http://www.economist.com/news/business/21697193-european-commission-going-after-google-againthis-time-better-chance
On the face of it, putting Android at the centre of an antitrust case seems silly. It faces competition from iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system. It is also “open-source”, meaning any hardware-maker can adapt the program as needed and install it on its devices for nothing. Yet since Apple doesn’t license its software to other smartphone and tablet brands, they are stuck with Android. And to be able to offer commercially viable products, it helps to pre-install some of Google’s popular apps, particularly Google Play, which is the dominant app store for Android.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/923bbd88-0225-11e6-ac98-3c15a1aa2e62.html
On March 19, Anna Sergeeva, a beautician working in Dubai, took a cheerful selfie from her seat on a plane that would crash in Russia a few hours later, killing everyone on board. She uploaded the photo to her social media profile, and the image has since circulated widely online. We see some of the outfit she chose for the flight: a comfortable light grey hoodie with a soft grey T-shirt to match. Her expression contains that archetypal selfie blend of coyness, good humour and subtle doubt.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21696962-more-people-are-paying-stream-music-industry-still-wobbly-scales-dropped
Until now. Growth in the digital streaming of music helped industry revenues to expand by 3.2%, to $15 billion, last year. That was the fastest rate since 1998, according to IFPI, a trade body (revenues also increased by a smidgen in 2012; see chart). The largest piece of the market was digital, with 45% of the total, whereas demand for those CDs continued to fall: physical goods accounted for just 39% of sales. Subscription-based streaming services like Spotify, Deezer and Apple Music proved especially successful, as the fastest-growing category: last year revenues from these rose by 59%, to more than $2.3 billion. Digital downloads on services like iTunes (which slice up albums into 99-cent individual tracks) accounted for $3 billion of sales, though that represented a decline of 10.5% on the year before. The music industry looks increasingly likely to be defined by services like Spotify, weightless but not cashless.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21696947-potential-bid-daily-mail-yahoo-may-make-sense-mails-got-you
The strategy of the Daily Mail runs against conventional wisdom in digital media. Home pages of websites matter less than before. Many news sites have ceded the job of distributing content to Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and other platforms. But organisations that let Facebook and others publish their stories risk losing their ability to profit from them. The Mail uses its home page as a distribution hub, helped along by its titillating “sidebar of shame”, which features celebrity gossip and racy photos on continuous refresh. Since 2012 it has claimed the title of the world’s most-visited English language news site. It now attracts an estimated 220m monthly unique visitors to its various sites around the world, including Mail Online in Britain.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2016/04/inequality-screen
The Annenberg report offers some interesting insights into why this ‘hypersexualisation’ discrepancy is so marked. When a female producer is on board, female characters are much less likely to be depicted in sexually revealing clothing (26.4%, rather than 35.9%) or with nudity (25.1%, instead of 33.3%). So too, films that have at least one female screenwriter as part of the production team feature a higher percentage of girls and women in significant roles (34.8%) than teams that only have male screenwriters (25.9%). They note that female producers or writers may have been purposefully hired for “female-driven stories” that focus on areas more diverse than romance, or that female writers may “write what they know” and thus put women at the forefront of their narratives.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21696539-older-consumers-will-reshape-business-landscape-grey-market
Yet this is only the early stages of a revolution. Baby-boomers have spent their lives making noise and demanding attention. They are not going to stop now. They will be the biggest and richest group of pensioners in history. They will also be the longest lived: many will spend more time in retirement than they did working. The baby-boomers have changed everything they have touched since their teenage years, leaving behind them a trail of inventions, from pop culture to two-career families. Retirement is next on the list.
