Airbnb rents out one million rooms per night-nearly 300,000 more than the largest traditional hotel chain, InterContinental Hotels Group.
of what is now the world’s largest hospitality company.
Recently, Hastings predicted that terrestrial TV ratings would decline “every year for the next 20 years,” while Internet TV would continue to grow.Ĭhesky, a former bodybuilder, is C.E.O. And yet that could eventually prove to be chump change. Sarandos, who made his name picking up shows such as Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards, plans to plow $500 million more into original programming, including a four-movie deal for Adam Sandler as well as War Machine. This year, Netflix continued its effort to disrupt the original- programming business with Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Daredevil, and 34 Emmy nominations. Netflix’s stock price has doubled since the beginning of the year, and the company is now bigger than Viacom. (It passed.) In July, the streaming giant, now worth around $50 billion, surpassed Wall Street’s expectations by adding 3 million subscribers, bringing the total to more than 65 million. Reed Hastings tried to sell his company to Blockbuster for $50 million. To wit: the company reportedly ordered a record 85 to 90 million units of its forthcoming iPhone model, which is said to feature an upgraded screen.įifteen years ago, C.E.O. Tim Cook has been cagey about sales, most analysts expect Apple to sell at least 10 million watches this year, which would be enormous by any standard other than Apple’s. Nevertheless, the new title gives him a role as the company’s product visionary, akin to that of Steve Jobs, while freeing him up to spend more time on the design of Apple’s new spaceship-like campus as well as its expanding retail presence. The move struck some as surprising since Ive would no longer directly supervise the design teams that create its gadgets. Just weeks after the Watch went on sale, Apple announced that Ive had been promoted to chief design officer. The release of the Apple Watch presented an opportunity for designer could have settled into the tech 6 ELON something far more mundane: Jonathan Ive to fully assume the creative mantle at the world’s most highly valued company. “Transportation will be so inexpensive that it will be cheaper than owning a car.” WHAT WILL TECHNOLOGY MAKE OBSOLETE IN FIVE YEARS? Meanwhile, recently leaked documents suggest that Uber will go public sometime within the next two years and mint a whole new generation of tech millionaires. He recently hired dozens of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics department to help him get there. Kalanick is already looking ahead to self-driving Ubers. “And neither is this company.” WORLD- DOMINATION WATCH: anti-trust authorities while at the search giant, is also facilitating Uber’s European expansion.) “I’m not perfect,” Kalanick noted in June. He’s more polished-and modest-in his public appearances, perhaps thanks to the consultation of former White House strategist David Plouffe and former Google executive Rachel Whetstone. At the same time, the puckish “brogrammer” has matured, too. Uber is currently valued at around $51 billion, making it the hottest unicorn-as billion-dollar start-ups have come to be known-in a Valley increasingly filled with them. Since Facebook’s growth seems constrained mainly by the limited number of Internet users around the world, Zuckerberg has endeavored to build a fleet of giant solar-powered drones to beam data into remote parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Has already offered free episodes of Ballers and The Brink.) It wouldn’t be a stretch to see Facebook eventually producing its own series, as has been rumored, putting it in direct competition with Netflix and Amazon.
Facebook has also been reportedly negotiating with record labels while striking deals with content providers, such as HBO, to secure rights to music videos and scripted shows. In May, Facebook announced deals with The New York Times, NBC News, and other news organizations to publish articles directly into users’ pages. He rules, with near omnipotence, over Silicon Valley’s grandest empire, and remains eager for more. Nor has there ever been a mogul quite like Zuckerberg. No company in history has ever achieved the scale of Facebook, which now reaches nearly 1.5 billion total users.