TiVo Inc.TIVO -1.61% announced the highest net revenue and profit in the company’s history and strong subscriber growth, causing the company to predict profits ahead for the foreseeable future. The company, which has mostly posted losses since the second half of 2009, said results for its second fiscal quarter and ongoing royalty payments stemming from patent litigation eased doubts about its long-term profitability. “Everyone has been asking that question about TiVo for a decade,” said Tom Rogers, TiVo’s chief executive, in an interview. TiVo came early to the DVR business, but soon found its product being replicated in one way or another by many in the cable industry, as well as by new entrants from the Internet. Read more of this post
Apple Updates TV Box to Add Disney, Music, Weather Apps
Apple Inc. (AAPL) added programming from Walt Disney Co., Weather Channel LLC and music-video service Vevo LLC for Apple TV, stepping up the pace of bringing on new video content to its $100 Internet-connected set-top box. The material was added today with a software update, said Christine Monaghan, a spokeswoman for Apple. Two applications from Disney, Disney Channel and Disney XD, will have live and on-demand content, and will be available to subscribers of pay-TV services that carry the channels. Vevo and the Weather Channel will be available without a cable or satellite subscription, she said. Read more of this post
Hong Kong Faces Vexing Choice With Alibaba IPO Pitch
Hong Kong has a choice: grant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. a shareholder structure that mirrors the world’s largest Internet companies, or stick to rules meant to protect ordinary investors and risk losing the largest initial public offering since Facebook Inc. China’s biggest e-commerce company asked Hong Kong’s stock exchange to allow a partnership of more than 20 executives and shareholders to nominate a majority of board members, a person with knowledge of the matter said last week. That would enable founder Jack Ma, who owns just a 7.4 percent stake, and his management team to maintain control after an IPO. Read more of this post
Here’s The Incredible Amount Of Data That Goes Into IBM’s Tennis Analysis
AUG. 27, 2013, 8:00 AM
The U.S. Open starts this week, and rabid tennis fans are keeping track of each ace, break point, missed volley, and Rafael Nadal fist pump. IBM may have even the most stat-geeky fans beat, though. IBM SlamTracker’s Keys to the Match system calculates 41 million data points from eight years of Grand Slam matches to apply predictive analysis to every facet of every player’s game. Check out the infographic below to find out what went into IBM’s exhaustive data efforts, which could be applied to both sports and business. U.S. Open fans should visit IBM Sports for in-depth analysis of all the action, and follow IBM Sports on Instagram for animated data points and live pictures from the Open.
Amazon’s cloud computing service, AWS, has more than five times the combined capacity of its next 14 rivals, according to a research report by Gartner, as cited in The Seattle Times’ recent look at Amazon’s efforts to win the contract for the CIA’s cloud services. Most people regard Amazon as that online book and retail company. But the Gartner report argues that Amazon has reached a staggering level of dominance in enterprise-level computing services for big companies. The Seattle Times: AWS generates roughly $3 billion in annual revenue, according to analyst estimates, by offering services to businesses at a fraction of what it would cost if those businesses owned and ran their own computers. Read more of this post
Amazon wants its retail store to always be just a click away.
The Seattle retail giant announced Tuesday that developers can allow physical goods from Amazon.com to be purchased through just about any Android app. That means users could buy an actual calendar to hang on their wall while using a calendar app, or spices from a recipe app. It is easy to imagine how the new in-app purchasing could appeal for marketers: Stick a virtual pair of the latest Air Jordan shoes on a game character and offer them at a discount. Read more of this post
On November 22, 2010, at 7:55 PM, Apple’s Senior Vice President of marketing, Phil Schiller, blasted an email to top Apple executives. He had just seen an ad from Amazon, and he was not happy. He emailed Steve Jobs, Eddy Cue, who runs Apple’s Internet services, and Greg Joswiak, VP of marketing:
I just watched a new Amazon Kindle app ad on TV. It starts with a woman using an iPhone and buying and reading books with the Kindle app. The woman then switches to an Android phone and still can read all her books. While the primary message is that there are Kindle apps on lots of mobile devices, the secondary message that can’t be missed is that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android. Not fun to watch.
Steve Jobs replied a few hours later:
What do you recommend we do? The first step might be to say they must use our payment system for everything, including books (triggered by the newspapers and magazines). If they want to compare us to Android, let’s force them to use our far superior payment system. Thoughts?
GigaOm first dug up this email exchange. It is evidence in the Department of Justice’s eBook case against Apple. A few months after Jobs sent this email, Apple decided to cripple Amazon’s Kindle app for iPhones and iPads. Apple said that if Amazon wants to sell a book through iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system, then Apple would collect 30% of the sale. Amazon abandoned selling books straight through its app. Instead, users have to buy a book through the web, then it’s sent wirelessly to the app. A bit of a pain, but it doesn’t seem to have slowed Kindle sales. Quartz writer Zachary Seward notes that the larger point from this exchange is that Apple executives realized the oft-discussed eco-system lock-in advantage for Apple is not that strong. Since this email exchange, Apple’s lock-in has only gotten weaker. Just about every great app for iOS is also available on Android. People are increasingly using services like Netflix and Spotify, which work on both platforms. Those apps make iTunes less powerful, and therefore Apple’s lock-in less powerful. Apple would counter any concerns by saying it has the highest customer satisfaction rate of any smartphone on the planet. And that’s the best indication that customers are going to stick with the iPhone. This seems to be the ad from Amazon that prompted the email:
Why hasn’t the future arrived for one of consumers’ most used gadgets?
By John Patrick Pullen
FORTUNE — After a month of phone tech support, a month of wireless router reconfigurations, a month in which I restored my computer to a backup from six weeks before, and a month of spotty, poor Internet service, I finally yanked my high-speed modem out of the wall last Monday and hauled it into my local Comcast office for a replacement. And it was there, flanked by more than a dozen people with phone, television, and Internet problems similar to mine — all watching Night at the Museum in the waiting room, like we were stranded in a bus station at the side of the information superhighway — that I thought, “Hey, that’s a pretty cable box they’ve got there. I wonder how I can get that for myself?” Read more of this post
The Economist explains: Is Netflix killing cable television?
Aug 26th 2013, 23:50 by A.E.S.
NEXT MONTH the Emmys, the American television awards, could label a show that never appeared on a television channel as the year’s best drama. “House of Cards”, a series about political maneuvering starring the actor Kevin Spacey (pictured), is available only on Netflix, an online-video service. The show’s success highlights the maturation of video-streaming firms, and the threat they pose to traditional television. People can now watch television-quality shows, including “House of Cards”, only through Netflix, seemingly diminishing the need to pay for a cable subscription. Is Netflix killing cable television? Read more of this post
“BLACKFISH”, a gripping new documentary about killer whales in captivity, feels like an action thriller. Opening with the death of Dawn Brancheau, a trainer killed by a whale at Seaworld in Florida in 2010, it builds suspense with a haunting score, shock revelations and emotional footage of the killer in question—a sorry-looking orca called Tilikum. This film (now available on DVD) is an example of a new breed of theatrically-minded, more commercially viable documentaries that are contributing to the genre’s increasing success. Recent British Film Institute data show that the number of documentaries released in British cinemas has grown steadily every year over the last decade, from a measly four in 2001 to 86 last year. Documentaries now also account for about 16% of the Cannes film market according to its director, Jerome Paillard, compared with 8% five years ago. Netflix, an online streaming service that also makes television series, recently announced that it will soon be producing documentaries for the next wave of its original content drive. Read more of this post
Aereo Wins Send Networks on Hunt to Stop Streaming TV
Broadcasters stymied by court losses in New York are turning to judges in California and Massachusetts in their campaign to shut down the Aereo Inc. online streaming TV service backed by Barry Diller. Aereo, which relays broadcast TV to subscribers over the Internet, continues to expand its service to more U.S. cities even as CBS Corp. (CBS), Comcast Corp. (CMCSA)’s NBC, Walt Disney Co. (DIS)’s ABC and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.’s Fox pursue copyright litigation that may wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Read more of this post
As experienced bulldozer drivers retire, heavy equipment manufacturers are including technology in new models to make precise earth-moving easier. This Komatsu bulldozer has a ‘machine control’ system that uses GPS to program movements around a work site.
CARTERSVILLE, Ga.—As he closed the door, leaving me alone at the controls of a 41,000-pound bulldozer with list price of nearly $432,000, a Komatsu Ltd.6301.TO -1.16% executive shouted, “No worries!” That’s when I started sweating. Typing I can do—blindfolded, if necessary. But mechanical flair has always eluded me. I recently had to ask a neighbor to help me start a lawn mower. Even so, Komatsu assured me that technological advances would allow me to learn the basics of dozing in a couple of hours. Dozers are used to smooth ground for roads and runways or shape the contours of building sites and golf courses. They are among the trickier types of heavy machinery to operate because drivers must shave huge mounds of earth to precise contours, often while perched on hillsides or mired in mud. Unlike excavators, dozers typically are in motion as they move earth. Read more of this post
It’s possible, even likely, that Microsoft is about to enter the darkest period in the firm’s history. Darker, even, than July 2000, when it seemed the US government might dissolve the house that Bill built, and force the company to be split into two different companies. The revenue Microsoft earned in the quarter ending in March 2013, $20.5 billion, probably represents a high water mark for the company, at least for the foreseeable future. In the most recent quarter, the company’s revenue missed expectations, which Microsoft blamed on ongoing weakness in the market for PCs. There is no sign that demand for PCs is going to pick up again—even Intel is projecting sales will be flat, at best—and plenty that the world’s demand for PCs, or at least the kind that run Microsoft Windows, is in terminal decline (1). Read more of this post
Microsoft’s decline from technology superpower to office utility has many causes, but none has received more focus than the management technique known inside the company as “stack ranking.”
Everyone on every team is divided into three groups. A few are top performers, and are eligible for promotion and larger bonuses. Most are average. The rest are denied bonuses and often asked to leave. The performance reviews that determine these rankings occur every six months. Read more of this post
Ballmer Departure From Microsoft Was More Sudden Than Portrayed by the Company
Published on August 25, 2013
by Kara Swisher
According to sources close to the situation, the departure of CEO Steve Ballmer from Microsoft last week was more sudden than was depicted by the company in itsannouncement that he would be retiring within the next year in a planned smooth transition. It was neither planned nor as smooth as portrayed. While the decision to go seems to have technically been Ballmer’s, interviews with dozens of people inside and outside the company, including many close to the situation, indicate that he had not aimed to leave this soon and especially after the recent restructuring of the company that he had intensely planned. Instead, sources said Ballmer’s timeline had been moved up drastically — first by him and then the nine-member board, including his longtime partner and Microsoft co-founder and chairman Bill Gates — after all agreed that it was best if he left sooner than later. Read more of this post
Tech is big in New York — but the alley still ain’t the valley. Here’s our annual report card.
FORTUNE — Last May when Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Marissa Mayer paid $1.1 billion in cash to buy Tumblr, New York techies cheered. Finally! A New York startup exits for more than a billion dollars! This hasn’t happened since Doubleclick sold to Google in 2007. And it is one of the signs people look for in determining whether the tech scene is robust enough to rival Silicon Valley. Read more of this post
Tesla Market Value Rises to $20 Billion on EV Optimism
Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA)’s market value exceeded $20 billion on investor optimism that Elon Musk can keep widening the appeal of electric-powered cars as the company’s sales increase. The stock climbed 5.7 percent to a $171.03 at 12:02 p.m. New York time after reaching an intraday record of $172.75. Shares of the Palo Alto, California-based company, which had its initial public offering just three years ago, have surged about fivefold this year.
Facebook Market Value Tops $100 Billion Amid Mobile Push
Facebook Inc. (FB)’s market value passed $100 billion amid optimism that the world’s largest social network can bolster sales from mobile advertising.
The stock increased 2.6 percent to $41.61 at 12:45 p.m. in New York. Earlier, it touched $41.94, the highest intraday price since Facebook’s first trading day on May 18, 2012. Before today, the shares had advanced 52 percent this year, compared with a 17 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Read more of this post
Many tech observers have predicted the demise of email – or wished for it to come as soon as possible. That assumption is predicated on the idea that because email is almost as old as the Internet itself, it must be outmoded. Those predictions have never come to pass, even as our digital habits have shifted to mobile, which, with its smaller screens and pokier keyboards, are less email-friendly. In fact, we’re busy hungrilydevouring email on our mobile devices. Read more of this post
A local Taiwanese electronics conglomerate Kinpo Group unveiled Monday a three-dimensional printer priced as low as US$499 to tap into what it calls a promising industry. The 3D printer dubbed the da Vinci will carry the brand name of XYZprinting, a joint venture by two Kinpo subsidiaries: Kinpo Electronics and Cal-Comp Electronics and Communications. Read more of this post
Closer Look: Xiaomi Pulls a Knife, Sword on Electronics Industry
Young smartphone maker is apparently preparing to unveil new gadgets, but more than that it is aiming at nothing short of supremacy in its field
By staff reporter Zhu Yishi
(Beijing) – Three-year-old smartphone maker Xiaomi Mobile Internet Co. is again in the spotlight as it draws closer to the debut of much-awaited electronic gadgets. The firm has sent out numerous letters inviting people to attend a press conference on September 5. Printed on the letters are a unique sword and knife, a clear reference to a novel that every Chinese person with the slightest interest in kung fu probably gets. He who owns the sword or the knife can rule the kingdom, or so the novel says. If anything speaks more loudly than ever of Xiaomi’s founder Lei Jun’s ambition for industry supremacy, this is it. Read more of this post
From Intern to VP: Meet Baidu’s 29-Year-Old Boss of Mobile
By Lulu Yilun Chen – Aug 25, 2013
For Baidu, a company where the average age of its 21,000 employees is 26, promoting a 29-year-old to vice president may not seem like a big deal. Mark Zuckerberg, after all, is that age. But Li Mingyuan, who began at the company in 2004 as an intern, last month became the youngest vice president ever of China’s largest search engine. And he’s taking on no small task: head of the mobile and cloud division for a company worth $49 billion. Read more of this post
eJiajie is a location-based housekeeping app developed by the team of taxi app Dididache, which makes inroads to a new field after the government put curbs on the taxi app sector. With more than 3,000 registered housekeepers, eJiajie enables users to get quick access to housekeepers near their homes (source in Chinese). eJiajie charges 39 yuan ($6.32) for two hours, allegedly the lowest in Beijing city. A star-rating system was established for the service of each housekeeper. Housekeepers with higher ratings will get a higher service charge. eJiajie will buy insurance policies in case housekeepers accidentally broke something in clients’ homes. eJiajie charges housekeepers 300 yuan to 600 yuan of annual fee, promising to offer more than 200 orders a year. The company planned to include confinement care, elder care and babysitting to the business lineup. In addition, it also plans to train housekeepers. (source in Chinese).
China UnionPay considers direct interface for collecting payments
Staff Reporter
2013-08-27
Total online payments in China in 2014 are projected to touch 8 trillion yuan (US$1.3 trillion) and the billions generated in credit card transaction fees are expected to trigger an intense competition. When a purchase is made at an online shop worth 100 yuan (US$16) via credit card through Alipay on an e-commerce site like Taobao, the store has to pay 1 yuan (US$0.16) to the bank in lieu of a service fee. The distribution of that single yuan per transaction between the card issuing banks, payment processors and cleaning houses has created a battle for profits. China UnionPay wants to set up a direct interface that will allow it to collect payments itself. As a result, a majority of third party payment providers would start losing their profits, reports Shanghai’s First Financial Daily. Read more of this post
ESPN likes to call itself the Worldwide Leader in Sports, and by most every measure it is in a league of its own. The network produced 35,000 hours of programming in 2012, including at least half of all live athletic events televised in the United States. It is a prodigious cash machine, regularly generating nearly half of the operating profit of Disney, its parent company. Wielding its wealth, it buys the rights to nearly all it desires: $15.2 billion for “Monday Night Football,” $5.6 billion for Major League Baseball and $7.3 billion for a 12-year deal to broadcast the new college football playoff system, to name just a few. From its sprawling 123-acre campus in Bristol, Conn., ESPN operates seven national channels, an industry-leading Web site, a magazine and international sites like ESPNcricinfo.com, for cricket fans. Read more of this post
SAN FRANCISCO — As a young executive at Microsoft, Steven A. Ballmer helped topple older, slower-moving technology giants like the Digital Equipment Corporation, Wang and Novell. These days, it is Microsoft’s turn to fend off the upstarts as it struggles to compete in a computing world that is increasingly mobile and based in a “cloud” of Internet-connected computers to which many customers gain access at the same time. It’s all part of the inevitable life cycle for technology companies. “Getting disrupted is the defining characteristic of this industry,” said Aaron Levie, the chief executive of Box, an online data storage company. “You can even have a near monopoly like Microsoft did, and then everything gets redefined.” Read more of this post
Under Jeff Bezos, Washington Post poised to become incubator for media innovation
Diane Francis | 13/08/24 | Last Updated: 13/08/23 2:50 PM ET
There is speculation as to what Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is going to do with his latest acquisition, the venerable Washington Post.
Jeff Bezos has already transformed one traditional print business — books — into a digital one. The experience provides a blueprint for how the billionaire technology executive is now poised to overhaul newspapers following his US$250 million acquisition of the Washington Post. But it’s really not difficult to discern. Bezos is going to do to the media (newspapers, magazines and television) what Amazon did to bookstores and authors. One need only consider his mission statement for Amazon, the book business he began in 1994: “Our vision is to have every book ever printed, in any language, available in under 60 seconds.” Read more of this post
SAN FRANCISCO—VMware Inc. VMW +2.74% isn’t exactly a household word, at least outside of Silicon Valley. But the software maker’s annual conference has become a key meeting place for those who help manage computer rooms—a techie tribe grappling with major changes. The event it started, called VMworld, is kicking off in a convention center here this week. It comes as a technology approach that the company pushed—to change how servers are used—is beginning to affect other markets. Read more of this post
Months before Apple Inc. AAPL -0.39% unveiled its iPad in January 2010, the tech world was buzzing about mockups of a tablet computer from Microsoft Corp.MSFT +7.29% Created by an inventor of the company’s Xbox videogame machine, the Courier folded like a book and let users sketch and jot ideas on a touchscreen. That spring, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer told employees at Courier’s Seattle laboratory that he was pulling the plug on the device. Mr. Ballmer said he was redirecting resources to the next version of the company’s Windows operating system, which was more than two years away, according to Georg Petschnigg and other former employees of the lab. Read more of this post
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Magazine publisher Conde Nast announced a major partnership with Amazon.com Inc on Tuesday in which the Internet retailer will handle print and digital subscriptions for glossy publications such as Vogue, Wired and Vanity Fair. Conde Nast is the first magazine publisher to collaborate with Amazon on this type of service, a move that will simplify and eventually save money on its subscription process and give it access to a huge new customer base. Currently, subscriptions involve direct mail and stacks of magazine insert cards. Read more of this post
H.E.R.O. stands for “Honorable. Exponential. Resilient. Organization.” and is operationalized into a unique, systematic 4-step investment process to identify the winners. The investment objective seeks to capture long-term investment returns created by disruptive forces and innovation by focusing on high-quality and liquid listed equities in the Asia-Pacific region that ride on and benefit from them. Through our cross-sector and in-depth fundamental research process, the Fund aim to provide access to companies whom we believe are run by high-integrity, honorable and far-sighted owner-operators with a higher sense of purpose in solving High-Value Problems for their target customers and society, and have unique, scalable and wide-moat business models with sustainable competitive advantages and innovative products, services, and processes to create, expand and service their total addressable market, including the resiliency and balance sheet strength to maintain or grow profitability, pricing power and market positions through up/downturns in the economy.
Bamboo Innovator 