How Bezos will spend his $1.8 billion paycheck

Bezos cashes a check for $1.8 billion

Bezos sold Amazon stock worth $1.8 billion over the past few days. The value matches the value gained in last fall’s run up of stock value. Gizmodo

dis-rup-shun: How do you spend $1.8 billion? Turns out Jeff is likely moving his money to his space exploration company, Blue Origin, which just won a long term contract with NASA. The rocket business, undoubtedly, consumes a lot of cash, and Bezos has enough to build a footbridge to Mars. Ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos has pledged most of her $36.6 billion divorce settlement to charity, content to live off of whatever is left after “most.”

What to think of AT&T DirecTV now

AT&T is changing the name of its brand streaming service (Netflix killer?) called DirecTV Now to AT&T TV Now. AT&T’s journey into the streaming world has been bumpy, as the service experienced multiple network outages, and has lost 500,000 subscribers in the past year. Combine that with total subscriber losses across all TV properties, and the losses total 2.5 million subscribers. ArsTechnica

dis-rup-shun: If streaming services are the future, what’s up with AT&T’s tinkering?

Here are a few answers:

  1. AT&T is not stupid. In fact, they earned $19 billion in profit last year and have maintained leading market share in multiple communications/entertainment industries.
  2. AT&T knew that cord cutting (dropping pay TV packages) was a growing trend, yet they invested in Time Warner and their Now streaming service.
  3. The power of the bundle is not to be discounted. AT&T is in a unique position to offer customers Internet, wireless, and entertainment services.
  4. As entertainment shifts to streaming services, market share will be gained by those services with differentiated content. That’s why the company purchased Time Warner — to make the content.

The company is positioned for a long, expensive battle with Netflix, Amazon, Disney and others to restructure entertainment services. AT&T will come out a winner at the end of the slog, but it will be three to five years of building on shifting sands and heavy subscriber movement.

The next wave of Intel chips coming for Christmas

Intel is, after much delay, releasing its generation 10, 10 nanometer chip family in time for holiday 2019 purchases. What does that do for you? The processors bring to computing much higher battery life (9 hours), better graphics processing, optimization for AI, faster Wi-Fi (version 6), and support for more really fast ports (Thunderbolt). Wired

dis-rup-shun: Intel is increasingly challenged by competition, including Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, and many others, who are gobbling up share of non-PC computing devices. It is rumored that Apple will move away from Intel CPUs sometime next year for Mac computers. Expect Intel to be increasingly on the hot seat as it is not changing as fast as the world of computing.

Companies work around Chinese export bans

Does the economic invisible hand know any boundaries?

The Trump tariffs have been aimed at China’s telco giant, Huawei, more than any other Chinese company, with the U.S. prohibiting sales of certain products by U.S. companies and by those of its trade partners. Now microprocessor vendors Intel and Micron have determined that many of their products do not violate the ban, and have resumed selling to Huawei. CNN

dis-rup-shun: The politics behind the trade ban are based on two premises: Chinese companies such as Huawei have violated patents, and the U.S. cannot afford for China, therefore Huawei, to be the leader in 5G technologies. If you are a multinational company based in the U.S. but heavily dependent on selling to all major global companies to meet 2019 sales projections and shareholder expectations, do you pursue all sales opportunities, or do you act in a nationalistic fashion to advance the U.S. 5G agenda? The industry leaders have spoken.

The smartphone notification dilemma

Smartphone apps are now providing as many as 73 notifications per day to average users, or roughly every 15 minutes of awake time. App researchers consider if our society should develop appropriate norms for the number of messages we receive and then expect tech providers to conform, or will people continue to have to make constant decisions about when they choose to interrupt their actions, conversations and thoughts. Wired

dis-rup-shun: Smartphone etiquette continues to be uncharted, and given the legitimate business messaging that occurs on the smartphone via Slack, Teams, WeeChat, SMS, iMessage, LinkedIn, and email, to name a few, banning smartphone usage in the conference room is doubtful. Blending attention at home with work alerts, or at work with personal alerts is a skill that must be mastered for success in both domains. A smartphone free zone, meeting, or experience will be transformational to those that get to experience it.

Air traffic control system getting prepared for drones

Raytheon is the company that develops tracking technology for the U.S. air traffic control system. It has signed an agreement with AirMap, a company that maintains the largest unmanned aircraft tracking network, in order to integrate drone tracking into its commercial and military aircraft tracking system. Airmap has $43 million in funding and currently works in the Czech Republic, Japan, Switzerland, and the United States. ZDNet

dis-rup-shun: The rate of drone innovation is outpacing regulation, such that effective delivery networks will be ready before regulators are. As an important global infrastructure provider, Raytheon will help bring commercial drone usage to market in the next half decade.

Selling school assets for better wireless

A national dilemma is brewing as spectrum once reserved for educational institutions and often unused may be auctioned off for 5G development by large carriers. Much of the Educational Broadband Service has remained unused, however some school systems have leased the spectrum to carriers who have generated revenue from the assets. Critics of the resale plan are concerned that the sale of spectrum will still not help with the problem of serving rural residents who remain without high speed broadband facilities. Wired

dis-rup-shun: Rural broadband infrastructure is simply a cost that no one wants to bear, as the economics will never work. Spectrum licenses should be sold with the requirement that the buyer fund or directly supply some portion of rural infrastructure to get the job done. If rural communities have access to leading-edge communications infrastructure, workers can reverse migrate from cities and relieve rising cost of living pressures.

Internet success, divorce and $18 billion of goodwill

MacKenzie Bezos will give away over $18 billion to charity. Ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, Blue Origin and owner of Washington Post, has committed to joining the Bill Gates and Warren Buffett Giving Pledge. The Giving Pledge was initiated in 2010 and calls mega millionaires and billionaires to give at least half of their estates to charity. CNBC

dis-rup-shun: While Jeff has not (yet?) taken the pledge, he has commended his ex-wife on her decision. The Gates foundation is making measurable progress at eliminating diseases in a number of third world and economically disadvantaged countries. Leveraging significant talent and capital for the good of humanity will hopefully become a trend among tech entrepreneurs that will influence the greater business and celebrity community to build weath with a cause.

A new Intel chip means thinner, faster computers with longer battery life

Intel has finally released a new generation of X86 semiconductors that were announced several years ago.  Ice Lake, code name for Intel’s 10th generation PC processor, provides faster computing in a smaller form factor, consuming less power. Gizmodo

dis-rup-shun: We are now experiencing the end of Moore’s Law, that for many years promised a doubling of transistors at half the cost every two years. This means major refreshments of PC computing technology will be fewer and farther between, but for now we can expect another round of even thinner, faster and more battery efficient laptops. This should help the global economies as demand for new products helps shake off the effects of trade wars.

Music streaming has changed the makeup of songs

Streaming music delivery, having essentially obsoleted physical delivery, has changed the structure of songs, making them shorter and quicker to get to the melody. Payment to artists for streaming music occurs if the listener sticks with the song for 30 seconds or more, and filling a listener’s time with more songs is more profitable. This has led to shorter songs with shorter intros. The Verge

dis-rup-shun: Technology, including streaming delivery and AI that analyzes audience preferences to determine what movies, TV shows and songs are most popular, will continue to erode diversity and make commercial entertainment content more homogeneous. This homogeneity, however, will increase demand for alternative or indy content and streaming services that deliver it.

Next smart home products: smart air purifiers for good health

Those with allergies, or who live in polluted areas, understand the importance of eliminating particles from air. A Wi-Fi connected smart air purifier from Blueair includes an app to help one see the levels of particulates, or pollution, occurring when one opens a window, changes bed sheets, or after a cleansing rain shower. Managing indoor air quality starts with measuring it, and the Blueair app provides a visualization of the degree of impurities in the air and the device’s effectiveness in cleaning it. TechCrunch

dis-rup-shun: Following smart thermostats and smart lighting, smart air management is a highly desired benefit of smart homes, according to surveys conducted for major HVAC manufacturers. Avoiding air-borne illness is a high priority, and with 80% of Americans and 55% of rest of world living in cities that are often polluted, these gadgets will be increasingly important and cost justified.