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.
Facebook is launching an app for Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV – Recode (Feb 14, 2017)
More news out of Recode’s Code Media conference today (after Apple’s last night). This one was actually reported by the Wall Street Journal a little while ago and I commented on it then. I’m still a little skeptical about this, but there weren’t many more details in the announcement, and so we’ll have to see what the app actually looks like and how it works – I do think there’s potential for Facebook to use some of its clever technology to present people with a better feed of relevant video, but I think that’s some way off still. Also worth noting: Facebook will have apps for Amazon and Apple TV boxes as well as Samsung smart TVs, but not for Android TV. And of course Twitter already has a TV app, mostly useful for its live video, though there as here the big questions remains whether the companies can actually sell enough ads around this video to make the effort worthwhile.
via Recode
Amazon’s new Chime video calling service takes aim at Skype and WebEx – PCWorld (Feb 14, 2017)
Amazon’s most high-profile enterprise offerings are back-end stuff – AWS, obviously, but also a range of other services mostly designed for IT departments rather than the broad base of employees within a business. But it has tinkered with employee-facing services in the past, and now it’s getting into one of those big categories almost every enterprise end user uses (and probably mostly dreads): conference calls. It looks like Amazon has thought this through pretty well – there are a handful of little features which could address specific pain points, and the pricing seems reasonable compared to some of what’s out there too. I’m definitely tempted to try this myself with a view to potentially ditching my expensive and frustrating WebEx subscription. This feels like it could be a gateway to more end user-focused enterprise stuff from Amazon too – much more promising than some of its earlier efforts in this space.
via PCWorld (more on Techmeme)
Snapchat is Struggling On Android — The Information (Feb 14, 2017)
I’ve tweaked the headline here to reflect the content of the article: the point here that Snapchat doesn’t work as well on Android as on the iPhone, where it began and where most of its employees and many of its users are. This wasn’t an accident – Snap is open in its S-1 filing about the fact that it has prioritized iPhone until now, and that’s not an unusual strategy for developers pursuing the high end market. However, it works a lot better as a strategy for a news, video, photo filter, or other non-social app than it does for a social app – by definition, social apps need broad reach to create the kinds of network effects that make them successful. It’s not that Snapchat hasn’t had an Android app for a long time – it launched it in October 2012, when it still had a relatively tiny number of users – but that it’s rather neglected the Android app. It explicitly called out some bugs and underperformance as a reason for its lackluster user growth late last year in its IPO filing, but this Information piece argues that it’s not moving fast enough to improve the experience there. And yet it has to be good there if it’s to grow, especially outside the US and major European markets.
via The Information
T-Mobile US Reports Q4 2016 Results (Feb 14, 2017)
T-Mobile reported its Q4 results this morning – the last of the major US wireless carriers to do so – and as usual it’s beating all the others handily on postpaid phone subscriber growth and making decent progress on growing its margins. It added several times as many postpaid phone subscribers as any other carrier, but in other categories like tablets and “connected devices” (think cars, machine to machine, connected utility meters) others were ahead, with AT&T leading the market in both those categories. T-Mobile says it has seen much higher porting ratios (the ratio of subscribers won versus lost from a particular carrier) against Verizon this quarter, which would help explain the latter’s rapid shift in stance on unlimited plans. T-Mobile continues to be quite a bit smaller than the big two, and that’s a big driver of its lower margins, but the fact that it’s willing to take those lower margins enables it to win subscribers with aggressive pricing, especially since its network performance and coverage is constantly improving. I continue to be skeptical that T-Mobile’s strategy is sustainable over the long haul – it’s very focused on phones, which aren’t growing much anymore, and hasn’t invested as its two largest competitors have in newer growth categories, but for now it continues to capture lots of attention and make the other carriers look bad.
via T-Mobile (PDF release)
Apple Debuts Planet of the Apps Trailer – Recode (Feb 14, 2017)
Apple debuted the trailers for its Planet of the Apps and Carpool Karaoke shows at the Code Media conference last night. These are two of Apple’s first bits of original video content, both of which will debut as part of Apple Music. Carpool Karaoke still features James Corden on some episodes, but not all, which will detract at least somewhat from the original format, which is compelling in large part because of him. Planet of the Apps is a Shark Tank-style reality / competition show focused on apps. This clearly plays to Apple’s strengths, and gives potential competitors a big draw in the form of featured placement on the App Store. This isn’t my kind of thing – I’ve never been a big fan of reality shows – but Shark Tank is very popular, and Apple’s show mirrors its format pretty closely, so it should do well among the same people that like that show. In addition to music exclusives, these bits of video content are another unique feature of Apple Music, which should help set it apart versus the competition. But to my mind, it’s more interesting to see this as an ongoing push by Apple into original content, which for now may live in Apple Music but certainly has the potential to become the foundation of an Apple subscription video service in future, which could be a much bigger deal.
via Recode (Planet of the Apps trailer here)
Apple Shares Hit All-Time Closing High as Investors Await Next iPhone – WSJ (Feb 13, 2017)
I’m tying this story to the Apple is Doomed narrative because it would be easy to see today’s news as evidence that investors don’t think Apple is doomed at all. But if you take that approach, you’d also have to say that investors did think Apple was doomed nine months ago when its stock price fell to two thirds its level at today’s close, when in reality that movement tells you a lot more about investor skittishness than Apple’s actual prospects. Apple continues to be massively undervalued relative to major peers, and that reflects an ongoing skepticism that Apple’s ability to sell massive numbers of devices is about more than just smoke and mirrors. Apple is the exception in the consumer electronics market, which is otherwise characterized by low single digit margins at best, and I always suspect that some financial analysts think this is the result of some kind of sleight of hand that will eventually be exposed – there’s really no other explanation for the ongoing under-valuation. The massive swings in Apple’s stock price over time – its 12 month range goes from $89 to the $133 it hit today – are much more about investor skittishness than underlying performance. Certainly there was nothing in Apple’s last earnings that should have triggered such a significant change in sentiment – they were decent results, but guidance for the next quarter wasn’t great, and as usual there was nothing concrete about the company’s longer-term trajectory from management. I continue to be very bullish on Apple in general, but I certainly don’t base that conclusion on what’s going on with the company’s stock price.
via WSJ
YouTube Orders First Original Kids’ Programming for Red Subscription Service – Variety (Feb 13, 2017)
YouTube has some original content for adults already, almost all of it tied to YouTube creators in one way or another, but it’s now extending that investment into kids’ programming to go with its YouTube Kids app. Again, several of the shows feature YouTube personalities, so it’s leveraging its access to content as well as giving creators yet another reason to stick with it rather than switching focus to, say, Facebook. The YouTube Kids app has been a bit of a mixed bag so far – at a time when several big traditional kids’ programmers eschew advertising, it’s shown ads (unless the viewer has a YouTube Red subscription), for example. But this is an interesting next step.
via Variety
GM, Toyota say U.S. rules limiting self-driving cars need to be eased – Reuters (Feb 13, 2017)
I linked to a news item a while back about a Massachusetts bill which was intended to find ways to tax autonomous and electric vehicles, and in doing so talked about the competition that’s emerged between states and municipalities over autonomous driving – some have been welcoming, while some seem determined only to see trials of the technology as a tax revenue opportunity. But the patchwork of regulations and policies across the US is also a major barrier to the launch of production autonomous vehicles, because any vehicle sold in the US needs to be able to drive across state lines. As such, major carmakers are today asking the federal government to do what it can to create a harmonized rather than fragmented regulatory approach across the US. It’s interesting that it’s the major legacy manufacturers rather than newcomers like Tesla, Uber, or Waymo making this request, but they would certainly all benefit if the government listened.
via Reuters
Facebook Tries to Offer Music Labels a YouTube Alternative – Bloomberg (Feb 13, 2017)
Billboard reported at the end of December that Facebook was working on a Content ID-like system for policing music rights infringement on the site, and this Bloomberg piece suggests more of the same. There are several challenges here. Firstly, most Facebook video is published privately, so it’s impossible for outsiders to truly gauge the scale of infringing content. Secondly, a lot of the music videos shared on Facebook are covers, not originals, making detection tough. And third, though Facebook wants to set itself up as a more attractive alternative to YouTube, with advertising as its business model it’s unlikely to pay out at a much higher rate, and in fact may detract from the progress being made by paid streaming services in compensating artists more adequately by creating yet another massive source of free music listening. As such, I’m not convinced that the labels should jump too quickly into bed with Facebook. And that’s tough for Facebook because it clearly wants to take share from YouTube, but music is a huge component of the latter’s popularity.
via Bloomberg
P&G Chief Brand Officer Lays Into Facebook and Google in Big Speech – Marketing Week (Feb 13, 2017)
I’ve changed the headline here to make it a bit more specific, but there’s actually quite a lot more to this speech, and although the article is a little hyperbolic, I do think this is important. Procter & Gamble is the world’s biggest advertiser, so its views and policies with regard to digital advertising are worth paying attention to. Its chief brand officer just gave a speech in which he railed against programmatic advertising and the broader opaque digital advertising supply chain, the power of Facebook and Google, inconsistent standards for measuring ad viewability, and more. Some of the very same things big ad-centric companies are constantly touting as key to their businesses are the same things that are causing consternation among major advertisers, and that’s a tension that isn’t going away anytime soon. Facebook is making strides on its metrics screwups from late last year, but programmatic – which Google talks up every quarter – is getting terrible press at the moment in relation to ads showing up on unappealing sites, and it feels like there are changes coming here. Worth reading the whole article just to see some of the big frustrations advertisers are working through and the possible impacts.
via Marketing Week
One Reason Staffers Quit Google’s Car Project? The Company Paid Them So Much – Bloomberg (Feb 13, 2017)
That’s an interesting hook for the article, but far more interesting than the ease of hiring away Waymo employees is the fact that Alphabet had such a kooky compensation scheme in place at all – more evidence that the Porat era has introduced much-needed financial discipline in the Other Bets. Long story short: Alphabet paid massive bonuses to employees in its autonomous driving division based on “project milestones” which had nothing to do with financial performance (since the division won’t generate revenue for years). This, in turn, has apparently loosened up some employees who have enough financial security to take risks on leaving for competitors. It really is remarkable how the Google/Other Bets split has shone a spotlight on some of the crazy largesse in the latter businesses.
via Bloomberg
Jeff Bezos wants Amazon to be the next HBO, Showtime – New York Post (Feb 13, 2017)
This feels like a totally logical next step for Amazon, which already has lots of both episodic and feature length content, and has been selling other companies’ premium channels for a while now. It’s presumably learning a lot from selling Showtime and the like, and has seen an opportunity to add yet another layer of subscription revenue to the base Prime membership. One big question, of course, is how it will divvy up its original and acquired content between the existing Prime service and this premium tier – any exclusivity around the paid channel dilutes the value of the base subscription, which Amazon wouldn’t want to do. It’s possible that this will be an offering primarily aimed at non-Prime subscribers, or part of its video-only version.
via New York Post
Apple joins Wireless Power Consortium, fueling iPhone 8 rumors – Business Insider (Feb 13, 2017)
Apple does, of course, have two products that use wireless charging today: the Apple Watch and AirPods, both of which charge exclusively without a conventional cable plug. However, neither of those products officially uses the Qi standard managed by the WPC, and of course iPhones don’t do wireless charging at all today. Given that wireless charging has been a staple of iPhone rumors for some time now, this certainly lends plausibility, but it’s also disappointing if this is the flavor of wireless charging Apple is going to implement. I’ve never been a fan of mat-based wireless charging, mostly because it’s actually less flexible than cable-based charging – you have to leave your device on the flat surface, which means no taking phone calls, no two-handed typing, no taking pictures, and so on. I’ve always felt that wireless charging over distance was a far more interesting and useful technology because it could eliminate the need to put a device in any particular spot to charge entirely, which would be particularly good for wearables. There have been rumors about Apple working with Energous, which makes that kind of technology, for some time too, but this WPC membership makes it look as though Apple is going a more traditional route.
via Business Insider
Verizon joins the unlimited wireless data party – USA Today (Feb 13, 2017)
The challenge for the two largest US wireless carriers has been to strike an appropriate balance between responding to the price-based competition from the smaller carriers and preserving revenue per user and margins in their massive existing bases of customers. On the one hand, failing to respond aggressively enough to competitive moves risked customer losses, and on the other responding too aggressively risked reducing revenue per user and margins for the base. On the whole, AT&T and Verizon have chosen to be more conservative, largely preserving prices while tinkering at the edges with temporary promotions and in AT&T’s case using its prepaid brand Cricket to compete more aggressively on price. But that conservatism has come at a cost – AT&T has seen postpaid phone net losses for two years now, and Verizon’s phone net adds have also dropped considerably below past levels, though their margins are better than ever. This move today by Verizon suggests that it’s finally reached a point where it doesn’t feel it can hold off any longer on unlimited plans and intends to compete more aggressively. That will likely be good for subscriber numbers, but potentially bad for margins as it caps revenue per user upside from a data plan perspective. I’m not yet convinced that AT&T needs to follow suit with broad-based unlimited data plans – I think they’re happy to keep their all you can eat plans limited to DirecTV customers, at least for now.
via USA Today
Making More Outside The Mac App Store – Rogue Amoeba (Feb 10, 2017)
Some interesting data points here from Rogue Amoeba, one of the medium-sized Mac app developers which has recently pulled the last of its apps from the official Mac App Store, and has seen roughly similar unit sales and slightly higher total revenues as a result. Although the iOS App Store continues to be the only way to get apps onto an iPhone or iPad, that’s not the case with the Mac, and frustrations over sandboxing, limited business model options, and the lack of formal upgrade mechanisms among other things have driven a number of prominent developers to eschew the MAS for direct sales. It continues to be fascinating how Apple’s approach to the Mac App Store has been so much less successful, in part due to the longstanding existence of alternatives, but in part also due to Apple’s inflexibility and lack of support for key developer requests. For all Apple’s strength and success with developers broadly, its Mac developer story is a lot less compelling.
via Rogue Amoeba
Tracing AT&T’s Capital Expenditures Over Time – Hal Singer (Feb 10, 2017)
One of the most pervasive stories out there about net neutrality is that, despite threats from the big telcos to reduce investment if it was made law, they have in fact increased spending since NN rules were introduced. This analysis looks at AT&T specifically and argues that its capex has actually gone down over the last three years if you back out the extra investment from its ownership of DirecTV and Mexican wireless assets. AT&T is complex because it no longer breaks out its wireline and wireless capex, but the headline picture here is certainly different from what you’ll see in most coverage of this issue.
via Hal Singer
Tim Cook Enthuses Over Augmented Reality – The Independent (Feb 10, 2017)
This is probably the meatiest commentary we’ve had on augmented reality from Tim Cook yet, though he’s spoken enthusiastically about it in the past. Read the last two paragraphs from this interview for the full take, but it’s worth pulling out several points: Tim Cook likes AR over VR because it keeps you in the world rather than taking you out of it; it’s for everyone rather than a niche (by implication, unlike VR, which is most exciting at present for hardcore gamers); it’s as big a deal as the smartphone, and yet not a product but a feature or capability – he likens it to the silicon in the iPhone; and it’s going to take a while before it’s ready for the mainstream (which you can take as meaning it isn’t coming to the iPhone or Apple products just yet, or that it’ll be a niche technology even when it does – the former seems more likely, but who knows.) Lots to chew on here, but for me the silicon comparison is the most interesting – that strongly implies we’ll see this in an iPhone rather than a headset from Apple in the near term.
via The Independent (UK)
Amazon Tap’s new hands-free Alexa update means it’s actually useful – The Verge (Feb 10, 2017)
Reviews for the Tap were mostly pretty negative when it came out, because it was like the Echo without its best feature: hands-free usage. Requiring a button tap to invoke Alexa basically ruined the experience for many of the reviewers, but this new software update rectifies that when the device is connected to WiFi. I’m guessing it runs down the battery quite a bit faster when it’s always listening, so users will probably want to have it plugged in when in this mode, and the mic array isn’t as impressive in this cheaper device than in the Echo either. But this is now on paper the same functionality as the Echo for $50 less than its list price, which isn’t bad. The Dot, however, continues to be by far the most cost effective way to get into the Amazon Alexa ecosystem, at $50 per unit, and that’s why it’s the best seller in the lineup by far.
via The Verge
Huawei Sold More Phones but at Less Profit — The Information (Feb 10, 2017)
Huawei was the number three smartphone maker I said was one of several missing from that recent analysis of who captured the profits in the global market, and it does actually make a decent profit (relatively speaking) on its hardware. According to the Information, the relevant business unit made $2 billion in profit in 2016, or a margin of 7.7%, which may not sound like a lot but given that almost all consumer electronics businesses generate low single digit or negative margins, it’s not bad. It was down from 11% in 2015, but Huawei invested enormously in marketing in 2016 and saw 30% smartphone growth as a result. It can probably ramp down that spending in 2017 while still seeing decent growth, which should help it get closer to its $4 billion profit goal for the year. Huawei continues to be a very interesting company to watch in the smartphone market, and is one of only a handful of companies which have managed to drive a decent profit from making Android smartphones.
via The Information
What’s different about Snapchat’s next new original series – Mashable (Feb 10, 2017)
Yet more ammo for the “Snapchat is TV” crowd, though that feels more and more literal all the time, since Snapchat’s content is more and more actual TV content from actual TV companies, as with A&E in this case. What’s unique here is that the show is both unscripted and not based on an existing show – i.e. it’s original content for Snapchat, though importantly not original content by Snapchat a la Netflix/Amazon/HBO. Snapchat did spend $13.3 million more in 2016 than 2015 on content creation, but in reality that’s about collaborating with existing providers on content rather than creating its own. For now, Snapchat remains a great way for existing TV brands to reconnect with the large portion of its target audience which has abandoned traditional TV.
via Mashable