It would be an understatement to say the past month has been an interesting one at Disney. At the request of Disney’s board, Bob Iger, who led Disney for 15 years during the 2000s and 2010s, made a dramatic return as CEO.

Iger’s return was met with sighs of relief and hope from various Disney stakeholders. Something of a Disney wish list materialized overnight. Iger would “fix” Disney parks, reinvigorate Disney animation…

The media loves its villains. While Elon Musk’s Twitter escapades took over much of November’s news flow, Musk is something of a known entity at this point. Sam Bankman-Fried now wins the award for fastest up-and-coming villain. Just a few weeks ago, his name (or SBF initials) only meant something to those in crypto circles. Today, fallout from FTX’s collapse, the crypto exchange that he founded in 2019, continues to grow and…

As Mark Zuckerberg contemplates some of his toughest business strategy decisions to date, Wall Street has already weighed in with its verdict on Meta: The company has about a decade left. While that dire prediction will likely morph with Wall Street’s always-changing mood, a closer examination of Meta’s valuation reveals several intriguing questions applicable to valuing Big Tech in general.

A quick check of stock prices would show that Big Tech has…

Paid video streaming has provided analysts and pundits plenty to talk about in 2022. Competition has intensified as Disney goes after Netflix for the subscriber crown (Disney has already won). Wall Street also turned sour on most streamers, driven by the higher competition and concerns with business model sustainability.

Set within this change and chaos, there is one theme that ended up being quite reliable: Subscription price hikes. In retrospect, higher subscription…

If there were still questions as to how Elon Musk was going to run Twitter, his tweeting a video of himself walking into an empty Twitter HQ carrying a bathroom sink to denote the change of ownership told us that this was going to be an unconventional transition. We were about to see the Musk show, and the first 12 days have certainly lived up to that description.

Unfortunately, much of the…

Judging by stock price moves, Wall Street experienced quite a few surprises last week. Consider the following price moves registered the day after reporting CY3Q22 earnings:  

The odd thing about these moves is that 3Q22 earnings contained very few surprises in Big Tech land. All of the major themes found in the numbers and on management conference calls have been on…

Snap positions itself as “a camera company.” It’s the first thing that a visitor to their website will likely see. On its Investor Relations page, the slogan can’t be missed. The aspirational messaging has served two functions for the company:

One of the major tech themes from the past ten years has been the giants increasing their bets on hardware. The moves, clearly aimed at catching up to industry-leader Apple, have been met with very few pockets of success.

Some companies, like Amazon, were able to get customers to bite out of the gate even though longer-term engagement trends have disappointed. Other companies, like Meta, have discovered just how expensive hardware is…

We are at the point where discussions taking place among the giants regarding TikTok need to be about how to survive against the company. It is too late to try to stop or slow TikTok’s momentum. Attempts at outflanking TikTok are also off the table.

YouTube Shorts has been Google’s response to TikTok and the overall rise of short-form video. Two weeks ago, Google unveiled its strategy for coexisting alongside TikTok: Appeal…

Having spent close to a decade covering the tech industry, I have always seen Disney occupy an interesting competitive position. The company isn’t in the same league as the giants from a software perspective. However, lumping Disney in with its content peers feels wrong. Netflix is no Disney although Netflix executives think otherwise.

Last month, the WSJ reported that Bob Chapek and company are exploring Disney memberships. Disney confirmed the reporting. Amazon…

We are at the point where we can begin writing Peloton’s eulogy. Last week, Peloton co-founder and former CEO John Foley stepped away from the company by resigning from the board. He had moved into the executive chairman role this past February after bringing in Barry McCarthy to fix his errors and miscalculations.

Peloton’s user trends continue to worsen. More importantly, the one thing that was always going to represent the core…

Last month, the sports and digital media worlds collided as the Big Ten chose the winners for its seven-year sports rights deal. Depending on your perspective, the $7 billion announcement was either a surprise or business as usual. The auction did a good job of highlighting where the media space is right now and the challenges / opportunities facing the tech giants when it comes to live sports programming.

The Big Ten’s…

September in tech land marks the start of the very busy new product unveiling season. The giants will show their hands for the upcoming holiday shopping season. In a few days, Apple will host its annual September event. Amazon, Google, and Meta are expected to follow in the coming weeks.

For the third year in a row, companies are unveiling new products into a very challenging environment. It’s a stretch to say…

In just the past few months, a lot has taken place in the paid video streaming market. Netflix, prematurely crowned by consensus as the streaming winner, is now having something akin to an identity crisis while being surpassed by a more capable competitor in Disney. Consumers have plenty of choice in the market and are beginning to show signs of hitting some kind of subscription stacking plateau. Increased churn is likely not…

Scooter Mania Fizzles

It’s tough to find good news in the scooter industry. Publicly-traded Bird is trying to survive. Uber-backed Lime is trying to find a way to IPO. All the while, the way scooters were quickly embraced in the late 2010s feels like a distant memory.

Bird describes themselves as “developing mobility solutions that put people and communities first.” These solutions revolve around “lightweight electric vehicles readily available to rent or…

This past Friday, Amazon announced its intention to buy iRobot, best known for its Roomba vacuum cleaner, for $1.7 billion. In describing the deal, Amazon’s hardware chief applauded iRobot’s “ability to reinvent how people clean with products that are incredibly practical and inventive…” This may make some people think that Amazon wants to go after Dyson for having the best vacuum cleaner on the market. There’s much more to the story. The…

Disney is in a weird position when it comes to the box office: Its strategy is being questioned. For years, Disney was considered to have mastered the evolving box office to maximize profit while protecting future interests. Although “Thor: Love and Thunder” got off to a good box office start last month, the subsequent 68% drop in ticket sales during its second weekend was alarming. The steep drop follows another recent Marvel…

Snap Is the Canary in the Ad Coal Mine

Last week, Snap reported a disaster of an 2Q22 earnings report and conference call. Snap went from having 50% revenue growth to pretty much no growth in a year. Even though the company had previously warned results would be bad, things were even worse than expected. Snap’s problems, which are long and varied, serve as a warning for nearly all ad-based business models…

With recession and inflation concerns continuing to build in the tech space, attention has shifted to where pockets of strength will be found. One such pocket may come as a surprise: luxury. At first, the idea of high-priced gadgets and services selling well in a high inflation and slow growth period may seem like a stretch. However, continued supply chain issues and software’s ongoing invasion of new industries bode well for companies…

Twitter is on a roller coaster named Elon Musk. There hasn’t been a shortage of surprise dips and turns. The initial courtship and even befriending that took place between Twitter leadership and Musk now seems like a distant memory. It’s hard to believe Twitter had initially tried to offer Musk a board seat in order to curb his Twitter stock purchases. Passive aggressiveness then set in once Musk’s intentions became known. This…