Samsung takes the chipmaking crown, Google wants to warn you about flight delays and Uber looks at bike sharing. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for January 31, 2018. 1. Samsung is now the world's biggest chipmaker Samsung is the world leader in terms of total sales of chipsets, per its latest financials. That's in terms of revenue from the category. It's the first time Samsung has done bigger business in this category than Intel, which has rivaled all others since 1992. Obviously, the mobile shift is mostly responsible, but you have to wonder whether this trailing indicator won't matter much in a few years when AI rises even further in prominence. 2. Google flights wants to predict delays before they happen Flight delays aren't fun. Google is hoping to make them easier to deal with by predicting delays before they're officially confirmed. It'll flag them up once it's 80 percent confident that it'll happen in the Google Flights search product. Still, that seems not certain enough to make any plans around. 3. Uber working with Jump on dockless bike share in SF Uber is mirroring some of its Asian rivals with a new trial launch of Uber Bike, a service that makes it possible to book on-demand bikes from dockless bike share startup JUMP in San Francisco. 4. SoftBank is working with Line on its mobile service for Japan SoftBank will own a majority stake in Line's mobile business in Japan, which is an interesting move for a carrier relative to a young, much smaller MVNO. 5. Spotify is building a Pandora-like playlist app Spotify has an Android-only app debuting in Australia (a common test market for these sorts of things) that resembles Pandora and focuses on playlist-based radio. 6. Amazon wants to make its own QR codes a thing Amazon is hoping QR codes can still catch on in North America, and it's using its so-called "SmileCodes" to make it possible to link directly to products on its platform from real-world marketing. The iPhone now has native QR code support, so maybe it'll work. Big maybe. 7. Amazon's amorphous healthcare announcement sends stocks tumbling Amazon's power is such that when it announces... something to do with healthcare in the works with partners JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway, almost all other healthcare stocks tumble. |