The future of Gaming according to the founder/Ceo of Digital Chocolate

This is the future of Gaming according to the founder/Ceo of Digital Chocolate.

To sum up a game should be available on many screens/platform, offline, online and mobile. A good game has "3 rules": it is simple, hot and deep. Cloud computing is a key enabler with tablets a main driver for new game creation. iCloud of Apple can also facilitates the development of native apps for games. On the other hand, cloud computing for any kind of browser simplifies the life of consumers and leapfrog Apple's iCloud.

See video.



Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

New article on Seeking Alpha: the challenges of Demand Media (DMD)

My new article on The challenges of Demand Media (DMD) is avsilable on Seeking Alpha.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/302993-the-challenges-facing-demand-media

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

HOW PEOPLE USE TABLETS AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE FUTURE OF NEWS

An interesting summary of the recent Pew Research Center study on tablets consumption.

http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/tablet


Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

Facebook more profitable than Amazon?

According to Michael Arrington, Founder of TechCrunch, Facebook is going to be more profitable than Amazon this year because of its high profit margin (50%), and high revenues growth. Amazon will have around $40B in revenues while Facebook will have around $4B in 2011, but both will have around $2B in profits. Market valuations are $107B for Amazon and $75B for Facebook.

Zynga, the online game company will make its IPO in the coming weeks. It is still very dependant on the business model of Facebook. Zynga has right now a $11.7B private market valuation.

Source:
http://uncrunched.com/2011/10/24/facebook-will-probably-be-more-profitable-than-amazon-this-year/

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Inbtelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

Big spending in R&D does not necessarily equal to being very innovative

Big spending in R&D does not necessarily equal to being considered "very innovative". It appears that top 'Innovators' rank low in R&D spending. A new report by Booz & Co. says that for many companies innovation is a top priority. However, few of the biggest R&D spenders crack the top 10 in terms of being considered "innovative" by their peers. Booz identified 1,000 companies with the biggest 2010 research-and-development budgets. The point is to spend more wisely money to buy or build innovation.

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

The state of tablet adoption at work

This is the state of tablet adoption at work, a summary graph found at VentureBeat.

http://venturebeat.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/tablet_adoption_infographic.png

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

Article on Seeking Alpha: 5 stocks expected to gain from Internet trends

My new article on 5 stocks expected to gain from Internet trends has been published on Seeking Alpha.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/301081-5-companies-expected-to-gain-from-internet-trends

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

The state of media: challenges to content creation

There is a very interesting article by Lance Ulanoff of Mashable analyzing a quick recap of the digital media history. Today, even a first year old baby can use a tablet iPad and find it natural to look at pictures on an online magazine or online newspaper.

Media has faced several boom and bust over the last 4 decades. Just in 2008, 500 magazines dissappeared.

For the complete article see:

http://mashable.com/2011/10/20/media-digital-revolution/

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligernce
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

The new opportunity in venture capital

According to Mark Suster, a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners, the best new opportunity for venture capitalists is the television business.

It appears that many have failed : Google TV, Apple TV and others, while some have experienced huge growth: youTube, Vevo, Maker Studios and Movieclips.

91% of households still pay for TV and they watch on average around 5.3 hours of TV per day.

Online video costs of production are very low compared to network TV.

Suster's Startup Blog is BothSidesoftheTable. See the complete presentation at:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document-preview.aspx?doc_id=100225840

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com
Twitter: @InfocomAnalysis

Infocom convergence war: Apple vs Google vs Facebook vs Amazon

The magazine Fast Company discusses this month the actual infocom war which oppose 4 corporate titans involved in many infocom sub-sectors. CNBC made an interview with the editor-in-chef.

It appears that very recently you could describe these 4 titans in few words: Apple did consumer electronics. Google did search, Amazon a web store and Facebook a social site. Each tech titan pushing further into mobile tablets, apps, cloud data and beyond. Fast Company offers four scenarios where each titan could emergence as a big winner of this tech war.

"In some ways their competition with each other will continue to elevate them ahead of the rest of the pack, but their actions and their ambitions are driving them into each other's areas. whether that's Google launching a social network, Amazon launching an ipad competitor, these companies are definitely looking for the same larger opportunities in mobile and media and data. and that's driving them into each other's areas. You know, at the same time they are setting the agenda for wide swaths of the rest of the economy. it's other folks who are forced to respond and react to what these guys are doing... I think the question here for investors is where will the profits go? right now apple is in the driver seat in terms of how big their profits are, the cash they're generating, the growth we're seeing from them.

But to put it in retail terms, this is like a battle between the Nordstrom, Walmart and Target models. i put Apple in the Nordstrom category, Google and Facebook are more Walmart. You sort of trade convenience for a little bit more of an open ecosystem but doesn't work quite as well. and Target is more of Amazon's model. They're really selling commerce, all these other things are feeding you into buying things from Amazon. I think that's the real issue is which one of those models wins out. I think they're all at slightly different life stages too. amazon ig@ on track to be the fastest company to reach $100 billion in revenues projected by I think 2015. That's tremendously fast."

"At the same time as you mention, Apple is making so much money and i think it takes apple about nine days to generate what Facebook generates in a year in revenue. But Facebook does have 800 million customers, right? users, and they have data from those folks on what they like and how they end up using that data may be tremendously valuable in the years ahead... How do you define actually winning? is it the amount of money they make, their entrepreneurship and innovative skills or the products they put out. or is it all of that? certainly from an investing point of view making money's important."

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000051097

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

Amazon competing with publishers, not just bookstores

There was an interesting article in the NY Times about the new strategy of Amazon concerning publishing. They are more and more competing, not only with bookstores, but also with publishers. They are cutting the middleman by signing publishing contracts directly with authors. With the proliferation of tablets, ebooks are more popular than ever. Amazon can control most of the value chain: the reading device the Kindle Fire and the distribution online channel.

Amazon just started giving all authors, whether it publishes them or not, direct access to the Nielsen BookScan sales data, which records how many physical books they are selling in individual markets (cities). It represents a one-on-one communication between authors and their fans that used to happen only on book tours. Recently, Amazon made an obscure German historical novel a best seller without a single professional review.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/amazon-rewrites-the-rules-of-book-publishing.html?pagewanted=all

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

Article on RIM new development initiatives

There is an interesting article on the NY Times on Research and Motion new development intitiatives. They will present this week a conference where they have to persuade critical applications developers to create new apps for the new generation of BlackBerrys that will use a more capable operating system known as QNX (pronounced CUE-nix) and for the tablet PlayBook. One problem with the Playbook is that there are few apps available now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/technology/research-in-motion-pins-hopes-on-its-next-os.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Ftechnology%2Findex.jsonp

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

Some key elements for innovation management value creation: the case of Yahoo versus Google

In a recent interview, a former Yahoo VP argues that the key element for efficient innovation management in order to create value is to have an organization enabling small accountable and empowered team that can take risks. Salim Ismail is a successful angel investor and entrepreneur. He has operated seven early-stage companies and is a frequent speaker on internet technologies, private equity and entrepreneurship. From February 2007 to February 2008, Salim was a Vice President at Yahoo and the Head of Brickhouse, Yahoo's internal incubator where game-changing ideas were brought in, built and launched. He is now working for Singularity University.

Yahoo became a matrix company under Terry Siemel, with several layers of organizational approval. The firm is now developed under the traditional verticals administrative functions. Google on the other hand always promoted risks taking and has less organizational layers of approvals, even less under the new CEO Larry Page. Free time is giving to engineer to work on the innovation project of their choice. Google encourage risk taking. Many internal resources of Yahoo made spin-off outside the firm like Zynga. Like Xerox which created many innovations like the mouse, the operating systems, Ethernet but did not develop it, outside spin-offs of Xerox created more value than Xerox itself: Apple, 3Com, Adobe Systems; history is repeated with the case of Yahoo.

According to Ismail, in the fast moving area of high tech, it is difficult to play the game of catching-up on trends and competition. Few players won that game. Apple totally reinvented the company, but they have relied on the Blue Ocean Strategy.

For more information on the ideas of Salim Ismail, see the interview on TechCrunch.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/11/keen-on-how-yahoo-screwed-up-and-lessons-for-other-silicon-valley-giants-tctv/#ooid=locnJ1Mjq5H8b_xXxgp9bym7HAdEvXrv

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

A new model for universities: Singularity University

A new model for universities is proposed by Singularity University in Silicon Valley. It was founded by Ray Kurzeil and Peter Diamandis. Serial entrepreneur Salim Ismail is now the university’s Global Ambassador.

They offer a ten week intensive Summer program where you can learn new technologies and search for solutions to social challenges. It aims to offer "pull content" and updated knowledge versus the traditional "push content" model offered by traditional universities, since 700 years.

The point is in many sectors like technologies, the traditional learning in universities is often out of date, even before the end of the studying. With Singularity University, teachers are often entrepreneurs or experts in technologies, or social challenges.

For more information, see the interview on TechCrunch. Few places are available per year.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/10/keen-on-the-future-of-the-university-might-well-be-singularity-tctv/#ooid=lpcnJ1Mjpkg-iPDxshtswvbzMbaOvKiP

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com