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Netflix to counter streaming slowdown by offering 'best gaming service available'
Can the company pull it off?
CNBC media and tech reporter Alex Sherman recently highlighted on Twitter that the CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, says not to ask about what the company will do next in the gaming field until it's offering the best gaming service available. From the outset, this sounds like a promising statement, that Netflix is indeed taking its fledgling foray into gaming quite seriously, though if you take a look at the current catalog, it's a mix of older titles and casual games, which hardly instills confidence. Worse than that, Netflix has admitted streaming competition is eating into its growth, so it appears the gaming foray is some sort of buttress to the slow growth with its video content. Essentially, diversifying content appears to be the path forward for Netflix, and so it does appear the company is taking gaming seriously, even if the catalog isn't impressive just yet.
Back in 2015, Alphabet was established as the parent company to Google and its many project divisions. Amidst restructuring, Google's co-founder and then-CEO, Larry Page, moved to oversee Alphabet while the SVP of Products, Sundar Pichai, was promoted as the new CEO of Google. Today, the company has signaled another monumental shift in Alphabet's business structure by announcing that Pichai will be succeeding Page as the CEO of both Google and Alphabet.
After a brief tenure, Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz has stepped down. Fawaz assumed the role in 2016 immediately following the departure of Nest founder Tony Fadell. Fawaz will remain at Google as an "executive advisor" for the company's hardware ventures, hardware chief Rick Osterloh said in a statement.
Just after his assets were frozen, and two months after resigning as CEO, LeEco chairman Jia Yueting has resigned from his position at the financially troubled and publicly traded half of the company. This latest news is almost assuredly connected to LeEco's ongoing financial problems. There is no word yet on how this might affect the privately owned phone manufacturing arm of the company.
Back in 1997, HTC, then known as High-Tech Computer Corporation, was founded by Peter Chou, Cher Wang, and H. T. Cho (oddly familiar initials that guy, eh?) Ever since, the company has evolved from being an ODM for others like Compaq Computers and T-Mobile to becoming a standalone branded smartphone manufacturer.
It can't be easy to be a BlackBerry user these days. Despite the hardware and software maker's (arguably) best efforts, the company has fallen from its height as the undisputed king of the boardroom to shipping just one out every two hundred smartphones worldwide in the last quarter. The reasons for BlackBerry's decline are legion: a failure to innovate quickly as Android and iPhone adoption soared, an ineffective ecosystem and infrastructure, and hardware missteps like the Storm at critical junctures. But one thing tends to upset users more than any other: a lack of apps.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere Plays A Convincing Creepy Uncle In This Profanity-Laden Holiday Promo Video
Sometimes you have to wonder if bombastic T-Mobile CEO John Legere actually believes the hyperbolically aggressive language he spews at his competitors. Then you watch something like this "Uncarrier Holiday" video, and you no longer have to wonder. This man appears to have a plush ornament of himself on his Christmas tree.
Last month Facebook bought WhatsApp for way too much money, making the app's developers very wealthy individuals. This deal, theoretically, gives Facebook access to the data provided by the app's nearly half a billion users. The companies behind the social network and the instant messenger have both promised that WhatsApp will continue to operate autonomously, but this hasn't completely alleviated privacy concerns. Thus WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum has shared a blog post aimed at "setting the record straight."
We've been trying to keep our heads up about the Lenovo-Motorola deal, but let's be honest: news like this is not encouraging. A Wall Street Journal report claims that Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside, whom many had credited with the company's impressive new product lines in 2013, is leaving for Dropbox. Woodside began working for Motorola after more than ten years at Google, succeeding Sanjay Jha after Google acquired the company.
Motorola CEO: Moto X Phone Coming By October, Built In Texas, And It's The First In A New Product Line [Update: Possible Summer Release]
The conferences put on by AllThingsD tend to be a bit sedate - Walt Mossberg gets on stage with some Very Important People and picks their brain in front
The conferences put on by AllThingsD tend to be a bit sedate - Walt Mossberg gets on stage with some Very Important People and picks their brain in front of a live audience. Not so with tonight's interview of Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside and Research & Development head Regina Dugan. At the D11 stage, Woodside let loose with a flurry of information about the company's plans for the remainder of the year, starting with the much-rumored X Phone. Yup, it's real, and according to the interview, the "hero device" will be released by October 2013.
I miss you, HTC. My Evo was the first phone I ever truly loved, and between 2007 and 2010, as a company you did remarkably well for yourself. Then the Thunderbolt happened, and then Beats got involved and... Well, let's just say it hasn't been a great couple years. So, when I hear that your CEO, Peter Chou, is planning some bold new changes for 2013, I'm hopeful. Skeptical, but hopeful.
We've reported on AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson's ideas on "toll-free" data usage, but it looks like he's expecting another big shift in data plans - the availability of data-only cellphone plans.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, speaking at the Sanford Bernstein Strategic Decisions conference, teased a possible solution for customers who feel beleaguered by tiered data, and who have been avoiding data-heavy services due to plan limitations.
The CEO of AT&T's mobile business, Ralph de la Vega, told CNET in an interview that the company is working on family data plans that would give consumers one big pot of data that all devices could share. While minute plans have worked this way for years, since tiered data came along, customers have been waiting on a way to pool their data.
Guerrino De Luca, CEO of Logitech, while speaking at the company’s Analyst and Investor Day yesterday, plainly delivered a statement that many of us could have seen coming, calling Logitech’s 2010 launch of the Revue set top box “a mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature.” Further, De Luca made it clear that Logitech had “brought closure to the Logitech Revue saga,” and plans to let inventory run out this quarter, with no sequel in the works for the manufacturer’s first Google TV box.
Sprint has network problems. Major problems. And they've gotten a lot worse lately. Really, really bad. Not all areas are affected - and in fact some have improved already, but more and more areas are getting so bad that Sprint's 3G data is completely unusable there, especially since the introduction of the iPhone. Troubleshooting and update my phone's "profile" and PRL didn't help, as evident from the screenshot #2 you see below.
During his time on-stage at the Salesforce.com Dreamforce conference, Eric Schmidt (Chairman and former CEO) of Google said that the company's purchase of Motorola is about more than just patents, as has broadly been claimed.
In an investor call today, Motorola's CEO Sanjay Jha revealed two interesting tidbits: first, that the ATRIX 4G's Webtop app and accessory are going to be made available for more Motorola devices in the future, and second, that Gingerbread updates for all of Motorola's high-end Android devices are in the works.
- the price of the XOOM will indeed be significantly less than $1,200 (at least according to Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha). In fact, if you decide to take the WiFi-only route, the tablet will cost just $600 - half of the price Best Buy put up (and subsequently took down). 3G connectivity will come with a $199 premium (jacking the price up to $799), though it's worth noting that the XOOM's radio will see an LTE upgrade sometime down the road.