H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (14 December 2018) – Tencent CEO Pony Ma tells staff that ‘responsibility’ was the main lesson learned from a tough year

December 14, 2018 Leave a comment

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (14 December 2018) – Tencent CEO Pony Ma tells staff that ‘responsibility’ was the main lesson learned from a tough year

Companies

  • How Line is giving its online communities offline experiences (TIA)
  • Japan Display Inc., a struggling supplier of screens for Apple Inc.’s iPhone, needs another cash cow amid sputtering smartphone demand. The company thinks it’s found the answer in sensors. (Bloomberg)
  • Chinese gaming giant NetEase sells comics business to rival Bilibili, retains rights to Marvel series (SCMP)
  • Meet the coder-turned entrepreneur who introduced Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja to China (SCMP)
  • Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi restructures to put more focus on its home market (SCMP)
  • Tencent Music Is Better Than Spotify At Making Money, But Growth Uncertainties Still Loom (Forbes)
  • Pinduoduo launches program to support Chinese OEMs (Technode)

BATTS – Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, TSMC, Samsung

  • Tencent’s Roster of IPOs Doesn’t Live Up to the Hype (WSJ)
  • Tencent CEO Pony Ma tells staff that ‘responsibility’ was the main lesson learned from a tough year (SCMP)
  • Alibaba brings face-scan payments to tablet for shopkeepers; New checkout technology lets customers keep phones in pockets (Nikkei)

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

  • How PayPal, Facebook Could Create a ‘Match Made in Heaven’ (Barron’s)
  • YouTube, under pressure for problem content, takes down 58 million videos in quarter (Reuters)
  • Google launches AI health service in Thailand to screen for diabetic eye disease that causes blindness (SCMP)
  • Google’s Cloud Unit Won’t Sell a Type of Facial Recognition Tech (Bloomberg)
  • On stock prices and Nvidia (Techcrunch)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Leadership crisis is latest woe for Bullet Messenger operator Smartisan (Technode)
  • As the home front cools, Chinese tech looks to Asia (Technode)
  • LemonBox, which brings US vitamins to Chinese consumers, raises $2M (Techcrunch)
  • Home robotics maker Trifo joins wave of Chinese Silicon Valley start-ups returning home to fulfil AI dreams (SCMP)
  • Huawei Is Planning a $2 Billion Cybersecurity Reboot (Bloomberg)
  • Grab lands $150M for Yamaha Motor to double down on motorbike on-demand services (Techcrunch)
  • The motley YouTube stars; India’s new YouTube celebrities are going well beyond urban audiences, with varied languages and content (Forbes)
  • ‘We’re less than 1% done’: $1b startup Canva has designs on China (Age)
  • James Packer-backed shopping app Booodl goes into liquidation (Age)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Adobe’s quarterly revenue surges 23 percent (Reuters)
  • Paypal is thriving by defying conventional wisdom; The company’s “refounder” boss saved it from conflict and possible irrelevance (Economist)
  • German online listings company Scout24 explores €5bn sale; US buyout group Silver Lake expected to be among bidders (FT)
  • Postmates Introduces a Robot to Roam Sidewalks Delivering Food; Little rover named Serve aims to lower costs, speed service (Bloomberg)
  • Investors Are Obsessed With Handmade Crafts Right Now (Bloomberg)
  • The cofounder of Casper wants to make home renovations less hellish (FastCo)
  • GE Forms New Software Company in Overhaul of Digital Strategy (Bloomberg)
  • Instacart Will Stop Delivering Groceries From Amazon’s Whole Foods (Bloomberg)
  • The Making of a Computer-Generated Influencer; ‘Lil Miquela’ tests power of fabricated social-media celebrity, and investor interest in fake characters (WSJ)

Life

  • Hong Kong Firm Fined $3M for Accounting Fraud; The SEC says Agria Corp. hid from investors a $17.5 million loss from the sale of its primary operating entity in China. Agria overstated the value of the shares it received from Xue by $17 million and assigned a value of nearly $60 million to the “effectively worthless” land rights (CFO)

Filed under Innovation

About bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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