Tesla’s bold claims do not hold up to scrutiny. Elon Musk has made some pretty bold claims on Tesla’s behalf regarding the state of its autonomous driving solution but with no official hard data being offered and its record, it is hard to take the claim seriously. Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, has given an interview to an MIT researcher (see...
Ultimately, the pressure proved too much for Apple. Apple and Qualcomm have settled their long-running dispute (see here) over patent royalties and chipsets in what looks to me to be a big victory for Qualcomm. This outcome is very different from the settlement that was announced with Nokia in 2008 where I was of the opinion that Nokia got the...
Investors will now pay the price of allowing poor governance. The move to oust Mark Zuckerberg will almost certainly fail in the strongest signal yet that companies with uneven share voting structures should attract a discount to their valuation. An attempt is being made to remove Mark Zuckerberg as chairman that is almost certain to fail because unless Zuckerberg votes...
A profitless platform isn’t worth anything. Uber is asking for a much higher valuation than Lyft which it is trying to justify through its dominant position in its home market. However, Uber seems to have a chronic inability to make money in spite of its dominance, leaving me wondering when or if real earnings will ever grace the income statement....
PewDiePie follows Epic Games in undermining the supremacy of Twitch and Google. The first credible challenge to the dominance of Twitch and YouTube has arisen as YouTube’s biggest creator (PewDiePie) who has 93.5m subscribers has announced that he will exclusively live stream on an almost unknown platform called DLive (see here). DLive is run by a tiny Cupertino based start-up...
Much less likely to get into trouble. Pinterest is in a much better position than either Uber or Lyft as its financials are in much better shape and it not engaged in a bloody price war to try and dominate the market. Demand for Pinterest has been soft, to say the least, as its IPO is now being offered at...
Apple needs to strike a very delicate balance with its partners. Netflix’s gripe with Apple is symptomatic of the problem that Apple faces and the difficult waters it must now navigate to keep its premium margins in hardware. In addition to snubbing Apple’s new TV app, Netflix has now dropped support for AirPlay citing technical reasons around guaranteeing the quality...
Epic challenges the 30/70 revenue split. Not content to disrupt the status quo on Android (see here), Epic’s moves against Valve are bearing fruit sending a strong signal that the traditional 30/70 platform developer split is now obsolete. Epic has launched its own app store on PCs to challenge Valve and is beginning to win some big-name exclusives much to...
Snap needs Facebook to slip to mount a comeback. Snap’s 1st developer conference revealed a move into gaming as well as a strategy to prevent the rampant copying of its innovations that have caused it so much trouble. I don’t think that this is going to trigger user numbers to start really growing again but it may enable Snap to...
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.
Samsung – Nasty origami
Huawei’s issues are likely to be just as bad. It looks like the majority of the screen failures on the Galaxy Fold are user errors but there are still enough other problems to warrant a delay to shipment while Samsung sorts them out. I doubt whether Huawei will fare much better. A whole slew of review units are showing catastrophic...