Chris Hill: In terms of trends, Aaron,
what's got you excited in 2019?
Aaron Bush: Augmented reality.
I think it's been a long time since we've
had a big new consumer-facing technology to invest in.
I have a hunch that AR, and probably VR associated
with it, is going to be one of the next big waves,
even though some of the hype
around it seems to have fizzled out.
I might be off by one year, but 2019 could
be the year in which good AR products are
revealed by at least one major
tech company, probably Apple.
For Apple, it makes sense. They've been
acquiring companies with AR tech since 2013.
They released their AR kit,
their developer toolkit in late 2017.
They have all the pieces in place, controlling
the hardware and the software, plus the developer
community to make it happen.
They probably recognize that winning over
the AR market might be as big of a deal one day
as winning the smartphone wars was.
I'm a bit iffy on timing, but I’m really
excited to see the pieces start to come together.
You never know, Apple might have a big AR
glasses or something announcement and late 2019.
Matt Argersinger: So, you're saying Apple has a chance?
Bush: I'm saying that they need to do this.
Technology is going to shift past smartphones.
Services won't be enough. Fingers crossed.
Hill: The cash that Apple has on the balance sheet,
that probably also helps them sleep at night.
Argersinger: It helps a little bit.
Hill: In terms of trends, Matty, what about you?
Argersinger: Big trend this year, the past
year already but even bigger now this year,
sports betting taking off. I've been
known to place a bet or two in my time.
I think there are broader
implications for the economy.
The world is far more efficient, far more
innovative when it becomes gamified.
A competitive marketplace of ideas and dollars that are
wagered, inefficiencies tend to get streamlined out.
It's interesting.
If you go back to this fall, you could place
real money on which party was going to lead
the House of Representatives
after the November election.
You could have placed money on where Amazon
was going to open its second headquarters.
We talked about that on the show.
Imagine betting on things like what the weather
is going to be like tomorrow, who's going
to succeed Warren Buffett as CEO of Berkshire
Hathaway, what's the over and under on the
minutes it's going to take for
Domino's to deliver my pizza.
These might seem like silly things to
bet on, but when you're wagering real dollars
at scale, it tends to be incredibly
informative to the marketplace.
It makes the economy more efficient.
I’m excited about all the innovations that
I think are going to come out of sports betting,
especially when it becomes
so much more of a mobile application.
Hill: One of the ripple effects that we saw
in 2018 in terms of sports betting and the
legalization played out in media.
In the subsequent months, pretty much every
major network, both on the regional level
and on the national level, started to roll
out programming aimed specifically at betting.
Argersinger: Absolutely.
You see it all the time now.
