good morning, it's 8:00 am on the west coast and 11:00 am on wall street. "squawk alley" is live. welcome to "squawk alley." former coo of yahoo! and mike

isaac of the "new york times." in less than one hour, google is set to kick off its hardware event where they are expected to unveil a new line of hardware including phones, vr devices, according to the information they poached, amazon executive who once led kindle hardware, expected to lead google's new branded line of smart phones. dan, what is going on between this, snapchat, who knows how else, software providers deciding they need to have an actual device? >> it's a little bit of apple envy, right? the entire system front to back. and android became so huge. amazon has become the clear leader. they're sort of dictating the terms to everybody. they're doing something first and people are copying them. it's a real change in sort of where the action is starting. >> these home speakers,

certainly. mike, take a look at google and hardware. i'm sorry, i mean, we've got to be realistic here. they've actually failed miserably on lots of froent fronts. nexus phones or the tablets. remember the nexus q, that home audio device they were supposed to make in the usa and never did, then they bought motorola, saying they were going to make phones in the usa, then sold it to china. they've had a few little dongle successes. is there any reason to think they're really committed this time and it's going to make a difference? >> the nexus q is like the most beautiful paperweight google has ever produced. i still have one somewhere laying around. i think the important part is the vr sort of open source hard we're design basically because they're first among developers,

getting that hardware out there with samsung and google clearly wants to play in the space and has worked on its cardboard issue for some time. that's where you'll see a lot of emphasis. the phone is a little less exciting for me. it's another phone. these are blue as opposed to a rose gold which is like whatever. honestly, watch the vr stuff. i think that's the most important. >> reports are saying curb corners, camera in the upper left-hand device, expected to come in two sizes. it doesn't seem to lack any differential between the apple iphone. >> let's hope it doesn't explode like the samsung phone. >> one did the other day apparently, the iphone did. it feels like a lot to me, too. it feels the whole world wants software now there's this enthusiasm for hardware and none of these companies have any dna in hardware.

i don't know why we would expect this round would be any more successful than the last. >> microsoft's band, exercise band, it's been pulled from the store. intel bought basis, that peak watch that's been pulled. intel has dipped in and out of consumer over and over again. amazon dipped in with the phone. then out. they're still doing tablets. if companies do a little thing around the edges and don't create a lot of inventory and the logistics headache it's one thing. once they decide to go big, even the size of google, you can lose a lot of money in hardware if you try to go big and don't do it right. this is potentially it. >> i'm looking at a note out this morning, we estimate hardware sales at google of the 75 billion, mike, in 15 gap revenue, 1.5. right? barely material. isn't it? >> that would even be high in my

opinion. >> really? >> yeah. >> mike? >> google has tried this many, many times. it's hard to drum up demand for these things no matter how much sort of they put behind it. the marketing efforts are always kind of like half in, half out, you know. i just wonder when they're going to pull the plug on it. who knows. carl, i might get a blue phone. >> we'll see what happens in 15 minutes or so. facebook marketplace launched just yesterday. today, taking an interesting twist. julia bornsboorstin has that side of the story. >> selling everything from drugs and guns, animals and sex. these types of offerings exploding on twitter and facebook itself. it's designed for 1.7 billion

users to sell items within each other, 450 million people already visit buy and sell groups on facebook every month. facebook apologizing for the elicit items, saying a technical issue prevented -- we are working to fix the problem and will be closely monitoring our systems to ensure we are properly identifying and removing violations before giving more people action toes marketplace. but as this tool does roll out, facebook will be posing big competition to ebay and etsy as well as craigslist. facebook's marketplace has drawn criticism that it doesn't have star ratings like ebay does. and they warn it doesn't facilitate delivery, which could lead to in-person meetings with unvetted buyers. it never took off in 2007. instead they shifted the feature

over to groups allowing people to post items for sale to interested groups. carl? >> julia, thank you for that. dan, what do you think of this rollout? is it botched or -- is it the whole idea botched? >> it's botched. the whole idea is botched. >> really? >> yeah. look, you don't facilitate vendors why would a consumer choose to shift from where they're currently comfortable buying to a place they're uncomfortable buying? it's not like a new invention, just a new location to go ahead and buy something. we're building a two-sided marketplace. we've had great success in it. facebook can create demand for anything. how are they going to get supply? why would i leave amazon's marketplace, ebay's marketplace or anyone else's unless i

thought i could sell more, make more money. that's no proof of that. >> one would argue that it will add more functionality to the facebook platform. and the average person spends 50 minutes a day on facebook. now they can spend more time buying and selling good. >> sure, i understand why facebook wants to do it. once you have someone in your ecosystem, you want to keep them there as long as you can. it doesn't mean consumer behavior will change. why would someone leave ebay or amazon for the same item unless it was cheaper and easier to do? >> how long does facebook have to fix this? facebook's whole structure is based on trust, knowing who you're dealing with, dealing with people you know. with this, they're opening it up to dealing with people you don't know, dealing with your money. they're not using that technology to make that process

cleaner or safer. >> i think it's a lot of different pr headaches for facebook. for a while, as facebook was saying, there's already been a lot of different sales on there and people were actually selling guns unofficially on facebook. this makes it a bit more difficult for them. now you are encouraged to buy and sell things on there, guns, joints, whatever is going to be much more difficult for facebook to do. there's probably upside here. if they can get people to stay on facebook at a time where timesharing and time spent sharing stuff on facebook is going down overtime, that's probably a good thing and they

can weather these drug headlines now and then. >> something to watch. we'll see if john's prediction comes true in a week's time. college students are not very enthused about this year's election, according to chegg's new survey, college students favoring clinton over trump. 65% of students watched the first debate. 67 of students followed debate on social media and 58% thought clinton won the first debate. this is key as we figure out how those millennials will break. >> it will be overwhelmingly clinton if they vote. the key statistic we found is that enthusiasm has plummeted. yes, they thought she won the debate, did better. only 8% are going to support trump. 16% are undecided. 9% are going to go for one of the other two candidates, probably gary johnson. the enthusiasm, the thought that they'll come out to vote at all, 77% said they wouldn't work for

either campaign. so the enthusiasm gap is really, really low. >> an unenthusiastic vote counts just the same as an enthusiastic one. will they actually get to the polls? lot of times young people are the ones out there, encouraging other people to vote. is there any way in your survey to measure that? >> yeah, that's what i'm saying. their willingness to work for the campaigns is very low. >> how high or low is it usually? >> 77% said they won't. >> how many usually say they won't? >> after the debate 7% more said they wouldn't work for hillary and 56% more said they wouldn't work for trump. there's your level of not willing to go out and vote. it's not who they vote for but if they vote at all. honestly, it doesn't look like they'll vote in any big numbers.

>> 20% said they learned from a comedy show, perhaps highlighting the importance of snl, "the tonight show"? before the hysterical snl debate. we were surprised how low that was. everybody always says they learned from all these shows. since jon stewart has left and since colbert has left the colbert report they're getting it more from social media than any other format, a change from the previous four years. we'll see. >> goes more important than ever. >> that's true. >> thank you for joining us. check on markets on the second day of the fourth quarter, stocks rebounding, recovering from the losses we saw yesterday. technology, in fact, the best performing sector in the nasdaq. dow and s &p turning lower.

still up about 10% year to date. lot of focus on the pound. sterling falling to a low after concerns of brexit. we'll talk to hugo barra after the break. google's hardware event, we'll go live to san francisco for details about that and imf downgrades the economy on brexit concerns. lot of pessimism felt in europe today. we'll get the top economists to weigh in. there are many things you don't want in industrial strength- like cologne. morning! but there's one thing you do. (gags) it's called predix from ge. the cloud-based development platform that's industrial-strength strength!

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airbnb has given me is such a priceless gift. i was able to take three months off to take car of my family during a family tragedy. the extra income that i get from airbnb has been a huge impact in my life. just in time for google's hardware event xiaomi has unveiled its first mi tv box. mi box supports 4k playback on sale at walmart stores across the u.s. what does this mean for the streaming box network? global vice president joins us here at post nine. you have a mi box with you. >> i do. good morning, all. >> pretty small. smaller than the roku. it was on a few days ago. 4k. 69 bucks.

roku's competitive box is 79 bucks. how do you get the price so low and why this product to enter the u.s. market with your brand? >> so on price, john, i think one of the things that really defines us as a company, our dna, is this idea of innovation for everyone. we have this deep belief that cutting edge technology should be accessible by everyone. we make high-tech products in very large scale and sell them at a relatively low margin so that more people can afford them. that's precisely the vision behind bringing mi box to the u.s. at $69. >> you worked with google to do this. this comes on a day when google is expected to announce some new phones. you guys also make phones. does this complicate you guys expanding your global footprint at a time when your sales have been under pressure in a smart phone company and google making another push into that arena? >> obviously, we are well-known smart phone brand.

we have our eye in the u.s. for smart phones as well and talk about that from time to time. obviously that's in the future. we do think that at the time we come to the u.s. with smart phones it will be a disruptive move. that's what we like to do. what we're doing with mi box is our first disruptive product in the u.s., the market that's poised to be completely changed, we think. it's about to go mass market. people are cutting the cord. you hear people say i pretty much don't watch tv anymore. they do. they watch a lot of video but they want to be their own programmers. right? so people want to watch whatever they want whenever they want. this is about -- it's a trend that's about to go mass market not just the current generation but everyone is basically going into this direction. we thought this is a good time to bring a 4k streaming media player into the market at a price point that disrupts the category that begins to set the stage for them bringing smart phones later on. we do that and also in a disruptive manner. that's our dna.

>> brand name relevance here in the u.s. and educate the american buyer about xiomi's products? >> as a very young brand -- we're only six years old as a company -- is to focus on our fans, have grand ambassadors who are passionate about the brand and have the brand grow via word of mouth. we're bringing our first product and starting that movement exactly so that by the time we have smart phones the brand is well known at least among some of these young early adopters who then help us get the brand known by other people. it's a very different sort of quirky approach to building a brand that's worked in every other market. it's brilliant for the u.s. >> do you have expectations, targets as to the percentage of viewers who will cut the cord, live without a cable box in the u.s. five years from now? >> five years from now? >> yeah. >> it's a long way out. i think the number will be pretty high. i think the vast majority,

certainly more than 50% of consumer also have moved over to on demand full on. >> really? >> it's interesting that the regulation is likely to get behind this as well with the latest moves from the fcc, so on and so forth. so i do think five years from now, definitely. >> minority of viewers will be on the cable box? >> minority of viewers will be on linear tv. everyone will be their own programmer by deciding what to watch and when they want to watch it. >> what is your services model and maybe transaction and commerce model in the u.s.? as you said, accessible prices for hardware so that people can get in. but then in other markets, china in particular, you sell stuff on the back end. are you going to do that here? what are you going to sell? >> our go to market model changes, depending on the market we're in. in china, we're very much e-commerce focused. especially for consumer electronics, it's very e-commerce focused these days. the u.s. still not as e-commerce

focused as china or even compared to india, for example, a third of every smart phone is sold online. u.s. is not quite there yet. go to market model in the u.s. is focused on high reach, but we've adapted it to the market. that's why we've decided to go with walmart into the 4,000 stores for our first launch. the business model behind what we do, however, is very similar. we sell products at a very, very low margin and we make money in other ways, right? there's a ton of content inside this box. you can subscribe. you can purchase one off content. we have a number of partnerships we've made and these partnerships eventually will generate revenue for us as well. it becomes a very interesting business model. >> you're getting a cut of those transactions if they happen in your box? >> in some cases. we're still starting with the first product. eventually the business model will flourish in the service direction. >> that's the dream. >> hugo barra of xiaomi, thank

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shares of deutsche bank continue to rise, on news of a possible settlement with the boj. jp morgan chairman and ceo jamie dimon. >> there is no reason that deutsch bank shouldn't get over its problems. they have plenty of liquidity. we want all these banks to get through. it's better for everybody we move on. >> weighing in on the implications for the banks and broader markets, jennifer mcowen at capital economics and ryan jacobson chief portfolio

strategist atwells fargo. jennifer, let's talk about the health of european banking sector. can germany's biggest lender have an impact on europe's viability? >> it certainly can. europe's largest bank. certainly there are risks from deutsche bank to other banks and globally important bank. imf said it's the most important bank. globally systemic importance of deutsche bank compared to others and it's -- it has cross border exposure and movements in its equity price tend to effect those. so far we've not seen those effects, thankfully. but there's certainly potential

for that. >> ryan, it's not surprising that european banks are trading at a sharp discount to the broader markets. average price for european bank at 0.55, highlighting the negative sentiment surrounding the european banking story. would you steer clear of these thoughts or is this potentially a good entry point? >> i would say that you could take a broad based approach to look at the european banking system as saying that it is cheap but it's probably cheap for a very good reason. if you're looking at it broad based you'll get a few bad apples. ideological approach can make a lot of sense. banking system in general over in europe still has a lot of healing to do. now, the key thing, though, is whether or not the issues would

spread. globally systemically financial institutions. keep in mind we've learned a lot from the lehman crisis. wholesale funding. now more banks have deposits, relying on that. a and. >> ryan, to your point, do you think they could change their quantitative easing strategy, given the challenges that the banking sector is facing? negative interest rates are having an adverse impact on banking margins. >> that is one thing i would look for. to modify their purchase program. right now they're excluding from their purchase program a lot of bank securities, the bank debt. perhaps they could loosen that up a little bit. it would solve, i think, a couple of problems here. one for the ecb. which is one where they think that maybe they might be running

out of corporate bonds to finish. another would be to help the financial system. you look at bank funding costs that have increased for a number of reasons. one is related to the issues over there in germany, money market reform in the united states. so you see bank cost increase, not necessarily a good thing to help fund growth. >> jennifer, the question is whether germany and ainngela merkel will step in and help deutsche bank. what do you think the likelihood of that is right now? >> i think it's unlikely to be needed. deutsche bank has a lot of assets it could sell if it needed to. its assets are widely diversify ed than they are for a lot of other banks. i think it should be able to get through this. if the bailout were need i think the german government most certainly would step in. there are limitations.

germany strongly opposed a government bailout in italy f recently. but if deutsche bank is in trouble and given it really need ace bailout and given the contagion banks, the german banking sector is already at risk and very highly fragmented, i think the german government will be relatively quick to step i in. note that german debt is relatively low unlike the italian government. >> spain and italy, given their immense support of fiscal austerity. we'll leave the conversation there. that will be something we'll watch in the coming months. jennifer and brian thank you for joining us today. let's get a news update with

michelle caruso-sbara. >> matthew is the most powerful atlantic storm in nearly a decade, being blamed for at least three deaths. european union has ratified a climate change deal. forbes is out with the 400 richest americans. here is the big twist. amazon's jeff bezos has knocked warren buffett off the number one spot. bill gates held on to his title of richest man or person in america for the 23rd straight year. let's be frank, they're mostly men. maria sharapova can return to competition in april. she was initially banned for two years after testing positive on a doping test. that's our cnbc news update at

this hour. back to you. we have a resumption in trading. let's get to dominic hsu with that. dom? >> sears is at least looking to get bids for its craftsman tools business by the end of october. this according to bloomberg headlines, black & decker as well as tti, the parent company of riobi power tools, milwaukee power tools as well. this is all again on sources reporting there. on the 26th of may, sears did say it was seeking alternatives for kenmore appliances, die hard batteries and craftsman brand. tds unusually heavy volume. we're off the highs, carl. up near its highs today we spike by almost 19, 20%. we'll keep an eye on those sears shares. we'll get back to anything they have to say. >> crazy week for news at sears so far this week. thanks, dom.

europe closed a few moments ago. we'll get you the trading across the pond after a short break. don't go away. irks jooi

markets closing in the uk and continental europe. london leading the way as the uk pound falls to a 31-year low against the u.s. dollar. concerns about the brexit are at the center of the pounds decline two days after uk prime minister set a march date to begin the process of leaving the european

union. the slide in the pound lifting the ftse 100 and will close at a record close because of strength in exporters. 75% of earnings come from outside the uk, companies that benefit from a weaker pound. multinational publisher pearson. doesn't believe pearson will warrant. lvmh rising on news it has agreed to quire an 80% stake in swrermen luggage maker rimowa for $716 million. and deutsche bank shares moving higher in frankford, analysts saying fears of the bank's solvency are overdone after deutsche bank tries to reach a

settlement. >> meanwhile, hillary clinton sounding off about wall street and wells fargo at a campaign event in ohio yesterday. take a listen to this. >> part of the problem is large corporations are amassing so much power in our economy. sometimes it's called market concentration or even old-fashioned monopolies. either way it threatens businesses of all sizes as well as consumers. look atwell wells fargo. really shocking, isn't it? one of the nation's biggest banks bullying thousands of employees into committing fraud against unsuspecting customers. >> joining us this morning is former romney senior adviser, author of "the new york times" best seller "the up side of inequality." great to have you back. >> thank you. >> welcome. whether discussion of stumps,

stock holdings, trump's taxes over the weekend, the argument about the very wealthy and the rest of the country has never been more front and center. how do you think it's going to play? >> i think it's played well politically for democrats, so well that republicans have even jumped on the band wagon. my book does try to explain why the 1% has been so successful in this economy and why middle and working class wages have stag nated. i argue there are two different sets of forces at work and it's wrong to try to combine these two and blame one for the other. >> what are the two sets of forces? >> you look at the 1% that are in an information-based economy. you doesn't need much capital to grow. entrepreneurs, innovators can create companies with almost no capital at all. they don't need to share their success with investors. you're going to see more income inequality particularly as the world grows bigger. success is going to get larger and larger relative to a doctor or school teacher who is

constrained by the number of doctors and teachers they can serve. >> both parties have wholeheartedly accepts at this point. yeah, there's inequality. it's terrible. we need higher wages for the poor in order to lift that up. from the republican side, donald trump is saying, hey, i'm a billionaire and i can avoid taxes and i'm the one who knows how to fix this problem that is crushing the middle class. you're saying it's not really crushing the middle class at all if, in fact, that's true, how do you wipe away a myth that everybody has accepted? >> it's tough to wipe that myth away. that's why i'm writing books and making my case on tv. i do think in the case of the middle class, if we go back to that, as opposed to the 1%, who if you look at the statistics, really their success has driven faster growth and higher wages in the u.s. it's not a zero sum game at the top where innovation and growth is created. but i do think if you take a plant, move it to mexico, we have been telling those workers for years, don't worry.

the entrepreneurs are coming. they're going to put you back to work, compete with each other and drive your wages up and that worker sees those entrepreneurs have moved to california, outsourced jobs to china. meanwhile, manufacturering engineers left behind are designing products and factories that employ mexican workers and they say where are the entrepreneurs coming to drive my wages up? the book argues that entrepreneurialism, risk taking and properly trained talent, the kind of talent that grows our economy are the constraints to growth in this economy. >> you say the way that's going to happen is through education. some would argue that's a real problem with inequality to begin with. housing prices are going up. it's more expensive to get your kid into an area with good public schools. then you've got the cost of college. you have to practically be a millionaire in order to get a kid or certainly a couple of kids through college with no debt. education is the answer here, isn't inequality actually a problem because there's not equal access to quality education? >> the book is skeptical about

whether education can lift america, at least in the short one. >> that's depressing. >> one of the things it proposes -- it goes through quite thoughtfully about some of the things you might be able to do for education, increasing charter schools and maybe even passing a constitutional amendment that bans tenure that allows us to fire the most incompetent teachers, not that we fire a lot of teachers but at the bottom those two things have been shown to be effective. one of the things the book proposes is hiring many more -- through immigration, many more ultra high-skilled workers, who are the kind of workers who drive growth in this economy. there are 100 million full-time workers. the top percent would be 5 million. 7 billion people in the world, 350 million of them would be in the top 5%. half are too old, too young. half we don't know who they are, half will never move. you get down to a pool of 50 million. one thing the book recommends, is 56 those 50 million to double the growth rate and put upward pressure on lower-skilled wages

which probably will not get resolved in the short run until we find better education, technology. >> are the parallels to the era of carnegie and rockefeller, men, almost exclusively men who made their fortune on commodities and materials? >> today there's a breakthrough in information through the internet and personal computer and that did open up a pathway, some very large fortunes to be made. you need very little capital to scale up. it's easier to make those fortunes. we've gone through that era. it's hard to argue that that didn't help everybody, that the iphone doesn't create way more value than captured by steve jobs and we wouldn't be better off with more of that than less of that. >> people forget, carnegie, the reason public libraries basically exist. good discussion. thanks for coming in. >> thanks for having me. sticking with the theme of donald trump and politics how mr. trump defines a recession might be a little different than the rest of us. robert frank is back at

headquarters to explain. robert? >> hey, john. in a campaign speech yesterday donald trump said the 1990 recession was much worse than the great recession of 2008. >> the conditions facing real estate developers in that early '90 period were almost as bad as the great depression of 1929 and far worse than the great recession of 2008. not even close. >> now for most americans, 2008 was far more devastating. 8.7 million jobs lost compared with 1.7 million in 1990. millions more lost their homes in 2008. the unemployment rate peaked at 10% compared with just over 7% in 1990. for trump, 1990 was a near death financial experience because his two biggest exposures at that time, bank loans and the new york city real estate market. by 1990, trump had more than $3 billion in debt with more than $800 million personally guaranteed and new york real estate prices plunged by more than a third. and his three casinos, plaza

hotel all filed for bankruptcy. he was forced to give up his jets, yacht and all his other toys. forbes kicked him off the rich list and his banks put him on an austerity plan. he tells the story of walking past a homeless man in the early 1990s saying that homeless man is worth $900 million more than me. by 2008, trump was back on top. earned income by licensing his name. and in new york, real estate prices quickly rebounded and forbes put him back on the list with a worth of $3 billion. he and his family were able to buy distressed properties at a discount. what most americans call the great recession was more like the great opportunity for donald trump. back to you. >> robert frank, thank you so

much. robert, back at hq. when we come back, sales force team has been busy lately, trying to go at linkedin. this morning, they made an acquisition. details on that with a crazy day of price action as the dow works its way back to the flat line. at's the value of capital? what's critical thinki like? a sketball costs $14. what's team spirit worth? (cheers) what's it worth to talk to your mom? what's the valuef a walk in the woods? the value of capil is to create, not just wealth, but things that matter. morgan staey

coming up today on the half time report, what one analyst says is the best name to own the next five years.

our call of the day. google's ceo taking the stage at the big product event. and it's a taco takedown. head to head on young brands ahead of its earnings report all at the top of the hour here on half time. seema, it is taco tuesday. >> i was going to say it's national taco day. that makes sense. looking forward to it. now rick santelli of the santelli exchange. >> hi, seema. thank you. >> i'm going to continue to revisit this topic. there has to be so much more discussion. obviously, political season, we're all sidetracked with useless things that don't really altar our future as candidates talk about things of the past. fed normalization of interest rates is key. i call this piece stocking up for rate normalization and i'll tell you why in a second. first of all, in my opinion, there's one almost victory fed

policy. s&p 500 in early 09. way better than the recovery we had in the economy at large and way better than the recovery for the middle class. i heard hillary talking about the wells fargo fraud. it's horrible there's a fraud. let's not delude ourselves. let's look at who was in tenure in politics, from '05 to '08 when things like tarp, writing checks to banks all occurred and the notion at the epicenter is what was going on with housing, making people have houses they couldn't afford. it didn't work out well. there's those same types of promises in a variety of areas today. let's stick with the fed, shall we? so stock market moved up. now let's connect the real fed dot plot here, shall we? janet yellin, all of a sudden, as we get close to the end of a two-term president, as we get close to potentially

world-changing normalization in the u.s. -- and you can tell its happening. look at the spread of u.s. treasuries against things like boones. it's not a data dependent thing. it's because they need >> the fed's notion of watering geraniums from a mile away with a firehose certainly did water the geraniums, but it wasted a lot of water. just wasted a lot of water. as a matter of fact, if you look at the trillions of dollars spent on faux stimulus and then you look at census, how many real family units there are in the country, let's say 80 million, you divide three plus trillion by 80 million units. we should have written a check to every one of them. at least the money would have done something useful, but back to the point at hand. connecting the dots. why is it now that they're talking about buying stock? because it's all about stocks. if you are going to normalize rates, and we know it's going to probably happen with stocks, the only thing to connect the dots

on is, ah, it's time now to buy stocks as we think about raising rates. seema, back to you. >> rick santelli, pleasure having you on. >> the google event where the company is expected to announce a new line of hardware. that's next. audi pilless vehicles and now much of that same, mountaadvanced tecologyks. isound in the audi a4. with one notable difference... ♪ the highly advanced audi a4, with avale trtrfic m assist. ♪

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our josh lipton has a pry view of what to expect from google. josh. >> reporter: well, john, google is staying mum about what exactly it's going to introduce at this event right behind me here, but we are anticipating a lot of new hardware, john. center stage could be these two new smartphones called pixel and pixel xl. now, these will reportedly be the first smartphones carrying the company's own brand and design. the price? an apple-like $649. as for the specks, qualcomm, snap dragon, 12 mega pixel cameras. fingerprint scanners, and they'll run on android n, the latest operating system. what is the strategy behind these new phones?

they give google a way to show off its new technologies and services like google day dream, the company's new virtual reality initiative. that is a real potential growth engine for google. and another way to differentiate its hardware from rivals like apple. also expected release dates and pricing for google home, which is the company's answer to amazon ecco. the strategy there, that product could really be a way for consumers to, being, access that range of google services from youtube to the play store all from the comfort of their own living rooms. now, google executives are setting a very high bar for this event. the lead for android actually tweeted that we're going to be talking about what's introduced here today many years from now, so stay tuned. carl, back to you. >> crazy busy day in san francisco. that's for sure, josh. thanks. when we come back, what's app encroaching on snap's biggest features, lut about it

win over users? that's next when squawk alley continues.

therare many things you dot want in industrial sength- like cofe. but there's one thing you do. you guys okay?! 's called pred from ge. the cloud-based delopmen platform that's industrial-strength strength! zpliefrmts sales force.com will continue its buying spree buying crux in a deal reportedly worth

$p00 million. payment for the deal includes both cash and stock. crux is a san francisco start-up that mines internet data to help marketers and advertisers and tom chavez wrote in a blog post announcing the deal we're trading gas for rocket fuel. sales force's dream force, of course, that conference kicks off today 170,000 people expected to attend. carl. >> cramer is at dream force, and as he has for a while now, appears to believe that crux combined with a twitter-like product, if not twitter itself could give sales force real insight into their cliechbt's information about customers. >> stock has to be a part of that payment, though. >> the stock is at 11% year to diet. vastly underperforming like google and microsoft. >> more facebook companies taking a page from snap chat in august. instagram borrowed -- new features for camera feature, including the ability to draw our rider at emojis to photo and

videos. previous features have been added to facebook messenger. the main facebook app and on live video watching all these guys chase. it's like little kids on a soccer game. just all chasing the same ball. >> they're all stealing from television, anyway. >> wapner is back at hq. let's go over to him and get "the half." ♪ through the jungle ♪ run through the jungle >> carl, thanks. welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner. into the amazon. why one well known analyst today calls the stock the best name to own for the next five years. with us for the hour today joe terra nova, jim levin thal, the brothers negarian. courtesy of piper's gene munster who says amazon is the best positioned name in his coverage universe. gene is with us live from minneapolis. gene, good to see you again. >> hello, scott. of all the good and big names, why is amazon the best? >> because it's not only an internet play that has users