The opportunity in hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence is “enormous” due to the digital transformations due to the pandemic, said IBM CEO Arvind Krishna on a Q4 call Thursday. “We see the hybrid cloud opportunity at a trillion dollars,” with fewer than 25% of “workloads” having moved to the cloud so far, he said. The AI market opportunity also is “massive,” he said. Though AI deployment rates remain “in the single digits,” customers are “at the point where they are moving from experimenting with AI to deploying it at scale,” he said.
Three companies bought tens of thousands of tickets through Ticketmaster and resold them for millions, “often at significant markups,” DOJ and the FTC alleged in three settlements totaling more than $3.7 million. It was the first enforcement action under the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, which prohibits brokers from reselling tickets at inflated costs. Just in Time Tickets, Concert Specials and Cartisim violated the Bots Act, circumventing Ticketmaster’s “restrictions on users holding multiple accounts by creating accounts in the names of family members, friends, and fictitious individuals, and using hundreds of credit cards,” DOJ said. “They also allegedly used ticket bots to fool tests designed to prevent nonhuman visitors.” Defendants used programs to conceal their IP addresses, DOJ said. A court levied civil penalties of $11.2 million against Just in Time Tickets, $16 million against Concert Specials and $4.4 million against Cartisim. The penalties will be suspended if the defendants pay $1.6 million, $1.6 million and about $500,000, respectively, while adhering to other terms, DOJ said: “Due to their inability to pay, the judgment will be partially suspended, requiring them to pay $3.7 million.” An attorney for the companies declined comment. “Not only does this deprive loyal fans of the chance to see their favorite performers and shows, it is against the law,” said FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director Andrew Smith.
Roughly half of corporate tech decision-makers expect companies lagging in digital transformation a year into the COVID-19 pandemic will go under within three years, Kong found. The cloud services provider canvassed 400 chief information officers and other tech executives in the U.S. and Europe in December and January, finding the proportion who think digital laggards are doomed by 2024 rising 14 percentage points from a year earlier. “A shocking 84% predict this dire outcome within six years,” said Kong. Two-thirds say they deserved to be fired, lose out on a promotion or denied a bonus for failing to pursue prudent “modernization initiatives,” it said. And 89% agree “creating new digital experiences to address COVID-19 business challenges is a business-critical endeavor.”
Holiday spending on e-gift cards jumped more than 80% from a year earlier, reported Blackhawk Network Thursday. "Digital adoption will continue and is here to stay,” said the payment solutions provider. “This stream of digital shoppers will benefit retail sales in" Q1. Nearly half of consumers it surveyed plan to spend at least $25 more than their gift cards' value, on average. Consumers report doing 68% of their holiday shopping online, and 41% say the payment methods they used to buy gifts in 2020 were different from previous years. Nearly a quarter reported using a mobile wallet for the first time, and of those, 37% plan to stick with that method.
Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for D.C. on Thursday set status hearings for Feb. 25, March 30 and April 30 in DOJ’s antitrust case (in Pacer) against Google (see 2101080055).
Prime members accounted for about 68% of Amazon shoppers in Q4, said Consumer Intelligence Research Partners Tuesday, estimating U.S. member count at 142 million. Amazon had strong growth in Prime memberships -- at a 2016 rate -- due partly to COVID-19, said analyst Josh Lowitz, projecting 30 million additional members in 2020. The company didn't comment.
Pass legislation to make it harder for dominant companies to buy smaller competitors in the same market, DOJ Antitrust Division Chief Makan Delrahim said Tuesday (see 2101150067). “For firms with more than 50 percent market share in any defined market, there should be a presumption that further acquisitions in that same market are anticompetitive.” His proposal would let combining companies rebut those findings if they can show the parties “post-transaction would not be able to exercise market power” or “the anticompetitive effects of the transaction are insubstantial, or outweighed by the procompetitive benefits.” He said the top issue facing Congress and his successor involve “market integrity and market power in the increasingly concentrated digital marketplace.” So “pass legislation to introduce bright line rules and alter the burdens of proof in civil merger cases in order to effectively combat certain excessive market concentration.”
Draft standard contractual clauses (SCCs) for data transfers to third countries offer stronger protections for data subjects but still need tweaking, EU data privacy watchdogs said. The European Data Protection Board and European Data Protection Supervisor welcomed proposed European Commission proposals aimed at addressing some key issues in the European Court of Justice Schrems II judgment, which annulled Privacy Shield (see 2009100001). Some text "could be improved or clarified," including the scope of the SCCs, obligations for onward transfers and aspects of the assessment of third-country laws on access to private data by public authorities. Changes should ensure EU citizens' personal data receives an "essentially equivalent" level of protection when it's transferred to third countries, said EDPS Wojciech Wiewiorowski.
Google's “unilateral decision” declaring its Fitbit buy closed (see 2101140006), despite ongoing DOJ oversight of the transaction, “is a stark demonstration of the corporation's disregard for democratic governance,” said Open Markets Institute Executive Director Barry Lynn Friday. He urged the incoming Biden administration to “immediately make clear that it intends to block” Google/Fitbit because the deal “is bad for Americans and to demonstrate that it will not abide further disrespect by Google of democratic rule of law.” DOJ and Google didn’t respond to questions.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology extended to March 1 its comment period for identifying and estimating cybersecurity threats for enterprise risk management, the agency said Thursday. The original deadline was Feb. 1.