LiveWire

Microsoft saw a rise in sales as companies and individuals adapted to pandemic life, with Xbox games, Surface laptops and cloud-computing services in hot demand. The Teams software suite, the company’s workplace collaboration tool that includes video functionality has seen average daily use numbers more than triple. - WSJ

As you may know, the Wii U failed to replicate the original Wii's success. Despite this failure, the company decided to double down on the old school pad and buttons feature. And what a great decision! By March 2017, Nintendo had already sold 80 million units. The Wii sales started to decline around 3 years after the initial launch, but the Switch sold almost 25 million units this year, most likely thanks to this cruel pandemic. With only 22 million units needed to surpass the Wii, the Nintendo Switch is well on track to become the best-selling console the company has ever made. 

According to ARK forecasts, the AR market could scale from a $1 billion market today to a $130 billion market by 2030. Over the past few years, companies like Apple, Facebook and Snapchat have increased their investment in the field, looking for new ways to implement the technology on mobile devices. Smartphone will represent over $20 billion of the $130 billion expected market.

In corporate news, e-commerce giant eBay jumped $3.08, or 5.3%, to $61.12, after the company’s profit climbed, beating analysts’ projections. PayPal rose $18.53, or 7.4%, $270.43, after reporting its earnings tripled from a year earlier. Chip maker Qualcomm slid $14.33, or 8.8%, to $147.97, after it posted revenue that came slightly below expectations and said its results were hit by supply constraints.- Bloomberg

With this strong e-commerce year, both PayPal and eBay were able to show strong results. PayPal performed particularly well with $277 billion in payment for the 4th quarter, bringing up the year total to $936 billion. It seems like the trillion is in reach for 2021! However, ever since PayPal left eBay, eBay has struggled to grow and keep up with its rivals. The company's gross merchandise volume only increased by 21% in 5 years, while PayPal's payment volume grew by 240%.