Welcome to 2017,As you'd except there wasn't much news between Xmas and New Year -- I took a vacation
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| January 3 · Issue #26 · View online |
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Welcome to 2017, As you’d except there wasn’t much news between Xmas and New Year – I took a vacation too – so this is your festive period catch-up.
Small but perhaps obvious reminder for PR and comms people who made be reading, releasing your client’s news between Christmas and New Year is not a great idea since most people are busy taking a break. That might seem clear to most, but still my inbox was full of pitches for news that didn’t stand much of a chance of being reported. Onwards – Happy New Year! Jon
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Snapchat is hiring for hardware developers in China
Spectacles may be just the start of its ambitions.
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Foxconn is aiming to create fully robotic factories
“In the first phase, Foxconn aims to set up individual automated work stations for work that workers are unwilling to do or is dangerous,” said the general manager of its ‘Automation Technology Development Committee.’ The company has over 100,000 workers across its factories.
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Twitter's China head leaves the company
Less than a year in the job, but a large number of Asia execs have left as the business has been streamlined so not a huge surprise.
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Alibaba's on-demand services business Koubei close to raising $1.2B
Offline-to-online, the process of bringing offline merchants online via a single platform focused on locality, is huge in China and that’s what Koubei does. The deal would reportedly value it at $8 billion.
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WeChat has 768M daily users
That’s up 35% per year. Lots of interesting stats here, including that nearly ¼ of messages sent by “senior” users are voice.
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Meizu and Qualcomm agree patent licensing settlement
Another new customer Qualcomm has won in China this year. Others include Oppo, Vivo, Hisense, Yulong and Lenovo.
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Apple said to seek lower taxes to start manufacturing in India
The Indian government has pushed its Make In India program to regenerate industrial manufacturing, yet India is the planet’s most expensive place to buy Apple devices.
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Amazon India losses double, but so do revenues
Amazon India’s yearly losses are $527 million, revenue $335 million.
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Google's high-speed Wi-Fi program launches in 100th railway station in India
The company says its program is now “in reach of” 10 million people across the country.
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The best buzzwords from Japan in 2016 include a term for when you sign off to take a bath
New habits and old traditions combine…
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Samsung chief warns of slowing growth in key markets
2016 was a tough year for Samsung, with the Galaxy Note 7 recall thought to have cost the firm at least $6 billion.
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Yello O2O raises $21m from Q Capital Partners
The online-to-offline arm of Korea’s Yello Mobile is gearing up for an IPO and is apparently profitable. I’m always cautious of Yello, which many see as a pyramid scheme with its constant investments and acquisition. The parent company is said to be valued north of $4 billion, and Yello O2O is seemingly one of its prized assets.
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The best buzzwords from Japan in 2016 include a term for when you sign off to take a bath — Quartz
In Japanese homes, where bath time is sacred, bathtubs are short, but up-to-your-neck deep. Soaking in hot water is a sacrosanct evening ritual. For Japanese teens, however, time spent chatting with friends on social media—and specifically, the most popular messaging and gaming app, Line—is also sacred. The two pastimes cannot be combined. Not yet. Japanese…
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iPrice raises $4M for its e-commerce aggregator service in Southeast Asia
The 18-month-old company had previously raised just under $2 million from investors.
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The best buzzwords from Japan in 2016 include a term for when you sign off to take a bath — Quartz
In Japanese homes, where bath time is sacred, bathtubs are short, but up-to-your-neck deep. Soaking in hot water is a sacrosanct evening ritual. For Japanese teens, however, time spent chatting with friends on social media—and specifically, the most popular messaging and gaming app, Line—is also sacred. The two pastimes cannot be combined. Not yet. Japanese…
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The NYT unravels Apple’s complicated relationship with Foxconn, and focuses on its manufacturing plant in Zhengzhou, once a rural dustbowl but now the largest producer of iPhones worldwide (producing 50% of all devices) link
A look at why US companies are failing to find success in China link
Inside sources say Faraday Future is a bigger catastrophe than you can possibly imagine link
Google is using AI to bring the world’s rarest languages online link
Kik’s CEO argues that chat apps are the new web browser link
11 trends that will shape Southeast Asian eCommerce in 2017 link
Don’t agree with all the takeaways, but an interesting read: ’I launched 5 startups in 2016. Here’s why, how, and what I learned.’ link
And just for fun: this is where the highest-paid expats live link
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