Reply to this post Tencent begins to build on Supercell. Following the most difficult set of results after its IPO, Snap has conveniently announced that Tencent has taken a 12% stake in the company. This has awoken take-over speculation that I thought would not really emerge before the shares dropped below $10 and should provide...
Reply to this post Dreadful results reveal a company in disarray. Snap reported weak results that bear all the hallmarks of a small, weak player being ground into the dust by a larger, much more powerful rival (see here). Furthermore, Snap now finds itself being forced to redesign its user experience in a desperate attempt...
Reply to this post An unaffordable outage. Snap Inc’s Snapchat service suffered a 4 hour worldwide outage that enraged its users, greatly increasing the risk of defection to Facebook’s more reliable and much larger stories service. Snap Inc. is already having a tough time competing against Instagram Stories and these sorts of events are simply...
Reply to this post For hardcore fans only. Razer has stuck to what it knows in its in launching first smartphone, but its focus on gamers means that the device looks very dated against competition in its price tier (Galaxy s8, Mate 10 Pro, iPhone 8 etc). The Razer phone sports a very average looking...
Reply to this post X hits the spot. Apple reported good results and guided strongly for FQ1 18 as it has managed to deal with some of the production problems with the iPhone X which will result in slightly better than expected shipments in FQ1 18. FQ4 17 revenues / EPS were $52.6bn / $2.07...
Reply to this post Humans are not the answer. Facebook reported strong results but gave disappointing guidance as its shortcomings in AI mean that non-productive headcount is going to skyrocket, materially hurting profitability. Q3 17 revenues / EPS were $10.3bn / $1.59 comfortably above forecasts of $9.8bn / $1.28. Once again this was driven by...
Reply to this post Its too early for Razer to go public. Razer wants to become the ecosystem for gamers but its progress in this area is at such an early stage that I think it has no business being a public company. This is because when a company is in transition, things rarely go...
Reply to this post A problem that humans can’t solve. There is a silver bullet to deal with the fake news issue, but the problem is that Facebook is not even close to being able to produce one and is having to rely on old, ineffective bullets instead. This problem has been around for a...
Reply to this post Software updates won’t fix reputation. The seemingly endless problems with Google’s latest Pixel devices can most probably be completely resolved with software updates, but these will not repair the reputation damage which is likely to keep the few potential buyers that there are at bay. The problems are legion: First, Screen...
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 – Augmenting reality.
Reply to this post Unit launch in 2019 is an augmentation of reality. If Apple is working on an AR headset, I think that there is no way that the technology will be ready in 2019 and that the scale of the technical issues to be surmounted will keep ARKit firmly resident on the iPhone...