Google investment clarifies intentions. Jio Platforms now has both Facebook and Google as investors indicating that Jio’s strategy is not to create a digital ecosystem of its own, but instead to offer a series of India specific services to take advantage of the shift to digital. Google will invest $4.5bn for a 7.7% stake in Jio Platforms bringing the total...
The UK extracts its pound of flesh. The protestations of the UK operators against the Huawei ban is likely to fall on deaf ears as their claims are questionable and are really aimed at protecting the bottom line as the loss of Huawei will diminish competition making infrastructure a little bit more expensive. The UK has banned the sale of...
If you can’t beat them, join them. Sony’s investment in Epic Games finalises the end to any ecosystem that it intended to build and from here on we are going to see Sony providing the game or media content to power the ecosystems of others. Sony is paying $250m to purchase a 1.4% stake in Epic Games, the creator of...
The AR field continues to narrow. Bose’s journey outside of its core audio business has come to an end with the closure of its Augmented Reality (AR) business in another sign that AR remains extremely difficult to get right and requires huge amounts of cash and commitment. Two and a half years ago, Bose launched its AR strategy which was...
A return to the public market is now more likely. Arm’s restructuring is either signalling a rapid return to the stock market or no return at all. I suspect the former. Arm is restructuring its business and transferring its IoT Services Group and IoT Platform and Treasure Data to SoftBank which will leave Arm completely focused on semiconductor IP. This...
Semiconductors pull a blinder. Samsung has indicated that it has had a good Q2 2020 almost certainly because the stay at home trend has continued to productivity electronics and data centre demand offsetting what has most likely been a weak quarter in smartphones. Q2 2020 revenues / EBIT was KRW52tn (down 7.2% YoY) / KRW8.1tn (up 23% YoY) ahead of...
Little suffering from the current ban. The notion that the current ban in India is going to cost ByteDance $6bn in revenues sounds to me like a piece of 3rd hand gossip that has become distorted as it has been passed from one person to another. China’s Caixinglobal.com is running with a story that the ban of Chinese apps in...
Subscription features is a risk worth taking. BMW’s potential move to feature subscription has some problems but if this pushes BMW towards having a relationship with its users, it may well be a risk worth taking. This is very different from BMW’s idea of charging users extra to interact with its infotainment unit (see here), which it subsequently abandoned and...
Byton’s trouble is an opportunity for others. One of my favourite electric car makers is in the kind of trouble from which it may not recover which I think spells a great opportunity for an OEM who has not yet figured out how to deal with the issues facing the industry over the next 20 years. Byton is my favourite...
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.
Netflix Q2 2020 – Peter and Paul.
Netflix robbed Peter to pay Paul. Netflix reported good results, but it turns out that the very strong subscriber numbers in H1 2020 were mostly due to pulling forward user acquisitions that would have occurred in the future meaning a softer H2 2020. Q2 2020 revenues / EPS were $6.15bn / $1.59 ahead of revenue expectations of $6.08bn but behind...