Spotify May Need To Be More ‘Asian' To Dominate Region
Asia’s fragmented music fanbase and subscription habits may stand between Spotify and its total domination of the region, or at least so its competitors hope. The music streaming service recently launched in the Asian countries of Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. When we spoke to Spotify’s head of new markets in Asia-Pacific, Sriram Krishnan, he was evasive on how extensive the company’s Asian catalog was, saying that the company is working with labels here and does feature local music, but emphasized that “mainstream” (read: US-originated) music is big here, and that catalog Spotify has plenty of. But several Asian-originated competitors say that their experiences here have been quite different. Taiwan-based KKBOX was launched in the region in 2005, and is available in its home country, as well as Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan, with plans for other Asian countries, said representative, Inman Lin. “The Asian market is very fragmented in terms of (each country’s) ...
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Mobile CRM Apps To Grow 500% By 2014 As Market Turns With Decline In PC Shipments
Gartner Research is reporting mobile CRM apps will grow 500 percent by 2014, another sign of a shifting market that has more to do with work getting done in the cloud more so than from a server behind the firewall. This is buttressed by Gartner’s news that SaaS providers will represent more than 50 percent of profits in the CRM market by 2016 and the steep decline in PC shipments that Gartner reported yesterday. Gartner reports there are 200 apps now in app stores. By 2014, there will be 1,200. Mobile apps will come in a variety of flavors, attacking specific aspects of the CRM experience. Gartner, citing a CIO survey of more than 2,000 people, predicts that vendors will need to build mobile apps around their specific strengths. Gartner also reported that Salesforce.com remains the No. 1 CRM vendor with 26 percent growth and $2.5 billion in revenue last year. In contrast, Gartner states SAP grew 0.1 percent year-on-year and totaled $2.3 billion in CRM revenue. That is a huge difference ...
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Navy To Deploy Lasers On Ship In 2014
Velcroman1 writes "The Pentagon has plans to deploy its first ever ship-mounted laser next year, a disruptive, cutting-edge weapon capable of obliterating small boats and unmanned aerial vehicles with a blast of infrared energy. Navy officials announced Monday that in early 2014, a solid-state laser prototype will be mounted to the fantail of the USS Ponce and sent to the 5th fleet region in the Middle East for real-world experience. 'It operates much like a blowtorch ... with an unlimited magazine,' one official said."
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Luxola Raises Series A, Pulls Former PopSugar Director Christine Ng To Singapore
Singapore beauty e-tailer, Luxola, just raised its Series A round from GREE Ventures. The amount was undisclosed, but has been rumored to be in the region of $2 million. The company carries about 60 brands of cosmetics and beauty products on its website, and ships to countries in Southeast Asia like Singapore and Malaysia. Its site was launched in September 2012, and it had previously raised a seed round of about $596,820 (S$740,000) from Wavemaker Labs and Singapore government fund, the National Research Foundation. Its initial angel round was about $423,460 ($525,000), according to CEO and founder, Alexis Horowitz-Burdick. Besides its latest funding round, the company has also managed to pull over former PopSugar Director of Affiliates and Social, Christine Ng. Prior to that, she was product manager at Sephora, where she led the beauty store’s social media and interactive product efforts. She joins Luxola as its chief marketing officer. “We’re grateful for Christine. The sort of ...
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Singaporean-Finnish Startup Nonstop Games Raises $2.9M For Core Gaming On iOS, Android
Nonstop Games, a Singaporean-Finnish gaming company (yes, really), just picked up $2.9 million from two Scandinavian venture firms, Creandum and Lifeline Ventures, to build out core games for iOS and Android. The company’s team has an interesting backstory. Henric Suuronen was a head of studio at one of Europe’s biggest social gaming companies Wooga, and a director at Digital Chocolate Finland before that. The company’s CEO, Juha Paananen, doesn’t have a long gaming career, but he previously ran Asia-Pacific business development for Nokia out of Singapore so he has lots of experience working in the mobile industry. Random fact of note: Juha is also the brother of Ilkka Paananen, CEO of Supercell, that Finnish gaming company that’s tearing up the charts with two top-grossing games in the top five. We’ve heard from multiple sources that the company is making more than $1 million a day on average, but they decline to talk about updated revenue figures since acknowledging a $500,000 ...
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