Showing posts with label HTC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HTC. Show all posts

2017-09-23

Tech Review | Apple $AAPL Special Event Postpartum Depression?

Tech Review (TR 2017-09-23)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech news with commentary, analysis and opinion: Features • 1) Apple $AAPL Special Event Postpartum Depression? 2) Google & HTC: Everyone Wants To Make A High-end Phone, 3) Cord-Cutting Trends--Cable Is For Old People, 4) Investing: Mass Psychology, Diversification, Gurus, US$, Buffett,  5) ICYMI Tech News.

1) Apple $AAPL Special Event Postpartum Depression?
 Apple Special Event. September 12, 2017.
NASDAQ:AAPL:
 $AAPL

2) Everyone Wants To Make A High-End Phone: Google & HTC
 Pixel Phone
Google (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) and HTC Corporation (TWSE: 2489"announced a definitive agreement under which certain HTC employees – many of whom are already working with Google to develop Pixel smartphones – will join Google. HTC will receive US$1.1 billion in cash from Google as part of the transaction. Separately, Google will receive a non-exclusive license for HTC intellectual property (IP) ... this agreement also represents a significant investment by Google in Taiwan as a key innovation and technology hub ... expected to close by early 2018."--HTC.com, 21 Sep 2017.--About 2,000 HTC staffers to join Google; HTC to continue making its own smartphones, including a new flagship model.

See also: Android zero-touch enrollment: seamless and secure enterprise deployment | blog.google: carrier partners who plan to offer zero-touch: USA: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile; Europe: BT, Deutsche Telekom; Asia-Pacific: Softbank, Telstra.

3) Cord-Cutting Trends--Cable Is For Old People: 
CordCutter
Cord Cutters to Top 22 Million in U.S. by End of 2017 (Study) | Variety.com: "By 2021, the number of cord-cutters will nearly equal the number of people who have never had pay TV — a total of 81 million U.S. adults." See also Cable News Is Almost Exclusively Watched by Old People.
"The last couple of years, a few friends pulled the plug on cable/satellite ... my daughter Katie ditched the corded life, as have many (most?) of her Millennial friends. They have been doing the "streaming thing," first with subscription models such as Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Prime, and then with expanded services offering network bundles: Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, Hulu with Live TV, YouTube TV, etc. Those who want to add a little "premium" to their lives can get stand-alone services from HBO or Showtime. (A basic guide to streaming options can be found on the Consumer Reports free site.)."--SeekingAlpha.com.  
Editor's note: best option for many may be either, or both, an Amazon Prime subscription (using an Amazon Fire TV Stick which will give you access to Amazon Prime content as well as Netflix (subscription), HBO and much more via Amazon Channels, AND/OR a Google Chromecast to access the free and à la carte and subscription content available from the internet and via Google Play (including apps). Total one-time hardware cost less than $75.00 (Fire Stick $39.99 + Chromecast $35). Put a little money into a quality screen, good internet connection (including router and modem), and pay for only the content you really want.

4) Investing
"Investing, in other words, is an exercise in mass psychology. I’ve spent decades studying it, and believe that one way to predict future market moves is to sort through the narratives that sweep through the population and influence decisions on whether to buy or sell. Such an analysis is a matter of art as much as science, however. Getting it right is crucial in the United States right now, because stock market valuations are already high enough to be worrisome."--Robert J.Shiller, Sept 15, 2017, NYTimes.com.

Separating the Dos From the Don'ts of Investing | Bloomberg.comDiversification is the idea of reducing specific risk in your portfolio.

Investment GurusBeware of investing advice from market gurus | usatoday.com"... the ninth anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy and the subsequent collapse of our country’s financial system. One of the most important lessons we can learn is that no one — not even the experts — saw it coming."

US$--The Demise of the U.S. Dollar? Don't Hold Your Breath--"The USD is still the dominant reserve currency, despite decades of diversification. Global reserves (allocated and unallocated) are over $12 trillion. Note that China's RMB doesn't even show up in allocated reserves--it's a non-player because it's pegged to the USD. Why hold RMB when the peg can be changed at will? It's lower risk to just hold USD ... the problem of replacing the USD in all its roles is that no other issuer has a large enough economy and is willing to shoulder the risks and burdens of issuing a free-floating currency in sufficient size to meet global demands."--Charles Hugh Smith

Warren Buffett, The Sage of Omaha: “Whenever I hear people talk pessimistically about this country (U.S.), I think they’re out of their mind ... It has been 241 years since Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence ... Being short America has been a loser’s game. I predict to you it will continue to be a loser’s game.” Buffett said he expects the Dow Jones Industrial Average to be “over 1 million” in 100 years, up from Tuesday’s close of 22,370.80, given where the index was roughly a century ago.--Buffett speaking this week in New York.


5) ICYMI Tech News:

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo


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2017-09-09

Tech Review | Amazon HQ2: Second Headquarters North America (video)

Tech Review (TR 2017-09-09)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech news:
Features • 1) Amazon HQ2: Second Headquarters North America (video), 2) Why Hurricane Harvey Won't Slow Down Houston, 3) Leading Cloud Providers Run Away with the Market: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, 4) Investing: Roku IPO, Best IPO, Uber, AT&T $T, 5) ICYMI Tech News: Huawei, Apple, Samsung, Google, HTC, Xiaomi, Facebook, Angry Birds IPO, Equifax data breach.

1) Amazon HQ2: Second Headquarters North America

Amazon Announces Public Hunt for New Headquarters
Video above published Sep 7, 2017, by Bloomberg.com: Amazon.com Inc.,  (NASDAQ: AMZN), is breaking from its history of secret expansions with a public hunt for a second headquarters, spurring quick interest from cities eager to land a workforce of as many as 50,000 people. Bloomberg's Gerrit De Vynck and Shira Ovide, a Bloomberg Gadfly columnist, have more on "Bloomberg Technology." Ovide's opinions are her own (not Bloomberg's).

Amazon.com Inc. Press Release"Sep. 7, 2017—Amazon today announced plans to open Amazon HQ2, a second company headquarters in North America. Amazon expects to invest over $5 billion in construction and grow this second headquarters to include as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs. In addition to Amazon’s direct hiring and investment, construction and ongoing operation of Amazon HQ2 is expected to create tens of thousands of additional jobs and tens of billions of dollars in additional investment in the surrounding community. Amazon is opening the Amazon HQ2 Request for Proposal (“RFP”) now, and local and state government leaders interested in learning more about how they can bring Amazon to their community can visit www.amazon.com/amazonHQ2. Amazon estimates its investments in Seattle from 2010 through 2016 resulted in an additional $38 billion to the city’s economy – every dollar invested by Amazon in Seattle generated an additional 1.4 dollars for the city’s economy overall. Details of Amazon’s Seattle headquarters ..." (go to link above for more info)(link and emphasis added).

See also: Two Very Different Stories About Amazon"The best thing since credit cards or the next Sears?"--Bloomberg.com

2)  Why Hurricane Harvey Won't Slow Down Houston: "... The economic forces favoring a quick recovery are just too strong ... Houston is a tech cluster ... the center of the U.S. energy industry, which has gone increasingly high-tech in the past few decades. The city probably is home to more engineers than any other in the country. The same pool of skilled employees that sustains Houston’s energy industry makes it appealing to other knowledge-based sectors as well ..."--Bloomberg.com

See also: Hurricane Irma is not expected to disrupt banking in Florida, even if a lot of bank branches shut down during the storm. Leaders of institutions such as CenterState Bank Corp. and Seacoast Banking Corp. of Florida told American Banker that technology, including the ability to deposit and withdraw money electronically, will keep business on track.--South Florida Business Journal | bizjournals.com

3)  Leading Cloud Providers Run Away with the Market--Synergy Research Group | srgresearch.com: Amazon ended June with 34% of the cloud services market compared to 11% for Microsoft and 5% for Google, according to Synergy Research:
 Leading Cloud Providers
Synergy estimates that quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues (including IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud services) have now reached almost $11 billion and continue to grow at over 40% per year. While AWS (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft and Google are the lead providers in IaaS/PaaS, IBM continues to lead in hosted private cloud. Alibaba has now become the fourth ranked provider in IaaS with very strong growth in China and aggressive expansion abroad.
While Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform are doubling in size, IBM continues to dominate in hosted private cloud and AWS is still over three times the size of its nearest competitor. Some of the numbers are actually pretty spectacular. The year-on-year market growth rate is nudging down as we expected in such a large market, but it remains at comfortably over 40% and AWS alone generated revenue growth of $1.2 billion over the last four quarters.”--John Dinsdale, Synergy Research Group Chief Analyst and Research Director 
4) Investing

5) ICYMI Tech News:
  • Smartphones: MWC Americas, September 12-14, 2017, in San Francisco at the Moscone Center. China's Huawei (domain: huawei.com) passes Apple in global smartphone sales, now second behind Samsung--cnbc.com. Apple's Sept 12th Event: Apple’s New iPhones May Be Called iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone Edition--cnbc.com (video)Google buying HTC? | cnbc.comSee also Samsung Galaxy Note 8: great build, dual camera and display, but not huge upgrade from S8+ and too expensive at $929--engadget.com, and finally, Google and Xiaomi partner to launch the Android One Mi A1 smartphone for just $234 in more than 40 markets--a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, 3080mAh battery, a 5.5-inch curved glass display, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB internal storage--VentureBeat.com
  • America's Superstar Companies Are a Drag on Growth--Bloomberg.com--"Lack of competition lets them gouge consumers, underpay workers and invest too little ... Since the 1980s, antitrust enforcement has gotten weaker." TalkingPointsMemo.com: A Serf on Google’s Farm: How publishers' extreme reliance on various Google services gives Google effective monopoly power, stifles criticism, and sometimes results in unexpected losses.  See also Silicon Valley Ethics Issues: Companies court "brand-name teachers."--NYTimes.com, and U.S. tax reform needed to spur competition and growth says Jamie Dimon--usatoday.com.
  • HollywoodReporter.comAmazon and Apple are competing with Warner Bros. and others for rights to the James Bond franchise.
  • Has disruption from e-commerce run its course? | 13D.com: Alibaba’s Jack Ma has put it bluntly: “We must embrace physical space.” See also Brick & Mortar Meltdown: Toys R Us Hires Bankruptcy Law Firm | Wolf Street and Mexico signs e-commerce deal with China's Alibaba Group--Reuters.com
  • Facebook: how its quest for growth and monetization shapes and distorts company's stated mission of connecting people--You Are The Product | London Review of Books | lrb.co.uk. See also Facebook's Watch goes up against YouTube for ad dollars--Reuters.com, and Facebook Tees Up WhatsApp to Make Money | WSJ.com. Meanwhile Facebook digital ads figures differ from census data: analyst--Reuters.com.
  • Angry Birds' Oy IPO in Finland: Rovio Entertainment Oy, Finnish mobile game and film company, plans IPO in Helsinki, with an issue of shares for €30 million and sale of existing shares by majority owner Kaj Hed, uncle of Rovio co-founder Niklas Hed, and others, with the goal of valuing the company at about US$2.38B--WSJ.com.
  • Chinese ICOs bannedChina bans fundraising via initial coin offerings | cnbc.com and China's virtual coin fundraising ban just the start of tighter regulations on virtual currencies a/k/a cryptocurrencies--Reuters.com
  • EU plans rule change to increase taxes on "digital multinationals such as Google and Amazon ..."--Reuters.comECB working on licensing rules for fintechs--Reuters.com. See also Zelle, the payment network backed by major US banks, launching a standalone app--TheVerge.com
  • Hackers Coming for Your Cell-Phone Number--Hackers have been increasingly able to convince carriers to transfer customer phone numbers to devices in their control, allowing a reset of passwords for sites secured using two-factor authentication, a feature now used widely by sites like Twitter and Facebook.--NYTimes.com and MIT TechnologyReview.com. See also Instagram Hackers Claim To Have Data of Over 6 Million Users--wccftech.com, and Equifax website hack exposes data for ~143 million US consumers | ArsTechnica.com: "Breach affecting 44 percent of US population is one of the biggest yet."--personal data of millions of people is now in the hands of hostile governments, criminal gangs, or both, and will remain so indefinitely. 

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo


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2017-08-06

News Review: HTC Terminates New gTLD .HTC, ICANN .BRAND Scam

News Review | ©2016 DomainMondo.com
Domain Mondo's weekly internet domain news review (NR 2017-08-06) with analysis and opinion: Features • 1) HTC Terminates New gTLD .HTC, 2) Other ICANN news: GAC Letter to ICANN re: GDPR, Geographic Names as Top-Level Domains (TLDs), 3) Names, Domains & Trademarks: Untied.com, 4)  ICYMI Internet Domain News: Senator Ted Cruz & NTIA nominee Redl, 5) Investing: GoDaddy $GDDY, Tucows $TCX, Verisign $VRSN & .WEB, 6) Most Read Posts.

1 HTC Terminates New gTLD .HTC: Well-known global brand HTC has joined McDonald's and other global name brands in rejecting ICANN's Extortionate .BRAND Scam:

 Registry Agreement Termination Information Page | ICANN.org:
ICANN hides its Registry Agreement Termination Information Page under "Proof of Concept Reports"
Like McDonald's, HTC's back end registry services provider was also Neustar
Letter from HTC to ICANN terminating new gTLD .HTC
News Review: ICANN's Extortionate .BRAND Scam Failing"... an assortment of hucksters, lawyers, charlatans, and snake oil salesmen ... thought they would get filthy rich off all the big "dumb" rich trademark holders who were told they must pay to defensively register their trademark as an ICANN .BRAND TLD or risk losing their "brand name" and trademark on the internet to other claimants. ICANN charged an initial $185,000 "shakedown" fee per brand name upfront, plus periodic fees thereafter for the "privilege" of operating the .BRAND TLD. Of course, that may be just a drop in the bucket compared to the fees charged by the consultants, lawyers, back end registry service providers, and others, including the aforesaid charlatans."

2) Other ICANN news:

a. Letter from GAC (Thomas Schneider) to ICANN (Theresa Swinehart) | ICANN.org re: GDPR Compliance Task Force: schneider-to-swinehart-24jul17-en.pdf [77.6 KB] embed below (highlighting added):

b. ICANN Management Organization Chart | ICANN.org 01 Aug 2017: management-org-01aug17-en.pdf (pdf) [131 KB]

c. Geographic Names as Top-Level Domains (TLDs): Letter from Avri Doria and Jeff Neuman to GNSO Chair James Bladel (pdf), embed below (highlighting added):

3) Names, Domains & Trademarks

4) ICYMI Internet Domain News 
  • Politico.com reports U.S. Senator Ted Cruz is "slowing down the Senate Commerce Committee vote on NTIA Administrator-nominee David Redl" because Cruz "is seeking assurances related to the IANA transition."  
Photos of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and NTIA Administrator David Redl at the Senate Commerce Hearing on June 8, 2017
At the hearing on June 8, 2017 (photos above, video @1:09:17), Cruz asked Redl whether he thought the IANA transition had been “wise and prudent.”

5) Investing: GoDaddy $GDDY, Tucows $TCX, Verisign $VRSN & .WEB
  • GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY), secondary offering lockup expiration: August 3, 2017.
  • Q2 2017 earnings LIVE webcasts for GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) and Tucows (NASDAQ: TCX): August 8, 2017, at 5pm EDT.
"Well, there's really no update to provide on [new gTLD] .WEB at this point. With respect to our interactions with the Department of Justice [Antitrust Division], we continue to cooperate with DOJ as it pertains to the CID [civil investigative demand] we discussed last quarter. That dialogue is constructive, has been constructive. We produced documents and information. We'd answered questions as needed, and we're meeting with the department. So that's an ongoing process, and beyond that, there's really nothing to say at this point."--D. James Bidzos, VeriSign, Inc. CEO, July 27, 2017
Global Public Interest? Verisign enjoys the pricing power (pdf) of an ICANN-enabled global monopoly:
 Verisign .NET price increase
Even ICANN itself is "in on the greedby charging $0.75 per .NET domain name vs. only $0.25 per domain name for new gTLDs' domain names. However, unlike .NET domain names, new gTLDs' domain names price increases are unlimited

And unlike the world's largest TLD (top-level domain) .COM (pdf), the new gTLDs are ICANN-enabled global monopolies with absolute, unlimited pricing-power. ICANN operates in the global public interest? LOL!

6) Most read posts (# of pageviews Sun-Sat) this past week on DomainMondo.com: 
1. News Review: EFF Warns Registrants To Avoid New gTLD Domain Names
2. The Big Four: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google; & The New Rules (video)
3. Apple $AAPL Q3 FY17 Earnings Webcast, August 1, 5pm EDT
4. Tech Giants Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google: Above The Law? (video) 

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo 

feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo


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