#tencent is a prime example

[savingsuk]

Digitalization and Industry 4.0

Digitalization is more than just a buzzword; it's reshaping industries worldwide. It merges the physical and digital realms, leading to substantial changes in how businesses operate. Countries like the UK, Germany, China, the US, and Japan are at the forefront of this transformation, embracing Industry 4.0, the latest phase in industrial development.

What is Digitalization?

Digitalization involves converting analog information into a digital format. This process not only enhances efficiency but also improves decision-making, data management, and overall productivity. Businesses in various sectors utilize digital tools to streamline operations, enhance communication, and foster a data-driven culture. For example, automotive firms in Germany have adopted digitalization to enhance production lines and refine their supply chains.

Understanding Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 represents the fourth industrial revolution. The first revolution used steam power; the second introduced electricity; the third embraced automation and computers. Now, Industry 4.0 brings together the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and big data. This evolution creates smart factories and connected industries that communicate and learn from one another. The benefits include increased productivity, better resource management, and enhanced customization.

The UK’s Approach to Digitalization

In the UK, there is a strong push towards embracing digitalization across industries. With initiatives like the Industrial Strategy 2020, the government is focused on improving productivity and growth through technology. Companies in finance and healthcare are leveraging digital solutions to enhance their services. For example, digital banking applications have transformed how customers interact with financial institutions, leading to enhanced customer experiences. Statistics show that about 90% of UK businesses believe that adopting digital technology is essential for their future success.

Germany: A Pioneer in Industry 4.0

Germany is recognized as a leader in Industry 4.0. The country has a rich manufacturing history, making it an ideal landscape for implementing digital solutions. Industries such as automotive and machinery are integrating IoT devices into their operations. This transforms production processes and helps manufacturers monitor equipment health in real time. In fact, around 70% of manufacturing firms in Germany is reportedly investing in smart factory technologies. Companies like Siemens and Bosch are prime examples of this pioneering spirit.

China: Rapid Growth and Digitalization

China has quickly stepped onto the digitalization scene, with significant financial backing and government support. The Made in China 2025 initiative aims to transition the country into a global manufacturing powerhouse with advanced technologies. As of 2021, China's investment in AI was expected to reach around $150 billion, making it a significant player in the digital economy. Sectors like eCommerce and telecommunications are incredibly advanced in China, with platforms such as Alibaba and Tencent leading the way. Additionally, a recent report indicated that an estimated 90% of Chinese businesses are investing heavily in digital technologies.

The US: A Diverse Landscape of Digital Innovation

The United States is another major contributor to the digitalization and Industry 4.0 movement. From Silicon Valley technology startups to established corporations like General Electric, innovation is prevalent. One area where the US stands out is in the aerospace and manufacturing sector. Here, advanced technologies like 3D printing and AI are optimizing production processes and product development. According to industry reports, about 80% of US manufacturers are implementing some form of digital technology to boost efficiency.

Japan: Balancing Tradition with Technology

Japan combines its rich industrial heritage with cutting-edge technology. This unique balance allows it to be at the forefront of digitalization. Industry 4.0 trends emphasize precision engineering and automation, which align perfectly with Japan’s strengths in robotics and manufacturing. For instance, Japanese companies are using intelligent robots to produce goods more efficiently. Industries such as electronics and automotive in Japan are adopting digital solutions at a rapid pace. As a result, reports indicate that Japan's manufacturing sector achieved a 10% increase in productivity after adopting smart technologies in recent years.

Challenges of Digitalization

Even with all these advancements, digitalization does come with obstacles. Employees need proper training and upskilling to adapt to new technologies. Cybersecurity is another significant concern. With increased digital data comes the risk of breaches. Furthermore, small businesses sometimes struggle to adopt these technologies due to costs and a lack of resources. Governments and large companies can collaborate to bridge this technology gap.

Digitalization and Industry 4.0

The Future of Digitalization and Industry 4.0

The future looks promising. As more countries, including the UK, Germany, China, the US, and Japan push towards digitalization, we can expect revolutionary changes in how industries operate. This involves improvements in best practices, sustainability, and designing products tailored to customer needs. Experts suggest that the decade leading to 2030 could witness an even broader embrace of Industry 4.0, significantly enhancing global productivity.

Conclusion

In conclusion, digitalization is transforming the way industries function across the globe, significantly impacting the UK, Germany, China, the US, and Japan. While embracing Industry 4.0, these countries are redefining their market landscapes and showing us the future of technological innovation. As we traverse this exciting path, challenges remain, but the advantages of digitalization far outweigh them. We expect to see significant progress in the coming years. For more information about how these countries are leading digitalization initiatives, feel free to check this article on the World Economic Forum's website. Read the full article

[shijiujun]

i feel kinda bad for shl cos all the fans of hyx and spl are blaming shl since their dramas are being delayed :(

LMAO I really don’t get that altho i can see that the timing might be a little back to back, and i’m not a SHL-only stan by any measure but:

For HYX especially,

Firstly it was already having problems since the end of last year with censorship and review. This is mostly due to the reason that 2ha is a pretty big fandom and is the cult fave in the danmei industry - what this means is that there are three types of fans basically right, (1) Normal fans who love the novel + show (2) Those who fanatically love the novel in some extreme ways haha (3) Those who hate it and/or are HYX-onlys - so you get it all in a bag. 

The first type of fans is definitely the easier ones to deal with, but unfortunately in big fandoms you get a lot of (2) and (3). It’s not something that’s exclusive only to 2ha/HYX but because it’s a cult fave, and a controversial one at that, problems definitely arise.

(2) are the ones who head down to the filming scenes, take photos and footage despite crew telling ppl not to do it, not to sneak around filming sites and definitely not to leak photos or footage. They do it anyway. Yeah sure of course it’s a couple of photos every few weeks or a tiny video every few weeks but word gets out. They’re inevitably hurting the show and the fandom with their actions, because shit trends on Weibo really fast, and the censorship committee (not just for the film industry or shows) is always lurking on the site to catch any sign of you know, hate speech for the country etc. and more. Not related, but the point is that social media is watched very closely. It’s not a myth or an exaggeration, you really just got to be careful, and HYX is a show that, despite not having been broadcasted, has consistently trended on Weibo over the last few months. Not always because of leaks, but yeah, HYX is in everyone’s faces. Fans themselves put a fucking huge spotlight on the show BEFORE we even have any content at all, and of course this isn’t enough to like create huge trouble for the show but then we have-

(3), which I believe creates the most trouble - the thing is 2ha and meatbun who wrote the book, has a long line of haters and antis, way before HYX came into the picture. I shall not go into details of how I’ve seen some big accounts on Tumblr here spit vitriol at the book without even reading it just based on the content/trigger warnings and playing the morality card (and I think most ppl who’ve followed me for a while know just what I think about that). Like this was way before any footage or leaks or even HYX being a thing came about - as a cult fave it has its share of haters, and this share is a huge. There are those who get off on their moral high grounds XD and I think especially these ones are the most troublesome, all they have to do is report that HYX is immoral, bad for culture etc. etc. hahaha and yeah the censorship team is always ready to step in on reports, especially on BL stuff.

And of course the larger part is the change in censorship processes - honestly even way before SHL came out in end Feb, HYX was no closer to getting passed by the review committee than it is now. Maybe yes, SHL scenes may be now used as reference for comparison but seriously? People are deluding themselves if they thought pre-SHL HYX was going through the review process smoothly and only hit roadblocks after. I mean, we’ve all seen the leaks, some of them are truly like god-tier scenes that may be hard to explain away. It’s not like they can repackage the script especially because they have to submit everything to the review committee.

I mentioned this in a post yesterday but how SHL passed reviews is due to the fact that they didn’t have to submit a full script. They only had to submit a partial script, and that makes a world of difference. Basically a team, under these requirements, can repackage the script to include the more het looking parts even I feel, and of course some heavy misdirection by the team, it could work. Now that you have to put an entire script up for scrutiny.. I mean, it’s hard. This is just a game of probability.

And the last reason I think is still Tencent. Honestly, I’ve never seen a huge ass MNC like this handle a show this terribly.

1. No control over leaks - This is honestly the dumbest shit to do

2. Terrible crisis management response time - When fans leak footage, it’s standard and practical business sense to control it IMMEDIATELY. They shouldn’t just leave it up to the crew to put up notices and as the company that owns the rights to the show, it’s up to them to possibly threaten legal action as well. Basically a sterner stance would have helped a lot, but Tencent is a motherfucker of a company who only cares about free marketing and publicity without any considerations over impact to the show itself 

3. Terrible at communicating with fans - Seriously, I’ve never seen a company or team that’s been this bad at confirming delays etc. and providing updates about a show. I understand that it’s mostly due to them not wanting to affect the review process or create more chaos within the fandom but lmao Tencent allowed the hype to build so much and then goes absolutely silent at crazy rumours. I mean we had to find out about a delay from Cai Bao, their cat mascot, like??? In a really veiled and poetic message that didn’t outright say the word ‘delay’ like damn these ppl have a lot of time

As for SPL,

Lol we don’t know anything about this show. We don’t know if they took out or left in the Yifu part that would supposedly make it less gay or whatever, we don’t know anything about how gay it should have been or could have, so this one might be a tad more ridiculous. I mean none of us have seen any good leaks, and we haven’t seen any of the script, we got ZERO idea about this. Maybe they really went hard on the bromance, how would any of us know hahaha so all the more it’s like people have zero basis to go on, to say that it’s because of SHL. Seriously, everyone’s shooting in the dark.

Technically if laws didn’t change last Feb, I think SPL/WIK should have been passed in the same way as SHL did, but it’s just inopportune time for them.

===

- So tl:dr HYX already had tons of problems, that I doubt were going to go away just because SHL didn’t air, honestly. For SPL, it’s really hard to tell what failed the review, because none of us know what’s going on in the script.

No one cared about SHL, even I only realized the show was airing on the day itself and then made a rec post after I watched the first 4 eps. And if it truly was anything to do with SHL, I’m telling you that the first thing the censorship committee will do is basically shut SHL down, get Youku to take it off sites etc. until it’s reviewed again etc. etc. That hasn’t happened yet, at least not before HYX and SPL were stalled.

===

ALSO!! Don’t have to feel sorry for SHl fans hahaha I’m telling ya a lot of us definitely weren’t OG SHL or TYK fans, seriously! All the bigger accounts I see on Twitter are a combination of CQL/SHL or MXTX/SHL, SPL/SHL and I am personally 2HA/HYX/SHL. The fight is all out on Twitter HAHAHAHA but it’s not that bad, we’ve all got practice. Seriously WHO ACTUALLY is an SHL only stan I’ve honestly not seen much?! HAHAHA the point is we’re all yelling on behalf of SHL as a cross fandom fan, easier for us to do so as well. We’re talking about 2ha/HYX/SPL/Priest dedicated accounts that delved deep into SHL championing for no-nonsense in the space hahaha

[dappersheep]

Food Fantasy: An Analysis on what killed a Golden Goose (1/3)

So first things first, disclaimers! I do not claim nor pretend to know every nook and cranny, ins and outs of the history of FooFan's conception, existence and uncertain future. I do not own the game nor its characters, only the opinions and thoughts stated hereon out.

This was born to vent out my frustrations with how a game like this was abused poorly by its own developer and publisher instead of being nurtured to become its full potential that could have overshadowed and remained better than the likes of Tencent's Tales of Food --I could dream, but it honestly had the potential to be.

Out of respect for the main tag, I personally will not be tagging this post and the following two with the main tag. If you want to tag it yourself with it, that's your choice. Only followers of my blog will see this.

This analysis is divided into three parts: Funtoy, Elex, and the Community. It starts under the cut. Well let's get started.

Funtoy

Ah yes, the creator. The developer. You'd think that with their sudden rise to fame during their global launch, they'd have used the massive profits they earned within the first quarter of 2018 to improve certain things about the game and then trickled it down as quickly as possible towards Global, right? Yeah, I thought so too.

After playing the game since launch, I've seen and experienced way too many things that just hammer in the fact that this is one of the most unfair gacha I've played in years. Some reasons being the following:

(Note: These are experiences ONLY on Global's version, it may also apply to CN being the original server)

⦁ The game's gacha model is aimed towards maximum predation on its players. F2p are forced to either spend some money (and thus tempt them to keep spending after getting a taste of it), or risk not even getting a good ascension of the unit to be useful at all. Paying for the event packs also doesn't guarantee that you would be able to secure a spot in the ranks. In fact, if you can't comprehend how the battle mechanics work, you could even de-rank. Fun way to burn that 800$, huh? At least you have the skin from rebates.

⦁ A little less known thing and probably theoretical at worst, the long joked about spaghetti coding of the game along with an outdated spine technology for the sprites could very well be the reason why a 2D game like this experiences the shittiest lags. Also how easy it is to hack this game with the right know-how.

⦁ Speaking of bad gameplay mechanics, did you know you could spend over fifty Mirrors and not get that final enhancement from +9 to +10 simply because there's absolutely no tangible safety net before +10?

⦁ If you're F2P, this game is terrible in giving you resources to stockpile. Because Funtoy certainly doesn't have a lot of weekly/monthly or even friendly events wherein you can get resources without spending another kind of resource. The Hawthorne event's rewards are lackluster at best, Bingo is severely limited in what it gives, and Recall also doesn't give much for a big event that only happens (supposedly) every 6 months. Did I also mention that daily resource rewards also kinda suck compared to how much you burn in just one event?

⦁ Monthly subs are a scam. Yes, you heard that right. My point of comparison here is Arknights. A monthly in AK allows you to have enough to 10-pull after 30 days, on top of a bit of stamina to help you. In FooFan? You have two monthly subs that do different things and even then, you won't have enough to 10-pull by the end of 30 days, nor is the stamina you get enough to even stockpile and ease the pressure of your need to save for the Gates or that stamina event that suddenly popped up.

⦁ A conga line of 'Must procure this unit at a high ascension to do well in the following events!'. You missed the first Pizza event? Missed the first Turkey event? God forbid, you weren't able to 5* your Beer on his debut? Well sorry, that 5* Black Tea of yours isn't gonna do squat to give you good damage. No, your 2* B-52 also isn't going to do much of anything with his lackluster damage capabilities. If you want a chance to get those event URs again, you have to wait for their pool with laughably limited pulls... and a bloated price to even pull.

⦁ The events starting after the first iteration of Turkey event get even more paywalled. As far as I remember, by the time Minestrone rolled around, an F2P with ample crystal resources can only get 2* at best. 3* and above are paywalled.

⦁ The game has incompetent balancing. The devs themselves likely have little experience in gameplay design and balancing, especially for a game with a growing roster of characters . A prime example of them launching a character not knowing it would pretty much unbalance the game? Look no further than Beer. The guy had to have a couple of nerfs done to him because he was just too meta. You know what's sadder? Before the 'switch' to Brave meta, almost all meta units was built to benefit off the Beer meta.

⦁ Artifacts. Do I even have to explain how the introduction of such a game feature so early into the lifespan of this game essentially fucked over the balance even more? Not to mention, all the more reason you'd be crying with the Gates of Trials demanding so much out of your stamina and crystal resources. F2Ps are again, the ones that suffer in this part. What's their reason? Profit, of course.

⦁ The nerf of resto chests. This was the primary source for people who were saving up stamina for the Gates... until Funtoy decided they were being too generous to their playerbase and dropped the stamina probability rate to 1% or less.

⦁ Terrible UI layout and design. Come on, be honest now, you've lost several thousand of your hard earned crystals buying screws in the fishing shop because you didn't notice that shiny warning in small text and a green button with the crystal image slapped on it, didn't you?

⦁ Look at all these SRs! All of them! Wow, they even outnumber the Rs by at least 80! What's that? There's more URs now too compared to Rs and Ms combined? That can't be real. But seriously, you'd think Funtoy could make some of these SRs into Rs and add them to the perm pool/shard fusion so people aren't stuck pulling Macaron or Dorayaki every time. They could have also populated the Team Up rewards with SRs instead of Rs. But you know... that won't bring them profit. Haha... haha.... Oh and I haven't even told you about the SP class...!

⦁ Lore. Yes, I'm sure by now you're aware that the in-game lore is different from the ones in the non-SP Food Soul bios, in the SP Food Soul bios that sort of ties in with the New World story (that global will never be getting btw). At this point, Funtoy handwaves the confusion away by saying, 'they're all different timelines'. Yes yes, an easy and cliche move to explain how shitty the writing direction went after a while. I don't know what happened, all I know is that lore got weird(er) when they introduced SP Rice.

⦁ They. Keep. Adding. More. Characters! They fail to see that a lot of their earlier players have imprinted on the first few waves of Food Souls and they sadly also fail to properly give some of them more story expansion... or skins. At the moment, they're shelling out so many JP-centric Food Souls because... as I see it? They're pandering to the last bastion of whales they have.

⦁ Merchandise. And I mean a variety of merchandise that isn't using the same official art every time. Like they couldn't afford to commission a couple of artists one or two times to make unique merchandise that would sell. They started too late on that train, and they even made it too hard for anyone not in CN or JP to even procure what already exists. Not to mention, they keep using the same 'popular' set of characters for their merchandise and never really expanding out to making merch for other characters.

These are all the things I can list off at the top of my head why Funtoy as a developer sucks ass. They could sweeten their words all they want, it won't change the fact that they've certainly made way too many bad decisions and found out about it too late, and now they're desperate to keep Food Fantasy alive to keep their profits coming in to make whatever that cat girl game they have and that supposedly 'side-game' FF2 they announced.

There may have been problems out of their control that I or you do not see, but one thing is for sure, they were blinded by greed for the money they were raking in on all their servers at the start, and never actually bothered to invest in more manpower in the right places to improve the game, both gameplay-wise and worldbuilding wise. It's actually saddening that this game could have been so much more with several QoLs and a more fleshed out lore, perhaps even spacing out the number of new units they keep introducing while going back to giving their old units more attention.

That's it for Funtoy. We're moving onto Elex in the next part and boy is that also a trip.

[flareai]

Super Apps : What Are They, And How You Can Benefit?

The flareAI Helpful Series for Mid-market & Small Ecommerce businesses

Two market forces are driving the growth of Super Apps, which are rapidly gaining adoption in the eCommerce world.

#1 

Shopify merchants, and consumers too, are becoming fatigued by too many apps. Many merchants add free apps, only to discover they can slow down page speed, damage SEO, cause redundancies, and lead to increased staffing costs.

#2 

AI adoption is rising exponentially, with professionals realizing the potential for AI-based apps to boost productivity dramatically and grow their businesses.

But what exactly is a Super App?

According to a blogger at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, Super App builds upon its core functionality to combine seemingly unrelated services that users need or want into one place. 

WeChat, China's omnibus app launched by Tencent in 2011, is a prime example of a Super App, allowing users to text, access city services, pay for utilities, send peer-to-peer payments, stream videos, and much more. All in one Super App.

The recent Super App entrants are #Microsoft Co-pilot and #Twitter (Elon Musk reportedly looking to add payment services)

Super Apps In the Ecommerce World

Super Apps are gaining adoption rapidly. Fatigued with too many apps to maintain, and added staffing costs to configure, monitor & maintain, Ebusinesses are increasingly looking for done-for-you solutions that can combine various seemingly unrelated services, but eCommerce merchants want done in one place.

Data Like Never Imagined Before

Super Apps also have access to large and deep datasets, allowing them to establish data links, analyze data, and make inferences in ways never before imagined.

Stay Ahead of the Game

To stay ahead of the game, merchants should proactively evaluate the new Super Apps for general productivity, such as Microsoft Co-pilot, as well as specialized eCommerce Super Apps. This will ensure that they do not get left behind as the trend toward Super Apps continues to grow.

Welcome to the flareAI family!

Receive more, follow flareAI

Get free sales from Google, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok & 20+ Free Sales Channels, on Autopilot: flareAI

If you found the content helpful consider supporting the Shopify Community with a Like + Comment

[ksfc]

The difference between shared charging treasure and shared bicycle

Shared power bank has once again become the focus of the industry. Compared with the shared bicycles that are full of sorrows, they not only silently spread all over the city, but also become a high-frequency hard demand. The rent from the original 1 yuan/hour has generally risen to 2 yuan/hour, and some brands even offer 3 yuan. price per hour.

What happened to the once-promising shared bicycles?

In 2017, when Wang Sicong was not optimistic about the shared power bank, it was the craziest time for the subsidy battle for shared bicycles. At that time, both ofo and Mobike were in their prime. Dai Wei, the founder of ofo, became the youngest entrepreneur. With great ambition, he set a FLAG: no one will buy a bicycle in 2020. Back then, bike sharing was the hottest track in the internet industry.

But at the end of the year, the situation took a turn for the worse. Ofo and Mobike were running out of funds, and the deposits were difficult to return. In April 2018, when Mobike was acquired by Meituan, it was considered to find a next home, and ofo embarked on a difficult road of self-help.

Although there are still players such as Qingju and Hello in the current shared bicycle market, the industry as a whole is suffering, and the end game is difficult. In the past, the shared bicycle was a good capital for capital, a phenomenon-level track, and the two giants of Alibaba and Tencent paid great attention. How did the once undervalued shared power bank develop to "just need" to move forward?

At first, people thought that with the development of technology, the battery life of mobile phones would continue to grow, and the demand for power banks would gradually decrease; after time verification, it was found that people obviously overestimated the speed of mobile phone battery life technology development. For example, Apple once boasted that the iPhone 11 has 1 hour more battery life than the iPhone xR, the iPhone 11 Pro has an increase of 4 hours, and the ProMax has an increase of 5 hours. If it's true, wouldn't the iPhone's battery life today be no less than 3 days? But in fact, smartphones are basically charged once a day, and there are 5G mobile phones that have already landed, and it is not surprising that they are charged once every 0.5 days.

Second, the charging treasure is only a few dozen yuan, it is more cost-effective to buy one by yourself! It's just that smartphones work hard every day to kill the necessities of our travel: wallets, keys, bank cards, bus cards, identity authentication, etc.; instead, we take out the QR code of the mobile phone from the trouser pocket, and even the mobile phone is too lazy to press the button to unlock , brush your face and you're done! Technology has cultivated people to be so lazy, and they will only become lazy if they continue to develop. The pie of the lazy economy is bigger than we imagined.

Third, even if you want to try to share the power bank, the "hurdle" of the deposit is really not so easy to cross, after all, it has been "bitten by a snake". At first, the shared power bank paid a deposit; however, by 2019, the share of credit-free deposit orders for shared power banks has reached 95.4%, and most brands of power banks no longer need to pay a deposit, which greatly increases the enthusiasm of users.

From the birth of the concept in 2015, to the industry reshuffle and profitability in 2019, Gongdian has experienced 5 years; shared charging treasures have spread all over the city's various consumption places; some shops even put multiple brands at the same time. As of June this year, the number of users in the domestic power bank market has reached 133 million, and the average monthly number of users in 2018 has exceeded 100 million. Recognized by mature customers in the market, there is no need to take detours.

From the point of view of the counterattack of shared charging treasures against shared bicycles, the judgment of capital, the judgment of giants, and even the judgment of "business wizards" are not necessarily correct, and the market is the only ultimate judge. From the shared charging line and the shared charging treasure, not only the financial model is better, but the operation system is also lighter; the market is wider, the number of hotels in China has exceeded 1 million, and the total number of rooms is about 100 million. The market is seized at a high speed, and the profit will be unpredictable.

[bestweb20sitelist]

India's billionaires got richer while coronavirus pushed millions of vulnerable people into poverty

New Post has been published on https://uspost.xyz/news/indias-billionaires-got-richer-while-coronavirus-pushed-millions-of-vulnerable-people-into-poverty/

https://uspost.xyz/data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhEAAJAJEAAAAAAP///////wAAACH5BAEAAAIALAAAAAAQAAkAAAIKlI+py+0Po5yUFQA7

India's billionaires got richer while coronavirus pushed millions of vulnerable people into poverty

But as these Indians struggle to live on a few dollars a day, the country’s ultra-wealthy have gotten even richer and more influential, as their combined fortunes have soared by tens of billions of dollars in the last year.

Mukesh Ambani — chairman of the sprawling conglomerate Reliance Industries — is now worth more than $80 billion, some $15 billion more than a year ago, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Not far behind him is Adani Group founder Gautam Adani, whose wealth skyrocketed from less than $13 billion this time last year to $55 billion today.

The two men, who are now the first and fourth richest men in Asia, respectively, are worth more than the GDP of some nations. Their diverging fortunes with fellow Indians are symbolic of a rising wealth gap that has hammered many across the world, and which has become particularly pronounced in Asia’s third largest economy, which accounted for more than half of the global increase in poverty in 2020.

Ambani spent much of the pandemic as Asia’s wealthiest person, ahead of many Chinese tycoons.

He’s retained his comfortable perch through most of this year, and is the world’s 12th richest man — worth more than the likes of Mexican mogul Carlos Slim and Dell (DELL) founder Michael Dell. His company had a terrific 2020, raising billions of dollars from Silicon Valley giants such as Google (GOOGL) and Facebook (FB), who are betting on his vision to dominate the internet in one of the world’s biggest markets.

And it is not too lonely at the top for Ambani. Until recently, the continent’s second richest man was also an Indian: Adani. The founder of Adani Group controls companies ranging from ports and aerospace to thermal energy and coal. Like Reliance, Adani Group has performed exceptionally well on the Indian stock market — shares of Adani Enterprises, for example, have jumped over 800% on the National Stock Exchange in Mumbai since June 2020, a sign that investors are optimistic about Adani’s ability to bet on sectors key to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic development goals.

Both the Indian billionaires have roots in Gujarat, which is Modi’s home state.

Shares in Adani’s companies tumbled last month after The Economic Times newspaper said that foreign funds that hold stakes worth billions of dollars were frozen by the country’s National Securities Depository.

Even though the conglomerate said the report was “blatantly erroneous,” its founder lost nearly $20 billion dollars in net worth in less than a month. Despite this steep fall, Adani remains among Asia’s richest men behind Chinese bottle water tycoon Zhong Shanshan and Tencent (TCEHY) CEO Pony Ma, according to Bloomberg.

Other Chinese billionaires, including Alibaba (BABA) co-founder Jack Ma, have taken a hit as Beijing cracks down on tech entrepreneurs.

The utter dominance of Ambani and Adani isn’t surprising, according to Saurabh Mukherjea, founder of Marcellus Investment Managers. He added that almost every major sector in India is now ruled by one or two incredibly powerful corporate houses.

“The country has now reached a stage where the top 15 business houses account for 90% of the country’s profits,” Mukherjea told CNN Business.

“The playbook is the same as other countries,” he said, referencing some of America’s famous tycoons throughout history, including John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie.

The other 99% in India

While Adani can easily brush aside a single-day loss of $6 billion, most of the country has been dealing with life-changing economic turmoil during the pandemic.

As India imposed severe restrictions on travel and business activity to control the spread of Covid-19, the share of wealth held by nation’s top 1% rose to 40.5% by the end of 2020, a 7 percentage point increase from 2000, according to a Credit Suisse report on global wealth released in June.

The report noted that the Gini coefficient — a popular measure of inequality — increased from 74.7 in 2000 to 82.3 last year. The higher the number, the greater the disparity in income. A rating of 0 means that income is equally distributed throughout a society, while a rating of 100 means that one person takes home all of the income.

India slipped into a rare recession last year, after a lockdown that lasted for almost four months. While the economy recovered this year, unemployment numbers approached record levels this May after a massive surge in Covid cases this spring.

According to an analysis by Pew Research Center, India’s middle class shrank by 32 million people last year as a consequence of the economic slowdown, compared to what it was expected to be without the pandemic.

“Meanwhile, the number of people who are poor in India (with incomes of $2 or less a day) is estimated to have increased by 75 million because of the Covid-19 recession,” senior Pew researcher Rakesh Kochhar wrote in a post in March, adding that it accounted for nearly 60% of the global increase in poverty. That increase didn’t account for the second wave.

By comparison, the change in living standards in China has been “more modest,” Kochhar added.

Many households coped with the loss of income last year by cutting back on food intake, selling assets, and borrowing informally from friends, relatives, and money lenders, according to researchers at Azim Premji University in the Indian state of Karnataka. The researchers estimate that some 230 million Indians fell into poverty — which they defined as income of less than $5 a day — because of the pandemic.

“An alarming 90 per cent of respondents … reported that households had suffered a reduction in food intake as a result of the lockdown,” the researchers wrote in a May report examining the impact of one year of Covid in India. “Even more worryingly, 20 per cent reported that food intake had not improved even six months after the lockdown.”

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab has been studying the impact of the pandemic on workers from some of India’s poorest states. In a report on young migrant workers from the states of Bihar and Jharkhand, the researchers found that Covid-19 pushed men out of salaried work, and women out of the workforce entirely.

“They [women] had this one chance of working. Now they are back home with their families and being pushed to get married,” Clément Imbert, associate professor of economics at the University of Warwick and one of the researchers, told CNN Business.

Now, as India braces for a potential third wave of Covid-19, researchers hope the government can introduce some bold measures to cushion the impact on the world’s weakest.

[deltainfoteklive]

Which Companies Use Flutter?

In the dynamic world of mobile app development, staying ahead of the curve is crucial for businesses. One technology that has gained substantial traction is Flutter. With its ability to create stunning and high-performing apps for multiple platforms from a single codebase, Flutter has caught the attention of various industry players. In this article, we'll delve into the question, "Which companies use Flutter?" We'll explore the diverse range of businesses that have adopted this framework, highlighting its benefits and showcasing the success stories that have emerged. Which Companies Use Flutter? As the demand for seamless and visually appealing apps continues to grow, many top-notch companies have turned to Flutter for their app development projects. The following are some of the notable companies that have embraced the power of Flutter: 1. Google When it comes to Flutter, Google is not just the creator, but also a major user of the framework. Google's investment in Flutter is a testament to its capabilities. From Google Ads to Google Assistant, Flutter has enabled the company to deliver consistent and engaging experiences across platforms. 2. Alibaba The e-commerce giant Alibaba has incorporated Flutter to enhance user experiences on its platforms. Flutter's rapid development cycle and expressive UI components have facilitated the creation of visually striking apps that resonate with Alibaba's massive user base. 3. Tencent Tencent, another technology behemoth, has recognized Flutter's potential for crafting captivating apps. By utilizing Flutter, Tencent has been able to optimize app performance and deliver rich user interfaces for its diverse range of services, including WeChat. 4. BMW Even in industries beyond technology, Flutter has made its mark. BMW, the renowned automotive company, has leveraged Flutter to develop apps that complement their vehicles. This innovative approach showcases how Flutter's versatility extends beyond the tech sector. 5. Reflectly Reflectly, a popular self-care app, stands as a prime example of how Flutter can empower startups. By using Flutter, Reflectly was able to expedite its app development process and provide users with a seamless experience, contributing to its rapid growth. 6. Square Square, the payment processing company, chose Flutter developer to create dynamic and user-friendly interfaces for its sellers. Flutter's cross-platform capabilities enabled Square to maintain a consistent design language across different devices. The Advantages of Flutter for Businesses Flutter's popularity among these diverse companies can be attributed to its compelling advantages: - Single Codebase, Multiple Platforms: Flutter allows businesses to write one codebase that functions seamlessly on both iOS and Android, saving time and resources. - Expressive UI: Flutter's widget-based architecture enables developers to create stunning and consistent user interfaces that adapt to different screen sizes. - Fast Development: Flutter's hot reload feature speeds up the development process, allowing developers to see changes instantly. - High Performance: Flutter's use of the Skia graphics engine ensures smooth animations and high-performance apps. - Open-Source: Being open-source, Flutter benefits from a strong community of developers and continuous updates. FAQs Q: Is Flutter only suitable for tech companies?A: No, Flutter's versatility makes it suitable for a wide range of industries, including automotive, e-commerce, and more. Q: What kind of apps can be built with Flutter?A: Flutter can be used to build various types of apps, from simple mobile applications to complex and feature-rich ones. Q: Is Flutter a good choice for startups?A: Yes, startups can benefit from Flutter's rapid development capabilities, allowing them to bring their app ideas to market faster. Q: Does Flutter offer native performance?A: Yes, Flutter's compilation to native ARM code ensures high performance, making it comparable to native development. Q: Is Flutter difficult to learn for developers?A: Flutter's concise and readable code, along with its comprehensive documentation, makes it relatively easy for developers to learn. Q: Can existing apps be migrated to Flutter?A: Yes, existing apps can be gradually migrated to Flutter, leveraging its advantages while retaining certain parts of the app's codebase. Conclusion In the competitive landscape of app development, Flutter has emerged as a game-changer. The array of companies, ranging from tech giants to startups, that have embraced Flutter is a testament to its capabilities and potential. With its unique advantages, cross-platform compatibility, and expressive UI, Flutter continues to shape the future of app development. Whether you're a tech enthusiast or a business owner, considering Flutter for your next app project could be the key to unlocking a world of possibilities. Read the full article

[orbemnews]

How a Chinese website for pirated TV shows became a cultural touchstone for millennials But the site — one of China’s largest, longest-running and last-remaining destinations for pirated, subtitled foreign content — was shuttered on February 3 as part of a sweeping police clampdown on piracy. While the website is still live, none of its services work anymore. “I was heartbroken when I found out,” Liang told CNN Business. “I feel like there is one place fewer in China through which we can expand our horizons.” Police in Shanghai arrested 14 people they claim ran the website and app after a three-month investigation into suspected intellectual property infringement. At the time of its closure, Renren Yingshi had amassed over eight million registered users and was home to more than 20,000 pirated TV shows and movies. The site’s operators made some 16 million yuan ($2.5 million) in the past couple of years from ads, subscription fees, and selling hard drives loaded with pirated content, according to police. Renren Yingshi did not respond to a request for comment from CNN Business. The crackdown was lauded by state media and intellectual property experts as a sign of China’s resolve to enforce copyright protection — criticism over which has dogged Beijing for years. But it also drew a wave of backlash from fans who, like Liang, had long relied on the site for uncensored foreign content. An outpouring of support for Renren Yingshi dominated China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform in the days after the crackdown. Some thanked the site for “opening a door for us to the world.” The public outcry came, at least in part, because of how tightly the Chinese government restricts access to foreign content. It is one of only four countries or regions, alongside North Korea, Syria and Crimea, that doesn’t allow access to Netflix, the world’s most-popular streaming platform, for example. China also strictly limits how many foreign films can be screened in cinemas each year. And of the content that is allowed to air in the country, much is heavily censored. For Chinese millennials, watching foreign shows and movies is not only a favorite pastime — it’s an opportunity to learn about the world. And many of them say the roadblocks imposed by the Chinese government leave them with little choice but to turn to pirated websites, even though they are willing to pay for legitimate access to uncensored, foreign content. While the demise of Renren Yingshi and the country’s censorship crackdown suggests the status quo might not change, the reaction to its closure and the popularity of uncensored work shows that there remains a huge appetite for such content within China. Strict censorship rules Founded in 2003 by a group of Chinese students in Canada, Renren Yingshi — a phrase that means “everyone’s film and TV” — was born out of a desire to spread foreign TV shows and movies more widely within China. Young, internet-savvy Chinese were drawn to foreign content as China reformed its economy and opened up to the world. They found that such films and shows offered an edgier, more diverse alternative to the heavily censored content produced at home — as well as a way to learn about other cultures and societies. Getting access to that kind of content through legitimate means, though, is difficult in China. Since the early 1990s, authorities have allowed just a few dozen foreign films to be screened in the country each year — only nine of the 26 Oscar best picture winners were screened publicly in China from 1994 to 2019, for example. International streaming services, including Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video, have also been unable to crack the market. Netflix, for example, told shareholders in 2016 that the “regulatory environment for foreign digital content services” was “challenging” in China. A subsequent attempt to partner with a local company to distribute content failed. The content that is allowed to air in China, meanwhile, needs to meet strict guidelines. Movies or shows with controversial themes — such as those that depict China in a bad light, portray taboo subjects like the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre, or feature LGBTQ storylines — are kept out entirely. And since China lacks a film rating system, any content approved by Chinese regulators is heavily edited to remove certain scenes, such as graphic sex or violence. When the Oscar-winning Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” was released in China in 2019, for example, any mention of the Queen singer’s sexuality — as well as his AIDS diagnosis — was edited out. And the American blockbuster fantasy drama “Game of Thrones,” which built its popularity on graphic sex and violence, was censored so heavily on Chinese streaming giant Tencent Video that some viewers complained that it was turned into a staid “medieval European castle documentary.” “There were too many ‘sensitive’ scenes deleted that I could hardly understand the plot anymore — it was so confusing,” said a fan of the show who watched on Tencent Video. The fan asked to remain anonymous because she once helped translate shows for a website that featured pirated content, and she also spoke to CNN Business about that experience. There’s little indication that these rules may change. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, tolerance for foreign ideas and values has declined drastically. Popular Western culture is seen by Beijing as a key risk for foreign infiltration that targets Chinese youth — making such content important for the government to control. A long history of legal issues The sweeping restrictions have motivated fans of shows and movies that run afoul of censorship rules to subtitle them in Chinese and upload unauthorized copies online. They operate in loose networks of volunteer translators known as fansub groups. Renren Yingshi was among the largest of these networks, exploding in popularity as American series like “Prison Break,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Gossip Girl” became smash hits in China. Long before the latest crackdown, Renren Yingshi was running into trouble with authorities. In 2009, it was one of more than 100 Chinese websites shut down for “rectification” after the government issued rules that banned the dissemination of unapproved movies and TV shows on the Chinese internet. At the time, Renren Yingshi vowed to give up its video downloading service, and in 2010 pivoted to translating open online courses offered by American universities. The strategy won the blessing of Chinese state media, which heralded the website as “a knowledge evangelist in the internet age.” That love-in didn’t last. The website eventually resumed offering pirated shows, and its servers were shut down by Chinese regulators in 2014, not long after the Motion Picture Association of America included Renren Yingshi on a list of pirate sites. It eventually popped back up, and at one point even moved its servers to South Korea for a time as it continued to look for ways to stay operational. Ultimately, Renren Yingshi’s interest in making money might have led to its downfall. While it began as a volunteer endeavor, Renren Yingshi eventually started accepting advertisements on videos, and charged members to view its content. “According to Chinese law, if copyright infringement was conducted for the purpose of making a profit, it is very easy to constitute a crime,” said Xu Xinming, an intellectual property lawyer at Beijing Mingtai Law Firm. Xu noted that in China, a business needs to make just a few thousand dollars in order to run afoul of copyright crime laws — well short of the millions police claim Renren Yingshi raked in. It’s not surprising, Xu says, that Beijing would want to go so hard against a platform with such a high profile. The government has worked harder over the last decade to address infringement, especially given Western accusations that copyright abuse runs rampant in the country. In 2020 alone, Chinese authorities shut down more than 2,800 websites and apps offering pirated content and deleted 3.2 million links, according to the most recent data available from the National Copyright Administration of China. ‘Using my love to generate power’ It’s not clear when the case may be resolved, though copyright infringement results in a punishment of up to seven years in prison, depending on the severity of the violation. Police in Shanghai did not respond to a request from CNN Business for more information on the case. No matter what happens to Renren Yingshi, though, it leaves behind a vast legacy of cultural exchange. “Many friends around me have grown up watching American series. They gave us a lot of extra parameters in our way of thinking,” said Lin, the Game of Thrones fan. She said she volunteered for a fansub group in high school called “Garden of Eden.” “If you’ve had so much exposure to different cultures, races and people from different backgrounds since a young age … it is easier for you to be able to see things from another perspective.” She said she was “using my love to generate power” — a phrase commonly cited by volunteers who want to emphasize that they are motivated by their passion for the shows, and not money. The translation work wasn’t easy, Lin said. “Every Friday, when the latest episode came out, the timer was on,” said Lin, who translated episodes of the American supernatural teen drama “The Vampire Diaries,” as well as sitcoms “The Big Bang Theory” and “Two Broke Girls.” Someone in the United States or Canada would record the show and send it along with English subtitles. Teams would then divide the episode into 10-minute segments and assign them to translators. “There was a lot of stuff I needed to look up,” said Lin, adding that it took her about two hours to translate 10 minutes of video. “Sometimes the characters would tell a joke that I couldn’t get, and I had to search for it online.” “It was difficult because I had to use [Chinese search engine] Baidu within the Great Firewall,” she said, referring to the government’s sprawling internet censorship apparatus. The work of fansub volunteers has effectively acted as a fourth wave of “translation activity that has had a huge impact on Chinese culture,” wrote Yan Feng, a professor of Chinese language and literature at Fudan University in Shanghai, in a widely shared Weibo post on February 3. By comparison, Yan said the other three major waves included the translation of Buddhist texts in ancient China, the translation of Western literature and social science works during the late Qing dynasty, and the translation of modern works on humanities and social sciences after the Cultural Revolution. For many Chinese millennials, fansub work is also a way to learn about the world. Many groups don’t just do translation work — they also add footnotes explaining background and context for certain dialogue to help Chinese audiences better understand historic, political or cultural references. “I think it’s a good thing for a child to be exposed to different cultures and different ways of thinking growing up,” said Joy Tian, a 23-year-old English teacher in Beijing. She said she was struck by the individualistic values at the center of many Western series and films, having grown up in a culture that emphasizes collectivism. “It helps promote diversity of thought,” she added. Xu, the Beijing-based lawyer, said it is up to the public to “do some self-reflection” following the crackdown on Renren Yingshi. “There’s no free lunch in this world, and they shouldn’t download or stream pirate films and TV shows anymore,” he said. But Tian stressed that she’d be willing to pay for the shows if they were uncensored. After all, she has paid for licensed American shows on legitimate Chinese streaming sites before — but she couldn’t get past all of the editing. Even Xu said that Chinese fans will likely continue to be tempted to watch pirated shows. People who watch such content and don’t profit off of it have not, traditionally, been punished in China. And if the government doesn’t ease up on its rules on content, the demand won’t go away. “This is indeed a problem. And as the government steps up its crackdown on copyright infringement, this problem will only become more acute,” Xu said. “With pirated access cut off, [the government and companies] should compensate by broadening legal access.” Source link Orbem News #Chinese #Cultural #Millennials #pirated #Shows #touchstone #website

[opticien2-0]

2020 VISIONS Twenty Mobile trends for 2020

What does 2020 have in store for mobile and retail?

As the new year – nay, a new decade – hoves into view, we continue our look at what the future holds for mobile with these 20 predictions from Thomas Husson, VP Principal Analyst at Forrester

  I have just published a post sharing some of our marketing predictions for 2020. It made me realise that Forrester no longer publishes dedicated “mobile” predictions. Why? Because mobile has simply become a key driver and enabler of business transformation.

  Mobile is embedded everywhere. However, many brands wrongly think they have ticked the mobile box and move on to new and more disrupting technologies. In a nutshell, they want to move from mobile-first to AI-first.

  A couple of months ago, I published a report claiming that the concept of “mobile-first” was failing CMOs, that most brands were still not mature when it comes to mobile, and that they needed to reimagine mobile to activate the total brand experience.

  As a board member of the Mobile Marketing Association France (MMA) and an independent analyst, I was honored to give a keynote this week at the MMA Forum in Paris and share my perspective on what will happen in 2020 in the mobile space. In fact, I decided to share several mobile mega trends, some mobile media and advertising trends that I expect to happen or to accelerate, and some trends that will not happen!

  Mobile will be the catalyst for business transformation.The mobile revolution primarily consisted of changing customer expectations to be served in their moments of need and in their context. The age of the customer (the shift of power from institutions to customers) was accelerated because of mobile. To answer these growing expectations and make their own mobile mind shift, organizations had (and still have) to evolve their culture, organizations, and processes (think agile, DevOps, cross-functional pizza teams, etc.). This transition toward more adaptive enterprises is still a work in progress. This is not new but will accelerate next year.

  Mobile becomes the glue that connects new technologies at scale.Let’s not forget voice-based assistants (such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant) are primarily used on smartphones, not on smart home speakers. Augmented reality (AR) will start really taking off next year (think Google Maps’ AR experience or Snapchat’s augmented experiences) because it has become a platform play at scale: Developers can tap into more than 1 billion compatible smartphones to build new integrated experiences.

  Mobile will act as the personalization experience hub.It is not a channel but a way to deliver an integrated offline/online experience in real time. Some brands (think Starbucks, McDonald’s, Nike, Argos, John Lewis, and Schibsted, to name a few) get it and execute pretty well the integration of mobile into their marketing strategy. But most struggle and still need to fix their mobile foundation.

  Mobile becomes a key enabler of societal engagement for values-based customers.Think apps for good (e.g., Yuka), mobile accessibility (e.g., vocal commands for blind people), and green IT (including dark mode), even though the key issue here is when Gen Z will realize the largely negative impact of smartphone and digital on climate change.

  Leading CMOs will leverage mobile to optimize the marketing mix.MMA has proven through numerous cross marketing effectiveness research that many brands underinvest in mobile. We expect leaders to define the role of mobile in achieving growth objectives and to start measuring offline media impact in (almost) real time. For example, for retailers, to put it shortly, this is less about mCommerce and more about how mobile drives traffic to the store and generates total incremental revenue. Mobile contextual data and transactional point-of-service data are thus central to improving media attribution across every channel, not just mobile!

  Moment automation will require you to assemble your own (mobile) martech stack.Once you have defined key mobile moments across your customer journey, you must identify the right trigger points and automate content and messaging. Think push notifications and in-app messages on steroids. To do this right, it often means you need to assemble your own martech stack with leading mobile point solutions and integrate them with many other marketing systems. At the minimum, you need ASO (app store optimization), mobile CRM (customer relationship management), analytics, and attribution.

  Mobile data privacy becomes a strategic differentiator to establish trust.A lot of the hidden harvesting of consumer data happens through mobile. To establish trust and enable personalization (or lack thereof, if consumers precisely do not want to share data), it is key to integrate mobile into your privacy-by-design approach.

  App platforms will continue to get traction.The rise of super apps is not just happening with the likes of Tencent, Alibaba, and messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. This trend is accelerating in other regions, too, such as in South America. See this TechCrunch article here.

  Expect more rationalization of mobile interfaces.Many brands I have spoken to recently told me they suffer a lot from hybrid development that’s supposed to work across different platforms (think Flutter, React, or Kotlin) and that they prefer to focus on native apps and/or mobile web-first experiences. Forrester has claimed for years that PWA (progressive web apps) are a key way to deliver applike experiences. According to Forrester’s Q2 2019 Global Emerging Technology Executive Online Survey, 18% of digital executives plan to pilot PWA in the next 12 months.

  Leaders will integrate meaningful mobile metrics into their dashboards.Marketers measure too many vanity KPIs when it comes to mobile. Let’s measure less pure digital KPIs and more meaningful metrics: customer experience, incremental revenue,DAU/MAU (daily/monthly active users), CLV (customer lifetime value), etc.

  Mobile will drive more than 80% of digital ad growth next year.Looking at the top five EU countries, we expect PC advertising spending to remain flat, while mobile advertising will grow from €22.9 billion at the end of 2019 to €26.1 billion by the end of 2020 (representing 64% of total digital advertising spend).

  Retail media is set to explode.Mobile is only a component of the retail media opportunity but will play a key role, when it comes to “drive-to-store” offerings, for example. More specifically, Amazon generated $10 billion of ad revenue last year, and next year it is likely that it will represent more than 5% of its total revenue, increasingly challenging Google/Facebook’s duopoly. For more information, see my colleague Collin Colburn’s report here.

  Streaming fatigue will lead to new offerings.Again, far from being just a mobile play, but the war between Disney+, WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, and low-cost Apple TV+ to compete with Netflix and Prime Video will exhaust consumers and lead to new content subscription models.

  Audio advertising will continue to grow fast, driven by podcasts as the next $1 billion ad format.Podcasts are massively listened to via mobile, and they will drive audio advertising more than voice-based assistants will.

  Visual search will take off for fashion and home decoration brands.Despite Pinterest’s initiatives, it is still early days for visual search. For selected brands, however, visual recommendations, and to a lesser extent, visual search will become key ways to engage consumers.

  And here are five trends of what will not happen…

5G will not matter to CMOs.Unless you’re a CMO at a telecom equipment company or a telco, you should not spend time thinking about 5G in the consumer space. Yes, it will matter for industrial players, but to consumers, 5G in 2020 will feel like 3G in 2004 or 4G in 2010; even urban areas in early-5G-rollout countries such as Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland will get an undifferentiated experience. And Apple’s launch of its 5G smartphone in Q3 of 2020 won’t change the game.

  Virtual reality (VR) marketing will remain niche.Despite more affordable VR headsets (Oculus Quest) and the success of the Beat Saber game, VR will mostly matter for B2B and industrial players or play a role in employee training. Marketing opportunities in the consumer space will grow but remain limited.

  More than 80% of AI conversations will not pass the Turing test.The vast majority of chatbot experiences will not leverage true NLG (natural language generation). Don’t get me wrong: Some chatbots will deliver value, but let’s not call them AI conversations.

  TikTok will not sell, and its IPO will be delayed until 2021.Explosion of mobile social videos will continue. TikTok would be an ideal target for the likes of Meredith, Snap, or Facebook but is not for sale and too costly anyway.

  RCS will not become a standard.Google and some telcos will roll out more rich communication service (think of it as the next generation of SMS), but they won’t truly scale in 2020. For more information about RCS, see Julie Ask’s report here.

from InternetRetailing https://ift.tt/2YF4mAp via IFTTT

[pari-shah-posts]

Home security: tech startup MyGate raises Rs 400 cr in series B funding

The firm procedures more than 60,000 solicitations for each moment and encourages more than 45 million registration demands each month to enable lofts to oversee guests, including visitors, just as conveyances and taxis

COMPANIES NEWS: MyGate, an organization that gives innovation to improve security and accommodation for occupants in gated premises has raised $56 million (about Rs 400 crore) in arrangement B financing. 

The speculation has originated from Chinese web monster Tencent Holdings, US-based JS Capital LLC, Tiger Global Management close by an existing financial specialist, Prime Venture Partners.

MyGate plans to utilize the financing to make imaginative answers for disposing of rubbing in connections between the home and the outside world and giving comfort and security to its clients. 

The assets raised would likewise help the firm spotlight on expanding the productivity of different partners, for example, security workforce, nearby specialist organizations and internet business organizations. 

The startup, which has more than 700 representatives spread over the majority of India's metros, is additionally wanting to significantly increase its workforce throughout the following two quarters.

"It (gated network) is a major market. There are more than 100,000 networks in the main 11 metros," said Shreyans Daga, fellow benefactor, and chief at MyGate. 

"There are additionally a huge number of networks in level 2 and level 3 urban communities and they are in any event, coming up in the place where I grew up Bikaner (in Rajasthan)," said Daga. He said the organization was giving a reasonable arrangement that cost Rs 20-25 every month for a level.

A previous venture head at tech monster Oracle, Daga, helped to establish MyGate in 2016 alongside Vijay Arisetty, an ex-IAF pilot (Shaurya Chakra awardee) and Abhishek K, previous VP at Goldman Sachs.

READ FULL STORY:  Home Security

[jacobhinkley]

Binance Recognizes Africa as a Prime Target for a Blockchain Revolution

Binance is looking at Africa as the next frontier of growth, an executive at the world’s largest crypto exchange by daily trading volume has revealed. Benjamin Rameau, the Director of Binance Labs revealed the company’s reasons behind setting out to conquer Africa, with the relative underdevelopment in the continent and the great diversity being among the key ones. Through a blog post, Rameau stated that while decentralization has the capacity to unlock a lot of potential in the developed world, Africa is the continent that could experience a revolution as its financial services networks have a very low adoption rate.  

The African Revolution

Rameau listed ten reasons that have led Binance to focus on Africa, the first of which is the contrarian spirit. Citing the unprecedented growth that Asia underwent in the 60’s and 70’s despite many people dismissing it, he expressed his belief that Africa is at a similar point and that it’s those that have a contrarian outlook that will take the most advantage of this.

Africa’s population of 1.2 Billion people is largely underbanked, with only 43 percent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa having a bank account against the global average of 69 percent. The proportion is even lower in some areas such as South Sudan where it stands at 9 percent. This makes the continent a prime destination for decentralized applications which can provide access to financial services for hundreds of millions of Africans.

Rameau, who leads Binance’s startup incubator, also cited the poor governance in many African countries for the stagnating growth. Blockchain technology can circumvent the political elite and bring together economically aligned people, he explained stating:

Blockchain technology can allow large people to work together through aligned economic incentives where they can participate in their own governance codes. The parameters controlling a DAO can be decided by the token holders, for the token holders. These organizations will no longer be dependent on the whims of a politician.

Africa’s huge proportion of young people will also accelerate the pace of blockchain adoption, Rameau continued. Citing Ethiopia as an example, he stated that with a median age of 17.9 years, it’s a reflection of the majority of the other African states whose population is predominantly young and would thus quickly embrace blockchain technology.

Binance Labs is just as African as it is European, Rameau concluded. Being a decentralized organization, Binance Labs has “no headquarters, no office and no geographical boundaries,” he stated. He expressed the commitment of Binance Labs to investing in Africa, inviting any applicants from Africa whose projects were making the world a better place to submit their applications for consideration.

With its mission being “to solve the problems that matter most to the ecosystem and change the world for the better,” Binance Labs invests in and incubates blockchain projects. Led by ex-Google and Tencent luminary Ella Zhang, it has invested in a number of startups including privacy-focused payments network MobileCoin, decentralized crowdfunding platform Republic and decentralized cloud computing platform Oasis Labs. Binance Labs is also the administrator of Binance’s Ecosystem Fund, a one-billion-dollar fund which has partnered with 20 initial partners to invest in blockchain startups

  Binance Recognizes Africa as a Prime Target for a Blockchain Revolution published first on https://medium.com/@smartoptions

[valuewalkposts]

Addressing Banking’s Deadly Digital Intelligence Debt

The financial services landscape has fundamentally changed. Top banks are under attack from niche players and non-banking companies.

In fact, 49 percent of banking executives say the traditional transaction/ branch based banking model will be dead by 2020, according to The Economist‘s 2016 report, “Retail Banking: In tech we trust.”

Consumers increasingly expect highly contextual, personalized experiences across their connected devices. Banks and other financial service providers who can’t deliver are under threat of extinction.

Most banks are not ready for this new demand. Fewer than 20 percent of bank executives feel prepared for the future, according to PWC’s Retail Banking 2020.

In order to compete, banks must demonstrate customer knowledge and understanding beyond what previously has been possible. Existing infrastructure is such that many systems do not speak to one another and the MarTech tools and processes that are in place have limited agility in terms of what they are able to deliver and how.

Banking’s digital intelligence debt is primarily rooted in these disparate data siloes. Without some sort of machine learning- or AI-powered digital intelligence layer, there is simply no way for banks to process the millions of disparate sets of behavioral, profile, and operational data to deliver the promise of 1:1 customer interactions at scale.

Without addressing this fundamental issue, banks are increasingly at risk to competitors outside of the industry. And banking executives know it.

In 2016, The Economist reported that 61 percent of banking executives believe their biggest competition will come from outside of the industry.

So, what do these industry outsiders look like? Well, they look a lot like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Jack Ma.

Competing for the millennial market with tech disruptors

According to a new 2017 survey, approximately one in three banking and insurance customers globally would consider switching their accounts to Google, Amazon, or Facebook if the Silicon Valley-based companies offered financial services.

Take, for example, Google. They have Android Pay and Google Wallet which allow consumers to send, receive, and request money. Google Finance also offers some online portfolio tools that could eventually expand to displace traditional brokerages.

Meanwhile, Amazon, with more than 250 million users, partnered with Wells Fargo in 2016 to offer discounted student loans to Amazon Prime customers. They’ve been active in direct loans through Amazon Loans and payments via Amazon Payments. In addition, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has played a large role in migrating heavily regulated banks data to cloud infrastructure, which could accelerate further partnerships. And yesterday Amazon announced its new Prime card, a credit card with no fee, ordinary interest and a whopping 5% cash back on Amazon purchases. It will undoubtedly come with other Amazon Prime benefits further strengthening Amazon’s relationship with its customers.

If you’re wondering what expansion by a tech giant into financial services actually looks like, look no further than Chinese tech giant Alibaba. In 2015, Alibaba launched their all-digital bank, MYbank, which has grown to more than 450 million annual active users. The Wall Street Journal reported that 58 percent of online payments in China use the bank’s payment service, Alipay.

Other major Chinese tech companies, Tencent and Baidu, both launched banks of their own over the past two years. Tencent, the company behind the ubiquitous WeChat social media app in China, launched WeBank. Baidu, the online search giant, partnered with a traditional bank to offer both online and offline services.

Alibaba’s capital lending arm is an optimal example of what the future of retail banking could look like. There’s no staff involved. Data algorithms calculate loan amounts and the application and approval process happen online—in minutes.

How CMO’s can address digital intelligence debt in 2017

Banking CMO’s are already adopting technology at a breakneck pace to cross the digital intelligence chasm.

Unfortunately, it’s still a major challenge to create and act upon a unified customer profile. The technology doesn’t scale, segmentation is too macro, processes require too much heavy lifting and the data is still disconnected from the front-line marketers who are tasked with maintaining and strengthening relationships with customers.

While the traditional marketing technology stack places personalization at the end of a complex collection of infrastructure investments in rules-based tools, forward-thinking CMOs should be thinking about investments in technology with core AI capabilities to circumvent much of the resource and integration issues that has plagued marketers for the past five years.

Instead, as CMO’s continually skew toward direct revenue drivers, they need to be evaluating machine learning-based digital intelligence platforms that integrate with their existing stack and data environments. These types of tools should be able to ingest all of their customer data, test 1000’s of messaging permutations, and adaptively optimize every customer experience.

Done right, this will result in significant growth in customer lifetime value and retention. Done poorly, and you’re still dealing with expensive, static marketing infrastructure with no provable ROI across your KPIs.

Business as usual, unfortunately, for many marketers.

But as financial services marketing leadership seeks to bridge the digital intelligence gap in 2017 and compete in a rapidly transforming industry, there’s no more room for business as usual.

By Santo Criscuolo, VP of Strategy & Digital Transformation, Amplero

About Santo

Santo Criscuolo has extensive experience helping large B2C brands, such as AT&T Wireless, T-Mobile, Nike, Adidas, Weight Watchers, Disney and Microsoft, leverage digital marketing to acquire, engage, and retain their customers.

As VP of Strategy & Digital Transformation at Amplero, he currently empowers Fortune 500 marketers to utilize machine learning and continuous optimization technology to drastically improve customer retention, increase average revenue per user, and deliver personalized 1:1 customer experiences at scale.

Contact him at santoc@amplero.com.

[thelmasirby32]

Are search engines dead in China?

30-second summary:

WeChat, a widely-used Chinese app, provides users with a variety of features including messaging, shopping, and more, inevitably affecting the search landscape with the abundance of data and content it provides to users.

Chinese users are stepping away from using traditional search engines, and instead, are leaning on searching within one-stop apps that are more tailored to their search queries.

Many companies like Bytedance and Alipay are increasingly trying to make their mark in search by creating large ecosystems that effectively tend to users’ needs.

Many of these challenger platforms are aiming to gain more dominance in the search market to capitalize on rising search demands.

 Are search engines dead in China?

You can’t imagine the internet without the search engine. It started out as a way of finding stuff on the various websites that were popping up, but ended up shaping the very medium it was indexing. Nobody would build a website without making sure it was molded around the demands of the biggest search engines in its customers’ region.

But that doesn’t mean search itself isn’t changing. As we’re seeing in China, the days of the search engine website that you visit to start your exploration could be numbered.

WeChat, therefore WeSearch

The largest search engine in China has always been (and remains) Baidu, which has a billion regular users, making it the second most popular search resource in the world.

But there’s a new player in town. WeChat has 1.2 billion users globally, mainly in China. It’s a one-stop app with a multitude of uses, not limited to messaging, consuming content, shopping, accessing services, and mobile payments. It’s ubiquitous in the nation, so it’s easy to see how it could become a hugely disruptive element in the search landscape. Because of its huge user base and multiple functions, there are billions of different user actions recorded and thousands of items of content being created and consumed on a daily basis. 

WeChat has a large volume of content and data within its ecosystem, including articles from WeChat official accounts (similar to Facebook business pages), mini-programs (mini-apps embedded within WeChat which don’t require installation on users’ mobile devices), news content from Tencent News, along with content from Tencent Music and WeChat Video channel. More importantly, WeChat has a partnership with Sogou, China’s second-largest search provider, to pump more information into WeChat’s ecosystem.

Plugged into this huge index, WeChat search has become a powerful tool to find information. A survey by SocialBeta showed that 32% of WeChat users use it as their prime search engine of choice, and 46% use it as a general search tool. These are big numbers.

Now, Tencent, the owner of WeChat (and Sogou’s major shareholder), is moving to buy Sogou outright, potentially empowering its business model to take on more of the traditional search engines’ market share and to grab the benefits that come with it.

Search is moving away from pure search engines

The amount of searching going on in China is as strong as ever, but increasingly, people are turning away from the traditional search providers and searching within the enormous ecosystems Chinese tech giants build. 

A typical Chinese consumer can have various different sources to search for information depending on what they are looking for. To search for a product, they can go straight to dominant ecommerce platforms like Taobao and JD.com, then search in Xiaohongshu to look for inspiration and community reviews. If they are interested in a brand, a celebrity, or trending news, they will head to WeChat, Weibo, or Toutiao. To find a nearby store or a local service they will search in WeChat and Alipay without downloading any apps. A typical American would do most of that through Google, even when searching for products on Amazon, despite it having a perfectly good search engine of its own.

Search defragmenting

When it comes to search engine market share in China, only traditional search engines like Baidu and Sogou will be classified in the landscape by all the statistics providers. The movement of other players has been neglected for a long time. Toutiao, for example, is the top news and information aggregation app in the country, with 275 million monthly active users. Its owner is Bytedance, a company that’s currently in the Western news, as it’s the owner of TikTok, a video sharing app that President Trump wants to ban in America.

TikTok’s cousin in China, Douyin, has more than 400 million users. Similar to WeChat, millions of pieces of content and actions happen across Bytedance’s portfolio, ranging from news and articles to videos. With the data and information continuing to grow in the app, an increasing number of users are adapting to use search in the news app to look for information.

However, in March 2020, when Toutiao launched an independent search engine to rival Baidu, it failed to meet expectations and didn’t make much of a crater in Baidu’s landscape.

With 700 million users, Alipay is another rising star in the search landscape. It is a financial app that allows users to not only pay for things, but do a host of daily tasks like picking up parcels, ordering food, applying for credit cards, and buying and selling stocks and shares. Again, search within this ecosystem is a significant competitive thing, as it can guide users towards certain products and services over rivals.

According to third party research, half of the search queries happening in Alipay are finance related. In early 2020, Alipay even made an improvement to its in-app search algorithm so users can directly search for the name of a stock or finance product, instead of accessing them through the menu.

Alipay has not stopped there – this year, as the major sponsor of a trending reality show, “Street Dance of China Season 3″, Alipay has been actively placing branded search bars in the show to encourage more viewers to engage with its in-app search function.

Why are they all eyeing the search market?

The answer is ad revenue. Many of the platforms mentioned above, including Weibo, Tencent, and Toutiao are already offering paid search ad positions to capitalize on the search demand.

Clearly, Chinese people regularly use all or most of these apps on a daily basis, so they don’t tend to stick to a single search engine, as is the case with Europe and the US, where Google dominates and permeates throughout the entire digital world. A rough parallel could be the search results given by Facebook and Twitter, but neither has the dominance or the captive audience that these Chinese giants can boast.

Should Baidu be worried? By far, Baidu provides the biggest index compared to all the other players. Also, like Google, Baidu has vigorously diversified, and provides dozens of services from maps to cloud storage – and its search engine backs up the whole ecosystem. The biggest long-term challenge for traditional search engines is that all the valuable data and content from super apps like WeChat, Toutiao, and Aliplay have not, and will not, open their indexes to service users outside their ecosystems.

In the short term, Google’s search dominance doesn’t look like it will be challenged in the same way Baidu has been. Through accidents of history and habitual use among consumers, it’s hard to knock big search engines off their perch. But nothing is predictable in digital, and analysts will certainly be keeping a close eye on the petri dish that is the Chinese search sector.

Ada Luo is Regional Account Director (APAC) at Croud.

The post Are search engines dead in China? appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digital Marketing News https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/09/14/are-search-engines-dead-in-china/

[brajeshupadhyay]

Will these trusts ever bounce back or are they dead ducks?

Some of the most popular income investment trusts have failed to bounce back from the coronavirus crash – and experts reckon it could be time to sell them.

Merchants Investment Trust is down 39 per cent this year and Murray International is down 25 per cent. Yet the FTSE 100 is down by just 20 per cent, having recovered from its low of 4,994 back to 6,032 by the end of last week.

The question for many investors who have money in these giant funds will be whether to hang on for the income they pay or offload now for a rival with better prospects.

Some of the most popular income investment trusts have failed to bounce back from the coronavirus crash

Merchants, for instance, is still paying a very healthy 7.39 per cent yield – or £7.39 a year for every £100 in the fund. Murray International’s yield is now 5.63 per cent.

Even though these payouts are being made to look more generous – you are getting a larger percentage of a smaller pot – they are not to be sniffed at.

Yet Ben Yearsley, director of Shore Financial Planning, points out that capital growth is vital in the longer term to deliver increasing payouts. In other words, if the funds keep struggling, the income paid out may fail to grow or even face a cut.

‘You need your capital to grow in order for your income to grow over time,’ Yearsley says. ‘So therefore would look seriously at alternatives for your income if your capital is doing poorly.’ 

Chris Salih, investment analyst at FundCalibre, adds: ‘Whether you should keep trusts just for income if they’re underperforming in capital growth terms is a very subjective question and very much depends on the type of investor you are.

‘Ideally, you’d want both. But if you are at or approaching retirement, it is understandable that you may want to prioritise the income – especially as dividends are being cut left, right and centre at the moment – provided your initial investment is not being heavily eroded by capital losses.’

Merchants and Murray International are favourites among income seekers. Murray International, managed by Aberdeen Standard Investments, is a £1.4billion trust which has been around for more than 100 years – meaning it has weathered its fair share of catastrophes. But it has recently underperformed markets such as the FTSE World and MSCI World indices.

It’s vital that your capital keeps growing over time over time 

So far this year the trust has lost almost 24 per cent compared to a broadly flat performance from the FTSE All World index. Over the past year, the trust has lost 15 per cent against a near 4 per cent rise for the index.

Laura Suter, personal finance analyst at AJ Bell, says: ‘Murray International has been hit harder this year than some of its peers due to its ‘value’ investing approach.

‘This means it invests in companies that it thinks have been unfairly priced down by the market and are primed for the rebound.’

Unfortunately for investors, many of those stocks were among those hit the hardest in the market falls earlier this year – for example, Mexican airport operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste. ‘In addition,’ says Suter, ‘the trust didn’t have much exposure to the technology stocks that have led a lot of the recovery around the world.

Murray International has recently underperformed markets such as the FTSE World and MSCI World indices

‘The fund has switched out of UK stock markets, dropping its allocation to the UK to a 40-year low, and instead is betting its fortunes on Asia and the emerging markets rebounding faster than other areas of the world. Considering these are some of the areas currently most affected by the pandemic, investors will likely need to be patient and ride out more volatility in the months to come.’

It isn’t all doom and gloom though, adds Suter. ‘Income seekers will be comforted that the trust has said that it plans to maintain its dividend growth policy and the trust has enough reserves to cover a year’s worth of dividends if needed.’

Investment trust Merchants, a £700million fund investing in UK shares, was enjoying something of a purple patch for growth at the start of this year.

However, AJ Bell’s Suter says: ‘The trust has a high level of gearing (borrowing money to invest in the market) meaning that any rises and falls in the value of its underlying assets will be amplified. On average, gearing has been shown to boost returns on investment trusts over the long term but adds to volatility in the short term – meaning investors need to be prepared for a wilder ride along the way.’

The good news is Merchants has committed to at least maintain its dividend this year. Suter thinks it is likely it will dip into its cash reserves this year rather than cut its payout.

However, Ben Yearsley thinks that’s a bad sign. ‘Dipping into cash reserves means the trust can artificially keep dividends higher in the short term,’ he says. ‘But Merchants, for example, has Imperial Brands, Shell and lots of financial firms among its biggest holdings. Those types of business haven’t recovered at all – and have in fact carried on falling in some cases.’

Merchants is down 39 per cent this year, but has committed to maintain its dividend

FundCalibre’s Salih says both the Merchants Trust and the Murray International Trust have a focus on value investing – a type of investing strategy which has been out of fashion for a number of years. ‘Quantitative easing (or money printing) and low interest rates have favoured the growth style of investing,’ he says.

Growth investing is where a fund manager will pick stocks on the up, as opposed to ones that could rebound from a tough time.

Salih adds: ‘The recent stock market sell-off saw central banks across the globe introduce yet more quantitative easing into the markets, while interest rates have fallen even further, making the backdrop even more challenging for value investing, as these companies are often more in debt.’

In contrast to Merchants and Murray International, Finsbury Growth and Income Trust only fell 8 per cent in value since the start of the year, but has a smaller yield than either at 1.99 per cent.

It might be better to ride out any bumps in the road 

Scottish Mortgage, the largest investment trust, started the year at £5.86 but after a small Covid dip has now shot up to £9.03 thanks to tech holdings in Tesla, Amazon, Tencent and Alibaba. That means investors have seen £1,000 turned into £1,536. However, the trust provides a dividend yield of just 0.36 per cent.

Yearsley recommends Finsbury Growth and Income, which he says ‘has a lower initial income but with better prospects for growth’.

Other alternatives tipped by Salih, at FundCalibre, include Murray Income, which still provides a strong yield of 4.52 per cent. ‘The manager is very experienced and his long-term track record still good,’ he adds.

However, he warns against making knee-jerk decisions. He points out that coronavirus has, and will continue to have, a massively adverse effect on the economy and the wider market – so any false moves driven by short-term price movements could prove costly.

Suter agrees: ‘Clearly in times of market volatility and falls, investors who are tempted to sell for better opportunities elsewhere have to be careful not to lock in a loss that might be hard to recover from.

‘If the fund has indicated that the cut to capital growth is temporary and they are still finding income opportunities, it might be better for investors to hold tight and ride out the bump in the road.’

Murray International manager Bruce Stout says: ‘We will not chase short-term returns. Instead we will continue to emphasise financially strong companies in regions of the world where long-term growth prospects remain superior.’ 

Some links in this article may be affiliate links. If you click on them we may earn a small commission. That helps us fund This Is Money, and keep it free to use. We do not write articles to promote products. We do not allow any commercial relationship to affect our editorial independence.

The post Will these trusts ever bounce back or are they dead ducks? appeared first on Shri Times News.

via Blogger https://ift.tt/3gHLmts

[jobsearchtips02]

Big Tech’s Antitrust Paradox

Everyone seems to hate America’s giant tech companies these days—except the hundreds of millions of people who use their products. Amid the new political and antitrust scrutiny of Big Tech, this not-so-small matter of consumer benefit should be the legal and policy watchword.

Wednesday’s House hearing with the CEOs of

Amazon,

Apple,

Facebook

and Google showed the bipartisan hostility to America’s most successful companies. Democrats say they’re too big, powerful and examples of non-union capitalist success. Republicans dislike them because the companies and their employees lean left politically and in some cases (Google,

Twitter

) are thought to use algorithms to punish conservative content.

“Our founders would not bow before a king,” declared Rhode Island Democrat David Cicilline, setting the tone for the afternoon inquisition. “Nor should we bow before the emperors of the online economy.” He added that the Big Four’s dominance is “killing the small businesses, manufacturing and overall dynamism that are the engines of the American economy.”

His evidence is weaker than his rhetoric. There may be specific cases in which a giant abuses market power, such as Google in online advertising. The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are investigating the giants and may bring cases this year. But as the hearing showed, the companies have plenty of evidence to use in their defense.

Start with the reality that all four face ferocious competition, often from each other. Amazon is supposedly an unbeatable leviathan in retail. But the company has only about a 1% share of the overall global retail business and less than 4% in the U.S. Walmart is bigger and its online business is growing fast. In cloud computing services, Amazon faces competition from

Microsoft,

Google, Alibaba and more. Apple’s iTunes must contend with Spotify and Amazon Prime.

Progressive groups such as the NAACP and Common Sense Media claim that the failure of the current advertising boycott to change Facebook’s speech policies shows that the social-media site is a monopoly. But it proves the opposite. Businesses can avoid Facebook because they have other online places to reach consumers—including Amazon and Google.

Facebook is losing users to Snap and TikTok, especially among the young. Facebook tried to introduce a TikTok-like feature in 2018, known as Lasso, but it didn’t rope enough users. Facebook is attacked for buying Instagram but it invested heavily to make the photo-sharing site easy-to-use. There’s no way to know if Instagram could have become a competitor to Facebook had it remained independent. It might have become the Yahoo of search—an also-ran.

Amazon has prospered in part by becoming a marketplace for small business, not by excluding it. Some 1.7 million small and medium-sized businesses sell via Amazon, and the company says more than 200,000 had more than $100,000 in sales in 2019. Amazon eclipsed

eBay

as a leading small-business web venue because entrepreneurs thought it served them better. Amazon was also a lifeline for many businesses that were forced to shut their storefronts in the pandemic.

Opinion Live Q&A

Are the U.S. and China Headed for a New Cold War?

Join WSJ Opinion’s Paul Gigot, Jillian Melchior and Jason Willick for a live online discussion and Q&A on China-U.S. relations on Thursday, July 30. Register Now with WSJ+

The American giants also operate in a global economy with emerging competitors, especially from China. Breaking up U.S. tech companies would be a gift to ByteDance, Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent, among others. Alibaba wants to elbow into Amazon’s data cloud business in Europe. Politicians who are fretting about China’s drive for global economic dominance should think twice before dismantling the U.S. firms that invest heavily in artificial intelligence and can compete world-wide.

Politicians talk about antitrust law as if it’s a finely tuned instrument, but it can easily backfire. A classic example is the way Amazon cajoled Barack Obama’s antitrust officials to bring a case against Apple for trying to compete in e-books. Justice won its case after the Supreme Court declined to take Apple’s appeal, but the result has been to make Amazon’s e-book dominance more secure.

Trust-busters target a market at a particular moment in time, though the digital marketplace is ever-changing. They targeted IBM’s mainframe dominance even as desktop PCs were on the verge of putting more computer power in the hands of individuals. They targeted Microsoft’s browser advantage on the desktop even as Google was creating new competition in search and Apple in devices.

In a democracy, any accumulation of wealth and power will get political scrutiny, and the tech giants are taking their turn in the dock. There are genuine concerns about political bias, the harm to journalism and democracy by Google’s use of content without compensation, and perhaps barriers to entry.

But the market usually does the best job of countering monopolies. Too often government intervention reinforces monopolies. Antitrust law since the work of Robert Bork and Yale Brozen in the 1970s has rightly focused not on size but consumer harm. The burden is on the critics of Big Tech to prove genuine damage, and then propose solutions that don’t do more harm than good.

Journal Editorial Report: The week’s best and worst from Jason Riley, Mary O’Grady and Dan Henninger. Image: Associated Press

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

%%

from Job Search Tips https://jobsearchtips.net/big-techs-antitrust-paradox/

[ayushir]

Over the Top Content Market 2020 – 2023: Global Leading Growth Drivers, COVID – 19 Analysis, Business Trends, Sales Revenue, Emerging Technologies, Industry Segments, Profits and Regional Study

Over the Top Content Market Overview:

Market Research Future (MRFR) expects the over the top (OTT) content market 2020 to accrue a whopping valuation of roughly USD 87 Billion by 2023. The market can also attain a growth rate of 14% between 2017 and 2023 (assessment period). We will provide covid-19 impact analysis with the report, offering an extensive market evaluation post the coronavirus disease outbreak.

 Post the COVID-19 outbreak, the sales of IoT–based smart devices has surged remarkably, as a result of the lockdown imposed across countries and the consequent deployment of OTT services related to media and entertainment. The widespread consumption of OTT services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime has been apparent following the SARS-CoV-2 spread, leading to a spike in the market demand.

Over the years, artificial intelligence/AI has gathered extremely high impetus across the digital world, but after the advent of novel coronavirus, various Over the Top Content Market trends service providers are integrated their services with AI to boost the appeal and gain more number of consumers. The pandemic hit service providers are now dependent on the latest technologies more than ever, as they are increasingly trying to understand the users' choice to provide them with customized content. Such factors, especially in these uncertain economic conditions can be major boosters in the over the top content market.

Agreements and partnerships between leading companies have been quite prevalent in the OTT content market, driven by the goal to provide innovative services with unparalleled quality. For instance, in June 2020, TEGNA Inc. has partnered with Gray Television Inc., which means that the latter will soon own a minor share in Premion, a leading OTT advertising business of TEGNA.

Top Companies:

Top companies actively seeking innovative strategies to elevate their market position include Microsoft Corporation (U.S.), Google, Inc. (U.S.), Tencent Holdings Limited (China), Roku, Inc. (USA), Nimbuzz (Netherlands), Hulu LLC. (Santa Monica), Facebook (U.S.), Brightcove Inc. (Boston,USA), Limelight Networks, Inc. (India), ActiveVideo Networks, Inc. (U.S.), Netflix Inc. (U.S.), Apple, Inc. (U.S.), and more.

Market Segmentation:

·       The over the top content industry has been considered for content type, deployment and device/platform.

·       The Content types discussed in the market study include Texts & Images, Voice Over IP, Music Streaming and Videos.

·       The primary segments depending on the deployment type can be On Cloud as well as On Premise.

·       Device/Platform-wise market categories can be OTT Streaming Devices, Gaming Consoles, Smart TVs and Smartphones & Tablets. The smart TV market is doing quite well across the globe, with Sony, Samsung, Sony and LG having the biggest share. Smart TVs generally have built-in internet interface, which works in the market’s favor. In addition, the mounting consumption of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, viewers are easily able to connect their TV with the internet, leading to more convenience and reduced time wastage.

Regional Insight:

The over-the-top content market has been regionally studied with respect to Asia Pacific/APAC, Europe, North America, and RoW or Rest of the World.

North America can emerge as the global leader in the over-the-top content market, with the one of the main reasons cited to be the huge number of content providers present in the United States/US and Canada. These countries are among the prominent consumers of animated content creation in the world. The major booster in the animation content creation field can be the prominence of The Fox Broadcasting Company, which is one of the biggest creators on prime time television. Some examples of popular series are Family Guy and The Simpsons, which have major fan following. Also, the existence of leading animation content providers such as The Walt Disney Company, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon also works in the OTT content market’s favor in North America.

The APAC market for over-the-top content shows immense promise as there has been a remarkable surge in the number of OTT content providers across India, Japan and China. The launch of the 5G network across several circles in the region has boosted the video streaming experience, resulting in higher number of consumers. Additionally, continuous advancements in the Internet service and the expected emergence of 6G as well as 7G services in the region also drive industry growth.

Access Full Report Details @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/over-the-top-content-market-2912

About Market Research Future:

At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.

Contact:

Market Research Future

Office No. 524/528, Amanora Chambers

Magarpatta Road, Hadapsar

Pune - 411028

Maharashtra, India

+1 646 845 9312

Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com