Wednesday 10 July 2013

After Snowden. A secrecy App, spy-proof, now being funded. Great Business thinking.








NSA Whstleblower Edward Snowden says he doesn't want to live anywhere, where his life is recorded.

The spying issue is of course about privacy (and far more) but re-enforces the need for security in transactions online - whether by email, text, phone, social media.

Not just as ordinary citizens but clearly, as businesses. A breach of business security could of course, cost millions nevermind the Government knowing what you're up to.

Consequently, a very smart move by Peter Sunde, a founder of 'Pirate Bay' to start thinking of a "bullet proof" App which would allow total secrecy in conversations. Called heml.is (he's Swedish) it's a messaging platform that no one can spy on (https://heml.is/)

It's being crowd funded at the moment looking to get 100k usd for development. And frankly, it's inspired.

There's a huge market for secrecy now following the Snowden revelations and no more so then for business, who will pay a premium for it.

Every cloud and all that.
Somebody is thinking all the time.

Monday 8 July 2013

Samsung has it problems. It has sold too many mobile phones.




You would think that of all the smartphone makers, Samsung is the one with the least problems on its mind. And it's not.

Since March, about 20 billion usd has been wiped off its value and recent warnings that profits will be lower than expected are causing market issues. That warning is, I kid you not, 8.3 billion usd profit in the second quarter and up a staggering +47% on last year. But it's not enough. Shares have declined circa -18% in the last month.

It has a 33% market dominant mobile phone share and smartphones account for about 74% of profit.

The main issue here is market saturation. Mobile phone sales are slowing - well, doesn't everyone have one - and more and more they need bigger advertising/marketing pushes which cost more and more money. So the investor confidence and outlook in the mobile phone sector is declining. Blackberry's problems typify this and HTC profits declined over -80% year on year.

Samsung are now reliant on mobile phones with their household entertainment products under more threat through reductions in consumer spending (recession) and major price competition.

Samsung have been and continue to be a hugely successful, massively profitable company. Their new Galaxy phone recently sold 10m units within a month of launch and yet, their faced with a serious decline.

Purely and simply because they're now in a market which has reached saturation and they can't show that they're able to move it along. Very reminiscent of Microsoft - a great company once that dominated the wrong space.

Interesting. Inspiration and Innovation required. Remember Nokia.