Commentary: Apple hopes to capture something that money can’t buy with its new credit card designed for the digital age.
Source: CNET
One new version will be cheap and may remove signature features, while the other will be enhanced, reports said.
Source: CNET
Today’s major tech stories include a controversial copyright law moving forward in the EU, Google’s AMP technology ready for its Gmail debut and an ITC judge’s ruling that some iPhones infringe a Qualcomm patent.
Source: CNET
It takes a deft touch to harvest fruit and veggies. Which is why roboticists are inventing hyper-specialized machines to pick crops.
Source: Wired
For $181 per night, Airbnb guests can stay in a castle in Galway, Ireland.
Many have taken the home-sharing business up on this offer with the company sharing today the castle supplies its most-booked private room. Along with that fun datapoint, Airbnb shared a slew of other stats indicating an upward trajectory for the 12-year-old company.
Most notably, Airbnb has just recorded its 500 millionth guest arrival across one of its 6 million homes, yurts, tree houses, boats and more.
Airbnb crossing the half-billion mark isn’t surprising given recent aggressive expansion strategies. Valued at $31 billion, the San Francisco-headquartered business recently announced it would acquire HotelTonight in a deal reported to be worth roughly $465 million.
Airbnb’s long-term goal is to build an end-to-end travel platform complete with home sharing, hotel booking, business travel arrangements, experiences and more. Folding in HotelTonight, a mobile app that lets travelers arrange last-minute accommodations, accelerates its path toward owning the peer-to-peer rental market and more. Already amongst the most acquisitive unicorns, per Crunchbase News, Airbnb is also in said to be considering purchasing a stake in Oyo, an Indian hotel startup.
According to the analytics platform Second Measure, Airbnb is rapidly surpassing hospitality incumbents. Since 2016, Airbnb has tripled sales, while larger hotel chains have observed sales growth of just 11 percent. Airbnb’s annual sales have overtaken IHG and Hilton, and are well on their way to exceeding Marriott, which has dominated the industry since acquiring Starwood Hotels in 2016.
All of this bodes well for Airbnb, which is said to be considering a 2019 or 2020 initial public offering. The company has to date raised $4.4 billion in a combination of debt and equity funding from venture capital investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. In January, Airbnb said it was profitable for the second consecutive year on an EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) basis.
In addition to the 500 million milestone, Airbnb has shared that its hosts have earned $65 billion from renting out space on the platform. That number is expected to swell, quick, as Airbnb says it saw 152 percent growth in the number of rooms available on its platform. The geographic distribution of guests has expanded, too, with outlying markets increasing their share of arrivals.
Finally, the age of hosts has become more diverse. Seniors are now the fastest-growing demographic in the U.S. while 70 percent of bookings in the last three years were made by guests under the age of 40. Millennials around the world have spent over $31 billion booking travel on Airbnb.
Airbnb currently dominates the peer-to-peer rental industry, but with Expedia gaining market share via its subsidiary HomeAway and Bookings Holdings doing its best to compete through Bookings.com, Kayak and Priceline, Airbnb may not be able to sustain this growth rate.
Source: TechCrunch
Yoshua Bengio, Geoff Hinton, and Yann LeCun pioneered work in artificial neural networks, paving the way for self-driving cars and facial-recognition software.
Source: Wired
Now that dozens of tests are on the market, patients can scan their unborn children for less serious diseases too. But what will we, as a society, do with that information?
Source: Wired
The contraceptive gel is being tested in nine cities. It seems to work, but it’s hard to know how eager men are for the new option.
Source: Wired
It’s Qualcomm 1, Apple 1 in the latest instalment of the pair’s bitter patent bust-up — the litigious IP infringement claim saga that also combines a billion dollar royalties suit filed by Cupertino alleging that the mobile chipmaker’s licensing terms are unfair.
The iPhone maker filed against Qualcomm on the latter front two years ago and the trial is due to kick off next month. But a U.S. federal court judge issued a bracing sharpener earlier this month, in the form of a preliminary ruling — finding Qualcomm owes Apple nearly $1BN in patent royalty rebate payments. So that courtroom looks like one to watch for sure.
Yesterday’s incremental, two-fold development in the overarching saga relates to patent charges filed by Qualcomm against Apple back in 2017, via complaints to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in which it sought to block domestic imports of iPhones.
In an initial determination on one of these patent complaints published yesterday, an ITC administrative law judge found Apple violated one of Qualcomm’s patents — and recommended an import ban.
Though Apple could (and likely will) request a review of that non-binding decision.
Related: A different ITC judge found last year that Apple had violated another Qualcomm patent but did not order a ban on imports — on “public interest” grounds.
ITC staff also previously found no infringement of the very same patent, which likely bolsters the case for a review. (The patent in question, U.S. Patent No. 8,063,674, relates to “multiple supply-voltage power-up/down detectors”.)
Then, later yesterday, the ITC issued a final determination on a second Qualcomm v Apple patent complaint — finding no patent violations on the three claims that remained at issue (namely: U.S. Patent No. 9,535,490; U.S. Patent No. 8,698,558; and U.S. Patent No. 8,633,936), terminating its investigation.
Though Qualcomm has said it intends to appeal.
The mixed bag of developments sit in the relatively ‘minor battle’ category of this slow-motion high-tech global legal war (though, of the two, the ITC’s final decision looks more significant); along with the outcome of a jury trial in San Diego earlier this month, which found in Qualcomm’s favor over some of the same patents the ITC cleared Apple of infringing.
Reuters reports the chipmaker has cited the contradictory outcome of the earlier jury trial as grounds to push for a “reconsideration” of the ITC’s decision.
“The Commission’s decision is inconsistent with the recent unanimous jury verdict finding infringement of the same patent after Apple abandoned its invalidity defense at the end of trial,” Qualcomm said in a statement. “We will seek reconsideration by the Commission in view of the jury verdict.”
Albeit, given the extreme complexities of chipset component patent suits it’s not really surprising a jury might reach a different outcome to an ITC judge.
In the other corner, Apple issued its now customary punchy response statement to the latest developments, swinging in with: “Qualcomm is using these cases to distract from having to answer for the real issues, their monopolistic business practices.”
Safe to say, the litigious saga continues. And iPhones continue being sold in the U.S.
Other notable (but still only partial) wins for Qualcomm include a court decision in China last year ordering a ban on iPhone sales in the market — which Apple filed an appeal to overturn. So no China iPhone ban yet.
And an injunction ordered by a court in Germany which forced Apple to briefly pull certain iPhone models from sale in its own stores in January. By February the models were back on its shelves — albeit now with Qualcomm not Intel chips inside.
But it’s not all been going Qualcomm’s way in Germany. Also in January, another court in the country dismissed a separate patent claim as groundless.
A decision is also still pending in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust case against Qualcomm.
In that suit the chipmaker is accused of operating a monopoly and forcing exclusivity from Apple while charging “excessive” licensing fees for standards-essential patents. The trial wrapped up in January and is pending a verdict.
Source: TechCrunch
SparkLabs Group, the network of accelerators and venture funds that has now worked with more than 200 startups around the world, wants to foster the next generation of entrepreneurs with a new program for universities. Called SparkLabs Frontier, the program’s first accelerator will launch at Arizona State University this summer.
SparkLabs Frontier-ASU is open to participants from the university’s programs, including the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, W.P. Carey School of Business and the Thunderbird School of Global Management, as well as alumni. It will begin taking applications on May 13, with the accelerator program starting in July 2019.
Unlike SparkLabs’ other accelerators, SparkLabs Frontier-ASU will have a three to four-month-long pre-accelerator component with training (provided in partnership with the Global Scaling Academy) to help students and other potential applicants develop startup ideas and connect with possible co-founders This is intended to ready them to apply for the main accelerator program, which will accept six to eight startups at a time. SparkLabs Frontier-ASU also entails the creation of a 30 percent stock option versus the standard 10 to 20 percent for seed-stage startups.
In an email, SparkLabs Group co-founder Frank Meehan said that the network wanted to work with ASU because of its achievements under university president Michael Crow (who as Columbia University executive vice provost taught another SparkLabs co-founder, Bernard Moon).
“ASU has grown into the most innovative school in the U.S., risen quickly up the national research rankings, leading a deep-space NASA mission for the first time and has heavily integrated entrepreneurship throughout its campus and schools,” he said. With Arizona’s relationship to the automotive and space industries, SparkLabs Frontier-ASU will focus on the “broad arena of frontier tech, or deep tech as some call it,” Meehan added. “So we will be looking into AI, autonomous driving, materials science, space, augmented reality, genomics, drones and other cutting-edge areas of innovation.”
While SparkLabs’ recent classes in other accelerators are now more often attracting later stage seed or Series A companies, SparkLabs Frontier-ASU will “be more raw, early and bootstrapped,” said Meehan. “The pre-accelerator program will be to develop ideas, talent and teams, so we don’t even expect these individuals to have co-founders or colleagues at this stage.”
SparkLabs Frontier-ASU will launch with an advisory board that has a roster of recognizable names, including science author Steven Johnson, M.C. Hammer, Barry Munitz, chancellor emeritus of California State University, and Mozilla chief innovation officer Katharina Borchert. Its venture partners include Chris Yeh, Jimmy Lin, Jen Millard, and Jared Carney.
SparkLabs Frontier has also began discussions with major research universities in the U.S., China and South Korea for future programs.
In a prepared statement, ASU president Michael Crow said “Entrepreneurial for ASU means partnerships and alliances, and it means driving ideas, technologies and inventions that matter, that will have real impact. Partnerships like this one with SparkLabs Group will move innovation and entrepreneurialism forward, which is necessary for the continuation of the success of the state, the country and the world.”
Source: TechCrunch