While Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says that his company is in good shape, Wall Street has its doubts. That concern resulted in Netflix shares dropping 16 percent to $85.45 directly after its first quarter numbers were announced.
Netflix added 1.7 million new streaming subscribers in the first quarter — considered only light growth for the second straight quarter.
Growth for Q2 is predicted to be lower. “During the analyst call, Hastings appealed for calm and said the problem was temporary and seasonal. The second quarter is typically tough on Netflix,” reports CNET. “Skeptics, however, worry that the problems could be more lasting and have more to do with the company’s inability to secure film licenses and growing competition in the streaming-video sector.”
In order for Netflix to remain competitive and elite, it has to secure more content to encourage subscriber growth. “But licensing costs have gone through the roof,” CNET notes, and “Netflix failed to renew a licensing agreement with Starz, the pay-TV cable service that supplied Netflix with films from Disney and Sony Pictures.”
In the meantime, the competition is growing stronger as Hulu, Amazon and HBO Go continue to expand, along with Comcast’s new Xfinity Streampix service.
Even though Facebook saw sales rise 45 percent to $1.06 billion, the growth was a drop from the 55 percent increase in December. Along with the slowing sales growth, Facebook saw its marketing cost more than double, causing the company’s first-quarter profit to drop 12 percent right at the brink of its initial public offering.
Facebook is looking for a $75-100 billion IPO valuation, which would raise $5 billion in the largest-ever Internet IPO.
“Facebook unveiled a new benchmark that showed monthly revenue per user climbed 6 percent to $1.21,” Bloomberg reports. “The company valued its shares at $30.89 apiece at the end of January, up from $29.73 at the end of the last year.”
Advertising still provides the majority of Facebook’s revenue but it dropped to 82 percent from 83 last year. The company’s revenue from social gaming company Zynga also dropped to 11 percent of the total from 13 percent in the last quarter.
“Our costs are growing quickly, which could harm our business and profitability,” the company said in the filing. “Providing our products to our users is costly and we expect our expenses to continue to increase in the future as we broaden our user base, as users increase the number of connections and amount of data they share with us, as we develop and implement new product features that require more computing infrastructure, and as we hire additional employees.”
Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Company, has a vision of lighter traffic and fewer fender-benders, a goal he considers within reach if car makers can collaborate on “an integrated system that uses real-time data to optimize personal mobility on a massive scale,” he said in a TEDTalk.
The plan would develop a mobile network to redirect drivers from congested areas and allow cars to communicate with one another. One potential problem is the demand on wireless carriers’ bandwidth, which would be overwhelmed with Wi-Fi in every car. The bigger hindrance, however, could be lack of cooperation.
“But competition between automakers may prevent that vision from ever happening, since companies pioneering the technology, like General Motors, see it as a competitive advantage and not something to work on together with rivals,” Mobiledia writes.
For now, many innovative apps are working to address the traffic issue. One app, Waze crowd-sources traffic navigation while another, Signal Guru (not yet public) gives suggestions of alternate routes and tells drivers how fast to drive to make lights.
“Ford’s vision for smart cars requires a lot of cooperation from automakers, wireless providers, phone makers and government regulators, and it may be difficult to pull off without a nudge from the government to entice businesses to stop competing and work together towards a common goal — cars designed to avoid clogging up the streets and running into each other,” explains the post.
Coursera, a new start-up from Stanford computer scientists Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, has attracted some $16 million in venture capital and will offer online interactive courses in the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences and engineering.
Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley have already been offering courses. They will be joined in the venture by the University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania and Princeton.
Stanford offered an online course in artificial intelligence last fall, which attracted more than 160,000 students from 190 countries. Some 22,000 students completed the course and received “certificates of completion,” but not Stanford credits.
Coursera has not yet determined their business model, but one idea is to offer premium services that students can purchase.
Other start-ups including Udacity, Minerva and Udemy are also targeting free online education.
Coursera breaks lectures into 10-minute segments and has a quick quiz for each segment. Essays are graded by fellow students. And support also comes from the student community. Interestingly, an early test showed that questions were answered in 22 minutes. One problem is there is no way to address possible cheating.
Still, the potential for teachers to reach hundreds of thousands of students has attracted great interest from universities, instructors and venture capitalists.
In a deal worth $550 million, Microsoft has agreed to sell 650 patents and patent applications to Facebook.
“The Haüs of Zuckerberg will stump up the cash in exchange for various social networking patents that were registered by AOL and sold to Redmond for $1 billion a fortnight ago,” according to Engadget.
Microsoft will hang on to the remaining 275 patents in its portfolio “and cross-license those that it’s sold on, but not the 300 patents that AOL licensed but kept hold of,” adds the post.
Engadget explains that with this deal, “the social network will likely utilize the portfolio to better defend itself from litigation like the lawsuit brought by Yahoo back in March.”
“Today’s agreement with Microsoft represents an important acquisition for Facebook,” said Ted Ullyot, general counsel, Facebook. “This is another significant step in our ongoing process of building an intellectual property portfolio to protect Facebook’s interests over the long term.”
Samsung has announced three new compact cameras with Wi-Fi connectivity for instant photo sharing. The NX series offers the first compact system to feature Wi-Fi connectivity.
“Each new NX has a Samsung-developed 20.3 megapixel CMOS sensor, with the ability to record 1080p high definition video, plus they’re all compatible with the NX range of accessories, including lenses and flash units,” reports Digital Trends.
Once connected to a Wi-Fi network, photos can be shared via social networks and email, or uploaded to a cloud storage service.
“Samsung’s selection of ten Smart Filters may sound small in comparison to mobile applications like the iPhone’s Camera+, but all the old favorites are here, including a retro, vignette, old-style film and even a cartoon filter,” explains the post. “If you’re using a Samsung smartphone to provide a Wi-Fi Hotspot, there’s also the option to use the phone as a remote viewfinder too.”
The new Samsung series includes the $699 NX1000, the $899 NX210, and $1,100 NX20. All three cameras will be available in May.
“The Hollywood Reporter has announced the launch of The Hollywood Reporter Social Reader, a free Facebook app that allows readers to read and share entertainment news, reviews, blog posts and videos from the leading entertainment news outlet,” according to THR.
Users will be able to access “nearly all” of the THR.com content without having to leave Facebook.
Dubbed “the first social reader for entertainment news,” it will provide readers with the ability to comment on posted content, in addition to “like” and share articles, blog posts and videos.
THR, which has already launched iPhone and iPad apps, has experienced an 85 percent increase in traffic to its site in the past year.
“People love to share and talk about anything that has to do with Hollywood and the entertainment industry. The Hollywood Reporter Social Reader offers readers a seamless way to share and discuss the entertainment content they love,” said Janice Min, THR editorial director.
Apple is making a push for smartphone business users by launching a new page on its site for iPhone’s use in the enterprise market.
“The info-packed page shows how the iPhone is used in the business setting to organize days, manage projects, setup meetings, read mail, set calendar appointments, keep contacts organized, and more,” reports 9to5Mac.
The company is highlighting related apps available in the App Store including MicroStrategy, OmniFocus, GoToMeeting, and TripIt. Another Apple page highlights businesses using the iPhone, including Lowe’s, GE and Gap Adventures.
Over the last year, Apple has been working to better compete with Microsoft and RIM in the enterprise space.
“At the end of the day, I think more and more businesses are starting to realize where they need to put their money,” comments the post. “Apple’s new page should help IT heads to choose the products from Cupertino, rather than the plastic phones from up north.”
According to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center, 65 percent of technology experts and stakeholders agree that mobile payments will be widespread by 2020.
Considering the strong push into mobile payments by PayPal and Google, eight years might seem pretty long but those polled felt the transition will take time because “people will resist technology that wants to learn everything about their personal purchasing habits,” AllThingsD reports.
“There is nothing more imaginary than a monetary system… Of course we’ll move to even more abstract representations of value. Other countries are already content to use their phones; we’ll catch up eventually,” Harvard professor Susan Crawford told Pew.
“The 2020 date might be a bit optimistic, but I’m sure that this will happen. What is in your wallet now? Identification, payment, and personal items. All this will easily fit in your mobile device and will inevitably do so,” commented Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist.
A new forecast from Strategy Analytics suggests that global revenue from mobile advertising and content will surge to $67 billion this year.
Total mobile media will reach $148 billion with $82.8 billion coming from mobile data subscription sales, the firm predicts.
GigaOM offers the following highlights from the Strategy Analytics report: “App downloads will grow 38 percent to 23 billion… App spend will grow 30.7 percent to $26.1 billion… Apps will make up 18.9 percent of mobile media outlay… Mobile ad spend will grow 85.4 per cent to $11.6 billion… In-app ad sales in the U.S. and western Europe will overtake mobile web display sales ($934.5 million).”
In contrast to the vibrant ad and app growth, video’s increase is not as impressive. “Despite the huge audience of 271 million users, ad revenues from mobile video are tiny — a meager $223 million globally in 2011,” the report states.
Dolby has introduced its next generation theatrical sound system called Atmos, which “gives the illusion of an infinite number of channels around and above you.”
Designed to achieve the highest level of sound quality that is not possible in the home, Atmos features according to Dolby include:
Integrates easily into existing audio postproduction workflows, supports up to 128 simultaneous and lossless audio streams, and allows for up to 64 discrete speaker feeds.
Atmos expands the creative palette with overhead speakers, adds side surrounds closer to the screen for improved transitions, and works across a wide array of speaker configurations and auditorium shapes and sizes.
Additionally, the system simplifies distribution with a single Digital Cinema Package (DCP) master, which can then be faithfully rendered at playback that is independent of channel count or speaker location.
Initially, Dolby is targeting Atmos for a select number of premium global locations in the United States, Europe, China, and Japan, with plans for a larger rollout in 2013.
NimbleTV, a New York City-based start-up backed by Tribune Co., “is promising to sign up anyone anywhere in the world for pay TV service locally, and then deliver live and recorded programming over the Internet to a slew of devices — an approach the company maintains is perfectly legal,” reports Multichannel News.
“It’s the latest example of how technology companies are trying to break into the closed system of television distribution in the United States,” comments The New York Times in a related post.
“Here’s how it works, according to CEO Anand Subramanian: NimbleTV signs up for satellite or cable TV service on behalf of its customers, and manages the installation of set-top boxes at a physical location somewhere in a given market. The company then re-encodes the signals to deliver live TV or DVR recordings over the Internet, to wherever the customer may be,” explains Multichannel News.
The customer would pay for the regular monthly service and pay an additional $20 fee to NimbleTV.
Reportedly, the response from pay TV operators has been positive as this may attract more subscribers. And unlike Aereo, the operators will be paid.
Customers will be able to access 26 channels during the initial beta test in New York, including ABC, FOX, NBC, TNT, TBS, USA, Bravo, ESPN2, CNN, MSNBC, MTV, Disney Channel, Lifetime, Discovery, Food Network, FX, IFC, NFL Network and MLB Network.
Sony announced on Friday that it will launch “PlayMemories Online” this week, a photo and video sharing service that will offer 5GB of free storage.
“The service will allow users to upload photos and videos taken with Sony cameras, using its ‘PlayMemories Home’ software for Windows and Macintosh,” reports PC World. “Photos can also be uploaded from smartphones and tablets using an Android app that will be available from the Google Play store.”
The service is part of Sony’s efforts to link its products online, similar to how Apple allows sharing via its iCloud service. Other companies such as Samsung will also be rolling out cloud platforms.
Sony is developing other online offerings as well. “It has grouped many of its online music, movies, and games into its Sony Entertainment Network, and is developing a PlayStation platform that will expand the brand beyond Sony-made consoles, on approved devices made by other hardware manufacturers,” according to the post.
New findings from Nielsen suggest Hispanic consumers in the U.S. are often the top users of smartphones, online video, social networks and other media.
“According to the study, Hispanics outpace all [other] ethnic groups in mobile downloads of music and photos, and are more likely to watch video online and on the their mobile phones than others,” TechCrunch reports. “Specifically, Nielsen says that Hispanic video viewers are 68 percent more likely than non-Hispanic White viewers to watch video on the Internet, and 20 percent more likely to watch video on their mobile phone.”
Hispanic consumers send and receive more SMS text messages than any other ethnic group and also make 40 percent more calls than the average U.S. customer.
The study also found Hispanic adults are 25 percent more likely to follow a brand; 18 percent more likely to follow a celebrity; 21 percent more likely to post links, articles, videos and websites; 17 percent more likely to build or update a personal blog; and 7 percent more likely to have one or more social networking profiles.
“Says Nielsen, ‘mobile presents a significant avenue of opportunity for marketers looking to reach Hispanic consumers,’ and the firm also notes that the group has ‘amassed significant buying power, despite perceptions to the contrary,'” the article states.
TechCrunch points out that this not only represents an opportunity for marketers, but also for developers of apps and services.
Scientists from the University of Texas at Dallas have developed an imaging chip for smartphones and small cameras that gives the user a super-human power: a form of X-ray vision.
The technology taps into an unused range of the electromagnetic spectrum, called the terahertz range, which our eyes cannot perceive.
“The breakthrough here is that scientists have figured out how to combine seeing into this terahertz range with the chip manufacturing technology called CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor), which is used to make chips for computers, smartphones, HDTVs, game consoles, and many other objects we take for granted,” reports Digital Trends.
The ability could have negative repercussions such as privacy issues, so for now the team is only working on a version that operates within four inches. Even at that range, however, the technology has great potential like finding wall studs, authenticating documents and eventually wireless communication, the article states.