Baidu and Tencent Thought to be Vying to Acquire Mobile Antivirus Expert NetQin

Baidu and Tencent Thought to be Vying to Acquire Mobile Antivirus Expert

May 20, 2013

by Steven Millward

Antivirus products and services have been a renewed battleground in China in the past couple of years, enveloping several of the country’s top web businesses. According to rumors in the industry heard byTechinAsia, that battle is now taking the form of these companies vying to acquire NetQin (NYSE:NQ), a China-based expert in mobile antivirus apps. Both Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) and Tencent (HKG:0700) are thought to be in the running, but the market value of NetQin is proving to be a bone of contention. NetQin executives even addressed the rumors late last week in the earnings call after revealing their Q1 2013 financials. Directly alluding to the suitors, NetQin co-CEO Omar Sharif Khan said during the call: Read more of this post

Hazards of the Buzzy Startup: Yahoo’s $1.1 billion deal for Tumblr is a fairy-tale ending for the blogging site, which fetched a rich price despite its meager revenue. Many other highflying Web startups may not be as lucky

May 20, 2013, 8:00 p.m. ET

Hazards of the Buzzy Startup

Yahoo’s Purchase of Tumblr Puts Spotlight on Highfliers Like Pinterest, Quora With Little Revenue

By AMIR EFRATI, SPENCER E. ANTE and EVELYN M. RUSLI

Yahoo Inc.’s YHOO +0.23% $1.1 billion deal for Tumblr Inc. is a fairy-tale ending for the blogging site, which fetched a rich price despite its meager revenue. Many other highflying Web startups may not be as lucky.

Monday’s deal for New York-based Tumblr throws the spotlight on a cadre of other Web startups that have similar characteristics. Many of them raised money at sky-high valuations based on their huge user growth, before a spate of troubled Internet initial public offerings in 2011 and 2012 for social networkFacebook Inc., FB -1.87% daily-deals site Groupon Inc. GRPN +0.14% and online-gaming service Zynga Inc.ZNGA +0.59%

Since then, a damper has been put on the Internet market. And as these startups have burned through cash to sustain their user growth, they have been dealing with difficult questions about exactly how much value they command and whether to remain independent or sell themselves off. Read more of this post

INFOGRAPHIC: Inside The Massive Mobile Video Ecosystem

INFOGRAPHIC: Inside The Massive Mobile Video Ecosystem

Business Insider | May 20, 2013, 3:37 PM | 13,495 | 7

Mobile video has begun to accumulate scale, and has also turned out to be one of the few types of mobile content — along with games — that monetizes reliably and drives premium ad rates. That’s reflected in the much higher prices that mobile publishers can command for mobile video ads, compared to standard mobile formats like banners. eMarketer estimates mobile video will account for $520 million in ad spending in the U.S. this year, or 13% of the digital video ad market. In a new report, BI Intelligence breaks down the mobile video ecosystem, analyzing the behavior and devices behind the growth in consumption, and examining the demographics and behavior of mobile video consumers. We specifically detail how mobile video monetization is booming, and look at the new video ecosystem that is taking shape, with mobile devices — rather than television — at the center. Thanks in large part to this growing ecosystem, brands and agencies are becoming more familiar with mobile video ad formats and in putting together mobile video ad campaigns. Thanks to technology and better know-how among ad platforms, mobile video ad units are easier to deploy across the mobile landscape than they were in the past. As we detail in our report, tablet-specific ad units are beginning to proliferate, as are non-ad videos that brands push out on their own digital platforms. So are anecdotes about increased mobile video ad transaction volume: YuMe, a provider of brand video advertising services, saw its mobile video advertising revenue in France and the U.K. grow over 500 percent in 2012. Mobile video ad specialist AdColony also reported U.S. revenue growth above 500 percent in 2012.  Michael Bayle, senior vice president of ESPN Mobile, says he sees the automotive industry diving quickly into mobile video as a complement to TV spending. “We see automotive highly skewing in favor of mobile,” he told Business Insider. ESPN benefits because its audience is 85 percent men, and auto advertisers are often chasing male eyeballs.

Global Brands: Online retailer Amazon grabs top spot from bricks and mortar rival Wal-mart

May 20, 2013 11:59 pm

Global Brands: Online retailer grabs top spot from bricks and mortar rival

By Barney Jopson

Calling Amazon the “Walmart of the web”, a common moniker for the online giant, is one way to make people from Walmart bristle. The bricks-and-mortar behemoth tends to think that if any company is going to be the Walmart of the web, then it should be Walmart.

That is why, after several false starts, the 50-year-old retailer from Arkansas is in the throes of its latest – and most serious-looking – effort to build a substantial online business. The results will help shape the evolution of the Walmart brand for years to come (as will the progress of its international bricks-and-mortar business).

But the 2013 BrandZ Top 100 ranking shows that Amazon still has more momentum. For the first time since the ranking began, Amazon, founded in 1994, has leapfrogged Walmart to become the most valuable retailer in the rankings: a 34 per cent rise in its brand value to $45.7bn lifted it to position number 14 overall. Read more of this post

But Wait. Didn’t Yahoo Try a Deal Like This Before? Yahoo’s deal for Tumblr raises questions about its ability to make money by selling ads, among other thorny issues

MAY 20, 2013, 9:00 PM

But Wait. Didn’t Yahoo Try a Deal Like This Before?

By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

When Yahoo announced its headline-grabbing acquisition, it boasted that the deal gave it access to an “unduplicated” audience of users and that its target was a “popular personal publishing” platform.

“Yahoo will be able to integrate and distribute a powerful set of state-of-the-art editing tools and content published through personal home pages in an array of services,” the company declared.

But Yahoo wasn’t talking about Tumblr. Those quotes came from a news release Yahoo issued in 1999 when it acquired GeoCities, which allowed users to create their own Web pages — not unlike Tumblr — for $3.6 billion in stock. The site was closed in 2009. Read more of this post

All Yahoo’s spending can’t make it cool again; It’s time for the Web 1.0 icon to put down its credit card and get back to work

All Yahoo’s spending can’t make it cool again

May 20, 2013: 12:15 PM ET

It’s time for the Web 1.0 icon to put down its credit card and get back to work.

By Cyrus Sanati

FORTUNE — Yahoo’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr looks like an expensive and misguided attempt by chief executive Marissa Mayer to somehow make the Web 1.0 company “cool” again. Instead of innovating her way out of the mediocre corner of the Internet in which Yahoo currently resides, the former Google executive has instead decided to take the company’s debit card and go on a shopping spree, snapping up 10 companies in less than a year on the job. Tumblr is by far the most expensive bauble she has picked up so far and could prove a dud over the long term given its questionable content, much of which is “NSFA” — Not Safe For Advertisers.

When Mayer took the helm at Yahoo (YHOO) last year, investors were ecstatic. The company had been on a listless voyage over the previous decade as it struggled to move from awkward adolescence into adulthood. Ms. Mayer’s appointment gave investors hope that Yahoo could somehow be pulled back from the brink of technological irrelevance. She was seen as a bright star equipped with the magic Google (GOOG) touch that would, hopefully, help restore Yahoo’s rusty search engine as well as the hodgepodge of companies it acquired over the years. Read more of this post

Viewers Start to Embrace Television on Demand

May 20, 2013

Viewers Start to Embrace Television on Demand

By BRIAN STELTER and AMY CHOZICK

While companies weigh bids for Hulu and industry heavyweights complain that TV Everywhere isn’t going much of anywhere, another way to watch time-shifted television is quietly gaining traction: video-on-demand, or VOD.

Glittery, those three letters are not. VOD rarely gets media attention, partly because of past missteps by cable and satellite providers.

But more and more TV episodes and movies are becoming available through the on-demand systems that cable subscribers can tune in with their set-top boxes. Some shows, like Fox’s “The Following” and ABC’s “Scandal,” now gain hundreds of thousands of viewers every week because of VOD, part of a decades-long shift from television on a linear schedule to television on viewers’ own terms.

“On-demand isn’t always the shiniest new technology. But we are seeing tremendous growth,” said Matthew Strauss, who oversees digital strategy for Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company. Read more of this post

Samsung swipes 95% of total industry profits earned from Android phones

HOW MUCH? SAMSUNG SWIPES 95 PERCENT OF TOTAL INDUSTRY PROFITS EARNED FROM ANDROID PHONES

By Andy Boxall — May 16, 2013

Google revealed its own fair share of big numbers associated with Android during its Google I/O keynote presentation, saying as of 2013, there have been 900 million activations of the mobile OS, making it the world’s most popular operating system. That must mean there are a lot of companies out there getting rich and fat from selling Android hardware, right?

Well, yes, but if the latest research from Strategy Analytics is accurate, it’s only one company doing so, despite Android being licensed by dozens of firms. As you have probably guessed, the one making the most profit from Android is market leader Samsung, but the actual figure may come as a surprise, as it’s said to have taken almost 95 percent of the global profits earned from the mobile OS during the first quarter of 2013. Read more of this post

Amazon wins key cloud security clearance from US Govt

Published: Tuesday May 21, 2013 MYT 1:55:00 PM

Amazon wins key cloud security clearance from US Govt

SAN FRANCISCO: Amazon.com Inc has been given a security clearance by the U.S. government that will make it easier for federal agencies to use its cloud computing services.

Amazon Web Services, known as AWS, was certified to operate as a cloud service provider for three years under the government’s new FedRAMP program. The accreditation covers all AWS data centers in the United States, the company said on Tuesday.

“This will cut the cost and time for agencies to deploy our systems,” saidTeresa Carlson, vice president of Worldwide Public Sector at AWS. “It cuts costs for AWS too.”

Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, has moved aggressively into the business of renting remote computing, storage and other IT services in recent years through AWS. The business has been a hit with startups, but the company is now going after big corporations and government agencies, a much larger opportunity. However, these organizations are more demanding, especially on issues like security and regulatory compliance. Read more of this post

NYC Startup Scene Boosted by 50-Fold Return on Tumblr Deal: Tech

NYC Startup Scene Boosted by 50-Fold Return on Tumblr Deal: Tech

Tumblr Inc.’s $1.1 billion purchase by Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) marks the biggest deal for a venture-backed New York startup, bringing a windfall for East Coast investors Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital while laying a foundation for further investing in the region’s entrepreneurs.

Union Square, founded in New York in 2003, and Boston-based Spark, which opened two years later, first led an investment of $775,000 in Tumblr in 2007, and then $4.5 million the following year. The firms owned a combined 47 percent of the company, giving them about a 50-fold return, according to PrivCo, which tracks private companies and venture capital.

While about 40 percent of venture funding happens in Silicon Valley, twice the amount in New York and New England combined, Union Square and Spark have spent about a decade investing in a revival of the East Coast technology industry. Though not all of the joint bets have panned out, their success proves there’s still growth in New York’s startup scene. Read more of this post

How cognitive science and user empathy powered Google’s design breakthrough

How cognitive science and user empathy powered Google’s design breakthrough

By Devindra Hardawar | VentureBeat.com, Published: May 20

Google has gone from a company that approached design through cold, hard data to one that’s employing gorgeous, user-centric interfaces.

Design was a big theme at this year’s Google I/O developer conference, with over a dozen sessions exploring design in some fashion. And you can see Google’s new aesthetic focus in plenty of its products — like Gmail’s slight redesign and the upcoming Google Maps refresh — but Android serves as the fastest example of Google’s design turnaround.

Perhaps it’s because design matters all the more on a small smartphone screen. With Android, Google also had to do something about Apple’s head start with iOS. To get Android to look as good at the iPhone, Google had to radically reshape how it thought of design, and fast. Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich,” released in 2011, was Google’s first attempt to emphasize design in its mobile OS. Its aesthetic has only become more refined since then. Read more of this post

GrubHub to Merge With Seamless as Food Orders Go Mobile

GrubHub to Merge With Seamless as Food Orders Go Mobile

GrubHub Inc. and Seamless North America LLC, two of the top food-delivery websites in the U.S., have agreed to combine their companies to take on rivals in the growing market for online meal orders.

GrubHub Chief Executive Officer Matt Maloney will become CEO of the merged group, and Seamless CEO Jonathan Zabusky will serve as president, the two said in an interview. Neither company is paying to acquire the other, Maloney said, declining to share financial details of the agreement. The deal now awaits the approval of U.S. regulators, he said.

Food-delivery sites and mobile applications are gaining in popularity as more people order their meals online, instead of calling or picking up orders at restaurants. That’s also driving consolidation, as startups join forces to head off competition from review sites such as Yelp Inc. (YELP) The merger will help the combined company accelerate the addition of users and restaurants, said Maloney, who co-founded GrubHub in 2004. Read more of this post

China: E-commerce trumps retail; consumers in China’s lower tier cities actually spend as much online as higher tier cities even though their consumers have far less disposable income

China: E-commerce trumps retail

May 20, 2013: 11:12 AM ET

High-tech meets low-tech (bike messengers!) as new Chinese consumers embrace online shopping.

By Scott Cendrowski

FORTUNE — Just as cash-strapped consumers in the developing world bypassed so-called landline phones in favor of mobile devices, so China’s lower-income consumers are skipping physical stores in favor of e-commerce sites.

A recent report by McKinsey & Co. shows that e-commerce sales in China reached an estimated $190 billion last year, almost equaling the U.S. market as largest in the world. China’s online retail industry is expected to grow to at least $420 billion by 2020—which would total more than the U.S., Japanese, U.K., German, and French markets combined. China will overtake the U.S. for the top spot next year, if it hasn’t already. Read more of this post