Tech Review: 1) Tencent & WeChat's Pony Ma, 2) Browser Market Share

Tech Review (TR 2018-08-04)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech investing news with commentary, analysis and opinion: Features • 1) Tencent & WeChat's Pony Ma, 2) Browser Market Share--Where's Amazon Silk? 3) Investing: The Week: Apple at $1T, Investing Notes: a. Disrupted, b. $FB Record Loss, c. U.S. at 3% Growth Next 4-5 Years? 4) ICYMI Tech News.

1) China’s Tencent & WeChat Billionaire

Pony Ma is one of the richest people in the world. He created Tencent (domain: tencent.com), China's tech colossus, one of the ten largest companies in the world and developer of the WeChat app (domain: wechat.com), China's ubiquitous multi-purpose messaging, social media and mobile payment app. But few signs in his early years suggest that he would become such a success. Bloomberg.com video above first published 11 Jul 2018.

Tencent Holdings Ltd   HKG: 0700

Tencent's $143 Billion Rout Is World's Biggest as Tech Sinks--Bloomberg.com July 30, 2018--Tencent's stock has dropped 25% from its January peak, erasing $143B in value, as global investors became wary of big tech's potential growth.

2) Browser Market Share Worldwide (all devices) June 2018--Where's Amazon Silk?

• Chrome 58.94% (Google)
• Safari 13.7% (Apple)
• UC Browser 7.46% (Alibaba)
• Firefox 5.17% (Mozilla Foundation, Mountain View, California)
• Opera 3.5% (Chinese consortium)
• IE 3.12% (Microsoft)

Editor's note: The dominant market leader is definitely Google's Chrome browser, and #2 Safari offers real competition only on Apple devices (Apple's 'walled garden'). But watch Opera's future market share growth on cheap smartphones, particularly in China, India, and Brazil. Also watch if Amazon's Silk browser expands beyond Amazon devices. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), could be just a few steps away from a broad array of new products and services, including a competitive search engine to Google and Microsoft's Bing, built on its core ecommerce platform, its AWS technology (aws.amazon.com), its Twitch (twitch.tv) subsidiary, and its expanding Amazon Advertising Platform--advertising.amazon.com/amazon-advertising-platform.

source: Statista.com

source: Statista.com

3) Investing

The Week: NASDAQ Composite +0.9% | S&P 500 Index +0.8% | DJIA +0.1%

Apple $AAPL Jul 27-Aug 2, 2018

Apple $AAPL on Thursday, August 2, 2018, became the first $1Trillion market cap company.

Wall Street's Charging Bull

Investing Notes:

a. Disrupted: "the staid taxi industry slept through the arrival of smartphones – and what an app-based system could do. While there are now apps for taxi services, it’s too little too late"--WolfStreet.com.

b. Facebook's Big Single Day Market Cap Loss in Context:

source: Statista.com

c. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says he sees at least 3 percent growth for next 4-5 years--reuters.com.

4) ICYMI Tech News:

• Q2 2018 Results of note this past week: Apple $AAPL & Tesla $TSLA. 

• 342M smartphones were shipped worldwide in Q2 2018, down 1.8% YoY from 348.2M, with Huawei passing Apple to ship the second-most smartphones--IDC.com.

• Chinese smartphone market declined 7% YoY in Q2 2018, fourth consecutive quarter of annual decline; Huawei's marketshare grew from 20% to 26%--counterpointresearch.com.

• Amazon has 70% of the U.S. home speaker market, followed by Google with 24% and Apple only 6%. The number of smart speaker devices in use in the U.S.? 50 million--CNET.com.

• 5G: Nokia & T-Mobile US agree to $3.5B 5G network hardware deal--reuters.com.

• "Logistics is hard"--Walmart stumbles with its 'last mile' package delivery plan--reuters.com.

• Cryptocurrency: California college student who allegedly was a member of OGUSERS, allegedly stole over $5M in cryptocurrency by "SIM swapping" (hijacking cellphone numbers)--motherboard.vice.com.
• Transaction Costs and Tethers: Why I’m a Crypto Skeptic--Paul Krugman in the New York Times | NYTimes.com.

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

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DISCLAIMER

Will Apple iOS 9 Ad Blocking Kill Google's Business Model? (video)

UPDATE September 19, 2015: Will Ad Blocking Be Google's Kryptonite? - Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) | Seeking Alpha: "I got out of Google back in late July after the stock had popped and began trending sideways. I still think it is slightly overvalued (PE multiple of 33 and a long-term PE of 25), and would like to see a pullback before I build a position again. In the meantime, I'm keeping an eye on ad blocking trends and any indication that it is beginning to affect revenues." (read more at the link above)

UPDATE September 18, 2015: Welcome to hell: Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook and the slow death of the web | The Verge: "IOS 9 IS APPLE'S ATTEMPT TO FULLY DRIVE THE KNIFE INTO GOOGLE'S REVENUE PLATFORM"

Google Inc., makes more money from Internet advertising than any other company in the world. In 2014, Google's ad revenue amounted to almost 59.06 billion US dollars. Advertising accounted for 89.5 percent of  Google's total revenues. (source: Statista)

 

Apple’s Ad Blockers - WSJ: Apple’s upcoming iOS 9 will make it easier for hundreds of millions of iPhone and iPad users to install apps that block ads, posing a challenge to Google, advertisers and publishers.

Apple’s Ad Blockers Rile Publishers - WSJ:  "Putting such “ad blockers” within reach of hundreds of millions of iPhone and iPad users threatens to disrupt the $70 billion annual mobile-marketing business, where many publishers and tech firms hope to generate far more revenue from a growing mobile audience. If fewer users see ads, publishers—and other players such as ad networks—will reap less revenue. The move also is a competitive weapon against Apple rival Google Inc., which makes more money from Internet advertising than any other company in the world. Making ad blockers available on iOS, one of two main smartphone-operating systems, is expected to prompt more consumers to use the technology. The benefits of blocking ads arguably are greater on smartphones than on personal computers, because they can reduce the clutter on small screens and help pages load faster."

See also:

Ad-Blocking Software Will Cost the Ad Industry $22 Billion This Year (WSJ.com)

Apple’s Ad-Blocking Feature Is Sending Publishers Scrambling - Bloomberg Business: "IOS 9, which is set for a Sept. 16 release, will allow owners of Apple’s newer mobile devices to download Web browser extensions that can block advertising from being shown while they browse the Web ... Apple hasn’t publicly articulated why it will start allowing ad blockers on iOS, but Tim Cook has criticized Internet companies in the past for violating people’s privacy to boost ad revenue."

With Technology, Avoiding Both Ads and the Blockers - The New York Times: "A report last month from Adobe and PageFair, an Irish start-up that monitors ad blocking, projected that the software would lead to nearly $22 billion in lost revenue for advertisers this year. Roughly 200 million people globally now use ad-blocking software; global usage increased 41 percent in the last year."

I work in advertising, but I still block ads - Digiday: "Our business is changing incredibly fast. We’ve become a mobilized society, and ads don’t work very well on mobile. The screen is too small for most banners to be effective. We’ve had to reinvent advertising for mobile, and we’re going to reinvent advertising when we all start blocking ads."

Domain Mondo: Google Alphabet A Signal To Sell OR Short $GOOG and $GOOGL shares?

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DISCLAIMER

Global Browser Market Share (graphic)

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share - March 2014 - April 2015 -  Internet browser market share worldwide: Chrome, IE, Safari, Firefox, Android, Opera, UC Browser, Nokia, IE Mobile


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