Epic games strengthens its Metaverse silo. Most of the $2bn being invested in Epic Games will be used to build a version of the Metaverse that will bring together at least 2 of the current players and may offer a challenge to Roblox and Minecraft. Epic Games has raised $2bn at a post-money valuation of $31.5bn with Sony and Lego...
Enterprise Metaverse is now. Almost all of the limitations that are going to prevent the Metaverse from taking off any time soon are much less relevant in the enterprise meaning that it is here where the first traction is likely to be seen. While RFM research strongly suggests that it will be a long time before the Metaverse takes off...
Tesla is set up to lose the autonomous race. Tesla’s removal of radar from its models shipping to Europe and the Middle East is the right choice based on its philosophical approach to autonomous driving, but there is a fundamental flaw in this strategy that is going to ensure that Tesla is an also-ran in autonomous driving. Model 3 and...
Metaverse will not save Meta from TikTok. There are signs that Meta’s push back against TikTok is flagging in a rare example of where a Chinese company is using technology to take market share from a giant USA digital ecosystem. TikTok is a short video sharing service that began life focused on sharing music and dancing selfie videos, but over...
Moving to subscription is going to hurt. Peloton is starting to move towards the subscription-based business that it always had to become but the legacy of hardware is hard to shake and brutally painful to wriggle free from. This is signalled by its cutting prices on some of its hardware and offering discounts to new subscribers in order to get...
The regulatory pendulum swings back to the middle. Beijing has made a significant concession that implies that now that it has the private sector is firmly in its grip, the Chinese state does actually want its technology sector to thrive and even access foreign capital. The Chinese state has announced that it will change its rules around audit secrecy in...
Three canaries burst into song. While the semiconductor companies are announcing record capital investment plans, there are signs that demand for components is starting to soften, highlighting the possibility that the semiconductor supercycle is beginning to peak. For the last year, demand and supply have been badly out of balance thanks to the coincidence of three factors: First, the pandemic:...
Sourcing from China raises eyebrows. Apple looks increasingly likely to source some of its storage chips from Yangtze Memory Technology Corp. (YMTC) which will raise eyebrows but at the end of the day, this is unlikely to be a particularly big issue. YMTC is a subsidiary of Tsinghua Unigroup which is a state-backed semiconductor company and from both companies, the...
SoftBank – Arm IPO. Arm China is holding up the relisting of Arm and the less-than-ideal solution that SoftBank is proposing highlights again my view that SoftBank may be better off holding onto Arm and relisting it another day. The situation between Arm and Arm China remains unresolved which has meant that Arm is unable to audit Arm China which...
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 Hardware– Horrible histories
Spare parts is not a fix. Google will make spare parts for its Pixel phones available for DIY repair and while this will be generally well-received, it does nothing to address the problem that it is not very good at making hardware. Google has been trying to be more like Apple for years, and despite spending billions of dollars on...