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Harry Wang, the director of health and mobile product research at industry research firm Parks Associates, echoed that assessment.

“Viv represents maybe the next milestone in the evolution of A.I. and human-machine interface design,” he told VentureBeat, “but not the greatest leap-forward nor the end-game.

“It may be more advanced, more intelligent, and more efficient than Siri, Google Now, or Microsoft’s Cortana, but I am hard pressed to believe it is far ahead in this ...read more

But the transition to a less-TV media landscape is hampered by the factor of money.

“Revenues for online video are just a drop in the bucket compared to TV advertising and pay-TV subscriber revenues,” Parks Associates’ director of research Brett Sappington told us.

From the article "For many Web-video watchers, TV is just a metaphor" by Barry Levine.

After a nearly four-year investigation into Google’s search business, and with a new European Union antitrust chief coming aboard in the fall, the regulators appear to be intensifying their efforts with new, more detailed inquiries sent to the company seeking information about these kinds of issues.

“European consumers tend to be much more skeptical of big business than consumers in the U.S. market,” Parks Associates’ Director of Research Brett Sappington told VentureBeat. “ ...read more

Parks Associates’ analyst Tejas Mehta, however, sees this beta version as testing the waters for mobile transactions — plus adding functionality for Amazon’s new Fire phone, where the wallet will come pre-installed.

“The launch of Fire smartphone heralded Amazon’s entry into mobile commerce,” Mehta told us, “and [with] a digital payments app Amazon can be in a position to offer an integrated user experience across the online, mobile, and offline retail space.”

From the a ...read more

But Seoul is not alone in opposing Uber. Brussels and Berlin, for instance, have banned the service, and there have been anti-Uber demonstrations by taxi unions in New York City and Washington, DC, as well as cities in China and Europe.

“This temporary setback in Asia and Europe is not new to Uber as it faced similar situations before in the U.S. cities,” Parks Associates analyst Harry Wang told us. “These bans and disputes may be just temporary in nature and a bargaining ch ...read more

“I expect [that] some smartwatch manufacturers will differentiate their products on the basis of a no-ad product,” Parks Associates’ senior analyst Jennifer Kent told us.

She also suggested that the “most realistic use case” is not ads on the wearables themselves, but on the paired smartphone — using “contextual data picked up from sensors in these smart wearable products.”

From the article "Quick, wearables, hide! The ads are coming …" by Barry Levine.

“It’s not going out without a fight,” Parks Associates Research analyst Glenn Hower told us.

He pointed out that, before the court decision, Aereo said it had no Plan B. “Obviously, they do,” Hower said, “but it’s a very complicated Plan B.” He noted that one of the complexities is that most of the statutory licenses include DVR recording, but these probably don’t cover the kind of cloud-based DVR recording that Aereo offers.

If they do get a license, he said, “they’re n ...read more

“Regulation can be a difficult balancing act,” Parks Associates‘ director of research Brett Sappington told VentureBeat. On the one hand, “regulators want to prevent huge players from squeezing smaller local companies out of the market, [and] protect the rights and privacy of consumers of consumers.”

On the other hand, he said, “it may be large companies that have the scale to really drive development of new technologies and services.”

From the article "Germany to Google ...read more