Fitness apps
Adidas, Asics, Under Armour Spend $1 Billion on Fitness Apps | Business of Fashion – interesting how sports apparel brands are making the front running in fitness apps. Fitness apps look like one of the key use cases for wearables and I expect technology firms to try and muscle in. Fitness apps would fit in with Google and Facebook’s broader health ambitions, advertising ambitions and subscription offerings.
China
HOW TO: Shenzhen Spring Festival/Chinese New Year | Dangerous Prototypes – great write-up that nails how Shenzhen feels over Chinese new year. One thing that people forget is that Shenzhen is a town of immigrants from other parts of China. That becomes apparent during the Chinese new year in Shenzhen. More on China here.
Consumer behaviour
Coming of Age: Millennials – Pornhub Insights – more about millennials than you probably ever want to know – more about millennials than you probably ever want to know
Ethics
Daring Fireball: Was Pew’s Polling Question on the Apple FBI Debate Misleading? – yes. The debate is based on emotive logical fallacy. More security related posts here.
Finance
Samsung Pay to enter China tomorrow, is probably screwed | Techinasia – yep, headline about sums it up
WeChat had more mobile transactions over just Chinese New Year than PayPal had during 2015 | The Drum – a lot of this is down to the relative attractiveness of electronic payments. The largest denomination Chinese bank note is worth about £9. So Chinese money is more inconvenient hard currency in other countries. In the west credit and debit cards are well established by comparison to their Chinese counterparts.
Marketing
Facebook for Business Influencers – Edelman
Media
Yahoo Has a Surprise New Suitor | Vanity Fair – quite why Time Inc would want to buy Yahoo! after parting with Aol is beyond me given that the businesses were similar in many respects (email, messaging, vertical news content, international presence)
Retailing
Powa Technologies: from UK tech darling to administration – FT.com – TechCity is more fragile than many people care to admit
Security
Daring Fireball: New York Times Publishes Report on iPhone Security and China – irony of Dept of Justice and State Department being at cross purposes is an interesting dynamic
Singapore
Helpers of Singapore – interesting tumblr account, surprised that is such long form content. Well worth checking out
Software
Microsoft to phase out Skype Qik video chat app as of March 24 | ZDNet – I didn’t know Qik was still maintained by Microsoft
Web of no web
Facebook creates ‘social virtual reality’ team – FT.com – all your cyberspace dreams coming true?
Samsung, LG improve smartphone cameras, turn to virtual reality – Shanghai Daily – there is a definite lull in innovation