime shipping and digital content service over the holidays and intends to offer one-hour shipping to more cities in 2015. Amazon considers its $99-a-year Prime membership, which confers free two-day shipping and streaming of select movies and songs, essential to driving its growth and margins. It was unclear, however, how many of the 10 million new members were just taking advantage of a standing 30-day free trial offer. The Internet retailer has never disclosed the precise number of Prime subscribers, except to say it is in the tens of millions. Analysts estimate it is growing at a rapid clip, and the company continues to try and spice it up with new content. The company's shares climbed 2.07 percent to $309.31 in midday Nasdaq trading. Amazon said customers ordered more than 10 times as many items via same-day delivery this holiday season, compared with a year earlier.

• Top 10 Pricing Mistakes, e-Commerce companies make, according to TechCrunch: 1: Basing prices on costs, not customers’ perceptions of value. 2: Companies base their prices on “the marketplace.” 3: Same profit margin across different product lines. 4: Companies fail to segment their customers. 5: Companies hold prices at the same level for too long. 6: Salespeople incentivized strictly on revenue. 7: Changing prices without forecasting competitors’ reactions. 8: Companies spend insufficient resources managing their pricing practices. 9: Companies fail to establish internal procedures to optimize prices. 10: Companies rely on salespeople and other customer-facing staff for pricing intelligence.