If You Can't Fight Them

There used to be a time when making money in the stock market only needed expertise in finance and looking at long term prospects of companies and industries. But in the last decade or so, the finance industry employed lots of mathematicians, quantum physicists, electrical engineers and of course, software programmers. Put together, that seemingly weird set of people help come up with AI (artificial intelligence) algorithms that buy and sell stocks at insane speeds and are in fact now the norm in the Western world!

Other industries like journalism seem to be unable (or unwilling) to react to an age where “many people start their day reading news on a phone or tablet”, as Cindy Krum, chief executive at MobileMoxie puts it. Thomas Urbain wrote:
“News organizations have to decide whether to go after digital readers on their own or to team up with tech firms. In these new apps, the publishers appear to have chosen the latter.”
Apps like Apple News, Facebook’s Instant Articles and of course, Google. But, says Urbain:
“It remains unclear whether these new apps will help news organizations find a lasting economic model to survive the digital age.”

The auto industry faces the same problem. If an auto company wants to pair up with Google’s Android Auto, the terms can be scary, as Porsche found out:
“As part of the agreement an automaker would have to enter with Google, certain pieces of data must be collected and mailed back to Mountain View, California. Stuff like vehicle speed, throttle position, coolant and oil temp, engine revs.”
Your first thought might be: what will Google do with such info? But remember they’re into driverless cars; and they have this uncanny knack of eventually using any data to make money, directly or indirectly.

While the Apple Watch has not yet disrupted the watch industry, incumbents like Tag Heuer are nervous. The smart watch is all about connecting to your phone and creating new scenarios that the user never dreamed of. But Tag Heuer doesn’t make smartphones, so their only option?
“In order to have even a chance of being as feature-rich as Apple Watch, then, TAG’s smartwatch will have to pair with an Android phone.”
Problem solved? Not necessarily because Tag Heuer is a high-end watch:
“This is TAG’s dilemma. Its smartwatch will need to pair with an Android phone to be anywhere near as feature-rich as Apple Watch, but TAG wearers don’t buy Android phones.”

Curse the finance industry all you like; but they hired employees with a totally different skillset than their core area long back. Unlike the journalism, auto and watch industries which are now getting swallowed by the tech industry.

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