URL: http://business.financialpost.com
Updated: 9 years 3 weeks ago
Fri, 05/22/2015 - 07:32
Tesla is building what will be the world’s largest battery factory. New drone footage taken in the desert of Nevada shows how far construction has moved along.
Thu, 05/21/2015 - 15:29
TORONTO – For investment bankers, it may not get any better: despite seemingly high valuations there is an incredible demand for stocks, especially for those issuers new to the public markets.
That demand was on full display Thursday when Shopify Inc. priced its initial public offering: the Ottawa-based company agreed to sell 7.7 million subordinate voting shares at US$17 a share. At US$17, the shares were priced US$5 above the lower end of the marketing range set a few days back, and US$1 above the top end of the revised price range set on Wednesday.
Judging from investors’ behaviour the issue could have been priced higher: In trading Thursday the shares shot up to US$28.74, before falling to close at US25.68. For the day, more than 12.6 million shares were traded – meaning that the small public float was turned almost twice. By going public, the company, whose specialty is e-commerce, now has a valuation of more than twice what it was deemed to be worth less than one month back.
Against such a backdrop, bankers are hungrily searching far and wide for the next Shopify (or even an old-school legacy brand like Cara Operations, which went public earlier this year and which has seen a steady gain in its share price).
It’s a great time to be a Canadian technology company
Jim Kofman, vice-chair at Cormark Securities, said sector rotation is part of the reason why technology-related growth companies have re-emerged.
After bailing out of precious metals, then resources and after seeking safe havens in yield securities, “growth has come back in vogue,” said Kofman, whose firm is part of the syndicate taking Mogo Finance Technology Inc. public. Vancouver-based Mogo defines itself as “a leading online lending platform providing consumers with quick and efficient access to responsible credit solutions.”
In general Kofman said the companies now going public or thinking about going public are different from those that were around for a period of time during the tech bubble. “The [new] companies have matured, they have real businesses with strong growth stories, even if they [trade] at lofty multiples,” added Kofman.
“It’s a great time to be a Canadian technology company,” noted one banker, who is out pitching possible IPO transactions while admitting that Shopify is a special case because of its world-class technology and unique culture.
Richard Drew/AP PhotoShopify CEO Tobias Lutke, centre, wearing hat, is celebrated as he rings the New York Stock Exchange opening bell, marking the Canadian company's IPO, Thursday, May 21, 2015. The company's stock surged after the opening. RelatedOne possible candidate is Montreal-based Lightspeed POS, which has been around for a decade and which has received $65 million in external funding – though it financed itself until 2012.
Dax Dasilva, founder and chief executive of Lightspeed, which focuses on on-and offline retail, said that going public remains on the table: “[What happened with Shopify] is hugely encouraging for us and our team to see what kind of outcome all our hard work could bring.”
On Thursday, Dasilva was full of praise for what Shopify, which he described as “a compatriot” company, has achieved. He termed Shopify’s IPO “an incredible milestone for the company and the retail industry as a whole. This is another great example of the innovative technology leaders coming out of Canada.”
Other candidates often talked about are HootSuite, which manages social media platforms; and D2L, Desire2Learn, whose focus is on “developing technology to improve the way the world learns.”
Indeed, at a conference in Vancouver Thursday, Hootsuite’s chief executive, Ryan Holmes, said, “I’m very bullish given the success that Shopify has had, and maybe we will want to speed that up a little bit,” he said.
Thu, 05/21/2015 - 13:22
LG has revealed a 55-inch OLED TV that’s so light and thin (1.45 kg and 0.508 millimetres thick) that it can be mounted on a wall with only magnets.
Dubbed “wallpaper TV,” the television can adhere to a wall by using a magnet attached to the television as well the surface it’s mounted on. While it’s only a proof-of-concept example, the potential of a magnetically-attachable television is exciting.
RelatedLG has not announced plans regarding whether a consumer version of their wallpaper television will be released in the future.
The wallpaper TV was revealed as part of a larger announcement from LG concerning the company’s future and its emphasis on OLED technology. OLED screens created by television manufacturers such as Samsung LG and Sony are still expensive to produce since there is a low yield rate of manufactured displays that are actually functional. These additional costs are then handed on to consumers.
LG has revealed that the company has developed a way to mass-produce large-screen OLEDs at an 80 per cent success rate. The company also revealed that it expects to sell 600,000 OLED TV panels this year and approximately 1.5 million next year.
Thu, 05/21/2015 - 08:27
This fall is the end of the beginning for Disney Interactive’s toys-to-life franchise, Disney Infinity.
The first game, released in 2013, introduced kids to the notion of purchasing plastic toy figures of iconic Disney characters from movies including The Incredibles, Monsters University, and Pirates of the Caribbean and then porting them into a game, Skylanders-style, where they went on adventures inspired by the films. In Toy Box mode they got to mash up locations and characters from disparate films, creating the potential for some very unlikely scenarios – like Mr. Incredible and Jack Sparrow visiting Monsters University together.
It was a pretty big hit, selling more than three million copies in the first few months, plus countless more figures at about $14 each.
Last year’s Disney Infinity 2.0 expanded the series by introducing Disney-owned Marvel properties to the mix, with dozens of new collectible characters and three themed adventures drawing from The Avengers, Spider-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy. All of the toys from the first game were compatible with the second, meaning Toy Box players could now make Mickey Mouse hang out with Iron Man in Andy’s room from Toy Story.
And now Disney Infinity 3.0, slated for release this fall, will add one last big Disney ingredient to the mix: Star Wars.
Disney InteractiveA scene from Star Wars: The Twilight of the Republic, the playset included with the Disney Infinity 3.0 starter pack.“We envisioned Disney Infinity 3.0 as the final introduction of the Disney Infinity brand to consumers,” said John Vignocchi, vice president of production at Avalanche Software, the studio behind all the Disney Infinity games, at a Disney Infinity 3.0 showcase in Los Angeles on May 19th.
“When we laid out the roadmap a few years ago, our idea was that the first installment would be Disney Pixar, the second would be Marvel, and the third would bring LucasFilm in,” explained John Blackburn, Avalanche’s general manager. “We now have all three members of Disney’s family in the game,” he said, suggesting that future games in the series would likely build on these three movie pillars as new Disney films are released.
To keep with the series’ aggressive yearly release schedule (and launch in time for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, due this December) Avalanche took on several major partner studios – including Ninja Theory (Heavenly Sword), Sumo Digital (LittleBigPlanet 3), and Vancouver’s United Front Games (Sleeping Dogs). These new teams expanded and refined the franchise’s combat, play modes, and visual presentation, all aiming to capture an authentic Star Wars vibe.
“Video games are often the way kids experience Star Wars for the first time,” said Ada Duan, a vice president at LucasFilm who manages the studio’s games business and has been working closely with Avalanche.
Duan said LucasFilm conducts studies to learn more about how kids around the world interact with and are introduced to Star Wars, and games rank high when it comes to first impressions. With that in mind, she wanted to ensure Disney Infinity 3.0 captures the essence of the franchise’s characters, locations, and vehicles.
“Disney Infinity 3.0 is the perfect way for generations of fans to experience Star Wars as a family for the first time,” said Duan, though she notes that with games it’s not about hitting every beat of each movie. “It’s not that every moment needs to follow the film. We want players to have agency, to have fun with it.”
Disney IntractiveThe Disney Infinity 3.0 starter pack includes two characters: Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano.Duan seems especially pleased with the way lightsaber combat turned out.
Avalanche brought in U.K.-based Ninja Theory, acclaimed for its work on the fast-paced, adult-oriented melee action game DmC: Devil May Cry, to build the campaign that comes with the starter pack – set during the events of the prequel trilogy and dubbed “Twilight of the Republic” – as well as completely revamp the series’ close quarters combat.
The result is that all playable Jedi have their own fighting styles and abilities. They can attack while hovering mid-jump, use Force push and pull skills, and animate very differently depending on the type of lightsaber(s) they use. To ensure players grow comfortable with this more sophisticated kind of combat, Twilight of the Republic focuses largely on lightsaber battles and Force mastery.
These elements will transfer forward to another playset (sold separately) called “Rise Against the Empire,” which is set during the original trilogy. Developed by Studio Gobo, this playset will introduce some radical new ideas for the franchise, including open-world spaceship battles that appear vaguely similar to LucasArts’ old Rogue Squadron games, with players attacking the Death Star in an X-Wing and taking down AT-ATs with snowspeeder tow cables.
A third Star Wars-themed playset – titled “The Force Awakens” and presumably based on the upcoming film – is in development as well, but Avalanche has yet to reveal any details beyond its name.
Non-Star Wars playsets will be available after launch as well, including a new Marvel playset (no details on this one, either), and another based on the upcoming Pixar film Inside Out about the goings-on inside an 11-year-old girl’s mind.
The latter looks like it may act as a kind of counter programming to all the Star Wars content, offering a colourful co-op-oriented adventure that’s light on fighting but heavy on new ideas, including some music-themed games and a pleasantly disconcerting 2D platformer mode that plays with our expectations of how gravity should work.
Chad SapiehaHan Solo, a collectible figure available for Disney Infinity 3.0.But with Disney’s first Star Wars movie set to launch this fall, Disney Infinity 3.0‘s focus is plainly set on George Lucas’s galaxy far, far away – including a batch of new figures that will bring Disney Infinity’s running total of collectible characters to more than 100.
The Star Wars figures revealed so far include iconic faces from the first six movies, including those of Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, Darth Maul, and Yoda. As usual, some will come with playsets, others will be available separately. In keeping with the starter pack’s focus on the prequel trilogy, it ships with Anakin Skywalker and – from the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series – young female Jedi Ahsoka Tano.
“We have a lot of female players,” said Blackburn, explaining why it was important to ensure that one of the first two characters players possess is female. “Almost half of our players are female, and they’re active members of the community. And we’ve learned that girls are twice as likely to play female characters as they are male characters.”
New Power Discs – little plastic NFC fobs that add additional themes and content for the Toy Box – will be available, too, but unlike past games in which players needed to buy them in blind packs, hoping for the ones they wanted, Avalanche is making them available in clear, franchise-themed packs, so consumers will know exactly what they’re getting.
That means buyers looking for specific discs – like new ones that unlock complete Toy Box games made by professional developers (including a new nine-course, multi-cup kart racing game and a Diablo-style dungeon crawler, which both serve as good ways to see characters like Darth Vader, Sully, Spider-Man, and Tinker Bell starring side-by-side in the same game) – can get exactly what they want.
Chad SapiehaPrincess Leia, a collectible figure available for Disney Infinity 3.0.The final and perhaps least expected difference between Disney Infinity 3.0 and its predecessors is simply that it clearly looks a lot better. Longer draw distances make for more cinematic environments, and more detail and clearer textures suggest that this third iteration taking advantage of current generation hardware in new ways.
Blackburn said that new artists at collaborating studios have a lot to do with the game’s new visual sophistication, but he also added that having a longer development cycle really helped.
“In all honesty, last year we didn’t have as much runway to start working on the Marvel edition as we did with LucasFilm and Star Wars,” said BlackBurn. “We approached LucasFilm much earlier. We’ve made a lot of technological advancements under the hood.
“We’ve just been able to really improve stuff.”
Thu, 05/21/2015 - 07:12
Shopify Inc. jumped in its trading debut, after the company raised a larger than expected US$131 million in its initial public offering.
Shopify rose 61 per cent to US$27.43 as of 9:59 a.m. in New York Trading, after the shares were sold for US$17 each. The stock is also listed in Toronto.
Shopify provides software that helps merchants sell their products online. The company was born out of a conundrum for 34-year-old founder Tobias Lutke, who had snowboards to sell over the Internet in 2004. He said in the prospectus that the software options for setting up small businesses online were complex and expensive, and started Shopify in 2006 as a result.
Today, 165,000 stores use Shopify.
Investors have been clamouring for the shares since Shopify began marketing the IPO: It initially offered the stock at US$12 to US$14, before boosting that to US$14 to US$16.
The US$17 IPO price indicates a market value of US$1.27 billion, based on 74.4 million shares outstanding.
The company doubled revenue to US$105 million last year, with almost two-thirds coming from merchants’ subscriptions. The rest is generated through services for the small businesses. Shopify posted a net loss of US$22.3 million in 2014.
Company RisksAmong the risks outlined in Shopify’s prospectus, the company cites payments. The company relies solely on Stripe Inc. to process the credit cards through merchants’ sites, and says any disruption could affect revenue. Payments are also subject to changing regulation in the various countries where Shopify operates, according to the prospectus.
Shopify is the first technology IPO to debut in Toronto since DataWind Inc.’s US$30.9 million deal June 30. Only 190 IPOs have ever listed in Toronto from the industry, compared with almost 2,000 in New York, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Bessemer Ventures, FirstMark Capital and OMERS Ventures are pre-IPO investors in Shopify, and none planned to sell shares. The company will have two classes of stock, with Class B representing 10 votes per share and Class A having one.
Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse Group AG and Royal Bank of Canada managed the offering. The stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SHOP and on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol SH.
Thu, 05/21/2015 - 06:50
Hewlett-Packard Co. sold a majority stake in its Chinese server, storage and technology assets for US$2.3 billion to Tsinghua University, becoming the first major U.S. technology company to pass control to local owners since the government stepped up restrictions on foreign firms.
A group owned by the Chinese university, Tsinghua Holdings, will purchase the 51 per cent stake in a new business called H3C. The deal values the businesses at US$4.5 billion net of cash and debt, the companies said Thursday in a statement.
China has been encouraging the use of local suppliers and aims to purge most foreign technology from the country’s banks, military and government enterprises by 2020, people with knowledge of the matter said in December.
By selling control of the businesses to Chinese investors, Hewlett-Packard seeks to win sales to state-owned companies. The Palo Alto, California-based company will maintain full ownership of its China-based enterprise services, software, HP Helion Cloud, Aruba Networks, printing and personal-systems businesses.
Related Rough QuarterHewlett-Packard’s networking units had “a rougher than anticipated” quarter, Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman told analysts in late February, noting that they struggled in China especially. Networking sales in the three months ended January 31 fell 11 per cent from a year earlier.
Under the deal, H3C will become a subsidiary of Unisplendour, a publicly traded unit of Tsinghua Holdings. Unisplendour, a software vendors and system integrator, has been in a long-term strategic distribution partnership with Hewlett-Packard since 1999.
The new H3C generated adjusted revenue of US$3.1 billion and adjusted operating profit of US$400 million last year, according to the companies’ statement.
Hewlett-Packard shares rose less than one per cent to US$33.15 in premarket trading Thursday.
Bloomberg News reported in March that Tsinghua, ICBC International Ltd.’s direct-investment arm RT Capital and state- owned China Huaxin Post & Telecommunication Economy Development Center were on a short list of bidders for the Hewlett-Packard units.
— With assistance from Tim Culpan in Taipei and Jonathan Browning in Hong Kong.
Thu, 05/21/2015 - 06:06
TORONTO — Kevin Crull — the former president of Bell Media, who quit after apologizing for trying to influence the editorial decisions of CTV journalists — has a new job at Sprint.
The U.S. telecommunications company says Crull will become its chief marketing officer at the end of May.
In that job, Crull will be responsible for Sprint’s advertising and marketing and all social media efforts.
Sprint’s president and CEO, Marcelo Claure, says in a statement that Crull’s experience at Bell Media will help the American telecom company provide unique content to its wireless customers.
RelatedUntil his departure on April 9, Crull had been head of one of Canada’s biggest media operations, which includes the CTV television network, a variety of specialty television channels and a radio network.
He had been criticized publicly for attempting to limit the amount of air time that CTV News gave to the head of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which regulates Bell Media and its parent BCE Inc.
Thu, 05/21/2015 - 05:47
Ottawa’s latest tech star — a burgeoning software empire called Shopify — is set to begin issuing shares to the public.
The TSX and New York Stock Exchange Wednesday conditionally approved the listing of 7.7 million shares, which are being offered at US$17 — higher than expected. Trading could begin May 27.
It’s the clearest sign possible that you can build successful high-tech firms in the National Capital Region — and this means investors are once more giving Ottawa-Gatineau a second look.
Eight years ago, Shopify founder Tobias Lütke and his fellow entrepreneurs were generating a few thousand dollars a month selling snowboards over the Internet. Their headquarters was a small space above a Bridgehead coffee house on Elgin Street — a location that allowed the cash-strapped firm to pinch Wi-Fi signals.
Today, a good chunk of Shopify’s 630-plus employees operate out of a stunning new tower on the same street. The company last year recorded sales of US$105 million — none of it involving snowboards. Lütke and his founders determined the best way to make money was to license software that allows other entrepreneurs and retailers to build electronic storefronts.
Shopify hit a sweet spot. More than 160,000 merchants in 150 countries rely on its software, sold through monthly subscriptions. During Shopify’s most recent quarter, ended March 31, revenues were running at an annual rate of US$150 million.
Although the company is still gushing serious losses — about US$22.3 million last year — it is the growth potential that has investors excited.
With approval from the TSX and NYSE a virtual certainty, Shopify expects to raise US$130.9 million, which would be used to further expand the company’s operations and software offerings.
This would be the region’s largest initial public offering since 2010, when Mitel raked in US$147 million. It would also exceed the US$124 million initial public offering in 1998 by Entrust Technologies — which executed the region’s richest IPO during the tech boom.
At US$17 per share, Shopify will have a value of nearly US$1.3 billion — more than that of Mitel Networks, until now the region’s richest in terms of market capital.
Shopify’s IPO seems likely to serve as an important catalyst for new startups in the region. No fewer than five venture capital firms invested heavily in Lütke’s firm — and all will do very nicely.
Bessemer — for decades a Silicon Valley beacon for entrepreneurs — and FirstMark Capital of New York contributed the most to Shopify’s equity. They own 20.2 million and 7.9 million shares, respectively. It’s not known what they paid for their equity, but the average price paid by all of Shopify’s current shareholders was just $1.34 per share.
Bessemer, FirstMark and other venture firms will have no trouble with the idea of returning phone calls from other Ottawa startups.
The IPO will also make wealthy men of founders Lütke, Daniel Weinand and Cody Fauser. Hundreds of Shopify employees will benefit. Lütke owns nearly 10 million shares, while Weinand and Fauser hold more than 1.3 million each. This is potential seed capital for entrepreneurial colleagues.
Shopify’s early success is a good reminder that — despite the bursting of the late 1990s telecom bubble — the National Capital Region remains Canada’s most technology-intensive city. Last year, eight per cent of the region’s workforce was high-tech — by far the highest among Canada’s 35 largest cities. Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto were next at 5.8 per cent and 5.4 per cent, respectively.
Our lead in the past few months has been slipping somewhat, which is why a catalyst from Shopify is timely. Overall, high-tech employment in Ottawa-Gatineau has dropped about 8,000 since hitting a recent peak last summer of 56,700. (This, according to Statistics Canada — based on a 12-month moving average, rather than the extremely volatile three-month average usually published by the agency.)
It’s not clear what’s driving the recent decline, but it may be temporary. Shopify’s IPO is just the latest in a string of IPOs since Mitel returned to the stock market five years ago. Halogen Software and Kinaxis raised $55 million and $100 million, respectively — and have been adding customers and employees at a fast clip. Tweed Inc. and other firms have started trading on the TSX Venture exchange.
What’s reassuring is the diversity. Halogen markets human resources software globally to more than 1,700 customers while Kinaxis — the latest version of a tech pioneer that has undergone several name changes (Carp Systems International and WebPlan among them) — makes software that helps companies track inventories electronically.
Kinaxis has done the best out of the IPO gate. Its share price has more than doubled over the past year as the firm has consistently delivered strong revenue growth and improved profits. The Kanata firm’s market value recently topped $700 million.
While Mitel’s shares are down about 35 per cent since its 2010 IPO, the company’s CEO, Rich McBee, has recently orchestrated a string of acquisitions en route to building a US$1.2 billion-a-year global concern. Its sales and earnings are recovering smartly.
There’s much that can go wrong following Shopify’s IPO. It’s just the nature of high tech. But if Lütke and his colleagues get the formula right, they could very well create a flagship firm capable of spinning off cash and entrepreneurs for years to come.
Certainly that’s how Lütke saw his role when he told the Citizen a little more than three years ago: “I want to build one of Canada’s greatest success stories,” he says. “That’s been my goal for a very long time.”
He’s still a long way from achieving it. But he’s getting closer by the day.
Ottawa Citizen
Wed, 05/20/2015 - 16:14
One of the backers of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment Ltd. was noticeably missing at Wednesday’s press conference that unveiled the new owners of the Canadian Football League’s Toronto Argonauts, BCE Inc. and MLSE chairman Larry Tanenbaum’s Kilmer Group: Rogers Communications Inc.
Bitter rivals BCE and Rogers put their feud aside when they teamed up in 2011 to buy a majority interest in MLSE. Along with Tanenbaum, the pair own the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Raptors, Toronto FC and the Marlies, among other media assets and real estate. Rogers also owns the Blue Jays and the Rogers Centre.
The duo has been adding to their libraries of coveted sports media rights, content that is best consumed live. Notably, in 2013, BCE bought the exclusive rights to CFL content on a variety of mediums through the 2018 football season. The telcos sell sports to their cable, Internet and smartphone subscribers — and then they sell the audiences these games amass to deep-pocketed advertisers.
RelatedThe absence of Rogers from the Argos’ new, long-awaited ownership structure suggests that while sports may be the king of live content, not all sports and franchises are made equal.
“We already have the most-coveted sports assets and content in Canada,” Andrea Goldstein, spokeswoman at Rogers Media, said Wednesday in an email, adding the company is “glad” the Argos have found a new owner and a new home at BMO Field once their lease at the Rogers Centre expires after the 2017 season. “We’re focusing our energy on delivering great hockey coverage and the Blue Jays.”
Not only is Rogers busy juggling the other sports teams it either owns or co-owns, or finding space to show the slew of hockey games it’ll pay $5.2 billion to air over 12 years, but any investment it would have poured into the Argos would have knowingly fed the content pipes and laced the pockets of its foe Bell.
“For Rogers, a competitor, to buy the team, when broadcast is the main element of the league, just didn’t make sense,” said Bob Stellick of Toronto’s Stellick Marketing Communications. “The challenge is the Argos have lost a lot of money at the gate for a number of years. The synergy component might make some sense: If the Argos get better, TV ratings will improve the value and that’s only going to accrue to TSN.”
Financial Post
cpellegrini@nationalpost.com
Wed, 05/20/2015 - 12:40
Scott Miller has more than a passing interest in Shopify Inc.’s initial public offering.
The chief executive officer of Vision Critical Communications Inc., a marketing-software company, is eager to see how the first big IPO of a wave of Canadian technology companies goes because he’s prepping his own firm for the “public eye,” Miller said.
“We want to see it go extremely well because all it does is expand the options for companies like Vision Critical,” he said in an interview at Bloomberg’s Toronto office.
Those options include an IPO of its own, adding to its more than $40 million in private funding, or an outright sale, Miller said. “I can see over the next two to three years, all three of them having a certain degree of appeal and viability.”
Shopify is expected to begin trading this week with an IPO that aims to raise as much as $123.2 million. That would value the company at more than $1 billion. The Ottawa-based software company joins other tech firms including Stingray Digital Media Group that plan to tap public markets.
Vision Critical, whose clients include NASCAR and Banana Republic, sells software that helps companies build online communities of customers that can give feedback on new products and approaches.
With revenue of more than $100 million in 2014, the Vancouver-based company is coming of age as companies boost spending on everything from tracking shoppers on social media to buying online adspace. Marketing departments will spend $44 billion on software by 2020, an almost four-fold increase from 2014, according to venture capital firm Foundation Capital LLC.
Customer Feedback
Vision Critical’s “insight communities” have five million members worldwide. Customers enjoy getting a glimpse of new products before they hit shelves, while companies get better insight into what their target market is looking for, founder and chief product officer Andrew Reid said in the interview.
“Consumers don’t want to be dictated to, they want to have a dialogue,” said Ashu Garg, general partner at Foundation Capital who’s invested in marketing technology companies including Boston-based Localytics and Emeryville, California- based TubeMogul Inc.
Vision Critical’s clients pay on a subscription basis, depending on how many people they want in the community. After Colombian airline Avianca merged with TACA it used a Vision Critical community to help develop its flight attendants’ uniforms, inflight magazines and even the kind of food it served, Reid said.
Related‘Competitive Space’
“The large companies in the space frankly have not figured it out,” Garg said by phone. “Whether it’s Vision Critical or TubeMogul or Localytics that can scale, I am a big believer that there is a massive opportunity.”
Vision Critical is just one among dozens of software-makers fighting for attention and money from marketers, Garg said.
“When there are big opportunities there are lots of people that see the big opportunities,” he said. “It’s a competitive space.”
Reid started Vision Critical in 2000 with his father Angus Reid, one of Canada’s best-known social researchers. The first project was an online focus group for female runners, he said. Miller was hired in 2012 after 12 years at market research firm Synovate Ltd.
Miller won’t rule out pulling the trigger on an IPO if the company sees the right opportunity. With the end of a decade-long commodity bull market and a drop in oil prices, Canadian investors are eager for technology offerings in a country where the industry accounts for less than 3 per cent of the benchmark equity index.
For now, the focus is on growing revenue and setting up the business so income and expenses are more predictable, he said. The company has increased revenue to more than C$100 million from C$5 million in 2006, Reid said. Recurring revenue from subscriptions is growing 30 per cent a year, Miller said.
“We can’t not get kind of excited by the ‘hey, Shopify’s going, when are you guys thinking about it?’,” he said. “At the same time, we have a fiduciary responsibility to do what’s right for our shareholders.”
–With assistance from Christopher Donville in Vancouver.
Wed, 05/20/2015 - 09:39
While saying that it’s still a music company at heart, Spotify says it is expanding is lineup to include podcasts, news radio and video streaming.
The company says it wants to help people create a soundtrack for their day that includes not only music but videos, newscasts and other content.
CEO Daniel Ek said that the new service launches Wednesday in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Sweden.
Spotify offers free streaming music and also a premium service for a monthly fee that includes extra features. The company didn’t say it is changing its cost structure.
Ek announced the new offerings at an event Wednesday in New York, highlighting content from the online media outlet Vice, along with Comedy Central. The videos will complement the Swedish company’s lineup of songs and other audio programming.
RelatedSpotify joins other online-content companies looking to video to accelerate advertising growth, because marketers spend more for the spots than for audio, print, photo or text promotions. Facebook Inc. has expanded its use of video, as have have Twitter Inc. and publishers like the New York Times Co. and Conde Nast Inc.
“A digital video service from Spotify is a logical extension of the company’s success in digital music streaming, since these are complementary businesses that use much of the same technology infrastructure, marketing expertise, and vendor relationships,” Paul Verna, senior analyst at researcher eMarketer, said in an e-mail before the announcement.
Most of Spotify’s more than 60 million users around the world listen to its free, advertising-supported music-streaming service. The company makes most of its money from subscriptions, which cost $9.99 a month in the U.S. It has more than 15 million paying customers.
Of the more than US$1 billion in revenue Spotify generated in 2013, less than US$100 million came from advertising, the New York Times reported in November. The company isn’t profitable, the newspaper said.
Spotify faces increased competition. Apple is about the unveil a new subscription streaming service using some of the technology it acquired in its US$3 billion deal for Beats Electronics and YouTube is plotting a subscription video product.
With files from Bloomberg.com, The Associated Press
Wed, 05/20/2015 - 09:17
TORONTO — The Federal Court of Appeal has rejected a bid by the country’s wireless service providers to delay the implementation of the wireless code of conduct.
The CRTC introduced the new code in June 2013 to give consumers better protection against high cellphone roaming charges and wireless contract cancellation fees.
Wireless operators including Rogers Communications, Telus and BCE Inc. launched legal action last July after raising concerns that some provisions of the code would apply retroactively to all of their customers once fully implemented.
In writing the decision for the three-member panel, Justice Denis Pelletier said the CRTC “has the right to make the wireless code applicable to contracts concluded before the code came into effect.”
RelatedOnce in force, the wireless code would require carriers to limit early cancellation fees, data roaming fees and overage charges, and imposes restrictions on the locking of wireless devices.
The code will apply to all customers, regardless of when they signed contracts.
“Given the CRTC’s intention to put more information into the hands of consumers so as to increase the dynamism of the market, it is reasonable to have all consumers on the same footing as soon as possible,” Pelletier wrote.
OpenMedia, which represented Canadians throughout the court challenge with legal experts, hailed the decision as a victory.
“This is a major win!” OpenMedia campaigns manager Josh Tabish said in a release. “By standing together, Canadians fought back against telecom giants in court and won.”
The Canadian Press
Tue, 05/19/2015 - 12:38
By his own account, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has been predicting the introduction of an Apple TV “for the better part of the last decade.” However, following a report from the Wall Street Journal on Monday that the company decided to abandon this product line, he had no choice but to pen a mea culpa this morning, titled “Facing the Reality Of No Apple Television.”
“Given how adamant we have been about the reality of an Apple television, it’s hard to accept the reality of no Apple television,” Munster wrote. “While it is a small consolation that the article affirms that Apple was actually working on a television during that period, in the end we were wrong in our constant expectation of the product.”
Munster isn’t giving up on Apple entirely. Instead of launching a TV set, he thinks the company will be able to focus on making headway in “the real future of the living room,” perhaps with a foray into the virtual reality space.
“We note that over the past two years, Apple CEO Tim Cook has consistently highlighted the living room as an area of intense interest and described the TV viewing experience as broken,” Munster wrote. “We believe that Apple is actively working on early virtual and augmented reality products, although we may be 5+ years away from seeing these products launched.”
RelatedAnd that, to the analyst, is the biggest disappointment stemming from this new revelation: “[I]t implies that the next incremental product category will take several more years.”
Another person who has to be disappointed is billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn. On Monday, he published an open letter to Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook imploring Cook to expand the size of the company’s share buyback program immediately and explaining why Icahn had considered Apple’s stock nearly 50 per cent undervalued.
Icahn’s estimate for fiscal year 2016 was predicated on a new “Ultra High Definition television set” set contributing $0.87 to earnings per share. Without this, his projection for annual EPS growth decelerates to 16 per cent, from 25 per cent. His case for multiple expansion was also grounded in the company’s entry into both the TV and automotive markets, given the potential profit opportunities available in those areas.
Tue, 05/19/2015 - 11:09
Apple Inc. unveiled a new version of its popular 15-inch MacBook Pro laptop line as well as a refreshed 27-inch iMac featuring a 5K high-resolution display on Tuesday, weeks ahead of its annual developers conference where it usually announces hardware updates.
Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Pro laptop – starting at $2,449 – is set to feature a haptic feedback trackpad, faster flash SSD storage and extended battery life, bringing the device’s total battery length to approximately nine hours.
The “Force Touch” trackpad heavily touted during the new 12-inch Macbook’s initial reveal will also be featured in this version of the MacBook Pro. This new trackpad technology is pressure sensitive and is similar to the vibration technology in the Cupertino, California-based company’s recently released Apple Watch.
RelatedApple also revealed the new MacBook Pro is set to come equipped with internal storage that is two-and-a-half times faster than what was featured in previous models of the computer, as well as a dedicated graphics card. The new base model 15-inch MacBook Pro features a 2.2 GHZ quad-core Intel i7 processor, 16 GBs of RAM and 256 GBs of internal storage.
Additionally, Apple has plans to launch an updated $2,399 version of its popular 27-inch iMac home computer, which is set to replace the top non-retina iMac. The lowest-end iMac with 5K retina display features a 3.3 Ghz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor, Radeon R9 M290 graphics card, 8 GB of RAM and 1 TB of internal storage.
Updates for both Apple’s iMac and MacBook Pro have been expected by industry analysts, but a reveal was predicted to occur during company’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in early June.
Industry speculation indicates Apple will finally reveal its music streaming service, as well as possible the company’s long-rumoured Apple TV, at WWDC in early June. Apple purchased Beats Electronics in a US$3 billion acquisition last May.
With files from Associated Press
Mon, 05/18/2015 - 08:45
TORONTO • If Kijiji is remembered at all in the United States, it is probably as one of eBay’s unsuccessful attempts to challenge Craigslist in online classified ads. But in Canada, Kijiji is now practically synonymous with classifieds.
More than 12 million people visit Kijiji’s site in Canada every month, three times the amount drawn to Craigslist in the country. The service is used by 42 per cent of Canadians, according to comScore, making it one of the country’s 10 most popular sites. It has also eclipsed other companies’ online businesses, including Cox Automotive’s once dominant used-car site, AutoTrader.
That success is a striking counterexample to the globalization of the Web, in which services like Facebook and Google offer a single product worldwide. It also represents one of the few online brands that fizzled in the United States but found success elsewhere, as the social media pioneer Friendster has in the Philippines and Malaysia.
I couldn’t even read it with all the i’s and the j’s
How Kijiji achieved those feats is partly a story of good timing, arriving in Canada before Craigslist really took off in this country. The success is also the result of the company’s tailoring itself to the subtle distinctions of the market, catering in particular to the tendency of Canadians toward thriftiness.
“Canadians are traditionally penny pinchers, which manifests itself in consumer buying differences,” said Warren Shiau, consulting director of buyer behaviour research at the market analysis firm IDC Canada. “Kijiji has no fees for anything outside of a few specific big-ticket categories, which appeals to the penny pinchers in us.”
These days, Kijiji has 6.7 million listings on the site. The operation has expanded to the point that its offices sprawl through two 19th-century former factories in downtown Toronto. While eBay does not separately disclose Kijiji’s financial results or the results for eBay Canada, the classifieds site is eBay’s largest operation in Canada. Variations of Kijiji now run in 32 other countries. And eBay Classifieds succeeded Kijiji in the United States.
But Kijiji’s success in Canada was far from certain – and it arose less from any master plan by eBay than from the desire by an eBay official, Janet Bannister, and her husband to move back to their native Canada in 2004.
RelatedFour years earlier, Bannister joined eBay in California and became director of category development, working to expand the online auction site beyond its original niche of collectible trinkets. When she returned to Canada, as director of product, she was put in charge of the features in the Canadian version of eBay.
She soon found that the operation had a significant problem.
“EBay Canada was doing a very good job of getting people in Canada to the website, but we were doing a terrible job actually getting them to transact on the website,” said Bannister, who is now a general partner at Real Ventures, a seed capital investment fund. “We did some things on the website to try to address it, but it didn’t really close the gap.”
A fundamental problem for eBay in Canada, Shiau said, is that Canadians generally do not like auction-based pricing. On top of that, Bannister found that because Canada’s vast geography and low population density make shipping costs high and delivery times long, buyers of secondhand goods preferred to make deals in person.
Screen grab/KijijiThese days, Kijiji has 6.7 million listings on the site.To Bannister, the answer for eBay seemed to be online classified ads. At the head office, however, the idea did not appear to be quite so obvious. At the time, about 10 per cent of Canadians used Craigslist, a level many eBay executives thought meant that it was fully entrenched. Nevertheless, they gave Bannister some classifieds site software being developed for Europe along with a small amount of money to adapt the site and market the result.
The only thing the head office of eBay in California imposed was the name, Kijiji – pronounced Ka-jee-jee – which is Swahili for village. Bannister was horrified.
“I was in a conference room and I wrote it down,” Bannister said of taking the call from the head office about the name. “I couldn’t even read it with all the i’s and the j’s. I said, ‘I don’t care what it means. You’ve got to have a name people can pronounce and people can spell.’ ”
There was no budging from headquarters on the name, though, so Bannister moved forward. At first, she avoided challenging Craigslist directly.
Research showed that Craigslist was used in Canada mainly by young men looking for accommodations or to place personal ads, so Kijiji turned to young families and their quickly changing needs. Kijiji also was introduced in Montreal and Quebec City, largely French-speaking communities where Craigslist was then available only in English.
Canada is a bright spot… where customers have helped us build a fun, easy, safe place to buy, sell, trade, search and more through Kijiji
Listings swiftly grew. Making money, however, was a more gradual process. Among other things, the site did not even introduce banner advertising until it had become fully established.
Today, Kijiji has three revenue sources. In addition to banner ads, the site sells more prominent positions within results and more elaborate displays for ads like photo galleries.
Also, car dealers and housing rental companies pay subscription fees for their listings. Despite those fees, the autos section is hugely popular, with 4.6 million vehicles listed last year, said Scott Neil, managing director of Kijiji in Canada.
The growth, though, has come with criticism. The site’s pet listings led to protests from animal rights groups that it had become a haven for puppy mills, which led to policy changes. And there are the somewhat predictable schemes. This year, a 25-year-old man was arrested and charged with fraud for reportedly using Kijiji to rent and collect deposits on a summer cottage he did not own.
Neil said that the company had about 60 employees who searched listings for fraud.
Although Kijiji is now used by almost half of all Canadians, eBay continues to advertise it heavily, placing ads on buses and on television during the current hockey playoffs.
Johnna Hoff, a spokeswoman for eBay, said the classifieds site fit into the company’s broader mission of connecting people in their communities.
“Canada is a bright spot,” she said, “where customers have helped us build a fun, easy, safe place to buy, sell, trade, search and more through Kijiji.”
As use of the site becomes more widespread, it could risk losing the sense of community built during its early days. But Neil said there was just something innately Canadian about the service.
“I was a user of Kijiji before I came here,” Neil said. “The one thing that surprised me was really how much people loved the site. Maybe I sound like I’m overemphasizing that, but I couldn’t believe how much it really resonated with Canadians.”
The New York Times News Service
Mon, 05/18/2015 - 05:00
Last fall’s epic sci-fi strategy and simulation game Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth put players in the shoes of a colonial leader looking to establish a new home for humanity on a distant planet.
It was loads of fun, putting a sci-fi twist on some familiar Civilization mechanics while introducing fresh concepts, such as an orbital layer above the main map within which players could places helpful satellites, and multi-part quests that introduced a clever kind of narrative for the franchise’s tried-and-true civilization-building formula.
But there was room for some improvements. And Firaxis Games’ Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth – The Rising Tide, a major expansion due this fall, aims to deliver them.
Speaking via telephone from the studio’s Sparks, Maryland headquarters, Beyond Earth co-designers Will Miller and David McDonough laid out what fans can expect from their hit game’s first big add-on, comparing it not to the expansions of previous Civilization games but rather XCOM: Enemy Unknown‘s (another Firaxis game) acclaimed Enemy Within expansion.
“That expansion changed everything about the base game,” explained McDonough. “It fundamentally redefined what people experienced and how the game is played. And we think of our expansion as redefining how Beyond Earth plays, from top to bottom.”
But The Rising Tide isn’t just about major game-changing tweaks (which we’ll get to in a moment). There are also plenty of upgrades typical of past Civilization expansions, including lots of new content.
For example, there will be four new factions, like the Al Falah, a group of Middle-Eastern descent who survived a devastating ecological disaster on Earth and are latecomers to the colonial seeding process. They went into space to find a new home after the base game’s original eight factions, under different and more challenging circumstances.
“We wanted to introduce leaders and factions that are more radical,” said McDonough. “The Al Falah’s ships don’t have cryogenics. They don’t sleep. Instead, they’re generation ships. They house multiple generations of humanity before arriving in the new world. These people have never seen Earth, or really any planet. They’ve only lived in space. Their perspective on what having a planet means, and to have power, and to compete on a world is quite a bit different, and very radical compared to the other factions. All four of the new factions are designed to be extreme and exciting in their own way.”
2K Games
There will also be a couple of new biomes, only one of which – a primordial environment – has been revealed.
“It’s a young world, a new planet; think Cretaceous Period Earth,” said McDonough. “Expect lots of volcanoes, seismic activity, and heat. It’s a hot world, very active, very different to play in than any of the original biomes.”
What’s more, the quests that proved so popular in the original are set to grow in number and complexity.
“We wanted to expand quests significantly,” said Miller. “There are new variations on existing quests and new rewards. We’ve actually doubled the quest catalogue compared to the original.”
But it’s the alterations to core systems that look set to really shake things up. To start, Firaxis is scrapping Beyond Earth‘s existing diplomacy system, which was essentially ported whole from Sid Meier’s Civilization V.
“The Civ V diplomacy system relies on the player’s assumed knowledge of historical figures,” said Miller. “You understand intuitively how Gandhi or Montezuma might behave, and build strategies around that. But our characters in Beyond Earth are invented from whole cloth, without the same backgrounds for players to take advantage of.”
In contrast, the new diplomacy system is trait-based. You’ll be able to go to a faction menu screen and see the leader’s traits and their special abilities, which will provide clues as to how they might act and which bonuses are applied to their actions. You can then apply this information in your play style and diplomatic dealings.
“We wanted to make a system out of the concept of a personality and how it changes over the game,” said Miller. “As a player you’ll invest in crafting a personality, and the AI players will be doing the same thing.”
2K Games
This apparently opens the path for more wheeling and dealing and allows players to flex their leader’s political muscle. Negotiations will span a broad scope rather than simply serving as a means to trade resources, declare war, or set the status of your civilization’s borders. A military focused civilization, for example, can use the new diplomacy system in clever, strategic ways to boost other elements of their society, such as science.
“We’ve built diplomacy to be a way for players to solve problems and strengthen themselves,” said Miller. “It overlaps with other systems, and plays a very important role from moment you first meet another civilization.”
Another major change is expanded naval play. Players will now be allowed to settle cities on the water, potentially opening huge new swaths of the map for strategic exploitation.
“You’ll be able to explore the oceans like never before,” said Miller. “That comes with a whole slew of new units, new resource types, and new ways to play on the oceans.”
The enhancements to naval play also gave Firaxis’ artists a chance to redesign the game’s water tiles, making them much more realistic and diverse.
“There are some completely new rendering and shader combinations so that you can see through the sea surface to the sea floor below, whether shallow, deep, or ocean abyss,” said McDonough. “You’ll see the resources, terrain, the creatures that live down there. It’s really come to life. Now the whole planet surface is a living and vibrant place.”
2K Games
The final big game changer is the concept of hybrid affinities. Affinities in Beyond Earth resulted from the way you guided your civilization’s development and how you chose to adapt to alien life forms. They were part of a non-linear technology progression system, and each affinity catered to a different kind of play style. There were three affinities in the base game, and now Firaxis has added three more, all hybrids of the originals.
“Once Beyond Earth went live, we found that there were ways players could play exploratively and kind of screw themselves in the late game,” said Miller, laughing a little. “They weren’t able to compete with AI or other players who had found paths that would get them affinity points quickly.
“The new hybrid affinities allow you to explore the tech web in ways you haven’t been able to before. You can go in two directions, acquiring affinity as you go, and unlock specialized unique units that complement play styles of both of the affinities you’re splitting. We’re adding a ton of new units to make hybrid builds more militarily viable for specific play styles. It fills out and balances our vision for the tech tree.”
Both Miller and McDonough expressed that while they had a clear picture of how they wanted to evolve the game post-release, everything in the expansion is fresh. Nothing was held back when the base game released. All features and content were developed specifically for The Rising Tide, and much of it is the result of lessons learned after launch and constructive criticism from some of the game’s most dedicated fans.
“A lot of what you’re seeing in this expansion is our response to what we’ve received in fan feedback,” said McDonough. “We’re elaborating on previous systems we’d introduced and integrating feedback we received from our fans.
“It’s a huge expansion. Lots of new content and gameplay concepts,” adds Miller. “It’s all for our fans.”
Fri, 05/15/2015 - 08:33
The first batch of home automation accessories, such as thermostats and garage door openers, compatible with Apple Inc’s software platform will go on sale in June, the tech company said Thursday.
HomeKit is a set of tools in Apple’s iOS 8 software designed to work with smart home devices. The company announced the home automation platform at its conference for developers last year, but devices compatible with the software have yet to appear in stores.
“HomeKit has been available for just a few months and we already have dozens of partners who have committed to bringing HomeKit accessories to market and we’re looking forward to the first ones coming next month,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said in a statement.
RelatedApple did not specify where the accessories would be sold.
Apple’s statement followed a report from Fortune that the first HomeKit enabled devices would not be available until August or September.
IDevices has said it will begin selling in the fourth quarter a HomeKit-compatible switch to control doors, lights and other products.
“We’re testing the software, and it works very well,” Chris Allen, chief executive officer of Avon, Connecticut-based iDevices, said Thursday.
© Thomson Reuters 2015, with files from Bloomberg
Fri, 05/15/2015 - 05:53
Netflix Inc. is in talks with a Chinese media company backed by Jack Ma and other possible partners as it seeks entry into the country’s US$5.9 billion online video market, according to people familiar with the matter.
Netflix has held discussions with companies including Wasu Media Holding Co. about forming a partnership, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. Netflix plans “to be nearly global by the end of 2016,” a spokeswoman, Anne Marie Squeo, said in response to questions about a possible China partnership.
China is too big to have an asterisk next to it
Entering China would allow the broadcaster of “House of Cards” and “Orange Is the New Black” to take advantage of what’s forecast to be explosive growth in online television in the nation of 1.4 billion people. The market is expected to almost triple to 90 billion yuan by 2018, according to Shanghai- based Internet consultant IResearch.
Wasu’s Shenzhen-traded shares, which had been down as much as 10 per cent in the morning, reversed declines and briefly rose to a record. They closed little changed at 56.59 yuan.
A local partnership would be essential given the Chinese government’s strict controls over licensing for online content. Netflix wants a partner that has licenses for content on all devices — including mobile phones, computers and set-top boxes, according to the people. China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television has given Internet TV licenses to seven companies, including Wasu.
RelatedWasu didn’t respond to an e-mail seeking comment. Two phone calls to Wasu’s general line weren’t answered.
Netflix, based in Los Gatos, California, is investing heavily in original programming to keep the U.S. business growing and support international expansion.
“China is too big to have an asterisk next to it,” Netflix’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said in Cannes, France, on Friday. “There are a lot of operating constraints in China that are different to anywhere else. We don’t have any operating partners anywhere else in the world, so that would be a new skill for us too.”
Sarandos, speaking to film buyers, executives and producers, did not comment on specific companies. The Cannes Film Festival is for the first time hosting a three-day China Summit to help film professionals in the country’s market.
Netflix would need to sort out content censorship regulations with Chinese authorities. Starting this April, new episodes of foreign programs — including “Mad Men” and “The Simpsons” — can’t be shown until after the shows’ seasons have ended, according to a government notice.
Episodes need to handed in to censors for approval, and content deemed violent, sexual or offensive to the ruling Communist Party can be cut, according to notices.
Wasu, one of the first in China to receive an Internet TV license from the government, has been working with Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to produce set-top boxes since 2013. Wasu operates cable TV and broadband networks in Hangzhou, where Alibaba is based.
Wasu said in April last year it would sell a 20 per cent stake to Alibaba Chairman Ma and fellow billionaire Shi Yuzhu.
–With assistance from Anousha Sakoui in Cannes, France.
Thu, 05/14/2015 - 12:58
BlackBerry Ltd. has come a long way since CEO John Chen took over in late 2013. And for that reason, the company’s long-term survival now seems much more assured.
That said, BlackBerry still has plenty of challenges ahead. Its brand does not have a good image, which seems to be holding back sales. Reports have surfaced that its software offering isn’t catching on. And the company remains well behind in the app war. Personally, I expect sales to disappoint for a while.
In the long term, there’s a lot of value in BlackBerry: it has a leadership position in security; its QNX operating system is very strong; and it’s well positioned in the growing Internet of Things marketplace. Its war chest of 44,000 patents is a key asset, and who can forget BlackBerry Messenger (BBM)?
Given BlackBerry’s weak brand, those assets would probably be more valuable in the hands of an acquirer. I’m not predicting a takeover any time soon, but if BlackBerry continues with its revenue struggles, then this may become more realistic. But who are the most likely suitors?
Related1. Samsung or Google
In January reports surfaced that Samsung made an offer to buy BlackBerry. Even though no acquisition ended up happening, it’s easy to see why Samsung would be interested.
For one, Samsung has struggled to gain a foothold in the enterprise market, mainly because it doesn’t have the same security capabilities as its competitors. A takeover of BlackBerry would certainly help with that problem.
Secondly, BlackBerry’s patent portfolio could be a key asset for Samsung as it battles Apple Inc. in U.S. courts.
Google Inc. could also make a push for BlackBerry, and its motivations would be similar to Samsung’s. The Android operating system is making little headway in the enterprise market, and Google is also battling Apple in the courts.
2. Apple
BlackBerry shares spiked on Monday when rumours surfaced that Apple was considering a takeover bid. How likely is such a buyout?
On the surface a takeover seems possible. Apple has had its own security issues (the main one being a celebrity nude photo scandal last year) and could potentially use BlackBerry’s help in this area. Furthermore, BlackBerry’s patent portfolio could once again be a valuable asset.
Apple could also buy BlackBerry as a favour to the U.S. government, which does not want to see the BlackBerry brand die.
I still don’t see this happening. It would be very out of character for Apple, and I doubt the technology giant really needs BlackBerry anyways.
3. Lenovo
I’ve only included Lenovo on this list because it has pursued BlackBerry in the past.
That being the case, this merger looks extremely unlikely. Lenovo is a Chinese company, so any takeover would surely be rejected by the Canadian government. It would also upset the U.S. government—BlackBerry’s biggest customer.
Remember, these are only three of the many potential suitors, and more could emerge down the road. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
The original version of this article can be viewed at www.fool.ca
Thu, 05/14/2015 - 12:32
I used to look forward to playing the occasional match-three puzzle game, but I’ve grown extremely leery of the genre in recent years.
For every strategic and balanced entry there are dozens poorly designed knockoffs created not to challenge players with fun, balanced play, but instead taunt them with luck-driven puzzles and unfair progression systems that encourage people to spend to win. This past winter’s Pokemon Shuffle, which began with some promise before quickly descending into a pay-based catastrophe, is the most recent example I had the misfortune of trying.
It was with some trepidation, then, that I plugged – the incredibly awkwardly named – Puzzle & Dragons Z + Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros. Edition into my Nintendo 3DS last week and began slinging around tiles with my stylus.
I was surprised and delighted to discover, however, that it’s just about the best match three puzzle game I’ve played in years.
NintendoI haven’t played the original free-to-play Puzzle & Dragons for mobile devices or any of its spinoffs, so I don’t have a frame of reference for how this version compares to its predecessors. I understand, though, that they incorporated in-app purchases that cleverly lured players to spend, spend, spend on virtual currency. They’re smartly dissected in this great Gamasutra piece that examines popular free-to-play monetization techniques.
However, the Nintendo 3DS version is pay once, play forever. That means the designers had no reason to insert progression gates or arbitrarily ramp up difficulty to frustrate players into spending more. And the resulting game is one in which strategy is rewarded and progression is constant and satisfying.
Well, it’s two games, actually.
The first, Puzzle & Dragons Z, is a fresh take on the original mobile game while the second, Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros. Edition, drapes a Nintendo-themed blanket over Puzzle & Dragons’ core machinery.
The puzzles in both are broken into dungeons consisting of multiple battles. Each battle sees one or more enemies appear on the top screen with a life bar. Your goal is to whittle their health down to nothing by sliding tiles around to create matching rows of three or more matching orbs. Each matched row causes any monsters of the corresponding colour on your team to attack your enemies.
NintendoThere’s all sorts of strategy going on here that needs to be unpacked.
First off, you can pick the members of your team – including a special helper character with a unique power that might, say, increase the attack power of allies of a particular affinity or change orbs of one colour to another – prior to each dungeon. You pick these teammates based not only on their current level and abilities, but also the types of tiles and opposing monsters slated to appear in specific dungeons. There’s a rock-paper-scissors kind of math that governs everything. It’s pretty easy to understand.
Then, once you’re in the dungeon and fighting enemies, you’ll need to carefully plan each move before putting stylus to screen. Unlike most match-three games, you can move single tiles anywhere you like on the board. And instead of just swapping locations with one other tile, you’ll displace each tile you pass along the way.
It’s a little confusing at first, but it’s also enormously empowering. During a single five-second turn you can quickly adjust the position of every tile on the screen. If you take the time to figure out exactly how you want to move your tile prior to moving it you can make multiple matches resulting in huge – and hugely satisfying – combo attacks. It’s great stuff.
The strategy extends outside the dungeon, too. You can upgrade your allies in various ways, sacrificing one to level up another or evolving them into new and more powerful forms using rare resources earned through combat. These and other forms of ally manipulation are slowly unlocked over dozens of dungeons and several hours.
There’s still some luck involved. You can’t, for example, control which tiles will fall from the top as you clear those below. But the impression that the outcome of each battle depended almost entirely on my skill and planning never left. Rare is the match-three puzzler that leaves me feeling so in control. And here we get two packaged together!
Though you may not like both equally.
NintendoThe differences in the two games’ puzzles and tactics are pretty minor.
For example, in Puzzle & Dragons Z you earn a stack of skill points from which any ally can draw from to execute its special skill (meaning one ally can perform the same skill multiple times in a row). In contrast, allies in the Mario-themed game power up their abilities on an individual basis. I preferred the Puzzle & Dragons Z method, but found I could cope easily enough with the less flexible system in the Mario edition.
It’s the differences outside the puzzle arena that will likely determine which game you like more.
Like presentation and storytelling. The Mario edition dubs its dungeons “courses” and breaks them into “worlds.” Its monsters are Shy Guys, Bloopers, and Buzzy Beetles, and its heroes are Mario and Luigi wearing familiar, power-bestowing costumes. The orbs we clear are Fire Flowers and Yellow Stars and Poison Mushrooms. And there is virtually no story. We’re whisked swiftly and efficiently between courses and worlds with virtually nothing in the way of exposition. It’s just match-three puzzle battles dressed up in Mario colours.
NintendoPuzzle & Dragons Z, on the other hand, has more of a traditional fantasy-meets-Pokemon vibe. There are monsters to capture and collect, a young, customizable hero in training, and an explorable world outside the dungeons with quests and within which a story about an impending catastrophe plays out. I think it took around half an hour of chatting and training before I got to the first real dungeon and began puzzling in earnest.
The Mario-themed edition’s presentation is far and away the more palatable of the two, at least for me. It kept me playing puzzles pretty much non-stop, which is all I really want from a puzzle game. The familiar and beloved Nintendo mugs dappling the screen are just a bonus.
That said, Puzzle & Dragon Z‘s ally upgrade and evolution system – accessed while exploring the RPG world – is quicker paced, a little easier to understand, and ultimately more satisfying.
I enjoyed both, but I can also imagine a single game that takes the best bits from both for a truly transcendent puzzle battle experience.
NintendoThe question I keep wondering, however, is whether a world now accustomed to free-to-play match-three puzzlers will be eager to spend 30 bucks on a game like this. Even if you reason that you’re really only paying $15 per game, the cost still seems pretty steep compared to free.
Of course, I think it’s a great deal. Paying a reasonable price for dozens and dozens of hours of satisfying and balanced puzzle play – and no temptation to spend more on in-app purchases – seems like a no-brainer to me.
But humans as a species are notoriously short sighted when it comes to things like this. I fear that the Candy Crushes of the world – upon which many players have spent far more $30 over the long term – have ruined things for fair, well-designed, pay once upfront match-three games that don’t prey upon our psychological weaknesses.
That’s probably all the more reason to grab up a game like Puzzle & Dragons Z + Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros. Edition while you have a chance.
