Meta may be returning to its bad habits. Meta Platforms delivered another set of excellent results but wiped out enthusiasm by guiding weakly for Q4 2023 and raising spending expectations for 2024. Q3 2023 revenues / EPS were $34.2bn / $4.39 nicely ahead of consensus of $33.6bn / $3.64 where profits were driven by a 23% increase in revenues and...
Taiwanese politics and Apple. Long-term collaborator and colleague Alastair Newton from Alavan Independent joins Radio Free Mobile in authoring today’s commentary concerning China, Foxconn, Taiwan and Apple. China has launched an investigation into Foxconn which employs over 1m people in China which we think is either another warning shot at Apple or a message regarding the Taiwanese election next year....
The USA still has the upper hand. In the face of further restrictions on its ability to develop AI algorithms, China is threatening to restrict the export of graphite in a move that is likely to be as ineffective as the restrictions it put on rare-earth metals 10 years ago. In what is now likely to be an annual update,...
An unattractive proposition. It looks increasingly like it will be Cruise rather than Tesla or Waymo that gets to market first with robotaxis giving it the best opportunity to be one of the winners in what is likely to be a bloodbath of cutthroat competition. Honda has announced that it is going to start a robotaxi operation in Tokyo in...
Low volume, low value. Qualcomm and Google have announced that Android Wear OS will be supported on RISC-V processors opening the way for the first market implementation that takes RISC-V on Android beyond vapourware for the first time. Qualcomm is the dominant supplier of silicon for Wear OS but to date, this has only been available for Arm powered processors....
Existing rules made more effective. The tightening of restrictions on chip exports to China aims to close a series of loopholes that allowed China to work around the rules and is likely to make life more difficult but only represents an incremental increase rather than a large policy change. As it has signalled, the US Department of Commerce updated its...
The real ERNIE 1.0. Baidu rolled out the latest version of its ERNIE chatbot which is a great improvement over previous versions and in my opinion, is what the company wanted to launch back in March but was simply not ready. Instead, like Google, it had to rush to market with something to demonstrate that China was not being left...
Nanoimprint lithography unlikely to solve anyone’s problems. Canon has announced that it will begin selling an alternative technology for advanced semiconductors that I suspect is unlikely to see a lot of traction in the market or help China circumvent the restrictions that have been placed upon it. After many years of development, Canon is ready to start selling a lithography...
RFM has contracted a mild illness from the last three weeks of travel. RFM Intends to return on Monday, October 16th.
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 & Microsoft – Scroogled again
Microsoft is really getting under Google’s skin. Microsoft continues to leverage OpenAI to get under Google’s skin and this quarter one can see some impact of this in the numbers. Microsoft FQ1 24 – AI Brand power Microsoft reported excellent results where its cloud business reaccelerated revenue growth and the rest of its business remained very robust even in the...