- Apple Starts to Woo Its App Developers: When Apple’s App Store opened in 2008, there were well under a thousand apps, and the relationship was obviously beneficial for both sides. But now, when there are more than 1.5 million apps fighting for attention in the App Store, the benefits for developers, particularly smaller ones, have become much less apparent. “Is Apple coasting on its relationship and lead with developers? I think the answer is yes,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Partners. “Their app store is considered an unappealing experience by many people. Their rules are arbitrary, and they take a big slice of money from sales.” For a long time, Apple didn’t have to care. But now it faces flat sales of its flagship iPhones, a lack of excitement about newer products like its smart watch and Apple TV, growing competition from Google’s Android platform and the rise of new challengers like Amazon’s Echo device, which responds to a user’s voice commands at home with the kind of magic that used to be an Apple hallmark. As the company prepares to hold its annual developer conference in San Francisco next week, there are signs that it wants to improve its relationship with app makers. Among the announcements expected at the gathering: Apple plans to finally give developers access to its Siri voice assistant so they can incorporate it into their apps.Apple’s charm offensive began in earnest in December, after it put Philip W. Schiller, its senior vice president of worldwide marketing, in charge of the App Store. Under Mr. Schiller, the company accelerated the app approval process, cutting typical review times from two weeks to a day or two. On Wednesday, Apple announced that it would soon begin allowing app makers to buy ads that would appear at the top of search results in the App Store, like the ads already on Google’s Play Store and website. Apple also said that it would cut its usual 30 percent commission on all subscriptions to 15 percent after an app subscriber had been active for at least a year.
- What happens when your search engine is first to know you have cancer:This week researchers demonstrated that by analyzing a person’s Web searches they could in some cases predict an upcoming diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. The team of researchers aren’t pancreatic cancers experts, but computer scientists at Microsoft. Unlike traditional medical professionals, they have the advantage of access to a trove of data that Microsoft collects through its search engine, Bing. The Microsoft researchers identified Web users who had recently searched for queries indicating they have pancreatic cancer, such as “I was told I have pancreatic cancer, what to expect,” and then looked back months earlier to examine patterns in the symptoms that the users searched for. This included phrases such as “dark or tarry stool,” “abdominal swelling,” “dark urine” and “yellowing skin.” From this analysis they realized trends in the queries of users who were soon to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, identifying 5 to 15 percent of cases with low false-positive rates. The research was published in the Journal of Oncology Practice.
- Alibaba Bears Pounce as SEC Probe, SoftBank Sale Squeeze Shares:Traders have never been more bearish on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the fast-growing Chinese e-commerce company facing a regulatory probe and the loss of a key investor. The total number of outstanding shares borrowed for short selling peaked at more than 124 million last week. That’s the most since its 2014 initial public offering and is up from about 60 million in December, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and Markit. Prominent short sellers including Jim Chanos and John Hempton have been red-flagging Alibaba for months, suggesting that its growth figures might be too good to be true. Bearish bets spiked in the past two weeks after the company disclosed a regulatoryprobe of its Chinese delivery unit and SoftBank Group Corp. disclosed plans to sell a $10 billion stake. Alibaba, which claimed more than 75 percent of the e-commerce market share in China last year, made history with a record $25 billion initial public offering in September 2014. Traders in New York clamored for the stock, which was priced at $68 a share, as a way to tap into the potential profits available from the country’s growing middle class. The shares have dropped 6.4 percent to $75.92 since May 25 when the company said that the SEC is looking at data reported from the company’s Singles’ Day promotion, Alibaba’s biggest shopping day, and how the company consolidates results from affiliates, including logistics partner Cainiao Network. While SoftBank’s divestment comes as part of a broader strategy to find new investments in startups and strengthen its debt-heavy balance sheet, the move can be unsettling to investors as the Japanese technology giant first bought into the company 16 years ago, said Henry Guo, a New York-based analyst at M Science. “The stake sale by SoftBank caught the market off guard, which damped Alibaba shares as it’s one of the early investors,” Guo, who has been covering Chinese internet stocks traded in the U.S. for about 10 years and has a positive outlook on Alibaba, said by phone.
- Amazon is preparing to launch streaming music service - sources: Amazon.com Inc is preparing to launch a standalone music streaming subscription service, placing it squarely in competition with rival offerings from Apple Inc and Spotify, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The service will be offered at $9.99 per month, in line with major rivals, and it will offer a competitive catalog of songs, the sources said. Amazon (AMZN.O) is finalizing licenses with labels for the service, which likely will be launched in late summer or early fall, the sources said. Amazon, which offers a free streaming music service with a limited catalog to subscribers of its Prime shipping and video service, did not respond to a request for comment about the new, full-fledged music plan. Although it will be a late entrant to the crowded streaming space, Amazon believes a comprehensive music service is important to its bid to be a one-stop shop for content and goods, the sources said. The new music offering also is intended to increase the appeal of the Amazon Echo, its home speaker, which searches the Internet and orders products from the retailer with voice commands.
- Why Line’s Two-Year Wait for IPO Cost It $4 Billion in Valuation: Line Corp. has finally pulled the trigger on an initial public offering after a two-year hiatus. That period of hesitation may have cost the messaging service $4 billion in valuation as Facebook Inc. began encroaching on its turf and markets cooled on technology company debuts. Japan’s leading mobile messaging service is aiming to raise as much as 113 billion yen ($1 billion) in July at a market value of roughly 588 billion yen, according to data in its Friday IPO filings. That’s down 40 percent from an estimated 1 trillion yen when it first filed for an offering in 2014. The price range will be set on June 27, and the final price July 11. That may be as good as it gets. Line’s gearing up for a battle with far larger rivals like Facebook and China’s WeChat as it looks to expand its 218 million user base beyond its strongest markets of Japan, Taiwan and Thailand. The Tokyo-based company, owned by South Korean search portal Naver Corp., plans to use the proceeds to spearhead an expansion across Asia and, eventually, the U.S. “Line will have its market in Japan fairly fortified from the likes of WhatsApp or even Facebook Messenger,” said Amir Anvarzadeh, manager of Japanese equity sales at BGC Partners Inc. “Outside of its core markets, it’s going to be a massive challenge.”
- Flipkart, Amazon’s India Rival, Changes CEOs: In a move that has been rumored for some time, Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal has stepped down as CEO of the Indian e-commerce company, the company announced today. He will be replaced by his co-founder, Binny Bansal (no relation). Sachin Bansal will become executive chairman and “mentor the senior leadership of the company and look for new investment opportunities,” the company said in the announcement. Binny Bansal, formerly chief operating officer, will now run the business day to day. The move comes as competition for market share in India’s burgeoning online shopping industry has ramped up between Amazon, Flipkart and fellow Indian upstart Snapdeal. Amazon has promised to invest billions into its India business, which is run by Amit Agarwal, who spent two years earlier in his career working as Jeff Bezos’s right-hand man.
- Uber China Raises Financing at $7 Billion Valuation: Uber said its China division has raised financing that values that part of the ride-hailing company's operation at $7 billion. Travis Kalanick, Uber's chief executive officer, discussed the new funds at a press conference in Beijing on Monday. Uber is bumping up against local competitors around the world. Nowhere is the competition more fierce than in China, where Uber faces Didi Kuaidi. The company is backed by Alibaba and Tencent, the country’s two most valuable technology companies. Uber and Didi Kuaidi are each spending aggressively to expand, partly by subsidizing the costs of rides. In a letter to investors in 2015, Kalanick committed to spending $1 billion that year in China. It may have surpassed that figure. Didi Kuaidi said on Monday that it completed 1.43 billion trips in 2015. Uber said it increased its share of the private car market in China to 30 percent or 35 percent as of the end of 2015, from 1 percent in January 2015. (The Information reported a similar figure earlier on Monday.) Didi Kuaidi said it holds 87.2 percent of China's private car-hailing market, attributing the figure to a Chinese research firm. A recent round of financing gave Didi Kuaidi a valuation of $16.5 billion, a person familiar with the matter said in September. Uber, which owns a controlling stake in Uber China, was last valued at $62.5 billion, people familiar with the matter said in December. Uber China’s $7 billion valuation does not include the new cash.
- Digital Display Ads to Overtake Search, Bringing a Reckoning for Google: As advertising keeps flooding over from television to digital screens, this year will mark a first: More online ad dollars will go to ads that aren’t for search results than to those that are. That’s per eMarketer, which measures this sort of stuff. A Monday report claims that spending on display ads — banners, videos, sponsored content and in-stream mobile promotions — will outpace search ads in 2016. The research firm estimates that U.S. spending on display will hit $32.2 billion this year (a 47 percent annual growth), overtaking spending on search (estimated at $29.2 billion, a 10 percent growth). That trend does not bode well for Google, which reaps the lion’s share of search ad revenue. Of course, the search giant also reaps other ad money — from its massive banner business and YouTube, primarily. But in this category of digital ads, Facebook is a far greater foe. Figures from eMarketer show that Facebook claimed just under 30 percent of U.S. display ads in 2015, more than twice Google’s share. Plus, many in the industry see Facebook’s nascent automated ad platforms as a potential threat to Google. Google knows this — that the tremendous profitability of its search business will peter out eventually. Hence the importance of Alphabet: It is scouring for some business after search.
- Israel brings tech expertise to protecting connected cars: Most cars today are equipped with some level of connectivity and self-driving vehicles are being developed. Given this level of sophistication, protecting cars from contamination with malicious software has become big business. Building on its expertise in technology, Israel is emerging as a leader in the race to keep cars secure and prevent the nightmare scenario of a hacker commandeering your vehicle. The threat appears real enough. Fiat Chrysler recalled 1.4 million vehicles to install new software last year after cybersecurity researchers showed they could turn off a Jeep Cherokee's engine as it drove. Software manipulation, albeit intentional, was also behind Volkswagen's emissions scandal. From its headquarters in Tel Aviv, Check Point, one of the world's largest cyber security firms, pioneered the computer firewall two decades ago. It hopes to repeat that success with a security capsule for vehicles. Connected cars need a two-pronged defense. First, they must make sure nothing bad gets in, like a virus sneaking through a navigation system. Then they have to keep internal communications secure to allow functions like side-view mirrors which angle down when vehicles are put into reverse.
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- As Google and Uber Circle Each Other, Google to Test Carpooling Service in Israel: Google said on Monday that it would start testing a carpooling service in Tel Aviv through Waze, the Israeli social mapping start-up that the company bought in 2013 for $1 billion. Unlike similar services offered by the likes of Uber, Google’s carpooling service will allow drivers to recoup only the cost of gas and wear and tear to their vehicles. Drivers will not be able to use the app to offer traditional taxi services. The service, which is currently available only in Israel, is part of Google’s increasing moves into the territory of Uber, the ride-booking service in which the search giant has invested millions of dollars through Google Ventures, its venture capital unit. Over the last year, tensions between the two companies have mounted as both jockey to offer people new services like self-driving cars and on-demand delivery of goods like groceries. Uber, which is valued at roughly $50 billion, has announced plans to develop autonomous cars, and has a team of engineers working on digital mapping technology. The company also has made a tentative offer for Nokia’s digital mapping unit. Uber has started its own carpooling service in the United States, which allows users to divide the cost of a ride when traveling in the same direction.
- Samsung Profit Misses Estimates on Galaxy S6 Phone Struggles: Samsung Electronics posted second-quarter profit that missed analysts’ estimates as shortages of new smartphones made it harder to lure customers from Apple’s iPhone and cheaper devices made in China. Operating income fell 4 percent to 6.9 trillion won ($6.1 billion) in the three months ended June, the company said in a filing Tuesday. That compares with the 7.2 trillion won average of 33 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Samsung’s seventh straight profit drop comes as Galaxy S6 phone sales have fallen short after winning early praise as a device that could attract users that had shifted to Apple’s iPhone 6. Production constraints for the model with a curved display have led to shortages, trimming sales of the device and forcing the company to rely more on its chip unit for earnings. The company's shares were little changed in trading in Seoul.
- Mood-changing wearable tech sets pulses racing: Doppel is a new breed of wearable device, one that its developers say can actually change the wearer's mood by delivering a tactile beat to their wrist. The makers of 'doppel' call it the next generation of wearable technology - one that can actually change the mood of the user. They say the device taps in to the body's natural rhythm and gives the wearer control over how alert or relaxed they are. Similar to the way that upbeat music can motivate the body, while downbeat music relaxes; doppel provides a tactile beat to the wearer's wrist that they can adjust to make themselves feel more alert or relaxed. Doppel is synchronized to each individual via a smartphone app that measures their resting heart rate. This is all the information needed for the device to tap into the body's natural response to external rhythms. Team Turquoise says prototype models have been successfully tested on hundreds of people. They say doppel was also independently tested by psychologists at Royal Holloway University of London; with their controlled tests showing the device can improve alertness when correctly set to the user's preference. The team is planning further independent tests aimed at validating doppel's ability to calm people down and reduce anxiety. They recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to turn their prototypes in to consumer-ready models, with backers to be the first to get their hands on their own doppel.
- Search After the Search Box: Google Now Pushes Into the Next Frontier of Mobile Behavior: Google Now, an intelligence layer on Android and the Google app that was launched in 2011 is beginning to spring to life. In January, the service started integrating with popular apps, pushing notifications customized around personal data. This summer the product team is rolling out Now on Tap, a new Android feature that weaves Now into apps (and, likely soon, mobile websites). It’s search without the search bar — and, sometimes, without the query. Aparna Chennapragada, the Google executive who has run Google Now, its AI-driven smart personal assistant, since the start of this year, spelled out the three-pronged direction of the product — what she called the “bets” her team is taking. The first bet was embedding Now with Google’s full “Knowledge Graph” — the billions-thick Web of people, places and things and their many interconnections. The second is context. Now groks both the user’s location and the myriad of signals from others in the same spot. If you enter a mall, Now will tailor cards to what people in that mall typically ask for. And this is where the third benchmark for Now comes in: Tying that context to the apps on your phone, or ones you have yet to download. In two years, Google has indexed some 50 billion links within apps. In April, it began listing install links to apps deemed relevant in search. Indexed apps will be included in Now on Tap when it arrives in the latest Android version this fall.
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- 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.”
- Facebook may finally be getting serious about search - launches personalized keyword search today: Two years after debuting semantic “My friends who…” search for people, places, and photos on the web, Graph Search is rolling out on iOS in the US along with a new keyword search option for dredging up old News Feed posts by friends. Product manager Rousseau Kazi tells me Facebook’s personalized search results are focused first on helping people rediscover thoughts, experiences, and memories they saw in feed. Still, queries for “dentist” or “burrito” could surface recommendations from friends that compete with Google results. Meanwhile, a search for “Michael Brown” or “101 traffic” could surface a feed of recent mentions or news articles by friends, similar to Twitter. There will be no ads on Facebook’s mobile search or any new keyword ads. But since keywords can carry lucrative purchase intent, I’d bet Facebook experiments with ads here eventually to see if they could become real revenue generators. Businesses would surely be willing to pay to insert themselves into results for “restaurant” or “lawyer”.
- Chinese provider of free public wifi in exchange for ads gets $49M investment from Tencent, Dianpin: WiWide, a Chinese startup that provides public wifi networks to stores and restaurants, has received an RMB 300 million (US$49 million) series C funding round from Tencent and Dianping, according to TechNode. Over 500 domestic and international franchises use WiWide in China, including Starbucks, Burger King, and several airports. Its advertising clients include Jaguar, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Nokia, Lenovo, and HTC, whose ads get pushed to customers once they connect. Altogether, the company runs over 30,000 hotspots. WiWide offers an end-to-end solution, meaning it provides the routers and other hardware, network architecture, professional installation, and a dashboard application for businesses to keep track of connected customers.
- A respected commentator asks - How many people really care about Google Services? "I ask these questions because when looking at the future of Android and of Google, Gmail, maps, calendar, Google Now and all the other Google Services come up a lot. They come up both as indicators of Google's strength and as levers for Google to retain power of Android OEMs, since it can withhold these services from a device more or less at will. I, and the kind of people who spend time thinking about these issues, tend to assume that, well, maps and calendars and email and so on are very important, because we use them all day, and that the tight integration of Google services is a good reason to buy an Android phone and their absence would make it unsalable. What I wonder, then, is how much one can say that these Google services are very broad but very shallow. They address a need that a small number of people feel very deeply but that many more people may feel only occasionally, if ever. We know, for example, that the typical Gmail user gets five emails a day, 'mostly commercial'. How committed are they to Google? The obvious exception here is an app store - but this is one area where it might be possible to make an alternative without having Google's vast machine learning engine as a back-end - Amazon has tried, and in China (where Google is effectively absent) there are at least half a dozen."
- Creative agencies maybe feeling the squeeze as brands opt for web video shops to "just get stuff done": Increasingly, marketers are going directly to online production houses to produce Web video content. "The Internet has changed everything in terms of how consumers find, curate and watch branded content, and this is putting tremendous pressure on traditional ad agencies," noted ShareAbility CEO Tim Staples. "Succeeding at YouTube requires an expertise that most general ad agencies don’t have, and the smart ones are not willing to risk a $50 million account for a $500,000 piece of content." Typically, these simple concept ideas are not related to a broader campaign, meaning they don’t need the full strategy and cost of hiring a traditional agency, explained Altimeter analyst Rebecca Lieb. As an added bonus, digital studios are adept in turning things around quickly and know what’s viral. "It's about hiring execution," she said. "Agencies do a lot of strategy and ideation, which is sometimes not what you need. Sometimes, you just need to get stuff done."
- Banned in Delhi, sued 4 days after launch by the city of Portland, Uber fights on: [Delhi] Delhi Police investigators have been scathing in describing their dealings with Uber. Mr. Verma said he was unable to find any contact number or email address for Uber on its web pages and finally located its headquarters by booking an Uber cab and asking to be taken to the company's head office, which turned out to be several rooms in a hotel. He said he was not able to get any information about Friday's bookings for five hours because the database was located in New York. Mr. Verma also said that Uber had failed to demand that Mr. Yadav show a badge, which can only be acquired by submitting to a criminal background check. He said Uber had registered Mr. Yadav under an inaccurate residential address, had not registered his vehicle as a cab, and had not installed a global positioning system in the vehicle, which is mandatory for commercial taxis. Uber, which has been valued by investors at more than $40 billion, is running into similar problems in cities in other countries. A Dutch court on Monday prohibited the UberPop service, which links clients with drivers who do not have professional licenses, from operating in the Netherlands. The UberPop service has been banned in the German cities of Berlin and Hamburg, and London's main taxi association has brought lawsuits against Uber and a number of its drivers. Lawmakers in Thailand and Vietnam have banned the service, and the city government in Seoul has said it plans to do the same. Uber just launched in Portland on Friday, but the City’s Transportation Bureau has already sued, alleging Uber violates licensing laws
