What You Don’t Know About China Tech
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| What You Don’t Know About China Tech | |
| Number | 3474 |
| Broadcast Date | FEBRUARY 22, 2019 |
| Episode Length | 30:15 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang |
| Guests | Eric Olander, Len Peralta |
We interview Eric Olander from the ‘China in Africa’ podcast to discuss the state of tech in China and examine where the largest non-American tech companies are choosing to do business.
Guest
Quick Hits
- Baidu beat analyst expectations for revenue and profit. Revenue from its streaming video service iQiyi rose 55 percent, offsetting lower ad sales on search and news. Baidu plans to expand its AI offerings like smart speakers and autonomous driving to enterprise and government customers. While revenue rose 10% it was the slowest growth in 6 quarters.
- MacRumors reports Apple plans to close its retail stores in Plano and Frisco, Texas on April 12. Both stores are located in the Eastern Texas District Court region that generally rules in favor of patent holders. A new store will open in the nearby Galleria Dallas shopping mall April 13. The mall is outside of the Eastern District's jurisdiction. This could prevent cases from being brought to the eastern district on the basis of Apple having an established place of business there.
- Facebook is removing its Onavo VPN app from the Google Play store. The VPN service will continue to work for existing users but eventually be shut down. Facebook used data from the app's users to conduct market research but it has stopped that practice. Facebook has also stopped recruiting new users of the Facebook Research app for Android. The iOS versions of both apps were banned by Apple.
Top Stories
- The Wall Street Journal reports that it found 11 health-related iOS apps that share info with Facebook even if the user of the app has no Facebook account. The apps track things like ovulation, weight and heart rate and share that data. None of the apps appeared to have an option to stop the data sharing. The apps use a Facebook analytics tool called App Events that can target ads by event. The Facebook App Events tool advises developers not to share "health, financial information or other categories of sensitive information." Facebook told the WSJ that some of the practices discovered seem to violate terms and it will force those apps to stop sharing the data.
- Nvidia introduced the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card based on its Turing architecture. Unlike Nvidia's RTX cards, it does not include DLSS or ray-tracing support. But it does promise power-efficient performance for 120fps gameplay at 1080p. Nvidia says it is 1.5 times faster than the GTX 1060. The GTX 1660 Ti is available worldwide for $279.
- The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa 2 spacecraft successfully landed on the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu Friday. It will be the second craft to collect samples from an asteroid and return them to Earth after 2005's Hayabusa. The landing and collection were made more challenging as the surface was made of larger-than-expected gravel. Hayabusa 2 will collect two more samples before returning to Earth. NASA's OSIRIS REX arrived at asteroid Bennu in December and is scheduled to collect samples in 2020.
- Following up on last week's story about the GAN-created human faces at thispersondoesnotexist.com we now have thiscatdoesnotexist.com. And it shows that human faces are way easier for AI than cats.
Discussion
- China. It's often misunderstood in the world of technology. To help us understand it better, let's welcome Eric Olander, long time China-watcher who currently works in digital marketing in Shanghai.
Mailbag
- Sure, many cutting-edge products don't succeed financially, but I'm rather interested in using cool products rather than investing in the company's stock. So I appreciate it when a company is gutsy enough to release a brand-new product to the market and let us all experience it.
Most of us don't have resources to create even a prototype. We rely on the big companies to make tremendous effort to develop and mass-produce a product. So, I think we should be a little more fair when talking about the significance of the products.
Many products were a failure of the marketing. For instance, they should have clearly labeled Google Glass as a developer kit like MagicLeap did. But it was still a remarkable piece of hardware and we all learned a lot about the potential of AR.
I think there are enough people who worry about the product's financial success or failure ;) As technology lovers, I think we can rather focus on the innovation aspects and encourage companies to come up with more products in new categories. - Sent by Komei
- Sure, many cutting-edge products don't succeed financially, but I'm rather interested in using cool products rather than investing in the company's stock. So I appreciate it when a company is gutsy enough to release a brand-new product to the market and let us all experience it.
YouTube
Links
| Preceded by: "The President is in Another Castle" |
What You Don’t Know About China Tech |
Followed by: "MWC2019: Tech News Tapas" |