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Technology

Technology

Microsoft Buys Nokia

In a major yet unsurprising move, Microsoft has acquired Nokia’s device and services devision for around $7.2 Billion.

Building on the partnership with Nokia announced in February 2011 and the increasing success of Nokia’s Lumia smartphones, Microsoft aims to accelerate the growth of its share and profit in mobile devices through faster innovation, increased synergies, and unified branding and marketing. For Nokia, this transaction is expected to be significantly accretive to earnings, strengthen its financial position, and provide a solid basis for future investment in its continuing businesses.

Microsoft is a now a vertical smart phone and tablet maker. Google and Microsoft are beginning to see the benefits of being the software and hardware makers for their devices like Apple. The likes of Dell, Sony, HP, Asus should be somewhat concerned now. Suppose Microsoft decides to only make Windows Phone 8 devices with Nokia and not them? Overall, this is a good move by Microsoft right now.

Another loser here is BlackBerry. At one point I was theorizing that Microsoft would use them for their secure enterprise services and perhaps hardware such as the Bold. In essence now, this move to acquire Nokia proves that Apple was right.

Oh yeah, free KitKats with new Android phones….

2013/09/03
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Technology

August 28, 2013

MBAs say values matter more than money

Eighty-five percent of respondents said learning about social and environmental business is a priority for them in their graduate school program, and 91 percent said that social and environmental issues are essential or very important to a business’s long-term success.

I am glad to see that so many new MBAs desire more than purely cold hard cash. Environmental, health care and social improvement are fields that these energetic and ambitious individuals need to contribute to. Richard Branson famously said “Have fun, do good, money [and success] will come.”

Marissa Mayer has “many enemies”

Mayer is an executive outsider not only as a woman but also as a techie. Her background is not in business or marketing, but in the actual guts of product development and management. This makes her far more of an outsider to business culture than women like Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman. Creative, technically oriented outsiders are founders, not corporate ladder-climbers: David Packard, Walt Disney, Ted Turner, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and even Bill Gates.

Honestly, I think that Mayer is doing a fantastic job. She has been CEO of Yahoo! for around a year now and while receiving a lot of criticism, she has had many successes. She invested in Tumblr and overhauled Flickr. And just recently, Yahoo! has passed the almighty Google in US visitors. Furthermore, Apple has been favouring Yahoo in services such as default search and weather in iOS.

New Zealand bans software patents

“The patents system doesn’t work for software because it is almost impossible for genuine technology companies to create new software without breaching some of the hundreds of thousands of software patents that exist, often for very obvious work,”

This is a dramatic and bold ruling that will probably hit the rest of the world within 10 years. Or at least some rethinking of the current patent system in the US.

Nintendo 2DS

The Nintendo 2DS is a new handheld in the DS family due out on October 12 for $130, in red and blue. As its name suggests, the 2DS plays all 3DS and DS games, but in 2D.

Personally, I think it looks terrible. A 2DS will not help Nintendo with their problems. Hint #1: make a new “GameBoy” and “GameCube”. Hint #2: make games for iOS. I’d pay good money to play Pokemon and Super Mario Bros. on my iPhone or iPad!

2013/08/28
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Technology

Data Only Please

I don’t want to be forced to pay for a cellular and data plan from my carrier. I just want a data plan. When Apple introduced FaceTime in 2011 and Google unveiled Hangouts and Voice, the notion of VoIP (voice over I.P address) became popularized. In essence, you could talk to someone face-to-face without using minutes from a traditional cellular plan. Instead, you would just require a data plan. Today, we have technologies such as 4G, LTE and 3G which can accommodate high performance communication.

Apple killed the SMS text messaging business with iMessages. This works with just data and wifi. It is very similar Blackberry’s BBM. And is also very encrypted and secure.

At Apple’s WWDC event, they unleashed iOS 7. While, they showed off many new features such as control center, parallax, improved multi-tasking and a new user-interface, they curiously left out one. One that I think is a another game changer. FaceTime Audio.

It’s exactly what you think it is. Starting September 10, 2013 (or when iOS 7 is actually released to the general public), you will be able to place a voice-call to anyone with an iOS or OSX device over wifi. It’s only wifi to start (just like FaceTime was initially) as the carriers are probably worried that it too will eat away at their profits.

Apple has around $200 Billion in cash reserve. I really hope they are planning to use that to maybe buy up some carriers, satellites, cell towers. It would be awesome to see them ultimately form their own network that worked globally. Imagine a world where you can just pay something such $40 USD a month for 10GB of data. You’d get one phone number on your data-only SIM card and you could travel to any continent and still receive high quality internet connectivity. That would be just fantastic.

But this is a very optimistic omen as to what is to come in the near future.

2013/08/23
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Technology

Start Investing Young

Melissa Yeong wrote a really in-depth piece in the Financial Post

“I am investing to build a sustainable and growing stream of passive income with the goal of it covering our household expenses by the time I am 45 years old.  We won’t necessarily quit working at that point; it’s just for the goal of being financially independent of others and being free to pursue our passions.”

With the recession going on, students are in debt from the lack of jobs and high student tuition.

While I won’t go into what I invest in. I do invest. I want to make my money work for me. Yeong interviews a handful of young Canadians about their various strategies. You will see the wide-range of different possibilities these clever folks are active in. These include stocks, mutual funds, GICs, bonds and real estate.

A lot of the time, children are heavily influenced by their parents. Especially for financial matters. It is so very important for parents to teach their kids about this because schools just don’t do a good job at it. This is where we will begin to see the gap in wealth start to open up. Obviously, children whose parents have experience with investing will teach their offspring more than those who don’t.

Basically, just start young. Even, if it’s just a little. Invest in things that you are comfortable with. For example, if you are a tech-savvy nerd like me, do some research in the companies you know about.

2013/08/22
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