🦅 [ perspective ix ]

💸Amazon's HQs #Amazon’s relationship to its hometown, Seattle, WA, has been complicated at best. The company has poured close to $4 billion in real estate spending into the city. Amazon is currently employing 45,000 people who have an average annual salary of $110,000. Critics say these moves have driven up the cost of living in the city. While the tech giant has grown, it has also deferred 54 million in state taxes alone, due to a high-tech corporate incentive in Washington state. 🚀@PerspectiveIX via Statista.

🔈Alexa Rules American Smart Homes Still capitalizing on its first mover advantage, #Amazon continues to dominate the smart speaker landscape in the United States. According to a survey conducted by research firm Strategy Analytics in July and August 2018, the e-commerce giant accounted for 63% of the U.S. installed base at the time, beating Google (17%) and Apple (4%) by quite a margin. Amazon had started the smart speaker craze in November 2014 with the release of the first Amazon Echo. The Consumer Technology Association expects smart speaker sales to amount to $3.2 billion in the U.S. this year, up 64% over the 2017 total. 🚀@PerspectiveIX via Statista.

​​😍Netflix is Responsible for 15% of Global Internet Traffic According to a new report by Sandvine, the web application responsible for the world's most downstream traffic is #Netflix with 15%. #Youtube isn't too far behind with 11.4% and further back but still with a significant share, #Amazon Prime Video is responsible for 3.7%. 🚀@PerspectiveIX via Statista. ❓Do you a Netflix account?

​​👀Facebook Portal #Facebook just unveiled Portal, a home video chat camera with auto-zoom & built-in #Amazon Alexa - for the people who still trust Facebook! With #FacebookPortal, you can’t watch #YouTube; there’s no web browser; #WhatsApp and #Instagram are nowhere to be found; and you can’t send or receive normal Facebook messages, even if they’re video recordings. If you buy the Portal, you have to really want to video chat with other people on Facebook, and do so from one room in your home, on something other than the phone or laptop or tablet that you likely already have. (TheVerge) With all the privacy issues surrounding Facebook, Portal seems like a stupidly brave bet from them. 🚀@PerspectiveIX ❓Will you purchase a Facebook Portal to place inside your home?

​​🎶Music Industry Streaming Revenues Revenues from streaming #Music grew 28% YoY to $3.4 billion for the first half of 2018. This broad category includes revenues from subscription services (such as paid versions of #Spotify, #AppleMusic, #Amazon, #TIDAL, and others), digital and customized radio services (like #Pandora, #SiriusXM, and other Internet radio), and ad-supported on-demand streaming services (such as #YouTube, #Vevo, and ad-supported Spotify). The overwhelming majority of the industry’s revenue growth during the period came from streaming music. Paid subscriptions have become the biggest format for music by revenue. Year-over-year growth of 33% brought total subscription revenues to $2.5 billion. So ¾ of recording industry revenue came from streaming, and ¾ of that from paid subscriptions. Despite far few users, subscription streaming vastly out performed ad-supported revenues. 🚀@PerspectiveIX via RIAA (PDF). ❓Which one do you prefer?

​​🗣The State of Chinese Voice Assistants China is the second-largest consumer market in the world, hitting $4.3T in consumer expenditure in 2016 alone (for reference, the US ranked first with $12.5T, and Japan third with $2.7T). The Chinese smart home market will reach nearly $23B in 2018, according to Juniper Research. #SmartSpeakers and #AI voice assistants are becoming an integral part of that. Now that smart speakers are becoming commonplace, the early entrant, #Amazon, is losing its market share — and not just to its rival #Google, but to newer players emerging in China. 🚀@PerspectiveIX via CBInsights. ❓ Do you own a smart speaker?

📰#iXDailyBrief STAT ⚡️ The ‘Gareth Southgate’ effect? M&S’ suit sales have been boosted so far for the 2018 World Cup with sales of waistcoats up by 35% YOY. (Source: Marks and Spencer) INSIGHT 📌#Pinterest's rudimentary consultancy gives retailers advice on in-store merchandising: prs.pctvix.co/2NJIVs3 OTHER NEWS 📈 Olio, the app that lets you share unwanted food items with your neighbours, picks up £6M Series A: t.me/iXNews/29108 📱 HTC’s blockchain-powered Exodus #smartphone is a risky bet that needs to pay off: t.me/iXNews/29106 👊#YouTube is fighting fake news with $25M to promote journalism and more context in search results: t.me/iXNews/29001 🤝#Snapchat moves beyond traditional publishing brands with latest partnerships: prs.pctvix.co/2NJzzN5 👻 Snapchat and #Amazon will team up on in-app shopping: prs.pctvix.co/2NIPag6 🕵️‍♀️ House Republicans demand answers from Alphabet following Gmail privacy scandal: t.me/iXNews/28988 — Sorry about missing the Daily Brief yesterday. I was on a couple of flights with no internet access. And today, I'm trying to catch up 🙃 Ben, @iXNews

​​📚It's Amazon's Birthday! On this day (5 July) in 1994, #Amazon was founded in Bellevue, Washington. It went public three years later and raised $54 million. #History 🚀@PerspectiveIX 📕prs.pctvix.co/2u7P093

📰#iXDailyBrief STAT ⚡️ 55% of UK consumers say the ads they see on websites are not usually relevant to them, 38% say they dislike advertising and 53% say that they are ambivalent to it. (Source: Kantar) INSIGHT 🧠 A new AI programme developed by Stanford scientists recreated the periodic table in just a few hours: prs.pctvix.co/2tx9PuW OTHER NEWS ⛓#Facebook is reversing its ban on cryptocurrency ads: t.me/iXNews/28285 📘#Facebook launches print magazine called ‘Grow’: prs.pctvix.co/2twrX87 ❓#Instagram’s NEW ‘Questions’ sticker for Stories is now rolling out: prs.pctvix.co/2txM9q8 🎙#Amazon adds voice control to its #Alexa iOS app: t.me/iXNews/28305 📹#Instagram now lets you 4-way group video chat as you browse: t.me/iXNews/28268 🚖 A court has granted Uber a 15-month probationary license to operate in London: t.me/iXNews/28304 — ☕️ If you like our channel, please support us: prs.pctvix.co/2taiWBz — “A penguin cannot become a giraffe, so just be the best penguin you can be.” ― Gary Vaynerchuk Ben, @iXNews

📰#iXDailyBrief STAT ⚡️ 75% of executives say they've seen brands advertising alongside unsavoury or objectionable stories or videos (Source: Reuters) INSIGHT 🏥 ‘Gaming disorder’ is officially recognized by the World Health Organization: t.me/iXNews/27733 OTHER NEWS 😐#Amazon faces pressure to stop selling facial recognition to police: prs.pctvix.co/2MCn8SN 👻 Even Evan Spiegel’s wife Miranda Kerr hated the #Snapchat redesign: prs.pctvix.co/2MF9TRt ⛔️ Unilever stops working with digital media influencers who buy followers: prs.pctvix.co/2MFbxCf 🏩 Amazon launches an Alexa system for hotels: t.me/iXNews/27754 🔈 Alexa is coming to Spain 🇪🇸 and Italy 🇮🇹 later this year: t.me/iXNews/27757 🤖 What it’s like to watch an IBM #AI successfully debate humans: t.me/iXNews/27739 🎧#YouTube rolls out its music subscription services to 12 more markets: t.me/iXNews/27706 — ☕️ If you like our channel, please support us with a coffee: prs.pctvix.co/2taiWBz — “No one has ever become poor by giving.” ― Anne Frank Ben, @iXNews

​​💰The largest buys of tech’s Big Five: a look at M&A deals In startup land, the mandate is to get bought, go public or die trying. And, as far as getting bought goes, one of tech’s Big Five could be a desirable acquirer. They have a lot of weight to throw around. #Alphabet (the parent company of #Google), #Amazon, #Apple, #Facebook and #Microsoft account for a titanic amount of market value — close to $3.9 trillion at time of writing. The largest acquisition of each of the Big Five: 1. Apple: Beats Electronics ⇢ $3 Billion 2. Amazon: Whole Foods ⇢ $13.7 Billion 3. Alphabet: Motorola Mobility ⇢ $12.5 Billion 4. Microsoft: LinkedIn ⇢ $26.2 Billion 5. Facebook: WhatsApp ⇢ $19 Billion The chart below shows the number of acquisitions made by members of tech’s Big Five from 2007 through 2017. 🚀@PerspectiveIX ☕️prs.pctvix.co/2M8AAOb

📰#iXDailyBrief STAT ⚡️ According to the newly released 'Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2018', the company which boasts the largest value backing up its brand is currently Google, with an estimated $302,063 million. When it comes to the UK though, Vodafone is top of the list, with a value of $28,860 million - putting it in place 37 globally. (Source: Statisa) INSIGHT 🏬 Morgan Stanley: Apple’s App Store clobbers Google Play: prs.pctvix.co/2LrVUg6 OTHER NEWS 🤯#AMD promises 32-core Threadripper processor for later this year: t.me/iXNews/26836 🤦‍♂️#Facebook shared data with Chinese telecom Huawei, raising US government security concerns: t.me/iXNews/26833 🎞#Instagram might soon let you post videos up to an hour long: t.me/iXNews/26832 💻#Amazon’s new all-in-one and laptop designs could get Alexa into even more PCs: t.me/iXNews/26821 — "Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it." ― Albert Einstein Ben, @iXNews