The shake-out begins. Osterhout Design Group (ODG) looks to be in the process of being wound up in what I suspect is going to be a procession of small companies failing as Augmented Reality (AR) is turning out to be a ludicrously expensive technology to develop. ODG has long touted its technical prowess in bringing AR to small and light...
The injunction has teeth. In a surprising admission of weakness, Apple has admitted that if the injunction remains in force, it will be forced to settle with Qualcomm which I think substantially ratchets up the pressure on Apple to negotiate. Apple’s statement to the court says: “Apple will be forced to settle with the Respondent, causing all mobile phone manufacturers...
Ericsson is scraping the bottom of the barrel for a use case. Ericsson has had to use cloud-based virtual reality to demonstrate the benefits of 5G over 4G which clearly indicates that the use cases that are regularly touted to justify investing in 5G, such as digital and autonomous vehicles, make no sense at all. Ericsson’s video (see here) uses...
A packet-pushing future awaits Verizon confirms my long-held belief that the one good thing that Marissa Meyer did for long-suffering Yahoo shareholders was to sell the Yahoo core business to Verizon. Verizon has completed its annual budget process for 2019 which includes an impairment test for the goodwill that the company carries on the balance sheet. Goodwill is the difference...
Chinese injunction will increase pressure on Apple. Qualcomm has won a good victory in China with an injunction on the sale of a good number of Apple’s products which will serve to increase pressure on Apple to negotiate with its foe. The Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court has issued a preliminary injunction against the sale of the iPhone 6S, 6S+, 7,...
AliMe is no Google Assistant beater. Alibaba is making strides to develop its AI, and its voice assistant in particular, but despite a very impressive demonstration, I think it remains very far away from what Google Assistant can achieve. At the 2018 Neural Information Processing Systems conference, Alibaba shared more details of its AliMe speech recognition and natural language processing...
Lyft should accept the gift Uber is offering. Lyft has filed confidential documents with the SEC signaling its intent to go public in 2019 but given the state of its battle with Uber, I think it should delay going public for as long as it can. The public markets are not for the faint of heart and certainly not for...
The hits keep on coming. The UK government has opened up yet another front against Facebook with the publication of a series of e-mails dating back to before 2015 that imply a complete disregard for user privacy and the custodianship of data. The UK committee for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has released a series of emails between Facebook executives...
Epic throws down the gauntlet to the app stores. In another direct challenge to the app stores, Epic has decided to launch its own app store for PCs, which if it gets traction, may end up on mobile in another direct challenge to the existing status-quo in app economics. Thanks to the huge success of Fortnite, Epic now has the momentum...
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.
Apple – Silly season.
Not everyone at Tesla does cars. Apple is recruiting people from Tesla again which I think has nothing to do with cars and everything to do with augmented reality. Commentators are jumping on the recruitment of Andrew Kim from Tesla as a sign that Apple is once again trying to build an automobile as a way of growing its revenues...