Against russians deployed in the area. By consensus, the United NationsSecurity Council today formally nominated Antonio Guterres to be the next secretarygeneral. He spent 10 years as u. N. High commissioner for refugees he said he wants to serve the most vulnerable. The victims of conflict and terrorism, the victims of the violation of rights, the victims of poverty and injustices. The 193member General Assembly is expected to approve his nomination next week. Global news 24 hours a day powered by more than 2600 journalists and analysts around the world. Bloomberg technology is next. Emily im emily chang, this is bloomberg technology. Social media star snapchat may be getting ready for the Public Market. We will bring you up to speed on what we know. Plus, does anyone want to buy twitter . Shares fall 20 on news that prospects for a deal are falling apart. And a rare interview with the founder and ceo of chinas didi, how he won a care for and took over uber in asias biggest market. But first, snapchat prepares the paperwork to go public. According to people familiar with the matter, theyre aiming to sell shares at the first of next year but timing is tricky. Sources cite three key factors that the Parent Company is watching. Joining from new york, macs chest and max chaskin with the latest. What do we know about their plans for an ipo . Seeking roughly 25 billion, which a lot of people in Silicon Valley were worried that the air is being taken out of the bubble. Thatll give a lot of confidence because its a big improvement over their last valuation. The other thing is, theyre trying to do this quickly. Its pretty stunning when you think about how fast snapchat is moving. They only added the basic measuring features most of their competitors have in the past weeks and months and they Just Announced this glasses thing, just changed their name to snap inc. , which i think i just made a mistake there its wild how fast the story has moved. The i. P. O. Is the latest thing in whats been a crazy six months. Emily why do you think theyre Going Forward with this now . I know there are a number of factors out there they said will affect their time. Timing. Part of it is they are trying to seize on some momentum. Facebooks instagram just knocked off the basic functionality of snapchat. I think there must be concern about that and you want to seize the moment right now. Its been really good. And the other thing is again, snapchat is unproven. There may be a thought like, we may as well get public now rather than risk some problem in the private market. If private funding were to dry up in the coming 12 months or 18 months, that could be a problem for snapchat if it werent public. Its a combination of seizing the moment and also trying to time the market. Emily i spoke with twitter investor chris this week and the first thing he did when he saw me is snap, not use twitter and hes been twitters biggest cheerleader for the longest time. Take a listen to what he had to say about snapchat. Snapchat is less about the product and more about the product team. Its a company thats been willing and able to reinvent itself a few times. Theyre bold and take chances. When they walked up to me after a talk i gave, they said, we loved what you stand for, we want you in our deal. I said, they walked away and i told my younger Business Partner and he said, what . And by the time we got back to them, they did a deal with somebody else, probably cost us a few billion dollars. Emily he didnt get in on that deal but others did. Hes using the product innovation, the willingness to change as a positive, perhaps in comparison to twitter which has not changed. How are what do we know about the actual numbers here in terms of users and user growth . And the actual market that snapchat has been able to bite off . Max i think were talking about 150 million daily actives which is a big number. Im not sure twitter has been sort of squirrely about its daily users in the past but i think most people believe snapchat is seeing much better engagement than twitter and when you consider that the way that snapchat has grown and how young it is, thats pretty impressive. The other thing about snapchat right now is, its just cool. I think one of the things weve learned from watching the evolution of these social networks over the past decade is, that sort of thing matters. Twitter really seems to be struggling just to retain users, to get people excited about it, where snapchat, they are just bringing out new products, new ideas, sort of these new shows constantly and theres, you know, theres a real sense of momentum. Emily well see if cool is enough to spark Public Market investors. Our Bloomberg Business week reporter, thanks so much. Well continue the story tomorrow with light speed venture partner robbie maxer, the very First Venture capital firm to back snapchat. Turning now to tech m a. Qualcomm is moving closer to a deal with a dutch chipmaker. Nxp. People familiar say the two companies are making progress on price negotiations. Shares of both stocks rose in thursday trading. On the other hand, twitter, shares plunged the most since 2015 on reports that prospects for a deal are falling apart. Joining us for the latest on both stories, alex sherman in new york. Alex, lets start with twitter. Theres reporting now that google and disney are not making a bid for twitter. That sales force may be the only suitor remaining. What do we know . Alex its not all that surprising that google at this stage would say theyre not bidding. Our initial reporting indicated they might not bid. It really doesnt make sense, i would argue, for google to bid unless it knows someone else will do a deal for twitter. I think google is fine with an independent twitter. They have a Search Partnership there. You would think the reason theyd want to buy twitter is to secure that Search Partnership for the long haul. If they felt like twitter would be an independent company thered thered be no need to buy twitter. Disney, they were with a Financial Advisor last week. We havent been able to independently confirm theyre out of this yet so we dont know that for sure yet. Rico did say theyre not going to bid. Salesforce is still there. Salesforce has not back down. I reconfirmed that today. So they are still taking a look at this. Not to to say that a deal will get done, necessarily, but maybe now salesforce sees this potential transaction has actually moved in their direction, advantageously, if they are the only bidder they might get twitter for a lower price. Emily lets say a deal doesnt get done. After all the speculation, where does that leave twitter . A potential acquisition had been priced in. Now we see the shares plunge. Alex i would imagine if no teal gets done, expect twitter shares to fall even further than they are to have. Premium bakeda into that stock for months and months now will evaporate at least for the time being. Knowing twitter, the speculation would probably come back around sooner rather than later. I think that there are a lot of people that are close to twitter. Either advisors to twitter or people at the board level that want to see a transaction get done. So even if no deal happens now, i wouldnt necessarily rule out that no deal would happen in 2017. Emily quickly on qualcomm, n xp, we know theyre getting closer to a deal on price. How soon could this happen . Alex this one may happen sooner than you think. Originally, there had been reports that a deal might be two to three months away. Then we did a little reporting on it on friday. Now im hearing things have accelerated. The two sides have made pretty good progress. Theres still a valuation gap. Its less than 10 . From what i hear, n. X. P. Wants about 100 a share, qualcomm 120 a share. Qualcomm more than like 110 a share but they are making progress. There are active discussions. Qualcomm is the only potential suitor right now. So all of those reasons lead me to believe that we may actually see a deal get done, you know, at least lets say in the next few months. Emily thank you for that update and your great reporting this week. Facebook is working on a new Virtual Reality product thats a step above the samsung gear asbut not as powerful oculus rift. Aey said they are aiming for sweet spot between the products but its not yet ready for launch. Zuckerberg also demonstrated avatars that can be customized to look like real people, read hand movements, the point is to give us all a place in Virtual Reality. As facebook works on social software. Oculus already spent 250 million on developers and is pledging 250 million more. Coming up, xiaomi pushes into the u. S. We will hear from global Vice President hugo barra and sling tv ceo roger lynch. Emily welcome back to bloomberg tech, were monitoring some breaking news, headlines from the New York Post that verizon is pushing for a 1 billion discount on its yahoo acquisition. They agreed to buy yahoo for 4. Billion, but yahoo in the midst of a hacking scandal involving information stolen from over half a billion accounts this coming from the New York Post, source telling the New York Post, well work to confirm this but verizon reportedly asking for a 1 billion discount on its deal for yahoo. Turning now to streaming, the xiaomis set top box is entering the u. S. But chinas fast rising smartphone maker is entering a crowded space, from apple to google to amazon, major tech players have products streaming video to a tv. One thing that makes the mi box stand out, preinstalled sling tv which offers internet based live tv. Here with me now, roger lynch and xiaomis v. P. Hugo barra. Thank you so much for being here. Hugo, lets start with you. Why get in this market when there are a lot of players here already . Hugo you know our company well. Our mantra, the way we do business, our d. N. A. , is what we call innovation for everyone. Its this idea of bringing Cutting Edge Technology to everyone by making products in very large scale and selling them at, you know, very small margin. We saw an opportunity here in the u. S. To disrupt these particular living room space with this model. Thats why we brought mi box in partnership with google and sling tv. Were here because the cord cutting phenomenon seems to be going mass market. This is the right time to enter this space. Emily sling is available on other devices but if you go with the mi box, you get a discount. How many subscribers does sling have and how many more do you expect . Roger we dont release these numbers because were part of dish network. They are released as total scrap his dish has. Subscribers dish has. Xiaomi has shown to be a tough innovator in china. I think this has been a launch that people have been looking forward to and have been excited about. Emily will the sling app on the mi box work with voice commands . How will this work . Roger its a fully integrated experience so one of the innovative things were doing with xiaomi is when you purchase the box itll launch right into sling tv. This, whathinking on you hear people talk about all the time, i dont watch tv anymore, why do i have a cable such . People do watch a lot of tv. Video content is at a rise but they want to be their own programmer. They say, i want to buy a box but do i lose my cable subscription . By working with sling tv we put your cable suspicion as Internet Service inside the box so you get what you had before but you know longer need a cable subscription. This is so important for the product story, why people would want to buy this story. Out of the box, when you power on mi box for the first time, connect to wifi, go directly to live television, almost as if it was a cable box. We have a special arrangement with sling whereby during that first day you get to watch live tv, entirely for free, without a paywall so you can know how well it works. Emily its interesting because in china, Live Streaming is huge. Its far bigger than it is in the united states. And im wondering if you could describe that for me a little bit and how you expect Live Streaming in the u. S. To evolve. How will it get there . Hugo so its an interesting blend of the old and new. But Live Streaming in china has taken over both for big events, which is sort of something we already know, but the personal live stream, you Live Streaming yourself is a big trend as well. Well see how much of that translates to the u. S. I think whats more interesting over the next couple of years in the u. S. Are the big things you would only catch on your regular television now being available much more easily, both live as well as on demand later. Theres unbundling trends at play here that will accelerate this trend. Emily roger, how do you see the market evolving . Roger the Pay Tv Market is in a state of transition. Five years ago, pay tv penetration by households was around 88 . Today its down close to 80 . We can see the shifts happening where consumers are moving to more stream, putting together their own bundles with Different Services that werent available before. Were just at the beginning of a long shift that were going to see, moving to streaming. Emily google unveiled google home earlier this week, will sling work on that . Roger we look to work on every device, its important to be on every streaming device people are using. Emily hugo, you can order this online but you can also buy it at walmart. Is this an indication of how we may find future xiaomi products . Hugo well see. Were here one disruptive product at a time. This is the first one poised for disruption. We wanted a wide reach Retail Partnership and google actually brought us into walmart. Theyve known retail channels really well here for some time. So one retail channel is enough for us to start with, we chose a wide reach one and well go from there. Emily you used to work for google for a long time. Ill ask you in the next block what you think of their announcement this week. Hugo, youre sticking with me. Vice president of Global Operation for xiaomi. Roger lynch, thank you for stopping by. Coming up, we dig into xiaomis other products. And smartphone competition. We will be right back. This is bloomberg. Emily walmart is boosting a stake to just under morea move to strengthen market share in the Worlds Largest online market. They are tapping jds resources to help succeed in china, where it is estimated a quarter of retail growth will come from in the next five years. Theyre spending big on ecommerce to compete with amazon. Walmart just snapped up jet. Com last month. Competition in the cell phone continues to heat up. Xiaomi unveiled its latest most premium device, in hopes to challenge apple and samsung. Just this week google emerged as another serious contender with the launch of the pixel handset, all this as the Smartphone Market reaches saturation. Vice president of Global Operations hugo barra is with me. You ran android at google for a long time, so im curious what you think about the new phones and that google is making their own phones . Hugo i had a chance to try the pixel and pixel xl yesterday. Very impressive. I am a big fan. To me the most important thing google is doing here is brand. This is the first time were seeing a phone with a big g on the back. Weve been talking about the google phone for years, but it was never the google phone. Now it finally is. Emily is this competition . Hugo for sure its competition. im delighted because i think this is the kind of move that will shake up the industry in more ways than one. Emily how . Hugo it is a different kind of innovation. I think one person put it well when he said, the pixel is the vessel for a. I. It is precisely the future of innovation in this segment. Weve been seeing display innovation, battery innovation, camera innovation for a long time, those will continue but i think where the real User Experience differential will come from in the future is the sort of things were seeing google do. Emily would you consider using the Google Assistant in xiaomi phones . Hugo we already are to an extent. We ship with voice search and google now on all our phones. When google makes the assistant, the next generation available, we are interested in using it as well. Im a big fan. Emily lets talk about the new mi phone. This is, you know, your state of the art, highest end phone. Apple just came out with the new iphones. Samsung is having some issues, which well get to, but what makes you think this can reinvigorate smartphone growth . Hugo this is our latest flagship, mi 5s, a fiveinch device, crystal display. It has a couple of innovations, one is the way you want to lock the phone. We are using an under glass fingerprint recognition technology. Instead of a button, its a piece of glass with a little dimple so you can find it when youre not looking. Its the first time someone is using this technology which makes it faster, more elegant, looks much better too. As you can see. Then the other thing were doing also is the camera that were using, this is a 1. 65 micron large, large pixel camera sensor. Coincidently, the same one we think is being use on pixel. Emily whats your take take on the samsung issue . Have you seen any impact . Massive global recalls, people, you know, could potentially end up switching to xiaomi or other brands because of it. Hugo it is a real issue. potentially very significant backlash. We are one the biggest innovators in battery technology. We were the first ones, the only ones really to talk about the density specifications of our battery because were probably the leading player in china or india about how much juice we can get out a battery volume. Battery technology is complex, you have to test it a lot, and we do. We havent encountered these kind