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.

Each post below is tagged with
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    Samsung Reported to be Opening Samsung Pay to Other Device Vendors (Jul 27, 2017)

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    Google is Finally Planning to Merge YouTube and Google Music Services (Jul 27, 2017)

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    Comcast Reports Strong Q2 Results, Despite Seasonal TV Subscriber Losses (Jul 27, 2017)

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    LG Reports Weak Smartphone Results, Losses in Q2 (Jul 27, 2017)

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    Verizon Announces Return to Wireless Growth, Wireline Declines in Q2 (Jul 27, 2017)

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    ★ Samsung Reports Full Q2 Results: Semi and Mobile Drive Growth and Profits (Jul 27, 2017)

    I’ve already commented this quarter on Samsung’s preliminary results, which let us know that it would report record high revenues and operating income. But we had to wait until its final and full results for the quarter were out to know the contributions made by its various divisions, though I’d had a good guess in that first comment. As expected, the Semiconductors division (which includes memory, ASICs, and Samsung’s new separate foundry business) was by far the strongest performer in the quarter, growing 47% year on year and contributing 57% of operating income for the company on just 27% of its revenue. That was driven, as expected, by a combination of market growth and price increases, with memory making up nearly 80% of sales. But the IT & Mobile division, which has been stagnant or declining in recent quarters, also contributed to revenue growth, up 17% year on year, the best in several years. A big contributor was the shift of the company’s Galaxy S launch from Q1 to Q2 this year, which had sent Q1 revenues down 15% year on year but boosted the year on year comparison this time around. Profits and margins, though, were both down on last year in the mobile division, suggesting perhaps because of the expenses associated with the launch shifting from Q1 to Q2 as well, and perhaps because the company is making a big marketing push around one of its most compelling flagships in several years. My bet is that the rest of Samsung’s year will go as well as its first half, based largely on the combination of higher chip prices, growing components shipments, and a big boost from Apple OLED orders for its new phones. Some of those drivers will ease next year, especially if other suppliers are able to ramp up OLED production to help meet Apple’s needs in the next generation of phones, but Samsung’s on a pretty healthy trajectory right now and there’s not much sign of that stopping. The biggest short term question is how it will position the Note 8 that’s due to launch next month, given the increases in usable screen size in the Galaxy S line and last year’s troubles, and how competitive it and the Galaxy S8 will be versus the new iPhones launched a month later by Apple.

    via Samsung (PDF)


    ★ Twitter Reports Q2 Earnings: No MAU Growth, Slowing DAU Growth, Revenue Down (Jul 27, 2017)

    At the time I’m writing this, Twitter stock is off 13% after it reported another set of poor earnings. It failed to grow global monthly active users at all in the quarter (US users actually shrank, offset by modest growth elsewhere), daily active user growth shrank from 14% in Q1 to 12% in Q2, and revenue was down 5% year on year, the second straight quarter of overall revenue declines. Importantly, all of this happened in a quarter when Twitter released a big redesign of its apps and sites and launched its Lite product in India, both of which should have driven good growth if effective. The contrast with Facebook’s results last night couldn’t be starker, with the two companies moving in seemingly opposite directions. The one thing they have in common is that both are working to convince advertisers of the value of spending money on their platforms, but Facebook is doing so from a position of strength, trying to win more TV ad dollars with its targeting and attribution features, while Twitter is mostly still trying to convince advertisers that it has a world-class ad platform at all. In theory, it’s making progress behind the scenes with its ad offerings, and users are responding positively to its product changes too, as evidenced by the fact that DAUs have grown quite a bit faster than MAUs over the past year. But the company also suggested on today’s earnings call that DAUs as a percentage of MAUs haven’t shifted much from three years ago, when that ratio was below 50% in its top markets. The picture that’s emerging here is one of a smaller number – perhaps around 160 million – highly engaged users (likely including most of the bots on the platform) and a constantly cycling second 160-170 million users coming onto and then rapidly leaving the platform as they fail to find value in it, something I first hinted at in this piece last October. Twitter would arguably be best served by emulating Snap’s reporting and ditching MAUs in favor of DAUs, then focusing on growing that number, which it seems to be doing more successfully. And yet it’s bafflingly reluctant to report DAUs directly, probably because that would be a concession that it’s reaching a much smaller engaged audience than it likes to claim. Note that just 17% of its MAUs watched any live videos last quarter, for example. It’s getting tougher and tougher to believe that Twitter is ever going to outgrow its current stagnation.

    via Twitter (PDF)


    Daily Podcast Episode 22 – July 26, 2017 (Jul 26, 2017)

    The daily podcast episode for July 26 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:


    Amazon Has a Secret Project Working on Medical Records and Other Healthcare Projects (Jul 26, 2017)

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    Foxconn Announces Plans to Build $10bn LCD Factory in Wisconsin (Jul 26, 2017)

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    ★ Facebook Reports More Rapid Revenue Growth, High Profits in Q2 (Jul 26, 2017)

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    Apple Drops to Fifth Place in China Smartphone Market in Q2 (Jul 26, 2017)

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    Nintendo Posts Strong Quarter Driven by Nintendo Switch and New Titles (Jul 26, 2017)

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    Roku Leads US Streaming TV Box Market, Apple TV in 4th Place, Says eMarketer (Jul 26, 2017)

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    Xiaomi Announces $45 Smart Voice Speaker (Jul 26, 2017)

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    Facebook Readying First TV Pilots for August (Jul 26, 2017)

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    Amazon Uses Singapore as Beachhead for SE Asian Expansion (Jul 26, 2017)

    TechCrunch reports that Amazon is launching in Singapore as the first step in an expansion into South East Asia, and other publications have reported that the Prime Now app is live in Singapore. Singapore is a great starting point for Amazon in the region, with high GDP per capita, a small and densely populated area, and proximity to other markets such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and so on. As such, a successful launch there could easily serve as a beachhead for expansion into the rest of the region. After a couple of years of higher profits, Amazon appears to be upping investment in growth again in recent quarters, and its international expansion has been a big part of that push, with an acquisition in the Middle East, early moves in Australia, and now this launch. The context for all this, though, is that Amazon is still active in only relatively few countries with its full set of offerings including Prime. Only thirteen countries were included on Amazon’s list of top selling items on its recent Prime Day, and 92% of its global revenues come from just four countries: the US, Germany, Japan, and the UK. That’s easy for those of us in the US to forget, but Amazon is still far from ubiquitous globally and major players dominate e-commerce in several important markets. In Singapore and the rest of SEA, Amazon faces some existing strong competitors backed by some of those larger players from Asia, including Alibaba, so it’s going to be far guaranteed that it enjoys US- or UK-level dominance. But brand awareness seems to be high in the region already and it has a decent shot at establishing a good business in Singapore and beyond.

    via TechCrunch


    Daily Podcast Episode 21 – July 25, 2017 (Jul 25, 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:


    Donald Trump Says Apple Has Committed to Building Three Plants in the US (Jul 25, 2017)

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    Congress Invites Tech and Carrier CEOs to Testify on Net Neutrality Legislation (Jul 25, 2017)

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