Blog Archives
eBay Spinning Off PayPal as Its Own Company
You may have forgotten since the purchase was twelve years ago but online auction site eBay actually owns the biggest online purchase service PayPal. Or at least as of next year, they will have owned PayPal. That’s because eBay announced plans to spin-off PayPal as its own company complete with a share flotation to make it public.
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Twitter Working on Deal for SoundCloud
This is a pretty big week for business acquisitions. First, it was all about YouTube’s reported purchase of Twitch. Then, there was the story about AT&T buying DirecTV for billions of dollars but only if the NFL renewed its Sunday Ticket deal. Now, Twitter decieded to get in on the action. A new report suggests that the social media / microblogging website is in talks to buy online audio-sharing website SoundCloud.
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Apple to Buy Beats by Dre for $3.2 Billion
Apple is on the verge of completing the biggest corporate acquisition in the company’s history is recent reports prove to be true. The company that made MP3 players and smartphones trendy and for the masses are going to buy the company that made ridiculously expensive and ostentatious headphones trendy and for the masses as Apple is nearing completion to buy Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion.
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Comcast Named Worst Company in America, Celebrates by Merging with TWC
Timing is everything, especially in irony. Yesterday, Comcast was announced as the winner of The Consumerist’s annual Worst Company in America poll. On that same day, they filed their paperwork with the Federal Communications Commission to begin the process of merging with Time Warner Cable.
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Disney Buys Maker Studios, Owner of YouTube MCNs Polaris and RPM
YouTube isn’t going away any time soon if big corporations have anything to say about it. The latest proof of that is Disney buying one of YouTube’s largest multichannel network owners, Maker Studios. The owner of such prominent MCNs as Polaris, Maker Music and RPM was purchased by Disney for $500 million.
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Apple and Comcast In Talks to Bring Streaming TV to Apple TV
Just one month after signing a deal with Netflix to give preferential network treatment to Netflix data, Comcast is working on another streaming content deal. This time, they’re not just the network provider looking for a cut. They want to stream content to Apple TV to allow the both companies to compete with Netflix.
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Facebook Buys WhatsApp for $19 Billion
It feels as though I’m talking a lot about money and tech this week so why not combine the two. Earlier this week, Facebook announced that they were buying popular cross-operating system instant messaging app WhatsApp for a jaw-dropping $19 billion.
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Sony Selling Computer Division, Spinning-Off TVs and Cutting Jobs in Major Restructuring
Facing a projected net loss for the fiscal year of about $1.1 billion, Sony is enacting a restructuring plan to reverse the fortunes of the company.
Sony CEO Kaz Hirai announced yesterday that the company is selling their Vaio computer division, spinning the TV division into its own wholly-owned subsidiary and eliminating 5,000 jobs worldwide.
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Nintendo Financial Results Reveal Troubling Information
We knew that Nintendo has been in rough shape since the launch of their current-gen Wii U console was a catastrophic flop. Between not having any killer apps on launch to an apparent massive marketing problem getting the message out that the Wii U is a new console and not a controller, the last year-and-a-half hasn’t been pretty for the granddaddy of game companies.
Yesterday’s quarterly earnings call showed how bad the situation is for Nintendo. The company announced a big loss for the fiscal year, noted poor Wii U sales for the first nine months of the fiscal year and lowered expectations for 3DS sales for the year.
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PlayStation Now is Gaming’s Next Disruptive Technology
When Nintendo announced the Wii, many cynics wrote off the console’s motion controls as a gimmick that wouldn’t add much anything to gameplay. After the console’s massive popularity and sales upon launch, both Microsoft and Sony followed Nintendo into the world of motion controls to gain back market share.
The Wii and its motion controls are a perfect example of a disruptive technology. The games industry was completely overtaken by the motion control fad as millions of dollars were spent to keep pace with Nintendo. They set a new direction for gaming and the other two console manufacturers followed.
PlayStation Now may not be out yet but Sony’s cloud gaming service is, if implemented correctly by Sony Computer Entertainment, destined to be one of the biggest and most disruptive technologies that the gaming industry has ever seen.
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