China reveals its hand. China has banned Micron’s products from critical infrastructure in a move that clearly demonstrates just how weak its hand is in semiconductors which remains something it is not going to fix any time soon. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has announced that Micron’s products “posed significant risks to China’s critical information infrastructure” and as such,...
So much to fix. The full spin-out of its cloud business failed to direct investors’ attention away from a very dull set of results which show almost no recovery in the Chinese economy and that management has a lot of things to fix to get Alibaba back on track. FQ4 23 revenues / EPS were RMB208bn (up 2% YoY) /...
Tepid resumption of consumption Tencent reported a return to YoY growth in Q1 in a sign that some consumer activity is coming back in China, but the shares did not budge as investors remain unwilling to invest in China given the less-than-spectacular economy and geopolitical events. Q1 2023 revenues / EPS were RMB150bn (up 11% YoY) / RMB2.63 (up 9%...
Regulation should target humans not machines. The recent Congressional hearings greatly increase the prospect of some form of regulation of the AI industry, but this will have to be very carefully crafted to ensure that unintended consequences are minimised and that the USA does not hamstring itself in the technological arms race with China. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, NYU Professor...
Alexa is the obvious place for generative AI at Amazon Amazon is jumping on the generative AI bandwagon with the intention to use it to power searches on its site, but Amazon seems to be ignoring or is ignorant of some of the fundamental issues that will make this very difficult. Amazon is planning to replace the search function for...
Cariad – execution or strategy? Cariad has reshuffled its executive team again in an attempt to get its vehicle software program back on track, but the risk remains that the new boss confuses strategy with execution. Cariad is on its second CEO in a year as the company is now 2 years behind on delivering a new software platform to...
Google mounts a steady fightback. Google is clearly still on the back foot, but the sense of panic and disarray has gone to be replaced with a sense of purpose and its hardware division has finally come up with a compelling product. Unsurprisingly, the whole show was all about generative AI and how Google is not the laggard that the...
AI could make work better not worse. The AI debate continues to dominate public discourse with the emphasis now being on the job market and while there are going to be some effects, they are unlikely to result in millions of white-collar workers being out of work. The other problem with this debate is that it is already becoming highly...
Palantir and Lucid together demonstrate the mood of the market. Palantir Q1 2023 – Generative AI use case. Palantir reported an excellent set of results reinforcing the view that it has no real competition and that it is in a good position to help governments and companies use generative AI in their activities. Q1 2023 revenues / EPS were $525m...
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.
Technology Newsround – Zoom, Cars & AR
Zoom – Hybrid work. Zoom reported good results as pandemic customers are sticking with the service which allowed the company to raise its estimates resulting in a valuation that is no longer particularly challenging. Revenues for 2023 will now be $4.47bn – $4.49bn and EPS $4.25 – $4.31 up marginally from its previous forecasts. What is remarkable here is that...