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Netflix users burned a lot of time watching content in 2017, though metrics seem to point that users have been watching less and less on average over time. In..

Digital Video

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Instagram has always been a social network where you follow friends and creators, but today it's evolving with a new way to follow hashtags so you see top..

Digital Media

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2017 has been the year of AI, reaching a fever pitch of VC and corporate investment. But, as with any hot technology, AI is outgrowing this phase of..

Singularity, AI & Consciousness

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A collective Internet gasp went up yesterday when, once again, the Apple Watch beat most major watch companies in terms of revenue. It’s not surprising not that the Apple Watch outsold Rolex and Omega and other luxury watch makers. What is surprising is that Rolex and Omega are still fighting this losing battle. Think about the Rolex market, for example. While I would wager that almost every Rolex owner has an Apple Watch, a fraction of the Apple Watch owners have a Rolex. For many, the Apple Watch is their only watch and, if there were no smart watches, they probably wouldn’t wear watches at all. As I bloviated last week, we wear the Apple Watch because it’s the best smartwatch of its kind and it will probably be the last watch we ever own. Apple is clearly proud of its sales statistics. While it won’t say much on the actual numbers, even on background, we can estimate that the Apple watch made $6 billion in revenue last year while Rolex made $4.5 billion total in 2015. This means that Apple raked in more on one product than Rolex made on its entire product line. Further it points to the lie of the luxury watch world. Except for a few very specific and very expensive pieces, most luxury watches priced at $2,000 or above are commodity products. Rolex doesn’t make $4.5 billion in revenue selling one or two watches. Even if the average Rolex is $8,000 that still means Rolex sold about 500,000 pieces. This means that Rolex is at once not selling many pieces compared to any popular smartwatch but is still selling more than enough to not rate as luxuriously unattainable. While luxury watch makers want us to think that their products are sought after and difficult to find – even to the point of creating false scarcity in some models – it’s clear that these companies are still in the business of selling as many watches as possible. Sure a little extra work went into the manufacture and sure people with the skills necessary to build a piece of micro machinery so robust it can survive years – even decades – without cleaning are disappearing. But the watch industry dealt itself a terrible blow by first ignoring the quartz watch back in the 1970s and now ham-handedly launching smartwatches with the same grace and poise as a panicked kiosk owner trying to sell the last of his umbrellas before the rain dries up. Ultimately it’s not hard to beat Rolex or Omega or Cartier. All you have to do is produce a better, cheaper product that millions of people will want to use. What’s truly surprising is that Rolex, Omega, and Cartier are still considered competition.

Gadgets & Gear

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I'm getting a dark techie feeling lately that I hoped I wouldn't return to: it's the sensation I had when I cracked open my new Dell Inspiron laptop in 2005..

Digital Media

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Facebook has set the pace for how social networks can grow their advertising revenues by leveraging advances and ad tech and the information that they collect about users and their interests throug…

Digital Media