The 5 Major Events in 2016 with Sameer Singh

Sameer Singh from App Annie and our host Bernard Leong discuss the five major events which rocked the Asia landscape in 2016: (a) Softbank’s acquisition of ARM for US$32B, (b) Pokemon Go, (c) Uber and Didi’s deal in China, (d) the Indian unicorn startups apocalypse & (e) the ecommerce war between Amazon & Alibaba in Southeast Asia. We also examine other interesting events that had happened and its implications to 2017.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Sameer Singh (@sameer_singh17, LinkedIn, main site), Industry Analysis Director of App Annie & Founder of Tech-thoughts.net (see his article “2017 Predictions for the App Economy” in App Annie).
5 Events that rock 2016 in Asia
- Softbank acquired ARM for US$32B. (See episode 126 with David Corbin) [1:35]
- The Pokemon Go Phenomenon (See episode 127 with Serkan Toto) [4:41]
- Uber and Didi in China (See episode 128 with Josh Horwitz) [10:11]
- India Unicorn Startups Apocalypse (See episode 134 with Newley Purnell) [11:45]
- Ecommerce War between Alibaba and Amazon from India to Southeast Asia with consolidation of companies such as Lazada and Redmart (See episode 143 with Jon Russell) [13:18]
Side Events that we considered:
- Tencent’s investment of US$175M in Hike with 1.4B valuation for India market [16:28]
- US Elections and SoftBank and Foxconn’s response to Donald Trump [20:36]
- Smartwatch / Wearable Expectations Implode [22:09]
- Samsung Note 7 Debacle (and that ends Samsung’s year in a smoke) [24:15]

Podcast Information:

The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bleongcw) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk on Indiegogo (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, Altizen and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack.