Tech & Telecom news — Feb 8, 2019
PRODUCTS & SERVICES
Connectivity
Recent comments by T-Mobile US show they don’t plan to introduce premium price plans for 5G mobile service, to be launched this year, and that they would be expecting to monetize 5G through customer upgrades to unlimited plans (enabled by 5G superior capacity) and additional services like home broadband (Story)
Video games
Fortnite keeps beating records in the video game space, in detriment of all the traditional leaders in the industry. Even if it is a free game, analysts estimations reveal that it could have already generated $500m revenues only in iOS, after less than 1 year from release (equivalent to $1.53m revenues per day) (Story)
Applications
Twitter just published their 4Q18 results, and the stock market penalized them yesterday (-9.84%) even if they announced a record quarterly revenue (+24% yoy to $908.8m/Q), due to concerns with a decline in monthly users. Twitter justifies that as an effect of closing “bad accounts” to reduce abuse in the platform (Story)
Advertising
Facebook may have been able to bypass China’s blocking of its apps, using a local partner (“Meet Social”) to deal with Chinese brands that want to advertise on Facebook’s apps and reach their 2.3bn global user base. So China could now actually be one of Facebook’s largest sources of ad revenue (more than $1bn/yr) (Story)
Regulation
Germany’s antitrust regulator has blocked Facebook from pooling data from Instagram and other subsidiaries without user consent, and accused the company of “abuse of a dominant position”. This could challenge the company’s plans to merge the platforms behind Instagram, WhatsApp and the core Facebook app (Story)
One of the explicit objectives of US regulators when removing the net neutrality rules previously pushed by the Obama administration was to increase incentives for American operators to invest in their networks. However, the largest 4 players (Verizon, AT&T, Charter and Comcast) have actually reduced their CapEx in 2018 (Story)
HARDWARE ENABLERS
Components
Amid current disputes with Qualcomm, and after Intel’s product delays, Apple has reportedly started a project to develop its own in-house 5G modems. This would show their concern for iPhones potentially being left behind by competitors that are expected to launch their 5G models (using Qualcomm) this year (Story)
SOFTWARE ENABLERS
Privacy
A new report by Accenture predicts a new age of tech innovation to be powered by companies building services to give consumers more control over their private data, as this is becoming a pre-requisite for consumers accepting this data to be used, and a key component of trust in brands’ relationships with customers (Story)
IPOs
Palantir, the secretive startup providing data analytics services to companies and US government’s agencies, could be close to an IPO, after announcing good 2018 results, with $880m revenues (+47% yoy) and aspiring to get positive profits this year. This is a relief also for employees waiting to cash in their stock (Story)
VC
Amazon has invested in a funding round for Aurora, a startup developing software and hardware for self-driving cars, and that has Volkswagen and Hyundai among its early customers, at a $2bn valuation. Some analysts are linking this with the opportunities to use autonomous vehicles for e-commerce logistics (Story)
