Finance Geek

The Galaxy S III is Samsung’s most ambitious smartphone yet, and it serves as a testament to the company’s growing stature as a premium handset maker. However, while it’s a fine smartphone, it’s not the unqualified success it aspires to be, and it’s regrettably held back by software that never works as well or as easily as it should.

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Google’s daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.

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Israel-based facial recognition maker Face.com was the internet?s flavor for a day Monday when it announced it was acquired by Facebook. But what was not widely known was that Face.com?s mobile app, KLIK, which allows real-time face-tagging of Facebook pictures, recently suffered a giant vulnerability.

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Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook! Ignoring the latest spike in Spanish bond yields and big drop in German investor confidence, stocks jumped Tuesday. In recent trading, the Dow was up 156 points, or 1% while the S&P 500 was up 1.3%. Better-than-expected U.S. housing data certainly helped the mood but the rally was largely [...]

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Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook! Time is quickly running out for Congress to pass stopgap legislation that would prevent interest rates on subsidized student loan debt from doubling to 6.8 percent July 1. Failure to pass this legislation would adversely affect nearly 7.4 million Americans who currently hold subsidized student loans, like Pell Grants [...]

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Follow The Daily Ticker on Facebook! Microsoft (MSFT) startled everyone yesterday by announcing that it is going to make and sell its own version of the iPad, which is called the “Surface.” This new tablet, which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer demo-ed in Los Angeles yesterday, will be made entirely by Microsoft–hardware and software. This strategy, [...]

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JPMorgan’s (JPM)Jamie Dimon is back on Capitol Hill today, testifying before the House Financial Services Committee and at least one person is wondering: Is this trip really necessary? “Hearings are helpful when they explain complicated issues, but they’re pointless when grandstanding is the main agenda item,” writes Rick Newman, chief business correspondent at U.S. News [...]

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I’m a big fan of simple charging models. I’m at LeWeb London right now listening to the CEO of Evernote who describes his business model as direct – he only makes money off his users and then only if they use the product (for those that don’t know Evernote operates a freemium model where the free version of the software is quite rich and advanced users can pay for a variety of advanced features – I use the free version). This has a beautiful simplicity that is easy for customers to understand and works well if your product is as fantastic as Evernote’s.

Other simple models that have been very successful include Google’s search advertising and Salesforce’s subscription software licensing.

There are plenty of successful companies that don’t have simple business models. Sometimes that is because there isn’t an obvious simple way to go – Facebook springs to mind as a great example. However, there are other companies, and sometimes industries, that choose to have opaque business models because they can make more money when it is harder for their customers to understand exactly what they are getting and what they are paying. These companies can be successful in maximising their revenues over the short term, but confusion stifles innovation and is rarely the best long term answer for them, and it certainly isn’t good for society at large.

The mobile industry has long used bundles of minutes, data, texts, handsets, contract tie in and free gifts or cash back on sign up to maximise revenues and innovation was stifled as a result. We didn’t see meaningful innovation in handsets until Apple used its clout to make carriers adopt the iPhone and confusion over data charges slowed adoption of the mobile web. In order to encourage adoption carriers then flipped to all you can eat data plans, which were great for consumers, but resulted in a dislocation in value received and cost of service provision, and carriers started looking to politicians to force providers of web services to subsidise their operations and we had the whole net-neutrality debate.

The simple answer is for carriers to charge on the basis of network usage and I was pleased to see that last week Verizon announce a plan that operates in exactly this way – wish users paying more if they use more data. They still have a proportion that is bundled as there is a significant line rental element and unlimited free calls and texts, but this is a step in the right direction. When cost of provision is aligned to value derived then the market operates efficiently and appropriate investments get made.

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