Google fails again to close on Alexa. While Google is rapidly increasing the number of skills available for the assistant, it has failed to materially close the gap on Amazon in 2018, giving just another indication that the best product might not win this battle. In January 2019, Google Assistant had 4,253 skills in the USA up 141% YoY while...
From revenue to cost. All is not well at Didi as a restructuring of the company is a sure sign that targets are not being met which is certain to lead to questions being asked about the validity of the most recent valuation of $56bn. Didi has announced that it will cut 2,000 jobs (15% of the workforce) as it...
Waymo’s lead shrinks again to 2 to 1. Apple’s offering is awful. Analysis of autonomous testing data submitted to the California DMV for 2018, reveals that while Waymo is still out front, GM Cruise has made up ground, cementing its No.2 position. Newcomer Apple came in 2nd last only to Uber whose performance has deteriorated massively in the last 12...
Watson goes nomadic. IBM has sensibly decided to allow its AI offering (Watson) to run on the cloud offerings of its rivals as well as enabling an ability to run effectively over multiple cloud instances at the same time. This is a good move which some may see as detrimental to its efforts to win share in the enterprise cloud,...
Amazon goes vertical. Amazon has moved to cement its grip on the smart home with the purchase of the WiFi router company Eero that should make the smart home much simpler as long as the user sticks with Amazon. Amazon has agreed to acquire Eero for an undisclosed sum which leads me to suspect that Eero has been a bit...
The main beneficiaries are Samsung and Ericsson. Just as Huawei is on the edge of casing Samsung real problems, it has a host of troubles that could completely destroy almost all of its business outside of China. Huawei’s problems are best understood by splitting them into two pieces. First, Iran: There appears to be some evidence (see here) that Huawei...
Pressure on Valve could lead to pressure on Google. Valve is resorting to underhand tactics to undermine Epic’s competition on the PC in another sign that the app store business model, in general, is coming under real threat. Valve has been virtually unchallenged in the market for online purchasing of games on PCs for some time and in all aspects...
The labels won’t go quietly into the night. Spotify reported its first-ever profit and underscored its move into podcasts but the fall in the share price just serves to underpin the view that Spotify still has no real business in being a public company. Q4 18 revenues / EBIT were €1.70bn / €94m compared to consensus revenues at €1.71bn. Crucial...
In this business, it pays to be big. Alphabet Q4 18 – Outside the doghouse. Alphabet reported good Q4 18 results, but rising costs and an increasing fear of privacy regulation has kept a lid on optimism both inside and outside of the company. Q4 18 revenues / adj-EPS were $31.84bn / $12.77 ahead of consensus at $31.33bn / $10.86....
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.
5G – Rotten race.
A race not worth winning. With Mobile World Congress just around the corner, the focus for the next week or so will be back on 5G as this will be all that anyone has to talk about next week. At the same time, Huawei will be on a massive charm offensive to convince regulators and mobile operators that its equipment...