Daily Archives: March 7, 2016

Bad News Flash: Scientists Did Not Cure Autism, Cancer Or Alzheimer’s

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Recent headlines claimed that scientists have reversed autism, cured cancer, and restored memory loss caused by Alzheimer’s. All of the headlines were based on real papers, but none of them are correct. Scientists and science journalists need to stop over-promising unless they just don’t care about their credibility.

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Samsung Pay posts a net loss of $16.8 million in its first year of operation

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Samsung Pay is still touring the world map – it launched in South Korea, then arrived in the US where it now covers over 70% of US credit and debit card market. Pay is launching in China this month, then the UK and Spain, Australia, Singapore and Brazil too. In Russia, Pay will launch alongside the Galaxy S7.

The service reportedly lost $16.8 million its first year under Samsung (the Korean giant acquired LoopPay for $229 in February 2015). This is on $4.12 million in net sales generated by the service. It has $23.6 million in debt and its net worth stands at $10.5.

Samsung says the service is worth a lot more, though, for the value it adds to its Galaxy smartphones – currently Samsung Pay is supported by the S6, S6 edge, Note5 and several Galaxy A phones, soon the new Galaxy S7 and S7 edge star duo too.

The company also thinks highly of MST – the magnetic stripe emulation, which is both unique and valuable in the US, since the country is behind on new chip-protected credit and debit cards. Bloomberg reports Samsung Pay is growing faster than Apple’s service, which had a head start.

Samsung sees Pay and things like Gear VR as avenues to generate revenue after the initial hardware sale. It’s not just about making a cut on sales through Pay either, industry insiders think Samsung can mine purchase data to use it for marketing, R&D and…

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How Baidu Is Strategizing To Retain Its Key Users

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With an 80% share in the Chinese search engine market, Baidu is the undisputed leader in the region where Google has entry restrictions. Baidu is now looking at ways to retain its users when they travel to other countries where Google has a presence. The company recently announced that it had launched a desktop and mobile mapping service in Japan, Thailand, South Korea and Singapore where most Chinese tourists travel. Baidu wants to ensure that its users have access to its mapping service while travelling overseas to avoid the risk of losing them to other competitors such as Google. While this strategy should enable the company to protect is domestic market share we believe it also opens up avenues for the international expansion of Baidu, especially in regions where its local advantage can work in its favor.
See our complete analysis of Baidu here

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How Google Is Innovating To Gain An Edge In Mobile Payments

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Recently Google announced that it is piloting an app called Hands Free which allows its mobile payment (Android Pay) users to pay in stores quickly and completely hands-free, through a voice command. The company stated that with this pilot, it wants to explore what the future of mobile payments could look like. The app is being piloted in the San Francisco area and is being rolled out to a small number of McDonald’s, Papa John’s and local eateries in the area. As Google focuses on launching Android Pay in several countries in 2016, increasing the convenience of mobile payments via Hands Free could give it a competitive edge and increase adoption. Google’s technology can provide enhanced security and convenience for the feature; however, user and retailer adoption is key for its success.

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The First Google Self-Driving Car Accident Makes The Case For V2V Communications

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Over the past several years of testing, Google’s fleet of autonomous vehicles have been involved in a number of minor accidents, but up until now all of them were caused by human driven vehicles running into Google’s machines. That has now changed as an autonomous Lexus RX450h slowly ran into the side of Mountain View, Calif. transit bus. While autonomous vehicles like Google’s prototypes can often see a lot more than human drivers and respond properly, they can miss things that we do pick up on and that’s where vehicle-to-external (V2X) communications can help.

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