Windows on Arm – Crusade Commences

Arm’s 3rd shot at Windows laptops might just work. Apart from AI, Microsoft Build is likely to see the main launch of Qualcomm, Arm & Microsoft’s 3rd attempt at addressing the Windows laptop market, and this time around, it has by far its best chance of success. This will then be followed by the PC trade show of the year,...

Google I/O – First Blood

OpenAI draws first blood in the competition against Google. Google continues to struggle with its messaging as OpenAI was able to deliver more in 30 minutes than Google did in a long, rambling and discombobulated 2 hours. If Google intended to amaze and astound then it failed badly, but it did manage to deliver a solid set of updates that...

AI Ecosystem – Opening Salvo

OpenAI jumps in just before everyone else. OpenAI’s new model has very little to do with improving raw performance and everything to do with making it easier and more fun to use, in a move designed to drive engagement and establish OpenAI as the premier AI ecosystem. OpenAI fired the first shots in the developer conference season that will see...

USA vs. China – The Grind

Pressure is making life very hard for Chinese semiconductors. SMIC reported difficult results as the cash machine that is supposed to be lagging edge is not delivering meaning that the losses that are being incurred at its most advanced, but uneconomic fabs are increasingly being felt in its financial performance. Q1 24 revenue / net income was $1.75bn / $71.8m...

Automotive Ecosystems – GM’s Big Bet.

Good, but it needs to be better. A large proportion of the automotive industry thinks that GM has taken leave of its senses by ditching CarPlay in its electric vehicles but the initial feedback is much better than expected although it needs to be a lot better before GM will be able to rid itself of Apple’s shackles. It was...

Arm FQ4 24 – Volatile Visibility.

The story will remain v9 for some time. Arm reported good results where it made good on its FY24 forecasts, but the shares fell as the guidance for the coming year was not quite up to expectations meaning that the shares will now remain a push and pull between what multiple should be paid for AI and its relatively consistent...

Apple – Feeling the squeeze.

Apple ups its cadence as competition heats up. Apple appears to be taking a leaf out of Nvidia’s book in launching a new chip just 6 months after it launched the last one in order to remain two generations ahead of Qualcomm even though it does not seem to be competing directly with it. Apple also updated its ageing iPad...

Autonomous Driving – Brains not brawn

End-to-end machine learning is not the answer. SoftBank, Nvidia and Microsoft are pouring $1bn into a system that relies entirely on machine learning to drive vehicles in the hope that if the model is big enough and trained with enough data magically, the answer will pop out at the end. I suspect that when it comes to the problem of...

Lidar – Last Man Standing

The only thing that matters is cash. The weakening of EV demand and the failure of the industry to produce autonomy has slowed demand for automotive Lidar putting a lot of players in existential trouble with Luminar being the latest victim. When a company announces a large restructuring, strategy shift and headcount reduction a few days before its results, it...

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...