Tech / Telecom news — 20 Jul 2017

S Winwood
S Winwood
Jul 20, 2017 · 2 min read

PRODUCTS & SERVICES

Connectivity

T-Mobile US continues its stellar performance, and raised its forecasts yesterday for customer growth this year, from a previous guidance of +2.8–3.5m new adds to 3–3.6m. Interestingly, they also raised profit outlook, suggesting that aggressive commercial activity is not hurting the company’s bottom line. Shares went up +2.9% (Story)

And Verizon seems suffering the most negative impact from T-Mobile’s success, as they lose the “premium” status that has served them so well for such a long time. A survey published yesterday concludes that they lost more customers in 2Q17 than any other competitor, and analysts attribute this to being too slow to react (Story)

Applications

Google wants a piece of the ad revenue growth from Facebook’s news feed (that is also becoming saturated with ads), so it’s launching the “Google Feed” within its mobile search app. This will offer users a personalised list of links based on search histories and data from other Google apps (like YouTube of Gmail) (Story)

Enterprise

After disappointing earnings, IBM’s share price declined -4.2% yesterday, to reach their lowest value since mid 2016. Investors seem tired of waiting for positive revenue growth, and concerned by the deceleration (from 13% in 1Q to 7% in 2Q) in the company’s “strategic imperatives”, that were supposed to save the day (Story)

SOFTWARE ENABLERS

Artificial Intelligence

Apple has just launched its “Machine Learning Journal”, a blog focused on AI research papers, including the ones by the company’s employees, opening up on internal innovation activities in a way that Apple is not used to, and revealing their need to better connect with external AI researchers (e.g. to hire new talent) (Story)

Traditional retail jobs (11% US non-farm jobs) have already started to disappear, under pressure from shift to online and rising wages, giving incentives for retailers to increase automation. Human roles are shifting to customer-facing tasks, with machines taking over routines e.g. with self-checkout or use of robots for logistics (Story)

Quantum Computing

Cryptography experts warn that current encryption schemes are not future-proof, because quantum computers could eventually easily decrypt even the most advanced ones. And hackers may have started to work with a view to exploit this vulnerability in the future, storing data now and waiting until the right tools appear (Story)

FINANCIAL MARKETS

SoftBank has announced a first group of deals through its Vision Fund, with an approximate investment of $500m used to acquire a diverse set of West Coast tech startups, including a robotics specialist (e.g. Brain Corp), an agricultural technology firm (Plenty), and (of course) an autonomous cars’ tech company (Nauto) (Story)

New voices appearing with the really old argument that telecom infrastructure deserves better valuations, as the key enabler for the digital revolution, not possible without massive high speed access. While tech companies’ have yielded roughly a 300% return since 2009, telecom carriers have not even doubled… (Story)

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S Winwood

Written by

S Winwood

Down at the tech station at midnight / ripkirby65@gmail.com

Dedicated Follower of Tech

The most interesting news in technology and telecoms, every day

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