Amazon Business to Tackle $1 Billion U.S. B2B Market

Amazon Business, a customization of Amazon for business customers will not come as a surprise, any more than marketplaces for consumer services are a surprise.

Amazon Business is an expansion of what was once Amazon Supply, the wholesale site it launched in 2012. At it's peak, Amazon Supply had about 2.2 million products serving millions of business customers. Amazon Business certainly will be much bigger, boasting hundreds of millions of products.

In part, the effort reflects the size of the business products market. In 2014, the business-to-business market was about $1 trillion, according to estimates by the U.S. Commerce Department.

That is almost four times the size of the business-to-consumer e-commerce market that recorded sales of $263.3 billion in last year, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

B2B e-commerce also is growing slightly faster than U.S. online retailing—at an annual estimated rate of about 19 percent, according to Deloitte, compared with 17 percent for B2C e-commerce, as reported ed by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

1,000 Times More Data Center Processing to Support IOT in 5 Years?

Only about four years from now, the Internet of Things will need 750 percent more data center capacity in service provider facilities than it consumes today, according to a recent report by the market-research firm IDC.

At the same time, it is possible latency requirements will require offloading processing to the edge of the network.

The reason is the assumption that dense networks supporting highly mobile and distributed sensors and appliances will produce so much raw data, with a need to process so fast, that computing has to be offloaded from centralized data centers to edge processors of some sort.

Whether it will be possible to process fast, with latency of not many milliseconds, backhauling all data to data centers, is the issue. Many do not think that will be optimal, even if it proves possible.

Apple Earns 69% of Revenue from iPhones

If you ever wondered why “Apple Computer” is now simply “Apple,” it is because Apple is a mobile phone company, not a “computer” company. The Apple iPhone, in Apple’s second quarter of 2015, represented 69 percent of total revenue.

Apple had quarterly revenue of $58 billion and quarterly net profit of $13.6 billion in its most-recent quarter, up from revenue of $45.6 billion and net profit of $10.2 billion year over year.

Gross margin was 40.8 percent compared to 39.3 percent in the year-ago quarter and international sales accounted for 69 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

For the next quarter, Apple predicts its fiscal 2015 third quarter will feature

revenue between $46 billion and $48 billion.

Verizon Puts Muscle Behind A LA Carte and Streaming Strategy

Verizon wants to make omelets.  It has to break eggs.

Did Verizon Just Screw The Content Giants? http://m.seekingalpha.com/article/3106216?source=ansh $VZ, $DIS, $FOX, $FOXA

Level 3 And Verizon Agree To Share Cost Of Network Upgrades

That is the way large networks and Internet domains always have interconnected. And it makes sense.

When networks exchange roughly equal amounts of traffic there is no structural problem. When traffic is unequal,  the sending network imposes costs on the receiving network. "Sending network pays" is how it works.

And how it should work, in fairness.

Level 3 And Verizon Sign Interconnect Agreement: Agree To Share Cost Of Network Upgrades http://m.seekingalpha.com/article/3106406?source=ansh $LVLT, $VZ

ESPN Sues Verizon Over Skinny Bundles that Do Not Include ESPN

ESPN obviously sees the Verizon skinny bundle as a bigger threat than DirecTV’s skinny bundle. Verizon excludes ESPN from the base tier, relegating ESPN to an optional sports tier.

DirecTV does something similar, albeit on a smaller scale, by allowing consumers to purchase a basic tier without ESPN, though most of the packages do seem to include ESPN.

So Verizon’s approach likely is going to affect more consumers. Verizon has been sued, and DirecTV has not been sued.

55% of U.S. Internet Homes Buy OTT Video

Some 55 percent of U.S. households with Internet access now subscribe to an over the top streaming (OTT) video service, up from 44 percent in 2013, Parks Associates estimates.

Subscriptions are highest among households with a younger head-of-household, with 72 percent of households headed by those 18 to 24 and 71 percent of households headed by those 25 to 34 having an OTT service subscription.

That alone might not suggest a tipping point, or inflection point, is nearing. More significant are moves by content suppliers to create stand-alone streaming services not dependent on a prior purchase of a standard linear service.