Despite the great amount of time and effort invested in pilot projects aiming to use distributed ledgers to verify authenticity, improve traceability, and build more trust into supply chain transactions, only 19% of respondents ranked blockchain as a very important technology for their business, the company said in a release. Only 9% have invested in it.
Category Archives: Marketing
AT&T misleads customers by updating phones with fake 5G icon
To win the 5G marketing wars, AT&T has decided to brand portions of its LTE network as “5G Evolution.” These portions of AT&T’s network have received speed-boosting upgrades and should be faster than typical LTE, but AT&T isn’t doing anything that other carriers haven’t already implemented. And these are still, by definition, LTE technologies — not 5G ones. So this is exclusively about marketing, not about improving your phone.
Source: AT&T misleads customers by updating phones with fake 5G icon – The Verge
Are Apple products overpriced?
What we learned: Being loyal to Apple is getting expensive. Many Apple product prices are rising faster than inflation — faster, even, than the price of prescription drugs or going to college. Yet when Apple offers cheaper options for its most important product, the iPhone, Americans tend to take the more expensive choice. So while Apple isn’t charging all customers more, it’s definitely extracting more money from frequent upgraders.
Source: Are Apple products overpriced? – The Washington Post
Germany: CeBIT, world′s largest IT conference, canned
CeBIT was once considered the best barometer of technological trends, and during the dot-com boom in the late 90s and early 2000s, it boasted some 850,000 visitors a year. However, that number has been declining for years, despite cultivating a ‘fun fair’ atmosphere.
Source: Germany: CeBIT, world′s largest IT conference, canned | News | DW | 28.11.2018
System76 Linux computer maker offers a sneak peek into its new manufacturing facility
Exactly when these new computers both designed and manufactured by System76 will become available for purchase is anyone’s guess. Quite frankly, based on the System76’s blog post, it seems they are still at very early stages. With that said, it will be interesting to see what is born inside that factory in Colorado.
Source: System76 Linux computer maker offers a sneak peek into its new manufacturing facility
Global PC shipments grew 1.4% in Q2 2018, first increase in 6 years
Gartner estimates that worldwide PC shipments grew 1.4 percent to 62.1 million units in Q2 2018. The top five vendors were Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, and Acer. Lenovo in particular saw big gains (its highest growth rate since the first quarter of 2015), although that’s largely due in part to the inclusion of units from its joint venture with Fujitsu.
Source: Gartner: Global PC shipments grew 1.4% in Q2 2018, first increase in 6 years | VentureBeat
Desktop OS market share 2013-2018
This statistic shows the operating system market share worldwide on Desktop PCs 2013-2018. In February 2018, the OS market share of the Windows operating system range was at 82.55 percent.
How Bitcoin Ends
We thought the net would break the monopoly of top-down, corporate media. But as business interests took over it has become primarily a delivery system for streaming television to consumers, and consumer data to advertisers.
Source: How Bitcoin Ends
This explains why bitcoin has become less a means of exchange than a speculative pyramid, as well as why the coin’s developers and early investors have ended up billionaires. The wealth disparity in bitcoin is worse than that of central currency, with 4% of users owning 96% of bitcoin. So much for breaking the banking monopoly; this is just hackers seizing the banking industry for themselves.
Facebook lost around 2.8 million U.S. users under 25 last year. 2018 won’t be much better.
The reality: The number of U.S. Facebook users in the 12- to 17-year-old demographic declined by 9.9 percent in 2017, eMarketer found, or about 1.4 million total users. That’s almost three times the decline expected. There were roughly 12.1 million U.S. Facebook users in the 12- to 17-year-old demographic by the end of the year.
Source: Facebook lost around 2.8 million U.S. users under 25 last year. 2018 won’t be much better. – Recode
The Overwatch Videogame League Aims to Become the New NFL
Every major sport in the US has seen the average age of its viewership increase since 2000. The NBA’s average fan is 42. The average NFL fan is 50. The average MLB fan is 57. What’s more, these audiences are limited almost entirely to North America. The Overwatch League, meanwhile, will begin with nine US teams and three from abroad—Shanghai, Seoul, and London (with more, I’m told, on the way)—and its average fan is a demographically pleasing 21 years old.
Source: The Overwatch Videogame League Aims to Become the New NFL | WIRED