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Thursday, 7 April 2016

Alibaba’s Top International Communications Executive Departs to Start a New Firm

Dan Bigelow

COMMERCE

April 5, 2016, 7:29 AM PDT

Jim Wilkinson, Alibaba’s high-profile SVP for international corporate affairs, is leaving the company after just two years. The exec, who helped the Chinese e-commerce giant as it went public in the U.S., will be launching a new international communications firm in two months, after transitioning his job to another top Alibaba comms exec Jennifer Kuperman. Alibaba will be one of Wilkinson’s key first clients at the new venture, which will help international companies in growth markets around the globe, especially in China.

“Alibaba is a family that I can’t imagine not being part of, and our work together is only beginning,” said Wilkinson. “I’m deeply grateful for their support for this new entrepreneurial venture.”

Wilkinson, a former PepsiCo exec, came to Alibaba as it sought to have a stronger image in the U.S., critical to its public offering, and built out a team of execs here and in China. One of his assets to Alibaba was his deep political background, including at the State Department, U.S. Treasury and the White House in the administration of former President George W. Bush.

Alibaba’s relationship with Wall Street and U.S. regulators has indeed gone smoothly, despite what have become worrisome economic issues in the China market since Alibabas IPO in the fall of 2014. Its shares are down about 16 percent since then.

PayPal cancels plans for Charlotte, N.C., office in response to state anti-LGBT law

Shutterstock

COMMERCE

pril 5, 2016, 10:25 AM PDT

PayPal has withdrawn plans to open a 400-person operations center in Charlotte, N.C., citing the state’s recently-passed anti-LGBT law that discriminates against transgender people.

“The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture,” PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said in a blog post. “As a result, PayPal will not move forward with our planned expansion into Charlotte.”

The withdrawal comes just two weeks after PayPal first announced plans for the office, which was expected to house customer service and risk operations roles, among others. It also follows Google Ventures’ decision to ban investments in North Carolina until the law is repealed, as well as an open letter from some of the industry’s top execs calling for the same.

The law in question, HB2, has been widely criticized for several reasons. It voids local government laws that protect LGBT people against discriminatory measures. It also essentially stipulates that transgender people need to use gendered bathrooms in schools and government buildings that match the gender on their birth certificate, not their own gender identity.

“This decision reflects PayPal’s deepest values and our strong belief that every person has the right to be treated equally, and with dignity and respect,” Schulman added.

Sony Mobile U.S. Quietly Replaced Chief, Cut Jobs and Moved to Silicon Valley

Shutterstock

MOBILE

April 1, 2016, 10:57 AM PDT

After years of declining market share, Sony has quietly moved its U.S. phone operations from Atlanta to the San Francisco Bay Area and named a new leader. It also cut an unspecified number of jobs during the move, Re/code has learned.

Sony Mobile has fewer employees now than it had when it was in Atlanta, though the company declined to say how many currently work in its U.S. mobile unit.

Kunihiko Shiomi, who had been head of U.S. development, took over as president in January — the same month the company brought the Z5 and Z5 compact phones to the States. Lacking support from any of the major carriers, Sony is selling both models unlocked via Amazon and Best Buy.

The former U.S. head, Ravi Nookala, has returned to Canada and is now CEO of Burnaby, B.C.-based Glentel, which runs a range of wireless service businesses. Nookala worked at Sony Canada before being named to run U.S. operations in January 2013.

Sony’s mobile business, then a joint venture with Ericsson, set up shop in Atlanta in 2009 to be closer to AT&T’s mobile business. At that time, the company still had about 4 percent of the U.S. market.

Since then, the company has had on-and-off relationships with AT&T and T-Mobile but has struggled to get significant share. In recent years, it has been forced to sell its devices in the comparatively smaller “unlocked” market for those willing to bring their own devices. Sony’s smartphone share in the U.S., meanwhile, has been below 1 percent since 2012, according to IDC.

While it still has a couple percent of the global smartphone market and remains a presence in Japan and parts of Europe, the company has been practically a nonentity in the U.S. in recent years, with new phone models coming here months after their launches in other markets.

Sony’s U.S. phone operations could be in danger of shutting down altogether. Executives have said that it may exit the business if it can’t break even this year.

Amazon Invests in Wi-Fi Startup Luma as Battle Over Home Internet Heats Up

Luma

MOBILE

April 7, 2016, 6:00 AM PDT

Luma, one of several companies looking to reshape how home networks are managed, has landed an investment from Amazon as part of a fresh $12.5 million round of funding.

The series A round was led by Amazon and Accel Partners, with 500 Startups and former AT&T chief executive David Dorman also investing alongside existing backers Felicis Ventures, Base Ventures, BIP Capital, Relay Ventures and Webb Investment Network.

Luma joins fellow startup Eero as well as Google’s OnHub among a new generation of devices aiming to offer simpler and better Wi-Fi experiences than those offered by a traditional router.

Like Eero, Luma aims to offer better coverage through a mesh network of multiple devices and use a smartphone app to set up, monitor and control the network. In addition, Luma looks to offer home administrators a deeper view into the devices on the network and, in many cases, even the websites and apps being used.

As for Amazon’s role, the investment was made by the company’s Alexa fund, and Luma says it is working to see how its products might integrate with the company’s voice assistant. For example, one might be able to eventually voice commands through Alexa rather than using the Luma app.

Luma is still a few months away from shipping — it plans to do so in June — but has started beta testing in a few hundred homes, according to executive chairman Paul Judge. The company said that it has received 30,000 preorders for the Luma, which is being sold for $149 for a single unit or $299 for a three-unit pack.

The company said the new investment will help the company step up its hiring. It currently has about 20 people and recently hired Sonos and Apple veteran Matt Duffy as vice president of supply chain along with former AirWatch engineer Anil Jagarlamudi, who will serve as vice president of engineering.

Twitter Built a New Button So You’ll Send More Private Messages

Rawpixel Ltd / iStock

SOCIAL

April 5, 2016, 9:30 AM PDT

Reply. Retweet. Like. And now Send.

Twitter is adding a new button to the bottom of each tweet so that it’s simpler to send that tweet to another user within a private message. The new icon, a small envelope right next to the heart-shaped Like button, automatically attaches the tweet to a private message which you can then address to another user.

This is a relatively small update. In fact, you could already send tweets to other people via direct message. It just required more steps.

But the fact that Twitter is putting a new button onto each tweet is a pretty good indication of how important direct messaging is to the company. Twitter was late to building out its messaging service and as a result has always lagged behind other messaging apps like Facebook’s Messenger or Snapchat.

But Twitter DMs are increasing in popularity — Twitter claims that 60 percent more messages were sent in 2015 than 2014. Adding a new button to encourage more private messages should bump that number even higher.

It should also make it easier for users to send tweets to brands or retailers, a customer service use case Twitter is starting to build features for. It’s one of the reasons the company removed the 140-character text limit for direct messages last summer; it’s hard to have a conversation with a customer service agent when you can’t send more then two sentences at a time. The customer service use case was also one of the reasons Twitter hasconsidered spinning DMs into its own app. It ultimately decided against the idea.

The new icon should appear for users on Tuesday as part of a free app update for both iOS and Android.

Proof that Snapchat is Facebook’s biggest threat yet

Asa Mathat for Re/code

SOCIAL

April 1, 2016, 10:15 AM PDT

Facebook has been able to contain prior threats, such as Instagram and WhatsApp, through acquisition or cloning. But Snapchat may prove to be the one that got away.

The most important thing about Snapchat is that it is still rapidly growing in popularity. That is, it’s not a fad. Snapchat is regularly in the top five most popular apps in Apple’s and Google’s U.S. app stores.

This chart from comScore shows that Snapchat’s penetration among all age groups has grown rapidly and continues to grow. Younger users — who often set communication trends — are its strongest set. Some 64 percent of U.S. smartphone users between the ages of 18 and 24 used Snapchat in late 2015, up from 24 percent in early 2013, according to comScore. Penetration among 25-to-34-year-old users increased to 31 percent, up from 5 percent in 2013.

Audience size is one area where Snapchat is strengthening. But its addictiveness is another. Among 18-to-34-year-old users, it is second only to Facebook in time spent per month, according to comScore. And this seems likely to increase as well, as network effects make it more useful to more people, and as Snapchat continues to add more engaging features, including more video networks and better messaging capabilities.

Snapchat, of course, must still figure out how to build a large business to stay independent. But it is moving in the right direction — toward mobile video, just as Facebook has. Facebook is still, in many ways, on another level. But Snapchat is sticking around.

Code/Media 2016: There are plenty of reasons to be excited about Snapchat

After a Pause, Nutanix Signals IPO Plans Are Back on Track

Nutanix

Dheeraj Pandey, founder and CEO of Nutanix

ENTERPRISE

April 4, 2016, 3:59 PM PDT

Nutanix, a supplier of storage products for data centers, just updated its paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, signaling that its plans for an initial public offering may no longer be on hold.

The new filing shows that Nutanix, based in San Jose, Calif., nearly doubled its revenue in the six-month period ended Jan. 31, to $190 million from $102 million in the year-ago period. It ran a net loss of nearly $72 million, which increased from $56 million a year ago. Operating expenses rose to $190 million from $112 million previously.

The company first filed for an IPO in December, but was reported to have put those plans on hold in February after markets turned south. After the Dell-owned security company SecureWorks, which is expected to offer about 20 percent of its shares in an IPO later this month, Nutanix would appear to be on track to be the second tech IPO of 2016.

Led by CEO Dheeraj Pandey, a former Oracle and Teradata exec, Nutanix specializes in a combined server and storage system sometimes described by the wonky phrase “hyper-converged infrastructure.” It basically eliminates the need for a storage array to run data-center applications more flexibly. It also makes it easier to expand the size of a data center quickly. Its equipment is designed based on techniques that Google and Facebook use in their own data centers.

The company has raised more than $312 million from investors including Sapphire Ventures, the investment arm of the German enterprise software company SAP, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Riverwood Capital.

Thursday, 7 April 2016

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