The High Tech Industry Is On Fire!

Alibaba. I have admired you from afar for many years now, and never have I felt closer to you than when I visited your booth at the MAGIC fashion conference in Las Vegas earlier this year (although, to be fair, you might want to train your sales people a little bit better because they weren't able to explain to me how the ordering process worked if there were multiple shipments to various locations but under one company, just sayin'.) and now, lo and behold, you have returned my affections! You're thinking about doing an IPO to raise $15-20B, which is no small chunk of change. Should I be scared though? What are you going to do with all that money? I have some loyalties to PayPal, so please don't hedge them out with your digital payments system. I do like though, that you're boosting up Yahoo since they have a large stake in you. So thanks for that. You're really going to be a game-changer-- outsourcing for products and materials will never be the same :)

Here's the requisite "Apple is going into mobile payments" post.

But speaking of Apple, Apple just split their stock which means that they're below the threshold to be included in the DOW. This could be awesome.

But not so awesome? Apparently there was a case awhile ago between a bunch of big tech firms alleging that they were conspiring to regulate hiring between them to drive down wages. Although they've admitted to instating no-hire rules between them, their argument is that it wasn't to drive down wages.  I actually believe this because I feel like they have more to gain by simply respecting each other and not poaching talent than driving down wages. I mean, wages have exploded over the past few years and I don't really see that stopping any time soon, so even if that was their intent, they've failed.

Amazon is still disappointing shareholders, but shareholders are still bullish for some reason. They did hit the diminished forecasts released by analysts, but their international sales are only growing by 18% and with the increase in their prime package, it's hard to say what will happen to their profitability in the future...My gut tells me that they will need to continue raising their prices in order to cover the (pretty luxurious) services that their customers have grown accustomed to. That means higher prime (already done), higher percentages for merchants (done a little bit, to some backlash, but I would expect for it to happen more often and with higher percentages) and a bigger push on their digital streaming stuff (already happening). The real question will come when the merchants aren't willing to pay and the consumers aren't willing to pay. If they're driving away their business by increasing prices, will they still be considered the world's most customer-centric company? Will they still be able to be profitable when they don't have the support of their customers?

What Is the Future of Net Neutrality?

A million signatures for something that isn't even proposed yet? Say what you will about Americans being apathetic political people, but when it comes to the threat of them taking away our internet, it's over! I don't care who we elect to be leader of the free world, but if I can't stream old episodes of Doug, then I refuse to live in this country. It might sound crazy, but the debate over net neutrality are heating up. According to the New York Times article, "Defending the Open Internet", the internet is essentially up for grabs-- should it regulated as an utility? Something that is almost like a public commodity like electricity or indoor plumbing? Should companies like Netflix be able to pay to make their transmission into viewers homes faster? If they're willing to pay for it, then it should be allowed, argue some. On the other hand, shouldn't internet be equal for all? But their livelihood (providing entertainment to people as quickly as possible) is critically dependent on the speed of the internet!

My guess? The FCC will let them do it, but the cost will be high to begin with. As they begin to agree on how to create and define the pricing tiers, the elite companies will pay the exorbitant amounts, and the little guys (non-Netflix) will begin to be pushed out. It will also be harder for two guys to start something in the garage (as the founder of Digg has pointed out) but this simply means the big guys will have more incentive to fund the little guys, which decreases creativity, but increases the burden on the larger corporations.

Fun Charts and Graphs

I'm out in Vegas right now for a business trip, and man is it hot out here! ANYway, here's a roundup of some fun charts ad graphs that I've seen recently:

 

So here's an interesting article from Bloomberg about the trends of business schools. Two of the biggest ones, Wharton and HBS, have seen a decline in the number of students who are interested in going to investment banking-- interesting because they are traditionally "finance" schools, but extra interesting because the industry choice that's taken its place is technology. This shocks me only because I kind of expected that the runner-up would more likely be consulting than technology, but hey....yay for my industry!

There's also this fun interactive chart (also from Bloomberg...I'm a sucker for a slider, I have to be honest) that shows the change in unemployment rates between 2009 and 2014. Unemployment, especially in the more urban areas, has hit lows of less than 5%, which is kind of shocking. Surprises? The midwest. 

Here's an interesting map from McKinsey that details the flow of goods, services, finances, people, data and information. Not surprising? The US usually makes up the fat line in pretty much all of these scenarios. Surprising? Not nearly as much activity from China as one would expect....

I'm such a sucker for graphs and stuff....