Ray Sullivan Author: IPO

Showing posts with label IPO. Show all posts

Sunday, 21 October 2012

UK Shocks Apple to the Core

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There's been a raft of legal cases running over the last six months between Apple and Samsung. It's all about design infringement, intellectual property rights and who has the coolest phone or tablet. There's been three distinct rounds to this fight, and I suspect not all rounds were as fair as they could have been.

Apple think Samsung have stolen their ideas for a rectangular shaped smart phone with - wait for it - rounded corners. I wasn't persuaded until I heard the corners argument, but now I think Apple have a point. But that wasn't all - if you've ever used an iPhone, or looked enviously over the shoulder of someone who has one, then you may be aware that when flicking through pages of apps that when you reach the last page of app icons it bounces back a fraction. No, I hadn't really noticed it until I read about it either. Google have all the app icons half turning in unison at that point on the Nexus, so they should be OK.

Samsung think Apple have half inched some of their ideas too. For non-UK readers, 'half inched' is Cockney rhyming slang for 'pinched' (stolen). Obviously an Imperial slang term, I'm not sure what the metric equivalent is.

Anyway, round one of the legal battles started in South Korea where the judges decided both companies had liberally dipped into each others intellectual pockets to some degree. To be fair, they awarded Apple more damages than they did to Samsung, but in terms of the earnings of these companies, a drop in the ocean.

Then Apple sued Samsung in a US court in front of twelve US jurors and that court found seriously in favour of the home team and damages of $1billion were awarded. $1 billion! More than I earn in a week, for goodness sake. I don't want to incur the wrath of Apple by suggesting that they benefited unfairly on their own turf - after all, they now technically have $1 billion extra to spend in the courts - but I reckon they did.

Now the last of the three court cases has finished, in London. The action in the High Court has dramatic consequences as it is applicable across the whole Eurozone apparently. And that decision is that Apple were not wronged. It even had the temerity to suggest that Apple may not even have been the first to suggest a rectangular shape with rounded corners. It did suggest that Apple were officially cooler than Samsung, but I don't know if that ruling is binding. I think I may have to sit down for a while.

But here's the kicker for Apple. They may have the $1 billion windfall from Samsung, but the UK court has ordered Apple to run adverts on its website and in selected newspapers stating that Samsung did not copy its registered tablet designs.

Apple can still appeal, to the UK Supreme Court. Incidentally, Samsung still have the right of appeal in the US to the judgement that awarded $1 billion to Apple. I suspect the likelihood of that appeal happening just increased by a huge margin after the UK decision and will be certain as soon as Apple post those adverts!

$1 billion. Core!

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Follow me on Twitter: @RayASullivan

email me at raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com

Check out my comedic ramblings as Throngsman on www.newsbiscuit.com

Friday, 30 March 2012

Project: Evil – The First Double Cross Meeting part 1

Brian jumped in the car and closed the passenger door rapidly. If O’Feld, Daw or anyone from work saw him meeting up with a member of the British Secret Service then his life would be forfeit; if anyone who knew him at all saw him in a Skoda, it would be worse. Bund looked across at Brian.

‘Did you bring the document?’ he asked, his eyebrow raising, stretching the sticking plaster holding his hearing aid in.

‘Yes,’ replied Brian, looking around furtively before withdrawing the envelope from his jacket inside pocket. He handed it over to Bund, who turned it over several times, before pulling it out of the brown envelope to examine it carefully.

‘Is it genuine, or a forgery?’ he asked.

‘A forgery, of course,’ answered Brian. O’Feld Industries forged everything, even public information leaflets that could be picked up for free from the Post Office. Bund nodded slowly, set the time to ‘one hour’ on the document and threw it onto the dashboard under the windscreen, the blue background and white image of a stickman in a wheelchair reflecting off the glass.

‘These things are like rocking horse shit where I work, which is a problem given that we’re all working way past the age we’d traditionally have retired,’ said Bund, easing his door open. ‘Come on, let’s take a stroll now I don’t have to fear the traffic wardens,’ he said.

They braved the sea-front wind, leaning into it as sea spray crashed around them.

‘I have some concerns about your project,’ said Bund, trying to cremate a sandworm using an aerosol can of UHT double cream and a pack of Swan Vestas, but failing as the wind kept blowing the matches out.

‘What sort of concerns?’ asked Brian, wondering why he had to justify his project every step of the way to anyone who felt they had an interest, possibly missing the key purpose of a project manager but absolutely in line with the PRINCE2 principles.

‘It’s the armadillo balls,’ said Bund, ‘they don’t grow on trees.’ Brian was stunned; OK, he was punching a bit above his weight as a Project Manager on a major overseas infrastructure project, given he was a catering manager by training – but for Bund to insinuate Brian might think armadillos were vegetation!

‘No, they grow on armadillos, and I’ve got two in the lab, with plenty more due soon,’ he crowed. Bund looked impressed.

‘On order? Who from? Amazon? Armadillos R Us?’

‘We’re a bit smarter than that,’ answered Brian, sheltering in a bus stop, the sea spray crashing against the Perspex sides. ‘We’re going to get the randy little buggers to mate. Start with two, then you get four, then sixteen, you get the idea,’ he said, adding, ‘and if they’re like my pet mice they’ll be at it with their brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers all night long.’ Bund took all of this on board before speaking.

‘Well, the two creatures in your lab, don’t expect too much magic from them unless they’re gay,’ he said, adding, ‘but the success rate for breeding armadillos in captivity is very low, even when you put opposite sexes together. And I don’t know what your definition of randy is, but they don’t mate until they are in their second year of life. So, by your estimate of fifty thousand gonads, assuming two per male and a fifty/fifty relationship between males and female it’s going to take you an awfully long time to get enough to fulfil your project aims.’

‘So, why are you telling me this?’ asked Brian, despondence falling all over him.

‘Because this is my last assignment, but the catch is that they won’t let me retire until it’s complete,’ answered Bund, fiddling with a cufflink in a way that made Brian feel very uneasy. ‘By my estimate, I’ll be one hundred and fifty two before you accumulate fifty thousand gonads.’

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The characters, companies and places referred to in Project: Evil are fictitious and any resemblance to people, companies, businesses or places is entirely coincidental

If you've enjoyed this chapter of Project: Evil then check out the blog every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday as the story unfolds and, if you haven't done so already, why not follow the blog.

If you know someone who has a warped sense of humour please pass them the link to my blog so that they can enjoy 'Project: Evil'.

I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

To find out more about my ancestors visit my sister’s website http://sullivanfamilyhistory.angelfire.com/

Visit my books on Amazon (for Kindle owners) and Smashwords (for access to all other formats and access to Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Sony, WH Smith, Kobo and many other good ebookstores.

Digital Life Form is available on Amazon.com in paperback for $8 (or for £5 plus P&P in the UK for UK readers - contact me on raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com for details)

For quick access to the various Kindle, Kobo, WH Smith and Smashword links please use the table below to view my books

To View My books In....

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Don't Forget, Facebook

I mentioned in a recent blog about why I thought the Facebook IPO was overpriced - a personal view from a guy working full time for a modest salary and flogging a few eBooks in his spare time. Although the blog was reasonably popular by my standards, it didn't result in an invite to sit at the top table at the next G8 to advise on fiscal policy. Fair enough.

But the key point of that blog was that it's literally not what you know, but who you know that counts. In a nutshell, I have a limited amount of value as an individual; we all do, and we all know how sought after that limited currency is. But add to that information the people we associate with, who we interact with, then there is a chance that what we like, some of them will like. And vice versa. Find a way of stitching this information together and you've got an intelligence web that John Le Carre couldn't have dreamed of during his stint as the Cold War novellist of choice.

That's what Google has built and Facebook is building. The inflated valuation on Facebook is not related to its clever coding, fancy interface or cool keywords - it's based on the second and third generation inferences that can be drawn from what you like and do multiplied by your friend list. Look up a Facebook contact, look at their list of friends - there will almost certainly be people there not on your list. Follow any of these new names and look up their list - even more names, people you've never heard of, will never speak to who in some tangential way are linked to yourself. On its own, that link is meaningless, but constructed in a web of millions of people and patterns will appear; lists of people worth targetting for specific products.

I suggested keeping your data lean, revealing as little as you could bear while reaping the benefits of the social media, and to be fair I was just looking at the obvious data people post that can compromise you, that could be used to access your online accounts. You may recall I suggested removing any data you didn't feel was necessary, with the aim of reducing your exposure to criminal acts against your online identity.

However removing that data isn't the whole story. If you've lodged that information with Google or Facebook and then deleted it, then the chances are, they still know it. Sure, they'll respect your wishes and suppress the information from outside of their organisation, but it's far from certain that they'll delete it. This has resulted in a number of people getting very worried about the retention of this data, which is why the European Union is considering a right to be forgotten - possibly the ultimate human right in a digital age. It's also being mooted across the Atlantic as well. If the legislators get their way then the value of Google and Facebook will be affected in a serious way - a large part of their value is based on the ability to cast this net wide and deep.

As humans we should be pleased to know that this is taking place, as we will be a little more in charge of our data than we are now, should we choose it. It's not universally popular though, and I'm not talking about Wall Street investors - if the right to be forgotten is made law it could hinder law enforcement and anti-terror efforts as well. No matter what your views are on their accessing such data, it's well understood that the people they target have provided many of the leads they need through social networks, often on the way up. That could be a serious curtailment.

I don't know if the lawmakers will succeed and I'm certain that those with vested interests will make the journey as difficult as possible. It'll be interesting to see who makes the journey the hardest - the moneymen or the spooks. One to watch, I guess. But in the meantime I'm keeping as much data private - except for the list of books I've written, every blog entry that reveals my inner rambling thoughts, my Twitter account details and, if anyone fancies buying a paperback copy of 'Digital Life Form', possibly my PayPal details. That's it, nothing else.

Or perhaps my sister's website promoting my ancestors - if you know anyone who may be related to Sullivans originating in Wales then take a look at this.

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I can be followed on Twitter - @RayASullivan or email me on raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com

Visit my books on Amazon (for Kindle owners) and Smashwords (for access to all other formats and access to Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Sony and many other good ebookstores).

For quick access to the various Kindle, Kobo, WH Smith and Smashword links please use the table below to view my books

To View My books In....

Saturday, 4 February 2012

Would You Buy Into Facebook?

It's been touted as the stock floatation of the decade, the Facebook IPO. Eight or so years ago it was Google and although I personally didn't buy any of their stock, I didn't doubt they would do well.

But is Facebook going to repeat Google's success? Will it be an even bigger Goliath in eight years time?

I think the simple answer is no, although judging by the amount of pundits singing the social media's praises, perhaps it's easier to say the answer is yes. Because the growth rate of FB has been so meteoric it's easy to assume it will continue, but apart from an inherent personal reaction against ever expanding growth, I'm not convinced FB is worth what the market seems to think right now, is unlikely to ever reach that value in real terms ever and is likely to face massive challenges to its position and model over the next few years.

Watching a news report today on the subject I noted they stated FB makes its money through advertising. I had to load my FB page up this evening to look at the advertising as I struggled to remember how much there is, and to be fair, it isn't very intrusive especially when you compare it to other web pages. So advertising is in there, and it has more reach than most media, but when you've got to load a page just to see if there is adverts my guess is that their effectiveness must be limited - not that that has ever stopped an advertiser. I can't say the adverts I saw looked that relevant, which given the amount of data FB holds on its users looks like an opportunity missed (although, as I reported a few blogs ago, I restrict most of my data, so perhaps I'm forcing FB to fish a bit).

I suspect that most of Facebook's income comes from using the data about you and me to provide companies with data that would be impossible to garner cost effectively any other way. We all know that our credit card companies know a tremendous amount about our personal spending habits, but powerful though that knowledge is, it is still on an island that is your name and address. Store card and supermarket loyalty cards gather similar types of information and if your main credit card is with the same supermarket you hold a loyalty card with, say from Tesco, then there's an added dimension to that data. Add to that the data they may have extracted at the time of application - your marital status, your occupation, your other debts such as a mortgage - and the picture is getting a bit frightening.

But it falls down over time; you can change your job, move in different social circles, get divorced and remarried, start a family, have your family fly the nest. It doesn't take a genius to see that I'm describing a number of social groups who may buy similar stuff, but have quite different needs and aspirations - a marketer's toybox. Or put another way, two individuals could have identical shopping lists but belong to quite different aspirational groups - so when it comes to targeting both persons to try and get them to buy things they don't normally buy it's difficult to know which one to pitch with what.

So that's where Facebook comes in: its users provide a load of information that can be cross referenced to other non FB data, then provide a rolling account of their wants and desires, forming associations with like minded or otherwise related individuals. Now you're getting a data web that's three dimensional and capable of being drilled a thousand and one ways.

So, why don't I think Facebook is a good buy? Two reasons. First, I think there will be a lot of people who will start to get a little edgy about the amount of data being harvested, and not just by FB - if it can be seen, it can be taken. They will object either to the data being mined full stop or they will object to it being taken without payment - our data may actually be the only valuable thing we have left! The second reason is that I expect legislation worldwide will make it increasingly difficult to gather data in this way, at least as it currently is. Consequently in a number of years the Facebook paradigm will be severly challenged, by users and Governments.

But there's a third dimension to this one - unless Facebook branches out into related and unrelated fields, in the way that Google has, then it will inevitably decline, along with its stock price. Perhaps the IPO is aimed at funding such a break into non social networking activities. But all empires fall in time and I think the Facebook empire is not only near its peak, but the rating for the IPO is placing it higher than it will ever be.

So, if you feel lucky, then bet your hard earned dollars on Facebook, but my guess is that the winners, apart from Mark Zuckenberg, will be those who buy and sell quickly. If you Friend the smart ones, you can read about their gains on their walls.

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