Important Note

Tech Narratives was a subscription website, which offered expert commentary on the day's top tech news from Jan Dawson, along with various other features, for $10/month. As of Monday October 16, 2017, it will no longer be updated. An archive of past content will remain available for the time being. I've written more about this change in the post immediately below, and also here.

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    Google Attempts to Use US Courts to Overturn Canadian Copyright Ruling (Jul 25, 2017)

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    LG and Apple Said to Invest in OLED Manufacturing Capacity (Jul 25, 2017)

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    ★ AT&T Reports More Postpaid Phone Losses, Steepening TV Sub Decline in Q2 (Jul 25, 2017)

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    Adobe Announces End of Life for Flash in 2020 (Jul 25, 2017)

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    Lyft’s Gross Bookings Growing at Higher Rate Than Uber’s (Jul 25, 2017)

    Bloomberg has some inside data from Lyft that suggests its gross bookings grew by 25% year on year in the second quarter, which would be higher than the mid-teens growth Uber had told investors to expect in a preliminary call earlier this month. As with other recent signals that Lyft may be gaining on Uber, it’s tempting to read this as evidence that there’s some kind of backlash against Uber over its recent troubles, but I continue to see very little evidence of that. Rather, it’s likely that Lyft’s big push into new markets in the first half of this year has helped it grow bookings significantly during this period, while the Uber scandals have made a far more limited impact. And of course Uber’s results are on a much bigger base, meaning that its dollar growth is likely far larger than Lyft’s even if its percentage growth rate is lower. I’m happy to see Lyft gaining on Uber – it’s always struck me as a more ethical company with a leadership with more integrity than Uber’s, and I’ve been using Lyft pretty much exclusively when traveling recently. But I see very little evidence that Lyft is gaining on Uber broadly for this reason, and in using Lyft it’s often been clear just how big an edge Uber has – at airports, there are multiple times as many Ubers in the pick-up area as Lyfts, and at least half my drivers have been drivers for both services, often skewing heavily towards Uber in their actual share of driving (which often turns to a 100% share on specific days given the bonuses Uber offers for driving over a certain amount).

    via Bloomberg


    Facebook Reported to be Working on Smart Speaker with Large Display (Jul 25, 2017)

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    Motorola Announces Moto Z2 Force, Shatterproof Phone With Mods (Jul 25, 2017)

    Motorola today announced the latest variant in its flagship Moto Z series, the Z2 Force, which is a follow-up to the Z2 Play announced a while back. Motorola, of course, is part of Lenovo, which had pared back the Motorola branding over the past year, although today’s launch suggested it’s reversed course on that front, with lots of “batwing” Motorola logos and the full version of the brand (not just “Moto”) on stage and elsewhere. The Moto Z is the only really high-end phone either Lenovo or Motorola makes, but even then the Z2 Play is priced at $500, well below flagships from other manufacturers. Lenovo has said on earnings calls over the past year that it expected the Z to sell around 3 million units in its first year, so this isn’t a mass-market flagship in anything like the same category as the iPhone or Samsung’s Galaxy S and Note phones, or even the LG G series. The Z line has been pretty much a niche proposition, and there are two big reasons for that: the modular approach, and the Verizon exclusivity in the US. Though neither of those changed with the Z2 Play, the Z2 Force will be available on all four US carriers, and offers a shatterproof screen and some other advantages over the Z2 Play. But it will also command a far higher price at around $800, putting it in line with the most expensive flagships from competitors. That’s a fairly bold move, but suggests Lenovo/Motorola feels comfortable about the device and its ability to differentiate in the market. Motorola has had an interesting set of differentiators over the last few years, in some ways going back to basics by emphasizing battery life and now shatterproof screens, while the modular approach is likely to be too niche to drive really meaningful sales. But will four-carrier support and a monthly financing program through Affirm, Motorola is definitely broadening the distribution this time around, and that should help it expand the addressable market quite a bit. None of that is going to catapult Motorola into being a major player in the US market again, but it should certainly allow it to take more meaningful share and re-appear on the radars of people who have written it off as a Verizon-only vendor in the US.

    via CNET


    Daily Podcast Episode 20 – July 24, 2017 (Jul 24, 2017)

    The daily podcast episode for July 24 is up now on SoundCloud and should be syncing shortly to iTunes, Overcast, and other podcast apps. As usual, the podcast spends about one minute on each of the items covered on the site today, and also points to a few other items in the news today which I didn’t cover but which are nonetheless interesting. You can find today’s episode on SoundCloud and all episodes on iTunes, Overcast, and so on. The additional items covered are below:


    ★ Alphabet Announces Strong Growth, Beats on Earnings in Q2 Results (Jul 24, 2017)

    Alphabet announced its Q2 2017 earnings this afternoon, and beat analysts’ estimates of revenue and earnings pretty handily, yet its stock still fell 3% in the first couple of hours afterwards, presumably because the stock has been bid up so much in recent weeks and there’s some profit taking going on. The results were pretty strong across the board, with no area of performance looking weak. The core Google business continues to grow rapidly, with the same three drivers – mobile, YouTube, and programmatic – cited once again, suggesting there’s still been no material longer term fallout at Google from the boycott against it earlier this year or the programmatic cutbacks that have followed. It’s clear that Google is investing heavily in its cloud infrastructure and personnel – CFO Ruth Porat said on the call that many of the 1600 new hires this quarter were once again directed at that part of its business. That business is still frustratingly buried in the broader Google “Other” segment along with disparate bits and pieces like Google Play and hardware revenues, so it’s impossible to parse precisely, but it’s likely that the growth of cloud services is a big contributor to overall growth in that segment. But hardware was also called out, though only Google Home and Google WiFi were called out specifically, suggesting Pixel sales are no longer such a big driver. My own recent surveys suggest Google Home in particular is selling well, taking about half the share that Amazon Echo does, with almost no other competitors in the market. The Other Bets continue to shrink their still massive losses, mostly by growing revenue faster, though the company has also reduced its capital expenditures significantly since the Google Fiber retrenchment began in late October last year. Alphabet did account for the EU fine, which it has not yet decided to pay, in its financials, but also provided a version of its profit figures which was more easily comparable with last year’s, and those showed strong growth in both revenues and profits. At this point, it’s hard to see a near-term reason for bearishness about Google or the broader Alphabet business – it now has several separate lines running well and throwing off decent profits, while it’s investing in others that should drive both in future. The one other thing worth noting, though, is that traffic acquisition costs for Google’s own sites continue to rise rapidly, with the rise driven by the payouts Google has to make to mobile vendors who send traffic its way, including Apple, Samsung, and to a lesser extent other Android vendors. That certainly doesn’t seem to be affecting profits yet, but it’s a sign of the increasing share of revenue Google is having to pay out to companies that control much of the traffic that comes its way on mobile.

    via Alphabet


    Roomba Owner iRobot Talks About Selling Home Mapping Data (Jul 24, 2017)

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    Facebook Acquires Content Identification Team and Technology Company Source3 (Jul 24, 2017)

    Facebook has made a small acquisition in the content identification space, buying Source3 and bringing on board its technology and people. The company majored on identifying copyright-infringing material, especially in user-generated content, something that Facebook has been working on for some time but clearly hasn’t cracked yet. As with YouTube in its early days, albeit at a very different scale, Facebook appears to have put growing its video business ahead of its ability to monitor that content for IP infringements, and is now scrambling to catch up. Copyright infringements are a big issue for Facebook, which has been accused of not doing enough to stop it in not just recorded video but live video, so it needs acquisitions like this one to speed up its progress in this area. This one seems likely to have been small – the company had only raised $4 million in venture funding, so it’s likely that it went for some low multiple of that, making it eminently affordable in Facebook terms.

    via Recode


    Sensor Tower Says Mobile Game Revenue Up 32% Year on Year in Q2 (Jul 24, 2017)

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    Sony to Sell PlayStation Vue Through Small US Cable Operators (Jul 24, 2017)

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    Regulators and Academics Begin Pondering Breaking up Big Tech Companies (Jul 24, 2017)

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    LinkedIn Lite Launches in India, Will Expand to Other Markets (Jul 24, 2017)

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    Apple Launches Siri Ad Campaign Featuring Dwayne Johnson (Jul 24, 2017)

    Yesterday, actor Dwayne Johnson (also known as The Rock) tweeted a tongue-in-cheek teaser for an ad campaign with Apple centered on Siri, with a three-minute ad posted to YouTube later. The ad campaign is only one of the things to talk about here, though, because the reaction to the teaser is worth discussing too. The campaign itself comes at an interesting time for Siri, given the massive media attention paid recently to the much smaller but arguably hotter home voice speaker market and the dominant assistant in that space, Amazon’s Alexa. Note that the Siri campaign is all about Johnson going around getting stuff done, and that of course is the major weakness of Alexa today: it’s basically useless away from home. There’s no direct jab here from Apple, but it’s clearly one of the underlying messages that Siri is with you throughout your day no matter where you are (albeit not, as the ad suggests, in space). But the other thing worth noting is how many people reacted to the teaser by taking it literally, or in other words believing that Apple was actually making a full-on movie featuring Siri and Johnson. That’s so absurd as to be laughable, but I’m pretty sure it’s the context of Apple’s recent push into original content and the negative response in much of the media to its Planet of the Apps show that makes it suddenly seem plausible. Once Apple starts spending serious money on content, and demonstrates that it’s willing to make shows featuring its own products and services prominently, almost anything seems possible. At this point, releasing Planet of the Apps first feels like it was a big mistake in launching Apple’s original content strategy – it’s set the tone for what’s to come, and though future offerings will hopefully be more compelling to a wider range of Apple customers, the reaction to this Siri campaign is a great encapsulation of the expectations Apple has now set. It’s got work to do.

    via TechCrunch


    Microsoft Working on AI Chip for Next Version of HoloLens (Jul 24, 2017)

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    Daily Podcast Episode 19 – July 21, 2017 (Jul 21, 2017)

    The daily podcast episode for July 20 is up now on SoundCloud and should be syncing shortly to iTunes, Overcast, and other podcast apps. As usual, the podcast spends about one minute on each of the items covered on the site today, and also points to a few other items in the news today which I didn’t cover but which are nonetheless interesting. You can find today’s episode on SoundCloud and all episodes on iTunes, Overcast, and so on. The additional items covered are below:


    Verizon Accused of Throttling Netflix and YouTube, Says Testing Video Optimization (Jul 21, 2017)

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    WhatsApp is Hiring Business Sales and Monetization Product Roles (Jul 21, 2017)

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