Archive for the ‘business’ Category
Modern Warfare 2
Dec.08.2009
Call of Duty is a video game franchise. There are six titles. And Activision Blizzard has sold over 55 million units. Total revenue from the franchise? Over 3 billion dollars.
Modern Warfare 2 broke recent entertainment launch records by taking in over half a billion dollars in its first five days.
According to Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick:
“If you consider the number of hours our audiences are engaged in playing Call of Duty games, it is likely to be one of the most viewed of all entertainment experiences in modern history.”
Do As I Say Not As I Do
Dec.08.2009
Interesting story in the Toronto Star about copyright violations.
Chet Baker was a leading jazz musician in the 1950s, playing trumpet and providing vocals. Baker died in 1988, yet he is about to add a new claim to fame as the lead plaintiff in possibly the largest copyright infringement case in Canadian history. His estate, which still owns the copyright in more than 50 of his works, is part of a massive class-action lawsuit that has been underway for the past year.
The infringer has effectively already admitted owing at least $50 million and the full claim could exceed $60 billion. If the dollars don’t shock, the target of the lawsuit undoubtedly will: The defendants in the case are Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada, the four primary members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association.
The real interesting observation in this article:
After years of claiming Canadian consumers disrespect copyright, the irony of having the recording industry face a massive lawsuit will not be lost on anyone, least of all the artists still waiting to be paid. Indeed, they are also seeking punitive damages, arguing “the conduct of the defendant record companies is aggravated by their strict and unremitting approach to the enforcement of their copyright interests against consumers.”
Truth In Advertising
Nov.25.2009
Telus gets an injunction against Rogers. No longer can the company make certain claims about the performance of its network.
Of course, that doesn’t stop companies making claims about this or about this.
Oracle and Sun
Nov.12.2009
I’m sure this made Larry’s day:
The European Commission has opened an in-depth investigation under the EU Merger Regulation into the planned acquisition of US hardware and software vendor Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation, a US database and application software company. The Commission’s initial market investigation indicated that the proposed acquisition would raise serious doubts as to its compatibility with the Single Market because of competition concerns on the market for databases. The decision to open an in-depth inquiry does not prejudge the final result of the investigation. The Commission now has 90 working days, until 19 January 2010, to take a final decision on whether the concentration would significantly impede effective competition within the European Economic Area (EEA) or a substantial part of it.
Via.
The area of concern is Sun’s rather odd acquisition of MySQL, an open-source database product. The details behind the EU case can be found here.
I never understood the driver for Sun to get into the open-source database space. I also did not think that it would become a point of contention in a merger scenario.
Sun’s first-quarter results showed a decline of 25 per cent in revenue. And shares in the company are trading well below Oracle’s takeover offer which suggests that investors are worried that the takeover may be in trouble.
Larry Ellison confirmed that all of the uncertainty around the deal is costing Sun about $100 million US a month. The company has been forced to lay off thousands in a restructuring plan as a result of a mass exodus of Sun customers.
The European roadblock, significant migration of customers, mass firings and dwindling revenue make it increasingly unlikely that Oracle will ever achieve its stated investment goals with the $7.5 billion deal.
Oops.
Of course, there is always another point of view.
Telephone Problems
Oct.06.2009
A request for a meeting received today — Tuesday — at 1:00pm:
We did tried calling your number last week, but were unable to do so. So, I thought of setting up the meet through email.
I was thinking if this week or next week on Monday or Tuesday at 1 PM would be fine with you? Or anytime that suits you the best.
How I wanted to respond:
I also did tried calling your number but were unable to do so, me too. I have so many issues with using a telephone. So, I thought of sending the response through email.
I was thinking if yesterday morning or last week on Monday or Tuesday to send it. But that was passed already. So anytime that suits me best is fine.
Oh, and the meet? Anytime that spells N-E-V-E-R is more than fine with me.
And how I actually responded:
Thank you for your note. We do not have an interest in these products and there is no need to set a meeting.
What the Apple Tablet Really Means
Oct.01.2009
Dan Lyons is a journalist who writes for publications like Newsweek and online sites like The Huffington Post. He also writes a blog called The Fake Steve Jobs where he masquerades as the CEO of Apple.
He had an interesting piece in The Huffington Post which, although written in a certain fashion, offers an important business lesson about change and redefining the business for future success. Although the story is about newspapers and technology, it is not hard to see a parallel with other industries.
The driver for the article is rampant speculation about a new device that Apple may be bringing to the market — a new tablet computer. And Fake Steve offers his perspective on the traditional, staid “big guys” in the publishing business. Here is an excerpt:
There’s loads of buzz about this Tablet that we may or may not be developing at Apple. For now the product is entirely imaginary — and yet, oddly enough, it’s already received more reviews than most devices that actually exist. That’s the nature of the beast here at Apple. And I know, I should feel lucky. Most companies would kill to have the kind of hype that we do
Nevertheless, I despise you. That’s right, every last one of you. Mostly because, for all the blather about our Tablet, nobody seems to recognize what’s really significant about this device. Little hint: It’s not about technology…
It’s like this: New technology creates new ways to tell stories. That’s the exciting thing. Not the tablet itself, but what it means for news, for entertainment, for literature. Gasp. Geddit? Is the light going off yet? This is what Anton Chekhov meant when he said that the medium is the message. This is why the Tablet is so profound…
Now we’re at the point where things are going to take off. The Tablet is part of that. Frankly, there is no point in moving to digital readers if we’re just going to do what we did on paper. That’s why Kindle is such a piece of junk. All Amazon did was pave the cowpath.
That’s also why we’ve held back on our Tablet — not because the technology wasn’t ready, but because the content guys are such idiots that they still can’t create anything that makes it worth putting the Tablet into the world.
It’s stunning how few of the big guys in publishing actually understand this. We’ve invited them in for meetings, and while we’re talking we sort of give them a little quiz, in the form of a very simple question: Where do you think publishing is going?
Most of them can’t see anything other than what they’ve done in the past. To them this is all just another blip, a little shift in their business, like going from black-and-white newspapers to color, or going from broadsheet to tabloid.
But that’s not it at all. We’re talking about an entirely new way to convey information, one that incorporates dynamic elements (audio, video) with static elements (text, photos) plus the ability for the audience to become content creators, not just content consumers.
The funny thing is that the publishing guys still refer to themselves the “creative” side of the business — even though they’re probably the least creative people I’ve ever met.
The irony is, they’re the ones holding everything back, because they don’t have any vision for what the future should look like. Honestly, you should see them sitting there in meetings, their mouths hanging open. Sooo creative. Yeah.
Worse yet, they still have loads of attitude. They really think it’s unfair that the tech geeks keep reaping most of the rewards from digital media. “Content is king,” they keep saying, and I’m like, Yeah, but not *your* content. Your content is lame and stale. You’re selling a product that hasn’t changed since the 1950s.
The full article is here.
PowerPoint Culture
Sep.28.2009
Nancy Duarte has some interesting thoughts on the presentation landscape in corporations. In her words:
In every Q & A I get the same question: I’m in a culture that thinks presentations are fine being hideous and ineffectual, what should I do? Here’s a quick video I produced for you guys, with an accompanying PDF, that will hopefully help focus your strategy on high-stakes presentations (where there’s the most pay-off). The Presentation Landscape has examples of which presentations to fight for – and fight hard for – and which ones are distracting skirmishes that you shouldn’t bother with.
Here is the video. The source post and the pdf file can be found here.
Billion-Dollar Donors
Sep.16.2009
Forbes magazine recently highlighted the 14 people who have given away at least a billion dollars:
1 Bill Gates, $28 billion donated
2 George Soros, $7.2 billion
3 Gordon Moore, $6.8 billion
4 Warren Buffett, $6.7 billion
5 Eli Broad, $2 billion
6 James Stowers, $1.9 billion
7 Herbert and Marion Sandler, $1.5 billion
8 Michael Bloomberg, $1.5 billion
9 Li Ka-shing, $1.37 billion
10 Dietmar Hopp, $1.25 billion
11 Michael Dell $1.2 billion
12 Klaus Tschira, $1.1 billion
13 Stephen Schmidheiny $1 billion
14 Ted Turner, $1 billion
Some names not on the list? Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. Larry Ellison of Oracle. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft. You can check out the current list of multi-billionaires here. I guess many of them keep most of the billions they make.
I Had No Clue
Aug.21.2009
From the New York Times:
John McAfee, an entrepreneur who founded the antivirus software company that bears his name, is now worth about $4 million, from a peak of more than $100 million. Mr. McAfee will soon auction off his last big property because he needs cash to pay his bills after having been caught off guard by the simultaneous crash in real estate and stocks.
“I had no clue,” he said, “that there would be this tandem collapse.”
No clue indeed. Check this out from 2007. I guess it was fun while it lasted.
I have collected pictures of some of the most stunning recording studios in the world and you can travel through the set by clicking 
