Zegna licenses brand name to eyewear manufacturer to expand category – Zegna had previously made their eyewear products on their own. The Zegna deal is yet another indicator of how eyewear manfacture is becoming a global oligarchy in terms of market dynamics. This oligarchy has implications in terms of market power for luxury brands like Zegna and mid-market brands product licensing power
Business
Goldman Sachs thinks the best mergers create oligopolies – Quartz
Consumer behaviour
Sparrow-Face: A new Selfie Trend emerges — mobileYouth®
Intel’s Sharp-Eyed Social Scientist – NYTimes.com
Data point: TV viewers shopping, messaging, surfing and more on second screens – Americans own on average four digital devices, and two-thirds of households have a smartphone, per Nielsen.
Over 20% of bookings on China’s top flight and hotel site come from mobile | Techinasia
Finance
Airbus buys German bank for inhouse requirements – this is a really interesting move by Airbus. Being able to organise loans for suppliers (in a similar way to Apple uses much of its cash pile) and customers (a la Huawei’s route to dominance in carrier equipment via cheap Chinese state bank loans) could be decisive against Boeing. It also could be implying that capital is going to get expensive in the Eurozone sooner rather than later
Hong Kong
Forty years since its creation, how the ICAC cleaned up corruption in Hong Kong | South China Morning Post – something Europe could learn from, although in Ireland I think even the ICAC would throw its hands up in despair (paywall)
Innovation
So tell me again. Just what is it that makes Silicon valley so innovative? – makes you think about Tech City vision, the big challenge is that the numbers don’t look at quality of innovation – hard innovation versus soft innovation. Over the past two decades Silicon Valley has focused on soft innovation
End of Startup Era: Chips Face Innovation Gap | EE Times – lack of startup funding for hard innovation now coming home to roost in Silicon Valley. People like Judy Estrin have been warning that this would happen since the late 1990s
Luxury
Chinese gamblers love France, so this 92-year-old tycoon is building a Versailles casino | Quartz
Marketing
Marketing to Engineers – how video is redefining marketing – Smart Insights Digital Marketing Advice
Media
WeChat Unveils Details of its Self-serve Advertising System – WeChat began testing a self-service advertising system for subscription accounts last month. According to Guangdiantong (GDT), the self-advertising system for Tencent services that is supporting the WeChat one too, dozens of accounts joined the trial for ten days and the click-through rate is 3.5%.
With Porn Filters Going Oh So Well, UK Roars Ahead In Expanding Them To Include ‘Extremist’ Content | Techdirt – Great Britannic Firewall seeks to filter out unharmonius content learning best practice from China
Blogger Casts Doubt On Credibility Of Facebook Ad Sales – PSFK
What Does This Guy Know About Virality That No One Else Does? — Medium
Online
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Infinite scroll search-friendly recommendations – repagination
Here’s How Google’s New Search Results Will Look Under European Antitrust Settlement | Re/code
Retailing
Why Abercrombie Is Losing Its Shirt – NYMag
Software
Software Saps Samsung’s Might – The Information – Google going Microsoft on Android eco-system
Technology
Broadwell bombshell: Has Intel delayed 14nm deployments until Q4 2014? | ExtremeTech
China Tech Start-Up Scene Turning Heads Globally – SPIEGEL ONLINE – that whole line about China can’t innovate is bullshit. China chooses not to innovate when it can copy is more accurate in many sectors as its about opportunity cost
Qualcomm cancels Snapdragon 802 smart TV chip it announced 5 weeks ago | Ars Technica
Wireless
China’s smartphone sales weaken last quarter | SCMP – maturing mobile market and a reduction in economic growth likely slowing down smartphone adoption and lengthening upgrade cycles (paywall)