Strategic business models of platform providers in the video gaming industry - cloud gaming customer segmentation analysis

This work project examines the evolution and variation of business models within the online video gaming platform industry. In the present paper, an in-depth analysis of the recent business model of cloud gaming is provided. With large gaming audiences that differ in needs and preferences, segmentation should occur based on gamer type. The analysis reveals a large potential, especially within the non-gamer and casual gamer segments. Further, advantages and weaknesses of the business model are outlined, and overriding recommendations are presented to strategically optimize it. To conclude, key insights and limitations as well as future research are discussed

Creative Destruction and The Music Industry : A Thorough approach on new technologies and their impact on the sustainability of the music market

Master's thesis in Music management (MU501

Models of ICT Innovation. A Focus on the Cinema Sector

The report starts by looking at the competing and overlapping definitions of creative industries, media and content industries. Chapter 1 investigates the fate of R&D and innovation in the creative industries and in the broader Telecom Media and Technology sectors. Chapter 2 summarizes past studies on innovation in distinct media and content industries (videogames, music recording and newspapers publishing) and draws some lessons from them. Chapter 3 delves more deeply into the specific case of cinema. This chapter investigates the film industry's complex and evolving relationship with technologies and technological inventions. Chapter 4 offers a short cross-comparison with R&D in the book publishing industry. Chapter 5 deals with policy issues triggered by the observed digital changes. Chapter 6 concludes with a brief assessment of EU strengths and weaknesses, and offers some recommendations.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

An analysis of strategic management in the digital music industry in a Chinese context

There are elements of cultural innovation only partly articulated in managing the business of Digital Music within academic research in a Chinese context. This thesis research into one question, how far management and operational systems developed with a western background can be applied efficiently to the Chinese context within the field of the Digital Music Industry? The study adopted a chronological approach. It followed the development history of three timelines, the development of management theories and logic in China and the West, the development of global Digital Music, the development of China's Digital Music Industry, which including understanding a critical introduction to management in its historical and intellectual context which provided a useful expansion of the issues raised. This research analyses China's Digital Music Industry from the perspective of the insider, with a people-oriented research angle and a comprehensive methodology based on an interpretive approach combined with dialectical thinking. The research distinguishes China's Digital Music Industry from other mature Digital Music industries and highlights the contemporary challenges it presents in the current context. This thesis begins by building a theoretical framework of Western management and its development, contrasting this with a Chinese experience of theories and philosophy of management. It tested these theories by analysing the changes and growth of Digital Music management in China from the external environment perspective and a case study of QQ Music. The research compares the similarities and differences between China's Digital Music Industry and others which include definitions of Digital Music, historical developments, people's concept of consumption, attitude, and behavioural habits around Digital Music. It reviews the literature on management research to conceptualise Western theories combined with the case study of QQ music, to make explicit how they apply or do not apply in China, and to be more specific, within the Chinese Digital Music Industry. The research defines the mission and goal of Digital Music in a Chinese context. More importantly, based on the analysis to understand the Chinese Digital Music management logic, makes clear the unique attributes (service as the core competitiveness), the development pattern of China's Digital Music Industry (an online and offline interactive digital business ecosystem) and offers a way to extend existing theories (the collision of fan economy, experience economy and the Long Tail theory). The research has collected a lot of valuable first-hand data, including many hard-to-reach groups and includes non-public data from the company and local government. The study concludes that Western management theories are distinct from China's experience in the Digital Music Industry. This lies in, particularly, the core profit model and consumer habits of Digital Music in China and their difference to the West. Consumers have different perceptions of the value of music content and service. It is valuable to seek new insights into advanced business models and management theories which is set to enhance the study of China's Digital Music Industry and which may provide the practical assessment of good practice in a Chinese context to inform management practice from non-Western models

Jukebox: An Adaptive Collaborative Open Application Development Ecosystem

In this day and age products are expected to be delivered to the right consumer at the right time through the right channel, in a way that inspires, informs and excites them. An adaptive, collaborative, open, and flexible mobile application solution has been designed for implementation. This solution undertakes to promote a broad level of inter and intra industry inclusivity, increase efficiency and efficacy, reduce total cost of operations, secure high transactional revenues, optimally channelize investments for better returns with minimum data pilferage and stimulates value for the end-users. The solution uses a jukebox metaphor and proposes conceptual workflows, architectures, protocols, and an application development ecosystem. These artefacts are a call for standards that could potentially evoke a paradigm change in mobile app development and operations

Online Distribution of English-Language TV in Mainland China

In the age of multiple screens, online video streaming has in the 2010s and present become the most significant way of consuming television content in mainland China. Among all the available content provided by Chinese streaming services, English-language television series stands out as an imported audio-visual product that is mainly distributed and circulated on the internet rather than television channels due to relevant media industry regulations and policies. Prior to landing on online streaming services as its legal distribution platform, English-language television series initially engendered its local audience base via informal distribution means, such as pirated DVDs and file-sharing and downloading websites; yet some of these informal services still exist in a grey area, since the content library formal streaming services possess is largely restricted in terms of size. From the perspective of media industry studies, this thesis deals with both formal and informal distribution platforms with a focus on formal distribution practices and the mechanisms behind them, which involve cultural, political and economic factors. This thesis first examines the streaming services themselves, studying distribution practices for American and British television series to understand the logic behind the localization of the business practices surrounding transnational television and to illustrate the features streaming services adopt to cater to online audiences based on local streaming consumption habits. The thesis then investigates how the current distribution pattern has been constructed by state supervision through cultural policies and censorship and by the historically dynamic relationship between formal distribution and informal distribution. I argue that the localized online distribution of English-language television series in mainland China is the result of the interplay among distributors’ business practices, Chinese authorities’ regulatory practices and Chinese viewers’ consumption habits and viewer practices. Putting the thesis in a global context, I contend that the development of online streaming technologies has created distinctive forms of media consumption in mainland China. Within the specific local political environment, the localized distribution pattern of transnational television content represents part of China’s response to the global television trade

Analyzing platform evolution in the new digital era - case indoor positioning in China

In recent years, a World 2.0 new digital era has been reshaping the whole business world, leading to the emergence of many new digital platforms, which not only won in their own industry but also started offering services in other industries, including sometimes the emerging fields. In this regard, platforms may become useful for helping companies to expand in the new business area. Nevertheless, as the digital environment is highly dynamic and the platforms are always evolving, it is difficult to find an effective tool to estimate to which degree those platforms could be useful. In the meantime, technological advancements in different industries have been converging into four areas: social media & social networking, mobile/mobility, analytics, and cloud computing, resulting in the formation of a new term – SMAC. The aim of this thesis is to discuss whether SMAC can be used as a tool to assess the platform ecosystem and evaluate the platform evolution. To achieve the objective, a Chinese social networking platform – WeChat was studied with a focus on emerging indoor positioning business. The findings of case analysis can help the focal companies to identify more easily the potential partners in each vertical or horizontal market and to define their expansion strategy more adequately

Dropout Attacks

Dropout is a common operator in deep learning, aiming to prevent overfitting by randomly dropping neurons during training. This paper introduces a new family of poisoning attacks against neural networks named DROPOUTATTACK. DROPOUTATTACK attacks the dropout operator by manipulating the selection of neurons to drop instead of selecting them uniformly at random. We design, implement, and evaluate four DROPOUTATTACK variants that cover a broad range of scenarios. These attacks can slow or stop training, destroy prediction accuracy of target classes, and sabotage either precision or recall of a target class. In our experiments of training a VGG-16 model on CIFAR-100, our attack can reduce the precision of the victim class by 34.6% (from 81.7% to 47.1%) without incurring any degradation in model accurac