Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, September 21

• Researchers remotely hack Tesla Model S: Chinese researchers announced Monday that they had discovered security vulnerabilities in the Tesla Model S that allowed them to take over the vehicle’s brakes and more without laying a finger on the car. While other researchers have hacked into Tesla vehicles, this appears to be the first time researchers were able to do so remotely — highlighting the security risks of the sophisticated software and online features now being built into vehicles. A video posted by the researchers from Tencent’s Keen Security Lab appears to show them controlling the vehicle's brakes, as well as manipulating its side mirrors, running the windshield wipers and popping the trunk while the car is in motion. The researchers were also able to manipulate some other features while the vehicle was parked, including opening the sunroof, controlling some of the vehicle’s lights and unlocking the doors, according to the video. In a blog post, the researchers wrote that they reported the vulnerabilities to Tesla, and the company confirmed the hack. The researchers only tested out their method on “multiple varieties of Tesla Model S,” but said that it’s “reasonable to assume that other Tesla models are affected." Tesla said in an emailed statement that it "deployed an over-the-air software update" to fix the problem within 10 days of being informed about the bug. The company said the vulnerabilities that Keen Security Lab uncovered would only be accessible under a very specific circumstance: when the vehicle’s Web browser was in use and the car was connected to a malicious WiFi hotspot. Tesla plans to reward the researchers under its bug bounty program, according to the statement. Tesla was the first automaker to roll out such a program, which offers cash rewards to independent researchers who help the company uncover problems in its software. The company pays up to $10,000 per bug.

• iPhone 7 Teardown Shows Margins Slimming on Storage, Displays: Apple Inc.’s iPhone margins have narrowed with the release of its latest smartphone line, the iPhone 7, with higher costs to provide greater storage options, a glossy black cover and more advanced displays, according to an analysis by IHS Inc. The component analysis firm estimates that the total manufacturing cost of an entry-level iPhone 7, a model with a 4.7-inch screen and 32 GB of storage, is $224.80. This compares with an updated IHS estimate of $200 for an entry-level iPhone 6S in 2015. IHS didn’t perform an analysis of the larger iPhone 7 Plus but said the costs are likely higher than last year’s iPhone 6S Plus due to the presence of additional components. Based on the IHS breakdown, the margins on the 4.7-inch iPhones have narrowed as Apple maintained the $649 starting price, but the company seems to have offset this by raising the price of the iPhone 7 Plus. The iPhone 7 Plus costs $769 for a model with 32 GB of storage compared with last year’s $749 entry-level price. Apple is also holding up its overall margins by reserving the more costly glossy black manufacturing process for the 128 GB and 256 GB models. While Apple hasn’t released sales numbers for the iPhone 7 line’s opening weekend, the company indicated its initial supply sold out. Despite early knocks against the device for its lack of a headphone jack, reviews have been positive and the company’s stock has gained 5.4 percent since the new phone was introduced about two weeks ago. The iPhone represented about 66 percent of Apple’s revenue last year, and the product’s unit sales, margins, and average-sales-price are critical to the company’s quarterly earnings results.

• Microsoft Plans Another $40 Billion Buyback, Boosts Dividend: Microsoft Corp.’s board authorized the buyback of an additional $40 billion of stock on top of an existing $40 billion repurchase program it will finish by year’s end, keeping up a strategy of returning money to shareholders as its cash pile grows. The Redmond, Washington-based software maker also raised its quarterly dividend by 8.3 percent to 39 cents a share, according to a statement Tuesday. The company’s stock has jumped 31 percent in the past year, giving Microsoft a market capitalization of $442.7 billion -- the third-largest in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has been working to jump-start revenue growth -- which analysts project will be 2 percent this fiscal year after a decline of 2 percent the previous year -- amid continued restructuring efforts related to the failed acquisition of Nokia Oyj’s phone business. Since Nadella took the helm in 2014, the company’s cloud and internet-based Office software businesses have fueled growth and boosted investor optimism. The stock this year has been hovering close to a 1999 record high.Microsoft shares rose about 1 percent in extended trading after the announcement. They slipped less than 1 percent to $56.81 at the close in New York.The company had $113.2 billion in cash and short-term investments as of June 30. Microsoft is spending about $26 billion to acquire LinkedIn Corp., a deal that will be largely funded by debt sales.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, August 24

• Tesla’s new 100 kWH battery makes it the third-fastest accelerating car ever: Tesla’s Model S and Model X vehicles just got faster. On a call with journalists today, Elon Musk unveiled a larger battery pack — 100 kWH — that enables the Model S to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds in what the company calls “ludicrous” mode. That makes the Model S the third-fastest production car ever made, after the Ferrari LaFerrari and the Porsche 918 Spyder, but it’s the quickest pure electric vehicle that has the capacity to seat up to five adults and two children, according to the company. In an industry first, the battery also enables the car to drive an estimated 315 miles on a single charge. This is the first electric vehicle to go above a range of 300 miles, according to Tesla. The Model S P100D will start at $135,000 — compared to a $125,000 MSRP for the Model S P90D equipped with ludicrous mode — and the Model X P100D will start at $135,500. The Model X P90D started at $115,500.

• Narrative Science can now describe your Tableau charts for you: Tableau Software‘s shares soared 13 percent on Tuesday following the announcement that the data analytics provider has partnered with Narrative Science, a Chicago-based company that develops natural language generation (NLG) tools. The result of the partnership is Narratives for Tableau, a free Chrome extension that automatically creates written explanations for Tableau graphics. Let’s say, for example, that you have a chart — made with Tableau — of sales and profits of your business for a certain amount of time. The extension, which works with Tableau Server 10.0 or the free Tableau Public service, will generate a narrative description of the data by writing sentences such as “Sales and profit ratio moved in opposite directions from January 2011 to December 2014,” as shown in this example. Narrative Science is best known for Quill, a platform that can take data — say, sports scores — and turn them into stories. Narratives for Tableau is one example of applying Quill’s capabilities, Frankel pointed out. Once Narratives for Tableau has generated the text, users can customize it by choosing a paragraph- or bullet point-style for the description, among other things. If users are not satisfied with the results, they can also make changes to the text.

• Pinterest Acquires Instapaper to Get Smarter About Articles: Pinterest Inc. is buying Instapaper, the app that lets you save an article to read later, as it works to understand the technology behind recommending stories for people. The acquisition of Instapaper, which has expertise in saving, curating and analyzing articles, aligns with Pinterest's goal to provide content that fits users' interests, the company said in a statement. Pinterest declined to comment on a price for the deal. Instapaper, started in 2008 by Tumblr co-founder Marco Arment, is known for helping people save longer-form stories they don't have time to read. Pinterest said people use its application to save articles, though they often tend to be image-based how-to stories about recipes or from inspirational do-it-yourself blogs. Instapaper's technology could help improve Pinterest's ability to match content with its users' interests.

• One Kings Lane sold for less than $30 million after being valued at $900 million: One Kings Lane, an online home-furnishings retailer, fetched less than $30 million in its recent sale to Bed Bath & Beyond, according to three people familiar with the deal. The purchase price marks a massive discount from a valuation of $900 million that the startup had secured when it raised more than $100 million from investors in early 2014. In the wake of Dollar Shave Club’s $1 billion sale to Unilever and Walmart’s impending $3.3 billion acquisition of Jet, the One Kings Lane outcome is a reminder of how brutal the e-commerce industry can be for many startups.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, August 4

• Tesla misses Q2 earnings, delivers 14,402 vehicles: Tesla missed its Q2 earnings targets today in a report released after the close of the market. Tesla executives are not wavering on yearly targets, despite a slower than expected quarter. All of this comes amidst a seemingly never-ending wave of Tesla headlines dominating Silicon Valley over the last few weeks. The energy company born out of an automobile company reported non-GAAP Q2 revenue of $1.56 billion up from last year’s Q2 revenue of $1.2 billion. The company came close but ultimately missed analyst estimates of $1.6 billion. Tesla closed down 0.62 percent today at $225.79. After the news was released, Tesla shares moved up almost instantly in after-hours trading after the news dropped but have been fluctuating up and down by 2 percent since.Wall Street analysts expected an adjusted net loss of $52 cents a share but found themselves with a worse than expected loss of $1.06 per share. Tesla delivered 14,402 new vehicles consisting of 9,764 Model S and 4,638 Model X in Q2, slightly ahead of last month’s estimates. Tesla had originally aimed to deliver 80,000 vehicles by the end of the year. It is growing tougher by the day for the company to hit that goal. On the bright side, the company noted that almost half of Q2 production occurred in the final four weeks of the quarter. Moreover, Tesla had an additional 5,000 cars in transit at the quarter end on their way to be delivered.

• Why it makes sense for Walmart to buy Jet.com — even for $3 billion: Walmart missed out on a Marc Lore company once, when Amazon swooped in to beat it to the purchase of Diapers.com’s parent company several years back. The giant retailer may not let it happen again. Walmart is in talks to acquire Jet.com, Lore’s new startup that has raised more than $800 million in financing in an attempt to build a new online megastore, according to a person familiar with the talks. It is not clear how far along they are. News of the talks was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which said the tie-up could value Jet at as much as $3 billion. A Walmart spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. A Jet spokesman declined to comment. A $3 billion price tag would be a steep one for Walmart, considering that Jet is largely still unproven and burning more than $20 million a month on advertising alone. A deal would also certainly not be what Lore had in mind when he set out to build a legitimate competitor to Amazon, Walmart and others after his non-compete agreement with the Seattle-based retailer expired two years ago. But it would be a marriage of necessity for both sides, and one that probably makes too much sense not to happen. On the Walmart side, its e-commerce efforts have largely been viewed as a failure in recent years for a retailer of its size and power. Annual revenue for the division is around $14 billion, compared to $99 billion for Amazon, excluding Amazon’s AWS cloud computing unit.Five years ago, it would have seemed possible, but unlikely, that Walmart could catch up with Amazon. Today, that notion is laughable.For Lore and Jet, the deal would be something of a shocker. Lore pocketed dozens of millions of dollars when he sold Diapers.com to Amazon so he doesn’t exactly need the money. That’s one of the reasons his backers believed him when he said his goal was to build a company worth tens of billions. But the hurdles to get there have been significant from the start and perhaps even larger than Lore imagined. Jet only really works long-term as a standalone company if it can convince millions of people to order multiple items at a time to earn discounts; individual product prices aren’t typically better than its competitors.

• Dorsey's Square reports 41.5 percent jump in quarterly revenue: Mobile payments company Square Inc on Wednesday reported a 41.5 percent jump in revenue and diminishing losses as more large merchants make sales using Square's technology, a sign the company has moved beyond serving only pop-up shops and food trucks.Square stock was up more than 14 percent to about $12 in after-hours trading following the second-quarter earnings call. The price at closing bell was $10.44. Square's revenue reached $438.5 million, up 41.5 percent from its earnings of $310.0 million a year earlier. It processed $12.5 billion in payments, up 42 percent from a year ago, mostly due to new and larger retailers using Square, the company said. About 42 percent of total payments is coming from larger retailers, signaling a dramatic transition for Square. The company started seven years ago as a card reader that turns a mobile phone into a payment terminal, and was sold primarily to pop-up stores, coffee shops, food trucks and other small merchants that couldn't afford elaborate payment systems.Square, which went public in November, has expanded to offer an array of services for businesses such as point-of-sale registers, invoice software and loans. Square Capital, the loan program, saw a 123 percent increase over last year, with $189 million in loans made to businesses. Square added five investors to the program, which will provide capital for additional borrowers, said Sarah Friar, Square chief financial officer. About 90 percent of borrowers renew their loans.Friar said Square's familiarity with borrowers - the company lends to merchants it has already done business with - and the low cost of the program distinguishes it from other lenders.Still, the company is not profitable. Its losses narrowed to $27.3 million from $29.6 million during the same period last year.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, June 14

• Pokemon GO gets ads - could be next big marketing tool for retailers: Pokemon GO, a mobile game that has rocketed to the top of Apple Inc and Android app stores in record time, looks set to challenge young internet companies which specialize in increasing foot traffic for small businesses and may end up playing a role in major brands' marketing, according to industry experts. The augmented reality game from Japan's Nintendo Co Ltd, where players walk around real-life neighborhoods to hunt down virtual cartoon characters on their smartphone screens, has more than 65 million users in the United States just seven days after launch. That is more users than Twitter Inc, and the game is already helping local restaurants, coffee shops and small retailers to attract new customers. L'inizio Pizza Bar in Long Island City in New York claims its sales jumped 75 percent over the weekend by activating a "lure module" feature that attracts virtual Pokemon characters to the store, thereby tempting in nearby players. The store's manager spent $10 to have a dozen Pokemon characters placed in the location, according to a report in the New York Post. That sort of instant effect is a potential threat for Groupon Inc, LivingSocial Inc, Foursquare and other relatively new companies which have revolutionized online marketing for small businesses in the last few years.

• Zendesk’s “Automatic Answers” taps machine learning, AI to generate bot-style email responses: Chat bots have ballooned in popularity in recent months, and now we’re seeing some interesting examples of how that technology, where computers interact and respond to human requests, is being used to solve other problems. Today,Zendesk is taking the wraps off “Automatic Answers”, a service for businesses to reply to emails from customers without ever having a human employee get involved. Automatic Answers is not your average, run-of-the mill email autoresponder. The service was built using a machine learning platform that Zendesk’s in-house teams of data scientists and engineers, which are based out of Melbourne, Australia, have been developing on for a while now. That machine learning platform was first announced last year and it also powers a service Zendesk announced last October, Satisfaction Prediction, which is able to monitor customer-company interactions to — as its name implies — determine whether the customer is getting what she or he needs. The machine learning/AI element means that the responses in Automatic Answers are not only reading and responding specifically to what you the customer is asking, but it is technically getting smarter with each response (and presumably using a bit of Satisfaction Prediction to figure out if it’s getting it right). Automatic Answers will work first in email because, as Zendesk’s VP of product Sam Boonin tells me, “Even in a world of customer services embedded in every communication channel from social to web to phone, email still represents the majority of interactions that are coming in.”

• No more Tesla buyback guarantee as company cuts price of Model X: Tesla Motors Inc has ended a program that guaranteed the resale value of its cars, and lowered the starting price of its Model X crossover, the high-profile electric vehicle maker said on Wednesday. The discontinuation of the buyback program, as of July 1, allows Tesla to free up cash that had been set aside to buy back Model S cars after three years at a value of at least 50 percent of the base purchase price. The changes come after Tesla warned earlier this month it will miss its vehicle delivery target for a second consecutive quarter.It faces other challenges, including a regulatory investigation of its Autopilot technology following a May 7 fatal crash and more scrutiny of its financials after a proposed merger with SolarCity Corp. Within the next 12 months, Tesla has disclosed it could pay a maximum of $192.4 million to cover resale value guarantees on 4,209 vehicles. That amounts to a maximum liability of $45,711 per car, although Tesla could offset payouts by reselling repurchased vehicles. Tesla valued the total liability created by the resale value guarantee at $1.58 billion as of March 31, according to its latest quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, up over 20 percent since the end of 2015. The program, begun in 2013, was intended to help Tesla control its secondary market and reassure buyers purchasing vehicles using its novel technology that resale values wouldn't drop substantially. A Tesla spokesperson said the program was discontinued to "keep interest rates as low as possible and offer a compelling lease and loan program to customers." In effect, Tesla is now doing what most established auto makers do: allow market forces to set trade-in values.

Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, July 12

• The non-gamer’s guide to playing Pokemon Go: Pokemon Go is a full-blown phenomenon, with millions of downloads and excitement only growing after players got through their first weekend of being real-life Pokemon trainers. The game is heavy on fun but light on explanations -- particularly if you're so excited to start playing that you blitz through the opening tutorial. So maybe you've downloaded it, fired it up and then gotten, well, completely lost. If you're completely mystified by how this game actually works, here are some basics to get you out there and catching Pokemon in no time.Once you download the app, you'll be asked to sign in. You can sign in using an existing Google account. Or, if you're not so keen to connect your Pokemon identity to your Google identity, then you can also sign up with the Pokemon Trainer Club, which is an account with the Pokemon Co. From there, you design your character and pick your first Pokemon. Then you can get going! And you will have to actually get going. The whole selling point of the game is to walk around the real world to find the cute little critters. This not only encourages you to explore your own city, but also -- gasp! -- gets you outside and around other people. In fact, this is not really a game you can play while stationary. Sometimes Pokemon will come to you, but more often than not you have to go to them.

• Twitter Falls After Analysts Downgrade Stock on Slow Growth View: Twitter Inc. slipped after analysts at two firms downgraded the stock, citing a lack of confidence in the company’s direction and ability to capitalize on new products. "What is Twitter? Quite frankly, we don’t believe that question has been answered," said James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. in a note. "Barring any changes, Twitter was, is and will continue as a niche product." He downgraded the stock to the equivalent of hold from buy. Robert Peck, an analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey also lowered his rating on the stock to the equivalent of hold from buy. “User growth and engagement for Twitter continue to be challenged, and we believe that increasing monetization can only go so far with limited new product introductions increasing competition (Snapchat!) and a challenging advertising background,” Peck said in a note.The stock fell 2.6 percent to $17.61 at 10:16 a.m. in New York. The shares have declined about 50 percent over the past year, valuing the company at about $12.4 billion. Many analysts see the company as an inevitable takeover target some day, though not anytime soon. “It’s surely an upside risk to our new rating, but at this time we expect Twitter will have to navigate as a standalone company,” Cakmak said.

• The SEC is investigating whether Tesla should have told its investors about a fatal crash: The Securities Exchange Commission is opening an investigation into Tesla to determine whether the company should have told shareholders earlier about a fatal crash related to its autonomous driving tech, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Joshua Brown was killed on May 7 when his Tesla, operating in Autopilot mode, drove into a tractor-trailer that that was crossing the highway. Autopilot is a semi-autonomous driving technology that’s a much more sophisticated version of cruise control. Weeks later, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into the accident to determine whether the technology worked as expected. This SEC probe, on the other hand, is not about the technology; it’s about whether, under securities law, Tesla should have told its investors about the accident and when. A Tesla spokesperson said the company had not received any communication from the SEC as yet.) The results of the SEC probe will set a precedent for the auto industry as more automakers roll out their own versions of Autopilot. The 2017 Mercedes Benz E class will be equipped with semi-autonomous technology called Drive Pilot; Volvo’s XC90 already has semi-autonomous technology called Pilot Assist; and General Motor’s Super Cruise technology is expected to become available in the 2017 Cadillac CT6. Automakers typically don’t disclose to investors every single accident in which their vehicles are involved. If, however, the SEC determines that Tesla should have disclosed this accident to its investors, that may all change.

• Bezos Beats Buffett as Amazon Market Value Tops Berkshire: Amazon.com Inc., Jeff Bezos’s online retailer, moved past Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to become one of the world’s five largest companies by market value on Monday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Amazon rose as high as $356.5 billion in the first two hours of trading. The company surpassed Berkshire on the day before Prime Day, an annual promotion.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, July 07

• India's $4 Smartphone Seems Too Good to Be True: A little-known Indian company called Ringing Bells Pvt is set to start shipping the Freedom 251. The prototype touts a quad-core processor, a 4-inch screen and front and back cameras - at the astonishingly low price of 251 rupees (less than $4). While global brands Samsung Electronics Co. and Lenovo Group Ltd. sell devices for less than $100, the $4 smartphone is the one stirring up the internet-hungry, app-crazy hordes in a country where Apple Inc. has been unable to make a dent. With iPhones costing upwards of $700, Apple commands a mere 2 percent market share in a country where the World Bank puts the per capita income at $5,630. Brands can't make money even on $50 smartphones, so profiting from a $4 device is a ludicrous idea, say experts like Tarun Pathak, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Technology Market Research. While Micromax sells millions of cheap devices every month in smaller cities - it profits by taking advantage of economies of scale. Ringing Bells’ managing director Mohit Goel isn't counting on a profit from device sales, conceding that the company will lose hundreds of rupees on each unit, and is instead planning to recoup money through advertising and marketing deals. Goel has said the company is importing kits from Taiwan and assembling the phones in a factory in Haridwar near Delhi.Even at $4, the smartphone could still be out of reach for most because of scarcity. When Goel first announced Freedom 251 in February, the company said over 70 million jostled to register, crashing its website. Last week he said Ringing Bells will soon start shipping 200,000 smartphones to buyers picked by lottery. Other details were not available and e-mails, phone calls and text messages to Goel and his representatives in the past days went unanswered. Selling such a cheap device has attracted scrutiny along with the publicity. The prototype Freedom 251 presented to the media turned out to be produced by another manufacturer with its logos covered. Thwarted buyers protested outside the company’s headquarters, setting off inquiries by the police and tax officials. Pankaj Mahindroo, president of the Indian Cellular Association, with members including Apple and Samsung, said “We are concerned and keeping a close watch.”

• Another Tesla crash is under investigation to see if Autopilot is at fault: U.S. transportation regulators are opening a new probe of a Tesla car crash, one week afterannouncing an investigation into a fatal crash of a Tesla operating in the company’s semi-autonomous driving mode. The new investigation involves a non-fatal crash on July 1 in Pennsylvania. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will try to determine if the Tesla’s Autopilot functions were active at the time. The additional investigation will likely intensify scrutiny around the safety and design of Tesla’s Autopilot product, which provides some self-driving features as a software update. 

• Zomato's Results: For the year ending March 2016, Zomato posted revenues of Rs 87.5 crore for the India region, up from Rs 46 crore revenues in 2015. India accounted for 47.3% of Zomato's overall revenues that stood at 184.97 crore for FY16. The net loss for the India region however shot up to Rs 247 crore for the fiscal, up more than three times from Rs 62.3 crore loss in 2015. This is nearly half of Zomato's overall net loss of Rs 574.5 crore in FY16.In the US market that accounts for nearly 50% of its listings, the Gurugram-based company posted a net loss of Rs 327.5 crore on revenues of Rs 6.73 crore for the fiscal. This is a massive increase from Rs 33 crore on revenues of Rs 5.1 crore in 2015. Zomato had forayed into United States last year with the $52 million UrbanSpoon acquisition that was eventually folded into the company.In terms of segments, Online advertising still dominates Zomato's revenues, accounting for 91.4% of the company's overall revenues. The segment's revenues grew by 76.1% to Rs 169.1 crore for FY16, from Rs 96 crore in FY15. Revenues from online ordering was at Rs 7.5 crore for the fiscal, accounting for nearly 4% of the company's revenues. Goyal had recently said that 20% of its India revenues came from the ordering business in April this year. Subscription revenues grew to Rs 8.4 crore from Rs 0.64 crore in 2015. This includes revenues from its business app from restaurants and its Whitelabel platform among others.

• Apple Drops to Fifth in China’s Mobile Market as Locals Rise: Apple Inc. dropped to fifth place in Chinese smartphone shipments, losing ground in its biggest overseas market in a fresh blow for the technology giant. IPhones made up 10.8 percent of devices sold in May, down from 12 percent a year earlier, according to Counterpoint Research. By comparison, Chinese vendor Huawei Technologies Co. increased its lead with 17.3 percent. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has publicly touted the importance of China, where the company is combating a slowing domestic economy and local vendors with increasingly popular devices. The launch of the cheaper iPhone SE was meant to boost Apple’s popularity in developing markets and Cook met with China’s vice premier Liu Yandong in May. Instead, it has suffered commercial, legal and regulatory setbacks in recent months leading to lawsuits and key products getting shut down. Local brands Huawei, Vivo, Oppo and Xiaomi are now the top four smartphone makers in China with a combined market share of 53 percent, according to Counterpoint research director Neil Shah. Oppo almost doubled its market share to 11 percent. Apple’s sales in Greater China, which also includes Taiwan and Hong Kong, fell 26 percent during the March quarter compared to a year earlier, amid a slowing market.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, July 6

• Samsung Set to Boost Spending as S7 Revives Smartphone Fortunes: After ending a two-year smartphone slide with the Galaxy S7, Samsung Electronics Co. could be about to hike capital spending to sustain a revival across the company. At least $5 billion more of investment is headed to the display and semiconductor businesses, according to a survey of analyst estimates, to help Samsung ride out bumps in the phone market. Such a move reflects new optimism about the company after the success of the Galaxy S7, with the shares rallying 17 percent this year.“Samsung’s smartphone business has finally had a soft landing after a bumpy ride,” said Chung Chang Won, an analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Seoul. Samsung will probably boost spending on memory and displays, which “are poised for a sudden rise as the next growth drivers.”But with growth in the global smartphone market evaporating, it needs to build up its other major businesses as competitors bring out new products in an attempt to spark growth.

• Tesla Falls After Paring Delivery Forecast Amid Factory Strains: Tesla Motors Inc. fell after the electric-car maker missed second-quarter forecast for global deliveries and lowered its full-year outlook, citing an “extreme” increase in output in the period’s final month. The shares slid 3.3 percent to $209.40 at 9:35 a.m. New York time. They declined 9.8 percent this year through Friday. Deliveries of 14,370 vehicles trailed a projection of about 17,000, after an “extreme production ramp” came too late in the quarter to get the cars to their buyers, Tesla said Sunday. About half of the quarter’s output in the final four weeks.The carmaker has had trouble getting its vehicles to customers fast enough to meet its targets even after increasing production. Tesla said 5,150 cars were still on trucks and ships making their way to clients who ordered them, and will be delivered in the first part of this quarter. Tesla is increasing output at its Fremont, California, factory with an eye toward making 500,000 cars a year by 2018 -- an ambitious timeline that also depends on the carmaker’s battery factory east of Reno, Nevada, coming online with battery-cell production. Tesla missed its deliveries forecast for the second time in a row this year. In the first quarter, the company blamed the shortfall on “hubris” in adding in too much new technology that led to part shortages for the Model X.

• BookMyShow secures $81.5 mn from Stripes Group, others: Movie ticketing platform BookMyShow has raised Rs 550 crore ($81.5 million) from existing and new investors in one of the largest funding rounds for an Indian consumer Internet firm in recent months. BookMyShow’s Mumbai-based parent Bigtree Entertainment Pvt Ltd. said on Tuesday it raised the Series C funding round from investors led by New York-based investment firm Stripes Group. Existing investors Network 18, Accel Partners and SAIF Partners also took part in this round. This round takes the total amount the company has raised to $128 million (Rs 863 crore), making it one of the most heavily funded firms in the media and entertainment sector. The company last raised $25 million (Rs 150 crore) from SAIF Partners, Accel Partners and Network18 in 2014.The latest funding round values the Indian company at $445 million (Rs 3,000 crore), The Economic Times reported citing company sources.The latest funding round values the Indian company at $445 million (Rs 3,000 crore), The Economic Times reported citing company sources.

• Five days of Etsy payment processing outages have merchants flipping: Those hoping to snag some handmade July 4th cookies and home-made vegan sunblockmight have woken up to an empty stomach and sunburn after a serious payment processing outage on e-commerce site Etsy. Over the last five days, a large number of Etsy transactions have been disrupted by “third party” payment processing outages. As of 6pm PST July 5th, over 4,000 messages of frustration have been posted in the company’s Bugs Community Forum. After the Direct Checkout outage, many merchants were left with their hands in their laps explaining delays to buyers. The outage is especially tough for sellers who have to face angry customers. It’s all too easy for an unhappy buyer to blame the seller in a negative review for an outage out of their control.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, 4th July

• How AWS came to be: There are lots of stories about the formation of AWS, but this much we know: 10 years ago,Amazon Web Services, the cloud Infrastructure as a Service arm of Amazon.com, was launched with little fanfare as a side business for Amazon.com. Today, it’s a highly successful company in its own right, riding a remarkable $10 billion run rate. What you may not know is that the roots for the idea of AWS go back to the 2000 timeframe when Amazon was a far different company than it is today — simply an e-commerce company struggling with scale problems. Those issues forced the company to build some solid internal systems to deal with the hyper growth it was experiencing — and that laid the foundation for what would become AWS. Speaking recently at an event in Washington, DC, AWS CEO Andy Jassy, who has been there from the beginning, explained how these core systems developed out of need over a three-year period beginning in 2000, and, before they knew it, without any real planning, they had the makings of a business that would become AWS. It began way back in the 2000 timeframe when the company wanted to launch an e-commerce service called Merchant.com to help third-party merchants like Target or Marks & Spencer build online shopping sites on top of Amazon’s e-commerce engine. It turned out to be a lot harder than they thought to build an external development platform, because, like many startups, when it launched in 1994, it didn’t really plan well for future requirements. Instead of an organized development environment, they had unknowingly created a jumbled mess. That made it a huge challenge to separate the various services to make a centralized development platform that would be useful for third parties.At that point, the company took its first step toward building the AWS business by untangling that mess into a set of well-documented APIs. While it drove the smoother development of Merchant.com, it also served the internal developer audience well, too, and it set the stage for a much more organized and disciplined way of developing tools internally going forward.

• Salesforce Pushed Microsoft to Up LinkedIn Bid Before Deal: Salesforce.com Inc. battled Microsoft Corp. for LinkedIn Corp. deep into the negotiating process, forcing the world’s largest software maker to boost its offer to buy the professional-networking service just days before the $26 billion deal was announced. Three other companies were involved in the discussions, which lasted almost four months, according to a regulatory filing Friday. One of those was Facebook Inc., which passed on an acquisition, according to a person involved in the negotiations. Microsoft increased its offer to $196 a share June 11, from $182 a share earlier, after the other main bidder offered "approximately $200" a share for the company, the filing said. The board ultimately decided the Microsoft offer was stronger in part because it was an all-cash deal, while the other bidder was offering to pay with its stock and cash, the filing said.There were other companies that expressed interest in acquiring LinkedIn, or were involved in the process. Those were referred to as Parties B, C and D in the filing. Recode reported Friday that Party B was Google, the internet search business of Alphabet Inc., and Party D was Facebook, operator of the largest social network.

• Tesla crash raises concerns about autonomous vehicle regulation: The fatal crash of a Tesla Motors Inc Model S in Autopilot mode has turned up pressure on auto industry executives and regulators to ensure that automated driving technology is deployed safely. The first such known accident, which occurred in Florida in May, has highlighted tensions surrounding efforts to turn over responsibility for braking, steering and driving judgments to machines. It may delay the U.S. government's plan to outline guidelines for self-driving cars this month. The cause of the Model S crash is still under investigation by federal and Florida state authorities, which are looking into whether the driver was distracted before his 2015 Model S went under a truck trailer. Shares of Tesla and Mobileye NV, the maker of the camera vision system used in the Model S, rose on Friday as analysts said the accident was likely a short-term setback. The stocks fell in after-hours trading on Thursday after an investigation of the crash was made known.

• Why Tech Support Is (Purposely) Unbearable: “Don’t think companies haven’t studied how far they can take things in providing the minimal level of service,” Mr. Robbins said. “Some organizations have even monetized it by intentionally engineering it so you have to wait an hour at least to speak to someone in support, and while you are on hold, you’re hearing messages like, ‘If you’d like premium support, call this number and for a fee, we will get to you immediately.’” The most egregious offenders are companies like cable and mobile service providers, which typically have little competition and whose customers are bound by contracts or would be considerably inconvenienced if they canceled their service. Not surprisingly, cable and mobile service providers are consistently ranked by consumers as providing the worst customer support.Of course, companies rated best for tech support often charge more for their products or they may charge a subscription fee for enhanced customer care so the cost of helping you is baked in, as with Apple’s customer support service, AppleCare, and theAmazon Prime subscription service.

Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, June 22

• Tesla offers $2.8 billion for SolarCity in 'no brainer' deal for Musk: Tesla’s stock drove off a cliff after the SolarCity bid was announced, and Elon Musk and his family could stand to gain $700 million in Tesla shares from SolarCity deal: Elon Musk on Tuesday sought to build a clean energy powerhouse as his electric car maker, Tesla Motors , made an offer to buy his solar installation firm SolarCity Corp in a stock deal worth as much as $2.8 billion. Tesla shares plunged more than 13 percent to $189.99 in extended trading - amounting to a loss in value of about $4.3 billion, or more than the value of the offer for the other company. Shares of SolarCity rose about 18 percent to $25.02. Musk, who is the chairman of SolarCity, CEO of Tesla and the largest shareholder of both companies, described the deal as a "no brainer" in a call with reporters. Tesla investors punished the company's shares, however.  Musk, who owns 19 percent of Tesla and 22 percent of SolarCity, said he would recuse himself from voting on the deal. He could not say how soon shareholders could vote on the deal, as due diligence needs to take place first. SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive, Musk's first cousin, said he supported the deal but would also recuse himself from voting. Rive's brother, Peter, is also a founder of the company and its chief technology officer.

• SoftBank President Nikesh Arora Plans to Step Down: A former Google executive and Silicon Valley star was on course to be the next chief executive of SoftBank of Japan, one of the world’s most prominent technology conglomerates. Now he is leaving, in an abrupt shakeout that shows cracks in SoftBank’s global ambitions. When the executive, Nikesh Arora, was poached two years ago from a coveted role as Google’s head of business operations, the hire was widely considered a coup for SoftBank. Its billionaire founder and chief executive, Masayoshi Son, crowned Mr. Arora heir apparent. Mr. Arora was vaunted for his deal-making prowess and seen as an international executive who would help transform SoftBank with a flurry of investments. One of Mr. Son’s most cherished ambitions was to turn SoftBank, a Japanese business with some notable overseas names like the American carrier Sprint, into a truly global enterprise. The honeymoon did not last.Investors have criticized Mr. Arora recently for his record of managing SoftBank’s overseas deals. Investments in start-ups like DramaFever and Housing.com, these shareholders have said, appear to have soured as the companies have faltered. And the carefully orchestrated succession plan — or what appeared to be — has collapsed. Mr. Son decided he was not ready to give up the reins soon. Mr. Son, 58, said in a statement that he still wanted to “work on a few more crazy ideas” at SoftBank. Mr. Son cited differences over when Mr. Arora would take over as chief executive as the reason he had agreed to step down. Mr. Arora, who was born in India, holds the titles of president and chief operating officer. “This will require me to be C.E.O. for at least another five to 10 years — this is not a time frame for me to keep Nikesh waiting for the top job,” Mr. Son said. Mr. Arora, 48, also presented the parting as amicable. “Masa and I are still in love with each other,” he posted on Twitter. “I will support everyone I invested in, and they know that.”

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, May 19

• This $5 Billion Software Company Has No Sales Staff: Atlassian sold $320 million worth of business software last year without a single sales employee. Everyone else in the industry noticed.: Atlassian, which makes popular project-management and chat apps such as Jira and HipChat, doesn’t run on sales quotas and end-of-quarter discounts. In fact, its sales team doesn’t pitch products to anyone, because Atlassian doesn’t have a sales team. Initially an anomaly in the world of business software, the Australian company has become a beacon for other businesses counting on word of mouth to build market share. “Customers don’t want to call a salesperson if they don’t have to,” says Scott Farquhar, Atlassian’s co-chief executive officer. “They’d much rather be able to find the answers on the website.” The way technology companies sell software has changed dramatically in the past decade. The availability of open source alternatives has pushed traditional brands and rising challengers to offer more free trials, free basic versions of their software with paid upgrades, and online promotions. Incumbents such as IBM, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which employ thousands of commissioned salespeople, are acquiring open source or cloud companies that sell differently, says Laurie Wurster, an analyst at researcher Gartner. Slack, Dropbox, and GitHub are among the companies trying to attract corporate clients with small-bore efforts that rely largely on good reviews. The idea is to distribute products to individuals or small groups at potential customers big and small and hope interest spreads upstairs. So far, though, Atlassian remains the most extreme example of this model. It’s a 14-year-old company, valued at $5 billion since going public in December, without a single salesperson on the payroll. More than 80 Fortune 100 companies use Atlassian’s software, and venture capitalists and peers often talk about trying to follow, at least partly, its sales strategy.Atlassian’s roots lie in Sydney’s barren tech scene. It was kept aloft early on not by venture capital, but by the founders’ credit cards, meaning it didn’t have impatient investors to answer to. “I don’t think their success is replicable,” says Tomasz Tunguz, a partner at Redpoint Ventures.

• Cisco's forecast tops Wall Street estimates; shares rise: Network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc reported better-than-expected results and gave an upbeat forecast for the current quarter, sending its shares up about 7 percent in extended trading. The company has been beefing up its wireless security and datacenter businesses to offset the impact of sluggish spending by telecom carriers and enterprises on its main business of making network switches and routers. Results in the latest reported quarter were mainly driven by a 17 percent jump in sales in its security business, which offers firewall protection as well as intrusion detection and prevention systems. Revenue in the company's collaboration unit, which sells IP phones, rose 10 percent in the third quarter ended April 30. Sales in the data center business, which makes servers, rose 1 percent. The company's legacy switches and routers business is still by far its largest, accounting for nearly 60 percent of total revenue. Sales in the switching unit fell 3 percent, while router sales fell 5 percent, painting a grim picture of corporate technology spending.The company's net profit fell to $2.35 billion, or 46 cents per share, in the third quarter, from $2.44 billion, or 47 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding items, the company earned 57 cents per share. Analysts on an average had expected a profit of 55 cents per share and revenue of $11.97 billion. Revenue fell to $12.00 billion from $12.14 billion.

• Tesla to raise $1.4 billion with public offering to fund Model 3 production:Tesla will raise at least $1.4 billion through a secondary stock offering, the company announced in SEC filings today, and an additional 5.5 million shares will be purchased by CEO Elon Musk via a stock option exercise. The funds will be used to "accelerate the production ramp of Model 3," according to the filing, with Tesla moving its 500,000 vehicle per year build plan to 2018 from 2020. Musk will exercise all his outstanding stock options for a total of 5,503,972 shares, with 2,777,901 of those being offered for sale to cover his tax burden. Tesla will not receive any of the proceeds from that sale, and Musk's net holdings in Tesla will increase. The Tesla Model 3 was unveiled in March and is the first "affordable" Tesla car, priced at around $35,000. Tesla says it will go more than 215 miles on a full charge and the success of the Model 3 will determine the future of the company. The first deliveries of the car are expected in late 2017, with volume production beginning in 2018. Initial demand for the car appears to be very strong, with the company reporting that it had taken roughly 400,000 preorders with refundable $1,000 deposits as of late April. In the filing Tesla revealed that as of May 15th, it currently had 373,000 preorders after 8,000 customer cancellations and 4,200 duplicate orders were cancelled by the company. Tesla is no stranger to secondary offerings. It raised around $500 million in a smaller offering last year.

• LinkedIn Says Hackers Are Trying to Sell Fruits of Huge 2012 Data Breach:  LinkedIn said on Wednesday that hackers were attempting to sell what they claimed were 117 million email addresses and passwords of its users, suggesting that a data breach in 2012 was magnitudes bigger than initially thought.LinkedIn is investigating the authenticity of the data, the company said. But a security researcher, Troy Hunt, said on Twitter that he had verified a portion of the breach and that it was “highly likely this is legit.” The hacker is trying to sell the data on an illegal marketplace for five bitcoin, or about $2,200, according to Motherboard. In 2012, the account information of 6.5 million users was posted to a Russian hacker site. LinkedIn settled a class-action lawsuit in 2015, agreeing to compensate 800,000 people who had paid for its premium services. Since the attack, the company has stepped up its security procedures, including enabling two-step verification, a technique security experts recommend for your most sensitive online accounts.

• Google Home vs. Amazon Echo. Let the Battle Begin. Google on Wednesday introduced Google Home, a voice-controlled, Internet-connected speaker that competes directly with Amazon’s smart speaker, Echo, which costs $180. The company also introduced Allo, a messaging app, and a rebranding of its virtual assistant. Here’s a quick explanation of what these major announcements, made at the Google I/O developer conference, mean for consumers. What do Home and Echo have in common? Home and Echo are both speakers that require a wired power connection. They stream music and perform tasks like web searches, adding calendar appointments and looking up movie showtimes over an Internet connection. What are the differences between Google Home and Amazon Echo? Google has yet to share many important details, including a price tag, about Google Home, which is scheduled for release this fall. However, from the announcement we can glean a few differences: Home, which can easily be held in one hand, is shorter and more compact than Echo. Both speakers have a cylindrical shape, but the top of Home is slanted downward, whereas Echo’s top is flat. Google is allowing consumers to choose from different colors for the bottom part of Home, while Echo comes only in black. (Amazon also sells a smaller voice-controlled speaker called Tap.) Most important, the brains of Home will be Google’s virtual assistant, which draws from Google’s extensive search database, whereas Echo relies on Alexa, Amazon’s assistant. In other words, consumers can expect voice commands that already work with Google’s assistant to work with Google Home. In a recent test comparing virtual assistants from Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, Google’s assistant was the most capable of performing basic tasks, largely because it drew data from Google’s search engine. Is Home smarter than Echo? Thanks to Home’s reliance on Google’s search engine, it will probably be a smarter speaker than the Echo when it comes to basic tasks like web searches and looking up traffic data. However, when it comes to actions offered by outside companies — like the ability to order a pizza from a restaurant or to set your Internet-connected thermostat — Home’s success will depend largely on whether Google persuades third-party developers to create tasks that work with it.

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Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, May 5, 20126

• India rejects Apple's plan to import used iPhones: India has rejected a plan by Apple Inc to import used iPhones, government officials said on Wednesday, a blow to the U.S. tech giant that has been seeking to revive waning sales of its flagship smartphones. Apple sells what it calls refurbished iPhones at a discount in some countries, including the United States. Extending this practice to India would have likely helped it increase its share in one of the world's fastest growing smartphone markets against competitors with much cheaper offerings. But India, which is pushing a 'Make in India' initiative to boost the competitiveness of its manufacturing sector, rejected the proposal citing rules against importing used electronics. Apple's proposal was opposed by domestic phone makers who claim selling refurbished iPhones - devices that have been returned by buyers or repaired to factory condition after damage - would breach India's anti-dumping rules. The Consumer Electronics and Appliances Manufacturers Association had written to India's telecom ministry to stall the move. The news comes at a time when Apple posted its first-ever drop in iPhone sales amid weakness in China, its most important market after the United States. In India, Apple only has about a 2 percent market share but its sales there surged 56 percent in the first three months, driven mainly by cheaper older-generation devices such as the iPhone 5S while demand for the new iPhone SE disappointed. "The 5S' success in India has more to do with affordability of a premium brand than a preference for smaller phones, and the move to the more expensive SE will discourage budget buyers," said Wilmer Ang, an analyst at research firm Canalys. The newly launched iPhone SE retails at 39,000 rupees ($585) in India - almost $200 higher than its U.S. price. To successfully tap into India's smartphone boom - where sales are expected to grow 25 percent this year - Apple will need a better retail presence and cheaper versions of the iPhone given the average smartphone in the country sells for less than$150, according to analysts. Apple, which currently retails in India through local partners, is already seeking government approval to set up its first store in the country.

• Tesla's Wild New Forecast Would Change the Trajectory of an Entire Industry - If Met: Tesla just took the most ambitious automotive production timeline since the Ford Model T and moved it up two years. The company now plans to produce 500,000 electric cars every year starting in 2018. That's 10 times the number of vehicles it produced in 2015, and enough to ensure that all 400,000 customers who put down a $1,000 deposit on the forthcoming Model 3 will qualify for a significant U.S. subsidy. Talk about doubling down—even the original 2020 goal was considered a long shot by Wall Street. This new target would pledge the carmaker to a faster production growth rate than Ford Motor Co. managed in the early 1900s. That's when Henry Ford pioneered the production line with the Model T, the first mass-market combustion-driven car. A century later, Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk wants the Model 3 to be its electric grandchild. He's now aiming for close to a million sales by 2020.  BNEF tracked 234,000 electric car sales worldwide last year, of which Tesla made up a fifth of the market, Morsy said. For Tesla to stay on its new track, it would need to produce more cars next year than the entire global electric-car industry made in 2015. Tesla's first mass-produced car, the $35,000 Model 3, will need to come to market on schedule, and with great momentum, in late 2017. Telsa's battery factory in Nevada must flourish, costs must come down, and car-making capacity must scale up at an astonishing rate. For context: Tesla has never managed to hit one of Musk's timelines for a new product launch. Not once. 

• Fitbit shares tank after reporting a weak outlook amid rising competition: Fitbit is not having a good day, with the stock crashing more than 11 percent after reporting its first-quarter results. Here’s the rub: its guidance for the second quarter came in light. Very light. Industry watchers were expecting the company to report earnings around 26 cents per share, while the company put its outlook at earnings between 8 cents per share and 11 cents per share. That’s a pretty big miss, and another indicator that the company will be facing some challenges in the wearable market. Here’s the quick rundown of the report: Devices: 4.8 million units sold. Earnings: 10 cents per share, against analyst estimates of 3 cents per share. Revenue: $505.4 million, against analyst estimates of $443 million. In the past six months, Fitbit shares are down more than 50 percent. Fitbit is facing a ton of increasing competition, not only from Apple with the Apple Watch, but from international manufacturers like Xiaomi and the usual competition from Jawbone. Fitbit’s usual strategy has been to go after the fitness-tracking market with a portfolio of devices, but recently it’s somewhat diverged from that with the launch of a smartwatch. Naturally, given Fitbit’s previous success, a shift in strategy may not be very welcome to investors looking for continued growth in the company — and a strong return. All this has forced Fitbit to find more unique ways to prove to consumers that it is the best option when it comes to fitness tracking. One recent example was an integration with the Amazon Echo, in which users can ask with their voice how they are performing through their Fitbit devices. It’s novel use cases like these that might propel the company above the competition, but so far we haven’t seen any kind of dramatic success on that front.

• Flipkart valuation marked down by two more investors: Two small mutual fund investors at Flipkart have marked down the company’s valuation, joining other investors who believe that India’s largest e-commerce firm is overvalued. Valic Co 1 marked down Flipkart’s value by 29.4% as of February, compared with August 2015, according to a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Valic valued Flipkart’s Series D stock at $98 a share in February, down from $139 a share in August.Fidelity Rutland Square Trust II marked down Flipkart’s value by as much as 39.6% as of February, compared with last August, according to a filing with the SEC. Fidelity valued Flipkart’s Series D stock at $82 a share in February, down from $135.8 a share in August. The Economic Times reported about the markdowns earlier on Wednesday. To be sure, Fidelity and Valic hold very small amounts of Flipkart stock. Their holdings together are worth less than $6 million. That’s a minuscule fraction of Flipkart’s overall value. The company last raised $700 million from investors in July last year at a valuation $15 billion. But taken along with other markdowns by Morgan Stanley and T Rowe Price, both of which together own hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Flipkart stock, it confirms the view that Flipkart’s own investors believe the company is overvalued by a significant amount. In late February, Morgan Stanley Institutional Fund Trust, another mutual fund investor in Flipkart, slashed the value of its holdings by as much as 27%. Then, last month, T Rowe Price disclosed in a filing that it cut the value of its stake in Flipkart by 15%.

• Free Code Camp survey reveals demographics of self-taught coders: If you’ve ever wondered who exactly is signing up for all these free learn-at-home coding classes and tutorial websites, Free Code Camp (which is one of them) has kindly surveyed 15,624 users with regard to various basic demographics and some more code-centric items. Some of the stats are expected (few women — around 1 in 5 surveyed) and a few are surprising — for instance, only 18 percent said they’d like to work for a startup. Thirty-eight percent don’t plan on specializing in UX, backend stuff or other specific disciplines, which they might want to revisit later. And they’re all over the world — mostly the U.S., with India a close second — but the long tail comprises 167 more countries.

Daily Tech Snippet: Monday, April 4

• Tesla says Model 3 orders top $10 billion in first 36 hours: Tesla Motors said orders for its new Model 3 electric sedan topped 253,000 in the first 36 hours -- a fast start for the company's first mass-market vehicle, which may not begin to reach customers for another 18 months or more. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk tweeted on Friday that the Model 3, which is slated to go into production in late 2017, will sell at an average price of $42,000, including the price of options and additional features, which would give the initial flurry of orders an estimated retail value of $10.6 billion. That intense interest, fanned in part by a steady stream of tweets by Musk, could help boost Tesla's stock price, which closed Friday at $237.59, up 3.4 percent. The stock has soared more than 60 percent since hitting a 12-month low in February. The car's average selling price projected by Musk is well above the $35,000 base price. Analysts earlier had estimated the first Model 3s off the factory line in Fremont, California, could be loaded with extra equipment and sell for $50,000 to$60,000. Tesla has undertaken a costly expansion of the Fremont plant, aiming to boost annual capacity to 500,000 by 2020, with production of the Model 3, the company's first mass-market car, ramping up slowly through 2019. Some analysts said the company could have trouble filling all the initial Model 3 orders, which are accompanied by a refundable $1,000 deposit, until 2020. Barclays analyst Brian Johnson on Friday said the heavy influx of Model 3 orders "sets the stage for an equity offering" later this year by Tesla, much of which would go toward factory construction and product development.

• China’s Companies Poised to Take Leap in Developing a Driverless Car: some argue that conditions in China are actually more favorable for quick adoption of driverless cars, in part because of more aggressive support from the national and local governments. And, unlike in the United States, China never fully developed a romance with the open road and car ownership. Car ownership has spiked in China, of course. And in recent years, it has become a middle-class status symbol to own a car. For the ultrawealthy, there are clubs dedicated to Ferraris and Maseratis. But enormous traffic jams in China’s largest cities can make driving a less-than-romantic experience. Why not let a machine built with artificial intelligence inside do the work for you? “It’s not that people are more willing to use the cars in Beijing or Shanghai, it’s that the economic value is much higher in China than in the U.S.,” Mr. Mosquet said, adding that air pollution could be as much a catalyst as bad traffic. Even as American companies like Google and Tesla work on autonomous vehicles, a number of Chinese companies are working on driverless car technology. The Internet company Leshi Internet Information & Technology (better known as Letv) has a driverless car tech unit, and the Chinese carmaker Great Wall Motors has opened a research center in Silicon Valley. The assumed leader in the field in China is the search engine company Baidu, which has been at work on autonomous vehicles since 2013.

• Jeff Bezos just live-tweeted his space company’s latest rocket launch: Opening the doors to his space company to the media for the first time last month, Jeff Bezos said he had kept the company so quiet and secretive for a simple reason: “We’ll talk about Blue Origin when we have something to talk about.” Now Bezos is talking — and tweeting. The billionaire founder of Amazon.com (and owner of The Washington Post) not only announced ahead of time that his space company would launch a rocket on Saturday, but he live-tweeted it, giving his followers a play-by-play of the event, and a few inside glimpses. Saturday’s liftoff from Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas was the third consecutive time the company has launched and landed its reusable New Shepard suborbital vehicle, which consists of a rocket and a capsule designed to take astronauts just past the edge of space. While the company has yet to fly any humans — Bezos said that test flights with humans are probably a year away — it has now demonstrated that its rocket can fly repeatedly. Bezos, and others, believe that is a key step toward lowering the cost of spaceflight, and therefore making it more accessible. Typically the first stages of rockets are discarded after each use. But Bezos and SpaceX’s Elon Musk are developing technologies to land the first stages vertically, using the engine thrust to slow them down. The United Launch Alliance is also working to recover the engines of its new rocket. But in his live-tweeting Saturday, Bezos not only chronicled the launch and landing, but also showed how the company paints a turtle on the capsule to commemorate each successful launch. He even tweeted a picture of a pair of new cowboy boots with the company’s motto printed on them. That motto is “Gradatim Ferociter,” loosely translated to “Step by Step, Ferociously,” which captures the ethos of the company to move methodically toward its goals. That’s also why it uses the symbol of a tortoise, which moved slowly but still crossed the finish line ahead of the hare.

• Apple's Push to Flood India With Used iPhones Ignites Backlash: Apple Inc.’s latest attempt to crack the Indian smartphone market -- by selling used phones -- is meeting a wall of resistance. The iPhone maker is seeking permission to become the first company allowed to import and sell used phones into the country, its second attempt in as many years. This time, the stakes are higher and a growing number of industry executives are fighting the move, warning government officials in private that it’ll open the floodgates to electronic waste, jeopardize local players, and make a farce of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make in India program to encourage local manufacturing. “Make in India could turn into Dump in India,” said Sudhir Hasija, chairman of Karbonn Mobiles, who said it sells about 1.7 million phones a month. Apple’s application in 2015 was rejected by the environment ministry without much fanfare. But things have changed since: India, as the world’s second largest mobile population, now represents a vast untapped opportunity for Apple just as China and the U.S. are slowing. Apple has publicly talked up its prospects in India and is on course to get the green light to open its first retail stores. Apple now has less than 2 percent of an Indian market in which four-fifths of phones cost less than $150. Branded smartphones are available for as little as $35 in India. Western multinationals from car-makers to soda vendors use “India only” prices and cut-rate “India edition” products to woo customers. Apple can’t employ those strategies without tarnishing its marquee phone’s premium aura.

Daily Tech Snippet: Thursday, March 31st

• With $340 million in revenue, Nest is underperforming, and its future at Google is at risk:  Nest generated about $340 million in sales last year, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. That’s an impressive figure for a company in the very nascent market of Internet-connected devices. Nest currently sells three products: The flagship smart thermostat; Protect, its smoke detector; and Nest Cam, the home-monitoring video predecessor to Dropcam. But it’s below the initial expectations Google had set for Nest when it bought the startup in 2014 for a whopping $3.2 billion. The company’s sales performance may face even deeper scrutiny inside Google’s new parent company, Alphabet, where Nest now sits, as the hardware maker faces its most critical year ever. Alphabet, whose execs have spoken regularly about controlling costs at the non-Google companies, may become less charitable. And in the meanwhile, Nest's CEO got slammed in a column in TechCrunch for the culture there: though the company currently manufactures three products — its thermostat, a smoke alarm, and its Nest cam (via its Dropcam acquisition) — it has repeatedly delayed product releases and disappointed its customers, particularly given the billing that Nest’s products receive. In one of the more visible cases of customer dissatisfaction, a New York Times reporter said in January that a software bug drained his Nest thermostat’s battery, a discovery he made only when his infant began crying from his chilly bedroom in the middle of the night. Nest’s smart smoke alarm has also been plagued by software glitches. In the meantime, says The Information, Google has moved forward on similar efforts, including its OnHub wireless router and a stealth project to create a competitor to Amazon’s Echo. That Google has done so without Nest’s involvement must be demoralizing to Nest’s current employees, who were presumably drawn to the challenge of helping Nest become one of the world’s great hardware companies. But there’s reason for even more concern going forward: Fadell has created a culture that’s increasingly unlikely to attract the world’s best engineers, which has always been the top priority for its parent company. (Google, in stark contrast, is consistently ranked as one of thebest places to work.) If Alphabet wants to maintain its feel-good reputation, it may be time to part ways with Fadell, or at least to demote him. He’s now had more than two years to prove himself. What Fadell has shown instead is that he’s unable to get out of his own way — or Nest’s.

• Car-Pooling Helps Uber Go the Extra Mile: One day not long ago, an Uber driver picked up a passenger in San Francisco’s gritty Tenderloin district. Let’s call our passenger Abby, because her real name has been lost to database anonymization, an effort to keep her identity private. Abby needed to go to Noe Valley, a 25-minute drive that might ordinarily have cost about $15. But she had chosen UberPool, the ride-hailing company’s 18-month-old car-pooling program. In the process she had unwittingly initiated one of the service’s more epic recent trips. Unlike a standard Uber ride, in which a single rider starts a one-time trip, UberPool works like a party line for cars. Travis Kalanick, Uber’s co-founder and chief executive, describes it as the future of his company — and thus the future of transportation in America. Call up the app, specify your destination, and in exchange for a significant discount, UberPool matches you with other riders going the same way. The service might create a ride just for you, but just as often, it puts you in a ride that began long ago — one that has spanned several drop-offs and pickups, a kind of instant bus line created from collective urban demand. In total, Uber collected about $48 for the ride, of which the driver kept $35. The company had collapsed five separate rides into a single trip, saving about six miles of travel and removing several cars from the road. For riders, the discounts amounted to savings of at least half of a standard Uber trip. For the driver, an hourlong trip with no idle time resulted in steady earnings (Uber drivers make money only when riders are in the car). And though Uber made less from the single ride than it would have from multiple rides, the company benefited by installing itself as a fixture in people’s lives. UberPool may push us to re-evaluate how we think about Uber and its impact on the world.

• People Are Spending Lots of Time, Not Money, on Their Phones: Shopping on mobile phones is growing at its fastest rate ever. But there’s still a huge gap between how much time shoppers spend on mobile websites and apps, and the percentage of total e-commerce sales that happen on these mobile sites. One big reason for this 44 percent gap: Entering in credit card and shipping details on a phone can be a pain, both on mobile websites and in apps. Services like Apple Pay and Android Pay have eliminated a lot of that work in partnering apps, by filling in those details automatically. And as Re/code reported, Apple Pay will be coming to mobile websites soon, too. If the gap between time spent and dollars spent on mobile sites is going to close, these services are going to be a big reason why.

• Elon Musk has a lot riding on his new Tesla: Tesla chief executive Elon Musk is poised to reveal his newest creation, the Model 3, at an event on Thursday. Starting at $35,000, the car represents Tesla's first electric vehicle aimed at price-conscious, mainstream consumers. And how it fares is going to have a major impact on Tesla's long-term future as a company — and the future of electric cars more broadly. That's why this unveiling is an incredibly important moment. Back in 2006, Musk laid out this vision in a blog post on Tesla's website: The strategy of Tesla is to enter at the high end of the market, where customers are prepared to pay a premium, and then drive down market as fast as possible to higher unit volume and lower prices with each successive model. In other words, this is the endgame. Although the company had focused first on high-end cars — the Tesla Roadster, the Model S, and the Model X — the ultimate goal was to bring the electric car to the masses. So for Tesla to have reached this point is going to be, naturally, a very big deal in the company's history. But that's not the only reason the Model 3 is significant. Tesla's new car is important in a very immediate sense because it offers Tesla a big chance at reversing some of the headwinds facing the company. You may recall that in October, Consumer Reports dinged the Model S for reliability problems, even though the same publication had otherwise issued aglowing review of the vehicle. Meanwhile, Tesla sales may have been affected by low oil prices that could be suppressing demand for electric vehicles, even as internal production issues hindered the company's supply. Not all of that is Tesla's fault, but it has prompted analysts to sour on Tesla's stock. Over the latter half of 2015, shares of Tesla fell roughly 15 percent from about $280 a share to $240. (It's now hovering at $230.) The Model 3 could be Tesla's opportunity to regain momentum.

• Amazon Assembly, Installation Services Bolster Big-Product Sales: Amazon.com Inc. wants to sell bigger things. To do so, the Web retailer has put together an army of workers who can handle everything from mounting flat TVs on walls to assembling treadmills. In the year since it rolled out Amazon Home Services, which also offers professional jobs such as painting, plumbing and yoga instruction, the online store has expanded the service to 30 cities from an initial four. Amazon now offers more than 1,200 services, the Seattle-based company said on Wednesday. It’s part of a push by Amazon to expand beyond products, and also a way to make it easier for consumers to buy big items that require an extra pair of hands to set up. Amazon has also increased its warehouse capacity for large items like furniture and flat-screen televisions. A new shipping hub in Kansas announced last week will be among about a dozen Amazon warehouses specifically designed for big products. Others are in Connecticut and California. Amazon now sells more than 1 million items that give shoppers the option of requesting assembly, installation or other related services, which is boosting the sale of home-improvement products, said Erika Takeuchi, a spokeswoman for Amazon. The most popular services requested are mounting flat-screen televisions to walls and assembling treadmills, she said. Amazon’s home services also include a wide range of offerings that don’t require purchases from the online store. Housecleaning is the third most popular job requested, according to Amazon. Other services include landscaping, gutter cleaning, pet grooming and yoga instruction. But most service requests are tied to a purchase.

• Foxconn unit Hon Hai's Quarterly Profit Slides as Smartphone Demand Wilts: Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.’s quarterly profit dropped for the first time in more than three years after the main assembler of Apple’s devices fell prey to slowing iPhone sales and intensifying competition in contract manufacturing. The largest member of billionaire Terry Gou’s Foxconn Technology Group reported a 7 percent slide in fourth-quarter net income to NT$52.9 billion ($1.6 billion), compared with the NT$59.1 billion average of analysts’ estimates. The fall in profit was Hon Hai’s first since the second quarter of 2012 on a comparable basis, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Hon Hai’s 2015 profit exceeded expectations but it’s grappling with a slowdown in smartphone demand. The Taiwanese company gets half its revenue from Apple, whichwarned in January of its first quarterly sales decline in over a decade as China decelerates. The iPhone maker has since launched a smaller and cheaper version of its marquee device, which investors are counting on to rejuvenate the business. Gou is seeking to broaden Foxconn’s remit, transforming the contract manufacturer into a company that also makes key electronics components and devices. Hon Hai and several other Foxconn affiliates on Wednesday announced a deal to take control of Sharp Corp. for about $3.5 billion, adding the Japanese supplier of displays for smartphones to Gou’s corporate empire. Researchers at IDC predicted in December that global smartphone growth will dip below 10 percent this year for the first time. 

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.