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
  • Company/Division names
  • Topics
  • and
  • Narratives
  • as appropriate.
    Microsoft and Harman Kardon Detail Cortana-Powered Invoke Speaker (May 8, 2017)

    Back in December, Microsoft announced its equivalent of Amazon’s Alexa platform for third parties in the form of its Cortana Skills Kit and Cortana Devices SDK. A week later, Harman Kardon announced its was working on a speaker that would feature Cortana, and said it would launch in 2017. Five months later, the two companies have provided a name (Invoke), pictures, and some capabilities for the device, but there’s still no specific launch date (beyond “Fall 2017”) or pricing. On paper, the Invoke looks a lot like Echo in both its design and its capabilities (it even has an Echo-like 7-mic array), and the main difference is that it will do Skype voice calls, which is something that’s been rumored for both Echo and Google Home but isn’t yet supported by either. One advantage Harman would have over Amazon or Google in this space is that it’s a speaker maker, so it may well have better audio quality in its version than those companies have in theirs, something that’s been a shortcoming in this category so far. And of course, it’s interesting given Samsung’s ownership of Harman Kardon that this speaker is running neither of the assistants Samsung itself supports – its own new Bixby assistant or the Google Assistant – though this partnership obviously began before the Samsung acquisition closed. Pricing is an interesting question: whereas Google and Amazon both have broader ecosystems which benefit from such a device and therefore justify subsidizing or selling it at cost, Harman obviously needs to make money on it, so it may end up being priced higher (as Apple’s version likely will be too). Lastly, we might see other ecosystem devices using Cortana announced at Microsoft’s Build developer conference this week.

    via Microsoft


    Intel Has a Serious Hijacking Flaw in its Chips, PC OEM Patches Coming Soon (May 8, 2017)

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    Apple Says Affiliate Fee Cut Will Now Only Apply to In-App Purchases (May 8, 2017)

    I’m seeing this change generally being reported as a clarification (including in the piece I link to here) but this is a change from the original wording here, which explicitly said the cut in affiliate fees announced a couple of weeks ago applied to both “app and in-app content” and didn’t include apps in the list of content types to which the change would not apply. Unless that was just really terrible wording, it does seem as though there has been a change in policy here. Applying the change just to in-app purchases again makes me wonder whether there might be some change to Apple’s cut of App Store revenue in this category, announced at WWDC in a few weeks. We don’t know quite how much of Apple’s App Store revenue comes from IAP, but games dominate total revenues, and IAP is the dominant model for games, so there’s a good chance that it’s 30% or more. As such, any cut to Apple’s share of revenues would dent overall App Store growth and Apple’s ambitions to double its overall Services revenues over four years from 2016 to 2020. So I’m somewhat skeptical, but changing the cut for IAPs would certainly go a long way to addressing the long-standing complaint from content companies like Spotify that Apple takes too much of their fees, given that those are charged through IAPs. And it would potentially open the door to Amazon’s arrival on the Apple TV too.

    via MacStories


    New Narrative: T-Mobile is Winning in US Mobile (May 6, 2017)

    When I launched this site fully earlier this year, there were 49 “narratives” reflecting many of the prevailing narratives about various aspects of the tech industry, which provide context for the individual items on the site each day. Today, I’m adding the first new narrative since launch, and the narrative is titled “T-Mobile is Winning in US Mobile“. Now, it’s worth noting as a reminder that the narrative titles don’t reflect my views, but rather the prevailing narratives in the industry, whether right or wrong. Subscribers can read the new narrative essay on this topic and my evaluation of the prevailing narrative on the narrative page linked above. I’ve also gone back and tagged 26 earlier news items with this new tag so that there’s a history there now, including several posts from the last couple of weeks, with many of the older posts available to non-subscribers as well. As with each of the other narratives, there’s also a forum topic for anyone who’d like to discuss the narrative and the essay, available to subscribers here. Lastly, this narrative also forms the subject of this week’s Narrative Video, which subscribers can also see on the narrative page.


    Facebook Gearing Up To Launch Original Video Content in June (May 5, 2017)

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    Apple Devices Added to HP’s Enterprise Device-as-a-Service Offering (May 5, 2017)

    Apple has done a deal with HP to allow the latter to include its devices in its enterprise device-as-a-service offering for enterprises. This is the latest in a string of deals between Apple and various enterprise-centric partners over recent years – a sign that the enterprise is an increasingly important source of growth for Apple as the consumer market reaches saturation for smartphones and upgrade cycles lengthen. HP will be a channel for all Apple devices, but the two companies are also working together to create some guidelines for various industries in deploying those devices and making the most of them in various applications. Apple’s strategy for the enterprise continues to be mainly leveraging these various third party channels rather than growing its own substantial business sales force, which is smart given Apple’s expertise (and the gaps in it).

    via HP


    ★ European Firms Including Spotify Sign Letter to EU Asking for Action Against “Gatekeepers” (May 5, 2017)

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    Pictures of Amazon’s Reported Echo With a Screen Emerge Online (May 5, 2017)

    A tiny, low-res picture of what might be Amazon’s Echo with a screen emerged today, and leaker Evan Blass followed up with a much higher-resolution version later in the day. The device looks vaguely like an old fashioned portable TV set, with a screen above a speaker grille, and a fairly substantial body behind the two. As I’ve said before, this form factor makes a ton of sense for Amazon for a variety of reasons, but it rather undermines the idea that voice and not touch is the next user interface. There’s also a certain irony in the prospect of Amazon announcing an Echo with a screen while Apple announces an Echo competitor without one in the space of a few weeks, as is presently rumored. The reality is that standalone voice assistants fill a useful role, but most people will want their assistants and devices to span several categories, including those with both voice capability and screens.

    via The Verge and Evan Blass’s tweet


    Amazon Video App May Finally Come to Apple TV in Q3 (May 5, 2017)

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    IDC Says Q1 Tablet Shipments Were Down 8.5% Year on Year (May 5, 2017)

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    CDC Reports Wireless-Only Phone Households Now the Majority in US (May 5, 2017)

    The CDC runs a twice-yearly study to determine how many households use landlines and how many use mobile phones only. That might seem like a strange thing for a government department responsible for studying disease to look into, but it first began doing so to determine whether its surveys needed to start including mobile respondents, as landline-based surveys were going to become less representative of the overall population over time. Well, those landline households are now less than half the overall population, while mobile-only households are now the majority, which has significant implications for polling and especially political polling, where automated dialing often hits only landline households. But the new numbers (and the trend over the last many years) are also a great illustration of how even technology that was once ubiquitous and considered essential can be displaced by something else, even something that on the face of it seems inferior in several respects (in this case, call quality, expense, the need to charge a battery, and so on, though all these things have improved over time). That’s worth remembering when looking at today’s dominant technologies and companies – there’s no reason to believe they’ll stick around forever either.

    via Fortune


    App Annie Reports People Spend More Time in Apps, Use 10/Day, 30/Month (May 5, 2017)

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    ★ YouTube Announces Six New Original Content Series For Its Free Service (May 4, 2017)

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    Apple Provides Better Source Insights to App Developers (May 4, 2017)

    Apple has been criticized for not giving developers good enough insights on how their apps perform and especially for not allowing developers to know where new users come from. That’s now changing with an update to Apple’s analytics platform for developers, which will be particularly useful in light of the paid ads which now run in Apple’s App Store search function. Developers need to know whether those ads are being effective in gaining new users and downloads, and how they measure up relative to other lead generation methods. The incremental steps Apple has taken to expand the range of business models open to developers, to share more of the revenue with those developers, and to improve analytics over the past couple of years are all checking important boxes in the wish lists of developers and cementing the status of iOS as the platform to develop for, despite Android’s larger user numbers.

    via TechCrunch


    Facebook Expands Paid WiFi Access Product to India (May 4, 2017)

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    Amazon Settles with EU Over Anticompetitive E-Book Practices (May 4, 2017)

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    Facebook Hiring For Original Video Content Roles (May 4, 2017)

    Facebook has a job opening on its site for a “Film Producer”, and the description for the role talks about “motion picture content” in a way that makes it sounds like this person is being hired to make movies. On the face of it, that’s an odd thing to do: movies aren’t made by in-house producers, they’re made on an ad hoc basis using the filmmakers (directors, producers, cinematographers, writers etc.) who make sense for a particular project, so if you’re looking to make original content you hire people good at commissioning it, not the people who actually make it. However, the detail of the posting makes it seem as though what this person will be responsible for creating probably isn’t movies for consumption by Facebook’s audience. I think Facebook means video where it says either film or motion picture, especially as it talks about “shareable content”, and a 90-minute movie is not overly shareable. I actually wonder whether this person will be creating content for internal use or to promote Facebook to its audience rather than to be enjoyed by the audience as entertainment. But Facebook’s earnings call this week reinforced the idea that Facebook is getting more serious about creating and seeding video content on the site to boost its video ad revenues, which are very dependent on longer-form video.

    via CNBC


    Snapchat Opens Self-Service Ad Buying Tool for Smaller Businesses (May 4, 2017)

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    Google Settles With Italy for $320m Over Unpaid Taxes (May 4, 2017)

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    Counterpoint Says Apple has 80% Share of Premium Smartphones in China Despite Overall Fall (May 4, 2017)

    Counterpoint, which I’ve referenced previously here as a solid source on smartphone market share and so on, especially in Asian markets, has an update on Q1 smartphone performance in China. The headline is that Apple, Xiaomi, and especially Samsung saw their shipments drop significantly year on year, while local companies Oppo, Vivo, and Huawei did better, in a market that grew just 4% year on year. The Apple drop is worth noting because China performance has been a major talking point on its recent earnings calls (including this week) and there are lots of explanations flying around about why it’s struggling there. I linked to this piece a while back, and Ben Thompson had an interesting piece this week on Stratechery about the role WeChat plays in China and how that impacts Apple. But it’s worth noting the details on the premium market in China in this Counterpoint post. It argues that Apple’s performance in China (as elsewhere) is highly cyclical, but that it consistently takes 80% of the $600+ market. In other words, Apple’s share remains very strong in the segment where it competes, but much of the activity in China is at lower levels where Apple doesn’t compete. In that sense, there’s nothing new here, and the growth of the sub-premium segments is to be expected in a maturing market that’s reaching lower income tiers of the population. But if the premium segment is actually shrinking in real terms rather than just relative terms, that’s more problematic because it would indicate consumers who could afford iPhones are nonetheless choosing to buy the cheaper alternatives. So far, I’ve seen little evidence of that, but it’s worth watching future numbers from Counterpoint and elsewhere to see if that pattern starts to emerge. For now, I’m still more inclined to read what’s happening in China as part of a cycle which is already starting to correct and should do so more meaningfully later this year.

    via Counterpoint