Twitter – The price of free speech

It becomes clear why Mr Musk refused a board seat. Elon Musk’s bid for Twitter appears to be more about his definition of free speech than financial investment as at $43bn he is really going to struggle to make a decent financial return. Elon Musk has made a public bid to buy the 91% of Twitter that he does not...

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Peloton – Restless natives

Activism compounds a legion of problems.  Peloton is now under assault by an activist investor who makes both fair and unfair criticisms of Peloton which make the task of turning the ship around even harder than it already is. Blackwells Capital owns less than 5% but updated its presentation (see here) which bemoans the lack of progress and calls for...

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Health Wearables – Grail delay

The Holy Grail of blood pressure is delayed.  It looks as if Apple is delaying its plans to include blood pressure monitoring in the Apple Watch for two or three years, once again indicating how difficult this is to get right and how important it could be once it is finally ready for the market. When it comes to wellness,...

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Epic, Sony & Lego – Legblox Station

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...

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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...

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The Metaverse – Enterprise first

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...

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Tesla – Unfounded confidence

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...

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Meta Platforms – Trouble in paradise

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...

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Peloton – Hard road home

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...

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Chinese Technology – The pendulum

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...

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