Apple grudgingly extends its contract. It turns out that cellular radio is difficult (5G particularly) as Apple has been unable to create a high-quality 5G radio of its own which has forced it to extend its contract to buy 5G modems from Qualcomm until at least 2026. Apple’s extension means that it will purchase modems from Qualcomm in 2024, 2025...
Apple is at higher risk than Qualcomm. Both Apple and Qualcomm have taken a hit over their exposure to China, but the reality is that Apple carries much higher exposure to China than Qualcomm does even though the numbers signal the opposite. Apple’s shares fell by 2.9% and Qualcomm by 7.2% on a series of stories that included Apple products...
Making a few chips is not enough. The fuss over Huawei’s new chip has gone all the way to the top but the real issue is not if the chip exists but whether SMIC is able to produce it in massive volumes, economically and with good yields. The White House is now looking into the Kirin 9000s chip to ascertain...
SoftBank is making things difficult. The final details of Arm’s IPO have now been made clear with SoftBank cutting back on the price in a sign that this deal has not been plain sailing. This should have been a perfectly ordinary IPO, but SoftBank’s need to book a big profit from its ownership of Arm has made the IPO much...
Still no hard evidence of 5G. Huawei is now more of a political pawn than ever as its claimed accomplishments are more about demonstrating that China can work around the US technology embargo than they are about actually selling devices and making money. Following the launch of the Huawei Mate 60 Pro, a furious debate has erupted over whether or...
Smartphones continue to languish. Results from players in both the enterprise and consumer space indicate that while the consumer sector remains difficult, enterprise demand appears to have bottomed which in some places is being helped by the current generative AI frenzy. Broadcom reported results that met expectations but guided weakly as its exposure to the smartphone market continues to be...
Alexa, Google Assistant et al have no value. After many years of wrangling, there is finally a smart speaker in the market that supports both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant in a clear sign that their spectacular failure to do anything very useful, combined with generative AI, has reduced their strategic value to zero. Harman has released through its JBL...
No 5G here. Huawei has released its latest flagship product but its hesitancy to disclose the details of the components that it is using highlights again how unfeasible it is for Huawei to manufacture a 5G smartphone. Huawei has launched the Mate 60 Pro which looks great but how it performs and what sort of battery life it will offer...
The feature is the bug. ChatGPT Enterprise looks like a marketing gimmick to make money rather than a serious attempt to offer generative AI services to corporations as, in my opinion, this service is not suited to serve enterprise requirements for generative AI. OpenAI has unveiled a new service called ChatGPT Enterprise which not surprisingly is a version of ChatGPT...
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 – Nothing burger
A gesture, some silicon and a bit of camera. When the most exciting new feature is a gesture for the Apple Watch, it is clear that the new iPhone offers minor incremental upgrades over the iPhone 14 that are unlikely to kick start the replacement cycle that is needed to bring Apple back to growth. Apple launched the iPhone 15,...