Institutional Investor (March 2)
“OPEC members with little foreign currency reserves or alternate sources of income have been struggling to keep afloat during the global slump in oil prices.”
Tags: Foreign currency reserves, Income, Oil prices, OPEC, Slump, Struggling
Bloomberg (March 1)
Macau’s going through a bit of a slump. “Players failed to materialize during what is traditionally one of the busiest weeks of the year…. Casino revenue is now projected to plunge 53.5 percent for the month” of February, with annual gambling revenue forecast to decrease nearly 10% for the year. Nevertheless, Macau “remains way ahead of its closest global competitor in Las Vegas.” In 2014, Macau took in nearly seven times more gaming revenue than Las Vegas.
The Economist (February 28)
As the “defining technology” of the beginning of the 21st century, smartphones “matter partly because of their ubiquity. They have become the fastest-selling gadgets in history, outstripping the growth of the simple mobile phones that preceded them. They outsell personal computers four to one. Today about half the adult population owns a smartphone; by 2020, 80% will.” Smartphones also matter because of the tremendous empowerment they bring users. Today, even the most basic smartphone “has access to more number-crunching capacity than NASA had when it put men on the Moon in 1969.” In their day, the clock and the car brought revolutionary change. “Today the smartphone is poised to enrich lives, reshape entire industries and transform societies.”
Tags: 21st century, Car, Change, Clock, Gadgets, Moon, NASA, PCs, Smartphones, Technology, Ubiquity
