This is an interesting thought study from Fred Wilson. He believes that by 2020 Apple will not be in the list of top 3 companies and here is why. VC Fred Wilson: By 2020 Apple Won’t Be A Top-3 Tech Company, Google And Facebook Will | Techcrunch “I think hardware is increasingly becoming a commodity,” he said. “Their stuff in the cloud is largely not good. I don’t think they think about data and the cloud.” Now I’ll admit to being an Apple advocate, but lets break this thought down. Hardware as a commodity: Absolutely. Thats a given and already … Continue reading Is Apple a hardware rooted dinosaur? | Fred Wilson

This is a fascinating article. FaceBook is a company with 3,500 employees and 1.2 billion users. The stock price has grown 110% since July 2013. When they change something the impact on people and on the now public company is gigantic. He even has a tentative new slogan: We’ve changed our internal motto from “Move fast and break things” to “Move fast with stable infrastructure.” The shift in that slogan exemplifies the theme of the interview. He has matured and understands the power of words and their impact on strategy. More importantly he has accomplished in 18 months +/- a … Continue reading Mark Zuckerberg grows up and displays real CEO strategic characteristics

The social network battles are largely over. Facebook owns the generic space. Others link to that space. G+ otherwise known as Google entry into the space has a decent following but it is too complicated and doesn’t come up in conversation as ‘are you on FaceBook’ does. Vic Gundotra the head of Google Plus is gone today. I care little in this blog for corporate change. I am however deeply interested in systemic shifts in internet direction and I believe this is one of those. Longtime readers will know I am not a fan of internet as a marketing medium. … Continue reading Changes at Google that have been a long time coming

This is one of the clearest posts I have seen describing next generation payment experience.  The emphasis on the word experience.  Payments shifted from something that interrupts and makes you line up and wait, to something that simply happens in the background; in particular with the BLE example described in this extract. Three Trends That Might Transform The Retail Payments Experience | David Marcus President Paypal For example, we have a pilot running in our on-campus Starbucks that combines Beacon, with an app built for the Samsung Galaxy Gear 2, and Gear Fit devices. Walk into the area covered by … Continue reading A great description of transformative payments | David Marcus

About 18 months ago I attended the introduction of Mintchip by the Royal Canadian Mint. Royal Canadian Mint takes on digital cash Mintchip is a project of the Royal Canadian Mint designed to provide an infrastructure for payments that would replace cash. But now in a dramatic change of strategy, they are intending to divest Mintchip to the private sector.  This is disappointing.  In the article it is clear progress was being made, and alliances arranged with security and terminal vendors.  It is unclear what the future will hold for MintChip now. It is especially disappointing because government involvement was … Continue reading The MintChip experiment appears to be over and is being sold off

Once in a while I am fortunate enough to get a hold of embargoed material.  This one is expected to be released to the public in about 1 month but I was able to get exclusive rights to release this now. Here is a senior management communication from a well known bank with what I can only describe as game changing technology for financial services.  In a few days I will be able to provide additional exclusive detail, but meantime this is just too good not to share. Enjoy this internal management letter. To All Management: Many of you are engaged in … Continue reading Game changing banking technology announcement

Its been some time (decades?) since I had anything positive to say about Microsoft. Nadella in a few short weeks is setting the tone and direction that will change the company.  The iPad app delivered on a non Microsft OS this week was a big deal.  Now this mobile-first, cloud-first world statement is a sharp right turn away from a Microsoft centric world. Satya Nadella email to employees on tuning our organization | Microsoft News Center Today marks the start of another big week for Microsoft as we gear up for the Build conference in San Francisco. We continue to … Continue reading “mobile-first, cloud-first world” | finally a new Microsoft

This is a fascinating ruling on the Bitcoin argument as a currency.  The US IRS has noted that Bitcoins are not fungible, which is one of the features of cash.  Each Bitcoin is unique which also implies unique tax treatment.  Whereas cash can be together in bills or in an account and it doesn’t matter which one is spent first. This doesn’t stop it being used as a payment medium, but it is not the same as cash. Bitcoin Tax Ruling Credit Slips The IRS ruled that Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are property, not currency.  This means that they … Continue reading IRS determines Bitcoin is property not currency