According to ResearchAndMarkets, the global inventory robots market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 13% by 2023 and expected to reach $3.1 billion by 2020. Booming growth of the e-commerce...
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British lawmakers have accused Facebook of behaving like "digital gangsters", abusing its dominant power in social networks, and behaving "ahead of and beyond the law."
The comments come in a devastating report on fake news by British Parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, made up of cross-party UK politicians and led by Conservative MP Damian Collins.
Facebook deliberately flouted privacy and competition laws and should be subject to new regulation, the committee wrote.
Lawmakers accused Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of showing "contempt" for UK Parliament, and a larger gathering of international parliaments after he refused to give evidence three times.
The report is the culmination of a sprawling, 18-month parliamentary investigation into disinformation and fake news online, which heard from 73 witnesses and received 170 written submissions.
It examined Facebook's role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal and its overall privacy practices. The report also touched on possible Russian interference in the Brexit referendum.
Collins said: "Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with disinformation and personalised 'dark adverts' from unidentifiable sources, delivered through the major social media platforms we use every day. Much of this is directed from agencies working in foreign countries, including Russia.
"The big tech companies are failing in the duty of care they owe to their users to act against harmful content, and to respect their data privacy rights."
The committee claimed that Facebook had deliberately "sought to frustrate" its work, putting up executives who were poorly briefed on areas such as election interference.
The report calls for major changes to the way the UK regulates its elections and technology, including:
Stricter rules that will force tech firms to take down illegal content on their site A code of ethics that defines "harmful content" An independent regulator to oversee enforcement of that code New laws around political advertising onlineThe UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright will head to the US this week to meet with the heads of major tech firms, including Zuckerberg, to talk about harmful content online.
Facebook denied it had breached competition and privacy laws, and said it hadn't found evidence of foreign interference in the Brexit referendum.
In a statement, Facebook's public policy manager Karim Palant said the company shares the concerns of the committee and said it is taking steps to improve its processes. He said:
"We share the Committee's concerns about false news and election integrity and are pleased to have made a significant contribution to their investigation over the past 18 months, answering more than 700 questions and with four of our most senior executives giving evidence.
"We are open to meaningful regulation and support the committee's recommendation for electoral law reform. But we're not waiting. We have already made substantial changes so that every political ad on Facebook has to be authorised, state who is paying for it and then is stored in a searchable archive for 7 years. No other channel for political advertising is as transparent and offers the tools that we do.
"We also support effective privacy legislation that holds companies to high standards in their use of data and transparency for users.
"While we still have more to do, we are not the same company we were a year ago. We have tripled the size of the team working to detect and protect users from bad content to 30,000 people and invested heavily in machine learning, artificial intelligence and computer vision technology to help prevent this type of abuse."
A UK parliamentary report called Facebook "digital gangsters."Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Monday.
A second former Cambridge Analytica employee has reportedly been subpoenaed by Robert Mueller's investigation. A representative for Brittany Kaiser, a former business development director for Cambridge Analytica, told The Guardian that Kaiser has been subpoenaed by Mueller and will offer her full cooperation to his investigation. The UK parliamentary committee investigating fake news called Facebook "digital gangsters" in its final report. The DCMS committee also accused CEO Mark Zuckerberg of contempt of parliament after he failed to show up to give evidence to the committee. Facebook moderators are in revolt over "inhumane" working conditions that they say erodes their "sense of humanity." In an open letter to Facebook employees, moderators from Austin, Texas complained about draconian working conditions that are eroding trust in the company. Elon Musk says SpaceX is developing a "bleeding" heavy-metal rocket ship, and making it work may be 100 times as hard as NASA's most difficult Mars mission. The craft will apparently "bleed" liquid during landing to cool off the spaceship and prevent it from burning up. Uber's business slowed dramatically in the fourth quarter as it gears up for an IPO. Uber's loss dropped to $370 million last year from $4.5 billion in 2017, the company reported Friday. The UK has reportedly concluded it can mitigate security risks associated with the use of Huawei equipment in 5G networks. Huawei, along with another Chinese network equipment company ZTE, has been accused by the United States of working at the behest of the Chinese government. Apple reportedly bought a startup that specializes in helping companies build voice apps. Apple has acquired Pullstring, a startup that helps customers publish voice apps, according to Axios. Facebook reportedly demonstrated "informal interest" in buying the company that made HQ Trivia but backed off after reports of 'creepy' behavior from its late co-founder. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook's interest in the company waned after Recode published an article describing allegations of inappropriate behavior by Intermedia Labs co-founder Colin Kroll during his time working for Twitter. People in the video game industry are rallying around the 800 employees laid off by Activision Blizzard. Activision Blizzard laid off about 800 employees on the same day the company announced record revenue record during 2018. Australia's major political parties have been hacked months out from a federal election, Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that the Liberal Party, Labor and the Nationals' IT networks were hacked by "a sophisticated state actor."Have an Amazon Alexa device? Now you can hear 10 Things in Tech each morning. Just search for "Business Insider" in your Alexa's flash briefing settings.
Paris-based startup Alan has raised a Series B round of funding of $45 million (€40 million). Index Ventures is once again leading the round, with partners of DST Global also participating. The company had raised a $28 million funding round only ten months ago.
Alan is a software-as-a-service startup tackling a very specific industry — the health insurance market in France — and soon across Europe. The company wants to create a well-designed insurance product with transparent pricing and policies to make healthcare more accessible. And it isn’t just a marketplace — the startup has obtained an official health insurance license and is the first new health insurance company in France in 30 years.
In France, every employee is covered by the national healthcare system for basic reimbursements as well as a private insurance company for more expensive treatments. In addition to that, legacy insurance companies have neglected those products as they usually don’t generate a lot of margins on that segment. It creates a huge market opportunity for Alan.
With today’s funding announcement, the startup has shared some numbers. In 2018 alone, the company grew from 5,000 insured people to 27,000, and revenue jumped from $4 million to $25 million (€3.5 million to €22 million). Alan has been focused on freelancers as well as small and medium companies, such as My Little Paris, Le Slip Français, Ledger and Converteo.
More interestingly, Alan is close to break-even right now with 64 employees. That gives you an idea of Alan’s margins.
Following today’s funding round, the company is going to hire a lot more people. There should be around 175 people working for Alan by the end of the year.
On the product front, the company is always looking at ways to make the experience as seamless as possible. “We’re trying to make the insurance process instantaneous, from quotes to coverage and reimbursements” co-founder and CEO Jean-Charles Samuelian told me.
But Alan has always been about healthcare at large, not just insurance products. So let’s see how they can use this influx of funding to simplify healthcare in general.
Compared to startups born into the frothy London fintech space as it exists today, 2011-founded GoCardless could well be considered a slow burner. However, in more recent years, the nearly 300 person company — headed up by co-founder and CEO Hiroki Takeuchi — has undoubtedly stepped on the gas in a bid to become the one stop shop globally for businesses that want to let customers pay via recurring bank payments.
A little over a year ago, GoCardless announced that it had raised $22.5 million in further funding, off the back of record annual growth in the U.K. and strong early traction in new markets. And today the fintech is disclosing another fresh injection of capital: $75 million in Series E funding, in part to fund new offices across EMEA, APAC and North America. In addition to its London HQ, the company already has sites in France, Australia and Germany, from which it says it processes transactions for 40,000 businesses worldwide.
Leading the round are new investors Adams Street Partners, Google Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. Previous backers Accel Partners, Balderton Capital, Notion Capital and Passion Capital also followed on.
In a call with Takeuchi late last week, he picked up on a familiar theme, describing the collection of recurring payments for many business as “broken”. Accessing the various bank to bank payments schemes has traditionally been difficult from a commercial, compliance and technical point of view. Instead, businesses have typically relied on payment methods, such as card payments or cheques, which aren’t up to the job of recurring payments.
That’s because these payment options are designed for one-off transactions (cards, for example, expire, breaking the payment flow). Meanwhile, there’s been a rise in subscription business models and an expanding B2B market in which contractors and partners need to make regular variable payments. According to Takeuchi, this means an international recurring payments network like the one GoCardless is building is needed more than ever.
“A global network for bank debit is an absolute necessity in allowing businesses to easily collect recurring payments anywhere, in any currency,” he says. “Thanks to the support of our investors we can now open up our global network and payments platform to more businesses across the world, delivering on our mission to take the pain out of getting paid, so that businesses can focus on what they do best”.
Takeuchi also tells me GoCardless is investing heavily in its product, with a product team of around 100 members. He declined to go into much detail with regards to GoCardless’ immediate or more long term roadmap, although currency conversion is one area the company is developing new products for. It’s not clear if that will be via an FX partner, such as London neighbour TransferWise, or a more home grown solution, although the former seems more likely. Takeuchi wouldn’t be drawn on any specifics.
Other areas of development include products to help businesses boost cash flow via “instant settlement,” and smarter payment features to increase transaction success rates. The latter could include using open banking to check if funds are available before trying to process a bank debit, or to automatically set the most appropriate payment date.
Sramana Mitra: Was your first customer from Denmark? Camilla Ley Valentin: Yes, it was. It was a government company and that was the first customer. It was a company called Nature Agency and they...
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Divvy is one of the many Silicon Valley startups working to change the way people buy homes. For Divvy, it's specifically interested in providing alternative financing options for potential home buyers who don't qualify for traditional mortgages.
It does so by purchasing homes outright and allowing customers to pay it back in a series of monthly payments â 25% of that payment goes toward building equity and 75% goes toward paying "rent."
"The customers do feel like they're owning a home and they are building up equity within in it," Divvy CEO Adena Hefets told Business Insider in an interview last November. "The difference is that we're doing it in a more manageable way."
Top venture capitalists have bought into Divvy's methodology as well.
Last October, Divvy raised a $30 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Caffeinated Capital, DFJ, and Affirm CEO, Max Levchin.
Hefets told us that in its first year, Divvy helped buy homes for over 100 customers, but that the company has much higher hopes. Divvy's official mission, she says, is getting 100,000 families their first homes.
"That's what we're trying to do in the next, no more than five years. We want 100,000 homes," Hefets said. "We want that to be the first home that a family can buy and we want it to be the stepping stone that allows people to transition from renting to eventually owning their own homes."
Here's the investor deck that helped Divvy sell its mission to VCs and raise a $30 million Series A (sensitive numbers have been redacted):
This feature from TechTarget covers the main highlights of this year’s edition of IBM Think held in San Francisco last week. The spotlight at the conference was on data and AI analytics. For...
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Venture capital funds focused on startups in the rapidly growing cannabis industry are raising boatloads of capital, and Altitude Investment Management is no exception.
The New York City-based firm is looking to raise over $100 million for its second cannabis fund, according to people familiar with the matter.
Altitude's second fund is set to be a substantial increase over its first. The firm's first fund closed at $30 million last year and is deployed across 16 companies in the cannabis sector, including BDS Analytics, a data firm, and Front Range Biosciences, a biotech startup.
The fund's partners include John Brecker and Michael Goldberg, who both worked at the $2.7 billion Longacre Fund Management, Roderick Stephen, who founded Longacre's UK group and worked at Citadel Investment Group, and Jon Trauben, a commercial real estate veteran who did stints at Barclays and Credit Suisse.
Trauben told Business Insider in an interview that Altitude's much larger Fund II represents a shift in how the cannabis industry is maturing, with incumbent companies "boxing out" new startups that rise to challenge them â and needing capital to fuel that growth.
"The set of companies that will win the industry already exist," said Trauben. "They're not being dreamed up in garages anymore."
While Altitude won't rule out investing in public companies, the focus will be on growth-stage startups. The prevailing question, then, for Altitude's second fund will be picking out which companies will "pull ahead."
"We're in the second half of the startup ecosystem," said Trauben. "There's still room for new ideas and new companies, but it's not like it was two or three years ago."
In terms of what parts of the industry Altitude is looking at most closely, Trauben said the firm takes a "pretty broad view" of cannabis, but he's particularly bullish on consumer brands, and the exit opportunities those brands present canny investors.
He pointed to Green Thumb Industries recent acquisition of Beboe, an upscale marijuana brand. "I think 2019 would really be the year of the brands for cannabis space," said Trauben.
Another area of interest: agricultural technology. Trauben said there's a number of startups working on developing cannabinoids â the active compounds in the cannabis plant â through cellular hosts like yeast and algae.
As big consumer packaged goods corporations race to formulate beverages and other products containing CBD and THC, two of the most popular cannabis ingredients, this technology could potentially become "very disruptive," said Trauben.
Unlike some other cannabis funds, Trauben says Altitude won't shy away from investing directly in "plant-touching" companies, though marijuana is federally illegal in the US.
That's part of what most cannabis-specific funds say gives them an edge over more traditional venture capital and private equity firms, like Lerer Hippeau and Greycroft, who are slowly getting more comfortable investing in the space.
In Trauben's view, funds like Altitude that are used to dealing with the complexities of operating in an industry that's growing so rapidly while being federally illegal represent the best chances of "getting it right."
"The true commodity in this industry right now is information," said Trauben. "If you're not seeing that information flow â the networks and the relationships you've built â you just don't have the right data."
Investors in other, more mature sectors, like tech or real estate, have decades of data and historical precedent at their fingertips when evaluating deals.
"I think when you move from that environment to this environment, you realize what's missing and to build that knowledge flow doesn't happen overnight," said Trauben. "It takes a concerted effort."
Altitude joins a number of other cannabis-specific firms who are raising new funds this year, including Tuatara Capital, Poseidon Asset Management, and 7thirty, among others.
Facebook at one point demonstrated "informal interest" in buying Intermedia Labs, the company responsible for the game-show app HQ Trivia, The Wall Street Journal reports.
But Facebook's interest reportedly waned after Recode published an article describing allegations of inappropriate behavior by Intermedia Labs co-founder Colin Kroll during his time working for Twitter. Kroll died of a drug overdose in 2018.
Facebook and Intermedia Labs did not immediately respond to Business Insider's requests for comment.
The Recode article, published in December 2017, said many venture capitalists did not want to invest in Intermedia Labs due to concerns about Kroll's behavior at Twitter. (Kroll co-founded the now-defunct six-second video app Vine, which was acquired by Twitter in 2012.) Recode reported that Kroll had been fired from Twitter due to his poor management skills and had developed a reputation at the company for acting in a "creepy" manner toward women. An internal investigation at Twitter determined that he was not guilty of sexual harassment, but had "created a hostile work environment," according to The Wall Street Journal.
HQ Trivia raised a $15 million round led by Peter Thiel's Founder's Fund that it announced in March 2018. It was reported that at the time, the company's valuation exceeded $100 million.
Since that time, when the company was at it's most prominent, its star has seemingly faded. As Recode reported in a November 2018 piece, HQ Trivia held the spot for the second highest number of monthly downloads in February 2018. By November, it had sunk to number 253.
In 2018, Facebook rolled out features that allow publishers to create game shows that stream on Facebook Live.
Fox's big-budget "Alita: Battle Angel" had no trouble topping the domestic box office over Presidents' Day weekend, with the movie taking in an estimated $27 million from Friday to Sunday and over $41 million from its opening on Thursday to Presidents' Day on Monday. But the movie will need a big run globally to make a profit.
The James Cameron-produced/Robert Rodriguez-directed big-screen adaptation of "Battle Angel Alita," derived from the famous manga series created by Yukito Kishiro, has been a project in the works since around 2000 when Cameron began penning the script. But with the success of 2009's "Avatar," Cameron stepped aside and enlisted Rodriguez to take the project to the finish line. Budgeted at $170 million, Fox needs an "Avatar"-like success to make a profit. But at the moment that's going to be a tough hill to climb.
With only a 59% score on Rotten Tomatoes, there wasn't much good word of mouth coming from Film Twitter leading up to this weekend, and Fox didn't seem that confident in the movie's prospects domestically as it only played on 3,700 screens ("The Lego Movie 2," currently in its second week in theaters, showed on more screens). To find financial success, the movie needs to bring in the coin overseas. In Japan, the movie is playing in previews, and in China it starts screening on Monday.
The good news for "Alita," back here in the US, is it has two weeks before getting hit with any major competition, as Disney's "Captain Marvel" doesn't open until March 8. So if word of mouth builds thanks to this strong weekend, the movie has some time to up its box office gross.
Meanwhile, the other big new releases (both playing since Valentine's Day) had modest success. Warner Bros.' comedy "Isn't It Romantic" brought in $20.4 million while Universal's horror "Happy Death Day 2U" grossed $13.5 million over the last five days.
Average demand expressions: 26,406,892
Description: "TITANS follows young heroes from across the DC Universe as they come of age and find belonging in a gritty take on the classic Teen Titans franchise. Dick Grayson and Rachel Roth, a special young girl possessed by a strange darkness, get embroiled in a conspiracy that could bring Hell on Earth. Joining them along the way are the hot-headed Starfire and lovable Beast Boy. Together they become a surrogate family and team of heroes."
Rotten Tomatoes critic score (Season 1): 82%
What critics said: "Titans is worth checking out because it's trying in earnest to be something you don't quite expect and, in a world that's being increasingly dominated by cookie cutter, live-action comic book adaptations, it stands out." - Charles Pulliam-Moore, io9
Season 1 premiered on DC Universe October 12.
The Nissan Leaf is the world's best-selling electric vehicle and has set the stage for a new generation of affordable electric vehicles that could reshape the auto industry.
The Leaf debuted in 2010, beating the Chevrolet Bolt EV to the market by five years. But until this year, the Bolt had a significant advantage in range â 238 miles compared to 151 miles for the 2018 Leaf. Nissan will release a new version of the vehicle, the Leaf e+, in the US in the spring of this year. It will have up to 226 miles of range, according to the automaker, but I tested the 2018 version over a weekend in December before Nissan announced the Leaf e+.
I live in an apartment in New York City that doesn't have a parking garage, which meant I couldn't charge the Leaf overnight and likely had a different experience with the vehicle than the average Leaf owner. But during my time with the Leaf, I came to understand how important it is for an electric vehicle to have at least 200 miles of range.
Here's what it was like to drive the 2018 Leaf for a weekend:
This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here. Current subscribers can read the report here.
Business Insider Intelligence 5G is very nearly here, and these lightning-fast networks will change how telecommunications shapes business and offer new and transformative possibilities in the IoT space.
As 5G networks become a reality in 2019 and 2020, the new standard will further increase the appeal of cellular solutions in the areas where it's available. And, as 5G-supported hardware rolls out, companies can use the network to support their IoT business.
But the excitement around 5G doesn't mean it should be selected above all other options whenever available. In fact, in some cases, it's not even the best among cellular solutions. Companies that use IoT devices and providers of IoT-based services and solutions need to be discerning in their determinations of where 5G will help and where it won't.
In The 5G and The IoT Report, Business Insider Intelligence will examine how the introduction of 5G is poised to transform portions of the IoT ecosystem. First, we look at the 5G standard broadly, identifying its strengths and weaknesses in comparison with existing standards, as well as laying out the timeline for rollout and expectations within the wireless industry. Next, we look at the new practices that 5G will enable in the IoT, focusing specifically on the capacity for high-bandwidth remote analytics, as well as the ability to use remote processing centers for mission-critical services. Finally, we examine areas where 5G will leave gaps and how companies will need to cope with the standards' early limitations.
The companies mentioned in this report are: AT&T, Ericsson, FairCom, InterDigital, Motorola, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Quectel, Sierra Wireless, Telstra, Verizon, and ZTE.
Here are some key takeaways from the report:
Where available, 5G will enable exciting new IoT use cases, like real-time remote analytics and the remote execution of mission-critical services. While 5G will offer a variety of useful new capabilities for companies that provide and use IoT solutions, there will be areas where it won't be useful within the IoT â at least not immediately. Companies offering IoT solutions need to look at 5G as a tool in their arsenal; the thing they need to figure out is when they can build solutions that amplify its strengths, mitigate its weaknesses, and when turn to alternatives if they can't adequately do either.In full, the report:
Provides an overview of the key differences between 5G networks and today's alternatives. Highlights the ways that 5G will enable new practices in the IoT. Presents some of the expectations for 5G from companies that will bring the standard to the world.Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:
Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now Subscribe to a Premium pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More NowThe choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you've given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of 5G and the IoT.
Apple's latest iPhone software update has a pleasant surprise for those who despise digging through the Settings menu to cancel their app subscriptions.
The update, which was released on Feb. 7 to fix a security flaw with Apple's FaceTime video chatting service, also makes it possible to manage app subscriptions directly from the App Store. This might include subscriptions to magazines, or to music or video streaming services.
Just open the App Store, tap your profile icon in the upper right corner of the screen, and you'll notice an option that says "Manage Subscriptions." After selecting this option, you'll see a list of each app you subscribe to.
From here, you can tap each app to see additional details about the subscription, and change its status. The feature was first spotted by MacStories editor-in-chief Federico Viticci.
It's a notable addition considering the other method of cancelling app subscriptions from your iPhone is way more laborious â it involves launching the Settings menu, navigating to the iTunes & App Store section, tapping your Apple ID, pressing View Apple ID, possibly verifying your Apple ID, and tapping the Subscriptions button.
It's a small change, but one that reflects Apple's goal of improving the App Store experience. In 2017, the company overhauled its App Store to with the goal of making it easier to discover new apps. The change is believed to have worked, as data from Sensor Tower suggested that app discovery through browsing rather than searching in the App Store increased to 15 percent following the launch compared to 10 percent prior to the redesign.
"No one really knew how much it would take off," BioWare lead producer Mike Gamble told Business Insider in a phone interview last week.
"It's taken off in a big way, which is great! We're still all part of the EA Studios culture, so when one of our teams does really well on something we all applaud it."
Gamble was talking about "Apex Legends," the huge new game from EA's Respawn Entertainment. Since its surprise announcement and launch on February 4, more than 25 million players have competed to be champion. It's a bonafide hit across Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC â in fact, "Apex Legends" is growing even more quickly than "Fortnite."
It's safe to say no one could've expected this kind of response, even in the wake of the "Fortnite" phenomenon.
But what does the massive, sudden success of "Apex Legends" mean for "Anthem," the other huge blockbuster from EA that's on the verge of launch? With "Apex" sucking up all the air in the room, how will "Anthem" compete?
With just days until launch, that's still unclear.
From the outside, it looks like EA just accidentally overshadowed its own blockbuster game launch. EA/BioWare
"Anthem" doesn't officially launch until February 22. When it does launch, it will cost $60 for the least-expensive version. But it's already available to play ... kind of.
If you're a paying member of EA's PC-based service, EA Origin Access Premier, you can download and play the full game starting on February 15. If you're a paying member of EA's Xbox One-based service, EA Access, you can download and play the first 10 hours of the game starting on February 15. There's a whole chart.
"Apex Legends," on the other hand, does not require a chart to decipher when you're allowed to play it. You can download it right now, for free, on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and/or PC. And you probably should, because it's really good.
Also, "Anthem" has jet packs. There are no jet packs in "Apex Legends." Not yet, anyway. EA/BioWare
Admittedly, "Anthem" and "Apex Legends" are somewhat different games.
"Anthem" is a so-called "loot and shoot" game, along the lines of "Destiny" and "The Division." It's played entirely online, in a shared open world with other actual players.
"Apex Legends," however, is a Battle Royale-style game â a first-person shooter with squads and classes. The last squad alive in any given round wins.
That said: Both are shooters. Both are online-only. Both are available only on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. They are different, but also not that different.
Gamble sees the distinction between the two games a little differently.
"With 'Apex Legends' being primarily a player-versus-player (PvP) game, obviously free-to-play and Battle Royale, that serves a certain niche," he said.
"The fact that we are a co-operative game (PvE) and we are a long-term service game, with a full story, characters, and that whole kit and caboodle ... you can start to see how the people who are going to want to invest a lot of time in 'Anthem' and the people who want to invest a lot of time in 'Apex' ... the overlap starts to get less and less when you look at the kind of games that they are."
"Apex Legends" players can buy in-game currency with real money, which can then be used in the game for various cosmetic items. EA/Respawn Entertainment
During our conversation, Gamble also pointed out that, since "Apex Legends" is free and "Anthem" is not, players don't have to make a binary purchasing decision.
"It's not like people have to make a decision between $60 'Anthem' and $60 'Apex.' They just have to get 'Anthem' and then they can download 'Apex,'" he said.
Though the distinction isn't wrong, it may be missing a crucial point: The choice isn't simply about money, but also time, personal preference, and a variety of other factors.
As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has pointed out in the past, Netflix's biggest competition isn't Amazon or YouTube or Hulu or HBO â it's other activities, like sleep, or playing video games.
In the same way, players may simply opt to play "Apex Legends" instead of "Anthem." That potential lack of early enthusiasm could be a death sentence for a game like "Anthem" that depends on an active, large playerbase.
And, if the distinction between them is solely about price, it's pretty easy to choose the free game over the $60 one.
"Anthem" runs a serious risk of being overshadowed by the massive popularity of "Apex Legends," which would be quite a thing given that both games are published by the same company. With just a few days until the launch of "Anthem," we'll find out shortly.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has talked a lot about making sure that users' time on his social network is "time well spent."
After a year of headlines blasting Facebook for negatively affecting everything from mental health to memories, Zuckerberg was responding â and, he said, showing responsibilityâ to growing public concerns about the age of social media.
But as Facebook revealed in a tiny but telling change to its latest quarterly report, the company also appreciates the very real threat these concerns pose to its business.
"Any number of factors could potentially negatively affect user retention, growth, and engagement," Facebook explains in the section of its 10K report devoted to risks related to its business. If, for example:
â "there are decreases in user sentiment due to questions about the quality or usefulness of our products or our user data practices, or concerns related to privacy and sharing, safety, security, well-being, or other factors;"
We bolded "well-being" to highlight the two words because they were not included in the same boilerplate sentence in the report released three months earlier. Go ahead, check for yourself.
Sure, regulatory filings to the SEC are kitchen-sink exercises, with every potential risk a corporate attorney can dream up explicitly spelled out. The company isn't saying it expects any of these risks to actually occur in the near future; it just wants to be able to say it warned you they might occur in case you ever decided it might be a good idea to sue the company.
That said, Facebook never thought its impact on people's well-being was a notable risk before. To the contrary, the company couldn't stop bragging about its altruistic "social mission."
Remember Zuckerberg's letter to shareholders in its IPO prospectus. Here's an excerpt, with emphasis his:
"We hope to strengthen how people relate to each other.
Even if our mission sounds big, it starts small â with the relationship between two people.
Personal relationships are the fundamental unit of our society. Relationships are how we discover new ideas, understand our world and ultimately derive long-term happiness."
It's been seven years since Zuckerberg wrote those words, and 15 years since the social network was created. A lot has changed in that time. But sometimes two small words buried in a dense regulatory filing say how much has changed better than anything.
Digital transformation has arrived. Business Insider Intelligence
Not a single industry is safe from the unstoppable wave of digitization that is sweeping through finance, retail, transportation, and more.
And in 2019, there will be even more transformative developments that will our businesses, careers, and lives.
Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together a list of 40 Big Tech Predictions for 2019 across Apps and Platforms, Digital Media, Payments, The Internet of Things, E-Commerce, Fintech, Transportation & Logistics, and Digital Health.
Some of these major predictions include:
Amazon will launch an Alexa-powered car product similar to Apple's and Google's. Amazon will buy Snapchat as the social app struggles to add users, compete with Instagram, and make money. Despite the hype around the Chase-Visa deal, it alone won't mark an inflection point for contactless payments in the U.S. Smart speaker prices will hit $20 for the newest models. Social commerce will fail to gain adoption despite social platforms' efforts. US-based trading app Robinhood will go public in 2019 â and it won't be the only one. While drone delivery regulation inched forward in 2018, the rise of 5G will see companies taking their drone delivery tests to the next level. Telemedicine won't take off.
Apple's upcoming streaming video service won't do much to boost the company's flagging financial fortunes, even if it's wildly successful.
That's the assessment of Tim O'Shea, an analyst who covers the iPhone maker for Jefferies. In a research report late Thursday, O'Shea estimated that if Apple's video service had 250 million subscribers in 2023, it still would account for only about 5% of the company's revenue that year â and wouldn't make up for its declining smartphone sales. By point of reference, after offering streaming video for 12 years, Netflix has 139 million subscribers.
"It's going take a long time for this type of service to really move the needle," O'Shea told Business Insider.
To figure out the potential of the video service, which Apple widely expected to launch next month, O'Shea estimated that Apple would charge customers $15 a month for the offering and would take a 30% cut of the revenue, giving the rest to video production partners.
If the service was extremely successful and hit 250 million subscribers, it would yield $13.5 billion in revenue for Apple. That's nothing to sneeze at. After all, Netflix's total sales last year were $15.8 billion.
But in the context of Apple, such a figure would be just a drop in the bucket. In fiscal 2018, the company posted revenue of $265 billion. Although O'Shea and other analysts expect Apple's sales to drop sharply this year before slowly recovering in coming ones, $13.5 billion would still represent only a small fraction of the company's revenue.
Apple has shown with its Apple Music service that it can grow such offerings relatively quickly by tying them closely to iOS, the software underlying the iPhone, O'Shea said. Apple Music now has 50 million paid subscribers and reached that total much quicker than market leader Spotify, he said.
But it's likely that Apple will have a tougher time in video, O'Shea said. The iPhone maker is just one of numerous companies that have or will launch streaming video services in the near future. And it's unclear how many services consumers will sign up for.
Apple's spending a fraction of what Netflix is spending on original shows and movies, meaning that at least at first it will likely be far more dependent than the streaming video giant on third-party content. But the company's plans to take a 30% cut on revenue may not sit well with many Hollywood studios and networks, he said.
"It's hard see how those economics fly," O'Shea said.
Even before the launch of Apple's video service, Netflix has been trying to avoid having to pay the similar commission Apple charges app store developers for subscriptions that come in through their iPhone apps. Netflix instead has been encouraging customers to sign up for its service via its web site.
Apple could find it hard to sign up customers to its own video service if too many production companies balk at offering shows and movies through it. Already Netflix has balked at being a part of Apple's service and HBO has yet to commit to it, CNBC reported.
"There are only a handful of players that make content that matter," O'Shea said. "If you lose one or two of them, it makes your service much less attractive."
But even if Apple overcomes such obstacles, it faces an even bigger problem â the iPhone. Apple's smartphone sales accounted for $167 billion in sales last year, and the iPhone may be the single biggest product business of any company ever, O'Shea said.
Because it's so huge, even a small percentage drop in its sales can more than wipe out big gains in other parts of Apple's business. And that's exactly what O'Shea and other analysts are expecting to happen this year after Apple saw a 15% drop in iPhone revenue in its first fiscal quarter. For his part, O'Shea expects Apple smartphone sales to fall to $135 billion this year, a drop of more than $30 billion.
O'Shea is optimistic about Apple's services offerings in general. In addition to Apple Music and the upcoming streaming video business, the company's services include its app store business, the licensing revenue it gets for making Google the default search engine on the iPhone, and its iCloud storage offerings.
The services business "is big, real, and growing," he said. "It's going to be big over time."
But right now, the deterioration in the iPhone business is overwhelming everything else.
"These iPhone declines are by far the dominant trend," O'Shea said, continuing, "Services at this point are not big enough to offset that pressure."
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