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Benedict's Mobile Newsletter
This is a weekly newsletter of what I've seen in tech and mobile and thought was interesting. It now has 169,646 subscribers. I'm a consultant in digital media and mobile, based in London. See more or subscribe at www.ben-evans.com

I'll be speaking at the InContext event in San Francisco in February. Link

Podcast: Cubed
 

Industry news

 
Google bought Nest for $3.2bn cash. Nest was founded by Tony Fadell, one of the early creators of the iPod, to reimagine neglected and ignored pieces of household electrical equipment. It started with smart connected thermostats and smoke detectors, but there's clearly a much larger story around taking intelligence and network connectivity into the home - it's an 'internet of things' story that's actually getting somewhere beyond converged fridge/toasters. For Google, the obvious explanation is 'data' (hence the jokes about how you'll have to join Google Plus to turn up the temperature). But that seems a little narrow, especially given Larry Page's penchant for trying to think bigger at every turn. Google missed social and seems determined not to miss cars, drones, robotics, wearables or, now, IoT. Is it, as both Michael Mace and John Gapper (last summer in the FT) suggest, turning into the GE of the internet - making everything internet the way GE made everything electric? Google Press release, Tony Fadell interview

Facebook is looking at creating a much wider range of unbundled mobile apps. The smartphone privileges single-purpose apps - it's easier to tap the home button than navigate through your hamburger menu system. And of course FB has an identity platform to tie things together (this is what Line is doing as well - lots of linked apps). But previous FB attempts at stand-alone apps met mixed results - from 'went nowhere' to mediocre. Not clear people actually WANT a FB alternative to Snapchat or the next 5 cool apps to bubble up. Link

Nintendo cut first year sales estimates for the Wii U from 9m to 2.8m. A very long, slow-motion train wreck: there is scope for one last generation of high-spec games console, but the 'cheap, easy, casual, low-spec' space is taken by smartphones and tablets. And selling games consoles to people who don't buy games is problematic. There's a certain symmetry in the rise of Nest and the collapse of Nintendo. Hardware is turning into software, but software is also turning into hardware. Link

Twitter is nearing a deal with Stripe to do payments. I'm not quite sure you can fit even a nice slick Stripe CC card form into a Twitter Card, but clearly they're still pushing to take the platform forward. Link 

Hershey's is making a 3D printer for chocolate. Killer app. (Of course, it's easier when your chocolate is essentially flavoured plastic anyway...) Link

Dropbox apparently raised $250m at a $10bn valuation. Interesting how the hottest B2B startups are both the ones that get rid of documents altogether (most SAAS) and those (Box, Dropbox) that get you to double-down on them. Death of e-mails the linking factor, perhaps Link 

Square is apparently doing a tender offer with a $5bn valuation. Nice company, very unclear how well it works in countries without the crappy US banking system.  Link

The EU is (again) looking into ending territory-by-territory sales of movie rights to TV channels. This has the potential to be very disruptive. Bad for both TV stations and content owners. Link

AOL finally spun out Patch, the hyperlocal news network, to a PE buyer. Ends the bleeding red ink. Supplying good local news and good local display inventory with viable economics remains an unsolved pair of problems. Link

Marissa Meyer fired Henriques de Castro, the COO she poached from Google, after just over a year. It appears that his pay-off will be in the region of $100m. Think of it as an expensive failed acquisition... Link

NTT DoCoMo has shelved plans to launch a phone using Samsung's Tizen smartphone OS. There really doesn't seem to be room for a new smartphone OS, or indeed any more than the 2 winners we already have. The interesting innovation around creating new platforms happens on top of Android from now on, I think. Link
 

Worthwhile blog posts

Profile of CyanogenMod, makers of the most popular Android ROM. Link

No-one in China is bothering to pirate wearable tech yet. Link

New Yorker - the iPod of prison. Link

Why Wandoujia has done well as a Chinese app store. Link

There are 3m ATMs on earth, and 95% run Windows XP. Link
 

Data points

A third of registered SF taxi drivers have switched to using a cab app instead. Link

Skype now carries the majority of all international phone traffic. Of course, international is still a very small percentage of total phone traffic (most people don't know anyone abroad). Link 

Flurry: social messaging apps were the fastest-growing category in 2013. Link

Foxconn apparently shipped 1m of the iPhone 5S to China Mobile ahead of launch. Very hard to read much into this, though. Link

Very comprehensive Ofcom report on internet safety measures for children. Link (PDF)

 

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Copyright © 2014 Benedict Evans,, All rights reserved.


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