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Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast
What If...Meta Bought Roku & Amazon's New Smartphone Is a Hit | Behind the Numbers
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A
Verve's global omnichannel advertising platform redefines what's possible beyond Ward Gardens, Verve illuminates, connects and activates high fidelity signals the drive outcomes for brands, agencies and publishers at scale. Learn more at verve.com V E R V E.com. Hey, gang. It's Monday, April 13th. Max, Marissa, Oscar, and listeners, welcome to behind the Numbers, the E market podcast made possible by vrv. I'm Marcus, and joining me for today's conversation, we have three people. We're joined by principal social media analyst living in Philly, it's Max Willins.
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B
Yo.
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A
Hello there. We're also joined by a newsletter analyst living in New York City, Marissa Jones.
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C
Hi.
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A
Hello.
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B
Hello.
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A
And also in the city, senior director of forecasting is, of course, Oscar Roscoe.
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D
Hello, listeners. Hey, Marcus.
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A
Hey, fellow. Today's fact. All right, a bit of a test for you. The most visited or pop quiz. The most visited state test was a bit intense. The most visited state in America Panic. The most visited state in America by foreign tourists. And we're not counting Canada or Mexico. So they've. Yeah. Is what? In 2024, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office.
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C
My initial. I was initially gonna say New York. I'm gonna go with Florida. I think it's got California.
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D
California.
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B
I feel like I have to pick a third thing because those were my two choices. But I. You know what? I'll say New York because that was also kind of my first instinct.
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A
But the other two should have gone with your gut. Marissa, It's New York.
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D
New York.
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A
10 million overseas visitors in 2024. But you said Florida. Florida, yeah.
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C
New York seemed too obvious to me, so I figured I'd go with my second.
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A
Florida is a good guess. Oscar, yours as well. Just four states accounted for 57 of all international tourists. There was New York with 10 million, Florida with 9, Cali with 7. And the fourth state, fourth most popular. What do we think where people. We think people are going to?
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D
Where does D.C. fit into? This is like Maryland. Maryland.
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A
D.C. nope.
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D
No.
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C
Illinois?
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A
No. That was the only Midwest state with over a million to visit.
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D
Arizona.
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A
Nope. Where do you think people are coming in? What do you think they're coming into the country to do? They're going to big city. They're going to theme parks. They're going to. Where else can people. Where else those adults having fun?
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D
Oh, Nevada.
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A
But quite a drop from 7 million in Cali to 3 million Nevada, which is in fourth place.
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D
We love you, visitors. Come visit us in New York. That's all I was going to say I love tourists, so that's good to hear.
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A
It's 20% of the of the foreign tourists who aren't Canadian or Mexican, about 20% are going to New York. 50 million visited from overseas in 2024. Gabrielle Cohen, a visual capitalist, pointing out that Hawaii is the rare state to have received more international visitors 2 million than its entire population of 1.4. Yep, haven't been yet. Can't wait to get there. Anyway, today's real topic or conversation, we're going to be making some very specific but perhaps somewhat unlikely predictions for 2026. Shark tank style completely ripped it off. Okay, here's how this episode works. Max goes first. He gets about 60 seconds to pitch a what if British prediction he thinks will come true in 2026 or thinks might happen in 2026. Then me, Marissa and Oscar and everyone listening will decide if we're going to invest. If we believe in his prediction, Marissa goes next, so on and so forth. Let's do it. Max, what do you have for us?
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B
So I would like you all to imagine a world where Meta, after what I would say is close to 15 years of just basically nonstop winning in the court of public opinion in attracting more advertisers and growing its user base, what if the two lawsuits that they just lost in California and New Mexico are the start of a long losing streak and Meta just keeps losing these lawsuits that it is slated to face in court over the next several months. There are over 2,400 lawsuits that have been piled together in a multi district litigation with judgments that could pile up into the billions. The question of remedies that could include stricter age verifications, the end of Infinite scroll, even changes to their algorithms that recommend content to people. I'm here to ask what happens if Meta keeps losing and I think that the answer is that we are going to have the first national ban of social media for children under the age of 16 and a change to the way that it's that its apps function.
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A
Yeah, I really like this one. We covered it in an episode last week on Monday, so check that one out. But Max wasn't with us for that one, so I'm glad that we've got his take on this today. The context behind Max just mentioned most of it, but the California jury found Matter and Google negligent for contributing a woman's childhood social media addiction, resulting mental health issues. She got $6 million. While this small amount of money for these trillion dollar companies, the ruling significantly could be a significant threat to social Media as a defective product harming young people. A day earlier, another jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay nearly 400 million for failing to protect young users from predators. That's the background here. Marissa, what do you think?
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C
I think this is a pretty likely scenario to some extent. I think. I guess we don't know how it's going to play out with how strict these new protocols around social media are going to be. But this is something we are seeing, is actually happening in other places outside of the US and we're seeing complete bans for people under a certain age in Australia. And really since that just a ton of other countries now looking into the these social media platforms and what harms they present to younger users. So I do think this is a very real threat to Meta. And I think obviously the negligence lawsuit they lost, while it was a very small sum they had to pay, is just kind of a tipping point in what is to possibly come.
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A
I'm wondering, Max, is this going to be the case where Meta or any other social platforms on their own decide, all right, we're going to get rid of these features so we can't get sued anymore, or where a law gets put in place saying you can't add Infinite scroll, you can't add Autoplay, et cetera?
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B
That's a really good question. I think the answer is probably going to depend on what happens in the second phase of the New Mexico case that you mentioned, Marcus. So the thing that got most of the headlines was the sum of 300, I think it was $375 million that Meta was ordered to pay. But the thing that struck me as more important was the fact that the case is now going to move to its second phase in May, where the judge is going to decide what structural remedies, if any Meta, will be required to undertake to sort of make this right. And one of the things that is on the table, there are some of the things that I alluded to earlier where Infinite scroll could basically be banned, change algorithmic changes, although the details there are very light, so it's sort of hard to say what that would look like. But it's all to say that if, if Meta, and Meta is obviously going to appeal this and deploy, you know, an armada of lawyers to try to keep this from going against it. But if Meta winds up losing its appeal on not just the financial damages, but also on the, the material changes that are required of it, they may wind up having no choice but to make a really drastic set of changes on its own. Just to, as you say, like, sort of stanch the bleeding and keep things from getting any worse. Because they. There's already. One of the things that's been discussed quite a bit is the, the effect, the extent to which these lawsuit judgments that have rolled out in the last couple of weeks sort of affect the prospects in the future litigations. Right? Like, if, if enough people sort of see, oh, you know what, it is okay for us to really, you know, thwack these companies for doing something that seems to have a, be having a really negative effect on the mental health of, you know, young people in the United States, then that could make for a really, really tough situation for Meta. Just when that comes to pass.
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A
Just to quickly jump in, Oscar, before you go on the young people thing, and Ethan made this point in last week's episode. He was saying that a lot of this, the conversation, the cases are about young people. And do we think that's going to. Eventually the legislation is going to spill over into, okay, these are rules for everybody, because right now we're just talking about young people. So I can imagine while Brother is there, right? These are the things that we can't have, the structural changes we have to make. You can't have Infinite scroll. You can't have also play all these things for anyone under this age. But once you're an adult, gloves are off, we can add. Do you think that they're eventually going to say, here's the sweeping changes across all ages?
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B
I think that that's definitely possible, although that, again, is something that they will fight tooth and nail because one of the things that they have spent so much time and energy and resources on over the last few years is really, really obsessively refining the ways that their systems optimize or personalize the content that people get and make sure that what you see is instantly appealing right away. And if there's even a hint that they are going to be forced to either wind down or undo some of that stuff or, or change it, they may feel really compelled to sort of come up with a more palatable version of, of those changes rather than have an outside company take a, you know, hatchet to this system that they have poured, you know, hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars into developing over the last couple of years.
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A
Yeah. Oscar, what do you think, Max?
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D
I was wondering, what do you think the more immediate impact, where will it be felt? So do you think Meta will feel it more from an engagement standpoint? Will it be usage? Do you think we'll see an immediate Drop in usage right away or is it on the monetization side? I'm wondering how you see that playing out first. Maybe you can even speak about long term. What will be the biggest impact?
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B
Yeah, I mean it's, it's tough because you know, what I've presented you and I'm arguing against myself here is this kind of like turducken of hypotheticals. But like if it, if it's all if, what we're talking about is kind of worst case scenario, right? Where like there's no more infinite scroll, there's no more autoplaying video, there are age verification tools that have real teeth. I think that what you're going to see first is a sort of just decline in engagement. And that fundamentally is going to be the thing that affects ad prices because it's just going to start affecting inventory, right? I mean advertisers have proven themselves over and over again to be pretty indifferent to the, you know, kind of negative PR that Metta has faced over the years. And for not insignificant things, right? I mean like lots of credible evidence that they have knowingly, you know, built their systems in ways that negatively affect the mental health of teenage girls. That they're, that they earn literally billions of dollars a year from, from ads that are, you know, basically sold by or purchased by scammers to sort of dupe people out of money. The idea that they have been, you know, their systems have helped facilitate ethnic cleansing in parts of the Global South. Like these are very serious, very sobering charges that they have faced and advertisers have just gone that's too bad and kept spending, you know, like it has had zero effect on their business as a whole. But if all of a sudden the amount of inventory available for them to buy drops by 16% and the amount of time people spend on their drops, you know, a double digit percentage, then all of a sudden that inventory gets more expensive and it probably starts performing a little bit, bit less effectively. And so it really, I think the sort of first domino that falls that way as far as a business effect is just the, the, a negative effect on the supply of, of inventory for, for advertisers to buy.
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A
Marissa, you had a great quote. We actually cited you in last week's episode. You were basically talking about implications for mass marketers on this and you said the decision quote, the, the decision doesn't mean messa and YouTube are less viable ad channels given does raise questions on how marketers will approach youth centric media plans in the future. The risk of being associated with platforms causing measurable harm to miners presents reputational and governance concerns. Marketers will likely have to exercise increased caution with what content they promote. Platforms with large youth audiences, I thought was an excellent point. So two things I wanted to say quickly on this. One of them, Marissa, you kind of touched on people, you know, overseas definitely starting to, to, to do things. And a lot of the time when it comes to legislation, you have to just kind of look across the water and have a peek at what Europe and other countries are doing. The Economist noting that in February a preliminary ruling from the European Commission found TikTok in breach of its Digital Services act owing to its addictive. It's been a key word in this one, this, this case, addictive features. TikTok was told to change the design of its app or risk a fine of up to 6% of global revenues for its parent company ByteDance. And then finally, Cornell law professor James Grimmelman calling this a brick in a potential wall. And Atlantic article by Caitlin Tiffany noting that the following verdict. Following the verdict's announcement, Matthew Bergman, one of the plaintiff's lawyers and founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law center, says reporters quote, the verdict carries implications far beyond this courtroom, establishes a framework for how similar cases across the country will be evaluated and demonstrates that juries are willing to hold tech companies accountable when the evidence shows formidable. Sorry. Shows foreseeable harm. Close quote. I'm in. I think this feels like a tipping point. So I'm going to give this one
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B
full point, have a lot to write about.
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C
I'm also going to give it a full point, Oscar.
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D
I'm gonna give it a half a point.
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A
Thank God, because he would have won already. It would have been almost impossible to get 3, 4, 1. So I appreciate that for the sake of competition. Go on, Oscar. Sorry.
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D
And, and the reason being I, I think Meta is just too big to fail. Right. And so I think structurally they'll be operate how it'll impact how they operate a bit moving forward. But I think it'll be a bit of posturing, kind of like a strong PR game to sort of let the greater industry know that things are changing for the better. You know, they'll pay some fines. I think they have over 80 billion in cash sitting in the bank. So it'll be a drop in the bucket. But ultimately I just think they're a bit too big to fail. They won't be allowed to, you know, half point.
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A
Go on. Go on, Max.
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B
I was just saying now that I have a commanding lead in the game I can say that I think that broadly there. There's a lot of reason to support that idea, Oscar. Like, what else? Where. Where will. Will all that. All that money, all that time, all that energy go. Right. You know, we're not all going to go back to the bowling alley. So it's. It's a great. It's a great question, but it's why I wanted to bring it up, because it's a really. It's a fascinating question.
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D
Yeah, it really is.
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A
Unfortunately, you guys have took me down to just half a point, so. Maxi, four points.
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D
It's too late how that works.
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A
Sorry. As the referee and also participant in the game, I've allowed to do whatever I want. So, yeah, unfortunately, two points for Max.
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B
I'm calling my lawyers.
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A
And then you jumped it as well. Thank you, Marissa. Thank God. All right, Marissa, you're up. What you got first?
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C
Yeah. So my scenario is what if Meta bought Roku or this could really be kind of any similar CTV player platform with as much scale. But if Meta were to want to branch out into tv, it needs to buy something where people are deciding to watch. Beyond offering ads, Roku captures the home screen. It captures the remote button, the ad layer, of course, and it is the gateway to ctv. So Meta, as we know, really dominates attention on phones and on social media. But ctv, we're seeing, become almost as important to advertisers as these mobile feeds. Buying Roku would allow Meta to really extend its dominance into the living room, to own discovery across screens and on the biggest screen in the home. I think what makes this particularly interesting is that in this scenario, if Meta were to buy Roku war CTV platform, it would also be positioning itself more closely with its major competitors Google and Amazon. So obviously, we know Amazon has Prime video and Fire TV. Google has YouTube and Android, which are huge CTV competitors. So Meta does have the attention to extend into this, but doesn't have the TV distribution that its competitors do. So buying Roku would be maybe a way to close that gap in a single move. So, yeah, Mez one attention on the phone, but buying Roku would be its next step to capture attention on a different screen.
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A
This one's really interesting. I like it.
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D
Because
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A
ctv, according to our forecasts, which Oscar will know very, very well, is the only time spent category that's growing. We've got about 13 hours a day with media at this point. In terms of time spent and any extra minutes that are being added, we're saying there's like a couple being added, but kind of Barely. Some are going down. The only one that's growing is ctv.
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D
Exactly.
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A
So social's flat. There's no extra minutes that you can squeeze out there. And so this fight, this battle for the living room, social players try to kind of pivot and get. I mean, YouTube's done a fantastic job of obviously making CTV kind of central to its core offering and being a place where people are consuming a ton of its content. So, yeah, I think this is really interesting move, a potential move for Meta. Oscar, what do you think?
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D
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a super fascinating one. Perfect example for the game we're playing. I mean, I did have a question, Marissa. Like, when you think of. Of Meta buying Roku, I mean, what do you think the most valuable asset would be for them, right? Is it. Would it be like the, you know, the Roku channel? Is it the operating system itself on the ctvs? Is it more about the. The ad stack and. And sort of that type of, you know, that type of technology that helps build out its ad business?
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C
Yeah.
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D
Curious what you had in mind there.
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C
I would say it's probably a combination between just owning such a dominant CTV operating system. I'm not really positive, but I believe Roku is kind of the leader in this. I mean, I have a Roku. Maybe I'm just speaking from personal experience, but I do think it is a super valuable operating system to have. But beyond that, it has the Roku channel. So it's has a leading fast platform and we are seeing really strong adoption. Fast. Pretty strong ad results from fast. That would give it another layer. And also as social engagement declines, this is another reason that would draw in advertisers who are looking for something to capture that engagement in a format that's consistently innovating and coming out with new ways to draw attention.
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A
It's also for context, really quickly, according to Nielsen's gauge, in terms of the track where people spend their time on TV, in terms of across the digital platforms, YouTube's first 12.5%, Netflix with, call it 9, Disney with 5, Prime Video 4, then Roku Channel with 3. That's more than Paramount to be Peacock or Warner Brothers Discovery. If Peacock and Warner Brothers Discovery got together, they would just be the Roku Channel. So it's a lot. It's a big audience.
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B
Sorry, Max. Yeah, no, I have a question that's kind of a different flavor of the one that Oscar asked, which is
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A
one
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B
of the things that has sort of defined Meta's. The evolution of Meta's kind of ad Business is that it's basically sought more places to kind of put the ad units that you find everywhere. Right. So like, I guess maybe a slight exception to this would be stories ads. But like, you know, the ads that you see in Instagram are the ads you see in Facebook are the ads you see in Threads are the ads that we are, you know, starting to see in WhatsApp are in this scenario. Are we basically expecting that we're going to start seeing like Instagram ads, you know, during ad breaks on the Roku channel or you know, inside like. Or is this more going to be like what Pinterest has done with or seems to be doing with TV Scientific where they're basically going to be kind of harvesting intense signal and using that for targeting of different kinds of creative that the advertisers will be, you know, piping into this CTV environments.
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C
Well, I think expanding to CTV really does give Meta more of these signals that I think it might not be identical to the ads that you would see on Instagram, but there is that connection they can make between the phone and the TV screen that helps them improve the relevance of these ads that they're serving. So I feel that connected TV ads, maybe something like a home screen ad might look similar to like an ad you scroll by on Instagram, but the ads that are within say the Roku channel and all the apps are on Roku would be probably a bit new for Meta, a bit something different that they haven't really explored before.
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A
Interesting. I'm hafin.
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C
Okay, I'll take that.
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B
I'm also half in. I think it's a very interesting idea to what we were just talking about. Like if Meta swallows Roku, it would take a. It's. It's going to take a long time for them to digest it, I guess is how I would put it. And so I, for that reason I'm. I'm half in. Like it doesn't seem like a layup, but it's definitely intriguing. So you get half points for me.
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D
Yeah, I've been tough today, but I'm going to give it a half point. I do think it's, like I said, it's fascinating. I love the comparisons with you made to Google and Amazon. Like it feels like it makes sense, but it does feel a little bit more like the type of move that would be more of like a partnership, you know, like a tie in. Right. Ad tech publisher tie in than necessarily like a complete acquisition. But I think there's something more to it. I also question if Mark Zuckerberg would think this is a bold enough idea. It feels like his mind is in other places, but no, no. Yeah, half point, which I think is great.
- [24:10]
A
Yeah, I'll take it. If they lose these. Yeah, if they keep losing all these lawsuits, they might have to make a move like this. Let's keep the business going.
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C
Yeah. If they lose all their young users, they can go to their kid TVs.
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A
One one and a half points, a strong performance. Oscar to go. Last up but not least. What you got for us.
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D
But not least. Okay, so full disclosure, my idea does not come entirely from nowhere. I mean, a bit like Max's as well, but it has to do with Amazon. There's been rumors about Amazon working on a smartphone. I'm developing a smartphone and the likelihood and from what I'm reading and hearing is that it likely won't happen. But you know what I'm playing here is what if Amazon's second shot at a smartphone? Remember they did have like the Amazon fire phone about 10, 12, 15 years ago, so it'd be their second shot at it. What if it's a success? They're calling it the transformer phone. So what if it does really well and it starts to eat into the OS market share that we know is entirely made up by Android and iOS. So keeping in mind that, again, a bit unlikely, but I think that there's real potential here for Amazon. My bet is that it can work, that this second attempt can come together. I think it's trying to turn Alexa plus, which has been a lot of news around Alexa plus recently, turning into this full fledged, like AI agent product. So what if it can turn into this proper OS system that layers what we know Amazon has, Right? It's shopping, entertainment, streaming and doing all of this. You know, of course, surrounded by everything AI, which I think is at the core of what they're trying to build there. I think they've learned from their mistakes. Mistakes from the original Fire phone. And they have so many. They have a strong ecosystem as well.
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A
Right.
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D
We didn't mention Fire tv, which Marissa mentioned earlier, but Ring and the Kindle. So, you know, I think it could really compete with, with, you know, Apple again, Android and all these hardware device companies that, that make the smartphones. So, you know, slowly carving out a niche in its, in the market and gaining over the years. That's my prediction.
- [26:37]
B
I think this is a really interesting one. I have a question about, you know, when you say hit, are you imagining this is a hit as a premium product or is a Sort of more cost effective, like lower end of the income scale hit.
- [26:51]
D
That's a, that's a great question. Now I mean the way I'm visioning, I mean I do, I'm, I'm thinking of it because from what I've read it's supposed to be unlike existing phones. So it's more of like not using the traditional app store system. So I think it would have to be kind of at a lower cost point. I think there'd be, you know, have to be a big partnership with a lot of the telecom players that you know, would offer the phone at a lower cost. Of course. Also thinking of all the Amazon services, anyone who would have a Prime membership, for example, would get some sort of discount or. And for the services once you have the phone you get discounts on that. So ultimately lower price point to start. And I think, you know, it has a lot to do with just the fact that the toughest thing to get over for new users would be the fact that it would look unlike what we know of now with an iPhone and an Android phone.
- [27:46]
A
Yeah, yeah.
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C
I think
- [27:50]
A
when you first said this, it's very easy to dismiss this, to kind of laugh it off and say hahaha, they tried the fire phone. What a joke. Didn't work. But this was 2014. This was when Pharrell, I went and looked it up for Pharrell Williams is Happy was top of the chart. So it's a long time ago.
- [28:04]
D
It's all
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A
but so to that point it does feel like there is a different moment in time. It does feel like maybe people want less from a phone. And if there's a phone, apparently they're drawing inspiration from this light phone, this $700 minimalist smartphone, camera, map, calendar, not much else. And if Amazon just says they basically want to help you buy with prime, watch prime video and listen to prime music and if that plus a Maps app, maybe that's all you need. Costs are going up. People already are struggling to buy smartphones or something smaller and something that does less, consumes less of your attention. Maybe that's quite an appealing proposition. Also a Yahoo Finance article thought this is a good point, noting that a differentiated mobile experience that reduces reliance on third party app stores may help Amazon defend its retail and prime economics if AI agents start to intermediate. Shopping on iOS and Android devices, I thought was interesting.
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D
Yeah, I think the Rufus piece, that was another part I didn't mention, but integration of Rufus, which has been apparently doing really well, you know, very high engagement. I think they reported over 250 million people worldwide have been using it.
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A
Wow.
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D
But, but yes, I think I didn't mention it at the beginning although I alluded to it. But yeah, it would be sort of an alternative where yeah it's, it's a little bit more about you scale specific use of the phone. You would less of this like browsing time wasting, second screening perhaps. But we know the Amazon ecosystem has so many users. Right. There's so many people that are again shopping, streaming. I mean there's been recently the grubhub integration too. So like you know, getting meals delivered to the home. So there's a lot there that would keep people kind of, you know, loyal to this, to this new phone and Amazon overall.
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A
Yeah. Marissa, what do you think?
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C
I think there is a market of people who are probably would prefer a phone that's a bit simpler, that's less. Takes up less of your attention and your time scrolling. But I wonder how many people are just saying that. How many people would actually want an alternative because as much as like to me like a cheaper phone that is maybe less distracting. Sounds good. If I was given an iPhone or an Amazon device, I would probably stick with my iPhone.
- [30:23]
D
Yeah, yeah.
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A
It's also an interesting point in time to get into a smartphone world because it's a shrinking market. The smartphone shipments heading for the biggest decline ever in 2026 expected to fall 13% according to IDC. As memory chip prices have gone up. So device prices have gone up. So the market is actually getting smaller and they're getting in at this point. So that's going to work against them. Yeah, we also, we think it's going to be a phone. It probably will be a phone. There's questions about what it will look like, if it'd be more kind of an AI screenless device. AI hardware hasn't gotten off to the best of starts. You've had humane AI pin that's gone away. Rabbits are one. Assisted didn't do so well. But it hasn't deterred others. Greg Benzinger of Reuters was noting that others are pursuing AI native devices with the app driven visual language of smartphones. OpenAI working with former Apple design chief Johnny I've on several hardware prototypes and Apple, Google and Meta developing new AI enabled glasses and other devices such as watches and headphones as well. So there's definitely interest in developing an AI centric device. Half in, what do we have?
- [31:42]
C
I'm also half in.
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A
Half in as well.
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B
All right, I'm going not in because
- [31:49]
D
you have said that for earlier, huh? For forgetting the points column. A little economy. I'm joking, I'm joking. Go ahead.
- [31:58]
B
No, I, I mean I was, I asked it kind of jokingly, but I, I think that if what they, if what they are doing is. Because I asked you whether you think that this is going to be sort of the lower end of the income scale versus a more premium product. I think that the reasons why Amazon wants this to be a thing are, you know, abundant. And I think you map them out really, really well. Right. Like, it's an amazing way to drive, lock in, to drive consumption on media, which is really important as they continue to fuel retail media with their dsp. It's a great way to sort of, you know, provide defense against agentic shopping that doesn't involve Amazon as a retailer. But I just don't see why any person would voluntarily buy something like this when, as you know, Marissa pointed out, like, everyone's pretty content with what they have. The shipments that Marcus laid out are an excellent point. Like we are reaching kind of asymptotic levels of improvement for the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy devices. And so the idea that a critical mass of American consumers would just sort of go, I'm going to ditch this thing that works perfectly fine, has worked perfectly fine for something that is cheaper and also that I can like shop a little bit more easily, like, and watch more stuff like, I just don't see it essentially, like if they were gonna, if they said that the transformer is like the humane pin, which sicko listeners of this podcast remember, I think is an amazing idea and I'm super remain super bullish on it. You would have gotten my half point, but you disappoint me. And so you can.
- [33:46]
D
Now these are valid points I want to get last thing in. I think we should revisit this in about two years, mark around the calendar, I think. April. Yeah, 14th of 2028. But look, I think the first phone was meant to get people to buy from Amazon. I really feel that the second one is gonna make it easier for people to live within the Amazon ecosystem. I think there's something to it, guys. We'll see.
- [34:11]
A
100%. We shall indeed. It wouldn't have mattered though, Oscar, because you needed a full point to tie and a point and a half extra, which Max couldn't have given you to win because your prediction was a really strong one. I think it's really interesting. What if Amazon's new smartphone is a hit, gets one point. Marissa's. What if Meta bought Roku, gets a point and a half. But Max is today's winner with what if Meta keeps losing all of these lawsuits with two full points. So congratulations to him. That's all we have time for for today's episode. Thank you so much to my guests for hanging out with me today.
- [34:43]
D
Thank you.
- [34:43]
A
First to Oscar.
- [34:44]
D
Thanks for having me, Marcus.
- [34:46]
A
Yes, indeed. Thank you, Marissa.
- [34:48]
C
Thank you. It's always a pleasure.
- [34:49]
D
Yes, indeed.
- [34:50]
A
And thank you, of course, to today's winner, Max.
- [34:52]
B
Always a pleasure, Marcus. Thank you.
- [34:53]
A
Thanks, fella. Thank you to the production crew. Ton of people working on this one. We've got Luigi, Lance and John in the background helping out. And thank you to everyone for listening in to Vi podcast made possible by Verve. Watch upcoming episodes of our video podcast on YouTube, Spotify, and coming this spring on Apple Podcasts.