Thursday, February 16, 2012

Carmody on Amazon Prime vs. Netflix

Tim Carmody, in a really good post at Wired, reviews prospects for Amazon Prime vs. Netflix, suggesting that 18 months from now he believes Amazon will have more subscribers than Netflix for their streaming video service.

Further, he pushes against the idea that Apple may have hit a wall based on the "law of large numbers" (the idea that the greater the sample size, a company's performance will return to their actual potential), quoting CEO Tim Cook's keynote address at last week's Goldman Sach's Technology Conference:
It was 37 million — more than we’d ever done before. We were pretty happy with that, but let me give you the way I look at the numbers. As I see it, that 37 million for last quarter represented 24% of the smartphone market. There’s 3 out of 4 people buying something else. 9 out of 10 phone buyers are buying something else. 
Handset market is projected to go from 1.5 to 2 billion units. Take it in the context of these numbers, the truth is that this is a jaw-dropping industry with enormous opportunity. Up against those numbers, the numbers don’t seem so large anymore. What seems so large to me is the opportunity. 

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