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Google Picasa announced the first bad news on its official website since its release. Google will shut down the Google Picasa service by this May. The public has been concerning the development of Picasa since Google released Google Photos. Google Picasa and Google Photos have similarities, however, the machine learning and automatic classification of Google Photos are better than Picasa’s.

Anil Sabharwal who is in charge of Google Photos indicated on the blog that if the company focuses its vigor and resource on this application, it will be upgraded with better experience for users. Photo service means a lot to any internet companies, especially when the smartphone becomes the most popular camera. The users require advanced storage, management and photo sharing devices.

Google once announced the montly active users of Google Photos reached 100 million in last October, however, it seldom announced the statistics of Picasa. Judging by the number of its monthly active users, Google Photos could be considered as a successful application. It could replace the function of Picasa. Google Photos was made for the mobile devices while Picasa was made for the need of desktop internet.

Many of Google Photos users might not hear about Picasa. Picasa was a CPE that acquired by Google in 2004. Google enaged in promoting this application, but its launch got stuck since 2011.

To Google, it works better to focus on the core products if it simplifies its product line. But it might cause effect to Picasa users. Google will stop supporting Picasa from March 15 and then its developers won’t be able to use some of the Picasa API.

If the Picasa users stored the photos on its online albums, they just need to login Picasa and open the Google Photos service to transfer the photos. If they are unwilling to use the Google Photos, they could login Picasa and check their photos. But they are unable to create or edit the albums in the future.

Google just announced its Gmail monthly active users reached one billion, Jan Koum, the founder of WhatsApp announced its monthly active users reached one billion as well. It means on average every 7 people around the world, there is one person uses WhatsApp service.

WhatsApp announced its monthly active users were 900 million five months ago. It only took five months to obtain 10 million active users.

Besides releasing the number of its monthly active users, Koum also shared a series of WhatsApp statistics:

42 billion messages sent per day
1.6 billion photos shared per day
1 billion total groups
53 languages supported
250 million videos shared per day
57 engineers are hired

It is worth noting that 1.6 billion photos shared per day. According to statistics reported by Mary Meeker in 2014 Internet Trends report, she indicated 1.8 billion photos shared per day on the internet. While there are 1.6 billion photos shared on WhatsApp. What a surprise!

Facebook also obtained 1.5 billion monthly active users for itself. What is more, the monthly active users for Facebook Messenger are over 800 million. It might not be too far for Instagram or even Oculus to reach such amount of active users.

It means a lot for Facebook that WhatsApp obtained one billion monthly active users. It only had 450 million monthly active users when it was acquired by Facebook. It took less than two years to reach one billion monthly active users under the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg.

WhatsApp Jan Koum claimed lately that the company would cancel the one-dollar subscription service per year. It used to apply the business mode to offer free service for the first year and then charged one dollar subscription per day after being acquired.

Koum revealed that the company is testing app to connect the company and users in order to create new business mode. But the final plan did not make yet.

There are VR helmets released in the beginning of 2016. VR market becomes a popular field now. It seemed that Google Cardboard is forgotten by the public. Google revealed the statistics concerns Google Cardboard recently, showing its current ecosystem.

There are two classifications of VR helmets, one is the high performance VR such as Sony’s and Oculus Rift. The other is simple type VR such as Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR. The formers need to connect with gaming PC or gaming console, the latters just need to plug in the smartphones.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Google Cardboard has been sold 5 million units in 19 months.

As statistics showed, Google Cardboard users have download 25 million VR applications on Google Play store. The duration that users watch videos with Google Carboard reached 350,000 hours.

The selling price of Google Cardboard is about $ 20 which attracts more users to buy. Samsung Gear VR is sold at $100.

The selling prices for high-performance VR are more expensive. Oculus VR was set at $599 and it needs to work with a gaming pc which costs 1,000 dollar. Sony and HTC haven’t revealed their specific prices for VR.

Google has obtained a large amout of users for Google Cardboard. However, the consumers might turn their heads to better qulity and higher performance VR products.

Frank N. Magid Associates did a search concerned VR products. Among the interviewees, 25% of them heard about Oculus Rift, 20% came to Sony PS VR while only 17% of them heard about Google Cardboard.

Google might need to focus on enhancing the its technolog for the VR products. It is planning to recruit more talents to launch better VR products. Quality, performance are important for a product’s competitiveness.

Facebook spent $22 billion to acquire WhatsApp and made a great success. Zuckerberg once claimed that the company will start the superposition of business model when it obtains one billion users. WhatsApp is making change as its users come close to one billion.

It is reported that WhatsApp allows the interconnection of Facebook account in its settings. Facebook might enhance the experience of WhatsApp and Facebook for users with the help of user data interconnection.

WhatsApp has obtained 900 million users in September, 2015. Its users group get close to one billion. It becomes the boss among global mobile chatting programs.

According to the test for WhatsApp’s latest version, it might realize the interconnection of user data sharing with Facebook. Facebook might have bigger plans later then.

The developers found a hidden setting in the latest WhatsApp version ” share my WhatsApp account with Facebook” to enhance its Facebook experience. It is said that such setting does not appear in iOS version.

With this setting, it will realize the data sharing between Facebook and WhatsApp. However, Facebook and WhatsApp keep silent for this figure.

Facebook made promise for allowing WhatsApp to run independently when Facebook finished the acquisition. WhatsApp refused to inplant the ads and fancy figures. It is simply a mobile chatting program.

WhatsApp announced to cancel its one-dollar yearly subscription this month. It results in difficulties to charge their subscriptions by bank card info as there are about one billion users.

It will extend to some more services that bases on the need of consumers. It will come to an integrated service platform.

GoPro announced on Wednesday that its sales performance did not meet the expectation in the fourth quarter 2015. It addressed that it will streamline 7% of its workforce as well. Being affected with this news, GoPro share price dropped 28% after trading-hours on Wednesday.

GoPro revealed that the revenue of the fourth quarter was $435 million, and annual revenue was $1.6 billion. These figures are far below its market expectation. Thomson Reuters reported that some analysts predicted its fourth quarter revenue would be $511.9 million. The reason why 4Q revenue did not meet the expectation was its camera sales did not perform well as predicted.

Morgan Stanley analyst reduced GoPro target share price in October as Hero4 did not make a since releasing. GoPro cut the selling price of Hero4 shortly after its release. GoPro claimed that such price adjustment of Hero4 led to a loss of $21 million.

GoPro workforce increased by 50% in the past two years. It had about 1,500 employees by the end of 2015. To carry out this workforce reduction plan, GoPro will spend $5 million to $10 million to dismiss its employees.

Nicholas Woodman analyzed the reasons why Hero4 did not perform well were higher price and fewer promotions.

Its 4Q0215 performance is not a good sign for its development in 2016. GoPro is supposed to report the 4Q and annual earnings of 2015 on Feb. 3^rd.

GoPro share dropped $ 3.31, closing at $11.3. It encountered the range of a price drop at 22.66%.

Even though Samsung’s fourth quarter peformance did not perform as well as predicted, there are at least 10 analysts assume its share price might increase by 40% in 12 months.

Its share price declined three years in a row. Accoring to the investigation did by Bloomberg from 38 analysts, they assumed its share will increase in 12 months with an averagetarget price at 1.62 million KRW.

Such prediction was based on its latest quarters performance. Daishin Securities and Hyundai Securities reiterate Samsung’s buy rating.

Its current market value is 8 times of its last year’s profit. Its PE ratio is behind Apple’s 10.5 PE ratio, but it is higher than the average PE ratio 6.7.

Samsung will reveal the performances of related divisions later. The smartphone business grows slower while the semi-conduct division has potential to be the most profitable department then. Samsung’s market value lost $ 8 billion in last fiscal earnings.

Kwon Oh-Hyun claimed that the competition become intense. He urged its employees to give suggestions in the smartphone, television and flash chip business to obtain its technical leadership.

Samsung made adjustment in the management group. It appointed new mobile device officer Koh Dong Jin. It claimed to focus on software innovation. Koh Dong Jin was responsible for Samsung Pay and Knox security software.

Greg Roh from HMC Investment Securities claimed that Samsung could consider a different development direction, such as reducing expense, launching new brands and innovative technology. Innovation is important for its mobile business.

Apple share encountered sucession share decline for three days on Thursday. It is reported that Apple cuts orders expectation for its suppliers in the past months. Up to now, it lost $ 40 billion market value due to the decline of share.

On Thursday, its share dropped $4.25 at NASDAQ market, clsoing at $96.45. The range of a share drop was 4.22%. Apple received a succession drop over 8.4% within three days. Up to now in the new year, Apple share declined by at less 4%, while its share declined by 4.6% in 2015.

Morgan Stanley decreased the predict of iPhone output as the demand of iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus become weaker. It seems to be saturation of smartphone in some developed countries. Apple just released these two models in last September.

Its share decline was based on the report of Nikkei Asian Review. It reported Apple firm would cut 30% of iPhone output in the first quarter of 2016 that surprised many analysts.
SBS decreased iPhone sales expectation by 5%, down to 220 million units. It indicated iPhone 6s & 6s Plus lack of new features to attact more uses to upgrade to new versions. The another reason is that consumers might prefer its predecessors as they charge less.

Apple’s revenue growth relies much on iPhone demands. The sales of iPad is declining and it needs time for consumers to accept Apple Watch.

Apple still under the condition to open the App Store in India due to Indian policy issues. However, Apple pays much attention to the Indian development. One of the reasons is India has a great large poplular, ranking second in the world. Its mobile users came to a large figure as well.

Indian Telecom Regulatory Authority revealed the latest statistics recently, it showed that its mobile users in India reached 1.03 billion by October, 2015. The growth rate was 0.7% in comparison with September, that is, it obtained another 7 million mobile users in a month.

The mobile users of India crossed over American users in 2008. It is the second country that obtained more than one billion mobile users. China obtained one billion mobile users in 2012. At present, there are 12 operators to compete in India. The communications charges are nearly the most cheapest there.

The growth rate of iPhone in India increased to 93% between last April and last June. While China market just increased to 87%. The growth rate of iPhone 6s received more users than ever in Indian market in the past year. Apple would pay close attention to this new emerging market.

It is reported that Apple is negotiating with Indian government to develop more authorized dealers even though it did not open the App Store there yet.

According to Japanese medium reports, Panasonic plans to build the electric vehicle battery plantation in China. The total investment capital reached 2.7 billion yuan. It will team up with domestic enterprises to build this plantation which is supposed to start building in 2017.

Panasonic chose Dalian to build the plantation for producing blade vehicle and its auxiliaries of plug-in PHV lithium batteries. Panasonic owns battery plantation for PC computers in China, however, it is first time it builds a plantation of the specialized car battery. Its annual capacity is assumed to offer the batteries for 200,000 full electric vehicles.

According to the 2015 summer prediction by Fuji Keizai Group, the scale of Chinese full electric vehicles and PHEV in 2025 will be 7.5 times than 2015’s, that is, about 650,000 electric vehicles in the market. Such number is beyond the prediction.

The statistics of The China Association of Automotive Manufacturers suggested the capacity of full electric vehicles and PHEV increased by 4.4 times from January to November on the basis of year-on-year figure. The specific capacity is 290,000 vehicles. CAAM claimed that it has potential to increase to 350,000 for all-year statistics in 2015.

LG built its plantation in Nanjing in October. It is now introducing the on-board lithium battery to the car manufacturers. Panasonic wishes to build the localized production system so that it increases offers for car enterprises. It aims to reach the annual sales volume at 100 billion yen with the help of on-board lithium battery business.