Tech Update

APPLE

It's over folks. In tech, he not busy growing is already dying. The landscape is littered with companies that dominated once and failed thereafter. And dominance is key. Something Apple no longer does. Samsung and Huawei and Android are eating into the iPhone business and Cupertino's computer numbers are going in the wrong direction, the company having waited too long to update product and...the Watch is a sideshow, Hollywood won't let Eddy Cue in and hubris and lack of vision have left Apple moribund. Don't look at today's numbers and the company's size as being indicative of future success. The iPhone has hit a wall in China, in the U.S. with carriers no longer subsidizing handsets adoption of new phones will be low, because an iPhone 6 is good enough. Investors look at revenue, margins, how much can be made in the short term, but it's the long term that really counts.

INSTAGRAM/SNAPCHAT

You cannot beat the established player without a great leap forward in infrastructure or features. Sure, there's a ton of runway for Snapchat Stories, but no one is complaining about functionality, as they did with MySpace before Facebook usurped its audience. Beware of companies extending their brands, trying to eat up the market share of an upstart. It illustrates lack of vision, and as we established above, vision is everything in tech and execution comes thereafter.

AMAZON

Jeff Bezos is the most powerful person in music, it's just that the industry doesn't know it yet. Bezos is building an empire via Prime. It won't be long before you can get all the major labels' content for "free" with Prime. And people are cheap. Once you can get expedited shipping and movies/TV and music for one low price... First came Prime, then came the Echo. The Echo is a stealth product that will only enhance Amazon's bottom line, not only can you speak your purchases, you can consume your content. "Alexa, play the Beatles." Done.

FACEBOOK

It's all about the ads. Facebook has the best mobile system. The odds that Lowell McAdam and Verizon can compete? Very low. You want to bet on the young players willing to stay up all night and do anything to win. Read "Chaos Monkeys," this is how Facebook beat Google Plus. There's too much old school thinking about tech, brick and mortar concepts that don't apply. It may be hard to start an automobile company, but it's not that hard to establish an app, especially when you can host it on Amazon Web Services.

ALPHABET

Larry Page is in charge. Never underestimate the power of the founder. Remember when Howard Schultz stepped back from Starbucks and the company faltered? That's coffee, not a complicated product, like chips. Theoretically Schultz's successor should have sailed on smoothly. But the successor didn't have a feel for real estate and Starbucks wasn't righted until Howard Schultz came back. Eric Schmidt was pushed aside. Adult supervision was unnecessary. Where is John Sculley today? Now investors do their best to grow the founder, who has a vision that can't be replaced. Alphabet may have failures, but it adjusts on the fly and has so many assets and is moving forward on mobile advertising... It's a winner.

WeChat

USA! USA!

Well, no.

Read this article:

"China, Not Silicon Valley, Is Cutting Edge in Mobile Tech": http://goo.gl/GWDHAo

While we're trying to adjust to chip cards, people are paying via WeChat in China.

America is going in the wrong direction. Free trade is good. Not America First, but WORLD FIRST! Sure, America may have the best economy, but if we isolate ourselves from the rest of the world it'll be our loss. The losers in a world economy must be helped, but you can't go backward, that's death.

TESLA

Only in America can one person die and a whole industry be hamstrung.

That's right, one idiot crashes his Tesla because his hands are off the wheel and he's watching "Harry Potter" and then the clueless government comes in and tries to regulate, the know-nothings in the press weigh in as if...they know anything.

So many cars already include elements of autopilot. Like your speed-adjusting cruise control.

When it comes to tech the government is always behind. And should stay out, especially in the development period, the government just doesn't understand. After a period of establishment maybe antitrust is an issue, then again, movement/change happens so fast that by time you regulate a company it's no longer so powerful, can you say Microsoft?

Forget whether Tesla will dominate, it single-handedly brought cars into the electric era, and with Solar City Elon Musk is addressing climate change, not that the merger will definitely pay dividends, it looks like Musk is saving Solar City but... Our nation is built on progress and innovation and when we hamper people it's ultimately to our own detriment. And, did you notice Elon Musk was an IMMIGRANT!

And self-driving cars are the FUTURE, and will be here before you know it. Kind of like digital photography, we heard about it for over a decade and then seemingly within a year film died. It's coming folks.

BITCOIN/APPLE PAY

They're nascent products in a wide open landscape. Virtual currency will rule, as will mobile payments. Will these two particular entities dominate. IT DOESN'T MATTER!

FACEBOOK LIVE

The whole internet is going to video, this is what low cost high speed bandwidth has wrought. New, unforeseen applications are coming. Real time video is only one of them. Google/YouTube got caught flat-footed, it didn't see this happening.

TWITTER

Too much talk about a company as opposed to an idea. Real time news is here to stay. Will the provider be Twitter or another entity? Doesn't matter.


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