Mapbox reshuffles to go for automotive. Mapbox has moved into a new phase of its development by moving its founder and CEO into the role of chairman and chief strategy officer and promoting Peter Sirota to the role of CEO. At the same time, Mapbox has announced that it will follow-on from its success from landing a partnership with BMW...
Huawei finally hits the wall. After nearly 2 years of ducking and diving combined with superlative execution on the part of Huawei’s management, its dependence on US technology has finally hit home as Huawei is expecting shipments to fall by more than 40% this year. Although, The White House has taken a much softer tone towards China in its commentary,...
Zoom is growing on the back of a declining asset. Zoom reported another great set of results but its success and the ability of its customers to manage through the pandemic has come at the expense of the social capital that corporations have built up over many years. As corporations turn over their employee base, this capital becomes exhausted and...
Airbnb signals the beginning of the recovery trade. Airbnb reported reasonable maiden results but its bookings are starting edge up in another signal that the travel, hospitality and entertainment sectors are about to enjoy a healthy recovery as thoughts turn firmly to re-opening. My personal suspicion is that when the hundreds of millions of prisoners across the world finally emerge...
Epic adds the EU as the next theatre of war. Epic has filed an antitrust complaint against Apple with the EU in what is a natural extension of this dispute as the EU has a long history of being more accommodating to plaintiffs in antitrust matters than other jurisdictions. Epic’s case is a fairly simple one and is in line...
FOMO feeds the cash bonfire. Lucid Motors is going public using a SPAC vehicle at a valuation that once again underlines that fear of missing out (FOMO) is driving investment in this sector as opposed to any semblance of reality. Lucid Motors is a luxury EV maker and as such is not really a competitor for Tesla but more BMW,...
The Chinese may provide a long-needed boost for this technology. Oppo is the latest of three Chinese handset vendors that have jumped into the far-field wireless charging game in a sign that differentiation is increasingly hard to come by but also just might finally allow this sector to reach the mainstream. Far-field wireless charging has been a theme I have...
Facebook outplays the Australians in leveraging its network effect. Facebook has scored a big win in arriving at an agreement with the Australian government regarding paying for news from Australian sources with concessions that virtually guarantee that it will be business as usual from here on. Facebook has said that it is satisfied with the changes and guarantees that it...
Life gets more real for online finance in China. Changes to the banking rules mean that the nimble online lending sector will become much more capital intensive which will incentivise the lending platforms to be more risk-averse when it comes to making loans. Online lending platforms are now being forced to have much more skin in the lending game by...
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.
Quantum computing – Under starter’s orders pt. II
D-Wave makes a real(ish) world demonstration. D-Wave has demonstrated that its quantum computer can solve a “real-world” problem and in the process found that it completed the task somewhere between 1m to 3m times faster than a regular supercomputer powered with silicon CPUs would be able to do (see here). This kind of speed is not a new revelation but...