Las tablets crecieron a costa de las PC

Tablets To Grow 53.4% This Year, Says Gartner, As The Traditional PC declines 11.2% [Updated]

by Natasha Lomas (@riptari)

The tablet category is continuing to eat the PC’s lunch, albeit it’s a large lunch so the feast is taking a while. Analyst Gartner expects worldwide tablet shipments to grow 42.7% 53.4% [Gartner has issued a correction to its earlier figures] this year, with shipments reaching 184 million units. And while traditional PCs are still shipping a lot more units (303,100 forecast for this year), those shipments are continuing to decline — predicted to be down 11.2% on 2012 shipments.

That’s lower even than Gartner’s prior forecast, back in April, when it said it expected PCs to decline 7.3% this year.

Growth in the so-called ultramobile category — aka lightweight laptops and portables running a full desktop OS such as Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet – is offsetting the traditional PC decline somewhat. But even adding in that category, overall PCs plus ultramobiles are forecast to decline 8.4% this year. Gartner previously said it expects tablets to be outshipping desktop computers and ultramobiles combined by 2017.

By 2014, it now expects the gap between traditional PCs and tablet shipments to have narrowed to just over 18,000 more PCs than tablets shipped, although it expects ultramobiles to have grown to close to 40,000 units shipped by then (up from around 18,600 this year).

Growth in the ultramobile category will be down to serving users that need to “balance work and play” considerations in a single device, said Gartner — thereby allowing hybrid ultramobiles to step in and offer the functionality of a PC in the form factor of a tablet.

Turning to tablets proper, smaller and cheaper is the order of the day — with consumers’ preference for the 7-inch form factor causing continued price decline in premium tablets. The raft of cheaper priced tablet hardware — from the likes of Amazon with its Kindle Fire line and Google with its Nexus-branded slates — is clearly helping to underpin overall tablet growth, taking share away from Apple’s more expensive iPad line.

Smaller tablets are also going to put a dent in the smartphone’s holiday appeal, according to Gartner. ”Continuing on the trend we saw last year, we expect this holiday season to be all about smaller tablets as even the long-term holiday favourite — the smartphone — loses its appeal,” said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, in a statement.

More generally, while the mobile phone market is expected to continue to experience steady growth, Gartner is calling time on the “opportunity for high average selling price (ASP) smartphones”. It expects growth in the mobile segment to be powered by mid-tier smartphones in mature markets, and low-end Android smartphones in emerging markets. So again, cheap devices are winning out. The wider point there is that many developed markets are saturated — pushing smartphone growth to emerging countries where lower ASP devices are required.

Gartner’s forecast for worldwide device shipments by operating system this year and next (rounded up percentage marketshares below) shows Android continuing to build out its empire — helped by growth in cheaper tablets and smartphones. Android will be approaching a half-market share across all the device types by 2014, while Windows/Windows Phone and iOS/Mac OS manage only marginal growth:

2013

• Android 38%
• Windows 14%
• iOS/Mac OS 12%
• RIM 1 %
• Others 35%

2014

• Android 45%
• Windows 15%
• iOS/Mac OS 14%
• RIM 0.8%
• Others 26%

On the wearables front, Gartner expects the market opportunity to remain primarily about companion devices that are used in conjunction with mobile phones, rather than replacing them. Gartner predicts that less than 1% of consumers will replace their mobile phones with a combination of a wearable device and a tablet by 2017.

“In the short term, we expect consumers to look at wearables as nice to have rather than a ‘must have’, leaving smartphones to play the role of our faithful companion throughout the day,” added Milanesi. ”For wearables to be successful, they need to add to the user experience by complementing and enhancing what other devices already offer. They also need to be stylish yet practical, and most of all hit the right price.”

TechCrunch

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Candy Crash hace boom!

Las sorprendentes estadísticas del Candy Crush

La empresa desarrolladora del exitosísimo juego en línea presentó las colosales cifras que genera la aplicación.

ÉXITO. El Candy Crush Saga hace furor en la red.


Las estadísiticas del Candy Crush Saga asustan: según anunció King, la empresa que lo desarrolló, el exitosísimo juego en línea superó, a tan sólo un año de su lanzamiento, las 500 millones de descargas.¿Qué significa esto? Que lo jugaron ¡1 de cada 14 habitantes del mundo!

La cifra final de descargas, calculada por la empresa especializada Distimo, reúne las bajadas de la aplicación tanto en la tienda App Store de Apple, como Google Play y Facebook. ¿Más cifras? Estiman en 700 millones la cantidad de veces que los usuarios lo juegan por día, siendo las horas de la tarde y los domingos los momentos favoritos.

Los cálculos arrojan además que se llevan jugados más de 150 mil millones de partidas individuales, y queuno de cada 23 usuarios de Facebook es fanático del juego.

A pesar de todo, la popular aplicación no alcanza al Angry Birds, que suma nada menos que ¡2000 millones de descargas en su historia!

TN

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El cliente no siempre entiende lo que hace

La simple razón de por qué los productos fallan: Los consumidores no entienden lo que hacen



El Santo Grial para los innovadores muchas veces no es más para ganar un mercado ya existente, sino también para crear una categoría de producto completamente nuevo. Pero al hacerlo plantea una cuestión fundamental para el empresario: ¿Cómo conseguir que los clientes potenciales y los inversores a comprender qué es lo que está haciendo ?

Es más difícil de lo que parece. Los consumidores tienen sentido de productos desconocidos asignándolos a categorías de cosas que ya entienden. Así que cuando Apple sale con su iPhone 6, por ejemplo, es bastante fácil para los clientes a entender que es muy similar a las versiones anteriores. Pero los productos realmente novedosos no encajan en una categoría u otra. De hecho, su novedad radica en el hecho de que las ideas y las tecnologías que se unieron para crear el nuevo concepto existía previamente en ámbitos o categorías que se pensaba que eran totalmente distintos.
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Como resultado, las innovaciones que son totalmente nuevos en el mercado son a menudo extremadamente difícil de describir. Las cosas que son difíciles de describir son difíciles de entender. Y lo que es difícil para los consumidores y los inversores a entender normalmente se enfrentan a dos resultados : o bien se ignoran o se devalúan.
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Para dar una idea del reto para el innovador, considere un anuncio para la línea Galaxy Note de Samsung. Con este producto, la empresa de Corea del Sur trató de crear un nuevo tipo de producto que combina las características de un teléfono con las características de una tableta. El anuncio muestra una imagen del dispositivo con la línea de copia "Phone? ¿Tablet? Lo mejor de los dos" La próxima gran cosa ya está aquí."
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El anuncio aborda el reto de frente, es decir, los consumidores podrían tener dificultades en describir qué es exactamente un Galaxy Note es. Por un lado, tiene la capacidad de hacer llamadas telefónicas a través de redes celulares, por lo que es en cierto sentido un teléfono. Pero es un gran teléfono poderoso. Por otra parte, tiene muchas de las características que la gente encuentra atractivo en tabletas (en sí misma una categoría que es muy nuevo en el mundo ). Pero es más pequeño que otros comprimidos. Entonces, ¿qué se supone que debes llamar ? ¿Y qué es exactamente lo que se supone que compararlo?
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Este desafío se repite en una revisión de la Samsung Galaxy Note 2 : "Por lo general, este es el lugar donde hablábamos de las alternativas que se ofrecen ", escribió el crítico."Pero admitimos, estamos perplejos aquí. ¿Por qué? Pues bien, en nuestra mente, no hay rival clara. El Samsung Galaxy Note creado su propia categoría, en la que no había phablets reales acerca de antes. "
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Lo que el crítico terminó haciendo fue la evaluación de la característica de producto por función, en lugar de proporcionar una evaluación general como"mucho mejor que el iPhone ", o "inferior a un iPad."Pero si siempre tiene que explicar su característica de producto por rasgo, usted tiene un problema. Usted es más propenso a confundir a la gente, o perder su atención, y corre el riesgo de que las verdaderas innovaciones incorporadas en el nuevo producto se pueden perder. Necesitas un atajo.
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Un ejemplo más vivo, y tal vez con moraleja, de estos riesgos es el caso del Segway, que ha existido durante 10 años, pero en realidad nunca ha estado a la altura de las promesas que se hicieron cuando inventor Dean Kamen primero lanzó.
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Gran parte de la razón de esto es que ha sido difícil para los consumidores a entender lo que es exactamente un Segway es. Este desafío es inmediatamente evidente en la página web de la compañía en el que describen su dispositivo como"un líder en, transporte ecológico personal", y"como líder en el vehículo eléctrico pequeño emergentes (SEV ) el espacio."Esto parece un poco como el que dice ser un líder en una categoría no tiene seguidores.
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Una táctica innovadores y comerciantes utilizan a menudo para ayudar a los posibles consumidores a entender el valor de su nueva innovación es la analogía. En otras palabras, tratan de explicar el nuevo producto, ayudando a los clientes asignar a un producto o conjunto de productos que ya entienden claramente existente. En el caso de Segway, Kamen trató de transmitir la promesa del producto a través de la analogía al afirmar en 2001 que iba a hacer por habitantes de la ciudad lo que"Henry Ford hizo en el siglo pasado para la América rural."En otra ocasión, dijo que creía que el vehículo "haría para caminar lo que hizo la calculadora de papel y lápiz. "
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Pero estas analogías cayó plana. Sí, está claro que creía que el producto haría caminar una distancia obsoleto. Pero, ¿qué es el dispositivo ? Al final, los consumidores simplemente no podían comprender las características que hicieron de esta la innovación radical que era. Dicho más simplemente : que no"obtienen"la misma.
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Los investigadores han estado estudiando durante años cómo las personas dan sentido a los nuevos objetos, productos y servicios que se encuentran. Las investigaciones realizadas por varios profesores aquí en Stanford sugiere que las categorías sirven como marco de referencia clave para los consumidores, ya que evalúan un nuevo producto. Hace Hayagreeva Rao varios años explorando el fenómeno desde la óptica de la alta cocina francesa. Él y co-investigadores mide el grado en que las decisiones de los chefs que pedir prestado a cocinar enfoques alternativos afectado sus calificaciones Michelin. Ellos descubrieron que los chefs que partieron desde el enfoque tradicional fueron sancionados inicialmente para hacerlo. Sin embargo, a medida que más chefs cruzaron, el efecto disminuye.
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El estudio, dijo Rao en el tiempo, sugirió que"el pájaro temprano puede conseguir el gusano, pero también puede ser matado."En otras palabras, cuando los límites categóricos están muy bien definidos, como lo fueron en este caso, "la gente no puede entiende lo que está haciendo cuando se cruza".
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Trabajar por la Universidad de Stanford Glenn Carroll, y otros, se ve en el fenómeno desde un enfoque ligeramente diferente. Se miraron un determinado tipo de sistema de almacenamiento de datos llamados arrays de disco para hacer frente a una pregunta aparentemente sencilla: ¿Por qué es que esta categoría de producto nunca se arraigó como una entidad reconocible ? Su respuesta : los mercados nacientes son más propensos a unirse en categorías ampliamente entendidos cuando los productores se han enfocado fuertemente identidades."Si muchas empresas en el mercado derivan sus identidades primarias de otras actividades ", escribieron en un papel,"y hay pocas empresas que derivan su identidad principal de los arrays de disco, entonces la matriz de la identidad del productor del disco es probable que no se percibe fácilmente por personas ajenas. "
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Estos resultados tienen implicaciones importantes para los innovadores que quieren lanzar un nuevo producto en el mercado. Para una empresa ya existente, significa comprender que si el nuevo producto es demasiado lejos de su identidad, digamos, una empresa de informática que pone en marcha una línea de helicópteros, o un restaurante con estrellas Michelin que se abre una boutique de alta costura en el lado -it valdría la pena considerar la concesión de licencias de nuevos productos, la venta, o girar apagado para evitar confusión en el mercado. En un inicio, significa el reconocimiento de que su ventaja potencial puede estar en el hecho de que tienen una identidad más maleable de lo que sus competidores.
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Para entender por qué esto es así, considere la empresa ZipCar. Avis Budget Group ahora es dueño de la empresa, pero imagino que si el gigante de alquiler había tratado de inventar el concepto desde el principio. Probablemente habría sido un camino cuesta arriba, porque el modelo mental existente entre los consumidores de"Avis"es atado en todo tipo de asociaciones, incluyendo mostradores de alquiler de coches, las formas de responsabilidad, pegajosidad en los precios de la gasolina, y las líneas en el aeropuerto. Así, al explicar a los clientes que esta nueva empresa es esencialmente una agencia de alquiler de coches, pero que funciona de manera muy diferente a lo que piensan cuando oyen las palabras"empresa de alquiler de coches,"habría sido extremadamente difícil. ZipCar, en cambio, no tenía equipaje en la categoría. Se estableció en sus propios términos.
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Si bien esta libertad para definirse a sí mismos crea ventajas potenciales para startups, también conlleva riesgos. Encontrar la analogía que ayudará a la gente a entender la innovación es difícil, y la tentación es la de ofrecer a los espectadores múltiples posibilidades con la esperanza de que uno va a trabajar. Considere el uso compartido de automóviles startups GetAround y RelayRides sede en San Francisco. Dado que la noción de car-sharing es desconocido, ambos tratan de ayudar a los consumidores a entender invocando conceptos bien entendidos, como el negocio de alquiler de vehículos, las redes sociales ("comunidades de car-sharing"), y la sostenibilidad del medio ambiente (" imaginar un mundo con menos autos, sin atascos de tráfico y menos contaminación. ") al proporcionar múltiples analogías para los clientes potenciales para adherirse a, corren el riesgo de crear confusión y alienación.
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La clave, entonces, para una empresa de productos novedosos de construcción es resistir la tentación de ser multi -vocal, es decir, para decir que somos"parte de esto, parte de que. "
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Productos verdaderamente innovadores a menudo son los que traen las ideas a través de límites categóricos. Pero al hacerlo crea confusión potencial, y las personas devaluar lo que les confunde. La solución, por difícil que parezca, es la adopción de una identidad nítida en su lugar. Después de todo, apostar un reclamo en su identidad es un elemento clave de la"apuesta"empresarial : Al introducir un nuevo producto en el mercado, tomar una decisión acerca de quién eres.

Quartz

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Emprendedorismo interdisciplinario con mucho amor

A Love Story That Spawned A Hardware Revolution In The Kitchen

Posted 1 hour ago by Kim-Mai Cutler

Neither of them had any entrepreneurial history before they met. Abe Fetterman was a plasma physics Ph.D at Princeton and Lisa Qiu had worked in hospitality at Jean-Georges and Mario Batali before entering the magazine world.

But while watching Top Chef episodes during their first week of dating, they clicked.

Lisa, who was working around some of the most elite chefs in the world, saw an immersion circulator on a Top Chef episode. These devices are used to cook with the “sous vide” method, where food is vacuum sealed and slow-cooked in a water bath to a precise and even temperature. High-end chefs have raved that “sous vide” helps them create perfectly cooked food, like steaks where the core is evenly rare without having burnt exteriors.

She confessed that she would’ve loved to have one.

But at the time, sous vide machines cost well over $1,000, which was far out of reach for an admittedly money-poor grad student and associate magazine editor in Manhattan.

So Abe gallantly offered to make one with off-the-shelf parts for about $50 or so.

It was the beginning of a partnership that would spawn a company, a family and an adventure through the factories of Shenzhen, DIY workshops in the Lower East Side and then Silicon Valley. Ultimately, the now married couple wants to start a home-cooking revolution where once avant-garde technique of sous vide becomes cheap and easy for everyone.

They just released the Nomiku, which is the product of well over a year’s work and has a pre-order price of $299.95. It’s a home sous vide machine that you can plop into a bucket of water, and then turn a knob to an exact temperature. It then circulates water around whatever it is that you’re working — be it eggs or salmon in a bag.

“Nomiku is all about modernizing your whole kitchen,” Lisa said. “We see the kitchen as a home manufacturing center. It should be both clean and beautiful.”

She went on, “When we started, the cheapest immersion circulator was $1,000. We completely disrupted the whole market and we’re making a whole, completely new one.”

Not long after Abe made a DIY sous vide machine, they started running workshops in Lower Manhattan for other hobbyists and chefs that wanted to hack their kitchen appliances.

Eventually, they came up with an idea to create an affordable sous vide machine — something that would be way easier for regular people than the kitchen appliance hacks they had been teaching. To put their project in motion, they joined a cross-border hardware accelerator that links San Francisco and Shenzhen called HAXLR8R.

While getting totally burned out designing the product and negotiating with suppliers, they took a vacation to Thailand where they re-connected with a former Momofuku line chef named Wipop Bam Suppipat, who had taken some of their Manhattan DIY workshops.

Luckily enough, he turned out to be a RISD grad with a degree in industrial design. They spent days together talking non-stop about the product until the point where it became a no-brainer for Suppipat to join as the third co-founder.

Last July, they ran a Kickstarter campaign that raised the most out of any other proposal in the food category.

With the $586,000 they raised, came the tough part, involving working through all of the design and logistical issues necessary to create a functioning prototype.

“We got really really burned out,” Lisa said. “It was 24-7 with barely any sleep, working on a prototype every day.”

Even so, the trio had complementary skills. Lisa had the Mandarin necessary to negotiate with manufacturers and navigate the often frustrating local business culture, while Abe and Suppipat had the technical and design chops to create a prototype that was easy to use and cheaper to make.

“Abe is a genius. He did a lot of the magic,” Lisa said. “I don’t think you could’ve gone to Shenzhen and done this. But we had a good melange of mentors from HAXLR8R, I speak Mandarin and we used a lot of new technologies like 3D printers.”

They were able to build the initial Nomiku with about $20,000. Still, there were setbacks. They found that steam was leaking into the Nomiku’s motor system, creating the risk that the device would rust. They also had to secure a UL certification from a third-party lab to make sure the Nomiku was safe to retail in the U.S.

After a few months of production setbacks (which are pretty common for Kickstarter projects), they launched the Nomiku last month. They also raised a small seed round from angels including i/o Ventures’ partners Paul and Dan Bragiel, former Yelp and Airbnb community manager Ligaya Tichy and former EA Popcap executive producer and Tilting Point co-founder Giordano Contestabile.

I ran a test of it side-by-side along some other DIY immersion circulators and a competing Anova product. (This is because when you host a sous vide dinner in San Francisco, everyone offers to bring their own machine, even ones they built themselves).

We made vegetables like eggplant with harissa, Romanesco cauliflower with lemon and anchovies and asparagus with the Nomiku, while doing meats and eggs in the other devices.

Overall, I’m very new to sous vide cooking, but it did definitely improve the taste of eggs, shrimp and thicker cuts of salmon.

Nomiku faces competition from much bigger, well-funded competitors like Anova, a lab equipment company that migrated into making water bath products for cooks and PolyScience, another similar competitor.

A more experienced sous vide cook and Anova-using friend had the following feedback: he felt that Nomiku’s user experience was more intuitive with a rotating dial instead of a touchscreen. But he said that it lacked features like a timer and was slightly slower in getting the water bath to the appropriate temperature than the Anova.

But the Fettermans and Suppipat don’t seem that fazed by their better-capitalized competitors.

“I don’t know what their strategy is and I’m not worried about them,” she said. “What we worry about is whether our customers are happy. Did they have a great experience? With every great idea you will have competitors. The only thing you can do is focus.”

TechCrunch

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Aceleradores e incubadoras para emprendimientos ONG

Aceleradores, incubadoras de nuevas herramientas para nuevas empresas sin fines de lucro



Después que la fase de emprendimiento ha terminado, sin fines de lucro deben seguir para buscar la ayuda de profesionales en temas complejos sin fines de lucro.
Incubadoras y aceleradoras están finalmente haciendo su camino hacia el sector sin fines de lucro, ayudando a las organizaciones jóvenes a despegar. Los programas proporcionan espacio de oficina gratuito y acceso a los recursos profesionales para la tecnología y las cuestiones legales.

Dos aceleradores no lucrativas recientes son BeeSpace y la Fundación Blue Ridge. BRF también ofrece servicios para la misión impulsada por fines de lucro, pero BeeSpace se centrará exclusivamente en el sector sin fines de lucro. Creador de BeeSpace, fotógrafo y asesor Marissa Slacker, limitará también la residencia en el programa en dos años. Esto hará espacio para nuevos emprendimientos y promover los más exitosos para crecer y seguir adelante.

Sin fines de lucro necesitan algo más que un espacio libre
Cualquier emprendimiento tiene sus riesgos, pero para las organizaciones no lucrativas, saltando demasiado rápido puede significar un desastre. De acuerdo a Space Grant, sin fines de lucro tienen que determinar si los servicios que pretenden ofrecer ya están previstas por otra organización o si se necesitan en su comunidad. Empresarios sin fines de lucro también tienen que confirmar muy pronto si su idea realmente califica como una organización 501 (c) (3).

Espacio de oficina gratuito y acceso a la ayuda profesional es un gran beneficio para las organizaciones no lucrativas, siempre se dan cuenta de que tendrán que seguir adelante. Si la idea resulta ser un éxito, las organizaciones deben prepararse para el aumento de las necesidades relacionadas con la dotación de personal, recursos humanos, recaudación de fondos y espacio para operar. Las organizaciones de jóvenes deben controlar su crecimiento, de manera que su misión no sufre. Una vez bajo control, los líderes sin fines de lucro deben asegurar su modelo es sostenible.

Los emprendedores sin fines de lucro deben buscar consultora externa después de la fase de emprendimiento.
A medida que la organización deja la etapa inicial y adquiere más empleados debe tener en cuenta el creciente costo de los seguros de desempleo, la protección contra el fraude y la gestión financiera.

Incluso si una organización no lucrativa mantiene sus niveles de dotación de personal a medida que continúa creciendo, los costos asociados con las piscinas de impuestos estatales IU seguirá aumentando para cada nuevo empleado. Incluso si no hay reclamaciones de beneficios se pagan, las organizaciones todavía tendrán un costo. Sin fines de lucro deben considerar la exclusión voluntaria de las piscinas de impuestos de UI estatales y unirse a un programa de ahorro de seguro de desempleo. Los programas que ofrecen las organizaciones miembro de una sociedad de responsabilidad limitada ofrecen la oportunidad de reducir los costos de la interfaz de usuario como un empleador auto- reintegrarán con menos riesgo que los fideicomisos de grupo.

A medida que una organización crece, también se enfrenta a la conclusión de que muchas de las reglas y reglamentos relativos a las organizaciones no lucrativas son complejos. A partir de las leyes de interfaz de usuario para la gestión de recursos humanos y los consultores financieros, los líderes deberían considerar buscar la ayuda de profesionales para mantener su organización en crecimiento en el camino correcto.

El contenido presentado por el Primer grupo sin fines de lucro, un proveedor líder de servicios de consultoría financiera para 501 (c) (3) sin fines de lucro empleadores.

First Non Profit Group

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El (bajo) precio de la acción de Twitter y su explicación

If You Think Twitter's IPO Price Is Silly, You Don't Get It

HENRY BLODGET

Twitter's IPO is ready to price, and, predictably, many pundits are going on about how stupid investors are to buy the stock.

Twitter is losing money, these pundits observe.

It's a social network, like the disastrous Facebook.

Twitter hasn't proven anything yet.

Twitter investors are so deluded and ridiculous, these pundits roar, that they've already agreed to buy Twitter stock at $25 a share! (A $15 billion valuation.)

Whatever you do, don't get taken in by this. Anyone who bashes Twitter because it's "losing money" or "is like Facebook" or hasn't "proven anything" is the most dangerous form of market pundit: Articulate enough to sound knowledgeable to someone who knows absolutely nothing, but so unsophisticated that he or she can't be bothered to ask why some of the smartest investors in the world are so excited about Twitter.

In case you're curious about the latter — why so many smart investors are so willing to pay up for Twitter, and why the stock is likely to trade much higher than the IPO price (probably into the mid $30s or $40s) — here are some of the key points.

(And to be super-clear: This isn't investment advice, and I couldn't care less if you buy the stock. I in fact think you shouldn't buy the stock, because I think stock-picking is generally a stupid strategy, especially for individuals. I'm just trying to help you understand why OTHER smart investors are buying the stock).

Why so many smart investors are so excited about Twitter

First, there are some very important differences between the Twitter IPO and the Facebook IPO (which, by the way, has worked out just fine for those who actually invested in it instead of bought it with the aim of getting a quick score):

• Twitter is going public at a much earlier stage and therefore could have many years of hyper-growth ahead.
• Twitter is still losing money and is therefore poised for radical profit-margin expansion as its business scales. Twitter's heavy current investment means that if it's model works (which it should), it should have many years of very rapid margin expansion and earnings growth.
• Twitter is selling a relatively small number of shares, which means that investors who want them will have to fight for them.

Contrast this to Facebook when it went public:

• Facebook was so mature that its revenue growth was already decelerating rapidly.
• Facebook's future growth was dependent on an unproven new product (mobile) that it hadn't even rolled out yet.
• Facebook already had a startling 50% operating profit margin, which left very little future upside.
• Facebook sold a huge amount of stock at the IPO and had several massive "lock-up" releases over the following year that made almost all of its stock available for sale.

In other words, the success and power of Facebook's business was already crystal clear to almost all investors, Facebook's business trends were getting worse, and there was no shortage of stock available. And there were also other problems that plagued Facebook's IPO, all of which are unique to Facebook.

These things matter to the prices investors are willing to pay. And, for Facebook and Twitter, they could not be more different.

Second, most skeptical pundits appear to be drastically underestimating how profitable Twitter may eventually be.

The mistake many investors made with LinkedIn, another social network that went public a couple of years ago and has had a spectacular stock run ever since, is that they failed to see how profitable the company could become. They looked at LinkedIn's financials at the IPO and took the "losses" to mean that LinkedIn would never make money. In fact, LinkedIn was investing heavily at the time of the IPO, and these investments have helped it grow its revenue to a level that most IPO observers would have considered unthinkable. And LinkedIn's growth and cost structure has now made it highly profitable.

One thing that all of these social networks have in common, in other words, is their cost structure.

Unlike traditional media companies, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, and other social media and tech powered media companies don't have any content costs.

These companies provide a "platform" to hundreds of millions of users, and the users then create the content for free.

That is a massive advantage from a financial perspective. And it's a factor that anyone who thinks Twitter's current losses mean it can never make money has not spent enough time considering.

How profitable could Twitter be?

The company says its ultimate goal is to have a 30% EBITDA margin (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization).

That's a healthy EBITDA margin. 

But Twitter is being absurdly conservative here.

With zero content costs, Twitter should ultimately be able to achieve an EBITDA margin of at least 50%.

If that strikes you as silly, take a look at Facebook. The company has already achieved an operating margin of 50%. Why wouldn't Twitter be able to do that?

In short, if you're thinking about Twitter's value by extrapolating the current losses, you're not understanding what the smart institutional investors that are buying Twitter are seeing. These institutional investors, in all likelihood, are seeing a possible future profit margin of 50%+.

But what about the risks?

Like any investment, and especially an emerging tech/media/communications investment, Twitter has many risks.

The three big Twitter risks, from my perspective, are these:

• Twitter's user base in its most important market, the U.S., is surprisingly small. If Twitter does not find a way to make its service "go mainstream," its long-term revenue growth potential in the U.S. will be constrained. So, right now, it would be a mistake to assume that someday "everyone" will use Twitter. Most people, in fact, just don't seem all that interested in it.
• Twitter's user base is growing much more slowly than its revenue, and most of the growth is coming less-monetizable international countries and emerging markets.  Twitter grew its user base first and is now following up with revenue. The company has enough users — 230 million last quarter — that it will likely be able to grow its revenue at a very rapid rate for another couple of years. After that, though, the future revenue growth potential will depend on the company's ability to make its service go mainstream.
• Advertisers are excited about Twitter, but even Twitter ad success stories reach tiny audiences and it's not yet clear that the ads are all that valuable. Highly successful Twitter ad campaigns cite tens of thousands of users "engaging" with Tweets and Twitter ad products. Other Twitter users also see these ads, but the scale of these campaigns is laughably small when compared with a medium like TV, Google, or Facebook. (A single hot TV show like "Breaking Bad," for example, reaches 7-10 million people.) Advertisers may experiment with Twitter, therefore, but it's not clear how big a share of their budgets Twitter will eventually get.

These questions and issues will likely make the difference between Twitter being a promising IPO and a long-term mega winner. And over the next couple of years, we'll probably get more insight into all of them.

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See how small Twitter's user base is compared to Facebook? It's really still a niche service.

But these are long-term questions. All companies have long-term questions. And you can't buy any stock without taking very significant risk. So pointing out that there are still unanswered questions about Twitter is, again, stating the obvious.

So what is Twitter worth?

Most people agree that the theoretical value of any stock is the "present value of future cash flows." The problem with this theoretical value, however, is that no one knows 1) what a company's future cash flows will be, or 2) what discount rate should be used to calculate their present value.  

The upshot of this is that no one knows what stocks are worth.

And estimating the value of any stock requires an investor to make several very subjective assumptions. 

(If these two observations aren't completely obvious to you, please turn off the TV and back away from the "buy" button.  Every sophisticated investor knows these things, and if you are trying to outwit sophisticated investors without knowing them, you are the kind of market participant that every sophisticated investor dreams of playing against — a major-league sucker.)

Instead of trying to calculate exactly what Twitter is worth (again, no one knows), it's probably more helpful to estimate what the collective wisdom of millions of investors might estimate that it is worth. (Say what you will about bubbles, the academics will tell you — rightly — that the collective guess of many smart people is generally more accurate than the guess of any particular one.)

So what might the market conclude that Twitter is worth?

Well, let's look at the value the market is placing on Twitter's two closest comparables: Facebook and LinkedIn.

Facebook and LinkedIn are both trading at observable multiples of 2014 and 2015 revenue and earnings estimates. Twitter is at an earlier stage than both Facebook and LinkedIn, so its earnings multiples are going to be much less relevant than the earnings multiples for Facebook and LinkedIn. So we'll look at revenue multiples. (Again, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn appear to have a very similar cost structure. So they should ultimately be able to achieve similar profitability. So, all else being equal, they should trade at similar revenue multiples.)

What are, say, the 2o15 revenue multiples for Facebook and LinkedIn?

The market's estimate of revenue for Facebook in 2015 is about $13 billion. With a market value of $120 billion, Facebook is trading at 9X 2015 estimated revenue.

The market's estimate of revenue for LinkedIn in 2015 is about $2.5 billion. With a market value of $27 billion, LinkedIn is trading at 11X 2015 estimated revenue.

In other words, Facebook and LinkedIn are trading at about 10X 2015 estimated revenue.

So what about Twitter?

At the high end of its IPO price range, $25, Twitter will be valued at about $15 billion. The collective estimate for Twitter's 2015 revenue is currently about $2 billion. So the high end of Twitter's IPO range is about 7.5X Twitter's estimated revenue for 2015.

My guess is that most investors will quickly conclude that there's no reason Twitter should have a lower revenue multiple than Facebook or LinkedIn. Yes, Twitter might be riskier and have more to prove, but it's also younger and growing faster. Put those things together, and a 10X multiple seems reasonable.

So what price would Twitter be if it traded at 10X 2015 estimated revenue?

About $35 a share.

Several analysts, including the excellent Robert Peck of SunTrust, think that Twitter could trade to $50 by the end of next year. Peck's logic is reasonable, so many investors will probably agree with it. If enough investors agree with Peck, Twitter could trade even higher than $35 a share on its opening day — maybe even into the $40s.

So don't be shocked if you see Twitter trade that high after the IPO. And don't immediately conclude that everyone buying Twitter at that level is obviously a moron. These investors may turn out to be wrong and end up losing money (all investors may end up losing money). But, unlike those who are dismissing Twitter's IPO as "ridiculous" because the company is "losing money," these investors have reasonable logic underlying their purchases.

Disclosure: I think trading individual stocks is a stupid strategy for individual investors, largely because of how smart and informed most big institutional investors are (You are competing against them, and you are at as big a disadvantage as your local Little League team would be if it played the New York Yankees). I do, very occasionally, for fun, take a plunge, as I did with Apple earlier this year. But the vast majority of my portfolio is in index funds, and I won't be "playing" the Twitter IPO.

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¿Que son los Bitcoins?

Programmer Robert McNally Put Together An Awesome Presentation On What Bitcoin Really Is

ROB WILE

Is Bitcoin the new gold?

Some former gold bugs certainly think so.

And its value has skyrocketedin recent months.

But many readers at this point are probably wondering ... what exactly is Bitcoin?

Robert McNally, an iOS developer at parking payment startup QuickPay, gave the following presentation to last year's Hackers' Conference in Santa Cruz, answering exactly that question. 

With his kind permission, we have republished it here. 

Let's begin ...

Robert McNally

And start with basics.

Robert McNally

In 2013, Bitcoin *is* money — at least for some — and that population grows each day.

Robert McNally

In this community, it has developed the same properties as regular cash.

Robert McNally

Though some prefer to think of it as more akin to gold, due to its durability and limited supply.

Robert McNally

But technically, it is a cryptocurrency.

Robert McNally

That means there are no records or files on the transactees.

Robert McNally

This is Bitcoin's principal benefit for many currency hawks or central bank doubters.

Robert McNally

There have been previous attempts at cryptocurrencies, but Bitcoin is unique.

Robert McNally

In theory, no one controls it. And you can also take it anywhere, since it's just code.

Robert McNally

Here's how Bitcoins are made ...

Robert McNally

Computers "mine" for it by cracking a predetermined encrypted program. This is a quite difficult task, which is what gives Bitcoin its inherent value.

Robert McNally

As Boromir would say ...

Robert McNally

Does this look familiar? Plotted over millennia, it represents the arc of known gold stocks. Plotted over decades, it's also, in theory, true for Bitcoin.

Robert McNally

Here's what "miners" look like in real life.

Robert McNally

One "block" of Bitcoins is created about every 10 minutes these days. We'll see how much one block is in a moment.

Robert McNally

Again, mining for Bitcoins requires a heck of a lot of dedicated computer memory.

Robert McNally

Do Bitcoins look like anything?

Robert McNally

As previously stated, they're basically just code.

Robert McNally

So how much is a "block"? It's been changing every day. This chart is now very outdated — Bitcoins traded as high as $94 last week.

Robert McNally

Source: Mt. Gox

So who's actually accepting Bitcoins? When they first came on the scene, pretty much only programmers or gamers were.

Robert McNally

But as its popularity — and value — grows ...

Robert McNally

So does the range of things you can buy with it.

Robert McNally

And now, chances are your card shark buddy would allow you to pay off your debt in it.

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