H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (7 March 2019) – AI can detect distracted drivers on the road

March 7, 2019 Leave a comment

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (7 March 2019) – AI can detect distracted drivers on the road

Companies

  • Food delivered to the doorstep is not so cheap in China anymore (TC)
  • Nintendo Adjusting Smartphone Games So Players Don’t Spend Too Much Money (SR)
  • Getac to scale up production for automotive components (Digitimes)
  • Machvision posts revenue growth in February (Digitimes)
  • IRESS partners with Beneficial Life for mortgage and protection sourcing (MI, FTA)

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

  • ByteDance starts commercialising its search business to challenge Baidu’s core revenue source (KRA)
  • Alibaba bears are losing billions on short bets (MW)
  • Can China’s superstar tech companies connect with US customers? WeChat and Alipay are growing fast but the trade war and a tech backlash may hold them back (FT)

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

  • Zuckerberg says Facebook’s future is going big on private chats (Reuters)
  • Apple makes over $3 every time someone subscribes to Netflix from an iPhone app (MW)
  • Waymo to start selling standalone LiDAR sensors (TC); Waymo Starts Selling Sensors to Lower Cost of Self-Driving Cars; The move puts Alphabet’s autonomous-vehicle unit into competition with Velodyne for the growing lidar business. (Bloomberg)
  • Google brings its Duplex AI restaurant booking assistant to 43 states (TC)
  • Alexa’s new Song ID feature can announce what music is playing next (TC)
  • Amazon will dominate the smart-home market next, according to this analyst (MW)
  • Netflix & Plex: A Story About Understanding Disruption in Business (LinkedIn)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Edtech firm Hujiang lays off unknown number of employees (Technode)
  • Sogou hints at going public in China, but offers no timetable (KRA)
  • Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng finds lessons in ping pong challenge for his upcoming battle with Tesla (SCMP)
  • Chinese Millennials Are Clicking Up a Storm Buying Asian Property Online (Bloomberg)
  • State-backed rivals muscle in on China tech start-ups; Introduction of fresh competition is part of efforts to curb ride-hailing and P2P sectors (FT)
  • The Largest Index in Asia Has a Unique Quality: Taking Stock (Bloomberg)
  • China Government Advisers Worry About AI Taking Over Jobs (Bloomberg)
  • Smartisan-backed Chinese messaging app that aimed to dethrone WeChat bites the bullet; While the app enjoyed a meteoric rise in its early days, Liaotianbao has struggled to keep users on its platform (SCMP)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

  • Fictiv raises $33M to be the ‘AWS of hardware manufacturing’ (TC)
  • Music services company Kobalt is raising a big round that could exceed $100 million (TC)
  • Clari platform aims to unify go-to-market operations data (TC)
  • Fitbit CEO James Park talks lessons learned from the company’s struggles; The exec discusses past pitfalls and the future of wearables (TC); Fitbit Stock Is Rising as It Announces Its Cheapest Smartwatch Yet (Barron’s)
  • Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Eighteen: Lyft’s IPO Prospectus Tells Investors That It Has No Idea How Ridesharing Could Ever Be Profitable (NC); Why Uber may buy its big rival in the Middle East (CNN); Uber’s Flash quickly loses lustre in Hong Kong (KRA); A Favorite Lyft Metric Is Messy; The company stresses revenue as a share of the total value of rides, but it has problems. (Bloomberg)
  • Dialog Semi eyes opportunities in connected health, gaming: CEO (Reuters); Dialog Semi, smaller after Apple deal, targets new growth areas (Reuters)
  • Mobile Ads Do More Work in One Second Than You Might Think; Industry standards for ‘ad viewability’ overshadow what happens in the blink of an eye (WSJ)
  • SurveyMonkey parent acquires Usabilla in bid to better compete against Qualtrics (MW)
  • Sell VMware Stock on Rising Risk From New Technology, Goldman Says (Barron’s)
  • How Many Streaming Subscribers Can Disney+ Get? More Than Netflix Has, Analyst Says (Barron’s)
  • More New Streaming Services Should Lift Roku, Analyst Writes (Barron’s)
  • Just Eat to ramp up expansion of delivery business to fend off rivals; Food marketplace under increasing pressure from competitors outside the US; Just Eat has come under mounting pressure from Uber Eats and Deliveroo (FT)
  • Beige Book Shocker: “Semiconductor Orders From China Plunged The Most Since The Collapse Of Lehman” (ZH)
  • Edge Intelligence Grabs the Spotlight at Embedded World (EET)
  • Why podcast fans will always reject a “Netflix for podcasts”; The golden age of podcasting may end behind a paywall. (FastCo)
  • AI can detect distracted drivers on the road (ZH)

Life

  • Pure Downside, No Silver Lining (MH)

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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