Tablets gaining (more) ground

Sales of tablet, such as Apple's iPad and Samsung's Galaxy Tab, are increasing rapidly. According to a new forecast from research firm Canalys, tablets are expected to account for half of the personal computer market next year.

In the overall market for personal computers Canalys adds up both desktops, laptops and tablets. Using this broad definition, overall sales are up 18 percent in the third quarter compared with the same period the year before. The total increase is due to the fact that tablets sales have increased, while desktop and laptop sales declined .

Canalys also expect the tables to continue to grow in popularity. In 2014, the forecasters believe a total of 285 million tablets is going to be sold in the world, and it then increases to 396 million tablets in 2017.

The two major suppliers of tablet are Apple and Samsung, and they will, according to Canalys, maintain their lead in the near future. But Canalys also notes that competition is increasing rapidly, and a number of other companies are working hard to grow their individual tablet development. Above all, these companies use Google's Android operating system, the same system that Samsung uses. It is calculated this OS will be used as the basis for 65 percent of all tablets sold .

Canalys also expect that Microsoft will increase its share in the tablet market. Microsoft recently bought Nokia's mobile operations, and thus have their own production of both mobile phones and tablets, to complement Microsoft's current tablet Surface. Microsoft is expected in 2014 to account for 5 percent of all tablets sold.

Snapchat Playing it Cool

I recently wrote about how SnapChat may spell the fall ofFacebook. Now I don’t want to pat my own back here, but it seems as though Mark Zuckerberg is reading my blog and taking notes (probably not, but fun still) since Facebook recently announced plans for acquiring SnapChat.

However, since founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy also seem to be avid subscribers to the Social Gnome, they coldly, shrewdly, and wisely turned down that offer. What happened next? Zuckerberg upped the ante. But Spiegel and Murphy would not have any of it, turning down the 3 billion dollar offer.

23-year-old Spiegel, has yet to comment on the information, but according to the Wall Street his plan is to start bringing in bids from potential buyers first next year. It is hoped that Snapchat will have grown even larger at that time, and thus have become worth more money. Snapchat has today only been around for about two years, and if the net-worth increases along the same tangent it has so far, it would be worth (crude calculations) an estimated 3,75 billion in May and 4,5 in November of 2014.

This however is all conditioned on several things but the two most important factors would be;

1.  Facebook themselves just copying the app and incorporating their “FaceSnap App” into their existing library. We all know they do have the resources, and building such an app is NOT a 3 billion dollar investment. What Snapchap is offering Facebook here is a kick start, where Facebook would not have to invest in building a community nor brand awareness.
2. Fad dying off and users leaving SnapChat. And if this happens SnapChap will not even be worth the time of day. It has happened before with immensely popular sites and applications. The social Internet is moving fast, and so is its users.

However, Facebook are not alone in trying to acquiring Snapchat; several different companies have shown interest. As of right now Snapchat has no sales what so ever, simply relying on its users. No ads, nothing; just investors and evaluations. With such a volatile income base, it shows Iceman guts to pass by an offer that would make the founders economically independent. 

And as of right now, Speigel and Murphy are playing it cool.

Mining the Bitcoin Innovation

There has been a lot of talk concerning Bitcoins lately. Nobody seems to know really what they are, whether they can be used as real payment, and why (in the case the latter is true) my local grocery stores still don't accept them. Perhaps the most pressing issue is how this even can be legal, since it for all intents and purposes are money being made in your own basement.

Inshort Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency that is not issued by a central authority. The concept was introduced in a 2008 paper by a pseudonymous developer known only as "Satoshi Nakamoto". Who he really is has not yet been unearthed.

In 2012, The Economist reasoned that Bitcoin has been popular due to "its role in dodgy online markets," and in 2013 the FBI shut down one such market, Silk Road, which allowed the sale of illegal drugs for Bitcoins. So far, seizing the funds have come at no or little success, since the FBI apparently just dont have the knowledge of how to seize electronic currency.

Bitcoins are increasingly also used as payment for legitimate products and services. Notable vendors include Wordpress, OkCupid, Reddit, and Chinese Internet giant Baidu.

The creation of Bitcoins are done by so called "miners". These are computers engaged in the upkeep of the Bitcoin transaction system. However, new Bitcoins are created at an ever-decreasing rate, and once this reaches zero, the number of Bitcoins will remain static. At this point the sole incentive for miners will be the transaction fees.

So why is this important? Well, at the current moment, judging by the rate of transactions and production, the Bitcoin will overtake the USD in amounts used by 2069. That is, by 2069 more people will be trading in BitCoins than in USD. In June of 2013 a single Bitcoin was worth approximately $128.

Still confused concerning Bitcoins? Luckily the Bitcoin community recently released a video explaining the whole situation. Watch and enjoy the birth of possibly the next gen currency.

Auction House closed by Gamers

Some time back i wrote about the troubles Blizzard were having with their virtual auction house tied in to their hit game Diablo 3. Back then the issue they were having was with prices sky-rocketing, players paying real-world money only to be drastically disappointing by the exchange rate in virtual gold, and suspicions brewing about evil, gold controlling oligopolies controlling the entire auction house (read the entire post here).

Now it seems the last straw finally broke the camels backs, and the auction house is being shut down. In a official statement, released on Blizzards Diablo 3 blog John Hight had this to say:

When we initially designed and implemented the auction houses, the driving goal was to provide a convenient and secure system for trades. But as we've mentioned on different occasions, it became increasingly clear that despite the benefits of the AH system and the fact that many players around the world use it, it ultimately undermines Diablo's core game play: kill monsters to get cool loot.

Everything is going to be shut down by March 18, 2014. While I think it is true that the auction house has taken away a lot from the core mechanic of the game, it cannot be understated that it was also a test product for Blizzard. With this I don't in any way mean that it wasn't finished, rather that Blizzard had an idea and wanted to test it out. 

The auction house has not broken in its system, but perhaps in the way it was implemented. It was way to easy for the market run amok, and a real hyper-inflation was created, something that naturally caused a huge backlash against the auction house and against Blizzard. I think Blizzard knows this, and will take this information back and reflect upon it for further releases down the line. However, I am confident this is not the last time we see the auction house. 

The main point of this story however is that Blizzard truly listened to the outcries of the community and corrected what many Diablo-players apparently saw as a fault in the game. Blizzard implemented something, the users tested it an didn't want it, and Blizzard subsequently rolled it back. Not many companies have the willingness to admit fault in this way, and Blizzard should have a great deal of credit for really listening to its gamers!

HyperInflation 2.0

Right now a totally amazing and fascinating story about virtual hyperinflation is unfolding, crashing the economy of Blizzard's MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) Diablo 3. Blizzard blew its economic strategy for Diablo 3 by making the "sinks" (places where gold is taken out of the economy) unattractive, adding in real-money-for-stuff trades, and then letting a bug run wild. Before you knew it, players were loading up virtual wheelbarrows full of virtual gold to buy virtual bread.

This was demonstrated when, in a message board entry prefaced by stating “Sell Equipment before Patch 1.0.5 Hits!” (a patch is a piece of software added to an operational program or application as bugs are found, changes desired, or ways of improving performance discovered), a player warned that,

Blizzard just announced that the drop rates for [certain] items are going to be doubled … if you haven’t already, you should consider converting your current gear to cash … since real $ [are] the best hedge against gold devaluation.

If historical cases of hyperinflation — real, and now virtual — have one thing in common, it is the instinct among its victims to blame the symptoms rather than the disease. The Austrian economist Hans Sennholz noted that during the German hyperinflation, “intrigue and artifice” were believed to be at work. Similarly, a handful of Diablo 3 players, frustrated about the decimation of their purchasing power, expressed increasing suspicion of manipulation and conspiracy theories.

Why are certain items priced so astronomically high? Many of them are not even that good yet cost 100’s of millions of gold. … I have about 45,000,000 gold saved up [and] check every few days to see if I can get any upgrades that are worth the gold, but … everything is vastly overpriced … clearly controlled by the gold sellers.

This, however, is not the first time hyperinflation has struck Blizzards virtual worlds. A few years back their now iconic game World of Warcraft was truck by a similar economic melt-down, when trade moved out of the game, and on to Craigslist and E-Bay. Gamers were selling their loot and gear to the highest bidder offline, and then simply handing these extremely sough after and costly items to its new owner online. However, an in-game mechanic forces a player who trades an item to give something in return, be it another item or other tender. Since the real trade already had been executed offline this was simply a facade, and the meant-to-be super expensive sword was traded for an shabby copper coin.

The virtual money lost all its value, prices on in-game items skyrocketed, and the hyperinflation was a fact. Blizzard had to close down servers, migrate players, and sanitize the entire economical system. Its funny to me how instances of the economy that we are trying our hardest avoid in real life, apparently cannot be circumvented not even i worlds we fully control.