Cruise makes a cautious return. It looks like Cruise is about to resume testing its robotaxis service which makes sense because the penalties that it incurred were more a result of bad behaviour by Cruise executives as opposed to the technology being more faulty than anyone else’s. Cruise has been off the streets since November 2023 as a result of...
Meta is still tinkering with silicon. Meta’s new AI chip is being taken as a competitor to Nvidia but the fact that it does not even remotely compare to Nvidia’s performance or economics and the fact that Meta intends to spend $14bn on Nvidia silicon anyway tells me that MTIA is a learning process that can be used for its...
The link is still missing. Meta and OpenAI are claiming that their next models will be capable of reasoning which, if true, will be a key step forward in the quest to achieve super-intelligent machines, but I suspect that this, just like the models that have gone before, will offer a simulation of reasoning and nothing more. RFM Research...
Higher costs are a necessary insurance policy. The announcement of $11.6bn in government assistance for TSMC is not really new news but it does further highlight that higher-priced chips made in the USA are probably a worthwhile insurance policy. The US has announced a preliminary deal with TSMC such that it will receive $6.6bn in grants and $5bn in...
Xiaomi’s love of low margins makes an EV viable. Xiaomi can succeed where Apple failed because its hardware is already very unprofitable meaning that adding an EV into the product mix will not dilute profitability as it would have done for Apple. When Xiaomi is in favour, it is often feted as the “Apple of China” but there is one...
2024 starts with a predictable bang. Samsung reported results that beat expectations confirming that the boom in demand for AI is affecting more than just Nvidia, while a modest recovery in smartphones is likely to have added some icing to the cake. Q1 2023 revenues / operating profit will be around KRW71tn / KRW6.6tn which is broadly in line with...
Gen AI is clearly very expensive to operate. Google is toying with the idea of putting new features of its flagship search service behind a paywall which indicates that the cost to deploy these features is so high, that advertising cannot support them. Since ChatGPT first appeared, there has been constant concern that generative AI would undermine Google’s position in...
EVs have run out of well-heeled early adopters. While the long-term proposition of electrical vehicles remains unchanged, the realities of delivering on that proposition are really starting to tell as Tesla (and the others) have run out of well-heeled consumers willing to pay big money to be beta testers. This has been apparent for some time but was brought into...
Pressure is mounting to generate revenue. The early signs of pressure are appearing in the AI industry which looks like a precursor to price erosion which RFM has predicted will be the pin that bursts the AI bubble. Roughly $50bn has been ploughed into an industry that has generated around $3bn in revenues, but as of today, most participants remain...
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.
Apple – Buzzword Magic
I am not sure anyone knows what an AI laptop is. Such is the magic of AI that it can add over $100bn to the value of a company simply with the promise to add it to its computing products even if no one is very sure how it will be used in the short term. Apple has been...