[HN Gopher] The Great Unbundling
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The Great Unbundling
Author : notoriousarun
Score : 125 points
Date : 2021-01-30 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ben-evans.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ben-evans.com)
| lesinski wrote:
| So many "trend" type presentations like this one take for granted
| that streaming will eat TV. Sure, cord-cutting is a trend. But
| Covid-19 isn't necessarily accelerating it. A huge contingent of
| the population, especially internationally and among US boomers
| will keep their cable bundle. Smart marketers will figure out how
| to leverage TV as digital advertising gets more competitive and
| streamers go on without ads.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _A huge contingent of the population, especially
| internationally and among US boomers will keep their cable
| bundle._
|
| Not just Boomers. I've seen numbers showing that Gen X is
| getting tired of jumping through hoops to watch TV, so they're
| going back to cable, or going * gasp * OTA.
|
| The numbers also show that Gen Z seems to embrace "owned"
| physical media a lot more than Millennials, and that they're
| also more likely to go full OTA just because they see little
| value in paying for multiple streams or a cable subscription.
|
| It seems that Millennials love streams and subscriptions, and
| everyone else is rethinking whether that's a good idea.
| ghaff wrote:
| Sports alone are a huge reason that keeps many people on
| their cable bundle--and it tends to be something a lot of
| people want to watch on their TV rather than a computer.
|
| >It seems that Millennials love streams and subscriptions,
| and everyone else is rethinking whether that's a good idea.
|
| I'm a bit skeptical of a lot of generational stereotypes. I
| think _many_ people are having some subscription fatigue
| especially with video. But I can 't say that I've seen a lot
| of evidence that Gen Z is particularly addicted to
| accumulating "stuff" especially media in physical form.
|
| e.g. https://www.rev.com/blog/how-gen-z-and-millennials-
| consume-v...
| martinald wrote:
| I think sport is the next thing the streaming services will
| look at. Amazon has started to do this, and now has some (a
| small percentage) of the England premier league soccer
| matches in the UK.
|
| Amazon (and netflix, apple, etc) has way deeper pockets
| than the current rightsholders (Sky, which was owned by
| Murdoch until he sold to Comcast recently, and BT Sport,
| which is also completely dwafered by Big Tech).
|
| It's difficult to see them not going big for this next time
| the rights are up for renegotiation. Amazon and Netflix
| have extremely high household penetration already, with
| their apps prebundled on so many TVs.
| hong_kong wrote:
| Cable operators already offer skinny bundles with only
| news/sport for lower cost, so you'll get a new leg down
| just from that + full cord cuts. But that's just delaying
| the inevitable I think - they'll abandon cable TV when
| margins turn negative (half a decade or so), and live off
| their broadband businesses.
| devmunchies wrote:
| only a matter of time before all ESPN and Fox Sports are
| bundled into Disney+, since Disney owns both.
| ghaff wrote:
| I would hope they keep it as an option. Sports make up a
| _big_ chunk of an overall cable bill. So if Disney
| bundles it in, expect that to put big upward pressure on
| the price of a subscription.
| rglullis wrote:
| Those who are tired of paid streaming services can just go
| torrenting.
|
| Either Gen Z has become absolutely technologically inept or
| these numbers are used to shape a narrative that pleases the
| news conglomerates.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Gen X and older Millenials are the most technologically
| adept age cohorts if we're talking about computers. Younger
| Millenials and Gen Z grew up with computers as appliances.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I guess I'm Gen X. Or a very young Boomer. I've just stopped
| watching TV altogether. "News" is a joke, and everything else
| seems like a waste of time.
| alea_iacta_est wrote:
| Xer here. If by joke you mean it's brainwashing and
| propaganda, I'm with you. A joke, randomly oriented, I
| could take, the one sided preaching that news, TV and movie
| broadcast 24x7 is just infuriating.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| This. And I refuse to watch serials anymore, just feature-
| length films. Why? Because I'm tired of being strung along.
| Here, watch this season now. But wait 12-18 months for the
| next season. Repeat. By the time that next season rolls
| around, I just don't care about the characters anymore.
|
| Fiction writers love to play this trick with book trilogies
| and book series. So I don't start a book series unless all
| books are already in print.
| ghaff wrote:
| They're just different forms. Films, multi-film series
| and connected series, miniseries, episodic TV, serialized
| TV, blends of episodic and serialized, anthologies,
| shorts, etc. are all different and have their own pluses
| and minuses.
|
| It's obviously fine to prefer some and not others.
|
| You can equally see TV seasons as giving the opportunity
| to take a break from something for a while.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| OTA? With ads every 15 mins? I don't think so.
|
| Netflix (and later amzn video and to a slightly lesser extent
| hulu) was the way out of that hellhole, and I don't see even
| boomers like me "going back".
| ghaff wrote:
| It took me a long time to get over the hump of canceling
| cable TV. But, then, I don't get any OTA. If I got good
| broadcast TV signals, I'd probably have taken the leap much
| sooner.
|
| I'm also not sure it's useful to distinguish a cable bundle
| from streaming if that streaming includes YouTube TV or
| whatever. You're really just getting the bundle in a
| different form at that point--and not really saving a lot of
| money.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > I'm also not sure it's useful to distinguish a cable
| bundle from streaming if that streaming includes YouTube TV
| or whatever. You're really just getting the bundle in a
| different form at that point--and not really saving a lot
| of money.
|
| Expect one you can cancel and purchase within seconds
| whenever you want or need to, and can watch on any device
| you want, and deal with fewer ad breaks.
|
| Cable TV is on no way a comparable product to the streaming
| services. People complaining about the horror of clicking a
| few buttons to cancel and resubscribe on a website gave no
| idea of the type of horror that awaits when dealing with a
| cable company.
| ghaff wrote:
| Fair enough, although that only applies if you want to
| dip in and out or watch on different devices. Had I
| actually watched cable TV latterly sufficient to justify
| what I was paying for it, I'd have had very little reason
| to switch to YouTube TV or whatever. The content is
| pretty comparable and the issue for me was that I just
| wasn't watching it _nearly_ as much as other services
| that cost a lot less. I still wish I had live TV now and
| then but not enough to pay for it.
|
| I was actually pleasantly surprised that when I canceled
| cable TV and my landline from Comcast they didn't even
| put up a mild fight. (I still have Internet from them.)
| AlexandrB wrote:
| As a millennial, there was a "golden age" for video streaming
| that has now passed where Netflix was the biggest game in
| town and had most of the desirable content. Now that there
| are 6 or 7 streaming services each with their own exclusives
| (and regional differences) streaming is becoming much less
| appealing.
| ghaff wrote:
| Netflix was never that great for movies but you could
| always subscribe to their DVDs. Unfortunately, more and
| more titles are becoming unavailable. (I resubscribed for a
| while during the pandemic but just canceled it again.) Of
| course, you can often just rent a la carte as well.
|
| It is a very fragmented landscape. On the other hand, I
| find I can subscribe to a few services and get access to
| far more good content than I have time to watch. There's
| very little that I just _have_ to see and, if there is, I
| can just spin up some service for a month.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Circa 2007-2011, before their deal with Starz expired,
| Netflix streaming usually had any movie, new or old, I
| ever wanted to see. The catalogue was massive. Now,
| around 3/4 of the time (my estimate) I'd be forced to
| rent or stream elsewhere.
|
| https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/20
| 11/...
| ghaff wrote:
| I guess we have different tastes. I actually canceled
| Netflix streaming when they started charging separately
| for it and only picked it up again when House of Cards
| came out. And I still remember telling a Netflix exec I
| knew that their streaming movie catalog wasn't very good.
| His response was that people come to Netflix for movies
| and stay for the TV shows.
|
| I read people saying what you did but it just doesn't
| match my experience; I kept a DVD subscription the whole
| time until fairly recently.
|
| But I don't think any of the streaming services are great
| for movies. I watch what they have and then either rent
| from RedBox, buy a disc if it's something I think I may
| want to rewatch, or pay for a streaming rental.
| monoideism wrote:
| No, Netflix had a massive catalogue at one point. It was
| even much later than 2011. Probably up until 2015, was
| when they really started losing content.
| devmunchies wrote:
| streaming in inferior in a lot of ways. It used to be I could
| turn on the TV and it powered up instantly. Now it takes about
| 30 seconds to turn on my TV, open streaming app, and click
| play. There's a real benefit to some analog mediums.
| benedictevans wrote:
| See slide 53
| sradman wrote:
| Former a16z partner and now independent analyst, Benedict Evans
| [1]:
|
| > Every year, I produce a big presentation digging into macro and
| strategic trends in the tech industry. This year, 'The great
| Unbundling'.
|
| This is a 134 slide presentation:
|
| > Covid brought shock and a lot of broken habits to tech, but
| mostly, it accelerates everything that was already changing. 20
| trillion dollars of retail, brands, TV and advertising is being
| overturned, and software is remaking everything from cars to
| pharma. Meanwhile, China has more smartphone users than Europe
| and the USA combined, and India is close behind - technology and
| innovation will be much more widely spread. For that and lots of
| other reasons, tech is becoming a regulated industry, but if we
| step over the slogans, what does that actually mean? Tech is
| entering its second 50 years.
|
| [1] https://www.ben-evans.com/
| devmunchies wrote:
| The slides on vehicle emission regulations (slides 121-122) made
| me think of needing to report how much energy your servers are
| consuming.
|
| But don't worry! AWS will automatically keep track for you and
| add the tax to your monthly bill.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| Is there a way to full screen the slides on iOS Safari! Text is
| too small for me to read. I tried clicking all the widgets but
| couldn't find a way to blow it up. :(
| tchvil wrote:
| Pinch/zoom it to go to an area you want bigger. Then it can be
| scrolled, not every time but most of the time. Unzoom to go to
| the next slide.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Is there a way to full screen the slides on iOS Safari!_
|
| In the controls bar just under the slides themselves, click the
| "Full screen" widget to the left of the "Options menu" widget
| (looks like a gear).
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| I don't think I have that option? https://imgur.com/a/qx9f8XB
|
| Turning off content blockers did not change anything.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _I don't think I have that option?_
|
| Apologies for my poor reading comprehension! I was using
| Safari on macOS. I also don't have that option when using
| my iPhone, and couldn't find any tricks for getting around
| it.
|
| I _was_ able to zoom in and out with gestures, in case that
| 's helpful.
| tasubotadas wrote:
| Can somebody summarize this in 20 words or less?
| robenkleene wrote:
| Does anyone recognize which software is used to make these graphs
| and diagrams? (I love how everything is aligned very precisely,
| and the design is cohesive across slides with respect to colors
| and fonts.)
| benedictevans wrote:
| Keynote. I used to use PowerPoint, producing identical slides.
| robenkleene wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| (Note that this is from the creator of the presentation
| himself. It sounds like Keynote or PowerPoint should be
| viable for producing slides like this.)
| high_priest wrote:
| Looks like a normal PowerPoint to me
| robenkleene wrote:
| Could be, I'd love it if anyone else could confirm. For the
| record, I've tried to create graphs like these in Excel, and
| I've struggle getting them just right. So the question I have
| is whether it's just because I don't know Excel well enough,
| or whether I should be using other software.
| pbronez wrote:
| Both. PowerPoint + Excel can do some pretty good charts.
| You need to put time & effort into custom themes to really
| make it work. Using custom themes keeps colors and styles
| consistent across charts and slides, with smarter defaults
| so you don't have to make as many manual changes.
|
| I've found it quickly breaks down when you push beyond the
| canned styles or try to apply them to more complex data
| (e.g. more than 5 categories). Then you have to move to
| something like Plotly.
|
| As always, your data graphics are only as good as your
| data. Make sure you're working from clean tables to ensure
| you don't start making errors.
| robenkleene wrote:
| Great tips here thanks. I haven't looked at custom themes
| before that sounds like a promising direction.
| sogen wrote:
| Can confirm Excel can do very clean graphs
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Can I recommend the "Another podcast" Ben Evans has recently
| started up with a friend of his. They have a pretty good dynamic
| and you get a sense of the nuance that slides just don't convey.
|
| Also second the whole "you can do this in powerpoint / keynote"
| amazement :-)
|
| link: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/another-
| podcast/id1535...
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know about China but, yeah, in the late 80s or so there
| was this incredible panic about Japan buying everything up. And
| various Nobel Prize-winning economists telling anyone who would
| listen that we had to institute government-industry partnerships
| like MITI or the US was doomed. And we did create organizations
| like SEMATECH to counter a perceived gap in semiconductors.
|
| Some of it was probably a useful kick in the pants, especially in
| manufacturing processes. But a lot of it was panic emulation of
| Japan that was neither needed nor especially useful.
| bijant wrote:
| I do like his blog. But I'm not going to click through a
| presentation without him even teasing his core thesis. A tldr
| would be much appreciated otherwise I would prefer if he packaged
| his (without a doubt) great presentation into an article (he
| already has all the illustrations)
| ffhggyh wrote:
| I don't understand how you're too lazy to click through a
| 100-slide slideshow--and yet have the energy write a full
| paragraph complaining about it here.
| dEnigma wrote:
| I can't tell if this sarcasm or not. Clicking through 100
| slides takes quite the effort, even if you're just skimming.
| saurik wrote:
| Yeah. So, I _did_ click through it; it took forever, and
| was _exceedingly_ annoying. I found myself wanting to go
| back a few times, and that just not being worth the
| effort... since I am not the one giving this presentation--
| which is already a problem... slides exist to support a
| speaker, and I am not the speaker! either this should be a
| video or an article, not some disconnected set of slides
| (from which I can 't imagine I am actually getting the
| connections between the content)--I have absolutely no use
| for a "one slide at a time" UI: either all 100+ slides of
| this should be rendered one after another so I can quickly
| scroll down through it, or (preferably) this shouldn't be a
| PDF file so I can decide how I scroll.
| ghaff wrote:
| >slides exist to support a speaker
|
| In principle I agree with you and, for most of the
| presentations I give, I make the slides available but
| they're pretty useless.
|
| That said, a lot of people find information presented in
| the form of a slide deck more approachable than a multi-
| thousand word written report.
| ridruejo wrote:
| I'd agree in general, but there are a few people that are worth
| going though whatever presentation they put together. Ben is
| one of them
| whb07 wrote:
| Unless China solves for the skewed demographics in the next ten
| years, seems like sheep-behavior to include them in projections
| for the future. Has anyone seen these types of presentations but
| say 1980, except it says Japan instead?
|
| I'd like to see some original thinking that stands away from the
| crowd for once.
| eloff wrote:
| Those demographics don't matter nearly as much over the next 10
| years as they do over the next 40. But I agree with you that
| most predictions of China taking over the world seem to
| completely ignore demographics - which is dumb because it's one
| of the most predictable parts of a country's future.
| jonathannat wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| 700M Chinese citizens who live on $140/month income.
|
| 500M 65 year olds by 2050 (money flows up in Chinese society.
| One grandkid pays 2 parents who pays 4 grandparents, since
| it's a one child society) Oh and no social safety net. you
| think CCP members care about the plebs?
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Unless China solves for the skewed demographics in the next
| ten years, seems like sheep-behavior to include them in
| projections for the future.
|
| True, long term, China has sealed its future, but even if you
| half China's population, it will still be no. 1 in pretty much
| everything it is no. 1 today.
|
| Pretty much nothing aside of war, civil war, or a second
| cultural revolution scale political crisis can stop it
| overtaking USA economically in coming 1-2 decades.
| contingencies wrote:
| Here's an original thought. The presentation asserts that Tesla
| has eaten the entire auto industry, and this is because of
| slipping battery costs. It does not, however, correctly credit
| China for this change.
|
| What other changes has China recently led? Video conferencing,
| mass-adoption of mobile payment, death of the desktop, home
| food delivery (pre-COVID), online grocery, e-Health passports.
| jonathannat wrote:
| Wow, way to twist the history to your own narrative. Also,
| no, Tesla has not eaten the entire auto industry, stock
| market cap doesn't equal to product market share
|
| > Video conferencing
|
| Zoom (American company) launched in 2011. DingTalk started
| way late in 2014 and wasn't even that popular until 2017. and
| still playing catchup to Zoom.
|
| > mass-adoption of mobile payment
|
| Japan in the 90s. I believe Chinese citizens were still
| mostly riding bikes then.
|
| > death of the desktop
|
| Japan in the 90s
|
| > home food delivery (pre-COVID)
|
| Grubhub was founded in 2004. IPOed in 2014.
|
| > online grocery
|
| Tesco direct started in UK in 1997.
| tpush wrote:
| > Unless China solves for the skewed demographics in the next
| ten years, seems like sheep-behavior to include them in
| projections for the future. Has anyone seen these types of
| presentations but say 1980, except it says Japan instead?
|
| The presentation directly addresses this in slide 86.
| hong_kong wrote:
| Only superficially. Just because China's population is larger
| doesn't mean it won't get hit by the same forces as Japan
| back in the 80s. China had a demographic tailwind in the past
| few decades, which is reversing now as the population ages
| while birth rate remains low - its dependency ratio will
| spike and a huge amount of resources will have to be diverted
| to elderly care.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Has anyone seen these types of presentations but say 1980,
| except it says Japan instead?
|
| I did read a lot of books which "Bright Heads" of US political
| scene wrote in nineties-eighties.
|
| US royally f..king up its _ally_ Japan is the biggest reason
| why Japan did not become a counterweight to China.
|
| Basically, US assured China's victory when it both alienated,
| and weakened the Japan.
|
| That both lead to Japan putting big money into China (Japan is
| China's biggest foreign investor,) and it becoming rather
| passive to US calls to do anything as about China after
| Washington finally got hit with understanding of its blunder.
| spideymans wrote:
| >US royally f..king up its ally Japan is the biggest reason
| why Japan did not become a counterweight to China.
|
| Can you elaborate on what the United States did?
| baybal2 wrote:
| If you did not read the books, Japan was for America a
| bigger boogeyman than the Union, and Ben Ladin combined by
| late eighties.
|
| It lead to an incredible economic, and political pressure
| US put on Japan, which culminated in US forcing Japan into
| Plaza accords, and the three Japanese lost decades which
| followed.
| jonathannat wrote:
| If I had to guess, American investments took over as #1 in
| FDI in 1992. Japan was still 4th in 1991. You can thank wall
| street, republican congress, and bill clinton for that.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/15/business/foreign-
| investor... "Last year (1991), the United States dropped to
| fifth, with less than a 5 percent share of foreign investment
| in China, behind Hong Kong, Germany, Taiwan and Japan." then
| the article talks about massive US investments.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_direct_investment_in_C.
| .. FDI spiked in 1992
| jonathannat wrote:
| These analysts who tout China live in 2008 China. And they
| ignore Xi Jing Ping + demographics + middle income trap + total
| debt as if they doesn't exist.
| treis wrote:
| I'm not sure I quite get the retail unbundling argument. Chinese
| sellers selling through Amazon is not direct to the buyer. It's
| through Amazon.
| dash2 wrote:
| But then he points out the growth of Shopify.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Shopify needs a satisfaction guarantee like PayPal. I mean
| you can use PayPal but the biggest risk here is fraud.
| treis wrote:
| Right so you don't really have a bundling or unbundling. You
| have the same trend that happened in brick and mortar
| happening online. Speciality retailers are doing fine.
| Massive scale retailers are doing fine. And everyone in the
| middle gets squeezed.
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