Players of Minecraft will now get three bars on their cell phones, thanks to Verizon Wireless.
With the extraordinary innovations that circle around one, have people ever thought that they would be able to use their phones, actually use it, in an actual game? Well, it is safe to say that thanks to Verizon Communication now one can use their cell phone in the Minecraft. Now the players of Minecraft, a blocky game, will be able to make phone calls to their friends from within the game.
The telecommunication giant, in collaboration with Wieden + Kennedy, an advertising agency and Blockwork, Minecraft’s advertising agency, started working on a cell phone that will be able to work within the game itself. Through this innovation, the players will be able to make video and phone calls to their friends; the only downside to this is that they will be pixelated video calls. Along with a video and call option, there is an option of a selfie stick as well; this feature allows a user to take a selfie and even send it to a friend as the cell phone is also able to send text messages and MMS.
The most attractive part of this is the video calls option as a player can dial a call to anyone of their friends and will be able to see them in block form while the people on the other side of the call will be able to see the avatar of the person from the world of Minecraft. Another attractive yet not so useful feature that the cell phones of the Minecraft world have is that of web browsing. The websites in the game will also be blocked and pixelated, it would be difficult for one to read them.
This whole thing came into being through a lot of hard work from Verizon company and the advertising agency. Along with its partners, they built a customized application by the name of Boxel. This specific custom application takes websites and videos and turns them into block form. It takes these options and turns them into a form in which the game can understand them. This project’s code is made available on GitHub, a software website.
Currently there are two largest telecommunication carriers in the United States, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, along with smaller rivals by the name of Sprint and T-Mobile US. The first two most popular networks are the most strong and reputable networks in America.
Verizon stock has been trading at a share price of $44.93 with a decrease in stock price of 1.43%. The earnings per share reported by the telecom company are 2.51.
The wireless company has finally decided to sell off all of its assets which are not giving the giant profit as much as expected and to now focus on wireless segment only.
Verizon Communications has brought about some massive changes in its wireless business and analysts have been wondering where this giant now might be headed. The most recent news about the wireless giant is about how it has announced of its plans to carry out a major selling of its assets which are worth $10 billion in a transaction that will soon be held by the giant.
This is majorly being carried out for the purpose of making its focus come right back to where it was previously and to get rid of all the excessively expanded business activities which were not bringing as much profit to the company as planned to. One of the major names in the asset-selling program to be carried out will be of MCI, which is one of those businesses which were offering the simple internet and landline services to special clients along with some major companies.
However, all of such smaller businesses have been facing some serious competition from other projects and programs launched by companies like Amazon and Alphabet Inc, which is why the wireless company has finally thought of selling these off in order to maximize its profit. The giant has indeed put up struggles to fight against the ever increasing competition but now it has decided against it, as all of these businesses will be sold off in the major sell-off plan that is to be carried out by the wireless business.
Analysts at Bidness ETC have turned out to be very bullish towards the Verizon stock now that the giant has announced it will be implementing a new strategy to make things better within the company’s sales. The analysts are of the opinion that in order to stay strong in the wireless communication industry, such steps are mandatory for the giant.
Verizon wireless has also decided to give all of its attention to the wireless segment of the company, which is believed to increase sales in all the right ways according to the analysts. In a press release, the giant was seen informing the industry of how much of a hassle it will be start selling off its assets as the biggest problem that will be faced in the initial stages is of departmentalization of all the assets which will take some time before the selloff finally takes place. The company is currently putting off the load it had previously taken and to put that as an investment in its wireless business to make it even better than it already is. The stock of the company closed at a share price of $45.78 on Friday, which showed a downside activity by around 0.91%.
The stock of the telecommunication company went up by 0.72% in the last trading session.
During the last trading session, Verizon Communication’s stock went up by 0.72% and was trading at a share price of $46.74.
In the past seven days, the stock of the telecommunications company went up by 1.56%; additionally outperforming the S&P 500 estimates by 1.35%. In a month’s time, the company’s stock went up by 9.43% and outperformed the S&P 500’s estimate by an increase of 2.69%. On the trading session that took place on Friday, October 30, 2015, the shares of the telecommunication company rose by 1.03% due to which it entered as one of the gainers of the day.
The trading commenced with a share price of $46.53 on Friday. On the higher end the share price was witnessed at $46.98 and on the lower end it was observed at $46.28; ultimately ending on $46.88. At the end of the session the shares were soaring at 14,753,237 shares. By the end of the trade, the shares were being traded at a price of $46.28.
The one year high was witnessed at $51.73 and the one year low was observed at $38.06. The current market capital of the telecom company is at $190.75 billion. The earnings per share reported by the company were 2.51 and the price per earnings ratio is at 18.65.
Insider trading was witnessed in the company. Verizon Communications disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission that there was insider buying and selling. The executive vice president of Verizon, Walden Marni unloaded 8,229 shares on August 7, 2015. The share price of the shares unloaded by the EVP is $46.26. The total transaction was worth $380,674 and was disclosed on a Form 4 Filing to the SEC.
A number of analysts have commented on Verizon’s shares. Major brokerage firm Citigroup covers the shares of Verizon and has maintained a rating of Neutral on Verizon’s stock. The brokerage firm has decreased the price target to $49 per share from an initial share price of $51. This rating by Citigroup was issued on October 21, 2015.
In other news, the company has also made an announcement that it will be laying off an undisclosed number of employees as well. The employees who will be laid off will be from the wireless division; employees from sales and stores will not be affected by this decision. By the end of the third quarter of the current fiscal year, Verizon had a total number of 177,900 employees. This lay off is happening because the company has decided to reduce the number of its regional offices. From 20 regional offices, its bringing it down to six; this change is taking because the company wants to reduce its costs.
Verizon Stores landline contributes 27% to the company’s revenue. The company also invests in Verizon wireless and internet products; along with it the company also released a free mobile video service earlier in September.
The telecommunication recently announced that it is allowing these sensor embedded devices at a reduced cost, maybe half price till next year.
In hopes of improving the Internet of Everything, Verizon Communications has presently announced that it will be making sensor embedded devices at a low cost. The telecommunication provider network has planned to make devices for cheaper and will also reduce the cost of connecting and accessing these devices from a 4G LTE network, as stated by the senior vice president of Internet of Things at Verizon, Mr. Mike Lanman.
ThingSpace was also launched by Verizon Communications, Inc. which is an integrated internet of things platform on which developers design and create applications. As for the users, they can manage their devices through it. At the event that was held on Wednesday at Verizon’s Innovation Center in San Francisco, the Senior Vice President announced that to cut of the cost of Verizon 4G LTE network chipsets designed by Sequans Communications are available. Furthermore he said that users will, in 2016, observed the company reduce this current price to half for a number of its modules that the company has planned on eventually launching. He says that through this the telecommunications company will be making 4G LTE networks and WAN networks more reachable and handy for users as well as developers.
Mike Lanman said in a statement at the conference that bringing continuous innovations in smart and metropolitan cities that are connect to cars and wearables clearly shows that the future belongs to Internet of Things and people, through IoT will live and work in the coming years but despite of being the future, at this point in time, it is still believed to be quite expensive, complex and also difficult to scale. So for the future of IoT to be successful, a genius or a true leader might be able to make it less complex and maybe even change the model of IoT while Verizon is one who is making efforts to improve it and making it available to millions and billions of users.
In other news, Verizon has also made announcements that it will cut some of the management positions as it wants the employees and customers to work closely together. Currently, the number of layoffs has not been announced. Bloomberg stated that the telecommunication company told its employees that it will be reorganizing Verizon’s wireless operations. From 20 it is going to bring the regional offices down to 6, according to Jim Gerace and further stated that some jobs will be cut in the process but he did not mention the numbers. The company itself said that even though management positions will be cut, no such change will be made for sales and retail store employees.
