An unattractive proposition. It looks increasingly like it will be Cruise rather than Tesla or Waymo that gets to market first with robotaxis giving it the best opportunity to be one of the winners in what is likely to be a bloodbath of cutthroat competition. Honda has announced that it is going to start a robotaxi operation in Tokyo in...
Low volume, low value. Qualcomm and Google have announced that Android Wear OS will be supported on RISC-V processors opening the way for the first market implementation that takes RISC-V on Android beyond vapourware for the first time. Qualcomm is the dominant supplier of silicon for Wear OS but to date, this has only been available for Arm powered processors....
Existing rules made more effective. The tightening of restrictions on chip exports to China aims to close a series of loopholes that allowed China to work around the rules and is likely to make life more difficult but only represents an incremental increase rather than a large policy change. As it has signalled, the US Department of Commerce updated its...
The real ERNIE 1.0. Baidu rolled out the latest version of its ERNIE chatbot which is a great improvement over previous versions and in my opinion, is what the company wanted to launch back in March but was simply not ready. Instead, like Google, it had to rush to market with something to demonstrate that China was not being left...
Nanoimprint lithography unlikely to solve anyone’s problems. Canon has announced that it will begin selling an alternative technology for advanced semiconductors that I suspect is unlikely to see a lot of traction in the market or help China circumvent the restrictions that have been placed upon it. After many years of development, Canon is ready to start selling a lithography...
RFM has contracted a mild illness from the last three weeks of travel. RFM Intends to return on Monday, October 16th.
More results to support the notion of a bottom. Samsung’s preliminary results came in better than expected adding weight to the possibility that the inventory correction is coming to an end which will allow revenues on consumer electronics to stabilise. Preliminary Q3 2023 revenues / EBIT were KRW67tn / KRW2.4tn which were in line with expectations but crucially, were better...
Regulation will be better if targeted at people, not machines. Governments and regulators are moving to impose regulations on Artificial Intelligence but a lack of understanding on their part may mean that regulation ends up destroying most of the value that large language models bring. Furthermore, their requirements for certainty could easily lead to certain functionalities being simply lobotomised resulting...
TSMC Q3 23 revenue signals a potential bottom. TSMC reported its monthly sales for September implying that Q3 2023 revenues have declined by less than expected giving me some hope that the decline in the smartphone market may be drawing to a close. Implied Q3 2023 revenues were NT$546.7bn which was ahead of consensus of NT$531.5 but still represented a...
Richard is founder, owner of research company, Radio Free Mobile. He has 16 years of experience working in sell side equity research. During his 11 year tenure at Nomura Securities, he focused on the equity coverage of the Global Technology sector.
USA vs. China – Tit for tat
The USA still has the upper hand. In the face of further restrictions on its ability to develop AI algorithms, China is threatening to restrict the export of graphite in a move that is likely to be as ineffective as the restrictions it put on rare-earth metals 10 years ago. In what is now likely to be an annual update,...