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| Subscribed to Life | |
| Number | 3210 |
| Broadcast Date | JANUARY 31, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 33:41 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane |
| Guests | Scott Johnson |
As boomers and millennials feel the pinch of rising healthcare, insurance and living costs is the future of retail sales and consumer consumption lay in subscription and rental services? Plus Nintendo’s Switch boosts the company’s bottom line by over a 177% and Google wants to tell you when your flight isn’t on time.
Guest
Quick Hits
- A patent filed by LG with the World Intellectual Property Organization describes a “mobile phone with a flexible display which can be folded in half.” Two designs show alternate ways of displaying information on the "cover" when the phone is folded.
- Xerox will merge with a joint venture it operates with Fujifilm in Asia essentially making Xerox a division of Fujifilm. Fujifilm will ultimately own 50.1 percent of the combined entity, which will encompass all of Xerox’s operations.
- YouTube TV, YouTube's cable replacement service, has the exclusive rights to telecasts of the Los Angeles FC MLS games starting in March. 18 games will be available on an LA FC YouTube TV channel, geofenced to LA subscribers. YouTube won't charge subscribers an additional fee.
- Go Pro has added device replacement to its Plus subscription service which previously included cloud backup for photos and videos. You can replace any GoPro camera twice within a twelve month subscription.The service still costs $5 a month.
Top Stories
- Spotify released an Android app called Stations, which lets users stream Pandora-style curated music stations without having to pay for a Spotify Premium subscription. The app, which Spotify describes as an experiment, is only available in Australia for now.
- Google Flights will start telling you the reason for flight delays. It will also start using historical flight status data with machine learning to alert you if its 80% certain a flight will be delayed. Google Flights will also now tell you which amenities are not included in a basic economy fare, for example, having to pay extra for carry-on luggage or seat selection.
- Amazon's launching a new messaging feature for Alexa devices in the U.S. that will allow you to send SMS messages to contacts using your voice. Depending on the contact, the assistant will decide how to route your message – using either the previously launched Alexa messaging system, or via SMS. The feature currently works only for sending SMS messages to Android phones, and doesn't currently work with 3rd party smart speakers. Amazon introduced free calls and messaging last year, but the feature only worked in between Echo devices.
- Nintendo beat market expectations in its third quarter, and also increased the sales forecast for its Switch console. Revenue was 482.97 billion yen ($4.44 billion) which is more than than a 177% year-on-year rise, and also the highest quarterly revenue figure since Nintendo's quarter ending December 2009.
- Facebook reported adjusted earnings:
- Earnings per share was $2.21 vs. an expected $1.95.
- Revenue came in at $12.97 billion vs. an expected $12.55 billion
Because of tax on overseas earnings, Facebook set aside $2.27 billion, decreasing diluted earnings by 77 cents per share for both the fourth quarter and all of last year. But CNBC reports that payment of that tax will free the company to bring back overseas cash at a lower tax rate.
- Facebook reports 1.4 billion daily active users vs. an expected 1.41 billion.
And monthly active users came in at 2.13 billion meeting expectations, up 3.39% from 2.06 billion in Q3 compared to 3.19% growth that quarter, so the monthly user growth sped up even as daily user growth slowed. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that “Already last quarter, we made changes to show fewer viral videos to make sure people’s time is well spent. In total, we made changes that reduced time spent on Facebook by roughly 50 million hours every day.”
- Facebook reported adjusted earnings:
- What to Watch For In Microsoft's Earnings Report on Wednesday
- Microsoft's cloud computing business grows, stock edges up
- Microsoft reported Q2 earnings per share of $0.96 Adj. vs. analysts expectations of $0.86. Q2 Revenues were $28.92B beating analyst expectations of. $28.39B. Analysts expected big gains from its cloud business and Azure revenue grew 98% year-over-year. And Satya Nadella has said gaming will become one of its biggest businesses.
Discussion
- Inside Joymode, a subscription service saving you from buying all of the things
- Vehicle Subscription Services Emerge as New Car Ownership Model
- You Will No Longer Lease a Car. You Will Subscribe to It.
- Toy Rental Subscriptions: Play & Return!
- The Mr. Collection - Rent Clothing Chosen by Personal Stylists
- Miele washing machine, Miele tumble dryer and Miele dishwasher in a subscription
- Rent Legos, Lego Rental Service | Netbricks
- Rep the Squad
- Rent Your Maternity Clothes (and Save Big!) Through These Savvy Sites
Pick of the Day
- Submitted by Chris Christensen
Mailbag
- Your recent discussions on digital wallets and modern banking got me thinking: the banking technology situation in the USA is kind of perplexing. As far as I know banks and consumers there are reticent to use newer banking technologies.
Here in South Africa chip and pin has been the norm for several years, and contactless is gaining popularity too.
In April 2017, MasterCard started a trial in partnership with 2 local retail shops to test the biometric cards they are planning to roll out. Its a chip card with a built-in fingerprint sensor for user authentication. As far as I know South Africa was one of the 1st markets to test this.
Most of the South African banks have full featured cell phone banking apps too. The bank I am with even allows the app to use the phone's NFC reader to make payments at all contactless enabled terminals. I recently had to use this feature when i was traveling with my wife's vehicle and had somehow left my wallet at home. The cashier at the filling station was skeptical, and then extremely surprised that it worked. - Sent by Louis from sunny and sweltering Mbombela, South Africa
- Your recent discussions on digital wallets and modern banking got me thinking: the banking technology situation in the USA is kind of perplexing. As far as I know banks and consumers there are reticent to use newer banking technologies.
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Subscribed to Life |
Followed by: "Alphabet Has Problems with Numbers" |