As the time that consumers spend on line continues to grow, particularly on mobile devices, the information that various companies are able to collect about their users is also growing. The value of that information – for commercial advertising, commerce,
– A PayPal spinoff is a sharp shift from EBAY’s “one-stop” merchandizing outsourcing strategy, relegating often asserted synergies between EBAY and PayPal to arm’s-length contracts – PayPal is growing but faces growing threats. AAPL is making payments an iOS default
– The Apple Watch lacks a compelling use case at launch, but critics are gun shy after missing on iPad. Demand driven by fashion, not function, with 10% max penetration into iPhone base – $349 is the bare bones price
– The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are Apple’s most important products since the iPad and will drive a significant upgrade cycle in its largest and most profitable product area. – Screen size parity will pull upgrade demand forward and
Apple Pay: Friend (and Potential Foe) to the Payments Industry Status Quo Apple Pay combines NFC, TouchID, and HW secured “tokens” on its iPhone 6 to execute retail POS transactions, meeting the security requirements of the card nets (V, MC,
– TMUS’ “Uncarrier” strategy is working with 2.75M gross sub ads including 1M post paid ads in August alone and porting ratios from other carriers at over 2 to 1 – CEO John Legere unveiled a new strategy to leverage
– The big screen iPhone 6 and 6+ should pull upgrade sales sharply forward, even at a higher average price point than the 5S, yielding 15%+ sales growth from iPhone for AAPL’s FY15. – The Apple Watch is beautiful and
Infrastructure as a Service: The Race Won’t Go All the Way to the Bottom The stakes for public cloud operators (IaaS) are huge. Annual global spending on enterprise data centers – hardware, infrastructure software, staffing, facilities, etc. – is more
– TWTR crushed expectations on every important metric, in particular delivering 24% growth in monthly average users, reversing a deceleration that had previously spooked investors – Sales growth accelerated to 124% YoY, with ad $/MAU up 85% despite a disadvantageous
– AMZN delivered its 4th quarterly loss in two years, well below both guidance and consensus, driven by massive investment in new content, devices, and services, and promised bigger losses next Q. – Sales were characteristically strong, up 23% YoY,
