Archive for March, 2016

Apple confirmed that it is in business negotiations to acquire British Imagination Technologies

Apple is the fifth largest shareholder of Imagination, holding 8.4% of its shares. It has been reporting that Apple might
consider acquiring Imagination since its another shareholder Intel sold out its shares last year.

Apple made announcement that it considered acquiring Imagination on Tuesday. In the meanwhile, it claimed that the company is
not going to make a bid for Imagination now.

Imagination locates in Hertfordshire, England. The graphics chip made by Imagination is applied by iPhone.

Ars Technica initally reported that Apple would acquire Imagination technologies. This news brought in 20% increase of its
share price. It forced Apple to verify this news to its investors. Apple’s deny led to a decline of Imagination share price.

Imagination’s current share price is below its peak price in 2012. Its chip was applied by several smartphone manufacturers
then. The public assumed its develop would be familiar with ARM’s.

The market value of current Imagination is £530 million, while it was valued at £2 billion in its boom period.

Due to the slow growth of smartphone, Imagination faces competitive pressure from its emerging rivals. This made its investors
feel restless.

Imagination CEO Hossein Yassaie was dismissed last month. Imagination claimed that it will sold Pure and cut 350 jobs around
the world.

The acquistion of Imagination would help Apple to enhance its impact in Uk. Besides its sales and marketing teams, Apple also
has a small size expert team works in London and Cambridge to study UI and AI.

Twitter welcomes its 10th anniversary. Is it possible to develop another 10 years? Scott Kessler said it is absolutely reasonable question think about, reports Firstcoastnews.

The current Twitter per share price is $16, which is only 25% of its peak price. It reflects the non-confidence for Twitter share of Wall Street. Twitter received fast revenue growth but it slows down a bit in comparison with the past. The analyst predicted that such situation will continue.

eMarketer decreased Twitter’s performance expectation this week. They assumed the advertising revenue for Twitter in 2016 will be $2.61 billion. It expected that Twitter would received $2.95 revenue last October.

The advertising competition among Twitter, Google and Facebook becomes intense. Sanford Bernstein claimed that the expense of stock-based compensation is more than its growth rate of sales volume.

The most advantages of Twitter that it obtained 300 million users, including stars, famous figures and politicians. Its users are fewer compares with other social medium. Its users only account for one fifth of Facebook’s and even worse compares with Instagram.

It is still a world-class social networking platform though it has fewer users. It makes great impact on some events, such as World Cup, US presidential election.

Dorsey leads the company by concerning the market development. With his return, Twitter’s develop seems to be more stable. He chaired meetings and appointed new senior officers since many executives left the company. It will be a hard challenge for Twitter to go further. Attractive products and wise leadership are also important.

Instagram is one of the subsidiaries of Facebook that is welcome by millions of youth. It was acquired by Facebook in October, 2012. It allows users to share images on this platform by taking snapshots wherever they like.

So far, Instragram is compatible with iOS, Windows Phone and Andriod devices. Its users grew rapidaly when Facebook acquired it.

Its business pattern is much alike its parent company Facebook as it lists the contents by time orders for algorithmic ones.

A blog post from the photo network confirmed that Instagram will allow the most popular images and videos to be posted on the top of its page.

Instagram claimed that it is necessary to make some changes as the survey showed that users missed 70% of their feeds on average.

The change is similar to the one that Twitter’s shift towards algorithmic timelines.

This service is against by users when Instagram announced the change. It might be the reason why this service is optional.

It seems that it takes time for Instagram users to accpet the changes. You might not be able to see those changes apply on Instagram immediately. Instagram is still testing and collecting the feedback before it makes next move for the global market.

The analysts have been analyzing will iPhone 5se contribute more sales for Apple. If it does, the sales for iPhone will rebound.

The 4-inch iPhone 5se is supposed to be released on March 21. So far, Apple doesn’t release its selling price yet. According to the prediction of KGI Securities analyst, it is supposed to be sold between $400 and $500. While its 4-inch iPhone 5s unlocked version is sold at $450 and iPhone 6 unlocked is sold at $649.

Jan Dawson, analyst of Jackdaw Research predicted that iPhone 5se will contribute to more sales of iPhone. But it depends on Apple’s product strategy. The cheaper iPhone will meet more market demands, especially in emerging market such as India. Tim Cook addressed that the company is interested in exploring more opportunities in India.

Based on the statisicts of Counterpoint Research, the smartphone users increased to 220 million by the end of 2015 which was 15% increase (YOY). India becomes the second largest smartphone market in the world. In Apple’s first quarterly report, the revenue of Indian market increased by 38%. Its iPhone shipment quantity increased by 76%. It shipped 74.8 million units of iPhone in the first quarter, increased by 0.2%.

Bascally, iPhone 5se is an upgrade of iPhone 5s. iPhone 5se is supposed to replace iPhone 5s. Apple iPhone product lines will be included iPhone se, iPhone 6&6 plus, iPhone 6s &6S plus.

Apple stock price has been fluctuating in recent months due to the decline of iPhone sales. More investors concerned that Apple’s market share is saturation. IDC reported that by the end of Q4 2015, its smartphone market share was 18.7%, while it was 19.7% in 2014.

iPhone 5se in built-in A9 and M9 chips that initially applied in iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. It may attract many Apple fans to experience this new device. We will see this device next week.

Because of many users exploit an advantage of SEO, PageRank which was released in 2000 has been criticizing.

According to the report of Search Engine Land, Google plans to close down the public access of PageRank in the near future. PageRank helps Google ranks each page sequentially based on the multi-factor weighting factor. It also led to the underground SEO business as many companies made advantage of this to broadcast the spam.

Google introduced the PageRank to Google Internet Explorer. Of course, it cloud also add many other features in it. The enterprises could learn more about how the network works.

PageRank is never introduced to Google Chrome. In 2009, it was abandoned by Google Search Console which was previously named Webmaster Tools.

In 2010, Google shut down the Google Open Directory website that showed the traffic of PageRank. In 2011, Google ends the Google Toolbar function for Firefox.

Google Toolbar becomes less important for Google Windows Internet Explorer. Its last upgrade dated back to 2013. Till now, Google plans to shut down the PageRank.

When Google blocks the public access for PageRank, it may realize the privatization of PageRank then. PageRank will be only available for internal work then.

Many SEO experts concern the development of Google. There areEigen Trust, TrustRank, SimRank and RankBrian introduced after the release of PageRank.

Business Insider which was established by Henry Blodget recently acquired another $ 5 million venture investment from Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon. RRE Ventures and Institutional Venture Partners also invested on Business Insiders.

Jeff Bezos has been a loyal investor of Business Insider. It is reported that this investment was made through Bezos Expeditions. Business Insider’s total venture capital reached $16.3 million. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz and Ken Lerer, the co-founder of Huffington Post are BI’s investors at its early stage.

Blodget said:” the leadership, foresight and management wisdom that Bezos made for Amazon inspired the startups and new enterpreneurs, including me. It is a great honor that he invested our company.”

Business Insider sets its headquarter in New York city and has 100 employees. Its revenue in 2015 was about $10 million, but the net deficiency reached $3 million. The expectation of BI revenue in 2016 will be $ 15 million. It still takes for a while for Business Insider to make profit.

Blodget suffered a tough time as he was accused of security fraud and was verdicted by the Securities and Exchange Commission that he should not engage in securities industry for the whole life.

Blodget turned himself into a new industry. He established Business Insider in 2007. The company develops rapidly and has 24 million monthly subscribers now. The reported contents involves in entertainment, techonology and finance. Its employees will upgrade the reports based on the subscribers’ need.

Bezos had invested $ 5 million on Business Insider in 2013. He even acquired the Washington Post at $250 million. He shows great interests in media industry.

PCWorld reported that Microsoft browsers madea new lowest record for user share last month. If its user sharekeeps declining, its leadership may be given place to Chrome in May.

Microsoft lost 2.1 % user share in the browsers market last month. It was the biggest monthly decline for 11 years. Net Applications showed that Mcrisoft gained 44.8% of user share last month, while it was 57.4% for the same period last year. It still held about 50% of user share in last December. If things don’t get better, its user share will decrease to 40%.

When Mcrosoft’s browser user share decrease to 40%, it would be the day for Chrome to lead the market.

According to the statistics, the user share of Chrome in February reached 36.6 %, increased by 1.5% in comparison with January’s. It gained 11.9% of user share from its rivals in the past year. Firefox obtained another 11.7% of user share , while Apple Safari got 4.9%.

The loss of browser user share of Microsoft has relations with its strategic failures. It forced the users to upgrade to the latest IE browser version which was unwelcome by users. Many of users even turned to use other browers during the upgrade. Since such policy released, IE browser lost about 23% of accumulative user share.

What’s more, IE 11 user share decreased by 2.3% last month. Most of them chose to use Chrome then. Jan 12 was the deadline of upgrading to its latest version for IE users, however, there are still one third users use the IE old version.

Windows 10 Edge browser only gained 0.9 % increase of user share last month. So for, its user share only accounts for 3.9% in the market.