Lyft says it listened to offers, but is not for sale

Lyft is disputing reports from The New York Times and other sites (including Engadget) that the company is actively seeking a buyer. “Getting approached and then having it characterized as us wanting to sell the business and failing to do so is a large mischaracterization,” President John Zimmer told Business Insider.

The NYT reported that Lyft tried to sell itself to Apple, Google, Amazon, Uber and Didi Chuxing, Uber’s new partner in China. However, it added that the company has $1.4 billion cash in the bank and is not exactly desperate. Lyft recently cemented a partnership with GM on self-driving vehicles to keep up with Uber, which is developing its own fleet.

We need to let people know that we’re not looking for a buyer, so that’s not a legitimate part of the story.

Lyft reportedly hired a bank specializing in takeovers, but said it had multiple offers and was obliged to check them out. Zimmer said that the company never put itself up for sale, though. “We need to let people know that we’re not looking for a buyer, so that’s not a legitimate part of the story.”

Furthermore, Zimmer blasted rival Uber for telling Bloomberg that it would pay no more than $2 billion for Lyft, despite a valuation estimated at around $5.5 billion. “I think it shows a bit of overstepping on Uber’s part … that fully demonstrates who is behind this,” he said.

Despite the denial, Zimmer wouldn’t discuss which companies wanted to buy Lyft or for how much. However, he did say the company had its best July ever and is on track to hit $2 billion in sales for the year. “We’re focused on being an independent business and having the largest impact on car ownership as we possibly can,” he stressed.

Source: Business Insider

Lyft President Says ‘We’re Not Looking for a Buyer’ Following Reports of Attempted Sale

Lyft co-founder and president John Zimmer today refuted reports from over the weekend that the ride-hailing company was seeking out buyers for a potential purchase — reportedly including Apple — outright telling Business Insider that “Lyft is not seeking a buyer.” According to Zimmer, Lyft itself was approached for a purchase opportunity, which was misconstrued in reports by The New York Times and Bloomberg as Lyft actively seeking out to be bought by a major company, including potential candidates like Amazon, General Motors, and even rival Uber.

Zimmer said these reports “crossed a line,” leading to the company needing to address them head-on and break its usual silence on these types of rumors focused on mergers and acquisitions. The most ire seems to be aimed at the Bloomberg angle on the story, which specifically stated that Uber “wouldn’t pay above $2 billion for Lyft,” coming in far below Lyft’s reported $9 billion estimated value.

Lyft president John Zimmer (left) and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick (right)

“We have to be careful with this type of thing for confidentiality reasons until Friday, when we feel like the line was crossed in that it was characterized as us trying to and failing to sell the business,” Zimmer said. “And as Friday happened, with both that characterization and the Bloomberg report, we said enough is enough. We need to let people know that we’re not looking for a buyer, so that’s not a legitimate part of the story. I think it shows a bit of overstepping on Uber’s part with the Bloomberg story that fully demonstrates who is behind this.”

Zimmer’s language targets Uber and its CEO Travis Kalanick as the catalyst behind Lyft’s M&A rumors, although he didn’t go into specific details regarding how he believes its rival began the chain of rumors that led to the reports over the weekend. Zimmer also declined to tell Business Insider which companies did in fact approach Lyft with a purchasing opportunity, with the publication saying that Lyft “isn’t quite ready to be transparent” due to apparent confidentiality agreements set in place at the company.

Lyft is currently the second-largest ride-hailing app in the United States behind Uber. Although Zimmer believes this rivalry makes it easy for outsiders to view the company as bitter, he mentioned that he and the company are happy with Lyft’s current trajectory. “We’re focused on being an independent business and having the largest impact on car ownership as we possibly can,” Zimmer said. “I don’t think [independence] is a requirement, but I believe right now it’s the best path.”

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MIUI 8 now rolling out for Redmi Note and Mi 4i, coming soon for other devices

It’s time for a software update.

After months of beta testing, MIUI 8 is now available for download on select Xiaomi phones. The stable ROM is being rolled out via an OTA update to the Redmi Note (3G and 4G editions) and Mi 4i starting today, with other devices slated to receive the update in the coming days and weeks.

MIUI 8 will be available on these devices:

• Mi Max
• Mi 5
• Mi 4i
• Mi 4
• Redmi Note 3
• Redmi 3S
• Redmi 3S Prime
• Redmi 1S
• Redmi 2
• Redmi 2 Prime
• Redmi Note 4G
• Redmi Note 3G

MIUI 8 offers a whole array of new features, including the ability to take scrolling screenshots, a dual apps feature that lets you sign into two different WhatsApp accounts from the same device, and so much more. As of now, there’s no mention of when we’ll see the update make its way to other devices, but we’ll let you know as soon as we hear more.

Did you install MIUI 8 on your Redmi Note or Mi 4i? How are you liking the update?

Lenovo and Motorola phones will come with Office, Skype, and OneDrive pre-installed

Motorola’s phones have stayed relatively free of any pre-loaded apps, but that’s changing now as part of a new patent cross-licensing deal between Lenovo and Microsoft. The move will see select Lenovo and Motorola phones offering the Office suite along with Skype and OneDrive out of the box.

Microsoft has inked similar deals with top Android manufacturers over the years, including Samsung, ASUS, LG, Sony, Xiaomi, and HTC. There’s no mention as to which specific models will get the productivity apps, but Microsoft’s corporate vice president Nick Parker mentioned in the official statement that they will be pre-installed on “Lenovo’s premium devices.”

The move makes sense for Microsoft seeing as how the Redmond giant is transitioning into a services company. Instead of collecting royalties from handset manufacturers over intellectual property, it is getting its productivity apps bundled into millions of phones.

Samsung unveils first 4G-enabled Tizen phone in India for ₹4,590 ($68)

Samsung has rolled out its third Tizen handset in the Indian market, the Z2 (the first was the Z1, and then Samsung launched the Z3). The phone is the first in the Tizen range to offer LTE connectivity, and will go up for sale starting August 29 via Samsung’s offline channels and e-commerce store Paytm. Much like its predecessors, the Z2 is aimed at the entry-level segment, with a retail price of ₹4,590 ($68).

As you can imagine, the hardware on offer with the Z2 is fairly basic, which is in the form of a 4-inch WVGA (800 x 480) display, 1.5GHz quad-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 8GB storage, microSD slot, 5MP rear camera, 0.3MP front camera, and a 1500mAh battery.

Things get much more interesting on the software front, where we’re seeing the latest iteration of Tizen. Samsung says that the phone has been designed from the ground up in its Bengaluru R&D facility, with a slew of India-specific features on offer.

The first is called My Money Transfer, which lets customers transfer money (up to ₹5,000) even when there isn’t an active internet connection. Then there’s S Bike Mode, which is debuting on Tizen for the first time. The feature routes calls to an automated service to prevent distracted driving. The Z2 also offers Ultra Data Saving Mode, as well as the ability to unlock the phone with gestures, pinning apps to the home screen, and more.

Tizen OS isn’t as memory-intensive as Android, which means that the Z2 should be capable of handling basic tasks with ease despite its meager hardware.

By pricing the phone under ₹5,000 ($75), Samsung is clearly targeting feature phone buyers. There are 550 million feature phones in India, and over 10 million new phones are being sold every month. With the 4G-enabled Z2, Samsung is looking to entice feature phone users into making the switch to their first smartphone. The Jio Preview offer — which gives unlimited LTE data for 90 days on Jio’s 4G network — is the icing on the cake.

Apple Patent Details Visual-Based AR Navigation Device

Apple has been granted an augmented reality navigation patent stemming from its acquisition of AR startup Flyby Media earlier this year (via AppleInsider).

The patent was published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office under the title “Visual-based inertial navigation”, and describes a system that allows a consumer device to position itself in three-dimensional space using data from cameras and sensors.

The system combines images from an onboard camera with measurements gleaned from a gyroscope and accelerometers as well as other sensors, to build a picture of the device’s real-time position in physical space.

The patent notes that visual-based inertial navigation systems can achieve positional awareness down to the centimeter scale without the need for GPS or cellular network signals. However, the technology is unsuitable for implementation in typical mobile devices because of the processing demands involved in variable real-time location tracking.

To overcome the limitation, Apple’s invention uses something called a sliding window inverse filter (SWF) that minimizes computational load by using predictive coding to map the orientation of objects relative to the device.

The system could be used in a navigational AR device that overlays an output image with location-based information. One scenario describes how the technology could be used to pinpoint items in a retail store as a user walks among the aisles. Another describes the use of depth sensors to generate a 3D map of a given environment.

Whether or not Apple uses the patent in an upcoming product is obviously unknown at this time, but the company has been relatively open about its interest in innovating in the virtual reality and AR space. Apple is said to have a large team experimenting with headsets and other technologies and is believed to have been working in the area since at least early 2015.

The patent was filed in 2013 and credits former Flyby Media employees Alex Flint, Oleg Naroditsky, Christopher P. Broaddus, Andriy Grygorenko and Oriel Bergig, as well as University of Michigan professor Stergios Roumeliotis, as its inventors.

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