TechCrunch
Windows 8 Passes 8% Market Share, But Windows 7 Grows Faster In September
Windows 8 picked up 0.61 percent market share in September to end the month at 8.02 percent, crossing the eight percent threshold for the first time according to Net Applications. In the same timeframe, Windows 7 snagged 0.80 percent market share to rest at the 46.43 percent mark.
As The Next Web’s Emil Protalinski points out, “this is the first time Windows 7 has gained more share than Windows 8 since the latter’s release.”
Microsoft is essentially selling two different operating systems to distinct market groups: Windows 8 to consumers, and Windows 7 to its enterprise clients, who often remain deep in their upgrade cycle away from Windows XP. Thus, strong performance from Windows 7 isn’t necessarily a knock against Windows 8, but it isn’t exactly a vote of confidence either.
Windows 8 continues its slow progress towards 10 percent market share. At 0.61 percent per month, Windows 8 should cross that barrier either in late December or early January, depending on how strong holiday sales of Windows PCs are during the holiday cycle.
I have a new phrase in mind: Fortress Windows 7. Companies are locking themselves into Microsoft’s beloved operating system at a pace that exceeds my prior expectations. This means that for a half decade or so, around half the PC market will remain happily ensconced in Windows 7. This is at once negative for Microsoft – it wants more people on Windows 8, downloading applications from its Windows Store – and a boon: By the time those PCs are ready for an upgrade, Microsoft will have presumably filed every rough edge from its Metro offering, and have a Windows Store sufficiently stocked to be above complaint.
And the amount of revenue Windows 7 brings to the operating system division of Microsoft is comparable with Windows 8, so the impact here is more strategic than financial.
Whatever the case, somewhere in Redmond someone is cheering that Windows 8 now has 8 percent market share to its name. It’s been a slog of a year for the operating system, with two points of light on its horizon: The coming Windows 8.1 update, and a new hardware crop for the end of the year, including two new Surface tablets. Both should come to its aid.
Still, total Windows market share is dangerously close to slipping under the 90% mark. That would be a far larger moment.
Top Image Credit: Dell Inc.
In Italy, Uber Launches Free WiFi In Cars With WiMan
Uber, the company that makes hailing a car and paying for it as easy as dropping a pin on a smartphone, has recently launched a new feature that brings another level of luxury and service to the experience, Wifi in cars.
Through a partnership with Italian startup WiMan, Uber in Italy now offers free Wifi service in every car through a 3G/WiFi hotspot in every vehicle.
According to Uber Italy General Manager and co-manager for Europe Benedetta Arese Lucini, Uber Italy shows more demand for Wifi service in every car because most data plans offer less GB/month than we usually get in the states, and finding free Wifi at every corner isn’t as ubiquitous as it is in San Francisco.
Here’s how it works:
Users click into the WiMan-labeled Wifi network on their iPhones or Android devices, and are taken instantly to a landing page for sign-in. Users can sign-in with one touch to their Google or Facebook accounts.
Uber and WiMan can work together to customize the landing page, perhaps for special Uber-promoted events or campaigns.
WiMan is an Italian startup from the deep south of Italy, Puglia, where there is no Wifi. As with any truly successful startup, WiMan was solving a problem that it faced on its own, and now has over 600 bars/restaurant partners and is installed in 20 Uber cars in the past six months.
The team has raised a total of €100k from Nana Bianca as angels.
Uber will be testing Wifi in Rome for the next three months, at which point Arese Lucini will get together with other Uber leaders and decide if this should roll out further.
WiMan is currently testing 4G/LTE options to bring to Uber consumers, as well as WiMan’s 100,000 unique users. But for now, Romans can enjoy 3G Wifi for free within Ubers courtesy of WiMan.
Galaxy Note 3 Benchmark Boosts Miss The Point That No One Cares About Benchmarks
Samsung is being called out by the highly respected and thorough Ars Technica for apparently “artificially” boosting the Galaxy Note 3′s performance specifically when it comes to benchmark testing. The blog found that while under normal testing the Note 3 vastly outperformed the LG G2, which has the same processor, after stripping away some fancy benchmark-specific code, the phone scored about the same as its LG competitor.
Ars has a very good, very long explanation of how they arrived at their findings, and the end result is an artificial benchmark bump of between 20 and 50 percent in all areas depending on which benchmarking tools you use, including industry standards like Antutu and Geekbench. It’s a good read if you’re interested in that sort of thing, but the upshot is, you probably aren’t. Which is why Samsung has even more egg on its face.
Artificially enhancing performance benchmarks for a smartphone these days is like artificially enhancing the smoothness of your elbows via plastic surgery: it may mean that overall, you technically present a more attractive package on the surface, but no one’s really going to know or care that you’ve had any work done.
Apple’s iPhone 5s reportedly benchmarks up in the same ranks as some fairly recent Mac computers, for instance, but that’s not something your average iPhone 5s buyer is likely to know. Also, it doesn’t mean anything; benchmark scores doesn’t mean one device will be able to handle the same tasks as the other, like running a professional video editing software suite for example.
Long ago, Apple realized that a specs race wasn’t the same as the race for market dominance. Actual buyers cared about the phone experience, not abstract numbers which may or may not be borne out by really using software and apps. It’s true that Apple still talks about performance when it touts new devices – but it does so relatively, explaining only how much faster or more efficient something is compared to previous generations. That frames the discussion in terms that everyday users can understand, making it genuinely useful information.
The end result is that Samsung looks like it’s grasping when it takes an abstract (essentially meaningless, for all intents and purposes) number and artificially builds that up to win praise from some whitecoats who test these things for a living. It seems to be doing this as a matter of course now, as Ars says it’s seeing similar behaviour in testing the new Galaxy Note 10 Android tablet from Samsung as well. And, in the end, its unadjusted numbers were actually faster than competitors like the G2 anyway; if for some reason as an OEM you’re still concerned with winning a specs race on paper at this point (which you shouldn’t be), you don’t need to win by a wide margin, especially at the risk of looking foolish.
Unadjusted numbers would’ve won faint praise from the crowd that likes them, and gone unnoticed by most. Artificially altered ones attract a whole lot of negative attention and result in a net bad look for Samsung. The Note 3, like most high-end Samsung hardware, is probably a great phone, but now it’s embroiled in a doping scandal, over a number nobody really cares about.
Obama: iPhones Have Glitches Just Like Healthcare.gov Has Glitches. Deal.
President Obama just compared Apple’s imperfect operating system launch to the massive glitches plaguing the new government healthcare price comparison websites. Responding to the government shutdown in a sunny Rose Garden press conference, Obama took time to address some of the reported website issues:
“Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it. I don’t remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn’t. That’s not how we do things in America.”
Here’s the extended remark (transcript via Washington Post/Federal News Service).
Now, like every new law, every new product roll-out, there are going to be some glitches in the sign-up process along the way that we will fix. I’ve been saying this from the start. For example, we found out that there have been times this morning where the site’s been running more slowly than it normally will. The reason is because more than one million people visited healthcare.gov before 7:00 in the morning. To put that in context, there were five times more users in the marketplace this morning than have ever been on medicare.gov at one time. That gives you a sense of how important this is to millions of Americans around the country, and that’s a good thing.
And we’re going to be speeding things up in the next few hours to handle all of this demand that exceeds anything that we had expected. Consider that just a couple of weeks ago, Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it. I don’t remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn’t. That’s not how we do things in America. We don’t actively root for failure. We get to work, we make things happen, we make them better, we keep going.
Icahn's $150B Apple Gambit Could Transform The Management Of Cash-Rich Tech Giants
In April Apple announced that it would boost its share repurchase program from $10 billion to $60 billion, as part of a $100 billion effort, executed with cash, set to conclude by the end of calendar 2015. That represented a $55 billion increase on its formerly announced shareholder return efforts.
In Apple’s estimation, it would return about $30 billion yearly to shareholders over the course of the expanded program, calculating that rate with a starting point of August 2012. Apple has issued a dividend for just over a year, at current date.
The company now returns over $10 billion to investors yearly in the form of dividends.
Some investors are not content, including everyone’s favorite eccentric uncle of dollars, Carl Icahn. Having amassed a nearly $2 billion stake in Apple, Icahn recently had dinner with the company’s CEO Tim Cook. His pitch: A $150 billion buyback. The pair are set to discuss the idea in a few weeks.
Note that Icahn wants $150 billion in share buybacks alone and not in total return. The $90 billion delta between Apple’s current share buyback program and what Icahn wants is stunning, as it is a figure 150 percent greater than Apple’s already recently expanded program’s promise.
Presuming that Icahn expects Apple to pull off his $150 billion in share repurchases in the same time frame as the company had previously intended to buy back a mere $60 billion, it would boost the company’s per-year return cost for shareholders from $30.03 billion yearly to $57.06 billion, a near doubling.
Cost
Can Apple afford the expense? The Wall Street Journal reported today that Apple completed its most recent quarter with $146.6 billion in cash. In that quarter, Apple had a net profit of $6.9 billion, and cash flow of $7.8 billion. Assuming that Apple generated that same amount of cash for a year, it would only total $31.2 billion.
So, at Icahn’s proposed rates, the company would be forced to dip deeply into its cash position to execute the buyback. Why would he want Apple to greatly lower its cash stash (aside from enriching his investment, naturally)? He thinks that Apple’s stock is undervalued, and therefore it’s a prime time for the company to buy more.
Buy when the share price is cheaper than its value, and you remove stock from the market at a more efficient rate.
Apple currently trades for $488 per share. Icahn, in an interview with CNBC, said that Apple would still have low “multiples” at $630 per share. In his view, it would be “absurd” to not buy more stock now.
Assuming 10 quarters between now (including the current fiscal quarter, of course) at $7.8 billion per, Apple would generate $78 billion in new monies available for use. That tacked onto its current cash position of $146.6 billion, and Apple has a theoretical cash chest of $224.6 billion. Icahn wants to use $190 billion of that. That would put Apple’s (back of a vodka-stained napkin in charcoal pencil) cash position under the $35 billion mark. It would be odd for Apple to not be richer than Croesus.
Still, we’re discussing Apple removing around one-third of its total market capitalization off the market. That’s a sea change in its investor position.
Impact
If Apple is swayed by Icahn, it would set a precedent by which even rich buyback and dividend programs enacted by wealthy technology companies could be viewed as at-risk from a corporate perspective. Microsoft, for example, is under similar pressure from an activist investor of its own: ValueAct. That investor is parlaying 0.8 percent stake in Microsoft into a board seat and perhaps larger shareholder return. Google has tens of billions in cash, as well. Cisco, Oracle, even perhaps Facebook could be on the dock if they continue to perform.
In short, the age of tech companies running massive cash surpluses as weapons that can be used both offensively and defensively could be winding down. Apple could draw down its cash position from $146.6 billion to $35 billion in just over two years. Get ready for some balance sheet bingo.
Fact: Companies love cash cushions. It provides latitude to buy any rival they fear, and make long-term bets that would be infeasible at lower rates of accumulated wealth.
Icahn is not making a small claim: His buyback program totals more dollars than Apple’s entire current cash position.
And he might get it, too.
Top Image Credit: Mike Deerkoski
Reesio Raises $1 Million+ For Its Real Estate Software Platform
San Francisco-based real estate startup Reesio is announcing today that it has closed on $1.096 million in new funding for its transaction management software for real estate agents. Investors included Digital Garage, MicroVentures, Hiten Shah, and other angels. The company had previously raised a seed round of $205,000.
Reesio first launched in April of this year, where it was focused on selling its platform to agents using the SaaS-based subscription model at prices ranging around $15 per month per agent. And this was a pivot from an earlier idea focused on the FSBO (for sale by owner) market.
During the company’s participation in the 500 Startups accelerator program this year, co-founder and CEO Mark Thomas and his team found that by processing the transactions on its platform, they were accumulating listing and property data in real-time. Then, in comparing that transactional data to large portals like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com, they found that Reesio’s data was more current and more accurate, leading them to realize that they might have something even more valuable on their hands.
Thomas claims that as much as half the data on the search portals was inaccurate for a variety of reasons - it wasn’t being updated in a timely fashion, as MLS systems were protecting their data against scrapers, for example. He says that the portals would not have the current, correct status of a property (contract, pending sold, etc.), the right listing price, or the right property data, like number of beds, baths or square footage, in a number of cases.
The problem lies with how the large portals are collecting this data. They syndicate listings from the 900 MLS’s across the U.S. and pull in public record data. And the MLS systems themselves receive their data by manual input from real estate agents – and sometimes, it’s never input at all.
Reesio’s solution is to bring the transactions online, in a modern web-based system designed for brokers, transaction coordinators, and agents. The platform includes support for workflow templates that help agents to follow through with each step in the transaction process – a process which, traditionally, includes a large stack of printed paperwork. Instead of having to print out copies for everyone to sign, Reesio integrates DocuSign into its product so users can upload, share and sign all the files. The online file system also doesn’t have a storage limit like other cloud storage companies do – such as Dropbox, a service that’s fairly popular among agents today.
The platform itself is clean and simple in its design, which makes it easy for the sometimes less-tech savvy realtors to use, as well as the brokers who track their transactions. There’s a social element to it, too, with member profiles, an Activity feed, and an invite system that allows users to reach out to clients, other agents an third-party vendors to get them online.
To take on competitors in the space, including companies like Cartavi and dotloop, among others, Reesio has until now been focused on offering a lower-cost agent offering. Brokers and transaction coordinators also start at those same lowered prices ($15 per agent per month, on average), but increase based on the number of users in their brokerage. The pricing included the e-signature account option, as well, so that’s not a surprise fee later on.
To date, the company has signed up 1,700 real estate agents to use Reesio, but Thomas stresses that they haven’t yet focused on growing the user base because they were in the accelerator program and have been still fine-tuning the product and platform, as there are also a lot of legal and compliance nuances that go into something like Reesio.
WHAT’S NEW: REESIO GOES FREE, ADDS PREMIUM FEATURES
Now, with the additional funding the plan is to drop the $15 per agent per month pricing plan altogether. (The website still reports pricing as being $20 per month, we should note – a discrepancy based on discounts currently offered). Starting on October 29th, Reesio will begin going after scale and growth by giving its product away for free to agents, who can then create as many transactions on Reesio as they want. The company will then launch additional features on the platform at the same time.
“Most notably, we’re taking all of the transaction details and automatically using those details to create public listing pages that agents can use to market their properties and that buyers can find through Google searches. Agents will be able to subscribe and pay between $99/month-$399/month to receive buyer leads that come through their public listing pages,” says Thomas, explaining that the rest of the platform will remain free. Reesio is also going to be launching the ability to make, accept, and decline offers, schedule showings, and it will introduce a revamped documents and compliance section, he adds.
The longer term business model also includes an advertising component. Because Reesio knows when transactions occur, like a new listing is posted or a buyer goes into contract on a property, the software can present tasks in the workflow that point to third-party vendors who advertise with Reesio. This includes things like staging, home inspections, homeowners’ insurance, and more. “The buyer won’t be put off by that because they need to get it done,” says Thomas.
He also tells us the funding will be used to grow Reesio now four-person team by two more. They’re hiring an iOS engineer to bring Reesio to the iPad and iPhone – a top request because realtors are typically on the go. The remaining funding will be used toward marketing efforts, with the goal of getting 25,000 to 50,0000 agents online over the course of the next 18 months.
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