THE NEWS WRAP: Google to relaunch Android One in India

Google is relaunching its Android One cut-price smartphone project in India with the aim of delivering a $US50 phone.

It’ll be on the back of a “very large-scale” investment programme, managing director in India and Southeast Asia Rajan Anandan says.

As the Financial Times reports, the original launch at the end of last year, with phones costing $100, was “not delivered to expectations”, with supply chain problems leading to product shortages.

“It is like any company when you try to launch a new initiative – we had a few hiccups,” Anandan says.

Sidecar pivots away from Uber to deliveries

Sidecar has been pushed out of the on-demand ride-hailing market by the likes of Uber and Lyft, deciding to rebrand as a delivery company for businesses.

It seems Uber and Lyft have now pulled so far ahead that there’s no room for any other competitors or newcomers in the market.

As Forbes reports, the US-based startup is moving most of its employees into the delivery area, and CEO Sunil Paul says although they often were the ones coming up with the ideas first, Uber has become unstoppable.

“In some ways, I’m proud of Uber,” Paul says.

“They were able to take the ride-sharing innovation, rebrand it as UberX, and really grow it and scale it like clearly no one else was able to – us or Lyft.

“It shows that our idea really does work. We’re still proud of the authorship even if it ends up being executed by someone else.”

Investors are pouring money into freight startups

Silicon Valley investors have pumped more than $US1 billion into freight-forwarding startups since the start of last year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

They’re all trying to find the startup that successfully puts the $US160 billion-a-year business into the internet age.

It’s becoming a very competitive market for startups, and investors have put in twice as much money into this realm in the last year than in the five years before that.

Overnight

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 46.37, falling 0.27% overnight to 17,373.38. The Australian dollar is currently trading at US74 cents.

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