CarPlay
Apple, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo go on a Carplay iPhone roadtrip | The Inquirer – in-car integration of the iPhone via CarPlay showcased at Geneva roadshow. Cars now contain up to 60 separate computer systems and their own internal network. One would have to be careful introducing more complexity like CarPlay. I would be concerned that there is more to go wrong however and hope that CarPlay runs off a real time OS a la WindRiver or QNX. CarPlay allows automakers to delegate entertainment head unit and navigation to the driver’s phone
Business
Jaguar weighing Saudi factory | City AM – already has a factory in China and one due to open in Brazil. Interesting that Saudi has come up as a potential site
London is second priciest city for firms to locate staff | CityAM – Hong Kong cost 123,000 USD per year to locate staff according tothis survey
WPP PR Revenues Drop 1.7% In 2013 | Holmes Report – WPP positions itself primarily as a media investment management business (media buying) PR is less core to this offering. There would be a benefit in tighter integration with the media buying and advertising agencies which isn’t happening as much as it should outside Ogilvy
2013 Global Tech Exits Report – CB Insights – 2/3 OF TECH FIRMS DID NOT RAISE INSTITUTIONAL CAPITAL PRIOR TO EXIT – you then realise how the VC model has changed so dramatically with less businesses that they can take a bet on, further restricting the chances of picking winners
Report: Apple poaching engineers in Asia to speed product development and launch more devices | GigaOM – Apple is on a hiring spree, according to the Wall Street Journal. A report on Monday says the company is “hiring hundreds of new engineers and supply chain managers in China and Taiwan” in order to increase the speed of product development and “launch a wider range of devices.”
Economics
China’s 2014 outlook: CCTV economist | WantChinaTimes – A Chinese economist sees both risks and opportunities in the Chinese economy in 2014 and has predicted that the nation’s real estate market will see excess supply in 2017.
Finance
Alipay shuts down WeChat API payment gateway | WantChinaTimes
Gadget
Oppo Find 7 50 mega-pixel photo sample! | GizChina – With only 16 days to go until the official launch of the Oppo Find 7, a photo sample released by Oppo themselves tells us the new phone will have a 50 mega-pixel rear camera! – Nokia’s photo advantage has just evapourated, if Oppo can do it others will
Innovation
Navy’s Tiny 5-Pound Missile Packs a Big Punch | Danger Room | Wired.com – relies on commercial-off-the-shelf ( COTS) components such as cellphone camera technology
Sheet-like Rechargeable Battery Developed Using New Principle | Nikkei TechOn
Luxury
Luxury brands scale back in China |WARC – based on interesting analysis of store openings last year versus brand planned openings
Counterfeit luxury goods move further upmarket in China | WantChinaTimes – better fakes at serious money
Marketing
LukeW | Data Monday: What Percent of Page Views Share on Social Media? – thanks to Mat Morrison for the link
Native Advertising Is Becoming The Essential Social Ad Format | BusinessInsider – Mobile is where all social networking activity is going, and it’s why native advertising is becoming such a critical piece of social networks’ strategies.
Shell seeks audience interaction – Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch energy giant, is seeking to build up its established global brand with a renewed focus on digital and social media engagement, the company’s deputy head of marketing has said. – only a decade after Facebook launched…
China marketers lengthening agency relationships: R3 | CampaignAsia – CHINA – The nation’s marketers work with fewer agencies and stick with them for longer, finds an R3 study. Digital now 18% of marketing spend
Ellen Degeneres Samsung selfie breaks tweet record, but she uses iPhone backstage | Slate – I imagine the Samsung marketers aren’t happy
Media
TCL announces strategy to add services to products | WantChinaTimes – going for the Apple / Google / Xiaomi integrated digital services model
Online
Facebook taps WhatsApp’s appeal – Jana Mobile – whats interesting about this is the emphasis on responsiveness
Mt.Gov – hit by hackers or seized by US Government? | Dazed Digital – even if the US government didn’t seize them whilst digging into the Silk Road, no one would believe them anyway
Youku Launches Individual Channels. Chinese Video Sites Seek Diversity | TechCrunch – Youku-Tudou, one of the biggest online video streaming services in China, just launched Individual Channels. The platform has been open to user-generated videos and announced a revenue-sharing plan in June of last year.It will now offer Individual Channel owners tools to better show their videos, manage followers and analyse metrics
14 Charts to Profile China Internet in 2013 — China Internet Watch
Retailing
Does J. Crew Fit in Japan’s Fast-Fashion Empire? Bloomberg Businessweek – J. Crew’s estimated value of $5 billion may be a little rich
Security
Labour calls for BIG OVERHAUL of UK super-snoop powers in ‘new digital world’ – there doesn’t seem to be recognition by Labour of consumers right to privacy, instead we will end up with something like the former Eastern Bloc
Dear Google, am I pregnant? | Charlie Stoss – Here in the UK, we are a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights, which among other things includes an explicit right to privacy (considerably stronger than the implicit privacy rights acknowledged in the US, which are not enumerated directly by the US constitution) – a right mess
Software
Can Telegram Beat WhatsApp with a Public API? – it really depends who gets behind it, but why not? Telegram doesn’t have to beat it they just have to be on the phone
Nadella Shakes Up Microsoft (MSFT) | Business Insider – Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella has started reshaping the company’s senior executive ranks. Tony Bates going kind of makes sense, I am less sure about Mark Penn as chief strategy officer
Technology
Watson Head’s Departure Raises Questions About IBM Moonshot – WSJ – just read Bob Cringely’s articles on IBM over the past few years and this will start to make sense
WSJ Runs Excerpt From ‘Haunted Empire’ – hatchet job on Tim Cook and Apple
Apple to maintain phone profit lead through years of ‘enormous transition’ – report – Windows Phone the rising star? – not convinced by Windows rise, but the profit share vs. market share split makes sense in these numbers. I think that the other could be bigger as Chinese vendors look for Android alternatives due to Google’s heavy hand and non-cooperation
Web of no web
The Internet Of Things: The Real Money Is The Internet, Not The Things – the big money will derive from business services that pull data from those IoT networks
Wireless
China Mobile to launch integrated communications services | WantChinaTimes
Ericsson: China Ranked No.1 in New Mobile Subscriptions in Q3 2013 | China Internet Watch – According to the mobility report released by Ericsson, the global mobile subscriptions increased 110 million in the third quarter, reaching about 6.6 billion in Q3 2013. The subscription kept growing steadily, with the YoY growth of 7% and QoQ growth of 2%