Apple FQ2 25 – AI not a problem yet, but tariffs bite. Apple reported good results, but then guided weakly as it warned of a $900m tariff impact that sent the shares down 4% demonstrating just how skittish the market remains when it comes to the “T word”. FQ2 25 revenues and net income were $95.4bn / $24.8bn just ahead...
Qualcomm FQ2 25 – Unreasonable punishment Qualcomm reported good results, but a slightly weaker-than-expected revenue forecast caused the market, already nervous about tariffs, to send the shares down 6%, creating an opportunity for anyone with a time horizon longer than 5 minutes. FQ2 revenues / adj-EPS were $10.84bn / $2.85 just ahead of expectations of $10.84bn / $2.82. On the...
F8 is resurrected to shoot at OpenAI & Co. Meta Platform’s cancelled F8 developer conference has been resurrected as LlamaCon where Meta spent most of its time shooting at OpenAI, and setting out its case as to why it should be the platform for the AI era. Meta kicked off its event by disclosing that Llama has been downloaded 1.2bn...
Inference at the edge moves forward. Alibaba has added to the ever-increasing deluge of AI models with the release of Qwen3 which it claims is better, faster and more efficient than anything that DeepSeek has produced, adding weight to my view that DeepSeek may have been unique only because it was first. It also advances the case for running models...
Chinese models will be more expensive It looks like Huawei will produce 2 versions of its data centre chip this year, but this sudden acceleration of product cadence will not fix the big problem that Chinese chips have with economics. The latest version of Huawei’s chip (Ascend 910C) is set to hit general availability in China in May 2025, but...
Google Q1 25 – Search remains untouchable Google reported good results as Search continues to contemptuously brush off the generative AI threat, giving it time to ensure that it is Gemini that Google Search users eventually switch to as opposed to OpenAI, Perplexity, Meta or any of the others. Q1 25 Revenues ex-TAC / EPS were $76.5bn / $2.81 nicely...
A deeply misleading industry practice. Open AI’s latest model has been demonstrated falling short once again, highlighting that the practice of dressing up product launch press releases as scientific papers is deeply misleading and leads the public to think that these models are far more capable than they actually are. In the Artificial Intelligence industry, the days of normal press...
More about Gemini than Metaverse. Google clearly paid the organisers of TED Talks to demo its developments for the Metaverse, but to be fair to Google, it showed good progress in improving the proposition of the Metaverse and head-mounted displays. Google bought its way into a TED Talks session and used its time to demonstrate its AR and VR hardware...
AI freight train is still rolling. The threat of tariffs, trade war, China restrictions and stock market volatility have been unable to dent TSMC, which reported good results and underlined that AI will continue to drive its revenues in 2025. Q1 25 revenues / EPS were NT839bn / NT13.94, broadly in line with estimates of NT837bn / NT13.62. TSMC confirmed...
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.
China vs. USA – Build the Wall! Pt. II
Balkanisation gathers pace. China’s efforts to become self-sufficient for technology are gathering pace exactly as we predicted, but this will come at the expense of efficiency as Chinese standards will become more costly to implement and run, making China less attractive to non-affiliated countries. Alavan Independent has long observed that what began as a strategic rivalry during the first Trump...