Category Archives: Business|Companies

Disney Gambles

In 2018, the US Supreme Court invalidated federal restrictions on wagers. Since then,  32 states and the District of Columbia have legalized wagering on sports. In 2021, sports-betting industry has grown to generate $ 4 billion in the US (Prang, 2019, May 14).

ESPN and Caesars Entertainment Corp decided to create sports-betting content including Daily Wager (Lombardo & Mullin, 2021, August 27). In addition, ESPN invested $250 million in DraftKings Inc. in 2015. DraftKings Inc. allows sports fans to play fantasy sports with real money at stake. In 2020, it went public.

ESPN, the sports-media giant and Walt Disney’s sports channel, has marketing partnerships with Caesars Entertainment Inc. and online gambling company DraftKings Inc.. By expanding these partnerships with the two major sports-betting companies, ESPN aims to get sports-betting license for around 3 billion in next 6-7 years (Lombardo & Mullin, 2021, August 27)

It is understandable that ESPN reaching out to keep young sports viewers, as most young adults do not spend time on TV or cables. Even its ex-CEO, Bob Iger did say that it is highly unlikely that Disney would be directly involved in gambling.  As Walt Disney kept its business image as family entertainment enterprise, direct gambling offering might not be wise. Thus, it make sense that Disney expands its partnerships with major players (O’Brien, 2021, Sept 23). 

Bob Iger had built multi-streaming channels with serious multiple intellectual property acquisitions of Marvel and Lucas characters. We will see this gamble working or not in next 10 years as this industry is still infantry and global economy is soft since Covid-19 Pandemic. However, any investor looks to diversify her or his portfolio with Disney at discount price recently, $172-175 per share. Disney has rooms to run as tourism has not recovered fully back to pre-Pandemic level while online subscription business model, streaming channels, and early stage of sports-betting content will support its revenue growth in the long run.

Power of Apple in advertisement and privacy protection

Apple (AAPL) users consist of 60% of mobile devices in the USA between 2020 March to 2021 March (Statcounter, 2021 March). According to the survey conducted in 2018, iPhone users have higher incomes and spending than Android users (Williams, 2018, October 31).

In 2021, Apple decided to ask users to allow ad-tracking activities, which was widely practiced by many companies, particularly Facebook (FB) who sells data to directly companies and/or advertisement companies. This provoked Mark Zuckerberg’s angry accusations on Apple’s intention and debates among other small companies (Mims, 2021, April 10). Now, Apple has its own advertising attribution technologies, which upsets Facebook most.

Facebook has enjoyed tracking its users and made sense of them for advertisement purpose. One of example that Facebook was able to figure out based on its algorithm was that there was correlation between those who ordered adult onesies and those who work home (Mims, 2021, April 10).

So, who is going to win this battle? Apple or Facebook? For now, Apple has an upper hand, as it sells many products directly users.

References:

Mims, C. (2015, September 8). The Hacked Data Broker? Be Very Afraid, Wall Street Journal, retrieved from: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hacked-data-broker-be-very-afraid-1441684860?mod=article_inline

Statcounter (2021, March). Mobile Operating System Market Share United States Of America, StatConter.com, retrieved from: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-states-of-america

Williams, R. (2018, October 31). Survey: iPhone owners spend more, have higher incomes than Android users, Marketing Dive.com, retrieved from: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/survey-iphone-owners-spend-more-have-higher-incomes-than-android-users/541008/

Mims, C. (2021, April 10). As Apple and Facebook Clash Over Ads, Mom-and-Pop Shops Fear They’ll Be the Victims, Wall Street Journal, retrieved from: https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-facebook-clash-over-ads-small-businesses-fear-theyll-be-impacted-11618009627

Four Tech Giants on Healthcare industry

Microsoft (MSFT) acquires Nuance Communication Inc. at $16 billion dollar, which signals that Microsoft taps into healthcare systems. Nuance Communications Inc has sold its software including speech-recognition to healthcare systems and providers who document clinical records by dictation (Winkler & Tilley, 2021, April 13).

Nuance builds language processing software including medical terminology, which allows Microsoft to include medical terms into its collaboration software package: Teams and to sell cloud-computing service.

According to Brent Thill at Jefferies (Winkler & Tilley, 2021, April 13), healthcare is a paper-based, manual, terrible industry riddled with inefficiency, which is a great opportunity to global cloud-computing service providers: Microsoft, Apple, Amazon.com Inc., and Alphabet Inc.

Amazon (AMZN) entered into healthcare sector since it bought online pharmacy PillPack for $1 billion in 2017. In March 2021, Amazon said it would offer telehealth services nationwide. On the other hand, Amazon ended its healthcare venture that started in 2018 to find a way to reduce medical costs for their 1.5 million employees for Berkshire Hathaway Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Amazon.

Google (GOOGL) has been working with two medical systems to make health records searchable for doctors. However, recently, there was skepticism to Google’s gaining access to medical records which worries privacy advocates and patient groups. In addition,  Google bought Fitbit at $2.1 billion and trace fitness activity using its wristband.

Apple (AAPL) has been selling its devices to healthcare providers and mobile apps to track exercise activity including heart rhythms, heart beats, total steps per day, walking distance, etc. In addition, it enables users to keep their sleeping pattern and records.

Reference:

Winkler, R. & Tilley, A. (2021, April 13). Microsoft’s Nuance Gambit Shows Healthcare Is Shaping Up as Next Tech Battleground, Wall Street Journal, retrieved from: https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsofts-nuance-gambit-shows-healthcare-is-next-tech-battleground-11618314585