Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 04/29 - Do Millennials Want Vertical TVs?

Episode Date: April 29, 2019

There’s no reason the hotel chains can’t do what Airbnb does, why superzoom lenses might be the real innovation in smartphones right now, we’re almost done with Tech Earnings Season and why was GOT so dark last night? Sponsors: Pixelunion.com/agency GetQuip.com/ride Links: Spotify is first to 100 million paid subscribers (The Verge) Beats’ Powerbeats Pro earbuds will ship on May 10th for $250 (The Verge) Marriott Is Officially Getting Into the Homesharing Business (Skift) "Superzoom" lenses will be the biggest thing to happen to smartphone cameras in years (Android Police) How China’s ‘Unicorns’ Shook a Bicycle Town (NYTimes) California governor signs internet sales tax law (AP) AT&T says 5G will be priced like home Internet—pay more for faster speeds (ArsTechnica) Samsung thinks millennials want vertical TVs (The Verge) A Theory About Why Last Night's Game of Thrones Was Too Dark to Watch (Gizmodo)   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme ride home for Monday, April 29th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today. There's no reason the hotel chains can't do what Airbnb does,

why SuperZoom lenses might be the real improvement in smartphones right now. We're almost done with Tech earnings season, and why was Game of Thrones so dark last night? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. When Tech earnings season blows in, it packs a sharp punch, and then it's out quickly. usually. We've only got two biggies left, alphabet tonight, about the time this episode drops, and then Apple tomorrow afternoon. But for now, brief mention for Spotify, which reported Q1 revenue

of 1.5 billion euro, up 33% year on year, and a reduced net loss of 142 million euro down from a loss of 169 million euro from the same period a year ago. But that wasn't the big news. The big news was that Spotify became the first streaming music service to hit 100 million paying subscribers, quoting from The Verge. More than 100 million users worldwide now pay for Spotify premium, the company has announced. Spotify reached the milestone by growing paid subscribers by 32% year on year. Including free subscribers, Spotify now has a total of 217 million monthly active users worldwide. That includes 2 million Indian users who joined after the company launched its service there

in February. Globally, the numbers put Spotify well ahead of Apple Music, its closest competitor, who reportedly had 50 million paid users worldwide at the beginning of April. However, in the U.S., Apple's music streaming service is winning, according to the Wall Street Journal, with 28 million subscribers compared to Spotify's 26 million, end quote. And quick side note, given the Game of Phones slash podcasting Wars narrative from last week, remember I told you that Spotify had also quietly acquired the podcasting studio Parcast. That was among the places that withdrew their podcasts from Luminary last week.

Rumor was that the acquisition price for Spotify was $100 million. Well, in the quarterly financial Spotify revealed that the real price was $56 million, which is still a lot of money. P.S. on the Luminary Front, also to have requested that their podcasts not be a part of the platform, Stitcher and PRX, including Radiotopia. If you've been waiting for an alternative to AirPods, you're in luck. Apple says that the PowerBeats Pro wireless earbuds will be available for pre-ordering beginning May 3rd and will ship on May 10th. However, paraphrasing Henry Ford, that pre-order offer is good for any color so long as that color is black.

The other three colors promised for the Power Beats pros will only come later this summer, quoting from the Verge. The PowerBeats Pro resemble the company's previous wireless Powerbeats earphones, but they've been re-engineered for better comfort. Beats says they can hit up to nine hours of continuous battery life longer than AirPods, and they include Apple's H-1 chip for hands-free, hey, Siri commands at any time. The earbuds are water and sweat-resistant and feature physical controls, which are a little easier to use than tap gestures when working out, end quote. They will also set you back $249.95. The other colors you can hold out for if you're so inclined are white, green, and blue. There's long been a narrative surrounding Tesla that goes something like this. Electric vehicles are the future for sure, but there's no reason why the legacy automakers won't notice that,

won't jump on board the bandwagon in a big way, and when they do, look out, because they have plenty more resources than Tesla might. and they know how to make cars. They've been doing that successfully at scale for 100 years. Well, apparently there's a similar narrative around the home rental slash hotel space. It goes like this. The big hotels aren't dumb either. They can see the number of stays, places like Airbnb and Home Away and others are hoovering up.

So there's no reason the incumbent hotel chains can't get into this game as well. And when they do, they'll have tons of resources and plenty of experience creating, you know, hospitality experiences. To that end, Marriott has officially launched what it is calling Homes and Villas, which it is positioning as an Airbnb rival in more than 100 markets around the world. Marriott has apparently done a year-long pilot program in 200 homes in London, and the results were, quote, great. But it's not quite that you can let Marriott rent your house because Marriott is working with various property management companies to manage the offerings, quoting from our friends at Skift.

In running this new business unit, Marriott will act more like an online travel agency or distribution platform, like Airbnb or booking or home away, for the selected property management companies it has chosen to work with. The company would not disclose the commission structure it has put into place. The property management companies will pay us a platform fee, Marriott Global Chief Commercial Officer Stephanie Linnertz explained, and it's those companies that are tasked with managing the properties, themselves handling everything from pre-arrival check-in, cleaning, support, and so on, end quote. And the homes available will be in the so-called luxury category, so don't expect your spare second bedroom will qualify. The advantage to Marriott? They get to expand to locations where the brand

currently doesn't have a presence, places like St. Bart's and the Amalfi Coast. And the advantage for Marriott customers, quoting again from Skift, from day one, you can earn and redeem Marriott Bonvoy points on our homes, Lenart said. We're meeting our customers' needs and expectations. The inventory is not exclusive, but what is exclusive to us is earning and redeeming Marriott Bonvoy points, end quote. The earn rate for homes and villas is the same as what Marriott offers for its long stay hotel brands, five points for each dollar spent, and eligible members can earn bonus points based on their elite status as well as elite welcome gifts or special amenities. There's also an opportunity for guests staying in a homes and villas by Marriott product to use their Bonvoy points towards special tours and activities or experiences, including exclusive Bonvoy moments that Marriott has developed with partners, end quote.

So that's what I mean by saying the legacy players can bring a ton of resources to bear when and if they enter this market. Being able to book and use your credit card rewards and points you've accumulated maybe for years, pretty powerful. as Mark Silva tweeted, quote, Watch this closely, having many conversations with incumbents across wide spectrum of industries that are not sitting back, watching their disruption,

but leaning in and leveraging position, scale, expertise, and vast resources for the win, end quote. Alongside foldability and 5G, one interesting trend that we've seen in the smartphones announced and coming to market so far this year is something called super zoom lenses,

which you can get on phones, like Huawei's P30 Pro and Oppos Reno. These lenses allow you to take pictures with five to ten times zoom and over at Android Police. David Ruddock argues that this might be the smartphone advance to get excited about if it becomes the new standard. Quote, imagine you're at your child's birthday party. You want a reaction photo of their face when they open the big present, the one you've made them wait until the very end to finally unwrap. Shoving a phone in their face can kind of kill the magic as can a giant DSLR. A lot of kids are camera shy.

Being able to stand 10 feet away and quickly snap a proper close-up of that open-mouth surprise is something a lot of parents would kill for, but using digital zoom will get you a pretty terrible result. The same goes for their first sporting event, first day of school, or just about any moment, you're not going to be able to get three feet away from them to capture. A zoom lens is invaluable for candid photography and can preserve the kind of human moments, feelings, reactions, and interactions that a wider, more open lens simply can't. or would require infringing on that moment in a way which saps it of its authenticity. This may sound like whimsical drivel to you, but I assure you that a shot of your child stepping up for their first at-bat in a little league game with a 5x zoom factor will capture that moment with so much more feeling and focus than an ordinary smartphone camera. Any serious smartphone manufacturer in the next few years will be developing at least one phone

with these new super zoom systems, whether of the Periscope style currently employed by Huawei and Appo, and soon to be Samsung, or another solution we've not yet seen. I believe every manufacturer will discover that customers love the experience and move quickly to capitalize on it. We've already seen that the mid-zoom portrait lenses popularized by Apple have been quickly picked up by most of the industry, and I think these new high-powered zooms, which are around 120-millimeter equivalents, will soon follow for exactly the same reasons, end quote. Another food for thought piece that I didn't want to save for the weekend long reads. One of the things we've touched upon in various conversations and segments recently is the idea that maybe the Chinese startup space is going through or has already gone through a mini investment bubble that is either burst or is in the process of bursting.

Same could be said for the micromobility space. Generally, a year ago, everyone was pouring money into scooter and bike share companies and that has cooled quite a bit. Well, the New York Times has a piece up about the Chinese bike sharing players like Ofo and Mo Bike. Maybe things work quicker in China, maybe the lifecycle of everything is just faster now, but a year ago, investors were throwing money at bicycle startups in China by the billions. Several companies became unicorns for obvious reasons. The size of the Chinese market, the easy infrastructure, just leave a bike on a street corner, unlock it, and pay for it with an app.

The problem in China was everybody took the investment money. went for scale, charged peanuts for the product, and never figured out how to turn a corner towards anything approaching profitability, and the needed industry consolidation never happened. This piece focuses on Wangqing Tao, which has been China's bike manufacturing capital since the 1970s, the Detroit of China's bicycle industry, if you will. When the bike chan craze hit three years ago, it was boom time. Some individual factories were churning out as many as 10,000 bicycles a day. And then the crash, quoting from the Times. To put it in one sentence, said Zhang Yi, chief analyst at I-I Media Research, it really messed up the bike factories. Today, parts of Wang King Tao look like a ghost town.

Many factories are locked tight and the signs that once showed their names and specialties have been removed. Storefronts stand empty on the street where many of the bike factories used to run shops. A stack of bicycle wheels sits beside a storefront. nearby somebody has piled unwanted bicycle forks in a haphazard row. I am going back home for Chinese New Year, read a sign written on the metal garage door of one of the empty factories. We'll restart on the 18th of Chinese New Year, it said, referring to February 22nd. More than a month later, the person had yet to return, end quote. Let's end today with a quick sort of potpourri of quick hit headline stories tip to me from listeners on our subreddit over the weekend.

again, that's our slash right home if you want to contribute. First of all, last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can collect sales taxes from companies, even if the company involved is domiciled outside of that state's borders, but is doing business over the internet. Well, today, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the first internet sales tax law in the country to take advantage of this latest ruling. Companies like Amazon and eBay will now be required to collect taxes on behalf of retail. that have at least $500,000 in annual sales to California residents. The law should generate an additional $759 million in taxes by 2021. Next, in a recent earnings call, AT&T CEO Randall Stevenson said,

upcoming consumer 5G services that will deliver Internet to the home would likely be priced exactly the way the current wireline services are, i.e., you pay more for faster speeds, quoting from Ars Technica, Some customers are willing to pay a premium for 500 megabits per second to one gigabits per second, speed and so forth, Stevenson said. And so I expect that to be the case. We're two or three years away from seeing that play out, end quote. In general, wireline home internet services have been priced based on speed. A subscriber pays more for 100 megabits per second than 50 megabits per second, for example.

Cellular pricing is usually the same no matter what data speeds you get, but customers have to pay for each gigabyte. Meanwhile, mobile carriers have historically imposed far stricter data caps and overage fees than home internet providers. There's some overlap between pricing structures, especially as home internet providers impose data caps. But in general, customers have paid for speed in home internet and for the amount of data in mobile, end quote. So, some much needed clarity, I guess, because consumers probably wouldn't react well to paying per gigabyte if they are also expecting to get their TV service streamed. right? And finally, the Verge says that Samsung thinks that millennials will want that video streaming to TVs that are horizontal instead of vertical. Quote, the latest addition to Samsung's TV range is the Zero, a 43-inch TV that was designed with the millennial generation in mind

and therefore pivots between horizontal and vertical orientations. It's a much smarter idea than the phrase vertical TV would lead you to believe, acknowledging that most mobile content is vertical, Samsung says the Sero is designed to encourage young people to project more of their smartphone stuff onto the TV by allowing it to go vertical. During a 4.1 channel 6 watt speakers along with an integrated Navy stand and a minimalist rear design, Samsung hopes this TV will function as both a music streaming hub and a handsome piece of furniture, end quote. So in essence, a flat screen TV, you can rotate to the orientation of your choice, depending on if you're watching Game of Thrones or, just TikTok videos or whatever.

Speaking of Thrones, I watched it last night with all the lights off in the room on a decently youngish flat screen TV, not OLED or anything, but still decent. And damn it, if I couldn't see anything, it was way too dark. And apparently I was not alone in thinking this. Last link in the show notes, Alex Krantz has a theory about why. The episode last night was maybe too dark. In short, the showmakers shot it for optimal viewing conditions, for OLED screens, maybe 4K screens, etc. But most of us watched it on streams that might be downgraded because of server demands when we were actually watching, when everyone was watching all at once.

And also, not everyone has their TVs calibrated for optimal movie watching, which essentially this episode was. It was a movie? In short, maybe the showmakers got ahead of themselves. If you shared my frustration, hit the last link in the show notes for instructions on how to calibrate your screen for optimal viewing. If you want to re-watch what you probably missed. Or I've been re-watching the episode on a retina screen iPad. And it's been slightly better, but I don't know. I think they still just screwed up.

Way, way too dark, y'all. But then again, the show has always been dark and full of terrors, right? So talk to you tomorrow.