Most Successful Launch in History. Fastest Ever to 1 Billion Dollars. Fastest EVER. Mobile Is the Magical Money-Making Machine. I am talking about Pokemon Go of course

Lets talk Pokemon Go. Mobile is the Magical Money-Making Machine. It is LITERALLY the fastest way to make money on the planet. The richest company in human history was on the brink of bankruptcy three decades ago. Then it discovered mobile. The second most valuable company in human history was a clueless internet search engine that said quite openly, we don't know how we'll make money but we'll figure it out. They found mobile. And the fastest ever company to become one of the 5 richest in the world, was also lost in its core business struggling to make money with social media. Then it discovered mobile. The secret sauce to why Apple, Google and Facebook are so filthy rich and profitable and valuable, they don't know what to do with their money - the secret is, Mobile. Mobile is the Magical Money-Making Machine! I should know, I literally wrote the book on how this industry makes its money (15 years ago, M-Profits, my second global bestseller, was translated and into multiple printings).

Some clueless writers have been telling you that the Pokemon Go craze is over, it was a fad, its vanishing, its shrinking, its disappearing. That is as silly a story as saying James Bond is dead because nobody pays to watch the movie 007 SPECTRE in the cinema anymore - in February 2017 when the movie came out in 2015. That is IDIOTIC stupid moronic lazy thinking and it is misleading readers. We all know, a movie lives and makes money in many ways (if its a success), one is the money they make out of the box office sales of at the cinema. Other ways the movie lives in future sales like DVD sales and rentals. Then the movie goes into various television sales through premium movie channels, airplane viewings, etc until it hits our home TV on broadcast TV and earns its broadcasters advertising revenues, etc. And there is the merchandising. And then, there is the sequel (007 SPECTRE is the 23rd sequel (so its movie number 24) in the longest-running cinema success story in history, where the first James Bond movie was 007 Dr No in 1962, 55 years ago. And obviously the movies themselves are adaptations of Ian Fleming's global bestselling book series about the spy. Just because cinema box office intake of 007 SPECTRE is 'shrinking' some weeks after the movie opened, does NOT mean the 007 series is in any kind of trouble. But now some idiot tech writers are telling us that Pokemon Go is somehow passe and the world has somehow moved beyond Pokemon Go.

Remember Apple? Google? Facebook? Your fave tech stories? None of them were MOBILE players. All of them DISCOVERED mobile and turned mobile into their magical key to success, from a computer maker, to an internet search company, to a social media service. All discovered IMMENSE FORTUNE through mobile, both through hardware (Apple, Google) and through software/service (Apple, Google and Facebook). And if you could go back in time, you'd want to be able to go back a decade and buy stocks of Apple, Google and Facebook haha, you'd be so so so rich now....

Now about those RECORD setting companies. They discovered their eldorado through mobile. But who BROKE THE RECORD for fastest to one Billion dollars in mobile? It was not Apple, not Google, not Facebook. Its not Uber or Twitter or Snapchat. Its not Candy Crush or Clash of Clans or Angry Birds. The RECORD-BREAKER in mobile success is... Pokemon Go.

In literally a world record, in only 7 months, Pokemon Go went from zero dollars in income to $1 Billion.

I will state that again

In literally a world record of any industry success, in an astonishingly short period, of only 7 months, Pokemon Go went from zero dollars to 1 Billion dollars.

They are NOT a mobile company. Just like Apple, Google and Facebook, Pokemon and its parent, Nintendo are not a mobile company. They were a playing cards game with TV and movie and other elements (Pokemon, that is). Pokemon games and spin-offs have been sold over 280 million copies in several decades and spawned as series of movies, etc. All before they discovered mobile last year. And yes, the game itself is licenced from Nintendo and produced by Niantic with Nintendo, through The Pokemon Company. But understand. If you thought Apple was amazing, if you thought Facebook or Google are amazing. What Pokemon Go has done in 7 months is FAR FAR FAR superior to what Apple or Google or Facebook managed to do when they enterered mobile. And look where they arrived. Undestand, dear reader, what I am saying. If you think Apple or Google or Facebook is currently great - what Pokemon Go (and Nintendo and Niantic) have done in their first 7 months is VASTLY BETTER than what Apple, Google or Facebook managed when they entered mobile. VASTLY better. VASTLY. Pokemon Go is literally setting the world record for success.

Pokemon Go is not just the most successful AR Augmented Reality venture (which it is).

Pokemon Go is not just the most successful App ever launched (which it is)

Pokemon Go is not just the most successful game ever launched (which it is)

Pokemon Go is not just the most successful new digital service ever launched (which it is)

Pokemon Go is the most successful new venture ever in human history of ANY INDUSTRY of any time, ever. In its first 7 months it reached $1 Billion dollars of sales. Pokemon Go is a 2 Billion dollar company in its first year. It is nearly halfway to being a Fortune 500 sized company - in its FIRST YEAR.

There has NEVER BEEN A SUCCESS AS ENORMOUS AS Pokemon Go. I am not talking about HYPE or investor hysteria. I am not talking about 'valuation' or a Wall Street opinion or a buy-out;. I am talking of REVENUE actually EARNED. REAL HONEST SUCCESS, not salesmanship and bullshit. This has never happened before. Not in gaming not in mobile not in tech, not in media, not anywhere. The ONLY limitation is so far, that we only have seen the first 7 months of this juggernaut and its very first steps into the global stage.

Are you aware that Pokemon Go has not even launched in the world's largest market with the most smartphones in use? China? Or that Pokemon Go only launched in India in December (second largest smartphone market in the world, also ahead of the USA). 

Mobile is the Magical Money-Making Machine as I have been teaching in my workshops and seminars all around the world, and showing my all my books for 15 years now. Pokemon Go is only the latest example of this - they will not be the last or the greatest - someone ELSE will break THIS record. But do not listen to the fools who say Pokemon Go is past us. That Pokemon Go is something you can now safely ignore. Would you have ignored Apple in 2009 as the iPhone broke all records for smartphone sales? Would you have ignored Google in 2010 when it was taking the mobile ad market globally by storm? Would you have ignored Facebook in 2013 when it had finally figured out that social media on the PC will not make money - but social media on mobile is .. a Magical Money-Making Machine haha. No. Why would you ignore the FASTEST GROWING BUSINESS IN HUMAN HISTORY? Pokemon Go.

Because some users tired of it, Tomi! No, ALL mobile games experience a loss in early retention. ALL STATS SAY that the RATE of Pokemon Go retention loss is the SAME RATE as other games, like Candy Crush, like Angry Birds, like Clash of Clans etc. SAME RATE. Except, Pokemon Go is MASSIVELY BIGGER than any of those, so its starting point is FAR HIGHER - meaning it has FAR FAR FAR more money to be made, as its moderately-engaged marginal users drop off, and the more heavily engaged users remain.

Pokemon Go earns 1.5 million dollars PER DAY currently, globally (while its next release in the saga is far away - Valentines's Day - and its last update was long ago - Halloween).. Yes, in the USA Pokemon Go has about 23 million users (down from a peak of 66 million) but that is normal - it is still FOUR TIMES BETTER than the second most popular videogame in the USA !!!! FOUR TIMES BETTER.

So lets talk about those users. Pokemon Go has achieved over 600 million downloads. Thats 19% of all smartphones in the world. BUT Pokemon Go is not yet launched everywhere. If we ONLY take out China smartphone users, in the rest of the world, Pokemon Go has been downloaded by a massive 25% of all smartphone owners worldwide (outside of China).

Do they all play daily. Of course not. Some try it and don't like it and stop altogether and remove the app - that is NORMAL FOR ANY APP. But others who like Pokemon Go but aren't that into it - now have it installed, and are RIPE FOR THE NEXT VERSION or any gimmick the game brings to them. 

So again, context. Angry Birds, the most downloaded game of all time, by Finnish tech company Rovio, was the previous champion. Angry Birds achieved 1 Billion downloads in its first 3 years (has passed 3 Billion by now). They breached the 500 million download level at 6 months from launch. How is Pokemon Go doing? Pokemon Go is already past 600 million downloads and reached 500 million in THREE MONTHS - literally LAPPING THE FIELD vs the previous champion, Angry Birds. Angry Birds has earned a cumulative 1 Billion dollars in about its first 6 years. Pokemon Go earned its first Billion dollars in SEVEN MONTHS.

The richest app developer, the richest game publisher, the most successful mobile content company in history, fellow Finnish mobile juggernaut Supercell, owner of such titles as Clash of Clans and Boom Beach and Hay Day, earn about $2.5 Billion dollars out of ALL of their games, annually, combined. Pokemon Go currently is on track to earn $1.7 Billion dollars out of ONE GAME ALONE  - and that is assuming no further growth this year - haha, thats a laugh. (Softbank of Japan bought most of Supercell which it recently sold to Tencent of China for $8.6 Billion US dollars so that gives you some scope of how incredibly valuable a successful mobile property can be). 

Pokemon Go is the MOST SUCCESSFUL TECH LAUNCH IN HISTORY. By FAR. But who is telling you this? Or are they telling you stories about how Apple Watch is actually not quite as horribly a disaster as we all thought it is? Are they telling you stories about Microsoft's pathetic plays on the fringes of mobile, after they blew it with Nokia? Who is reporting to you about the BIGGEST SUCCESS IN TECH, EVER? And doing it properly, accurately, and explaning the REAL RELEVANCE of this all?

So, the company (more Niantic, not Nintendo per se) is being quite secretive about its numbers. And we get precious few other stats to use. But we have some. The download cumulative numbers are past 600 million. The revenues now passed $1 Billion. But what of active users? You may have seen a 23 million active user number often quoted. That is not GLOBAL numbers. That is a count of USA numbers, active users. Down from a peak of 66 million and now at 23 million. Like I said, its four times better than the second most played videogame in the USA. But lets try to see global numbers. There are only about 250 million smartphones in the USA, and 600 million total Pokemon Go downloads. So obviously the majority has been abroad. And not all US smartphone owners have downloaded the game. But lets be VERY conservative. Lets say the world splits 2:1, for every 1 Pokemon Go download in the USA, there are two outside of the USA (it was reportedly downloaded by 15% of all Australians already by August of last year, and 4 million are playing Pokemon Go in South Korea right now, in January, etc). So lets say its 200 million in the USA and 400 million elsewhere. And lets assume that the usage is similar worldwide. Then if the USA has now settled to about 23 million active Pokemon Go users, then the world has about 69 million active Pokemon Go users. That seems about right. Would be just under 12% of all who had downloaded the game at some point.

And if we take those 69 million active users and multiply it by $1.50 dollars per month of average spend, we get currently earned income in the range of $100 million per month. That is down from the peak reported of $210 per month in August. We are learning that the game currently has its users catching Pokemon characters at the rate of 533 million per day. That works out to 7.7 Pokemon Go characters caught per active user daily. Thats a lot of gaming involvement. It takes a lot of walking and hatching of eggs and whatever all it takes to play the addictive game.

Some closing thoughts. First, AR. Augmented Reality. Pokemon Go alone achieved 600 million people worldwide to experiment with AR last year and of those at least 69 million have become accustomed to interacting with AR on a regular basis. Don't think AR will disappear. It will be a mass media, as I predicted. TV was the fifth mass media, Internet was the sixth, mobile was the seventh mass media channel and AR will become the 8th mass media. It will have 1 Billion active users by year 2020 worldwide - which for scale, is about twice the size of the global daily circulation of newspapers. Yes, AR is real, it will come - and it comes fast. AR is the 8th Mass Media. You read that first on this blog when I told you.

Second, gaming. In gaming you have hits (Angry Birds, Clash of Clans etc) and if you have a hit, it can be a monster global massive hit. Gaming as an industry is already larger than music worldwide, or movies worldwide (actually larger than movies and music, combined). Mobile is now the largest part of the gaming revenues, as I told you all those years ago, it would become. 

Third, apps. I told you apps are a lottery. 75% of all revenues out of apps are earned by games and even in gaming its a 'hits business' where for every 1 hit, there are 10 failures to sustain by the publishers. But in apps its a crap-shoot. You have only 1 in 100 chance of success. So unless you do games, don't expect to become rich via apps. There are dozens of better ways to make money in mobile, apps are literally the second-worst aspect of mobile for making money (location-based services are the only one area worse than apps). Anyone who wants to understand the money of mobile and the numbers, go read my TomiAhonen Almanac, it has all the numbers for you.

Pokemon Go? Wow, congratulations Niantic and Nintendo, what a wonderful success story! We love you. Please do innovate and create and show the rest of the digital content media industries how to do it. You are combining augmented reality with community involvement (social media) and mobile and payments and physical world movement (walking, hatching) with gamification and making mobile fun. Its a wonderful example for us all. Thank you! Good luck and here's to your second Billion dollars in income. May it come even faster than the first!

(PS anyone else who happens to need some REAL insights into how you make money in mobile not rubbish about bitcoins etc, then yes, I do still do the workshops and seminars about how mobile money is made. Contact me and we'll set up a time for your event or session or consulting).

Comments

[Jonny evans]

This is great. Thanks.

[Peter F. Mayer]

The interesting thing about Pokemon GO is that it is based on Ingress which Niantic released in November 2012. All PokeStops and Gamys are portals in Ingress. The difference between Ingress and Pokemon GO are the Pokemon.

With Ingress Niantic made barely a living after they have been spun off by Google resp. Alphabet. Ingress never got beyond about 4 million active players.

So the reason for the success are the nice monsters, not AR, not mobile.

[Abdul Muis]

@Tomi

I was wondering if you ever tried Pokemon Go? Do you turn the AR effect all the time?

I think one of the main reason Pokemon Go successful is because it's a new kind of RPG. The first LBS-RPG. Also let's not forget that Pokemon have a huge following.

Anyway, Niantic & Nintendo has done a great job on Pokemon Go.

[Taylor]

@Tomi -

Can you expand on your statement that LBS are the one area in mobile that is worse than apps for making money?

"in mobile, apps are literally the second-worst aspect of mobile for making money (location-based services are the only one area worse than apps)."

-T

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Taylor

(Welcome to the blog). My regular readers know this story well. So yeah, anything in mobile will make SOME money, as a rising tide raises all boats. I've tracked the mobile industry from literally its birth (wrote the first book about mobile services and apps for this industry 15 years ago, and chaired the first mobile internet conference, the first mobile advertising conference, the first smartphone conference etc). I report on the various aspects of the industry in my annual statistical volumes like the Almanac, and I publish various mobile-related stats on this blog.

A highly promising area for the mobile industry back 17 or so years ago (around year 2000) was 'Location-Based Services'. It got a big enthusiastic support from major players around the world. I devoted half of a chapter in my first book to various location-based services like the most notorious one, you walk into a shopping mall, the shopping mall sends you a targeted personalized mobile ad, based on the fact that we know you just walked into THAT shopping mall.

But all sorts of maps and games and coupons and augmented reality and whatnot can be done with location information. So we've known this concept and literally THOUSANDS of service ideas have been commercially launched to utilize that location information. The location precision has gotten better where now we have indoor sensors to try to spy on you inside stores (GPS does not penetrate indoors) and so forth.

And there is SOME success. LBS is globally worth about 2 Billion dollars in annual revenues, when all LBS services are added together. We are able to make SOME money out of it. But take music. No, take one SLICE of music. The SIMPLEST form of mobile music is the basic downloadable ringing tone (the ploink-ploink version of cheap phones). That business exploded from nothing into a 2 Billion dollar industry - by year 2002 !!!

So that is what I mean. ANYTHING else you could imagine doing in mobile, doing mobile news, or games, or advertising or music or healthcare or education or gambling or porn - ANYTHING else you could have thought of, back in year 2000, would have given you a FAR FAR FAR better return on your time, money, resources and customer satisfaction - than investing in 'Location Based Services'.

So yeah, once again, I was wrong. By my second book (this is still 2002) I had already wised up and told all my readers - hey, that Location-Based nonsense, forget all about that. Lets do something that makes you FAR FAR more money than LBS.

That is what I mean. Location-Based Services have been deployed for about 17 years now, and everywhere they've been done, they are a dismal failure. There are occasional TOTAL exceptions (Pokemon Go needs Location to work) but as an industry, it is THE WORST performing slice of the mobile economic miracle. Anything else would have served you better than bothering with LBS.

I have written longer blogs explaining why, every few years, on this blog. You can try Googling say 'Communities Dominate Location Spam Myth' and find an article from a few years ago when I talked more deeply about these things.

Oh, and do get the free Almanac 2015 edition - that also warns of course (as all my books since my 2nd) about the LBS myth.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[John Phamlore]

Tomi,

I'm afraid you're missing the real mobile story here. Just this month we daily read stories such as this:

The Dutch will revert to paper and pen for their elections in March.

IBM may be demanding even programmers to move to one of a few centralized sites. And they're not the only company that is going away from telecommuting. And it's not just older companies: Even Facebook seems to be paying employees to move fairly close to its company campus.

Don't events like this strike you as being a bit odd? Voting would seem an ideal application for mobile. It wouldn't be hard for a well-run First World country like the Netherlands to guarantee all of its citizens mobile voting capability, and from there, all forms of interaction with the government. And we've never in human history had some incredible communication devices which now permit the supposed dream of face-to-face video communication. Shouldn't of all jobs programming be able to be totally geographically dispersed?

And let us not forget that a couple of years ago, EU / Eurozone leaders of countries had to physically gather together to hammer out an agreement to keep Greece in their group. These leaders all had mobile phones. So did their underlings.

I can't help but wonder if humanity is actually collectively deciding that there is an uncanny valley for mobile communication, especially among relative strangers. In this light, Pokemon Go's success is hardly something that applies to all of mobile. It might instead actually be a warning that the type of application that can make money is something that does NOT pretend intimacy between customer / citizen and company / government.

[Winter]

@John Phamore
"Voting would seem an ideal application for mobile."

NO.

The reason we switch back to paper voting in the Netherlands has nothing at all to do with the communication capabilities of mobile or the internet. It has everything to do with security and accountability. Voting has a number of essential prerequisites that cannot be questioned: Voting is done in perfect privacy/secrecy, votes can be done in perfect freedom, all votes cast are counted, and only the votes that are cast are counted.

Mobile voting is defective in all three respects, and electronic voting is defective in two out of three. The dismal security of computers and the internet makes electronic voting not private, and the counting suspect. Voting outside of the voting booth makes voters vulnerable to outside pressure. We know politicians in the USA could not care less about these three prerequisites as they allow them to manipulate the voting process, but we do care about our voting process.

The rest of your arguments are equally uninformed. The bandwidth and flexibility of face-to-face communication and negotiation is still a far cry from what can be achieved by electronic means. This is simply the way humans are build. Many formalized encounters can be brought online, but the bigger collection of human encouters still cannot be done electronically. Try having dinner over tele-conferencing (or an after dinner night together).

[grogxd]

In 2009, a good year for Nintendo, they had a annual net income of 2.8 billion. Then in 2016 an almost inexpensive game(for that big of a software developer) makes 1 billion for them/TPC/Niantic.

That's really huge, the Switch is kind of a lost opportunity in the mobile realm for them, but in the other hand it gives them time to revise how to adapt their business model to this new situation. The convergence of their handheld and home console businesses is done now thanks to it, and they now can study if in 4/5 years they want to transfer that convergence to android/ios to go full mobile. That move would give them basically all the human population as their install base to sell software/services to.

By then I guess the only new hardware they will be making would be Joy-con-like controllers(the attachable controllers of the Switch) and other gaming accessories for the iPhones and Galaxies of the world.

In other news

Later this year they will launch an Animal Crossing game under the freemium model, while the franchise is not nearly as well known as Pokemon, it has concepts that well exploited can help it going viral too.

[wilthyrich]

Yes yes. Nice indeed. 1 Billion in a short time is nice indeed. Apple though has done 1000 billion in less than 10 years and they will make another 1000 billion in 5 years.

Then lets remember that Apple gets 25-30% from the Pokemon Go.

[chithanh]

@John Phamlore
> The Dutch will revert to paper and pen for their elections in March.

That is because they are paranoid. Voting can be done safely and securely using electronic methods. It can be even better, as with paper based voting you have no way of knowing whether your individual vote was counted, but with electronic voting this is now possible.

Just the voting machines in use in some countries are very poorly secured, about as attack-proof as an ATM (so not very). I think it is even the same companies that make both.

@Winter
> The dismal security of computers and the internet makes electronic voting not private

That problem is solved, you just need two computers that aren't controlled by the same attacker.

> Voting outside of the voting booth makes voters vulnerable to outside pressure.

That problem is solved too, e.g. in Estonia: You can always after casting your electronic vote go to a polling station and vote on paper. This will make your electronic vote invalid and only the paper vote will count.

[Winter]

@chithanh
"That problem is solved, you just need two computers that aren't controlled by the same attacker."

The fear was that someone could manipulate the electronic counters and the counts in transit. There was talk about the possibility to manipulate the voting machines in the voting booths. Securing that would be extremely costly. And after all votes have been casts, there would bound to be someone that would argue that security was breeched and both computers were controlled by outside forces. That would also be a serious attack: Make it believable that a successful attack had been perpetrated and cast doubt on the outcomes.

That is the strategy of the Republicans in the US. There is negligible in person voter fraud in the USA, but the GOP is very successful in making people believe there are millions of votes cast illegally.

@chithahn
"That problem is solved too, e.g. in Estonia: You can always after casting your electronic vote go to a polling station and vote on paper. This will make your electronic vote invalid and only the paper vote will count."

Our voting process would have to be changed for that. By law, all voting has now to be done in a single day with very few exceptions.

Our minister of the interior reasoned that, while the probability of a successful attack was remote, he simply did not want anyone to cast any doubts about the validity of the voting process. Instead of going into a lot of effort to secure an electronic voting process and still ending up with someone coming up with a possible security hole casting doubts on the outcome, he simply reverted to paper ballots with a transparent and tried and tested security model.

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

@winter, @chithanh:

In addition to Winters comments I would like to add that transparency is an aspect of voting that is very easily overlooked.

In my country, we have a public lottery. Every week, a winner is chosen by letting a machine release 7 random numbers from a large selection of balls.

This process could be handled by a computer spitting out seven random integers. I think most people savvy enough to code an app knows how to program this type of program. So why do we still have the same lottery drawing machine as back in the sixties? This mechanical machine could easily be replaced for a digital and maintenance of the machine would be next to zero.

Because of transparency. The lottery right now is so transparent, even a simpleton can understand what is going on. It is also fully automated which means the human factor will not play a part.

Replacing this wi th a digital machine that blips seven different random numbers would completely destroy this transparency.

Same with voting; not only does the process have to guarantee secrecy, anonymity and security (from tampering); they also have to guarantee transparency. And computers are not transparent. At all.

This is why even the Pirate Party in my country, a party otherwise incredibly tech friendly, believe electronic voting to be a really bad idea.

[Winter]

@PWE
"This is why even the Pirate Party in my country, a party otherwise incredibly tech friendly, believe electronic voting to be a really bad idea. "

Actually, all hackers, black and white, as well as all computer security expert are AGAINST electronic voting.

[Tester]

Any sane person would be against computer voting, and even more against mobile voting. Any election that cannot be physically traced to the last vote out there is by definition suspicious.

These are typical ideas coming from technocrats who do not think it through to the end.

[Abdul Muis]

Talking about the DEVIL.....

Korea opens VR, AR complex in Seoul
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170210000575

"South Korea's science ministry opened a new complex in western Seoul on Friday to nurture the virtual reality and augmented reality industry as the country aims to become a global powerhouse in the sectors.

The so-called "KoVAC" is located at Digital Media City, a high-tech complex in western Seoul, to accommodate various VR and AR companies, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said.
A VR exhibition in Seoul in 2016. (Yonhap file photo)

The complex is part of the government's broader plan to invest more than 400 billion won ($358 million) over the next four years in developing new and indigenous VR and AR technologies, and narrow its technology gap with global leaders.

"The government will make utmost efforts in supporting our developers and companies so that they can advance to the global market," Choi Jae-you, vice minister of science, ICT and future planning, said in an opening ceremony.

At the KoVAC, the ministry set up an open space where companies and research centers can freely gather to develop the latest VR content, the ministry said.

Select start-up companies will work with major electronics companies to develop content that can be used on the latest VR devices and applications, officials said.

Also, a VR experience zone will be set up, the ministry said, adding that it is in discussions with major tech firms to establish it.

At the so-called VR campus, the ministry aims to train more than 2,200 VR experts, with 20 more campuses to be built across the country by 2020.

The world's AR and VR market is expected to reach $109 billion by 2021, with AR taking a share of $83 billion and VR with $25 billion, industry data showed. (Yonhap)"

[Abdul Muis]

And Apple also try to ride the AR bandwagon

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/02/10/apple-inc-ceo-tim-cook-talks-up-augmented-reality-potential-again.html
Apple, Inc. CEO Tim Cook Talks Up Augmented Reality's Potential (Again)

[chithanh]

@Winter
> manipulate the voting machines in the voting booths

That problem has been solved, and the solution is called "voter verifiable paper trail".

> Our voting process would have to be changed for that. By law, all voting has now to be done in a single day with very few exceptions.

Interesting. Here in Germany, municipalities typically have one or more polling stations open weeks in advance of an election, where people can cast early votes. The early voting process is called "Briefwahl" (mail voting) for bureaucratic reasons, as it is legally a form of absentee voting.

@PWE
> So why do we still have the same lottery drawing machine as back in the sixties?

I disagree with you, the reason is that even if the electronic machine were to be made transparent (which is definitely possible), people would not trust it because they could not understand it. Actually, laypeople are very bad at understanding computer security.

There was some Google research into what users and what security experts think makes their computers secure, and the answers could not be further apart:

https://security.googleblog.com/2015/07/new-research-comparing-how-security.html

@Winter
> Actually, all hackers, black and white, as well as all computer security expert are AGAINST electronic voting.

That is not correct. They are against forms of voting which are non-transparent, non-verifiable, and open to manipulation. If you look at the arguments that were brought against electronic voting machines in Germany, these objected against the use of voting machines which were closed and proprietary (on top of being demonstrably insecure), and produced no voter verifiable proof of working correctly.

@Tester
> These are typical ideas coming from technocrats who do not think it through to the end.

I invite you to check Tor Bjørstad's 31C3 talk on electronic voting in Norway. They were able to design a system that has all the required security properties of voting, including secret vote, transparency through verifiable cryptographic properties of the system (ie. every voter could check if their vote was counted correctly), and did not require any part of the system to trust any other part.

Electronic voting eventually fell out of favour in Norway, but for entirely non-technical reasons.

https://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/Fahrplan/events/6213.html
https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6213_-_en_-_saal_6_-_201412301130_-_the_rise_and_fall_of_internet_voting_in_norway_-_tor_e_bjorstad

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

@chithanh:

We are in agreement I think. You bring a very valid point to the table - that most people just do not understand, nor do they want to understand, how computers actually work. Nor should they, in the same manner noone needs to know everything about the car they are driving.

But again, the transparency suffers because of this, which is a big reason why the traditional way is preferred by most techs.

Perhaps in the future this status quo can be slowly altered, but for now...

[Winter]

@PWE/chithanh
"But again, the transparency suffers because of this, which is a big reason why the traditional way is preferred by most techs."

The Dutch Minister of the Interior did explicitly refer to this transparency fear to justify his decision. It was not that he was afraid the elections would be hacked, but that he was afraid that "the public" would lose trust in the outcome.

Note that the Netherlands did have electronic voting some years ago. These voting machines were discontinued after it was found out that you could record votes from outside of the building using electronic emissions. This was the straw that ended their use.

A comment on another blog pointed out that security wise, computer hard- and software becomes outdated in a few years. With elections every 4 year, this would mean that new equipment and updates would have to be bought for nearly every election. And that only for a minimal increase in "convenience". On the other hand, there have been no new "hacks" of paper ballots discovered during at least the last century. With the current paper ballot set-up, large scale subversion is next to impossible.

@chithanh
The Dutch approach to absentee voting is different. Voters can delegate their votes to some other voter in the same polling station. Each voter can cast maximally two absentee votes together with his own. Selling votes is illegal and actively prosecuted. Abuse of this system for absentee voting is the only irregularity observed and has an insignificant impact.

[Abdul Muis]

http://blog.smartprix.com/nokia-n81-set-unveiled-22nd-february/