Google should issue refunds. Gaming on mobile phones remains a huge opportunity because outside of China, there is no dominant player but the way that Stadia is going it looks like Google will lose to someone else. Despite being one of the most important Digital Life services on smartphones and one of the highest earners for developers, no one has...
Robotaxis will not be appearing anytime soon. McAfee has exposed a corner case that triggered dangerous behaviour by a Tesla vehicle in another example of how deep learning is not well suited to the chaotic road environment. The result is that robotaxis remain as far away as ever and that investors should wary of pricing in robotaxis into Tesla’s valuation....
Blue Apron shares are probably going to zero. Another set of awful results has forced the board of Blue Apron to seek “strategic alternatives” which in English means either someone buys the company, or it goes out of business. The problem is that I can’t see anyone who would be foolhardy enough to buy the business. The last time I...
Apple does not know how badly it will miss FQ2 20. The first signs of the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the world economy have arrived, but critically no-one has any real idea what the real impact is going to be or how much worse it could get. Apple effectively withdrew its guidance for FQ2 20 in announcing that...
mmWave antenna design is still a big issue. As I have long suspected, one of the most challenging issues for 5G is the design of the mmWave antenna which has very little margin for error and has to deal with the most challenging radio propagation conditions yet seen in mobile telephony. Currently, Qualcomm is the only game in town for...
The USA makes up for recent ground lost. The US Department of Justice has stepped up its campaign against Huawei in a move that I think aims to dissuade other countries from doing business with an alleged criminal enterprise. I think that this all relates to the long-running trade dispute and technology rivalry between the USA and China where Huawei...
Me too products sink the ship. Andy Rubin’s Essential Products Inc has gone from a $1.2bn start-up to ignominious closure simply because it catastrophically failed to live up to its name. This has been coming for a long time as the company has hardly made any noise for months and has now announced its closure (see here) where most of...
Samsung gives 5G a major boost. Samsung has launched its annual flagships for 2020 and the fact that all of them will support 5G at close to the same price as last year’s version, means that 5G penetration of the user base will be much better than I have been expecting. Samsung also greatly toned down the commentary about its...
Robotaxis are autonomous driving v0.5. Since the revelation that autonomous driving was not going to live up to the hype, the focus has moved to robotaxis but these too, face plenty of issues. Fiat Chrysler and AutoX are the latest in a long line of companies that have announced that they will be launching a robotaxi offering but like everyone...
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.
Ford – Ship and remember.
Ford is starting to understand digital. I may have issues with Ford’s view on vehicle demand (see here) but there are signs that Ford is one of the very few OEMs that is starting to understand how important digital data is and the opportunity that it presents. More importantly, it appears to be almost the only one that is doing...