Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, 5th December 2016

I had drifted into a routine of waking up later and later, and putting this together had fallen by the wayside as a result, but I'm trying to reset that habit now:-)

• Meitu of China, Built on the Selfie, Could Be Worth $5.23 Billion in I.P.O.: For users of Meitu’s signature app, a beautiful touch-up at the press of a button is free. But Meitu is hoping that investors in the company, which wants to “make the world a more beautiful place,” will value it somewhere between $4.6 billion and $5.23 billion. Meitu plans to offer shares at between 8.5 Hong Kong dollars and 9.6 Hong Kong dollars, raising $629 million to $710 million. The company is known for its eponymous selfie app, which allows users to digitally alter their photos, as well as its livestreaming app, Meipai. It also makes smartphones, designed to improve selfie-taking, which are endorsed by the Chinese actress Angelababy. The share listing will offer a rare gauge of whether global investors agree with the sky-high valuations often found in China’s tech start-up scene. Venture capitalists and private investors have leapt into the field, which has given rise to successful app- and gadget-makers amid an e-commerce and financial technology boom.

• There’s a powerful new way to dig up dead websites: It can be hard to find sites that have disappeared from the Internet. But the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine is on the verge of rolling out a feature that will make tracking down dead websites much easier, according to Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle. The Wayback Machine has been helping people see past Internet sites over the past 15 years, but searchers always needed to know the URL of a website to find the archived copies. Soon, however, you'll be able to use keyword searches to find old websites -- in fact, you can already test it out through a public beta.The new search feature is not quite like Google, where all the text on each page on a website is indexed to help with searches. The Wayback Machine feature lets you search for an archived website's main page, although it does not have the capacity to enable searches for specific web pages on that site. But once you're there, you're able to navigate around the old websites.

• Psst.. Sony Has a Hit That's as Big as Pokemon Go in Japan: Nintendo Co. might have scored a hit with the explosive debut of Pokemon Go this year. On its home turf, however, Sony Corp. has quietly dispatched its rival with a popular mobile game called Fate/Grand Order. The game, based on an anime TV series called Fate, allows players to travel back in time and team up with historical figures like Julius Caesar, Leonardo da Vinci and Joan of Arc to rescue humanity from looming disaster. While the basic version is free to play, people can pay for tokens that make it easier to add characters and speed up gameplay. Fate/Grand Order has been at or near the top of Japan's app revenue rankings all year and has been downloaded more than 7 million times since its July 2015 debut. It has made more money than Pokemon Go among Android users 104 out of 133 days this year, and 51 days on iOS devices, in the same period, according to researcher App Annie. The game's success is a sign of how important Sony's gaming and entertainment businesses are as the company struggles with razor-thin margins and competition in televisions, cameras and other hardware. The company plans to expand its mobile games effort with more titles in more markets in the coming months.

• Microsoft’s AI will describe images in Word and PowerPoint for blind users: Artificial intelligence may be making small and steady advances in general-purpose situations like digital assistants. But it’s the more subtle AI accessibility features that have a more substantial impact today, especially for users with disabilities. For instance, an upcoming feature for Office apps like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint will automatically suggest image and slide deck captions, called alt-text, using AI algorithms. That way, when those files are presented to blind users, computer tools designed to translate the information onscreen into audio have text descriptions to work with.Microsoft is accomplishing this feat with its Computer Vision Cognitive Service, which uses neural networks trained with deep learning techniques to better understand and describe the contents of images. “We will offer you automatic suggestions for alt-text when you insert a photographic image that can be recognized with high confidence,” writes the Office 365 team in a blog post. “Through machine learning, this service will keep improving as more people use it, saving you significant time to make media-rich presentations accessible.” Facebook too announced a similar feature for photo captions back in April, and much of the tech industry is using these AI techniques to both improve accessibility and better parse images and videos for valuable data. The feature will be available in Office and PowerPoint on PC starting next year for Office 365 subscribers.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, March 16

• Sony PlayStation VR to launch globally in October, cost $399: Sony Corp announced on Tuesday that its virtual reality headset for PlayStation will launch globally in October for $399, a move that undercuts its biggest competitor by hundreds of dollars. Andrew House, head of Sony's gaming division, made the announcement during a press event at the Video Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, where virtual reality gaming counterpart Oculus Rift announced its headset a day earlier. The headset, a visor-style frame with a 5.7 inch (14.5 centimeters) screen, includes 360 degree head tracking, a 100 degree field of vision and latency of 18 milliseconds between the time a user's head moves and the time they see the correct image. At $399,the package is notably less than the $599 price announced Monday by Facebook-owned virtual reality company Oculus Rift. Oculus will also sell bundles that include an Oculus Ready PC and a Rift for preorder in February starting at $1,499. The company said more than 230 developers are building content for the PlayStation VR device and 50 games are expected to be ready by the launch date. Users can download the Playroom VR at the PlayStation store and play six free games. The company has also teamed up with development company EA Sports and Lucasfilm for a Star Wars Battlefront game that will be released as a PlayStation VR exclusive.

• Uber Could Give Us a Lesson in Productivity: In Los Angeles, traditional taxi drivers have a passenger in the car for 40.7 percent of the miles they drive. By contrast, Uber drivers have a passenger in the car for 64.2 percent of their miles, or a 58 percent higher capacity utilization rate. In Seattle, the other city surveyed with mileage data, Uber drivers were 41 percent more productive. When measured by time, Uber drivers in Boston, San Francisco and New York on average have a passenger in their car about half the time their smartphone app is turned on. That compares to a range of 32 percent of the shift for taxi drivers in Boston to 49.5 percent for cabbies in New York. The service's use of internet-based mobile technology to connect passengers and drivers certainly contributes to its efficiency, according to the report. It makes sense: tapping your smartphone screen a few minutes before you need a ride is often easier than waiting on a street corner and hoping an empty cab drives past. Meanwhile Uber allows drivers to set their own shifts, and when combined with their use of so-called surge pricing that increases fares during times of increased ridership, supply and demand are more smoothly matched. Uber drivers are also exempt from regulations that prevent taxi drivers who drop off a passenger in a jurisdiction outside the one that granted their occupational license from picking up another customer in the same location. Given their 38 percent advantage, Uber drivers could charge 28 percent less than traditional taxis and still earn the same amount per hour under certain assumptions, including ignoring fixed costs, according to Cramer and Krueger. That may be one reason investors last year valued the company at $62.5 billion, more than Ford Motor Co.,  General Motors Co., and 80 percent of companies in the S&P 500.

• Instagram is switching its feed from chronological to best posts first: The average Instagram user misses 70 percent of what’s in their feed, including great photos with tons of Likes and posts by their best friends. So today Instagram announced it will start rearranging the order of posts in its feed. Rather than strictly reverse chronological, Instagram will order posts “based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post.” The testing will start out slowly; at least at first “all the posts will still be there, just in a different order.” But eventually, low-quality posts might be filtered out entirely. The changes mean if you don’t check your feed until the next morning but a friend whose photos you usually Like posted something awesome the night before, it could appear at the top of your feed even if it is hours old. This is essentially how Facebook’s feed works, and how Twitter recently reconfigured its feed to work. On the one hand, the relevancy-optimized Instagram feed will make sure you don’t miss great content even if you don’t neurotically check it all the time. You’ll be able to follow more accounts without worrying about them drowning out your favorites. And it will be easier to keep up with international friends who might normally post while you’re asleep. At the same time, remixing the feed will make Instagram less useful as a real-time content feed because the most recent posts won’t necessarily be at the top. Users will have to worry about making their posts good enough to be chosen by the algorithm or their posts could be de-prioritized. And brands might lose the reach of a previously reliable marketing channel, the same way they did with Facebook Pages. Filtered feeds tend to score more attention from users, as there are few boring posts that push them to close the app and do something else. And at this point, Instagram is so ingrained in people’s lives that they’re unlikely to ditch it over this change. But with Instagram and Twitter both moving to algorithmically sorted feeds, getting seen on social media will become more of a competition than ever.

• LinkedIn’s Lynda.com Videos Are Now Free on Some Commercial Flights: Here’s a tip for helping your video content stand out online: Make sure people see it when they don’t have many other options. That’s exactly what LinkedIn is doing to promote Lynda.com, the library of online classes it bought last year for a whopping $1.5 billion. LinkedIn announced Tuesday that it’s partnering with Virgin America to offer those classes for free to in-flight passengers. Beginning in April, a handful of classes will be free on all Virgin flights, and the entire Lynda.com library will be free for flights with higher quality Wi-Fi technology. No money is changing hands as part of the partnership, according to a LinkedIn spokesperson, but the potential benefits to LinkedIn are simple enough to understand. You’ll still need a Lynda.com account to watch videos, so it may help LinkedIn sign up more users. Plus, the competition for eyeballs on an airplane is usually pretty weak. The chance to learn a new skill or brush up on stress management may seem more appealing than random episodes of “Deadliest Catch” or “Cupcake Wars,” especially to business travelers. It’s basically a free opportunity to introduce its video library to potential new users — in the hope they will like the videos enough to pay for them sometime later down the road. If not, it still doesn’t cost LinkedIn anything in the process. It has offered free Lynda.com courses before. But this move does show how serious the company is about generating attention for Lynda.com. It paid a lot of money for the online classroom, and now it’s working to make it all back.

• Uber India Is Working on Offering Ride-Booking on Snapdeal: Uber’s India arm is in talks to partner with Indian e-commerce platform Snapdeal, multiple sources told Re/code. If a deal is reached, Snapdeal shoppers in India would be able to hail an Uber from within the newest iteration of Snapdeal’s app, these people said. As of March 9, Snapdeal had only released its new app to a select group of its customers, but indicated in a company blog post it would soon roll out to a larger group of users. The newest version of the Snapdeal app already includes integrations with travel booking service Cleartrip, food-delivery service Zomato and bus-booking service Redbus. As Snapdeal CEO Kunal Bahl told Re/code last April, the company believes it can differentiate from e-commerce competitors Flipkart and Amazon by broadening its focus beyond selling physical retail products. Last year, Snapdeal acquired FreeCharge, a recharge service for prepaid phones, and RupeePower, a comparison site for credit cards and loans. “What’s the delta between retail and consumption?” Bahl asked rhetorically. “It’s things like financial services, education, utilities, health care. But today, all everyone is doing is products.”

• India Opens Market for Solar Battery Makers Such as Tesla: India plans for the first time to include energy storage as a requirement when a solar project is tendered this month, opening what could become a significant new market to battery makers such as Tesla Motors Inc., Samsung SDI Co. and Panasonic Corp. The state-owned Solar Energy Corp. of India, which is responsible for implementing the government’s green targets, will ask bidders to include a storage component in 100 megawatts of the 750 megawatts of solar capacity tendered in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, Managing Director Ashvini Kumar said in an interview. The intention of the pilot program is to reduce fluctuations in electricity supply in order to make possible the transfer of clean energy between states. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has set a goal of 175 gigawatts of clean energy by 2022. The Andhra Pradesh project include 15 minutes of storage each for two solar installations. Warehousing power is considered a crucial component of India’s green targets. The requirement, if more broadly adopted, has the potential to invigorate the storage market because of India’s outsized ambitions for the industry. It would give manufacturers the scale they need to help bring down costs of battery storage that are holding back wider adoption.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, September 7

• Google hopes to reenter China by fall: Google expects to return to mainland China as early as this fall following a five-year absence, tech website The Information reported on Friday. The company hopes to get Chinese government approval for a China version of its Play store mobile app, The Information reported, citing people familiar with the plan. The tech giant is also planning to extend support of a version of Android for wearable devices in the country, The Information cited one of the people as saying. Google has assured Chinese authorities that it will follow local laws and block Play store apps that the government deems objectionable, one person familiar with the plans told the website. The Play store app will only work on devices running the recently unveiled "M" version of Android, and only on devices that comply with China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology requirements, The Information reported. Google is also planning to offer new incentives to phone makers to upgrade Android phones to the latest versions of its operating system, one person familiar with the plans told the website.

• New Apple TV Is Said to Focus on Games, Challenging Traditional Consoles: Apple is expected to make games a primary selling point of its new Apple TV product, which is scheduled to be announced on Wednesday in San Francisco, according to people briefed on Apple’s plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity. This is a big change from Apple’s previous versions of Apple TV, a device shaped like a hockey puck that for the first eight years of its existence has mainly been used to stream videos and music. “I think Apple’s going to create a big new category in gaming, one that others have tried and failed to create before,” said Jan Dawson, chief analyst at the technology research firm Jackdaw Research. “What the Apple TV has the potential to do is to bring casual gaming to the living room and make it a much more social activity.” Most game executives and analysts see little chance that Apple will be able to woo hard-core fans of the leading high-end game consoles, the Xbox One from Microsoft and the PlayStation 4 from Sony — both of which will most likely still have better graphics than the new Apple TV. Gamers who fancy big-budget games like Call of Duty and Destiny will probably not be easily persuaded to switch systems. That still leaves a large market of casual gamers whom Apple could target with the new Apple TV: people who find traditional game controllers complicated and who enjoy lighter, less epic forms of content. The new product is expected to have a starting price around $150, according to the people briefed on the product. While that is more than double the price of the least expensive Apple TV on sale today, it is significantly less than the latest traditional game consoles, which range in price from $300 to $500, depending on the maker and configuration. The business opportunity for Apple could be huge. The company now takes nearly a third of the revenue from sales of any games and other software purchased in its app stores. Total revenue from console games is expected to be more than $27 billion this year, which is more than a third of the $75 billion global games business, according to estimates by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

• Ireland Seen Losing Apple Tax Skirmish, Triggering Legal Battle: Ireland will probably face censure from European authorities within months in relation to its tax dealings with Apple Inc., according to a person with knowledge of the matter. A finding against Ireland will spark a legal battle that may last years, as the government is ready to fight the decision in the European Union Court of Justice, according to the person, who asked not to be named because the case is ongoing. In preliminary findings last year, European antitrust authorities said Apple’s tax arrangements were improperly designed to give the iPhone maker a financial boost in exchange for jobs in the country. Apple said in 2013 it had paid an effective tax rate of less than 2 percent in Ireland over the previous ten years. The EU inquiry comes amid a global crackdown on corporate tax-affairs, with the European Commission estimating that tax avoidance and evasion in the region cost about 1 trillion euros ($1.11 trillion) a year. In a worst-case scenario, Apple may face a $19 billion bill if the government in Dublin ultimately loses and is forced to recoup tax from the company, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst Rod Hall.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday February 19

• Uber expands Series E by $1B to $2.8B; Baidu among investors as Alibaba invests in rival Lyft: Facing overwhelming demand from institutional investors, Uber has expanded its Series E round of venture financing by $1 billion, according to documents filed Wednesday with the Delaware secretary of state, bringing the total capacity for the round up to $2.8 billion. The move, which was confirmed by Uber, occurred just weeks after the company closed a $1.2 billion round of financing. At the time, Uber said it had left capacity for about $600 million in additional strategic investments, according to a Delaware filing. The company is incorporated in Delaware and based in San Francisco. But the appetite for a piece of Uber has proved to be greater than the company had imagined. The $600 million was quickly oversubscribed, and Uber decided to raise the amount. Baidu, the Chinese Internet giant, accounts for part of the additional investment beyond the $1.2 billion round. The most recent expansion is on top of some $4 billion Uber raised, including a recent $1.6 billion round of convertible debt financing from the clients of the private wealth arm of Goldman Sachs, the investment bank previously confirmed. Uber’s $40 billion valuation, extraordinary by any private technology company’s standards, remains unchanged since the company announced the first part of the round in December. Uber is one of the most richly valued private technology start-ups, second only to Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer. Meanwhile, Uber’s largest United States competitor is also raising money. Lyft, identified by its signature pink mustache logo, is trying to raise at least $250 million in private capital, with participation from at least one previous investor, the Alibaba Group of China.

• Google is set to launch a subscription model for YouTube in a few months, CNBC quoted Robert Kyncl, the online video service's head of content and business operations as saying at the Code/Media conference. The company was "fine-tuning the experience", Kyncl said at the conference in California. (cnb.cx/1zOXElH) YouTube has been exploring a paid, ad-free version of its service for some time. The company launched a pilot program in May 2013 that allowed individual content creators to charge consumers a subscription fee to access a particular "channel" of videos. The plan would represent a significant change for the world's No. 1 online video, whose free videos, often accompanied by short commercials, attract more than 1 billion users a month.

• Snapdeal aims for $2B in fashion in 2015; acquires designer apparel e-tailer Exclusively.com: E-commerce major Snapdeal.com, run by Delhi-based Jasper Infotech Pvt Ltd, has acquired Indian luxury and lifestyle products site Exclusively.com (formerly Exclusively.in). The financials of the deal are not disclosed. According to Snapdeal, the acquisition has been made with an aim to strengthen its fashion business and reach $2 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) in the category in 2015. “We have witnessed a surge in the demand from consumers across the country for premium and luxury products. However, given that access to luxury brands is limited in our country, we have acquired Exclusively to provide our users with access to a range of aspirational, high end products and services,” said Kunal Bahl, co-founder and CEO, Snapdeal.com. As part of the acquisition, Exclusively will complement Snapdeal’s existing ecosystem and will provide a consolidated offering for the luxury and lifestyle shopper. It will continue to function as an independent site and all aspects of Exclusively’s online shopping experience will remain intact — with new collection and service augmentations in the pipeline. Snapdeal on the other hand will help the company scale up and expand its current business and reach. As of now, Exclusively retails products from designers like Manish Malhotra, Tarun Tahiliani, Manish Arora, Anita Dongre, Rohit Bal, Shivan & Narresh, Gaurav Gupta, JJ Valaya, Ritu Kumar, Varun Bahl, and Neeta Lulla, to name a few. This year, the company plans to launch leading international luxury brands and designers on its site. Founded in June 2010, Exclusively.com offers products in a number of categories including apparels, jewellery, handbags and accessories. While it started off targeting the US and the UK markets, the company now caters to the Indian market. Interestingly, the company was reported to have been acquired by fashion portal Myntra.com in 2012. At the time, Myntra had acquired Shersingh.com. The two sites (Shersingh.com and Exclusively.com) were functioning under the same umbrella back then. Exclusively.com could not be reached out to for an immediate response.

• Samsung Buys LoopPay, a Competitor to Apple’s Mobile Wallet: Samsung, the South Korean technology giant, announced Wednesday it had acquired LoopPay, a mobile payments company, signaling its interest in controlling smartphone-based purchases. The move comes just months after the release of Apple Pay, Apple’s mobile payments product, which allows consumers to buy things with little more than a wave of a smartphone. Though it has been available for only a handful of months, Apple Pay has gained significant traction with retailers and consumers. Whole Foods, the high-end grocery store, said it had processed thousands of Apple Pay transactions. Apple has also persuaded dozens of credit card issuers to sign up to support Apple Pay. LoopPay, however, believes its reach will extend far beyond that of Apple Pay. LoopPay’s underlying technology relies on a magnetic transmission sent from a user’s phone to a merchant’s payment terminal, mimicking a credit card swipe. The technology, according to LoopPay, can be accepted in more than 90 percent of existing point-of-sale terminals. It is unclear if LoopPay will work on chip-and-pin terminals, which use a more secure form of credit card technology and are being widely phased in this year. Apple Pay relies on near-field communication technology, which Apple says is available at approximately 220,000 American locations. MST v NFC: LoopPay uses magnetic secure transmission (MST) tech works with around 90 percent of existing payment terminals currently deployed in U.S. stores. “If you look at other competitor solutions in mobile payments [Apple Pay included], it’s actually based on near-field technology, which has very limited coverage in the U.S. We see the MST technology that LoopPay owns has a lot of potential to really solve the end-user coverage issues with respect to point-of-sale terminals.” Samsung spotted the potential early: LoopPay launched a Kickstarter project in November of 2013, and was contacted by Samsung only “shortly thereafter,” according to Graylin.

• Why Google Should Fear Facebook's New Product Ads Social network's targeting threatens retail search dominance: Yesterday, Facebook revealed that it's starting to serve ads for retailers' goods that use the targeting and personal-interest information it has on its 1.4 billion users. These product ads are an answer to a service that Google has offered businesses since 2013 with Shopping Ads (which were initially called Product Listing Ads). Google Shopping Ads show up as paid posts atop retailer-focused search results and render pictures and prices of items for sale. They are highly visual compared with text-based search results and have become a lucrative piece of Google's search business. In fact, according to Q4 2014 research from Adobe Digital Index, 20 percent of clicks on Google search links for retailers were on Shopping Ads. Also, Adobe said that merchants spent 47 percent more on Google Shopping Ads year-over-year last quarter, meanwhile they decreased spending on text-based ads by 6 percent during the same period. The interest in the format, which entails more dynamic creative, shows how digital advertisers prefer more visual marketing over simple text. Now, Facebook has the opportunity to mimic that success with its troves of consumer data while siphoning from its rival's digital dollars. Its product ads will let businesses zero in on users based on elements such as clothing preferences, musical tastes and location. "Facebook has the best targeting capabilities, so it can take some of the limelight from shopping ads on Google," said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst for Adobe Digital Index (ADI). Facebook has made dynamic visuals a priority—not just with its new product ads—but with the whole design of the platform, encouraging more video and photos. And there's a bottom-line reason behind such moves. Gaffney and her ADI team's quarterly research last month read: "Advertisers are gravitating toward creating an image-based Web shopping experience for consumers. Facebook is also attracting more retailers, which means there will be a likely increase in demand for more effective shopping ads. By the second half of 2015, Adobe predicted that shopping ads will account for 30 percent of all search dollars. Also, Google and Facebook are not alone going for that market—Yahoo and Bing have a version; however, for now they control only a small market share.

• Chinese online education startup raises $100M: On the eve of the Chinese new year, online education platform 17zuoye has announced that it has raised a series D round worth US$100 million, according to Duozhi. This brings the company’s total valuation to US$600 million. The round was led by H Capital (which also invested in 17zuoye’s series C), and other investors included Temasek, Yuri Milner/DST, and Lei Jun’s Shunwei (which has invested in every 17zuoye round starting with its series A). 17zuoye is an online learning platform for students K-12, as well as teachers and parents. The name means “homework together” in Chinese, and the site aims to serve as a nexus for all three groups to facilitate the educational experience, focusing on English and Math classes. For example, for students one service it offers is an automated system that allows them to record English sentences and get instant feedback on pronunciation. Teachers can then listen to their students’ recordings at any time. Parents can even get real-time reports on their kids via WeChat. Online education is a hot market in China right now, but 17zuoye, which was founded in 2007, has shown especially explosive growth. Two years ago the site had just over 1 million students; now it has more than 7 million. In July of last year alone, for example, the site added more than 130,000 students to its rolls.

• Sony seeks to re-invent itself: sees 25-fold profit jump by 2018; could exit TVs, phones: Sony aims to boost operating profit 25-fold within three years by growing its camera sensors and PlayStation units, its chief executive said, outlining a strategy that could see the company exit the cut-throat TV and smartphone sectors. CEO Kazuo Hirai said on Wednesday the Japanese consumer electronics firm would no longer pursue sales growth in areas such as smartphones where its has suffered competition from cheaper Asian rivals as well as industry leaders like Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Samsung Electronics (005930.KS). Sony would instead focus its spending on more profitable businesses such as camera sensors, videogames and entertainment as it seeks to return to growth after forecasting for this financial year its sixth net loss in seven years. The comments, made just as the Tokyo market was closing, helped Sony's shares (SNE.N) rise 1.4 percent in New York. "The strategy starting from the next business year will be about generating profit and investing for growth," Hirai told a briefing, adding that Sony's units would be given greater autonomy to make their own business decisions. Asked about the TV and mobile phone units, Hirai said he would not "rule out considering an exit strategy", Sony's clearest statement to date about the possibility of selling or finding partners for these struggling units. Sony is in the midst of a restructuring that has so far seen it sell off its personal computer division and spin off the TV business. It has also axed thousands of jobs. Sony shares have risen more than 80 percent over the past year as investors applauded the restructuring, which accelerated since Hirai appointed Kenichiro Yoshida as his chief strategy officer in late 2013. Hirai said Sony would target return on equity of more than 10 percent by the end of March 2018, adopting a yardstick Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been promoting as a way to attract foreign investors. He also said Sony aimed to post an operating profit of at least 500 billion yen ($4.2 billion) for 2017/18, a jump from the 20 billion yen forecast for the year ending March 31. Sony's revamp is starting to pay off. This month, it forecast an operating profit instead of a loss for the financial year ending March 31. But it still expects to book a net loss in 2014/15, albeit a smaller amount than previously estimated.

• Microsoft seeks to re-invent itself: has suddenly gotten serious with mobile. This is the same Microsoft that spent almost a half-decade trying to offer a credible alternative to Apple’s iPhone and mobile devices running Google’s Android. And it’s the same Microsoft that paid more than $7 billion to buy Nokia’s once-mighty handset business, only to see its mobile business sink further. The company now clings precariously to a 3 percent share of new smartphone sales. Make no mistake, Microsoft still wants its mobile operating system, Windows, to be the software in our smartphones. But mobile developers continue to focus on making apps for Apple or Android devices instead, making Windows phones an increasingly hard sell. That reality has finally sunk in at Microsoft, and a new strategy is afoot. When Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, took the top job at the company about a year ago, he signaled that the company’s priorities were shifting. Microsoft, he said, was in a “mobile-first, cloud-first world.” Since then, the company has brought more of its apps and services to the Apple and Android devices people actually use, rather than the ones Microsoft would like them to use — those that run Windows. What’s even more surprising is that Microsoft’s heart seems to be in the effort. Over the last several months, Microsoft has been taking up more and more space on my own iPhone’s home screen. I’ve installed mobile versions of its Office apps as well as OneDrive, the company’s answer to Dropbox, Google Drive and other cloud storage services.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday December 18

• Sony cancels movie release after terror threats: Sony Pictures Entertainment on Wednesday dropped plans for its Christmas Day release of “The Interview,” a movie that depicts the assassination of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, after receiving a terror threat against theaters. Before that, the four largest theater chains in the United States said they would not show the movie, which has been at the center of a devastating hacking attack on Sony over the last several weeks. American intelligence officials on Wednesday concluded that the North Korean government was centrally involved with the attacks on Sony’s computers. That determination and the cancellation of the film were new twists in a series of developments that has found a major studio fighting for its art, and perhaps life, against forces driven by a foreign government. Hackers claim to have taken at least 100 terabytes of Sony data, or about 10 times of the amount stored in the Library of Congress. Sony computer systems were damaged and the studio is already the focus of at least two lawsuits from former employees who had their personal information spread online.

• How smartphones maybe reducing Amazon's edge: Phones have already radically altered both the way Americans shop and how retail goods move about the economy, but the transformation is just beginning — and it is far from guaranteed that Amazon will emerge victorious from the transition. Phones are at the heart of the service offered by Postmates, one of several start-ups that are working with retailers and helping to change shopping experiences. As local retailers adopt mobile innovations, customers will be able to search stores’ inventories, purchase goods for same-day delivery, and navigate and search for help and reviews inside a crowded store. None of these technologies pose an existential threat to Amazon, but by giving physical stores some of the conveniences that Amazon has long had, they may limit its potential reach. With Instacart, you can get groceries delivered instantly from big and small supermarkets. With Google’s Express delivery service, you can get household goods from big-box stores delivered on the same day you order. The app Curbside lets users order items from Target, and have them ready when they drive up to a store. And with Postmates, it is possible to order takeout, and pretty much anything else, and have it delivered directly very quickly. These services all have in common speed and convenience: Because they route purchases from stores, they can often shuttle goods to buyers faster than they are available from Amazon. The prices are even competitive with Amazon, which delivers most of its products, even groceries, from warehouses that are a few hours away.

• Twitter's CEO has sold >500K shares since November: Twitter CEO Dick Costolo’s family trusts sold $5.32 million worth of Twitter shares Monday, and the sale comes at an interesting time. Twitter shares have declined nearly 45% this year, and Ev Williams, Twitter’s cofounder, just sold more than 719,000 shares, worth nearly $28.7 million, last month. Jack Dorsey, too, is reported to have sold $2.1 million worth of his shares last month. Also, back in April, Twitter executives, including Costolo, Williams and Dorsey had indicated in an SEC filing that they had no “current plans” of selling their shares, even after the company’s lock up period ends.

• Indian startup action: Zepo.in, Livspace get funding: Zepo.in, a do-it-yourself (DIY) e-commerce platform for SMBs, has secured an undisclosed amount in funding led by Anupam Mittal, CEO of People Group, which operates the internet properties including Shaadi.com and makaan.com. Zepo can help an SMB to open its online shop in a few minutes for under Rs 999 per month. It also provides them free payment gateway, logistics support and marketing. With 20 employees on board, Zepo has offices in Delhi and Bangalore. The firm mainly competes with Nirvana Venture Advisors-backed KartRocket.com, besides MartMobi, Shopify and CostPrize. Livspace, an online marketplace for personalised home interior design and décor, has received $4.6 million in its Series A round of funding. Livspace claims that it enables homeowners to discover thousands of pre-created looks for all rooms, kitchen, and storage areas in their homes at the click of a button. Customers can select and purchase these looks, which are created by international designers, and personalise them (by material, colour, style) online. The startup will then deliver the items at the customers’ doorsteps. Livspace has partnered with many real-estate developers in the country and also offers a ‘find your apartment’ feature to offer pre-created, ready-to-install interior design for customers who buy homes from these developers.

• Chinese phone maker OnePlus, selling on Amazon in India, has been barred by the Delhi HC from selling, marketing, or importing phones in India. The dispute centers around OnePlus using Cyanogenmod’s version of Android, which is licensed exclusively in India by rival phone brand Micromax. OnePlus received a shock in October when Micromax acquired the rights to be Cyanogen’s exclusive partner in India in order to launch Micromax’s new YU Cyanogen phone on December 18. Cyanogen has already clarified that OnePlus One phones sold in India will not receive updates. In return, OnePlus says it will start work on a custom Android build for its users in India. The high court has allowed the Chinese company, which launched its OnePlus One phones in India through Amazon on December 2, to clear its stock of Cyanogen-based products.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday December 8

• The massive hacker attack on Sony, possibly by groups linked to North Korea, continues to dominate headlines; security flaws exposed: North Korea says its supporters may be behind Sony attack:The attack shut down most of the studio's network for more than a week and hackers have released sensitive data over the Internet, including employee salaries and Social Security numbers along with high-quality digital versions of several unreleased films. A key weakness was that few security measures existed between the computers of the Japanese company’s divisions around the world, so hackers could move with relative ease throughout the corporation, said the person, who asked to remain anonymous because the information is confidential. The most recent attacks suggests Sony hasn’t done enough since the last episode. The company put itself and others at risk by not putting passwords or encryption on the files that would have made them more difficult for hackers to open, according to Todd Feinman, chief executive officer of Identity Finder LLC, a New York-based provider of data management software.

• Facebook Video and YouTube are now equals in the video ad market, say some: "YouTube and Facebook are equal players now, or at least close to it," Ron Amram, senior media director of marketing, Heineken USA, told Adweek. "What we're finding is that we have to consider Facebook as the key video partner going forward because not only does it have the reach but the effectiveness. Here's why he's bullish on Facebook's nascent promos: While pushing Heineken Light to 21 to 34 year olds in the United States in October, the brand's digital spots—in three days—were exposed to the newfeeds of 35 million Facebook users, producing 5.5 million views, according to Amram. That means 16 percent of the people reached watched the spot. "This is the first time we've looked at [Facebook] as part of our digital video strategy overall," he said. "It complements television very well but also goes beyond it." To Amram's last point, the 15-second auto-play ads featured the same Neil Patrick Harris work from Wieden + Kennedy that broke on TV in July. One minute and 48-second commercials were also pushed on the platform. "Putting it on Facebook re-accelerated it for us," Amram said. "August and September were good, but October was even better." "Facebook over-delivered on what we anticipated," he said. Additionally, he had postive data when it came to still promos on Facebook. Amram said sister brand Dos Equis got a $3.35 back for every dollar spent during the weeks leading up to Cinco de Mayo last spring, which helped the brand lift sales by 6.6 percent year over year.

• India's smartphone market is surging (23M in Q3 2014, 82% Y/Y), even as China's reaches saturation (105M in Q3 2014, 10.8%): The latest figures from IDC show that smartphone shipments in India grew 82 percent in the past 12-month period, while China saw growth of just 10.8 percent. Admittedly, India is still a small-ish market in relative terms, with an estimated 23.3 million smartphones shipped to retailers in Q3 2014, versus 105 million in China. Basic, non-smart phones still account for the majority of mobile sales in India, but that means a seismic shift is now underway to Android, iOS, and Windows Phone devices. Cheaper Android phones are helping push this forward in the very price-sensitive market. The ratio of feature phones to smartphones shipped in India is now 68:32, which has changed a lot from 78:22 at the end of last year, and 90:10 at the end of 2012.

• Uber terms of service face scrutiny as firm faces the possibility of legal action in India following arrest of rape suspect: Madhur Verma, New Delhi police deputy commissioner, said that police will also take legal action against Uber — valued at $40 billion — for failure to run checks on the driver’s background and whether he had an adequate GPS device in his car. The police are taking legal advice before deciding whether it would be a criminal or civil case. Earlier reports suggest that the suspect had disabled GPS during the incident, which occurred late on Friday night or early Saturday morning. The suspect allegedly parked the car in a secluded area after the passenger, said to be in her mid-twenties, fell asleep. He then raped her and threatened her life if she reported anything. Shockingly enough, Uber’s terms of service don’t necessarily protect against this. You can have a read through it right here, if you’d like, but the main argument is this: Uber is not a transportation company, but rather a technology service that matches seekers of transportation (riders) with providers of transportation (drivers). By using Uber, and accepting the obligatory ToS, you are acknowledging that each and every driver that picks you up in any city in the world is a third-party (not Uber), and thus, Uber is not responsible for any of their actions. This is hardly the first time that a dispute (to put it lightly) has arisen between an Uber driver and a passenger or pedestrian. One man was hit over the head with a hammer, and a six-year-old girl was killed when hit by a driver. This isn’t even the first rape allegation against an Uber driver.