H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (7 September 2018) – Japan’s Nidec sees electric vehicles driving profits as it plans for future

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (7 September 2018) – Japan’s Nidec sees electric vehicles driving profits as it plans for future

Companies

• Japan’s Nidec sees electric vehicles driving profits as it plans for future (Reuters)
• Daifuku exhibits top logistical technology in Thailand (AN)
• Tencent Music will reportedly file for its US-based IPO on September 7. The company hopes to raise $2 billion at a valuation of up to $31 billion (Technode)
• Meituan wants to help restaurants manage better with $4.4bn IPO (Nikkei)
• Billionaire Founder Locked Up? JD.com’s Board Can’t Meet Without Its Mighty Boss; Corporate clause shows Liu Qiangdong’s tight control of his company; many tech firms have structures that give founders a viselike grip (WSJ); At JD.com, CEO Richard Liu has an iron grip and no clear successor (Reuters)
• Touch and fingerprint sensor supplier Elan Microelectronics hit record revenue for 2nd consecutive month (Digitimes)
• Realtek posts record August revenues (Digitimes)
• Himax teams up with MediaTek, Megvii for 3D sensing solutions (Digitimes)
• KakaoTalk users look forward to more improvements (Investor); Kakao Mobility taps Japanese taxi market (Investor)
• Nearmap Ltd wants $70 million to fund its international expansion plans (Yahoo)
• HDFC Bank’s fintech footprints; The private sector lender was one of the earliest to partner fintech firms for digital solutions (Forbes)

BATTSS – Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, TSMC, Softbank, Samsung

• Alipay opens unmanned apparel shop in Hong Kong; Ant Financial looks to promote mobile payments in city (Nikkei)
• Billionaire Jack Ma Prepares for Life After Alibaba (Bloomberg)
• Tencent signs partnership deal with coffee startup Luckin in challenge to Alibaba-Starbucks tie-up (SCMP)
• SoftBank Is Seeking Loans From Banks Pitching for Big IPO (Bloomberg)

FAANNMG – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, Netflix, Microsoft, Google

• Apple: A Media ‘Bundle’ Worth $37 Billion? (Barron’s)
• In Apple’s Third Act, the iPhone Plays Supporting Role; Wearables are today a relatively tiny business for Apple, but they could someday be the company’s biggest driver of revenue and customer retenti (WSJ)
• Facebook’s Shrinking Margins Top List of Woes Weighing on Stock (Bloomberg); 1 In 4 Facebook Users Delete Facebook App As Millennial Exodus Continues (ZH)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

• Didi admits RMB 4 billion net loss in the first half of 2018 (Technode)
• China’s 5G Bonanza May Leave Investors on Hold (Bloomberg)
• China’s bike sharing industry is ‘immature and unreasonable’, needs regulation, says state media commentary (SCMP)
• Roger Yuen is the CEO of Clozette, an online lifestyle and social network that has a collective reach of more than 450 million eyeballs, drawn to the content created by the platform’s 3,000 content creators. (BT)
• GIC still sees gems in tech sector despite stretched valuations; Fund has found firms with substantial technology capabilities that trade at ‘old economy’ valuations (BT)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

• Innovation to drive future semiconductor market growth, says Morris Chang (Digitimes)
• Mutual Fund Giants Make DevOps Startup PagerDuty a Unicorn (Bloomberg)
• Everybody Wants to Take a Bite Out of Big Tech (Bloomberg)
• Waymo, Uber Driverless Projects Make Scanning Sensors Cheaper (Bloomberg)
• Car-Sharing Boom Gets An Unlikely New Entrant (Bloomberg)
• As Tech Selloff Worsens, Options Traders Brace for More Bleeding (Bloomberg)
• MasterClass Has Celebrity Instructors and $136 Million. Will Students Show Up? Would you pay $90 for a video cooking lesson from Gordon Ramsay? (Bloomberg)
• Financial software maker SS&C to buy Intralinks in $1.5 billion deal (Reuters)
• Elastic, a search-focused software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Files To Go Public (CrunchBase)
• Insight Venture Partners buys content management platform Episerver for $1.1 billion (Techcrunch)
• Short seller Andrew Left sues Tesla and Elon Musk, claiming stock manipulation (CNBC)

Life

• Stop Wasting Time on the Unimportant: 7 Questions to Eliminate the Non-Essential and Focus on the Critical (Medium)