Meituan follows Alibaba and sends a signal. Meituan has emerged from regulatory scrutiny almost completely unscathed implying that as long as everybody toes the line and behaves, then business (with a few exceptions) will be allowed to continue pretty much as it did before. Meituan has been fined RMB3.4bn ($530m) which equates to 3% of its 2020 turnover for abusing...
The profit might be fake, but the company is not. DeepMind’s move into profitability means very little and, in my opinion, deflects attention from the fact that Deep Mind is one of the finest AI companies in the world. DeepMind made a profit of £46m in 2020 on revenues of £826m which represented an increase of more than 3x in...
Congress seems to want to give Facebook the ByteDance treatment. Facebook has had a bad week but the allegations being made have been quite effectively shot down by Mr. Zuckerberg, highlighting the possibility that this event is being used as an excuse for the US government to take control of Facebook’s ability to distribute news and information. The main allegation...
Qualcomm is coming for Mobileye. Qualcomm has won its fight for Veoneer which will see it expand its offering in automated driving in an attempt to take on Mobileye in a market that is ripe for more competition. Qualcomm and SW Partners are acquiring Veoneer which will then be broken up and the autonomous driving piece sold to Qualcomm and...
Amazon Game Studios sees some traction at last. Amazon has had a torrid time with its fledgling game studio, but its recent release is seeing good traction with gamers but I still think that Amazon’s real aim here is to sell the tools to developers rather than make the games itself. After the cancellation of two of its big-budget games,...
Rivian is not a growth company. It is a start-up. It looks like Rivian has a great product on its hands which combined with its relationship with Amazon puts it in a strong position, but how a company with zero revenues is worth $80bn remains a total mystery. Rivian has filed its S-1 (see here) and while there are...
ByteDance joins the giants. TikTok the short video service owned by ByteDance has announced that it has over 1bn users making it unique as the only Chinese company that has scored real success outside of its home market. ByteDance started life as an AI company that has become extremely good at creating algorithms that can categorise video content and match...
GM appears to go it alone. GM has announced a new end-to-end platform that aims to provide everything from systems management to infotainment, in what can only be a big demotion for Google’s role in GM’s plans. GM already has its Vehicle Intelligence Platform (VIP) which runs the vehicle infrastructure, and this has been designed so that further functionality can...
Amazon experiments with privacy. Amazon released a series of products and services in what looks like an experiment to see how much privacy users are willing to surrender in return for fun and convenience. Amazon only speaks to the market like this once a year meaning that every event is loaded with both hardware and software products, updates, and services....
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.
Magic Leap – Second life
Magic Leap is back and has a seat at the table. Magic Leap is back in contention with a new device and a funding round, but the company has not said anything that has not already been said by everyone else, leaving me wondering where it plans on finding its competitive edge outside of hardware. After what looked like certain...