Integration benefit overshadowed by AI. After a long 4½ year wait, Facebook is finally integrating its Digital Life services that will enable it to meaningfully improve the service that offers as well as well as the targeting that it applies to its advertisements. It will also make the company more opaque and difficult to break-apart from a regulatory standpoint. Facebook’s...
Google increasingly at risk of losing. Walmart has abandoned Google Express dealing what is likely to be a fatal blow to Google’s attempt to challenge Amazon in the one place where its’ performance is inferior in the smart home. There has been no formal announcement, but Google Express has admitted on Twitter that Walmart is no longer on its website....
Didi in pole position but should not rush to IPO. The Mobike brand is about to disappear in yet another sign that while the sharing economy offers great deals to its users, earning a return from it is fiendishly difficult. This is a major global trend that I expect to play out with increasing volume during 2019 and uniquely leaves...
2019 will be the year of the shake-out. With a darker economic picture and shrinking access to capital, 2019 is shaping up to be a year where the donkeys (see here) are forced out meaning that 2020 could be the year where the unicorns finally start making some money. No sub-segment of tech is likely to be immune as the...
Facebook must entice users not to disengage. Facebook’s future is going to be determined by whether users uncomfortable with being tracked disengage from using Facebook services. So far, the data is indicating that almost no one has walked meaning that Facebook should be fine once it has weathered the seemingly endless bad press. Data from PEW research indicates that most...
Integration with the vehicle is essential A recent survey has found that voice assistants are quite widely used in the vehicle, but I think that until they are properly integrated, they will be little more than an occasionally useful gimmick. Voicebot.ai’s most recent survey (see here) and here) has found that 117m US adults have tried a voice assistant in...
Cortana offers more dead than alive. With usage at rock bottom and its Cortana leader resigned, Microsoft is clearly distancing itself and its products from the hapless Cortana which now look certain to occupy a plot in the digital assistant graveyard. Microsoft held a media event where Satya Nadella extolled the virtue of Cortana, but it is clear from his...
Wearables to remain fossilised. Google has purchased the right to use and disseminate core IP from Fossil for $40m (stoking rumours of a Pixel Watch) but I can’t see anything that Fossil has that will allow Google to close the gap on Apple. Smartwatches are the most important sub-segment of the endlessly disappointing wearables segment where Apple clearly leads the...
Google i/o shaping up to be a snooze. The next version of Android has leaked ahead of the usual developer preview and it looks to me like innovation in Android has ground to a halt, meaning that all the action will be found in Google’s own services. Android Q is the next version of Android and its main feature looks...
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.
Google Automotive – Wobbly wheels
Android Automotive is far from a foregone conclusion. Google clearly still thinks of vehicles as nothing more than handsets on wheels which I think is the reason why products that were supposed to use it do not and why the software was conspicuously absent at what is now the world’s biggest car show, CES. Google has put a brave face on...