A Damn Good Question

(Facebook.com)

That's A Damn Good Point

(Facebook.com)

Hoarding In The Digital Age

(CavemanCircus.com)

Let This Sink In

Pokémon is the highest-grossing media franchise in the world with $59 Billion in revenue, $16 Billion more than Star Wars

(CavemanCircus.com)

 

The 'Modern' Junk Drawer

(Bits&Pieces.us)

There's Actually A Logical Reason For It

Here's Why Automakers Don't Advertise How Long It Takes To Fully Charge An Electric Car

As the EV market gets more competitive, automakers have started benchmarking charge times to only 80 percent. Why don’t they advertise how long it takes to fully charge?

The latest electric cars can achieve most of their charge in under an hour—Jaguar claims the I-Pace takes just 40 minutes for an 80 percent charge with high powered DC chargers.

But most companies, including Tesla, Jaguar and Byton, avoid quoting the time it takes to fully charge an electric car, because it takes disproportionately longer to charge up that last 20 percent of capacity.

(Jalopnik.com)

This A Great Summary Of The Situation

Water Cooler Talking Point: “Bumble is that very respectable female who finally left her douche-bag boyfriend and now all he does is talk sh*t about her to his friends to make her look bad. Good for her for sticking up for herself.”

(BroBible.com)

It's About Time They Felt Like This

For Toyota, it's always time to panic 

Company and its leader are driven by an enduring sense of crisis


Toyota's chief rarely opens his mouth in public these days without warning of the "once-in-a-century transformation" assailing the entire industry.

"Over the next 100 years, there is no guarantee that automobile manufacturers will continue to play leading roles in mobility," Toyoda said last fall in a timbre typical of his pronouncements. "A crucial battle has begun — not one about winning or losing, but one about surviving or dying."

That may sound hyperbolic, melodramatic or even panicky to the outside observer. But in some ways, the obsession with gloom and doom shows that Toyoda and his team are smack in their comfort zone — a chronic state of discomfort.

"Technology is changing quickly in our industry, and the race is on."

(AutoNews.com)

When You See It

Modern message in a bottle

(Bits&Pieces.us)

A Very Informative Perspective

Technology is destroying the most important asset in your life

“Money isn’t the most important thing in the world. Your time is.”

One of the biggest problems of our generation is that while the ability to manage our attention is becoming increasingly valuable, the world around us is being designed to steal away as much of it as possible.

The internet and the technology companies that are built on it have democratized opportunity. It’s hard to argue that the net effect of these innovations isn’t positive. That said, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t costs. Smartphone addictions are real. Technology-induced stress is real.

Companies like Google and Facebook aren’t just creating products anymore. They’re building ecosystems. And the most effective way to monetize an ecosystem is to begin with engagement. It’s by designing their features to ensure that we give up as much of our attention as possible.

(QZ.com) 

Nokia FTW!

(BroBible.com)

Did You Know - Qualcomm Edition

Qualcomm’s kind of a big deal

It is the largest supplier of semiconductors to the mobile phone market, commanding a 50% share.

Apple? Also kind of a big deal. By purchasing chips for the iPhone, it drives a quarter of Qualcomm’s $24 billion in revenue.

But a MAJOR disagreement over Qualcomm’s licensing practices has this marriage seeking counsel.

Put simply, Qualcomm’s massive hold on the semiconductor market has allowed it to charge Apple to use its intellectual property, plus a 5% royalty on every iPhone it sells (almost $980 billion worth since 2007…).

And this licensing-plus-royalty bundle has generated 80% of Qualcomm’s pretax profits, which sends the message to Apple: “hey, if you like our technology, then you’ve gotta pay for the right to use it.”

(BroBible.com)

Did You Know - Headphones Edition

If you are buying headphones/speakers, test them with Bohemian Rhapsody. It has the complete set of highs and lows in instruments and vocals.

(CavemanCircus.com)

This Is A Good Read

The Radial Tire Lesson for Silicon Valley 

Smartphones and computers last longer than ever. Can their makers adapt? 

In the 1980s and ’90s, technology was changing so fast that a new computer was almost disposable. You upgraded every few years. But as innovation slowed, they lasted longer, which meant fewer people buying computers.

Bill Gates was worried about this all the way back in 1991. “When radial tires were invented,” he said in an interview, “people didn’t start driving their cars a lot more, and so that means the need for production capacity went way down, and things got all messed up. The tire industry is still messed up.”

During the dot-com boom, Mr. Gates invoked the analogy again. “Every time I read about optic fibers or wireless, I say to myself, ‘Wow, that sounds like radial tires,’ ” he said. “When they got radial tires did people drive four times as much just because the tires lasted longer? No, the industry shrank.”

That fear has come true. When was the last time you upgraded your PC? Exactly. They run and run. Sales of personal computers peaked in 2011 at 365 million. Five years later, only 260 million shipped, down almost 30%. Tech companies continue to post relentless performance increases and cost improvements, except they show up elsewhere—in cloud computing, artificial intelligence and speech recognition.

It’s true that tablet computers caused some of the PC’s decline, but they’ve peaked, too. Steve Jobs introduced the iPad in 2010. Sixty-eight million were sold in 2014. Last year Apple moved barely 45 million, down a third. The company is on pace to sell even fewer this year. These tablets don’t wear out, and the new ones don’t have enough additional features or applications to entice users to upgrade. It’s a radial tire.

(WSJ.com)

Another Trend Setting Venture By Nike

Lace ‘Em Up

Yesterday, Nike upped the ante on Under Armour and Adidas by launching its Direct Consumer Offense. It sounds alarming, but we assure you, it’s a good thing.

The $88 billion athletic brand is looking to boost digital sales by streamlining mass product customization and speeding up lead time to delivery. And it’s all to meet the fast-changing insatiable tastes of Nike’s favorite person—you.

In doing so, it will remain laser-focused on the 12 cities that Nike believes will drive 80% of growth until 2020.

Here’s the catch: it’ll be dropping 1,400 of its 70,000 employees along the way.

(BroBible.com)

Apparently Fee Isn't Always Enough

An Offer You Can’t Refuse

Washed up, beaten down, kicked to the curb. Sprint’s (+0.61%) feeling like that framily friend no one wants to hang with.

The fourth-largest telecom company is now offering as many as five free lines of service for one year to Verizon customers in a last-ditch, digital effort to gain some street cred.

But is it too little too late? Sprint’s $2 billion bottom line feels concerningly small when compared with its $40 billion debt load. And the pressure remains real to either finagle a merger with T-Mobile or quickly work its way out of the four slot.

If “free” doesn’t win you subscribers, not sure what will.

(BroBible.com)

These Are Some Interesting Numbers

Welcome to the Big Leagues

The new kids on the block: Facebook (-3.30%), Apple (-3.88%), Alphabet (-3.40%) and Amazon (-3.16%) have been carrying the Nasdaq and S&P on their backs all year.
That is until a Goldman Sachs report, released Friday, compared them to the Fab Five of tech: Cisco (-0.76%), Oracle (-0.86%), Intel (-2.11%), Lucent and… Microsoft, and quickly erased $95 billion of their $600 billion run.
The report takeaways:

• The “new kids” have better cash flows and are financially stable.
• But, they made up 40% of S&P 500’s gain at only 13% of the index.
• A valuation that feels oddly similar to where the “Fab Five” stood before the tech crash of 2000 . . . . .

Investors had heard enough. Commence the sell-off.

(BroBible.com)

USB Instructions

(CavemanCircus.com)

It Is Amazing

(Bits&Pieces.us)

Seriously?

(BroBible.com)