Apple & Peloton – Opposites

Fat middle age versus fighting for survival. Apple FQ2 24: Bounces off the bottom. Apple reported reasonable results and predicted a better FQ3 as the stabilisation in the smartphone market and continued growth in the services business are arresting the revenue decline. Apple also sprinkled its commentary with as much AI as possible promising that it would share “some very...

Qualcomm FQ2 24 – Steady Sailing.

Stable quarter and guidance raised. A steady quarter devoid of fireworks but where the fundamentals are beginning to come together creates a foundation for more upside as new segments such as PCs and automotive gain traction. Qualcomm reported good results and raised guidance as the core smartphone chip business continues to recover and the new business areas get themselves ready...

Amazon Q1 24 – Picks and shovels.

All roads lead to Nvidia. Amazon reported good results that were led by AWS as appending on AI has reignited growth, but capex is growing to support these massive models and the main beneficiary remains Nvidia. Q1 24 revenues / EPS were $143.3bn / $0.98 ahead of estimates of $142.7bn / $0.84 and guidance for the coming quarter was broadly...

Automotive Ecosystems – Play Suspended

Mercedes bails on Apple CarPlay 2.0. Mercedes Benz has confirmed that it has no plans to support the next generation of CarPlay as it has realised that letting Apple take over the infotainment domain will destroy its ability to monetise digital services in the vehicle. Ola Källenius was very clear on the Decoder podcast answering “the short answer is no.”...

Apple Vision Pro – Too Much, Too Early.

Apple loses very little with the Vision Pro. It looks like Apple is going to miss its 1m target for the Apple Vision Pro with commentary from suppliers indicating volumes of 200,000 – 400,000 but this is very far from the disaster that it would appear to be. Apple’s main assembler for the Vision Pro (see here) appears to be...

Tech Newsround – GOOG, MSFT & INTC

2 hits, one miss Alphabet: AI everywhere Alphabet reported strong results and spent its conference call reminding everyone that it is the best AI company even if it does a poor job of getting that message out to the media and investors. Q1 24 revenues-exTAC / EPS were $67.6bn / $1.89 ahead of estimates of $66.1bn / $1.53. Alphabet also...

Meta Platforms Q1 24 – Bad habits

Zuck returns to a bad habit. Meta reported reasonable results but Meta’s habitual tendency to spend resurfaced spooking the market which sent the shares down 15% which I can understand as, based on what it launched last week, Meta should be less capital intensive than its peers. Q1 24 revenues / EPS were $36.5bn / $4.71 slightly ahead of estimates...

Tech Newsround – TikTok & Tesla

TikTok: The ball is in China’s court. The chances of a ban on TikTok have increased substantially meaning that Beijing will now have to choose between the global expansion of a national champion and national security. The bill to force ByteDance to sell TikTok has passed the Senate and will now go to the office of the President who has...

The Metaverse – Android II

Meta will need to stop making hardware. Meta has decided to open its VR software to 3rd party manufacturers in a sign that Meta is already thinking about the ecosystem of the Metaverse, but it does mean that Meta will have to stop making hardware. Meta Platforms will make the operating system of its headsets available to 3rd parties and...

Huawei – Slow Slippage

New chip. New phone. Same story Huawei’s new Pura 70 Ultra smartphone sports some interesting satellite functions and uses a new applications processor but even a modicum of scrutiny reveals that the chip is both uneconomical to manufacture and further behind the cutting edge compared to a year ago. Huawei has launched the Pure 70 Ultra with some extra bells...