Jawbone + more news

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Jawbone

Jaw-bone-d: Wearables biz Jawbone shuts down | The Register – pretty sad end for Jawbone. Jawbone was the wearables company that pioneered noise cancelling Bluetooth headsets. I had the good fortune to go on a work trip to San Francisco. While there I picked up an early Jawbone headset. At the time it was a retail exclusive with AT&T Mobile and weren’t available outside of the US. With the rise of Apple’s AirPods, surely this should have been Jawbone’s time to own BlueTooth headsets if it had been able to keep going and innovating?

Business

Chat app Kakao raises $437M for its Korean ride-hailing service | TechCrunch

The Japanese Company Betting Billions to Prepare for the Singularity | Wired – I think that Softbank have overreached on the vision here

Cision IPO – Great guns for brand situational awareness | Forrester – but it needs to do a better job with its brand and PR people

Consumer behaviour

Hong Kong women spend over HK$4,000 on beauty products | Marketing Interactive – I guess it depends on how you define beauty products

Staring down internet trolls: My disturbing cat and mouse game – unremittingly grim

Economics

North Sea becomes burden on taxpayers | Business | The Times & The Sunday Times – this is down to lower oil prices and tax relief against investment (predominantly decommissioning platforms) which will accelerate over the coming years. This will squeeze the UK government hard in the face of Brexit

FMCG

发现新大陆 – amazing marketing for McDonalds’ spicy chicken wings

How (FMCG) markets grow | Kantar World Panel – interesting read

Gadgets

Nokia Branded Phones to Get Zeiss Branded Cameras | Fortune.com – Nokia’s handset business getting the gang back together

Nokia, Xiaomi sign patent sharing agreement | ZDNet – Nokia and Xiaomi will work together on optical communications solutions for data centers, IP Routing for the Nokia FP4 processor, and a data center fabric solution

Alibaba Challenges Google, Amazon With New Echo-Like Device – Bloomberg – Interesting that they are using the Tmall brand rather than TaoBao

Amazon Launches Customized Kindles With China Mobile | China Tech News – interesting deal with China Mobile. Jailbroken Kindles have been going around in China for years

Media

It’s the end of an era: Channel 18 cancels international format that served generations of L.A. immigrants – LA Times – a sad indictment of media economics

Chinese site Weibo to ban ‘bad talk’ about Chinese affairs – CNET – not clear if this is an addition move on top of the recent regulations to clean up the web

I Cannes | No Mercy No Malice | Scott Galloway | L2 – so much to read about here

The Awful Truth Behind the Glamorous Facade of the Chinese Live-Streaming Host – not that different to modern record label practices or the Hollywood (and Hong Kong) studio system of the past

Retailing

Instagram and Nike Want to Show Fashionistas How to Shop – Bloomberg – really soon after the deal with Amazon

Software

US army spin-off GPU database bags $50m Series A funding • The Register – interesting use of GPU technology

Technology

China Is About to Bury Elon Musk in Batteries – Bloomberg – what’s this going to do to the price of lithium?

Why the Future of Stuff Is Having More and Owning Less | Singularity Hub – but all the wealth will flow to the suppliers ie generation rent – its the first step on the way to serfdom

How AI Boosts Industry Profits and Innovation by Purdy & Daugherty – Accenture white paper looking into the machine learning crystal ball and what it means for businesses (PDF)

Azeem Azhar, entrepreneur | China will win AI race – China are also more focused on pragmatic usage of machine learning rather than flailing around like western startup eco-systems

Crypto Miners Hated by VR Players as Graphic Cards Sold Out in China | NEWS.8BTC.COM – which gives you an idea of how much crypto currency mining happens in China now

Apple is suspiciously interested in Fisker’s electric car – BGR – the Fisker Emotion appears to be a technical marvel, with a fast-charging system that enables the vehicle to charge up in just nine minutes. As we noted a few weeks back, the Emotion’s impressive battery system is based on supercapacitors using graphene as opposed to the more traditional lithium-ion batteries used in vehicles like the Tesla Model S

Telecoms

Bidders gear up for Li Ka-shing’s fixed-line network business | South China Morning Post – interesting no bid from China Telecom or any of the other Chinese SOEs. More telecom related posts here.