Jan 17

1. #tech. Pitchbook

Apple acquired an AI start-up Xnor.ai for $200M, with the potential to shore up its core money-maker – Iphone. Xnor.ai can makes technology that allows Ai to operate on locally low-power devices, which could help free Apple products from relying on cloud for complicated tasks

2. #economics. MorningBrew

Details on the first deal between US and China. US will export more to China ($200B for the next two years) and in return, it will lower tariff on $120B China exported goods from 15% to 7.5%. The losers are US farmers, and winner is…China

3. #movicestreaming. Inc.com

The competition in streaming market is going steamed witht the debut of Peacock from NBCUniversal. However, Netflix, the market leader is still going well as their subscribers do not leave it.

Summary of my favorite topic: Fool: Spotify – How a pure-player compete with loss leaders

Music streaming has been the growth engine of music industry’s resurgence over the last decade, and Spotify is one of the key contributors to that engine. The battle in streaming is highly competitive and Spotify has taken further steps to maintain its present.

Spotify’s competitors are small companies under colossuses’ umbrellar, such as Apple music by Apple and Amazon music limited my Amazon. To rack up as many subscribers as they can, these ones are willing to make losses when label price hits a wall. In contrast, Spotify must define its own path to profits

In reality, Spotify has implemented two steps. First, it is building a two-sided marketplace, where artists can utilize the massive network of listeners instead of depending on record labels. Second, Spotify has jumped into the podcast world and became the biggest player, then the advertising future is promising ahead.