Waymo is racing to market. Waymo has raised more money clearly indicating that Waymo’s technological edge has been eroded as the data suggests and that it is now a straight race to the finishing line in terms of the six leading contenders. Waymo has raised another $2.5bn at a valuation that was probably around $30bn which comes on top of...
The OpenRAN pieces may not fit together very well. Vodafone is launching OpenRAN on its network in what looks like an experiment to test whether or not OpenRAN can fulfill any of the promises that its proponents have so often made. I suspect that it is going to struggle to do so. OpenRAN is an industry movement to make the...
Best of a difficult bunch. Didi Chuxing has filed its documents to go public which reveals a company with brighter prospects than most of its rivals and a Chinese economy that has fared far better than its Western rivals. Didi has filed under the name of its holding company Xiaoju Kuaizhi and the F-1 filing can be found here. In...
Google sneaks its new OS into the wild. With zero fanfare Google has launched its new Fuchsia OS onto consumers, the vast majority of whom are very likely to not even notice that this has occurred. Hence, this looks like a soft launch of the new OS where Google will look and see how well it performs in the wild...
El-Salvador goes fishing for business. El Salvador’s move to grant Bitcoin legal tender status is not an endorsement of Bitcoin but a recognition that there is still a lot of capital swirling around in the sector and a move to attract some of that to El Salvador. With 62 out of 84 votes, Bitcoin has become legal tender in El...
The war will not be fought in semiconductors. The technological war between the US and China will not be fought in semiconductors as commentary around the US Senate’s new bill seems to suggest, but in the new frontiers of AI, autonomous driving quantum computing, and future wireless standards. The US Senate has passed a bill that aims to curb China’s...
Apple takes no risks at WWDC 2021. Apple inched the juggernaut of its ecosystem forward with a series of incremental updates that bring it into line with the competition and beyond that focused on user experience tweaks that took no real risks at all. This is exactly what happens when a company reaches this level of size and power because...
Ant Group’s digital powerhouse becomes a bank. While the original Ant Group proposition was dealt a fatal blow (see here) by the Chinese regulator, Ant Group has been granted a license that will see it become a 50% shareholder in a bank. While the value of this to Ant Group is a tiny fraction of the once mooted $300bn, it...
Battery stuffing may not be worth it. Xiaomi’s new ability to fully charge a smartphone in 10 minutes sounds great but it will in all likelihood damage the battery so much that Xiaomi may need to move back to user-replaceable batteries and provide a replacement in the box. The technology media (see here) is touting this as an incredible breakthrough...
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.
ByteDance – Fundamental break.
ByteDance’s business model has a fundamental problem. ByteDance had its best year ever last year in terms of revenue, but because it employs over a 100,000 people, it is still losing a fortune which is a situation that a company of this size should have long left behind it. ByteDance grew revenues 111% YoY in 2020 to $34bn with 1.9bn...