پایگاه خبری ندای گیلان|اخبار گیلان و ایران

U.S. tech without Iranian immigrants

شناسه مطلب: 60290
زمان انتشار: ۱۳۹۵/۱۱/۱۳ ساعت ۱۵:۲۲
ارسال توسط: الیاس بشری

ast year, when we were debating whether or not the U.S. should ramp up its acceptance of Syrian refugees, one image of a tech icon went viral, inspiring social media posts, news coverage, and a Banksy tribute. That image was of Steve Jobs with the caption “Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian refugee.”

While the image should probably have read “biological son of a Syrian immigrant,” it put a relatable face on the situation and added tangible stakes. Imagining a U.S. without Syrians is easy if you don’t know any Syrians, but imagining a U.S. without Steve Jobs means bearing the loss of Apple and Pixar’s economic, design, technological, and cultural influences. It would be a veritable alternate timeline.

Trump’s new order threatens to cripple immigration from seven countries: Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia. So far, no one’s done a good job of expressing the tech and business costs of what it means to lose the best and brightest from those countries. Instead, we get limp statistics, images of strangers suffering, and vague lamentations like “we’re losing our values” or “this will make it harder to hire programmers from abroad.”

Since I’m an Iranian-American and know the community’s accomplishments well, I’d like to paint a brief picture of what the U.S. tech landscape would look like had Iran been stonewalled over the last few decades. This should give you an idea of what’s at stake (the people below were either born in Iran or had Iranian parents).

  • eBay, if it existed at all, would be a French company (Pierre Omidyar, founder)
  • Your searches might be on Yahoo instead of Google, since Google would have lost its business founder (Omid Kordestani)
  • If Google did survive, its acquisition of YouTube might have wrecked the platform without a key employee’s stewardship (Salar Kamangar, former YouTube CEO and Google employee #7)
  • You’d be storing your files locally instead of on Dropbox. Other cloud storage services inspired by Dropbox wouldn’t exist. (Arash Ferdowsi, cofounder and CTO)
  • Twitter would be in deep trouble, because it would lose its Executive Chairman (also Kordestani) and its COO (Ali Rowghani).
  • Oracle would just be a character from The Matrix, because Larry Ellison would be missing his cofounder (Bob Miner)
  • If you’re a gamer, the ambitious World of Warcraft might never have made it out the door (Shahram Dabiri, Lead Producer)
  • If you’re single, you’d have no Tinder, which also means no Tinder knock-offs. If you’re not single, that also means no swipe-right UX (Sean Rad, founder)
  • Your business or computer science or engineering alma mater would lose international standing because Iranian-Americans are over-represented as professors and administrators in these fields.

The list goes on, and Iran is just one of the seven countries Trump is targeting. But it gets worse, because even if you think turning people away from these seven countries is an acceptable loss, there’s a cascading effect.

  • Immigration will fall from neighboring countries. Would a brilliant Turkish programmer accept a job in the U.S. now, knowing that their work visa could be revoked on a whim?
  • Immigration will fall from dual citizens (and many people with immigrant parents are automatically dual citizens). Would a born-and-raised British student study abroad in the U.S. if they had immigrant parents, knowing they could be stranded there indefinitely?
  • Immigration will fall from those with affected friends. Would someone weighing multiple international job offers pick the U.S. if their best friend was being unfairly treated by us?
  • Immigration will fall from those with empathy. Would a wealthy Swiss angel investor want to retire in the U.S. if they disagreed adamantly with our refugee policy?

Talented people in other countries don’t disappear if we reject them. They’ll shrug and move on to the burgeoning tech scenes of Europe and Asia, where they’ll be greeted with easy funding, a low cost of living, fast Internet, vibrant communities, and exotic workspaces. Many American tech startups have even been flocking to these destinations of late. If we limit immigration, we’ll be accelerating Europe and Asia’s tech position while massively sabotaging our own.

Adam Ghahramani is head of digital product for a creative agency in New York City. Find him at adamagb.com or make friends on Twitter (@adamagb).

SuperData: Mobile games hit $40.6 billion in 2016, matching world box office numbers

Super Mario Run is happening on iOS.

Above: Super Mario Run is happening on iOS.

Image Credit: Nintendo

Mobile games hit a new record by generating more than $40.6 billion in worldwide revenue in 2016, up 18 percent from a year ago, according to research by SuperData Research and Unity Technologies. That money is equal to all global movie box office sales during the same time, the companies said.

Mobile games now account for half of the entire global digital games market. The year’s big hits included new titles such as Pokémon Go and Super Mario Run. The report examines the combined mobile, mobile VR, and overall VR markets, and it’s the first to use data from both companies.

“The sustained growth of the global mobile games market is helping to legitimize games in the traditional media landscape,” says Stephanie Llamas, the vice president of research and strategy of SuperData Research, in a statement. “The size of the market is also attracting the leading players in the gaming market, as can be seen with Activision’s Blizzard deal to buy King and Tencent acquiring Supercell.”

Asia represents the largest mobile games market in the world, producing $24.8 billion in revenue in 2016, while North America and Europe generated $6.9 billion and $5.7 billion respectively.

Artwork celebrating the Pokémon Go Halloween event.

Above: Artwork celebrating the Pokémon Go Halloween event.

Image Credit: Niantic

Americans now play mobile games more often than they watch Netflix, Hulu, or YouTube. They spent 5 percent more in 2016 versus 2015, and the companies believe that number will continue to rise.

“Players are installing more apps than ever and are more engaged with mobile games than TV and online videos,” said John Cheng, general manager of Unity Analytics, in a statement. “They play six days a week and watch content only five. It’s been phenomenal to watch engagement on the different mobile and VR platforms grow, and that trend will continue to increase in the foreseeable future.”

During the year, time spent on mobile games grew by 12 percent on iOS and 9 percent on Android respectively, with gamers averaging almost 30 minutes of play time each day. As consumers continue to spend more time playing on mobile devices, the companies expect mobile gaming will continue to give marketers and developers an even greater opportunity to monetize this trend.

In other details, the report found 58 percent of mobile gamers play puzzle games, compared to 40 percent who play action games and 26 percent who play simulation games. Puzzle games don’t require high-level graphics and are ripe for on-the-go play.

However, action games represent 30 percent of the share of game installs by genre, while puzzle games represent 14 percent. Unlike puzzle games, action games are quick to play through, and retain players at 70 percent the rate that puzzle games do.

Clash Royale tournament coming this weekend.

Above: Clash Royale tournament coming this weekend.

Image Credit: Supercell

The U.S. is the only country with more players on iOS than Android. Android gamers represent 78 percent of the global market, but iOS continues to yield higher spending overall.

In the U.S., developers made on average 45 percent more on a player using iOS over Android, but in China, Android players were worth eight times more than those on iOS.

Indonesia tripled its potential for advertisers, seeing a 192 percent increase in installs in 2016. Spenders also play 84 percent more than the average Indian player, creating an undeniable opportunity for developers.

Users engaged with virtual reality more often than they did with games, movies, or TV. Mobile VR users engaged in 48 sessions per month, while PC/console users engaged in 36 sessions per month.

Total VR revenue in 2016 was $1.8 billion, with 6.3 million devices sold. Samsung Gear VR came out as the leader with 4.5 million devices sold due to a low barrier to entry (and promotional deals) as compared to high-price competitors like Oculus

read more at:clike