LiveWire

Paywalls are becoming more and more common among news websites. Making users pay for online news content isn’t impossible – but remains a challenge. While many news outlets are still hesitant to charge their readers, data compiled by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) show that paying for online news is quite widespread in markets such as Norway (45%) and has also become relatively common in the US (20%).

According to Insider Intelligence, US retail e-commerce sales grew 33% in 2020, reaching $799.18B. In store shopping will rebound as covid subsides and a share of consumer spending will rever back from retail and toward services like travel and live entertainment. Sales growth should increase this year--building on top of a massive upward revision for 2020--which would cause total ecommerce sales for 2021 to be $147B greater than before the pandemic.

The bulk of apps are sold via two major app stores i.e., Apple Store, and Google Play. In fact, world-wide consumer spending in app stores soared to about $110B in 2020. Apple does not make money from in-app ads, but Google does with its AdMob platform. Many apps make money through advertising sales, a business that has been increasing in size in the past years, especially as downloads for free and paid apps have grown. Players are rewarded with in game items for watching the ads. The app economy is major source of revenue, and thus worth fighting over (Epic Games vs Apple trial as testimony to this). The top three most in demand non-game apps are Netflix, Tinder and TikTok.

After SoftBank reported the highest net income ever seen on Japanese markets, a figure equal to 1.93 trillion yen, (or about twice what second best Toshiba could do), the share price fell. Company IRR is up from a year ago but technology equity prospects are down as markets are seeing a general sell-off derived from inflationary concerns going forward.

Net income was 1.93 trillion yen ($17.7 billion) for the three months ended March 31, the most for a listed Japanese company dating back to 1990, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Most of it came from SoftBank’s Vision Fund investment arm, whose 2.3 trillion yen profit was supercharged by the successful initial public offering of Coupang Inc. in March.