Tech & Telecom news — Sep 6, 2018
PRODUCTS & SERVICES
Connectivity
New entrant Reliance Jio has drastically changed India’s digital landscape, by massively selling its ultra-cheap fast mobile connections, bringing millions of people online for the first time. Now the question for Jio is how to get profitable, and their project to sell content, financial services and advertising still looks challenging (Story)
Content — Music
Fights are back between Spotify and the music industry, which wants the online music service to pay more for the content. A recent dispute affects music videos, that Spotify doesn’t pay much for, claiming they’re a promotional tool. Behind this, deadlines for contract renegotiations with major labels are getting closer… (Story)
Content — Games
Unity, a startup, is building a very successful business by providing a platform to simplify video game development, through basic building blocks that work behind all games, like rendering engines or systems for animations. 50% mobile games currently run on Unity (!), and they’re now expanding to consoles and PCs (Story)
Blockchain
News that Goldman Sachs has backed down on plans to start a dedicated cryptocurrency trading desk made crypto markets fall yesterday, with Bitcoin down -5% and Ethereum -14%. Goldman’s decision has been linked to uncertainty in regulation, but some voices also point to uncertainties from an investment perspective (Story)
Regulation
More bad news for Silicon Valley from the political side. Just at the same time as tech executives were meeting Senators to discuss fake news and related themes, the US Justice Dept said yesterday that they plan to examine if social networks are intentionally manipulating political news, like Trump had previously suggested (Story)
Tech stocks were negatively affected yesterday by all this, with clear falls for Facebook (-2.5%), Twitter (-6.1%) and Google (-1%) reflecting investors’ concerns that new legislation may be passed to limit these companies’ power, and their business opportunities as a consequence. Not clear who would be the winner here (Story)
HARDWARE ENABLERS
Networks
Industry analysts seem to be prepared to back projects to invest in new 5G networks, with consensus on the sustainability of fast growth in data traffic demand. Of course, some of their sources, like Cisco (which expects a +63% 5yr-CAGR for mobile data) and Ericsson (8x growth to 2023) are interested parties… (Story)
SOFTWARE ENABLERS
Artificial Intelligence
As a relatively immature AI technology gets used for more things, like the identification of people at public events for security reasons, some voices (e.g. this WSJ post) claim for more transparency (how the algorithms work) and more skepticism (recognizing their limitations and detecting bias) to avoid false expectations (Story)
Privacy
Beyond potential regulatory measures, it seems that people are using Facebook more carefully, after the privacy scandals this year. A study by the US Pew Research Center shows that 52% American users have recently adjusted Facebook’s privacy settings, and 42% have taken a break from the app of a few weeks (Story)
M&A
Elliott’s (aggressive) deal to take control of TI has not been very successful up to now, with the stock having actually fell -35% since the activist fund took control in May, when they promised they’d double share price in 2 years. All this has been commented by Vivendi, the loser, who calls this a “disastrous” performance (Story)

