"Now, when it comes to mobile phones..." "I've got one." "I have two." "Samsung touchscreen, but it's like an LG because it's touch and you can..." "'Everyone seems to know so much about technology these days'." "BlackBerry is good." "So's Apple." "Why are they called fruits?" "BlackBerry and Apple." "What's a bad phone to get?" "Old Nokia, they're bad." "'Sometimes too much'." "This is a Nokia." "What's wrong with that?" "That is bad." "That is bad." "These are cool." "My grandma has one of those." "She's getting a new phone, and it's an iPhone." "So beat that." "That's my grandma." "I think that is totally rubbish." "Look..." "You need to get a new phone." "You need a really good camera." "Get a new style." "'How can I be so out of date?" "'I only got this 18 months ago.'" "What's going on with the world, when people whip themselves up into a religious frenzy over the latest must-have gadgets I can't even see the point of?" "'" "It's a shop." "Come in and buy some computers." "Why are they so excited?" "'And websites are starting revolutions.'" "'Facebook and Twitter mean it won't go unseen'." "The world seems to have been taken over by a bunch of technology megabrands who are in everybody's pockets and living rooms, except mine." "I might be looking to sell it on." "Yeah, I'll give you 50p." "'That's it.'" "I'm going to drag myself out of the dark ages." "I'm going to knock on the doors of the big boys, the rocket-powered megabrands we all know." "This is where it all happens, the whole Facebook thing." "'I'm going to find out what's going on." "'Where did they come from?" "' Nokia started off being famous for toilet paper." "How did they get us to want all this stuff?" "What we found out about the PlayStation 3 was, it cost more to build than they were selling it for." "And how much money are they really making out of us?" "I want to know who's driving all this, and I'm going to look everywhere to find out." "Does that mean that technology is the new religion?" "'And I mean everywhere'." "You could say that the porn industry is the weathercock of technology." "Whooo!" "Mobile phones...and that." "Yeah, can I stop doing it now, please?" "Feels very embarrassing." "What's wrong with my phone?" "It's a Nokia 6330 classic with a stainless steel effect finish on the back." "It's a beautiful piece of kit." "And everybody tells me that my new Windows netbook isn't cool either." "I should be getting an Apple MacBook, I should be getting an iPad, I should be going on Facebook." "How have the brands managed to persuade so many people that these things are cool and worth hundreds of pounds more than anything else?" "That's cool, that is!" "Look at it, look at me!" "Apple this, iPad that." "It's got a lovely keyboard that's very easy to use, although the shift key is in a slightly unintuitive position." "Xbox 360 Kinect, apps." "Am I missing out?" "What is the point of all these things?" "Am I on the outside?" "Are they having more fun than I could ever imagine?" "Let's find out." "I'm going to start off by looking at Apple, the brand I have the most arguments about." "People gets so worked up about it." "What is it about Apple that makes people so emotional?" "If Apple was a person?" "Young, hip." "A trendy East London design type with glasses similar to yours." "Spoilt, kind of snobby." "I think they would wear white clothing." "The sort of person that might invite you to their birthday party, but when you got there, you'd be doing everything that they wanted to." "# If there's a cure for this I don't want it, I don't want it... #" "Apple seems to inspire feelings in its users which other technology brands just can't reach, especially when they're opening a new shop." "These Apple Store openings are absolutely bizarre." "It's like mass hysteria, like some sort of religious cult or something." "I want to see what goes on at an Apple Store opening, and it seems I might be in luck..." "'Thanks for calling Apple...' ..because there are rumours all over the internet that a brand new flagship store is opening in London soon." "Hi, there." "I'm after some information on, er, Apple Store openings." "I've heard that there might be one opening in London." "'But I'm told that Apple don't comment on rumours and speculation.'" "But there are goings-on in London's Covent Garden." "First of all this, curtain appears." "Then half an apple pokes out." "What could that mean?" "I've bumped into an Apple Store opening veteran who might be able to shed some light on things'." "So how many shop openings have you been to?" "Roughly 30, I'd say." "Some around the world, most of them in the UK." "But although he runs a successful Apple blog, he doesn't seem to know any more than I do." "It's a common thing with Apple and their stores." "They just keep this mystique about them for as long as they possibly can." "And then maybe a week beforehand, they'll give you a location and a date and a time, and that's it." "I'm wondering if all this secrecy is normal for technology brands." "I think what's really clever is the way they play the press." "Microsoft has a folder on every journalist." "They basically keep tabs on all the journalists and what they're interested in." "How do you get journalists to write favourable things about you?" "Apple doesn't." "Apple won't even talk to us." "There's this incredible air of mystery, everyone's trying to work out what's going on." "There are all these rumour sites, you know, and it's brilliant marketing, because you just write anything about Apple, and everyone wants to know what it is." "At last, Apple announced that there will be a store opening here, but don't confirm the date until five days before." "No cheap-rate advance tickets for Apple fanatics." "It's 5.55 on Friday evening." "It opens at ten o'clock tomorrow morning, but already, there's some people sitting on the floor over there, waiting to be the first in the queue for when it opens." "I come from Turkey." "Turkey?" "Yes." "From Russia?" "I have missed two times in China, so I don't want to miss this one." "I flew from California to stand out here all night and see what the store looks like." "So you came all the way here just to queue up to go into a shop?" "Yes." "I've been here since about ten o'clock this morning." "So that's about 24 hours before the shop actually opens?" "Yeah." "Why was it important to you to get here so early?" "Normally when you see the first person in line, it's normally a guy." "So I kind of wanted to be one of the first girls who's first in line." "Do you work here then, or what?" "I do, yes." "I have the pleasure of working here." "So what's going to happen at ten am tomorrow then?" "Er, an immense amount of pandemonium and energy." "It's going to be amazing." "Is it like, you know, a grand opening..." "Sorry, guys, just one second." "I was just chatting to him, asking him what's going to happen tomorrow, when somebody came up to him, took him to one side, whispered in his ear and then he disappeared completely." "So I'm thinking they want to keep everything on message." "They're very suspicious of anybody asking questions." "These are the enforcers of the party line." "It's Saturday morning now, and the shop opens in a little over an hour." "The queue has got absolutely gigantic." "It's now snaking out in front of the shop and it goes over there past the walkway and round the corner of the courtyard." "You can hear a lot of noise coming now from inside the shop." "All the staff are being whipped up into some sort of crazy, evangelical frenzy, clapping and cheering and jumping up and down." "As I'm not allowed to go in and see what's going on, I think I'll have a go myself." "iPhones, iPads and stuff, and 3Gs and that!" "'Then the staff come out and make me look like an amateur'." "They've all got sort of like glassy eyes, like as if they've been sort of whipped into a state of hysteria and they're at some kind of prayer meeting where somebody's going to get healed or something." "Finally, they're ready to open the doors." "Unfortunately, my friend who's first in the queue is a little overexcited and runs in before the countdown." "Undeterred, the Apple preachers count down anyway." "Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one!" "Whoo!" "I can honestly say I've never seen anything like this at PC World." "Time to be initiated." "It's amazing, amazing." "In a way, it's..." "I suppose the best way I could describe it is...a big shop." "It's definitely worth it." "I'd do it again." "What's going on here?" "Sure, Apple make computers, phones and MP3 players that people really like, but this devotion to the brand, it goes beyond anything I've ever seen." "These people need their heads examining, they really do." "Wouldn't that be great, if you could take an Apple fan..." "let's say Alex, for example." "He's got a lot of Apple stuff." "You could say he's obsessed." "Definitely 24 hours a day thinking about Apple." "You could put him in a head-examining machine which would look inside his brain while he was thinking of Apple and see what's going on." "Well, guess what?" "I've found a group of brain scientists who can do exactly that, and Alex has agreed to provide his head." "This fancy bit of kit is an MRI scanner." "Basically, there's a massive electromagnet in there, and if I was holding some metal things, it would fly through the air and smash everyone's face off." "That's why I can only come this far." "I've had to take my ring off, my watch off, my belt off." "When Alex has feelings, his brain gives off tiny electrical impulses." "The scanner will be able to measure any electrical impulses stimulated by the pictures we're going to show him - pictures of Apple gizmos, pictures of non-Apple gizmos, so we can compare the difference." "You know when you're doing these experiments and that, is there ever a moment where you suddenly go "Ooh, it's a brain, it's horrible"?" "No." "We're about to start." "The Neurosense group have analysed hundreds of people's responses to all kinds of different things." "Hopefully, they can give me a clue as to what kind of feelings Alex is having." "So is Alex quite a fan of Apple, then?" "Yes, he is, definitely." "Well, it's kind of interesting, because we see quite an amount of changes in the brain when he's actually looking at Apple products, which are quite fascinating." "Let me show you something here." "So there's much more activity in the visual cortex, an enhanced sort of visual attention, if you like, to the Apple products." "So he's looking more intently at that, like, his eyes are sort of drinking it all in?" "Well, that's right." "We often see this when people are very loyal to a brand." "Not much surprise so far, but Neurosense have done this kind of comparison on different groups of people." "One group was very religious." "When we've also then looked at a different group of subjects, looking at religious versus non-religious images, we can see a very similar pattern of activity." "Well, it's interesting that when we went down to the opening of the Apple Store in Covent Garden, it was almost like a religious meeting." "It was like an evangelical thing with people whooped up into almost a sort of hysteria." "Well, we think one way to interpret this data is to suggest that these big technology brands have harnessed or exploit the brain areas that have evolved to process religion." "So the brain scan shows that the Apple products are triggering the same bits of Alex's brain as religious imagery triggers in a person of faith." "'And I'm not the first to see a parallel.'" "What have you got there, The Economist?" "This is a cover article I did earlier in the year." ""The Book Of Jobs"." "Yes, the holy iPad was announced that week, so this was our take on it." "How does a brand become a religion?" "The Bishop of Buckingham reads his Bible on an iPad." "This is a standard Hebrew text of the Book of Judges." "He's offered to tell me how Apple has been sanctified." "I think there are various ways that a religion, if you like, works, um, in human terms." "You need a story, don't you?" "Appleism, Chapter One." "The Story." "In 1976, Steve Jobs and two other California geeks started a computer company for enthusiasts in their garage." "They called it Apple." "It was boom time for personal computers, and within six years they were multimillionaires." "A huge, multinational corporation like Apple could not be further from two kids building a thing in a garage, but you need a strand of the DNA that feels like that to people." "Appleism, Chapter Two." "The Antichrist." "Apple's main competition was the giant corporation IBM, who teamed up with Bill Gates' Microsoft to make computers into boring business machines." "Meanwhile, Apple invented things like icons and mice to liberate us..." "We shall prevail." "..as they showed us in this legendary advert." "You'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984." "In the Bible you have these great stories of dragons and, you know, 13-headed beasts and things." "With Apple, you've got IBM, haven't you, and the great sort of apocalyptic battle against the sort of anti sort of figure." "Appleism, Chapter Three." "The Place of Worship." "Even I noticed that the Apple stores looked like churches, with their stone floors and arches and little altars." "They are extraordinary temples." "I always go up the glass staircase, which has this extraordinary different texture of light coming through it." "Appleism, Chapter Four." "The Messiah." "In 1985, an evil traitor within Apple fired Steve Jobs from his own company." "Without him, they were lost." "Within a few years, they were in dire straits." "It's sitting on 2 billion worth of unsold computers." "So they repented and begged Steve to return." "He then created the iMac, the first of a series of hit products which propelled Apple back to the top, overtaking Microsoft in value last year." "I think that everything that Steve Jobs has ever done has been for the benefit of everyone." "The new white iPod." "And yes, it does videos." "When Steve Jobs talks, people listen to him because he's telling us," ""This is what you're really going to want to do"." "With Christianity, you have to wait for the Second Coming." "With Apple, that happened in 1997 or whenever!" "What's going on?" "Hello." "This is an iPhone 4." "I haven't bought it myself." "It's very expensive." "I've borrowed it." "I wanted to see if any of these things are worth the money." "There you go, that's it." "It's quite nice, quite glossy." "And, er...you know, Apple seem to be very, very clever at marketing, very, very clever at design, and by combining these things, they've managed to tap into a part of our brain" "which creates this kind of religious-style hysteria." "'But there are other megabrands we all still use.'" "My netbook has got Microsoft Windows on it." "How come Microsoft are so big?" "They don't have to rely on making people believe that it's some sort of religious experience, buying one of their computers, so what are their secrets?" "If Microsoft were a person, they'd be old." "They would work at Tesco." "Constantly making mistakes, maybe tripping up a lot." "I can see them coming with one look this week, and another next week." "Someone who has been divorced recently, someone who's kind of settled and dull and in their nook, and then they've been thrust out into the world and have to try and pretend to be young again." "93% of the world's computers run on Microsoft Windows software, and last year, they made a video to launch the latest version which has now reached cult status." "Hey!" "Welcome to the party." "The four of us, along with hosts worldwide and you are launching Windows 7 Ultimate Software." "You know what?" "Let's take a minute or so to tell you about how great it is to host a launch party." "You can use house party tools to build your guest list, upload your pictures, which is his favourite, right?" "And you can even get a party pack." "Apparently, one commentator said that if Microsoft were in charge of PR for sex, the human race would be extinct." "I show my guests things from two of the Windows 7 orientation videos, and it took, like, ten minutes." "You know what was great?" "It was totally informal." "Everyone just crowded around the computer in the kitchen." "This is even more bizarre than the Apple Store opening." "What were they thinking?" "!" "This really is our launch." "Yeah, you're right." "So it ought to be a party." "Have fun out there!" "Cheers!" "Have a good one, guys." "Oh, my gosh, I'm so hungry." "Let's eat." "How come a company this uncool could be on all of our computers and making so much money?" "In stark contrast to Apple, Microsoft have agreed to talk to me, so I'm heading across the pond to their headquarters outside Seattle." "This is what I know so far." "When businesses started using computers in the early-'80s, they turned to the massive corporate IBM to supply them." "IBM could make the computers, but they didn't understand this new-fangled software stuff." "So THEY turned to a bunch of college drop-out super geeks called Microsoft, the world's first software company, headed by little Bill Gates." "Unfortunately, being a bit new to all this, IBM let Microsoft keep most of the rights to the software they'd written." "Doh!" "With hindsight, you'd wonder, why would IBM, that huge, great corporation," "50 billion corporation, why would they strike such a stupid deal with this kid?" "But they did." "And they went, "Oops, what have we done now?"" "Bill Gates will never sneak up on anybody again like that." "Keeping the rights meant that as PCs took over the world," "Bill Gates became the richest man in the world." "GENTLE HUM Can you hear that noise?" "It's the sound of computers, massive, gigantic computers processing things, coming up with ideas, developing new products, doing PowerPoint presentations." "'My tour of the 350-acre headquarters begins immediately, 'and they're very keen to show me everything." "'I've already found out where a chunk of that massive profit goes." "'Microsoft spends £5.5 billion every year on research and development.'" "This is the front yard of the future, and behind these doors is the home of the future." "AUTOMATED VOICE:" "'Someone is at the front door.'" "Hello." "Hello." "Are you a robot?" "I am not a robot, guaranteed." "'In the future, fingerprints open doors..." "'..eventually." "'In the future, statues of the Eiffel Tower automatically bring up photos of Paris." "'In the future, you can pause documentaries like this one to buy things'." "Did you know that this is a Contoso backpack?" "So imagine, an advertiser might be able to plug their gear in here." "'In the future. wallpaper moves'." "If I walk in and I point to the wall here, we will bring up a menu of different, um..." "'Ah, they've got a few years to get it working." "'It is the future, after all." "'Well worth £5 billion, if you ask me.'" "OK, let's move on." "There's a hint of desperation here, and I think I might know why." "Microsoft grew so big because of the stranglehold they had on any software for the PC." "But since the '90s, they've been prosecuted three times for running an illegal monopoly." "One of the things that happened in the Microsoft trial which really didn't help them was the video testimony given by Bill Gates." "He really ought to have had a bit of media coaching there, I think." "And that sort of dealt a very severe blow to the sort of "we are the geeks, we are the cleverest"" "culture that the company had." "And since then, it has tried to reinvent itself in various ways." "Ten years later, Bill Gates has retired from Microsoft to become the world's biggest charity donor." "And as more and more of us are doing our computing online, the days of running Windows on PCs could be numbered." "So Microsoft are using their dwindling, but still massive income to try and invent other things we're all going to want." "But it's not been going well." "In the smartphone wars, Microsoft has been left trailing in recent years." "So imagine my surprise when I found an excited queue for a Microsoft product." "This is a queue of Microsoft employees going into the staff shop." "They've had an e-mail to say that a new batch have come in, and they've all come from their offices and started queuing." "How long have you been queuing for?" "About an hour." "An hour?" "'The person responsible for this gadget is in the building." "'Time to meet with Microsoft's cool alter-ego, the hopeful saviour of their nerdy image'." "Hello." "You're Alex?" "I am Alex." "You're Alex." "I'm Alex as well, yes." "I love your name." "Yeah, it's good, isn't it?" "We're going to be good friends." "OK." "MUSIC PLAYS Yeah!" "'This is the new XBox hands-free controller, Kinect.'" "Couldn't we have one where it was a bloke doing it rather than...?" "'They've shifted 8 million units in the first two months since launch." "'This isn't house of the future, this is house of now, and it works pretty well.'" "Here it comes, here it comes." "'If you're jumping up and down in your living room to control your XBox, 'it's a small army of people like Alex who you have to thank." "'He actually started programming at the age of five.'" "I did." "That's weird." "Were you, er... you know, abused by your parents?" "No." "Is it something they made you do, they forced you to do it and it was your only refuge?" "No, it's the only thing..." "I would run away and do it." "If anything, they'd want me outside, playing sports." "What is your actual job at Microsoft?" "My job, um, is to invent the future." "While everybody else is putting gadgets and gizmos in people's hands, my objective is to make technology disappear." "It's to create simpler ways for people to be able to interact with this art form that I'm so in love with, interactive entertainment." "'And it seems to be working, because Kinect is now the fastest-selling electronic device of all time." "'As I head back to the UK, I wonder how XBox users 'feel about their cool games console being made by the uncool, monopolising giant?" "'" "Now, you're all familiar with XBox, but do you know who makes the XBox?" "Ooh!" "Er..." "Anybody know what it is, anybody?" "Is it Mr XBox?" "Mr Freddie XBox?" "Yes, that's his name." "Seriously?" "No." "'I've found a lot of people don't really associate Microsoft with XBox." "'When I look for their logo on the box, I can see why.'" "There's a very small one there." "You'd need quite good eyesight to see that." "On the back, there's another small logo saying Microsoft." "So here's a mega-company living off past glory desperately trying to reinvent themselves, but they've become so uncool, they don't even dare put their name on their own products." "Whatever next?" "MUSIC: "Pump It" by Black Eyed Peas." "# Ha ha haaaaa!" "# Pump it... #" "'Now, a games console is a bit of technology I can relate to, and it's big business." "'There are over 40 million PlayStation 3s, over 50 million XBox 360s and over 80 million Wiis." "So I've assembled a crack team to help me decide what the big questions are.'" "Did I just get...killed?" "'Vincent is something of a kindred spirit, as he's almost as stingy as I am." "'He's just got a very good deal on a second-hand games console.'" "So why did you buy it second-hand?" "Because I wasn't going to buy it brand new at all." "I'm not spending that much on a computer console." "'We keep coming back to the subject of price.'" "How much Ps do they make a year?" "How much Ps?" "Yeah." "Profits?" "Yeah, like, how much do they actually make out of this?" "Well, I think that's a very good question." "How much do you think it costs to make a PlayStation 3?" "I think it'd cost about £100." "'So how much profit are they making?" "'The PlayStation 3 is the most expensive console." "'It's at least £240." "How much are Sony getting?" "'" "If Sony were a person, I think they'd be kind of middle-class." "They're the same as 100 other anonymous bank workers." "They'd have a BMW." "Reliable elder statesman." "When Sony started life just after the Second World War in Tokyo, their first product was an electric rice cooker." "But they made their name with tape recorders and transistor radios." "By the beginning of the 21st century, they were making all kinds of consumer and professional electronics, as well as owning Columbia Studios and Sony Records." "PlayStation was first introduced in 1994." "Not surprisingly, I can't get them to tell me how much it costs to make, but I've found someone who will." "I'm really sorry about this... but you're going to die." "'So, with a plan in my head 'and a kamikaze PS3 in my hand, I'm clocking up the Air Miles again.'" "I'm in Los Angeles, Californ-I-A, and I'm just about to go and meet a chap who, for a living, takes apart pieces of technology to their components and works out how much they cost to make." "Let's have a look at the PlayStation." "'It was hard to see her lying there on the operating table, 'but it would be a worthy end.'" "OK, start." "My PlayStation is being completely stripped to its fundamentals, so that every chip, plate, diode, fan or screw can be added up and complete manufacturing costs calculated." "Well, that's ruined, I mean, look at the state of it." "This is ruined." "So, what did you find out about it?" "Well, what we found out about the PlayStation 3 was, in fact, that it cost more to build than they were selling it for." "'That wasn't what I was expecting to hear.'" "One would expect that, if you're building something, you're going to sell it for more than you build it for." "A profit, in effect?" "Exactly." "And, by the way, we looked at it several times because we were in disbelief." "We thought this surely is not possible, let's go back, let's make sure we've done our research, our calculations correctly." "And, sure enough, here was one where there was a significant number of dollars that they were basically wrapping around each PlayStation and shipping it out the door with." "Whoo-hoo!" "There's over 4,000 individual bits, and iSuppli have worked out the cost of every single piece." "They estimate that the cost of all these pieces put together is 805." "Now, when this was sold in the shops when it first came out in 2006, the price was 499." "Now, since it was launched they've been trying to make it cheaper to make, but they're still losing 37 on each machine." "Now, they've sold 41 million PlayStation 3s, and if you work out all the losses they've made, it comes up at 3 billion losses on 41 million consoles." "How on earth can they make that pay?" "This Blu-ray drive alone accounted for 107 of cost, and actually you don't need a Blu-ray player to play games." "'Blu-ray is just the high-definition version of DVD." "'It shouldn't make much difference to gaming 'except add a chunk of change to the price, so what's it doing in a PS3?" "'" "More research connected the PS3 to an old story about Sony, a bloody battle which left them bruised and humiliated." "The real video war isn't fought against invaders from outer space, it's battled out on the high streets of Britain." "At stake, a multi-million-pound industry." "The weapons?" "Well, it's all a matter of format." "Once upon a time, when home video was new, there were two totally incompatible formats." "Betamax from Sony and VHS from JVC." "Video rental shops were a nightmare, one side of the shop for each rival format." "Two copies of each movie." "During the 1980s, the format war raged, but two things happened." "JVC let other people make VHS machines, making it cheaper, and they found a very lucrative market which Sony wouldn't allow onto Betamax." "Porn." "Home video had created an explosion in the pants of the adult video market." "Suddenly you could watch filth in the privacy of your own home." "By the '90s, it was all over for Sony's Betamax." "Flash forward 16 years, and we've all got to get new high-def DVD players." "Whoopee!" "But, hang on, it's happened again, there's two totally incompatible formats." "Blu-ray from Sony and HD DVD from Toshiba." "This time, Sony aren't taking any chances, so they smuggle a Blu-ray player into our living rooms, at great expense to themselves, inside every PlayStation 3." "That's a start, but just how many compromises are Sony willing to make?" "This is Los Angeles, Californ-i-ay." "It should be beautiful hot sunshine and we should all be in bikinis and trunks, and look at it." "Luckily we're filming the next bit, er, indoors." "'I'm going to ask the real experts...' ..at a porn shoot." "Digital Playground have been spearheading technology in smut since 1993." "Their biggest indecent offering had a budget of £7 million." "Faithful crew of the Sea Stallion," "I am about to lead you on a perilous journey." "We're going to hunt down and kill the most notorious and dangerous of all pirates." "They should be able to tell me if Sony have stuck to their principles or if they've finally cuddled up to the porn industry." "Lick it." "Hello." "Hi, hello." "You must be Samantha?" "I am." "How are you?" "Very well thank you, how are you?" "What are we shooting today, then?" "We're shooting our first really girl-girl line that we're just starting with a new director." "OK." "We're excited." "'I've just found out I've got something in common 'with the star of tonight's action.'" "The infamous superstar, this is Riley Steele." "Hello." "Hello, Riley." "How are you?" "My second name's Riley." "Oh, really?" "Yes." "'But I'm not here to make small talk, I'm a professional, 'there are questions to be asked.'" "Just how important do you think the adult industry latching onto something is..." "Sorry, I'm..." "It's OK." "So, how important are the sex..." "Sex, you see, I'm so..." "Could you get sex off the brain?" "Stop it, where do you think you're at?" "Oh, geez, I'm just..." "That's why I can't concentrate, cos I know what's going on behind me and..." "You're losing focus." "This is making you nervous." "Your palms, are you sweat...?" "Oh, geez." "'Oh, what the hell, I'll just let her talk.'" "Cos Sony would not allow adult content to be put on Blu-ray, so we were forced to go to HD for a very short period," "I think just a few months." "Oh, right, so originally you..." "you were on HD DVD?" "Absolutely." "In this battle between Blu-ray and HD DVD..." "Huge battle." "First of all your company went onto HD DVD because Sony wouldn't let porn go onto Blu-ray?" "Exactly, we couldn't get a licence, we had to get permission from Sony, they denied us, and then as all the other adult studios started following suit, doing HD," "Sony came around a few months later and said, "You have our blessing."" "And we jumped on it." "Really?" "It's all about content, whether it's porn content, whether it's, you know, content from, let's say, Universal Studios, if you don't have them on board, it doesn't matter what" "your format is, it doesn't matter if it's technically superior - if there's no content, there's nothing to watch on it because you don't have an agreement with the studios, you're not going to win that war." "They realised the mass markets that they're going to miss out in and how much money that could be made by giving us the licence and being paid, because, you know, adult DVD is huge, you know." "Over 11..." "What do they say..." "an 11 billion industry." "You know, if you're so pivotal to the success, do the manufacturers court you, do they come and speak to you and ask you to, you know, adopt their formats?" "Absolutely, absolutely." "You know, I can't..." "We've worked, you know, kind of undercover with some computer companies that I really cannot tell, state their names, but they'll do a lot of testing with our products." "Without being public about it?" "Without public knowledge." "Totally under the radar?" "Yes, absolutely." "So, Sony, determined not to lose another format war, have dropped their principles on the one hand to embrace pornography, and, on the other, they've used the PlayStation like a Trojan horse to get a Blu-ray player into 41 million houses." "It might have cost them 3 billion to do, about £2 billion, but that's the kind of money you have to be prepared to gamble in the technology game, and it really is a gamble." "Now they've won this war, lots of other people are making" "Blu-ray hardware but they still have to pay Sony." "One cent on every blank disc sold, 9 for each Blu-ray player sold, 12 for each recorder, plus a cut of all games and movies sold." "But, as we start downloading stuff like movies more and more and using DVDs less, no-one knows if they'll get their money back before Blu-ray is obsolete." "So now I know how much money they're making out of these things, um, it's amazing, isn't it?" "To think that they, er, they're actually giving something away for free that you probably wouldn't have normally bought." "So it just makes you think, what is hiding in the other pieces of technology that I own?" "It's time to find out about my phone." "Three things I wouldn't leave the house without are my phone, my wallet and some shoes on my feet." "The three things I take with me when I leave my house are my phone..." "And definitely my mobile." "My phone." "Mobile phone." "Phone." "Phone." "Phone." "Phone." "Mobile phone, definitely." "I'm excited to be looking into mobile phones." "I think it's the most important piece of technology for virtually all of us." "The numbers of mobile phones sold are staggering." "Nokia is the biggest, they sell well over a million phones a day." "So, imagine my surprise when I read this in the newspaper." "Nokia boss warns staff they're standing on burning platform." "I've just found out that Nokia, the number one phone brand in the world, are in serious difficulties, and so I feel that, as a user of the very good 6330 classic, I owe it to my phone and" "to myself and to other people like me to get to the bottom of the problems." "If Nokia was a person, he'd be quite old, like, 90, or something." "Just doesn't have the best stuff." "Used to be cool when I was 14." "So, I guess it's kind of like..." "Eminem." "Back in 1865, Nokia weren't making mobile phones." "They started life making rubber shoes and toilet paper." "By the late '60s, they'd diversified from bog roll into electrics." "Why not?" "And then this little thing came along." "A new system goes under the rather prosaic name of cellular radio." "What it provides is this - a phone you can take anywhere." "One study suggests that between three and four million of us in Britain will have these by the end of the century." "But it wasn't three or four million, it was 30 million, and rocketing." "No one saw how fast it would grow." "The networks thought one in 12 of us might like to have a mobile eventually." "Which of the following best describes how interested you would be in the idea of having this new personal telephone?" "Quite interested." "But someone thought they could do better." "HE HUMS RINGTONE" "So they started churning out phones for every type of person." "5110, which was the first phone, was used with exchangeable covers." "7650, which was our first camera phone." "5140, which is an example of the robust phone." "3110... 5800..." "As the number of mobile phones exploded around the world, Nokia held the number one spot." "So, how can a company which sells over a million phones a day be in trouble?" "I'm heading for Nokia's biggest factory to see what I can learn." "This is an example of just how fast the pace of change is." "We're about ten minutes away from the biggest mobile phone factory in India, the second biggest mobile phone factory in the entire world, and this is just... you couldn't be more rural, could you?" "I'm amazed we got in, actually, the security is incredible." "They check the serial numbers of all our mobile phones to make sure that we don't swap them for a newer one while we're walking round." "The plant goes for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and there's three shifts with over 2,000 people on a shift." "Since 2006 they've produced 400 million - 400 MILLION - mobile phones." "We can only show you here." "We can't film the next process, whatever it might be." "I didn't get any clues as to why Nokia are in trouble until after I left the factory." "My inquiries lead me to Delhi Central Market, where I find an impostor." "So this one..." "this one looks like mine." "This is obviously a Nokia style one." "Yeah." "That is a copy of your phone, exact copy." "Well, actually, it's a better model, it's the higher model than mine." "It's a better model!" "I can't believe it." "'These are shanzhai, or bandit, phones, made in small factories in China." "'These are lookalike copies, which can be churned out so quickly that 'sometimes they're in the shops before the real thing is even released.'" "Let's see what the features are." "It takes two SIM cards, does yours take two SIM cards?" "No." "Do you have an MP4 player?" "No." "Does it have an... 'It might be plastic, have no warranty, 'be prone to the battery exploding, 'but it's got more features than mine 'and it's a quarter of the price.'" "And so what kind of a Nokia could you get for 1,800 rupees?" "You wouldn't get one." "Really?" "Yeah." "'But all the brands are here.'" "So, what would you have, the official BlackBerry, or five BlackBerry-style phones for the same price?" "'So, why is Nokia the one in such trouble?" "'I remembered what a ten-year-old girl had once told me.'" "My grandma has one of those, and she's getting a new phone, and it's an iPhone." "Beat that, it's my grandma." "'The cause of Nokia's problems is right under my nose.'" "'And ever since the iPhone came out in 2007 that really 'revolutionised, er, kind of the way we look at phones.'" "The iPhone isn't necessarily the best phone ever, but what it is is a computer in your pocket." "Now, you're not just connected to people, you're connected to everything, including loads of apps." "Want to check snow conditions?" "The iPhone ad didn't even mention making phone calls - it went big on telling us all about the apps." "There's an app for that." "What really made the iPhone a big success wasn't just that the hardware was very elegant and easy to use, it was this app store which had come along and revolutionised the way you looked at a cell phone," "because now you had this ability for one, two, three dollars, or free, to run..." "games, er, any number of things." "All these apps are brilliant fun for the user and an absolute cash cow for Apple, because every time you buy an app," "Apple takes 30 percent, plus they get money from any advertising on the apps." "The iPhone." "It's the gift that keeps giving - to Apple, that is." "It's no longer about spending 300 on the equipment once and then it's done." "So, that's why Nokia are in trouble, they've been left behind in the smartphone revolution." "But I've still got some unanswered questions." "This is the most popular app on the iPhone - Facebook - yet it's free, and there isn't even any advertising on it." "So if they're giving it away for nothing, how come the brand is worth £30 billion?" "What's their secret?" "'I've been avoiding this for years." "Oh, well.'" "As you know, I think Facebook is a waste of time, it's just a stupid thing for people who've got nothing better to do." "However, I know you're on it and so I would like to set up my own page to see what it's like." "Oh, so it's one of your favourites." "It's actually gone onto my profile." "So..." ""Currently hates DHL more than anything in the world."" "HE SNORTS" "# It's like gold dust... #" "Facebook as a person?" "Annoying." "It would probably be getting bought drinks." "It's someone that everyone you know knows, so you have to associate with them." "But really, left to yourself, you'd probably not hang out with them." "Secondary school, university, employer." "What's all this?" "This is really..." "You know, why do they need to know about that?" "So you can find your friends." "Philosophy..." "Religion." "You see, the idea of putting all this personal information in... it just makes me feel really nervous." "'As I'm uploading my profile, I can see little ads on the right-hand side." "'Surely they're not enough to bring in this vast amount of dosh?" "'" "'There's only one thing for it." "'I'm going to have to hit the road and ask them how come they're so rich." "'Here's what I know so far.'" "In 2003, Mark Zuckerberg was a student at Harvard University." "One drunken evening, he created an application called Facemash, by hacking into the university database." "Originally, he wanted to compare students' ID photos to farm animals so the students could vote on who was hotter." "He soon dropped the animals and compared one student to another." "Although humiliating and elitist, it was a smash hit." "So, after fighting off various lawsuits brought against him for security breaches and plagiarism," "Zuckerberg released Facebook." "Four years later, he became the world's youngest self-made billionaire." "In some ways, this has been the Facebook revolution." "These days, Facebook is connecting 600 million people around the world, and rising." "Just travelling south out of San Francisco at the moment." "So, this is it - Facebook headquarters." "Looks a bit like some sort of college campus somewhere in the leafy boondocks." "'I'm meeting Chris Cox, Zuckerberg's right-hand man." "'He's been out of nappies for over a week now!" "'" "So this the entrance to Facebook, this is our headquarters." "People walk in and then our visitors can write on the wall, which is a throwback to the original wall on the profile, where you could write whatever you wanted." "Oh, right." "Al Gore." "Al Gore." "Kanye West was here." "People want to come see what's going on here." "'I'm actually really close to the richest person I've never met.'" "In the meeting room there is actually Mark Zuckerberg." "'I wasn't allowed to actually talk to him, but I could gaze through the window.'" "Man of the Year 2010, Mark Zuckerberg, simple as that." "What would you say is the secret of the success of Facebook?" "I think the secret is that the product we're building is about people." "It's connectedness." "So it's creating a company, a product, a brand, that keys into a sort of human need." "Yeah." "So how does Facebook make money?" "What we've created is a really simple way for marketers to put stuff in front of people according to some really basic information, like where they live and what they've listed they care about." "So Facebook can sort through all that personal information" "I'd typed in to deliver me to just the right person who wants to flog me something." "That's why it's worth so much money - because if you advertise in a magazine and you want to reach classic car fans who are into Arctic Monkeys, it's a pretty hit-and-miss business." "But on Facebook..." "Bingo!" "So if that's how it works online, how come there's no advertising on Facebook's iPhone app?" "At the moment, there's no advertising." "What's going on there?" "It's not about making money." "We're trying to build this platform where everyone can share stuff with people." "Eventually, surely, it'll be too tempting." "Someday..." "Million and tens of hundreds of millions of new customers on their phones all the time, in India and China and Africa and South America." "Come on, people will be beating a path to your door saying, "Come on, we want to do a massive advertising campaign" ""in India, can we use your platform?"" "You're going to say yes." "I think one day there will probably be some advertising experience on the mobile phone." "But at the end of the day, that's not what most people are asking for right now." "I guess nothing's really free in this weird world of technology brands." "You get the software, but they get your details to target ads at you." "It's the new way of making gazillions, and these guys are the new gazillionaires." "I mean, in a way, they are like rock stars." "They're young, they've got pots of money, they're doing something that people around the world are completely fascinated by." "The next morning, I've had a thought." "There's another young company just half an hour down the road from here." "They invented the idea of making money by doing stuff for me for free." "But they don't ask me for any personal information, and yet they make 22 times the amount of money from advertising that Facebook do." "Young, like, 20." "He would own a Ferrari." "Someone cool and trustworthy." "And generally...nice to you." "But with the vague sense that they might be, you know, stealing your money." "LAUGHTER" "If you put a search into Google, is it basically a load of people with encyclopaedias and stuff and telephone pages, and they just go through and find numbers and websites, and type them very, very quickly?" "Yeah, probably not." "This is what I know about Google so far." "In the mid '90s, young eggheads Larry Page and Sergey Brin met at Stanford University." "This was still the early days of the internet." "There were only around 40 million people online worldwide." "There were already a couple of search sites, but they were reading and hand indexing everything on the internet." "Larry and Sergei developed a way for the computer to automatically search and organise the information." "If you printed out the information, it would be over 70 miles high." "And we can search that for you in half a second and give you back exactly what you wanted." "The only problem was, they hadn't figured out how to make money out of it." "We were always confident we would find a way to make money." "Even though we didn't know exactly what it was." "In 12 years, Google has become the most visited website on Earth." "Their mission statement is to organise all the world's information and make it accessible to everyone." "'They're quite keen to organise me, as well.'" "This is one of the...wa-hey!" "Hang on." "'But I am allowed to be filmed riding one of the Google bikes 'through the Google umbrellas, 'and I'm allowed to see all the sculptures and volleyball courts." "'I'm due to interview Google's first lady, Marissa Mayer, 'one of Fortune's 50 most powerful women in the world." "'I want to ask how they can make such vast sums." "'But ten minutes before the interview, she drops out, due to illness." "'None of the other 20,000 employees of Google 'are available to give me any juicy secrets, 'so the PR guy volunteers himself.'" "Are you a Googler?" "I am a Googler." "And new people are Nooglers." "New people are..." "Nooglers." "With an N." "What about if you've left the company?" "Then you're an Exoogler." "'But I don't really think this is the secret of Google's wealth." "'So I'm heading home." "'I use Google's Chrome browser to Google the airport, 'print out a map from Google Maps, and then I Google "Google UK"." "'I check out the managing director on Google's YouTube, 'write some notes about him on Google Docs," "'I could Gmail him from an Android phone if I had one 'to ask for an interview, but I haven't." "So I use the Nokia to call, 'and all the time I'm thinking Google are everywhere.'" "We're not really outside, we're inside, that's just how crazy they are, these..." "Googlists." "'So at last I can ask how Google have earned 'so much more than Facebook without asking for any personal info.'" "So when you search for something on Google you will sometimes see, on some of the results pages, ads." "Yeah." "And, erm, we make money when advertisers get clicked on when they're advertising to a user." "The amounts that they pay for each click-through are..." "What kind of amounts are we talking?" "Er, it's usually pennies, but we have billions of searches across the world every day, so those pennies mount up over time as we reach lots of businesses." "So what information do you need about me when I'm doing that search?" "Sometimes I think people believe that, er," "Google and companies like us need tons of information about you personally, and that's actually not the case at all." "When you type "plumber" in Birmingham, we know somebody typed plumber in Birmingham, we know what time they typed it and we know where that person is, so that's all we know, and we know also what was clicked on at the end of that search result." "But they are storing that search along with all the world's" "Google searches and analysing it, and not just searches - information from all those other websites they own." "The big Google boss has said..." ""This information could be used to minutely analyse" ""and predict human behaviour."" "How powerful does this make them?" "I know just who to ask." "A bloke down the pub." "My own view, my analysis of Google is it's an adolescent." "We've yet to see the giant emerge from Google." "So, what makes Google so powerful?" "Well, Google has a natural, well, almost monopoly, over the channels between people and the internet and all of the commercial organisations and government organisations that use the internet." "So it's the doorway, it's the portal into these vast informational resources." "Now, Google controls that, and the person, the organisation that controls that doorway controls everything." "'It seems to me that I've finally found the secret 'of the technology superbrand." "It's all about controlling the doorway." "'Google controls my doorway to the internet 'so they can analyse what I search for and how I react to what comes back.'" "What is in our heads has incredible commercial value." "You can imagine." "We know what a billion people are thinking." "Sony's doorway is the PlayStation - games, movies, music, everything which goes in or out means ker-ching for Sony." "That's why they can afford to sell it for less than it costs them to make it." "Same thing with the XBox." "The iPhone." "Facebook." "Nokia are in trouble because they're mostly making gizmos, and that's not where the smart money is." "But Google, Google dwarfs the others." "I can see why their phone platform, Android, is so important to them." "You need to be able to know not just what people are looking for, but where they are, what their movements are, where they're visiting, what their interrelationships and associations are." "The only way you can do that is by having a phone platform." "So, Google can bring all of that together with other sources to create a sort of unprecedented snapshot of you as an individual as you go about your daily business, where you go, depending on what services you've switched on." "I've got to admit that this iPhone is an amazing piece of kit, and Facebook and Google and the rest of it, but now I know that they're more than just phones and games consoles, social networks and search engines, they're little electronic shops" "connecting me not just to my friends and family, but to anyone who wants to sell me things, I'll be sticking to the 63-03 Classic." "After all, it's a classic." "Well, at least until me next upgrade." "Next time I'll be swapping my jumpers for the fashion megabrands." "I want to know how they get us to fork out so much money." "It's about £100 to hire it." "To hire it?" "Yeah." "How do they get us to pay extra for knackered jeans?" "So I'll dive into the frenzy of fashion, from Adidas to Abercrombie and Fitch." "I'll attend the A-list events to ask why we wear the fashion superbrands." "So, basically, we're doing it to get a shag?" "Yeah." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk"