Perplexity starts a race to the bottom with deep research. In the space of a month, pretty much everyone now has or will soon have a deep research tool confirming that performance gains are flatlining and that beyond a fat wallet, there are no real barriers to entry in the generative AI game. What will follow now will be a...
AI momentum finally makes it to China. Alibaba reported good results where a jump in cloud revenues allowed the company to justify large investments in AI, which has allowed the AI momentum story to finally come to China after ignoring it for 2 years. FQ3 25 revenues / EPS were RMB280.1bn / RMB2.55 ahead of estimates of RMB275.1bn / RMB2.43....
New modem needs to succeed to re-open hostilities. Apple has finally launched a phone that uses its own in-house 5G modem, but the real test of success will be whether anyone can tell the difference between the in-house version and the Qualcomm modem that is used in all of the other iPhone 16 models. If the new modem works well,...
The count of equally good models continues to rise xAI has released the latest version of its Grok model and, while it scores very well on all of the most advanced benchmarks, it struggles like everyone else with the basic stuff implying once again that LLMs alone are not going to deliver the superintelligence that the industry craves and that...
Private sector comes in from the cold Not only did President Xi turn up but he also made comments which indicate that, while he may not like the private sector very much, he realises that he needs it if China is going to come close to meeting any of his ambitions. All that was missing was a picture of President...
Jack Ma may again be the turning point. Jack Ma’s potential meeting with President Xi is a sign that after 4 ½ years, the Chinese state may have had enough of stagnation and could be prepared to let the private sector have a much freer hand. This is precisely what RFM and Alavan Independent have thought is required to get...
Arm will need a major charm offensive. It turns out that Arm may be looking to make its own chips after all in a move that needs to be carefully balanced to ensure that it does not enrage its customers and accelerate the shift away from Arm to RISC-V. The Financial Times (see here) and Reuters (see here) are citing...
There is no GPT-5. OpenAI has disclosed its medium-term roadmap and in the process, effectively admitted that scaling is coming to an end supporting RFM’s long-held view that superintelligent machines are as far away as ever meaning that the real returns from AI will be made from focusing on what AI is good at rather than chasing a pipe dream....
Apple’s privacy server may have to go Alibaba looks like it will be the launch partner for Apple Intelligence in China but the system that Apple has created remains replete with privacy features that are likely to have to be compromised if Apple wishes to launch its service in China. Alibaba’s AI ambitions have been boosted by the possibility that...
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.
Huawei – The Yield Game
I remain sceptical about these claims. Huawei is making some bold claims with regard to the yield that it is achieving on the AI chips it is making which, if verified, would have a substantial impact on China’s quest for technological independence. The FT’s article (see here) that makes these claims declines to name its sources but I suspect that...