• Covid-19 Propelled Businesses Into the Future. Ready or Not. (Paywall: WSJ)
• FT People of the Year: BioNTech’s Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci (Paywall:FT)
• Will you have to carry a vaccine passport on your phone?
• The power of value 4.0 for industrial internet of things
• Nearly half a billion users played Among Us in November
• Zoom may launch an email service and calendar app to compete with Google and Microsoft
• Microsoft may be developing its own in-house ARM CPU designs
• Tesla is going to release Full Self-Driving monthly subscription in early 2021
• Telegram, nearing 500 million users, to begin monetizing the app
• TaskRabbit is resetting customer passwords after finding ‘suspicious activity’ on its network
• Horizon Robotics, a Chinese rival to Nvidia, seeks to raise over $700M
• Apple targets car production by 2024 and eyes ‘next level’ battery technology
• The Battle for Mars
• German firm says indoor vertical farm in Singapore will produce 1.5 tons of ‘leafy greens’ every day
• There are now almost 300 so-called “neobanks” live worldwide, with nearly half concentrated in Europe.
• How Amazon Wins: By Steamrolling Rivals and Partners (Paywall:WSJ)
• Investors pour $1bn into buying up small merchants on Amazon (Paywall:FT)
• These breakthroughs will make 2021 better than 2020
• Amazon Echo Frames
• GP Bullhound Technology 2021 Predictions
• Fjord Trends 2021
• BBC Tech trends in 2021
• Trends In 2021: The Future Of Life, Learning And Play
• Trendwatching: 21 meaningful, trend-driven innovation opportunities for 2021
• Top 100 Business Trends for 2021

• McKinsey: The Next Normal
• The great hack attack: SolarWinds breach exposes big gaps in cyber security
• Deloitte 2021 Global Marketing Trends
• AWS introduces new Chaos Engineering as a Service offering
• Global Competitiveness Report Special Edition 2020
• Global chip shortage threatens production of laptops, smartphones and more
• Battery prices have fallen 88 percent over the last decade
• E-commerce became commerce…Online shopping made up 14 percent of all retail sales in the US last quarter as in-store retail flagged.
• Walmart will use fully driverless trucks to make deliveries in 2021
• Google Waives $1.5 Billion DeepMind Loan as AI Costs Mount
• Floating ‘mini-nukes’ could power countries by 2025, says startup
• China just brought moon rocks back to Earth for the first time in its history
• Google to shut down Android Things, a smart home OS that never took off
• “None of us were ready” to manufacture genetic vaccines for a billion people
• Amazon’s answer to SpaceX Starlink delivers 400Mbps in prototype phase
• AI controlled a US military aircraft for the first time
• OneWeb launches 36 satellites to join its global broadband constellation on orbit
• UiPath files confidential IPO paperwork with SEC
• WhatsApp to bring voice and video calls to desktop next year
• Among Us’ is coming to Xbox in 2021
• A successful experiment gets us one step closer to a quantum internet
• Twitter launches its voice-based ‘Spaces’ social networking feature into beta testing
• Walmart to pilot test livestreamed video shopping on TikTok
• F1 engine makers are testing sustainable fuel…Formula 1 aims to hit net zero carbon emissions within 10 years.
• How Pfizer Delivered a Covid Vaccine in Record Time

Zoom was adding 5,000-6,000 servers (on AWS) a night as they scaled in the early days of the pandemic ? #reInvent

— Rachel Dines @ #reinvent (@RachelDines) December 15, 2020

• Goodreads: Best books of 2020
• Disney+ Could Hit 260 Million Subscribers by 2024, CEO Bob Chapek Says
• Outlook 2021: Sustaining the Outperforming Covid Recovery
• Wall Street Begins Trading Water Futures as a Commodity
• Apple Fitness+ launches this coming Monday at $9.99 per month
• Facebook hit with massive antitrust lawsuit from 46 states
• SpaceX’s Starship has flown a record 12.5 km into the air—and then crashed
• Adobe just released the last Flash update ever…Adobe will stop supporting Flash on December 31st, 2020, and it will block Flash content from running on January 12th, 2021.
• Amazon’s redesigned Fire TV software starts rolling out today
• Seoul-based payment tech startup CHAI gets $60 million from Hanhwa, SoftBank Ventures Asia
• Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics for nearly $1B
• Coronavirus, election results, Kobe Bryant and Zoom among Google’s top 2020 search trends in US and world
• App stores to see 130 billion downloads in 2020 and record consumer spend of $112 billion
• With over 1 billion users, Chrome is both a browser and a major platform. The Chrome Web Store hosts more than 250,000 extensions and themes with 4 million Chrome extensions downloaded every day
• McKinsey estimates that global digital-health revenues—from telemedicine, online pharmacies, wearable devices and so on—will rise from $350bn last year to $600bn in 2024
• Sony to buy AT&T’s anime business for $1.18 billion to expand global footprint
• The New Consumer Conversation in an Era of Uncertainty

• After reaching $40B in revenue in record time, Amazon Web Services hints at its own reinvention
• AWS brings the Mac mini to its cloud
• Facebook Buys Customer-Service Software Maker Kustomer
• How the US, UK and China are planning to roll out vaccines
• Japan is about to bring back samples of an asteroid 180 million miles away
• Warner Bros. will release entire 2021 film slate in theaters and on HBO Max… includes Dune, Matrix 4, and Godzilla vs. Kong, among other titles.
• More online retailers are following Amazon’s lead in making it easier to drop off items at brick-and-mortar locations near your home, no box or shipping label necessary
• The death and rebirth of America’s department stores, in charts
• Revolut lets businesses accept online payments
• Grab-Singtel and Ant Group win digital bank licenses in Singapore
• More than 500,000 full electric cars sold so far this year in Europe
• Singapore approves sale of lab-grown meat in world first
• Stripe announces embedded business banking service Stripe Treasury…The company is partnering with banks to offer a banking-as-a-service API. In other words, Stripe clients will be able to provide bank accounts to their customers — the service is invite-only for now.
• Microsoft launches Azure Purview, its new data governance service
• Hulu officially launches its co-viewing feature, Watch Party
• Elon Musk is open to talking about merging Tesla with another car company. These are the 4 most likely candidates, experts say.
• Coronavirus: Vaccination ‘could become routine from 2022‘
• Elon Musk is ‘highly confident’ SpaceX will land humans on Mars by 2026
• Gartner Says Global Smartphone Sales Declined 5.7% in Third Quarter of 2020
• The Luxury E-Commerce Wars Heat Up

• Slack’s stock climbs on possible Salesforce acquisition
• AI can run your work meetings now
• HBO Max, for instance, has around 9 million users; Roku has 46 million users, giving it an estimated 30 percent of the streaming device market.
• SpaceX Starlink engineers take questions in Reddit AMA—here are highlights…Expanded beta is coming in January, and there’s no plan for data caps.
• Alibaba vies for a piece of China’s booming EV market
• Thanksgiving online shopping hits record $5.1B, up 21.5% on 2019, 47% of sales via mobile
• Bigblue wants to automate e-commerce fulfillment in Europe
• SpaceX successfully launches a Falcon 9 booster for a record seventh time
• Mobile banking app Current raises $131M Series C, tops 2 million members
• 1% of farms operate 70% of world’s farmland
• Microsoft hints at turning Xbox into an app for your TV
• How my electric car is helping to power my home’
• China launches ambitious mission to land on moon and return samples to Earth
• “The Queen’s Gambit” set the record as the most-watched scripted limited series to date on Netflix — with 62 million member accounts tuning in to the show in the first 28 days, according to the company.
• Imagine a World Without Apps
• How Archaeologists Are Using Deep Learning to Dig Deeper

• An Economist’s Guide to the World in 2050
• Four Reasons the Stay-at-Home Economy Is Here to Stay (WSJ:Paywall) “…First, companies have made huge investments in the infrastructure needed to deliver goods and services to our homes quickly and efficiently, which means those products are now easier to use and often less expensive. Second, families have also invested in the services and gadgets to keep their members safe and sated while sheltering in place. Third, our habits have changed: Many people have gotten over the “hump” of adopting new technologies earlier than they otherwise might have. And finally, hundreds of thousands of Americans who lost traditional jobs in retail and service—on showroom floors and inside restaurants—have found new ones working in online order fulfillment and delivery. Even those who retained their jobs are seeing their roles shift to address these new conduits for economic activity...”
• During the pandemic, 10 years of consumer adoption of e-commerce was compressed into three months, according to a recent survey by McKinsey
• Who should get a covid-19 vaccine first?…Mathematicians are faced with two conflicting priorities when modeling for vaccines: Should they prevent deaths or slow transmission?
• Rocket Lab has successfully recovered a booster for the first time
• Spotify has 300 million users
• “…That’s a remarkable thing. It’s the first time you’ve ever been able to decide exactly when and where you want to watch a big, would-be-blockbuster Hollywood movie on opening day…“
• Google Chrome is available as an Apple M1 native app today
• Stadia game streaming will come to iOS via Web browser
• Google revamps its strategy towards banking (FT:Paywall)
• Google Pay gets a major redesign with a new emphasis on personal finance
  • Google Pay now has about 150 million users in 30 countries
  • Google is also partnering with 11 banks to launch a new kind of bank account in 2021. Called Plex, these mobile-first bank accounts will have no monthly fees, overdraft charges or minimum balances. The banks will own the accounts but the Google Pay app will be the main conduit for managing these accounts
  • …combining three things into one,”
    • One is the ability to pay friends and businesses really fast.
    • Explore offers and rewards, so you can save money at shops.
    • Getting insights about your spending so you can stay on top of your money.”
• Apple drops its cut of App Store revenues from 30% to 15% for some developers…The cut benefits only developers who pull in less than $1 million annually.
• Thanks to SpaceX, NASA regains a capability it lost for a decade
• Windows Turn 35: A Visual History…The PC revolution started off life 35 years ago this week. Microsoft launched its first version of Windows on November 20th, 1985
• Microsoft and Apple working on Xbox Series X controller support for iPhones and iPads
• Eero’s security subscription now lets parents block sites at the router level
• OneWeb emerges from bankruptcy, aims to begin launching satellites again on December 17
• LidarPhone attack converts smart vacuums into microphones
• Japan Inc to begin experiments issuing digital yen

• Emerging Trends in Real Estate®: US and Canada
• Disney+ has more than 73M subscribers
• Amazon’s in-garage delivery is now available in 4,000 US cities
• L’Oréal rolls out a line of ‘virtual makeup’
• Amazon begins shifting Alexa’s cloud AI to its own silicon
• PayPal now lets all US users buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency
• Nintendo Switch sales topped 735,000 in October
• Python creator Guido van Rossum joins Microsoft
• Uber will now let users book rides 30 days in advance and pick a favorite driver
• Spotify buying podcast hosting and ad company Megaphone for $235M
• New forecast pegs TikTok to top 1.2B monthly active users in 2021
• Autonomous delivery startup Nuro hits $5 billion valuation on fresh funding of $500 million
• Turkish AI Companies
• Rolls-Royce plans 16 mini-nuclear plants for UK
• Honda says will be first to mass produce level 3 autonomous cars
• SoftBank Is in Talks to Sell Robot Maker Boston Dynamics to Hyundai
• VW boosts investment in electric and autonomous car technology to $86 billon
• Alibaba Sets ‘Singles Day’ Sales Record…$75.1 billion in sales in annual shopping event (WSJ)

• Goodreads: Best Books of 2020
• Peloton, Pizza and Videogames Grow in Stay-at-Home World (WSJ)”…Consumers holed up during the coronavirus pandemic redirected their travel and entertainment dollars toward pizza, videogames, home-exercise equipment and luxury goods, according to several companies that provided business updates Thursday…”
• Sony confirms the PS5 won’t support SSD storage expansion at launch
• Proposition 22, created to decide the future of the California gig economy, has passed.
• Battery-Free Underwater GPS
• Apple will require apps to add privacy ‘nutrition labels’ starting December 8th
• Gamelist for PS5 and XBox
• WhatsApp finally begins rolling out payment service in India
• Challenger bank Starling is out raising a new £200M funding round
• Amazon to invest $2.8 billion to build its second data center region in India
• Netflix tests a programmed linear TV and movie channel in France
• Chinese autonomous vehicle startup Pony.ai hits $5.3 billion valuation
• Bentley is making the shift to an all-electric lineup
• Amazon launches its first Amazon Air regional hub in Europe
• The T-cell immune response to covid lasts at least six months
• Apple TV is coming to Xbox consoles on November 10th
• YouTube brings in $5 billion in ad revenue as Alphabet and Google bounce back”…YouTube now has more than 30 million music and premium paid subscribers — 35 million, including free trials — and YouTube TV has more than 3 million subscribers…”
• Happy 13th birthday, Android.
• The pandemic has created a middle class private jet boom
• How a UK supermarket nourished Silicon Valley’s critics (FT)
• NASA’s Voyager 2 receives first commands since March, sends back a hello

• Apple reports record $64.7 billion revenue in Q4 2020 despite iPhone delay
• Amazon reports $96.1 billion in Q3 2020 revenue: AWS up 29%, subscriptions up 33%, and ‘other’ up 51%…Subscription services were up 33% to $6.58 billion. This segment mainly constitutes Amazon Prime and its 150 million paid members.
• SpaceX Starlink public beta begins: It’s $99 a month plus $500 up front…About 3% of Starlink satellites have failed so far
• making Ocado’s operations streamlined and efficient—in just 5 minutes robotics can complete 50,000 orders
• US grid-battery costs dropped 70% over 3 years
• Amazon launches shopping website in Sweden
• UK study finds evidence of waning antibody immunity to COVID-19 over time
• Microsoft cloud business gathers steam as pandemic boosts growth
• Visa to Acquire YellowPepper
• Visa’s Planned Purchase of Plaid Faces Antitrust Scrutiny at the Justice Department (WSJ)
• No Implants Needed For Precise Control Deep Into The Brain
• Don’t fear AI. It will lead to long-term job growth.
• Apple is quietly building a search rival to Google ahead of the DOJ’s landmark antitrust case, according to a report…Apple develops alternative to Google search
• Sony sets 100m sales target for new PlayStation 5 console (FT)
• Marketers Try New Data Tools to Navigate Pandemic…Analytics platforms developed by marketers’ agencies collate information on everything from foot traffic to local pandemic restrictions (WSJ)
• WhatsApp is now delivering roughly 100 billion messages a day
• Under Armour to sell MyFitnessPal for $345 million, after acquiring it in 2015 for $475 million
• Smartphone shipments dip in China for Q3, led by Huawei decline
• PlayStation CEO says VR won’t be a ‘meaningful’ part of gaming for years
• The Simple Rule That Could Keep COVID-19 Deaths Down
• Corsair acquires EpocCam, a webcam app for iPhone
• Google’s AI converts webpages into videos
• Humans have been living in space for 20 years straight
• These drones will plant 40,000 trees in a month. By 2028, they’ll have planted 1 billion
• “…Even if people now work from home only one day a week, how many retailers will experience that as a 20% decline in footfall…”

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Siri is currently at 25% of Google Search in terms of query volume.

— Horace Dediu (@asymco) October 28, 2020

WhatsApp is now delivering 100bn messages a day. That’s roughly 5 times more than the entire global SMS system did at its peak.

— Benedict Evans (@benedictevans) October 30, 2020

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