Tesla Focuses On One Feature For Success

Tesla is interested in manufacturing its electric cars in China to meet the demand for Model 3

Tesla Motors is setting up its new plant to meet the huge demand for the Model 3, President of global sales of the company Jon McNeil stated while being interviewed by CCTV News. The American EV maker has a plant in California that can manufacture 600,000 automobiles annually, Jon spoke during the interview. The automaker is ready to establish another facility specifically to make sure that it gets ready to sell Model 3 as per schedule.

That factory "could very well be in China," he added. Elon Musk’s organization has almost 400,000 pre-orders for Tesla Model 3, according to April 21 Reuters article. There have been concerns that the EV maker cannot meet that huge demand, particularly considering the Model X SUV, Model S and Roadster all came later for different reasons.

Even CEO Elon Musk waivers a little on whether the mass-market car will meet its target manufacturing date of the late 2017. Jon stated while giving an interview that getting Model 3 ready on time is a major priority for the company and that setting up another facility will help meet its target manufacturing date.

The automaker believes that the higher level of pollution can help it succeed in the region as if one breathes in Beijing, he/she will understand why the electric carmaker is too much excited regarding "bioweapon defense mode."

Provided the well-documented problems in China with air quality, the company is expecting the cabin-filtering feature of the car will be a huge selling point as it grows sales of its electric vehicles here.

Initially, CEO Elon Musk launched the user-friendly feature in Tesla Model X SUV in September, 2015 and it has been speculated that it could be later launched in upcoming versions of the Model S vehicle. The company has not kept its ambitious for China. Following the conversation by McNeil, spokesperson of Tesla, said “600,000 per year” was an error and that “there has been no change” to the planned capacity of the factory.

Tesla will probably attain the whole capacity of the facility in 2 years or around the end of the decade into the beginning of the manufacturing of Model 3. Its factory in Fremont, California is amongst the largest buildings on the globe that has occupied 5.3 million square feet of office and production space.

The company has also continued to attain more space in California to add to its production capacity in the US. It also runs a tool and dyes plant in the state of Michigan and a Tilburg-based final assembly facility. Recent reports indicate that officials of Tesla visited areas in Suzhou and spoke to possible production partners.

Initially this year, Musk confirmed that his company aims to secure a domestic partner and location to set up a production facility in the region in the upcoming months. An announcement will probably take place soon. 

Amazon Vows To Supply Food To San Francisco Residents Within An Hour

Amazon has rolled out its food delivery service in San Francisco to provide orders within an hour to residents

In a region already comically populated with well-financed startups pledging to offer your upcoming meal, today isn’t a happy day: Amazon recently announced its improving its 1-hour Prime Now food delivery service in San Francisco. That is right: the residents of San Francisco who avail unlimited 2-day video streaming and shipping for a price of $99 on an annual basis can currently also buy food from 117 domestic restaurants sold in around an hour.

Offered in 33 zip codes around San Francisco, the facility is the largest rollout of an extensive range of everyday goods, Apart from the Prime subscription charge, food delivery service is offered with no extra fees or markup. The company is also guaranteeing that persons will be charged the exact same price as is mentioned in the menus of the restaurant.

The “price guarantee” is being offered to help the organization capture the market as it enters the crowded industry. The website of Amazon has revealed that the price guarantee will be offered until late next year.

If one finds a good that is offered at a price higher than one mentioned on an online menu inside a day of ordering, the online retailer states it will re-fund the price charge for that order. Initially, rolling out food delivery service in S.F, where the sector is currently crowded with competitors might look daunting. There is Munchery, Sprig, Postmates and Caviar.

Even the company started to enter the food delivery industry; it might have a unique position to win. If its own food delivery facility works like Amazon Prime Now for the rest of goods, the web retailer already has an efficient engine that looks difficult to top.

The Seattle based organization has built its success on logistics; it can just seemingly flip the switch to offer any new product through its delivery infrastructure. In Seattle, the online trading platform operator launched Prime Now restaurant delivery service in Sept 2015.

Today it is live in eight cities around the state, including Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland. While the online trading platform operator has not guaranteed that its new service will always be offered free of charge, currently it is yet another incentive that could make consumers members of Prime.

At the end, getting many people connected on Prime is just what the ecommerce organization wants. The launch in S.F puts the company in direct and immediate rivalry with many established companies, such as UberEats, Seamless and GrubHub, in a market where the consumer base is quite technology savvy and interested in trying new things. 

Facebook Tries To Increase Sharing On Social Network Platform

The company is developing its new standalone camera app which resembles Snapchat

Facebook is building a standalone camera application to persuade its 1.6 billion users to share and create more videos and photos. A prototype of the application built by the “friend-sharing” team of the American social network company opens to a camera, like a disappearing picture application, Snapchat.

Another planned feature allows a user-recording video with the help of an application to start live streaming. The venture might not be fruitful initially, but it reflects that the company is anxious about the highly passive behavior of users on its social platform. Many users check Facebook on a daily basis or even many times daily, but fewer post status updates, videos and photos regarding their lives.

Reversing the pattern is a rising priority within the organization. Spokesperson of the company refused to share views regarding product plans. The spokesperson stated the overall degree of sharing on the network was strong and “similar to levels in prior years.” The people aware of the matter stated the camera-first format is intending to motivate users to create videos and photos.

Compared to that, the flagship mobile application of the networking organization is opened to a personalized feed of advertisements, status updates and articles that persuades users to consume content, but not essentially develop it. The standard also differs from the Instagram-picture sharing platform of Facebook, which has built an image as a network to only post the most well-photographed and best pictures.

Instagram compels users to take many steps before posting an image, including filters. The social network operator has previously also developed an application to encourage sharing. In June 2 years ago, it introduced a Snapchat-like application Slingshot that allows users to trade videos and photos after one day. It previously introduced a picture-editing and sharing application known as Camera. None of them was able to lure users so both of them were later dropped.

The new application would be equipped with different features like the “live streaming mode.” The decline in sharing on the platform has increased as a difficulty in the past year. According to The Information, “original broadcast sharing” on Facebook decreased by 21% as of the first 6 months of the last year, compared with the past year.

In the initial quarter of this year, one third of Facebook users surveyed by market research organization ‘GlobalWebIndex’ said they updated their status in the past month while 37% said they shared or posted their own pictures. A year ago, 44% stated they made a status update in the past month and 46% claimed they shared or posted their pictures. 

IBM tries to rule the cognitive computing worldIBM tries to rule the cognitive computing world

IBM Deep Blue defeated world chess champion to prove that it is competent enough to rule the cognitive computation world

The California research laboratory of International Business Machines Corporation, located near San Jose, after spending many years as a hardware- centric organization selling mainframes, servers as well as personal computers, the tech corporation has progressed dramatically in the field of cognitive computation.

Deep within the application we use, the medication we take, the food we consume as well as the medical diagnosis done by us, one can find traces of the corporation. Like its Calif research lab, there aren’t obvious signs it is there. Look cautiously though, and the work of the organization- especially from its laboratory- is everywhere.

The cognitive computation business of the Corporation –including analytics, algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence – contributed to 35% of IBM’s 81 billion is sales revenue in 2015. It is the rapidlygrowing niche at the New York-based organization, where total sales are decreasing.

The work at Calif played a significant part in this. Hundreds of researchers work at the facility establishing algorithms, artificial intelligence and chips to support more powerful and faster self-learning technologies. It doesn’t feel less like the rest of Silicon Valley technology companies, where ping-pong tables and hover boards are popular sights, and more similar to college- campuses, which don’t have students.

The hallways are clean and quiet. The tenured professors, in the present case, the company’s engineers and scientists do coding in their unnoticeable offices.

The Corporation is already a main player in mainframes and servers - its technology is powering the airline reservation and banking systems. It also has people making efforts in sectors like cloud and cyber safety.

However, to comprehend why it views cognitive computation as its future, it takes one to 2011, when artificial intelligence of the organization, Watson, defeated humans in the game show “Jeopardy."

Winning "Jeopardy" is not anything like winning at chess. An initial IBM  artificial intelligence, Deep Blue, defeated the world chess champ 21 years ago by computation of every potential measure and exercising the best option. But for the AI system to even play "Jeopardy",  it needed to understand riddles, learn natural language as well as answer questions in clear sentences. Things human beings do.

The organization had continued to research AI since the 1970s, but the victory of Watson was a huge breakthrough. If the organization could teach Watson anything it required to know to win over a difficult game show, what else could it learn?

Shortly after the "Jeopardy" matches, researchers of IBM, including those working in its Calif lab, taught AI system to peruse medical journal abstracts and patent databases.

In drug research, every given molecule can have at most 100 synonyms-- generic names, various chemical strings and brand names.

Fiat CEO Believes Tesla Model 3 Would Lose

Fiat CEO Sergion Marchionne holds the belief that Tesla would fail to earn a profit from the sale of Model 3

CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Sergio Marchionne has seriously doubted whether Tesla Motors can earn a profit by delivering its new out Model 3 for a price of $35,000. That vehicle, which has 400,000 reservations since launched in March, is the American electric carmaker’s effort beyond its roots in luxury cars.

While Tesla Model 3 might be a large seller, Sergio is not convinced that it will turn into a source of income for CEO Elon Musk after it begins delivering in the next year. “If (Elon) can show me that the car will be profitable at that price, I will copy the formula, add the Italian design flair and get it to the market within a year,” Sergio spoke to a reporter of Automotive News Europe on the sidelines on the annual meeting of Fiat in Amsterdam on April 15, 2016.  

His views, while snarky, foresee what might happen if the push by the organization gains profit and momentum. Big organizations, such as FCA, will wish to imitate that success weakening the EV maker in that process.

The executive of FCA is known for his controversial comments regarding electric automobiles. He used to plead customers not to purchase his Fiat 500e, which is the electric version of its 500 minicar, due to the loss he was making off it. He recognizes the needs for vehicles with zero-emissions in a general manner, but he has continued to be publicly skeptical regarding any business case for EVs.

When Sergio was asked that if he believes that his company is late, he replied, “better late than sorry.” The EV maker clarified that it intends to attain the $35,000 base price of Model 3 by attaining economies of scale in its automobile manufacturing procedure, but also by cutting down its battery cost by 30% with its Gigafactory.

Batteries represent a crucial part of the cost of an EV. While many people would agree that the carmaker could probably sell a new automobile in a year, I am not sure most would agree that the Italian automaker could establish a huge battery manufacturing facility in one year.

CEO of Nissan Motor Company differed with Sergio by reacting in a decent and manner to the launch of Tesla’s mass-market car. According to Automotive News Europe, FCA delivers just few thousand 500e vehicles in some American states. The vehicle is not sold in the European region or other international markets.

The Model 3 will probably be the first Tesla automobile to be equipped with Tesla’s autonomous driving system. Electrek knows that Musk’s organization is possibly thinking about mobility on demand facility depending upon an answer Elon gave while addressing an earnings call in 2015. Analysts at Wall Street are even taking account of potential new business in their valuation models. 

Uber Tries To Justify Surge Pricing To Indian Public

Uber lobbies against the ban imposed by Karnataka government on surge pricing

Uber is personally extending its reach to each user in the Silicon Valley of India, Bengalaru, to elaborate upon how surge pricing is beneficial for them. Surge pricing – defined as increase in prices when demand is higher – is viewed as anti-consumer act because it lets the company take advantage of times when many people simultaneously want to avail rides.

On April 6 2016, the South Indian state government of Karnataka imposed a ban on the practice. Bengaluru is Karnataka’s capital and an important market for ridesharing apps, such as Ola and Uber.

The government of Karnataka said cab service providers in the state cannot charge over 29 cents per km for offering rides in an air-conditioned cab and 22 cents for a non- conditioned one.

This regulation could hit Ola and Uber, which frequently charge 2 to 4 times more for offering a ride because of surge pricing. In personal emails to each user in the city, Uber said it has had a look at the figures and “the government’s proposal to fix prices will cost more overall.”

A calculation sent to Itika Sharma Punit at Quartz revealed that she would have spent an amount of money 30% greater for availing the service since January this year if the new law had been followed. The company didn’t elaborate upon the mathematics explaining this calculation. An email sent by Quartz wasn’t immediately responded.

Surge pricing is not new in the country. It is used actively in other industries like aviation. The state government intervened to check unusual rises in airfares but did not impose a ban on the practice.

Some experts hold the belief that the new policy of Karnataka government on Uber technologies pricing is misdirected. Some experts have asked questions regarding how transporters like Uber and Ola determine surge pricing. Doubts like those are fuelled by reports given by riders who say cabs charged “peak hour charges” to them for offering rides during non-busy hours.

The decision by the American transporter to lobby against the regulation of the government is understood as the legislation might be replicated in the rest of the Indian states.

According to Business Standard, Maharashtra government is already thinking to impose a similar ban. Economic Times revealed recently that Travis Kalanick’s organization and the Indian cab company have lowered down the base fare for taxi rides by approximately 20 to 30% to battle with auto-rickshaws. To deal with higher levels of demand, they even increase fares by five times. 

Facebook Found New Way To Make Money

Facebook introduces Messenger Chatbots to attract businesses towards social network platform to earn money

On April 13, 2016, Facebook introduced its Messenger Chabot platform, but the question is that how it will generate money from it? The answer is by charging companies to send re-engagement messages to people who have already willingly started talking to them.

These “Sponsored Messages” are presently being tested, with a tiny test for advertisers. They are being heavily observed by Facebook to stop them from being spammed. The news confirms the scoop of Tech Crunch from February regarding advertisements coming to Facebook Messenger, after Tech Crunch grabbed a presentation sent by a one of the employees of the organization to a top advertiser, outlining the upcoming marketing product.

The company confirmed it would be also able to generate revenue with “Click to Message” News Feed advertisements that the publication earlier pegged as means to monetize chatbots. Both “Click to Message” advertisements and “Sponsored Messages” could bring users into conservation with the chatbot, which can then try to sell them items.

Think if rather than tapping an advertisement and then guiding yourself on an un-known e-commerce site, one could only tell the bot about his/her preferences and it could then show relevant products.

While bots are developed to give a response to users or act as they asked for, a concern is that Messenger advertisements could weaken the experience. Up till now, when anyone’s Messenger app buzzed, he/she would be sure it was anyone concerned about communicating with them.

This behavior changes with “Sponsored Messages”. VP of Product for Messenger, David Marcus, would be cautious about how Messenger advertisements are utilized to avoid annoying users.

When asked regarding the exact frequency or timing with which “Sponsored Messages” could be sent by businesses, Marcus emphasized that the social organization could monitor their use tightly compared to promotional messages sent to other mediums.

Not every Sponsored Message or bot will necessarily activate alerts, David told Tech Crunch. If the company can persuade these “Sponsored Messages” to endear network users to business instead of annoying them, it might finally find means to monetize 900 million users via Messenger.

According to reports by Silicon Angle, bots on the platform can offer automated content, such as customized content or weather and traffic updates, receipts and shipping information. To look for a bot, one needs to turn the app on and enter the company name in the search bar at the topmost part of the app

Currently, bots are offered to 33 organizations, including CNN, Burger King, Fandango, Staples, Spring and Poncho. 

Verizon Communications Intends To Bid For Yahoo Japan While Google Weighs Offer

Verizon is interested in buying out Yahoo Japan after Microsoft Corporation failed to take over it

Verizon Communications aims to make a first-round offer for the Yahoo web business in the upcoming week. It is interested in purchasing the organization’s Yahoo Japan Corporation share to improve the offer.

Alphabet’s main unit, Google, is also making efforts for the core business of Yahoo. Potential suitors Comcast Corporation and AT&T have taken a decision against bidding, sources revealed asking to be kept anonymous, as the deliberations are not public.

Microsoft Corporation, which was unable to win a hostile bid for the American multinational tech company in 8 years ago, would not offer this time. Time Inc. is yet evaluating an offer, while private equity funds TPG and Bain – among other companies – are also aiming to run at the business, either alone or by supporting a strategic purchaser.

First-round bids for the major Web assets of the company are due April 11. Verizon and its division subsidiary ‘AOL’ are collaborating with at least three financial advisers on the Yahoo offer.

Hiring the services of such a number of banking organizations is a sign that Verizon is seriously concerned with takeover plans – it said since late 2015 that it wanted to purchase all or some of Yahoo. Yahoo is facing problems and its management experienced a harsh time while investors push the company over the edge.

Verizon with a market value of around $213 billion could provide share of Yahoo Japan to its shareholders or sell it. The Californian organization would be interested in spinning off its 35.5% share in Yahoo Japan, valued around $8.5 billion, along with the central business, reported Bloomberg last month. The worth of the total assets would increase difficulties of private equity organizations to fund a bid for both parts.

Representatives for TPG, Verizon, Comcast, Yahoo and AT&T refused to share views. Representatives for Google and Bain did not immediately reply to requests for sharing views. Based on the financial details, Verizon values the core business of Yahoo at a sum lower than $8bn.

Verizon and some private equity companies had a meeting with Microsoft in March to discuss the possible financing for an offer. Microsoft Corporation has not committed any financing and it is not likely to offer anything over a token investment to the successful bidder.

Microsoft’s spokesperson refused to share views. The earnings and projected revenue will decrease by over 20% and nearly 15% this year, revealed a slide deck it launched to possible bidders, reported Re/code on Wednesday. 

SCMP Remove Online Paywall After Alibaba Acquisition

Alibaba completes $3.5 billion takeover of South China Morning Post to dominate the Chinese media sector

South China Morning Post has removed the online paywall from its site following the completion of its takeover by Alibaba. Its PDF editions and physical newspaper will remain subscription based.

Earlier, SCMP imposed a limit on those stories, which non-paying users could read on its site monthly; but currently, that cap has been removed in a measure “paves the way to grow its readership globally,” as revealed by Editor-in-Chief Tammy Tam.

Tammy further claimed that people need “insightful and trusted news” from China – a line similar to what was heard from founder of the Chinese e-commerce company. In December, the online retailer announced plans to purchase the 113-year-old publication. Companies purchasing media always express concern. Executive chairman of Alibaba, Joe Tsai, told at the moment that the company won’t interfere with the methods of the newspaper to work, but rather use its own resources.

That means increased financial efforts from the business perspective through what the organization calls as “e-commerce media ecosystem.” Beyond than three-bundled buzzwords joined together to form a phrase, CEO of the Hangzhou-based organization, Daniel Zhang, claimed the case that media represents a possibly profitable channel for online trading facilities, and those of the organization while also helping media organization earn money.

Besides the publication, Alibaba also invested in ‘Weibo’ (a microblogging website) and is passing through the completion phase of a $3.5 billion takeover of video website ‘Youku Tudou’ to enhance its media profile.

Apart from dropping its paywall, the mobile apps of SCMP is also revamped with deep-linking, personalization, search and other features, since the organization states it is now “a mobile first company” with mobile representing most of its business.

Many doubted the intentions of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos when took over the American publication, Washington Post, but the newspaper seems to be allowed to keep working under own rule. Alibaba can be compared to Amazon in a number of ways, and people can just wait to find out if it can act with patience with its sparkly newly acquired media asset.

SCMP reported that since last night, a reader could read it free of charge and download the new app for Windows, Android and iPhone for easy and speedy reach to the latest news.

Chairman of Alibaba, Jack Ma said, “[With the paywall taken down today] our focus now should not be on finding the right media business model.” The dropping of Paywall differs from the international trend of publications charging readers for articles they read on websites, but Jack is taking a lesson from his Taobao experience. He expressed confidence that with the help of a change-embracing and open-minded approach, the publication would turn itself into a profitable publication and find out its own business model. 

Amazon Moves Fast To Defeat Payment Service Providers

Amazon expanded its payment service to lead the payment industry and lure a large number of shoppers towards its platform.

More buyers would soon find a convenient method to spend online instead of using a credit card, easily entering the password and user name of Amazon.com. On April 4, 2016, the American e-commerce company announced an extension of its payment service, Amazon Payments, as it competes with other payment intermediaries, including Apple Pay and PayPal.

Online traders can already avail the payment facility by typing their account details of the website instead of their payment information, addresses and names. The extended program will turn into “Pay with Amazon”, an option offered to merchants who develop their webpages on e-commerce platforms developed by companies that mostly help merchants run and establish their own e-shops.

In its announcement, Amazon named three participating platforms – Shopify, Japan’s Future Shop and French e-commerce company, PrestaShop SA - though more are registered on the website of the company.

The program could make Payment Service an option for many online sellers. Shopify also reported its network is home to over 240,000 shops. For sellers, permitting customers to spend using just Amazon.com account details, could make checking out easier and quicker, possibly leading to extra sales.

In February, Southwest Airlines announced that it was including a payment service option for entertainment purchases and in-flight Wi-Fi, citing convenience as an important attention.

For Amazon, more sales transactions processed through its financial service lead to more sales revenue. The company charges sellers 2.9% of every transaction – a little over 2.75% charged by Californian organization, Square, along with 30% fee.

Analyst from Wedbrush Securities, Michael Pachter, said the extra fees are appealing to the company because it does not need to develop any new thing to earn them. Amazon has unsuccessfully make efforts to extend its financial service provider before. Two years ago, it launched physical card reader, Amazon Local Register, which connected to tablets and smartphones.

Intended for small conventional shops, the device was a direct rival to Square, which provides a card reader that attaches to cellular devices, but it was unable to succeed, and the company scrapped it in late 2015.

Some sellers have voiced their concern that using the web retailer’s physical card reader would leak out what its customers were purchasing – the same type of data that has currently helped the e-commerce marketplace operator turn into a challenge to offline businesses and juggernaut.

As the financial service extends, it is not clear if online sellers will find the same challenge or if they will add any extra value to the service, says brokerage service provider’s analyst, Robert W. Baird. 

Dell SecureWorks Plans To Launch IPO In April

SecureWorks Corporation is planning to hold IPO in April 2016 to receive funds for growth.

A cyber-security service provider, owned by Dell, is looking to end the tech IPO drought. SecureWorks Corporation, owned by the closely held parent company of Dell – Denali Holding – is looking to unveil its IPO in April 2016 persons close to the agreement state.

The organization could start its “roadshow” to promote the shares to investors throughout the week of April 11. The stock will probably trade on Nasdaq with the symbol “SCWX”, revealed to an earlier securities filing.

If it succeeds, SecureWorks, which allows corporations to lock their systems down and monitor for computer intruders, could be the first tech organization to launch on US exchange in the next year and give an optimistic signal regarding the condition of a market for IPO that has continued to ail amidst market volatility.

No other tech organization has listed stock in the United States following a small Chinese company, which did so on December 15, 2016. People told SecureWorks would probably spin off a comparatively tiny part of itself in the offering due to uncertainty regarding the reception from investors in a tough IPO market.

Cutting down the supply of IPO stock could raise demand and add to the chances they trade well. The cyber-safety service provider could only raise a sum of $150 million. Proceeds and valuation from an IPO are usually in flux unless just prior to the trading of the shares.

The company is planning for a valuation less than $2 billion. SecureWorks had been aiming at $2 billion as of previous summer, but with many of its competitors trading down one-fifth or over, its expectations regarding valuation have fallen down.

Amidst the lack of technology offerings – a significant driver of the new-issue market – the first quarter was amongst the most sluggish on record for IPOs, with just nine contracts that raised only $1.2 billion. Market watchdogs have issued a warning that this part of the year might not bring a lot of relief.

Another factor that has adversely affected the market for IPO concerns a large number of private technology companies with valuations of more than a billion are overvalued. The Georgia based company differs from most of those organizations, as it was established through the last technology boom and is accommodated within a huge, developed corporate parent.

It is similar in one respect – SecureWorks is not profitable. In fact, the losses of the organization have increased alongside its sales revenue. For the financial year ending in January 29, Dell SecureWorks earned revenue worth $339.5 million, a rise by 30% from the past year, while it earned a net loss of $724 million, which was approximately two times as wide, revealed securities filing.