>> this is "bloomberg west" where we focus on innovation technology and the future of business. another republican is throwing his hat into the ring. this time it is marco rubio. he will announce his candidacy in his hometown. we will have information in just a few moments. russia has lifted its ban on on

delivery of air missiles to iran. it will cancel in 2010. russian president vladimir putin that lifted the ban. meantime, secretary of state john kerry is meeting with congressional members today and tomorrow urging them not to rush to judgment on and iran deal until wi-fi -- final one is completed. >> i have some reservations about whether some of my colleagues are going to be able to do this in a responsible way or whether it is going to be a race to beat out the president. if that is the case, i am out. emily: meantime, sparring over the arrangements details.

exports and china fell to 15% -- from 15% to the lowest number in a year. record-tying of victory in the masters was a ratings winner for cbs. ratings up 23% for the final round which saw the 21-year-old thai tiger woods in the masters. >> to join it the club that is the green jackets and to join up masters history and put my name on that trophy and to have this jacket forever is something that i cannot fathom right now. emily: steve could make as much as $10 million in advertising endorsements. now to our lead, the presidential campaign is kicking into high gear. democratic front runner hillary

clinton skipped a traditional campaign announcement for an online video which has already been viewed 2.4 million times on youtube alone. >> i am running for president. americans have fought their way back from tough economic times but the deck is still favored to those on top. americans need a champion, i want to be that champion. emily: a half an hour after there were several thousand tweets a minute. 633,000 likes. 33 million followers on twitter, dwarfing her opponent. clinton is the clear democratic front runner while there are a number of republican candidates. joining us, former economic adviser for obama's campaign and corresponded peter cook.

peter, break this down. hillary just started her facebook page. she already has more likes the end jeb bush. it was going to win here? >> this is a good start particularly because she has not been accused of being the most tech-friendly candidate. they are introducing her to the public in a new and exciting way given the fact she has been around for a long time. this was an important step in the campaign. a have gotten into a good start. she is definitely going new-school with the digital release of her campaign. emily: she famously joined twitter late. do likes translate into votes? emily: -- >> they definitely translate to making sure people are familiar with the candidates and get the word of mouth that is so

important to grassroots organizations. emily: mitt romney's followers famously trailed a box -- barack obama's. what is their strategy? what should the republican strategy be? >> i'm not sure what their strategy is but i do know you can watch a little bit from the video and the tech rollout about how it went and how much it appealed toward the normal type of person. that is the important thing to watch. they are immediately out of the gate with a strong message and a good residence to back it up. you can tell the e-mails are going out. the videos are being watched. that is the most important thing. if i were a republican candidate, i would be wondering how can we make our rollout need this good.

it will be important for them to catch up. >> marco rubio has been tweeting up a storm and is also on snapchat. on the video front, there has been criticism. some people saying it is divorced from reality. she should have done a televised announcement with her family standing or buy. what do you think about that? >> i think no matter how hillary rolled this out she would get criticism. she is in a difficult position. having to reintroduce herself to an american public most of which no her already ready well. to come up with an innovative way, they generated is about a decision everyone pretty much knew would be made. they checked that box pretty well. this is important, particularly as she tries to reach younger voters who may not know that much about hillary clinton. this is one way for her to mind

that population of the american voting public that may be has not voted for her before. emily: heartburn you are at the top of obama's tech team. hillary has hired stephanie from google. do republicans have something similar? how do you see the two teams shaping up? >> it is interesting to see who they hire. i think they have made the right higher with stephanie. i'm not sure who the republicans have hired but i'm sure who they are looking for, that person that is an important person because it attracts talent. more importantly it make sure that your tech is flawless. thus far they have done a good job. we will see who the next higher czar. i am excited to watch. emily: the notorious text from hills still getting a lot of

attention. do you think hillary can appeal to younger voters? what do they want? >> a lot of the things older voters want. economy working. job opportunities. not just hillary clinton, but all the republicans will try to tap into that. republicans have upped their digital game substantially. everyone running for president and those who will join the freight later, have digital media as the focal point. look at marco rubio. clearly trying to reach out to younger people. younger republicans at the moment. he is savvy in terms of his own social media presence. ted cruz and rand paul the same way. i know the power of social media out there into they are going to use it. to some extent they may try to use it to their advantage

because they are more tech savvy than hillary. emily: last question for you harper. hillary has momentum but you know it is difficult to keep it going. how much of a challenge will it be for her to maintain out with other candidates out there? >> i do think it is difficult but i do know the campaign has an amazing team. that is the team that will help push the message out and make sure it is always fresh and appealing for the younger and more social media savvy users, voters, and constituents. the important thing to remember is you can't see what kind of campaign these people run based on the rollout. the rollout was flawless on the hillary campaign and i am excited to see what is next with that, honestly. that is the key. >> one other factor to bear in

mind, this is also a big fundraising opportunity for all of the candidates. how they use social media to turn it into real money. emily: thank you so much. we are going to be talking about this for the next year and a half. after the break, a discussion of a new program to make house calls. ♪

emily: sprint is helping to sign up customers in their own home. ceo sprint makes a house call story next. trying to land a rock and on the barge floating on the atlantic ocean. this will take place if space x

is able to launch later on today. it is the sixth official mission to bring supplies to the international space station. google is gearing up or impossible ruling from the european union on its long-running. the eu commissioner is heading to the u.s. this week. an announcement will allow her to discuss the case. groupon's businesses are undervalued according to gene munster who says groupon ticket business and e-commerce in south korea could fetch $5 million on the open market. munster writes that the company could have a $6 billion value rather than five million and has today. sprint is making house calls and could deliver a new smartphone right to your door.

competition heats up for t-mobile. trying to differentiate itself by bringing the in-home experience to your home or office. earlier, i spoke to the sprint ceo and asked him how sprint tested the program before launching in kansas city today. >> we wanted to test the concept so we started doing this with a select group of customers in kansas city. we sent them an offer. we had our experts go to their homes or go to their offices and takes him through the whole experience. it is a strong experience. i do not know when was the last time you went to a store and got a cell phone but if you are switching from one carrier to another it takes a long time. if you are switching from one operating system to another, say from an ios to an android or an android to an ios, it can be painful.

most people are not tech-savvy. before we launched before we did our big lunch i wanted to experience it myself so i went to the customer some. i went through the whole setup. the customer was delighted. when we felt like all of our customers were delighted and wanted to recommend it to others, we decided, let's go big. let's announce in kansas city today, let's go to chicago, let's go to nationwide by the end of the year. emily: you got your start selling phones out of your car in college. you even made house calls. how did that inform this decision? >> i was a partner in a company called cellular solutions in boston. act and was a bit different. the customers calling had never used a cell phone, we had to take them through the whole experience. how do you make your first phone

call? things have not change much. if you get your new smartphone the amount of things you can do is like getting a brand-new fun. enough customers today do not want to order a fun online because when you go home and you get a ups box and open it up you have this intimate dating, latest galaxy or iphone. it is not easy to transfer all of your contacts or apps or photos or videos. you have so many e-mails from customers telling us, i lost all of my pictures that i had in my phone. we thought this would be a clever way to basically go to a customer's home. more importantly, delighting your customers. by the time they are done, i can tell you that these are customers who are recommending sprint to everybody they know. emily: there seems to be a race

to the bottom in pricing. do customers care about guys or convenience? what kind of phones are you selling the most of the program? higher and? or are using selling on the lower end as well? >> customers want to get the latest and greatest device. we realize that. if you look at sprint, we launched and a few months back we launched the first called "iphone 4 life." every year you have the ability to get a new year -- a new phone. imagine sitting in your home you have a one-year lease on your phone, and every year you're going to change your phone. you go to a nap, you click and you choose where you want the phone delivered and somebody shows up and basically changes

your iphone 6 for maybe an iphone seven or iphone eight in the future. that is the type of experience. this is what companies have been able to do if you make to knowledge easier for people. that is what we are trying to do. emily: sprint has been losing customers for seven years. t-mobile on the other hand is finally gaining subscribers again. jon leger, the ceo of t-mobile has predicted that t-mobile will surpass sprint. how likely is that to happen? >> we feel good about where we are. i have been the ceo for eight months. last quarter was great for the company. the company lost 700,000 the first nine months, then we reported 30,000 positive customers.

that is a lot when you have been losing millions of customers. we feel good about where we are in terms of growth, churn, and company per spec. emily: are you saying that t-mobile is not going to access sprint anytime soon? -- surpass sprint anytime soon? >> he promised that is going to happen last quarter. this quarter. i do not know t-mobile's results, gets once we both report our numbers we will know. i feel good it about the direction sprint is going in today. emily: john legend is bigger on twitter. he seems to be a marketing media mastermind. he is currently in a twitter fight with donald trump. he complained about a jammer and front of a trump hotel. trump snapped back saying

t-mobile service was bad. legend snapped back saying that trump was just old and tired. how appropriate is that for a ceo? >> i am not here to judge john. he took a company that was in pretty bad shape and got it back into growth mode. i only say there is a fine line between being entertaining and annoying. who knows what happened this weekend? i found it entertaining seeing the interaction between john and donald trump. i think john is doing a really good job. emily: up next, nearly one million people wait for the new apple watch. tex evie trend centers are already showing off their new apple where. see who were at west next on "bloomberg west."

emily: i am emily chang and this is bloomberg west. celebrity showed off their new apple watch at coachella this weekend. if you are not a celebrity in you are waiting for a watch, analysts estimate nearly one million apple customers are waiting for their new watch with some orders delayed until june. here is cory johnson with me in the studio. you did not get me an apple watch. cory: you don't know that yet. i may have ordered one. they are not in yet. this apple watch is one of the things you have missed. we have been talking about a watch on tv for about three years. it is almost here. nearly one million were ordered

over the weekend according to some outlets. emily: they are already being listed on ebay. cory: some of the groups are saying the average number of sales is 1.3 watches, which is fewer arms than most people that more watches than most people need. a great success. one million was the over-under for the weekend. emily: also some drama with qualcomm. cory: the anticipation of the.com, the company said, when the bubble crashed they pulled away. now they are saying, split into -- split in 2, could be a big change. emily: thank you so much.

coming up, google getting into the arms race and the first episodes of game of thrones have been leaked online. how big of a blow is it? we will discuss that later on bloomberg west. ♪

♪ emily: this is bloomberg west, we refocus on innovation tech knowledge he, and the future of business. hillary clinton is running for president, if you had not heard, and she already received endorsements from politicians in her adopted home state of new york, including governor andrew cuomo and senator charles schumer. not endorsing her yet is new york city mayor bill de blasio who managed clinton's 2000 senate campaign. mayor de blasio: i want to see a vision. that is true on all visions. it is time to see a clear, bold vision. >> you are not yet endorsing her?

mayor de blasio: until i see a vision of where the candidates want to go. emily: the white house says president obama is not endorsing anyone at this time either. the trade group u.s. telecom has filed a new action in federal court to throw out the new net neutrality rules. u.s. telecom members include verizon and at&t. they say the rules are needlessly intrusive and give the fcc too much power. this builds on earlier lawsuit fired by u.s. telecom, which it admits it fired [indiscernible] a sophisticated hacking group has been targeting governments and companies in southeast asia for a decade according to fire right, which is the group increased hacking activity ahead of regional diplomatic meetings. >> we have seen that all the evidence which we have identified points back to china. the evidence includes the vic them groups that were targeted and the information that was sourced. we looked at who would benefit. we also looked at the technological artifacts. we looked at the tools, the malware, and the hosting that was used, the technical details. what we noticed was that all of

the tools that were used were designed to be used by chinese link which audience. emily: china's foreign ministry defense ministry, and internet regulator have repeatedly denied the nation is behind any cyberattacks. twitter has long made money by selling its data to third parties, but the company is poised to cut off that stream of data, known as twitter firehose, to bring it in-house. twitter said it came naturally after it acquired a third party last year. twitter made $147 million, about 10% of its revenue, in data licensing. pepsi is replacing coke as the official partner of the nba. this means pepsi co. will be the

official partner of all four major u.s. sports leagues. coca-cola had been the nba official partner since 1986. google has joined the search for a better battery. according to "the wall street journal, a small group began testing batteries in 2012. i year later, the group expanded to look at battery technologies google might develop itself. google has at least 20 battery-dependent projects so far. joining us now from washington steve levine, battery expert and offer of -- author of "the powerhouse. steve, battery technology is famously difficult to advance. can google make more breakthroughs than anybody else? steve: we do not know what google will come out with in the lab. what we do see -- the head of the google group was head of the apple group until recently, a couple of years ago.

and he was responsible for a few tremendous breakthroughs. in fact, batteries that are inside the iphone 6 and the six-- the 6x. both came from his lab. his people produce that. what we are seeing -- it is very interesting that the end users -- google, apple, tesla, of course, richard branson -- they are all in patient with the battery makers. they are taking the process of creating the better battery, the super battery, into their own labs. and by pushing the process, i think we are going to see this going much, much faster. cory: i wonder, when we look at what they are doing -- it is

funny you mention richard branson. i talked to him last week. he dipped into his pocket and pulled up a folded piece of newspaper about some advance he read about happening at stanford around the use of batteries and the duration which they can be used. for google in particular, a way they have already done things with existing lithium-ion batteries to try to combat some of the weaknesses, such as project blue, their effort to spread the internet using hot air balloons -- but at temperature, the lithium-ion does not work well. do you expect advances from google to be focused on new technologies in the same way gm is trying to be a powerhouse? or do we expect them to tweak existing technology the way tesla has? steve: what we are seeing at google and at the other majors that are all working on this is tweaking engineering existing technology. they are not getting away from lithium-ion.

they are using their engineering genius, their ingenuity they have shown again and again to make that better. the team at google, one thing the leader has proven especially adept at is taking a standard battery and cutting it up into pieces -- different shapes different sizes -- and stacking them up so they can fit inside custom-made into a particular user's device. this is a huge problem with google glass, for example. how do you power google glass? i would expect -- he is really good. this is the best age to be a battery genius. there may have been no time in the age of batteries that you can make your name and get rich. if any of your viewers are in that space, if they are battery geniuses, go to silicon valley. you can earn a lot of money right now. cory: it is one thing to try to figure out better batteries for

consumer electronics, phones glass, whatever. the automotive industry, as you write about so wonderfully in the book -- going up against gm is a tough effort. you still think there is a lot of innovation to be had in the battery cars? steve: yes, i think that the fact that apple and google, and then richard branson -- they are attempting to be in the space. that google is in the space is a very good sign for producing the super battery. they are better than gm and doing this. there are two pillars of creating a commercial super battery. one is discovery in the lab. the other is genius and manufacturing. that is what they have. producing design products that

consumers want to buy. they have that sizzle. getting them out into the market, owning the product after it has been invented in the lab. emily: how far off is the day i do not have to charge my phone multiple times a day, or have to worry about it losing charge in the middle of the day? steve: this is the main thing i think that most people worry about. they are so upset. i just flew in from minneapolis. minneapolis five chicago. you go through the airport. everyone is looking at the floorboards of the airport as they walk away, looking for a place to plug their phone in. i think this is the first stop. this is the low hanging fruit. i do not think it is far away. the greater challenges cars -- challenge is cars. i think your electronics, two, three years, depending on how you use your advice, of course. emily: the battery expert and author of "the powerhouse." coming up next, how to make wood without trees. a new material made from mushroom. and we look at the "game of thrones" leak. how would the most pirated tv show respond?

emily: could your home someday

♪ emily: this is bloomberg west, i

am emily chang. could your home someday be built from mushrooms instead of wood? we visit one company that is already planning for it. and "game of thrones" taking on a real battle -- hbo versus hackers. first, a check of top headlines. antigovernment protesters are turning up the heat on the brazilian president. about 100,000 demonstrators marched in sao paulo, calling for her impeachment. brazilians are upset over a massive corruption scandal at state owned oil company petrobras, along with a struggling economy and a slumping currency. it has been quite a reversal for coffee. the commodity it is one of the worst performing commodities this year after being a top performer last year. the reason? rains have returned to one of the biggest coffee growing areas of brazil, likely ending a supply crunch. a notebook the longing to british mathematician alan turing hits the auction block today. turing is the man who cracked the german enigma code during world war ii. the notebook is the only extensive touring manuscript -- turing made a script known to -- manuscript known to exist and

is expected to fetch at least $1 million. could we soon be building our homes out of mushrooms? in the spark, we looked at innovators taking on seemingly unsolvable problems. bloombergs sam grobart visits an upstate new york company that believes rigid, board like materials made from mushrooms could replace plywood manufactured wood products in and manufactured wood products in the furniture business. it has created biodegradable packing materials out of natural mushroom fibers. take a listen. stan: manufactured wood is everywhere. each year, we make millions of cubic meters of particle board that goes into everything from the chairs we sit on to the houses we live in. but there is a problem. most manufactured wood contains urea formaldehyde, a binding agent that sounds nasty because it is. the federal government has classified it as a known human carcinogen. >> in order to maintain our current quality of life, we need to challenge the way we are using, discarding, and manufacturing materials today.

stan: i am inside a factory in upstate new york where new breeds of renewable construction products are not made. they are grown. this new process is based on an unconventional source, the root structure of mushrooms. >> in about five years, we expect you to be building your home with mushroom materials. stan: what are the problems with the existing traditional material that we use for building and other products? >> traditional wood products the principal composition is typically around 85% of the total mass is would -- wood. the remainder is synthetic resins derived from natural gas, human carcinogens. stan: you are talking about what

people might call particleboard. gavin: exactly. the chair in your office or the desk or table in your home. stan: by replacing formaldehyde with my psyllium, they can avoid the complications. >> it is like a natural adhesive. we used to constituents -- we use two constituents of ground-up wood waste, and inject that with [indiscernible] it goes through and around the particles, binding them together through the growth of the organism, transforming discrete particles into a physical composite. essentially, we are using nature's technology to grow a glue. reporter: this is what is in all these racks behind us? >> we have an enclosure. the enclosure provides the shape and geometry we are looking to

grow. we cracked this open. all of the white material you see here -- this is really pliable. it is a living, breathing fungus. look at the side of this. we have some of the corn waste completely encapsulated with the stuff. it is pretty tough. >> how long did it take to get from raw ingredients to this. >> this is day four. this is ready to go to our press. that is going to consolidate the material to a thickness that can be used in the furniture material. it is moving the water, killing the fungus, and increasing the stiffness exponentially, to a range where you would see traditional wood products. this takes about 10 minutes, to press and remove all the water and set it so it maintains the shape we are looking for. reporter: at the end of that, we are left with something like

this? >> that is right. this material is used as a chair back. reporter: as far as cost, how does this compare to plywood? chris this is being sold in a slightly lower price point than traditional products. reporter: so far, they have been able to make chairs and packaging materials from the plant-based mushrooms. but they see this is only the beginning of what they can do with fungus. >> it is a naturally occurring polymer. we think most of the best applications are replacing other synthetically derived polymers. >> we only have one planet. although we are going to continue to grow and prosper as a people, we want a material that can be up cycled or reused in the future. emily: that was bloomberg's sam grobart.

"bottom line" coming up at the top of the hour, with mark crumpton in new york. how i have missed you. mark: we are going to be talking presidential politics 2016. today florida republican senator marco rubio is expected to formally announce his candidacy. yesterday, it was democrat hillary clinton's turn. what is big business going be looking for from these candidates, and for the rest of the field, going into next year? also, what are their economic platforms like? is mrs. clinton's platform an extension of what we have seen the last seven years from president obama? as far as marco rubio is concerned, is there still blowback from the decision to kind of force forward the immigration overhaul package? we are going to take a look at those questions and more. we speak with the president of american action for in a few minutes. welcome back in san francisco.

emily: we will see you soon. up next, four episodes from the latest season of "game of thrones" have been leaked. how much is piracy really hurting hbo? that is coming up next. ♪

emily: welcome back. i'm emily chang. the bwest byte is where we focus on one number that tells a whole lot. cory johnson, our editor at large, here with us. to share that special byte, which i have missed greatly. cory: 3,172,370 times, game of thrones was illegally downloaded over the weekend. a couple of companies found the number of downloads was extreme this weekend. there are a lot of pirates in "game of thrones," but these are the worst kind. emily: that is significant

given that hbo has 31 million subscribers. first of all, rory, how big a blow is this, really, to hbo? game offense is already the most part written in history, right? rory: what we saw was a 100% increase in piracy, caused by the leakage of the new shows. the previous year on year increase was only 10%. i think hbo is definitely on the right track with hbo now. unfortunately, the leaking of the series resulted in a doubling of piracy. emily: hbo has famously said that piracy complements the viewership of its hit shows. what do you think?

>> i actually do not think piracy hurts hbo whatsoever. their business model is predicated on getting more people to subscribe to hbo. it is not like a movie studio where they need to sell tickets opening weekend. they just need people to pay every month. in this case i do not see people dropping their hbo subscription to watch a few pirated leaks. if anything, it exposes the new season to the very people who might buy a subscription to watch the rest of the season. emily: what has to be done to stop piracy? can it be stopped, or is it an evil that will always exist to some extent, a necessary evil? rory: it will always exist. i think hbo has an excellent initiative to reduce heresy. most people want to pay a price for a good product. those folks were using popcorn time to do peer-to-peer downloads.

we have their ip addresses. we can track their geolocations. in some countries, we can even get their names and addresses from the isps. so it is a question of is there is one site offering a legitimate, valuable service. on the other side, prosecuting those who refuse to pay. cory: do you pay, emily? emily: yes, i am a paying customer. but i found a way to watch it early, because i cannot stay up until 10:00 at night. there is an hbo sd channel where you can watch the east coast feed. cory: did you like it? emily: i thought it was great. i cannot wait to see episode two. cory: the cast members, it is amazing how little tech is in their lives. interesting people. emily: watching and as steve these days is quite painful, given how amazing the shooting is -- watching in sd these days is quite painful, given how amazing the shooting is.

thanks so much for watching "bloomberg west," we will see you later.