- Parrot is laying off a third of its drone division: Drone makers are having a tough time competing with China’s DJI. Parrot, the French drone maker, announced today it is planning to lay off one-third of its drone-related workforce — about 290 employees — after poor performance in its fourth quarter caused it to miss sales estimates by 15 percent. Specifically, Parrot said margins are so low in the consumer drone business that it wouldn’t be able to generate “profitable growth ... over the medium and long term.”
- Why Flipkart has turned to Kalyan Krishnamurthy: New CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy’s main objective will be to make the budding Flipkart turnaround last. On Monday, Flipkart said Krishnamurthy, who was parachuted to the company for a second spell only last June, will replace Binny Bansal as chief executive officer (CEO) of Flipkart, exactly one year after Binny had replaced Sachin. Binny will become Flipkart group CEO. Ananth Narayanan, CEO of Flipkart’s fashion units Myntra and Jabong, and Sameer Nigam, CEO of Flipkart’s payment unit PhonePe, will continue reporting to Binny. Krishnamurthy will now control all of Flipkart and report to Binny. Krishnamurthy’s elevation marks a major landmark for the start-up ecosystem: he has become the first so-called professional CEO at a large Indian start-up.
- Ten years after the iPhone, Apple is still looking for something to top it: As Apple celebrates 10 years since the introduction of the iPhone, investors and consumers alike are impatiently waiting for Apple’s next big hit. But it turns out topping the iPhone is no easy task. After all, Apple has sold a billion of the suckers and, in the process, redefined mobile computing and became the world’s most valuable company. The 2007 debut of the iPhone showed Apple at its best — entering a new category and completely changing the rules of the game. Apple did so with the iPod in 2001 and again a few years later with the iTunes Music Store. But, as revolutionary as those products were, Apple wasn’t alone in seeing those opportunities — it just had a far better answer than anyone else. When the iPod debuted, there were other MP3 players on the market, even others with a hard drive — they were just big and clunky. Similarly, others tried to sell music before and after iTunes, but Apple’s simplicity won the day. Even with the iPhone, plenty of people saw the collision of the phone, internet and iPod coming, but Apple was alone in its vision of how that combination should work. For its next act, though, it is highly likely the company will have to go further afield. Whether it’s a car or something in digital health or augmented reality, it is clear that Apple will have to acquire at least as many outside skills as those it already has.
- Move Over Mobile Phone: The Next Ad Frontier is the Windshield. The next frontier in digital advertising may be your car’s windshield. Automakers, technology companies and glass manufacturers are teaming up to turn the display that graces the front of an iPhone into the windshield of a car -- one that can show ads, directions and vehicle information to the person behind the wheel. The advent of connected cars is creating a new sales battleground, and using a vehicle’s windshield may be the next way to pitch more products and services to consumers. McKinsey & Co. estimates that mobile and data-driven services in autos will generate $1.5 trillion by 2030. At least part of that will be spent projecting information to drivers and passengers right before their eyes. “When you think of a person driving and what your needs are when you’re on a typical trip, it’s food, it’s fuel and it’s rest stops,” said John Butler, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst. “Owning the inside of the car is critical, it’s really where the money is made. The real value is locked up in the ad opportunity.” Here’s how a smart windshield may work. A driver that’s close to running out of gas would see an alert pop up that notes the fuel situation and offers to find a nearby gas station. The car’s virtual assistant will offer a choice, again on the windshield, of two options, including directions to a station where the driver is eligible for a free cup of coffee -- an ad placed by the gas company that fits with the driver’s buying patterns, also known by his smart car. Panasonic Corp. demonstrated technology at CES, the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas this week, that lets a driver order and pay for fast food through a heads-up display, before pulling off the freeway to collect it.
- The NBA is streaming a game live to Facebook for the first time — but only in India: The NBA will livestream a regular season basketball game directly to Facebook for the first time on Sunday, but there’s a catch: The game, a matchup between the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings, will only be available to Facebook users in India. The livestream is tied to an in-stadium promotion from the Sacramento Kings — Sunday at the arena is Bollywood Night. (Kings owner Vivek Ranadive also grew up in India.) Facebook users in India won’t need to pay to watch the game, and will see the local Kings and Warriors broadcasts that are usually available as part of the NBA’s International League Pass subscription, according to a league spokesperson. The stream won’t include commercials, so viewers will see the in-stadium entertainment during stoppages in play. It’s unknown if Facebook paid the NBA to stream the game. A League spokesperson declined to comment on financial terms of the deal, and Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The NBA already streams a lot of content on both Facebook and Twitter, but has never livestreamed an actual NBA game on those platforms. Those games are valuable, and broadcasters like Turner and ESPN pay billions of dollars for the rights to stream them weekly in the U.S.
- Saudi embrace of ride-hailing apps drives economic, social change: Saudi Arabia hopes its plan to bring a further 1.3 million women into the workforce by 2030 will be given a lift from ride-hailing apps Uber and Dubai-based rival Careem. The cars, which the government says should only be driven by Saudi men, offer women, who are banned from driving in the conservative Muslim country, an alternative to being driven to work by chauffeurs, male relatives or the shabby taxi system. Ride-hailing apps have come under intense scrutiny from governments and regulators across the globe as they disrupt traditional taxi businesses. But Saudi Arabia courted Uber and Careem, offering state investments, to support its Vision 2030 economic reform plan. With a budget squeezed by lower oil prices, the plan aims to draw workers away from government jobs by creating 450,000 private sector positions by 2020. Uber and Careem say they will create up to 200,000 jobs for Saudi men in the next two years. By offering women a way to get to work, it should also help meet the plan's goal of increasing the female workforce by five percentage points in the next five years to 28 percent. "This is the next best thing to women being able to drive, because you are in control of your time, no more wasteful waiting around,” said Marwa Afandi, a 36-year-old marketing executive. With the workforces of Uber and Careem easily expected to overtake the 65,000 nationals employed by state oil giant Saudi Aramco, the kingdom has invested in both companies. Saudi's sovereign wealth fund put $3.5 billion into Uber in June 2016 while state-controlled Saudi Telecom Co announced on Dec. 18 it bought 10 percent of Careem for $100 million.
- Fired Snap Employee Sues, Saying Company Inflated Growth Stats: Snap Inc. was sued by a former employee who says the company, parent of the Snapchat social media app, was inflating growth metrics ahead of a planned initial public offering. Anthony Pompliano, who was hired from Facebook Inc. in 2015 to focus on user growth and engagement, said he was fired after he refused to go along with the figures that made the company look better than it actually was, according to a complaint filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The court document redacts information about the disputed metrics. Snap says the lawsuit is without merit. The company has been planning an IPO for as soon as March that could value it around $25 billion, people familiar with the matter have said. Pompliano says he was recruited from Facebook based on the false metrics, and when he urged Snapchat to correct them, he was fired after only three weeks on the job, according to the complaint. He also believes he was hired so Snap would receive confidential information about Facebook, which he refused to give, he said. The incident has prevented him from finding employment elsewhere, he says.
- Mark Zuckerberg shares Facebook’s secrets with all his employees, and almost none of it leaks: Unlike tech companies such as Apple and Snapchat, which keep employees in the dark about projects and ambitions, Facebook routinely shares all kinds of secrets with all of its workers at Friday afternoon Q&A sessions that Zuckerberg has been running for a decade. What’s most surprising: Almost none of it leaks out. Sources say Zuckerberg uses these weekly meetings to tell his nearly 16,000 employees details of yet-to-be-released products, like news reader app Paper or Snapchat competitor Slingshot — and M, the AI assistant. He’ll open up about the company’s product strategy, like its push into live video. And Zuckerberg will also share his personal opinions on competitors like Snapchat and Twitter, and even Facebook’s board members. Almost nothing is off limits. And almost nothing leaks to the press, even though Facebook’s entire workforce — including its interns — have access to the meetings. “That level of transparency is alarming when you see it at first,” said one former employee. “But there’s something [special] about knowing you’re getting an unfettered response.” And that special feeling — that employees have access to information and an open, unscripted, says-whatever-he-thinks Zuckerberg — helps keep what happens at the weekly meetings inside the weekly meetings. Usually. "People come to work at Facebook because they want to work for Zuckerberg," said one former employee. “No one else has a Mark."
- Medium says it can’t make money selling ads so it’s laying off a third of its staff: Medium CEO Ev Williams says his company’s ad-based business model isn’t working, and the startup is laying off 50 employees and closing its offices in New York and Washington, D.C., as a result. That’s about one third of the company’s employees. In a blog post shared on Wednesday, Williams said he wants to move away from ad-supported content, which is how most stuff on the internet generates revenue. Williams described that business model, which is almost entirely dependent on clicks and views, as a “broken system.” “The vast majority of articles, videos, and other ‘content’ we all consume on a daily basis is paid for — directly or indirectly — by corporations who are funding it in order to advance their goals,” Williams wrote. “And it is measured, amplified, and rewarded based on its ability to do that. Period. As a result, we get … well, what we get. And it’s getting worse.” Medium simply grew too quickly, according to a person close to the company, and laying off 50 people is part of Medium’s plan to cut costs while it figures out what comes next. Medium has raised more than $130 million from a number of well-known investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Greylock and Spark Capital. Its most recent funding round, back in April, valued the company at more than $600 million.
- Apple pulls New York Times app from iTunes store in China: Apple, complying with what it said was a request from Chinese authorities, removed news apps created by The New York Times from its app store in China late last month. The move limits access to one of the few remaining channels for readers in mainland China to read The Times without resorting to special software. The government began blocking The Times’s websites in 2012, after a series of articles on the wealth amassed by the family of Wen Jiabao, who was then prime minister, but it had struggled in recent months to prevent readers from using the Chinese-language app. Apple removed both the English-language and Chinese-language apps from the app store in China on Dec. 23. Apps from other international publications, including The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, were still available in the app store.
- Tesla posts 9.4 percent fall in quarterly deliveries: Tesla Motors said on Tuesday fourth-quarter deliveries fell 9.4 percent due to short-term production hurdles from the transition to a new autopilot hardware. Deliveries fell to about 22,200 vehicles in the fourth quarter from 24,500 vehicles in the preceding quarter. Total deliveries for 2016 of 76,230 also fell short of the company's projection of 80,000 to 90,000. Shares of the company, led by entrepreneur Elon Musk, were down nearly 2 percent at $212.90 in extended trading.
- India Poised to Reject Apple’s Demand for Manufacturing Sops: India is not in favor of offering Apple Inc. concessions to start manufacturing iPhones in the country, a government official told reporters on Tuesday. The government is also unlikely to ease norms governing local sourcing for the manufacturer of iPads and iPhones as such a step can’t be granted to just one company, according to the New Delhi-based official, who didn’t want to be identified citing rules on speaking to the media.
- Two reasons the red Solo Cup is a marvel of modern engineering: The red Solo Cup is an elegant piece of technology. It's easy to forget when you find them strewn across the room, half-filled with leftover beer or crushed underfoot from parties the night before. But what many take for granted as simply a cheap, disposable beverage holder is the result of careful, beautiful engineering by people such as Robert Hulseman. While regular users may admire the Solo Cup's lightness and balance, particularly when filled to the brim with libation, some of the most underappreciated aspects of the cup can be traced to a simple design aimed at solving a rather sticky problem. Before the invention of the Solo Cup as we know it, it was often difficult to remove one disposable cup from a whole stack because of the way they sometimes clung together, and designs aimed at eliminating the issue resulted in production irregularities that drove up costs and increased the likelihood of cup breakage. For a thing whose whole job is to hold other things, this outcome simply would not do. Enter the plastic Solo Cup, which won a patent in 1976. Described as "an expendable thin walled cup for liquids and the like," the Solo Cup offered two key innovations that, according to the company, helped solve the sticking associated with large stacks of cups as well as the hard problem of cleanly removing the plastic cups from the production molds.One of the Solo Cup's distinguishing features, according to the patent, was the curved lip of each cup (see 10a in Fig.3). When several cups were stacked together, the lips would "engage" — to use the company's language — and rest upon each other, keeping one cup from sinking too tightly into the next. But, Solo Cup Co. observed, this helped create another problem. When cups like these were subjected to crushing forces from various angles, the bottoms could warp in ways that actually made it harder to separate the cups. So the bottoms had to be reinforced (see Fig. 4, Fig. 6 and 26-28 in Fig. 3). This is how the plastic Solo Cup gained indentations or divots in the base that made the bottoms more rigid and allowed for more air flow between each stacked cup, which allegedly had the side benefit of helping the cups come apart.
- Silicon Valley's obscure unicorns could boost 2017 IPO market: Social media firm Snap Inc may be the highest profile tech IPO planned for 2017, with the potential to raise billions. But more than a dozen expected stock offerings of relatively obscure software firms targeting business customers - little-known names such as Apttus, Tintri and Okta - could be just as important in thawing a long-frozen IPO market, according to investment bankers and advisers who work on IPOs.Such enterprise software companies generally sell their services through subscriptions that produce reliable revenue streams. They aim to sign contracts lasting several years, giving investors more predictable returns than many Internet or consumer-oriented companies that depend on advertising or high volumes of individual transactions. The firms provide a range of back-of-the-house services, such as automating business processes, security, accounting, training software and expense management. Although such companies have moderate valuations, between about $500 million and $4 billion, the sector accounts for most of the tech IPO market. Apttus, for example, helps salespeople give a price quote quickly when trying to close a complicated deal that includes different products.
- Apple to cut iPhone production in first quarter of 2017: report Apple Inc will trim production of iPhones by about 10 percent in the January-March quarter of 2017, the Nikkei financial daily reported on Thursday, citing calculations based on data from suppliers. The company had slashed output by 30 percent in January-March this year due to accumulated inventory, the paper said.
- Kayako’s CEO on building a bootstrapped business: Kayako isn’t a new company — the bootstrapped business has been around for 16 years — but it does have an interesting story. Kayako is a unified customer service platform, meaning that companies use their software to manage customer feedback and support across multiple platforms, including phone, email, Twitter and Facebook. With fewer than 100 employees (barely), Kayako has never taken outside funding. It has offices in three countries, is profitable and continues to grow. How, you may ask? Shoor saw a pain point and spent over a decade building a product to solve it. He found customers where he could and adapted to a market that moved online. By being flexible, he opened opportunities for himself and his company. There is no clear path to success and stories like his show that the strength of your idea and how you go about growing it are also key to a building a company that lasts. "You can literally go on to Twitter today and see customers complaining about how they keep having to repeat themselves. And that is a symptom of the problem, which is in the market right now. The reason they have to repeat themselves is all these organizations are using separate platforms for feedback and they don’t know what the problem is. The customer might have called before, they tweet, they may have emailed multiple times and they just don’t know. This is what Kayako solves. It brings all that information together in one stream of communication. "
