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.
    Source: Google’s Pixel 2 to feature improved camera, CPU, higher price, but ‘budget’ Pixel also in works | 9to5Google (Jan 26, 2017)

    Lots of interesting stuff in here, but of course none of it certain to pan out in the actual product. To my mind one of the most interesting aspects is that the price of the Pixel 2 is expected to be $50 higher than the first-generation Pixel, which was already priced at premium levels – that part doesn’t ring quite true to me, unless it’s an Apple-like creation of an additional tier above the standard ones. Pricing its only phone higher than the base iPhone model would unnecessarily limit the market, and that seems unlikely. The camera focus makes sense – the first version majored on the camera and the Assistant differentiator should have been eroded relative to other Android devices by then, so hardware features will be important. The budget version is also interesting in the context of the recent reports about Google bringing Android One to the US – it certainly wouldn’t be unprecedented for two parts of Google to be working on essentially the same problem in different ways, but the hardware strategy there has been more joined up lately. The other thing to note is the details about chips, as Google is apparently testing both Samsung and Intel components as well as something it’s built itself. There have been repeated rumors about Google building ARM-based servers, and it’s possible that it’s also experimenting with its own ARM-based chips for smartphones too, though this would be a massive multi-year effort, especially tough without an acquisition of significant existing skills a la Apple/PA Semi.

    via 9to5Google


    Facebook wants you to watch longer videos, so it’s going to show you longer videos – Recode (Jan 26, 2017)

    “Facebook wants to sell mid-roll video ads, so it’s going to show you more longer videos” would be an even more direct reading of this situation. Facebook recently began introducing mid-roll video ads, but of course those don’t do any good if the videos people watch are too short to hit the point where an ad would be shown. And Facebook has arguably trained its audience and content providers to prefer short videos, because those tend to grab attention better and lend themselves better to the soundless auto-play scenario that dominates video viewing on Facebook now. In order, then, to feed users more video ads, Facebook needs first to feed users longer videos, and it’s tweaked its algorithms to show more longer videos than before. On the surface, this is about fairness – percentage completion rates are always going to be lower for longer videos for short ones, and so some weighting is required to measure performance fairly. But this is really a fairly transparent way to provide yet more slots for Facebook ads, as with this week’s testing of banner ads in Messenger. As with that announcement, Facebook is here going to begin bumping up against the natural limits of how many ads its users will tolerate, and will have to be very careful.

    via Recode (official blog post here)


    Snapchat NYC Spectacles store is mostly empty – CNBC (Jan 26, 2017)

    Snap’s foray into hardware coincided with its new company name, and the marketing strategy for the Spectacles was genius – very short supply combined with a sales model that made availability even narrow by focusing it on single vending machines that moved around, combined with a single permanent store in New York City. However, it’s becoming apparent now (if it wasn’t obvious from the start) that Spectacles aren’t going to be massive sellers. Yes, hundreds of people lined up early on to buy them, but the crowds have now disappeared. I’m somewhat surprised Snap hasn’t put Spectacles up for sale anywhere else yet – it’s still basically impossible to buy a brand new pair at list price unless you live in or visit NYC or happen to be in one of the other places where the moving machines have turned up. That suggests, though, that this move into hardware was more experimental than strategic, and raises the question of whether we’ll see more of this from Snap in future. There’s certainly potential for some interesting new functionality around AR in future versions, but there are few indications at this point that Snap has any big plans.

    via CNBC


    Apple iPhone Price Under Pressure as Buyers Seek Cheaper Devices – Bloomberg (Jan 26, 2017)

    This piece suggests falling ASPs due to iPhone buyers plumping for older models like the 6S rather than the new iPhone 7 models, but only quotes one analyst at Barclays to back up the claim. We’ll know soon enough what the ASP numbers for the December quarter look like, but they did fall this past year relative to the year earlier, in part because of the iPhone SE launch. It’s certainly also true that people are hanging onto phones longer, because they’re more capable, and that new installment plans from US carriers make the price of phones more transparent than the old subsidy model, and reduce the monthly cost once a phone is paid off. For all these reasons, I’m definitely seeing longer upgrade cycles for smartphones, but I see very little evidence that people are buying older phones new – in fact, all my conversations with carriers suggest the opposite – moving from an upfront cost to a monthly cost is driving people to higher-priced phones. In addition, the mix between the 7 and 7 Plus looks to have moved in favor of the larger device relative to earlier models, and that and interest in the jet black finish will also drive up ASPs. Color me skeptical at this point.

    via Bloomberg


    Twitter replaces the Moments tab with Explore – The Verge (Jan 26, 2017)

    After lots of Facebook news, it’s finally Twitter’s turn to announce a new feature, in this case an Explore tab which replaces but also subsumes Moments. This will allow trending topics and other content discovery features to sit alongside Moments in the interface, which makes a lot of sense. Moments have done fairly well at Twitter, but I suspect there have also been lots of users who never used it and were frustrated that it took up a tab in the interface, and often had an annoying little blue dot indicating there was unviewed content too. That’s not to say all those users will instantly use the Explore tab – I never look at Trending topics on Twitter, and imagine many other users are the same. But for new users or those that haven’t spent the time finding the right mix of accounts to follow, the feature can be a useful starting point for finding interesting content. Now, Twitter just needs to do a better job with the on boarding process, which is still too account centric and not topic-focused enough. It’s also worth noting, as this Mashable post does, that live video will be prominently featured at the top of the Explore tab when available.

    via The Verge (official blog post here)


    HTC’s top Vive designer is leaving to work on Google Daydream – The Verge (Jan 26, 2017)

    It’s musical chairs week in VR, with Hugo Barra leaving Xiaomi to head VR at Facebook, and now an HTC designer moving to Google to work on Daydream VR there. This is one of the hottest areas in tech, and it’s therefore no surprise that it would prompt moves between companies as ambitious people try to find roles in the sector. For HTC, which continues to struggle mightily on the smartphone front and has only a side business in VR, it may become increasingly difficult to attract and retain talent in the face of an onslaught from some of the biggest names in the business.

    via The Verge


    Alibaba Affiliate Ant Financial in Deal to Buy MoneyGram International – WSJ (Jan 26, 2017)

    I’ve commented a couple of times in the last week or so on payments-related stories, and have talked abbot the relative immaturity and fragmentation that characterize mobile payments. But those comments were referring to Western markets, and the situation in China is very different, with massive adoption of mobile payments across several major platforms, and Alibaba has been one of the largest players. It has separated its payment activities into a separate entity, Ant Financial, which has been becoming more and more like a bank in its own right, and is now about to buy MoneyGram, a large global person-to-person payments provider. This is a rare example of a Chinese company buying a global player to extend its reach into other markets – it’s been much more common for Chinese companies to expand organically, and generally that hasn’t gone well.

    via WSJ


    Apple Set to Join Amazon, Google, Facebook in AI Research Group – Bloomberg (Jan 26, 2017)

    This would be a fascinating development – Apple has very rarely been part of such groups in the past, often a holdout among major tech companies. But it does seem to be taking AI very seriously at this point, and seems also to be taking steps to help current and potential employees feel they can continue to contribute in the industry beyond Apple’s walls, including allowing employees to publish research and potentially now joining this group. It’s also worth noting that AI, perhaps more than any other major technology currently being developed, has massive ethics implications, and ethics and related issues are a major focus of the group. Apple may feel that it needs to be both contributing to and learning from others in the field when it comes to these non-technical issues.

    via Bloomberg (more on Techmeme)


    Verizon Exploring Combination With Cable Firm Charter Communications – WSJ (Jan 26, 2017)

    I continue to be really skeptical on this deal or anything like it – the only way it could be approved is if Verizon or Charter sold or spun off their operations where the two companies compete, and even then I’m not sure there’s appetite for another mega merger between broadband and TV providers. I see the rationale – the TV business in particular is all about scale, and AT&T and Comcast tower over the rest of the market (even the new Charter has almost 6 million fewer TV subs than Comcast, and over 8m fewer than AT&T-DirecTV). Combining Verizon and Charter’s subs would approach Comcast’s scale in video, while adding wireless, which Comcast is about to add through a partnership with Verizon. But there would be massive challenges here – combining incompatible technologies for delivering voice and data services to homes, along with the cultures of a telco and cableco. And of course regulators would be likely to be very skeptical at the outset (though this administration will certainly view it more favorably than the last). I’m just not convinced this is the right way for Verizon or Charter to go, and there’s no sign that Charter is even interested.

    via WSJ


    Comcast Reports 4th Quarter and Year End 2016 Results – Comcast (Jan 26, 2017)

    Comcast is an enormous and complex company, with its US cable and broadband business but also a movie studio, theme parks, the NBC TV business, and more, and as such it’s hard to its results justice in a brief space, so I’ll focus on a couple of key areas. Firstly, it saw video subscriber growth for 2016 as a whole, the first time that’s happened in a decade. This wasn’t a surprise – Comcast’s video net adds have been trending upwards for several years, mostly because the major telcos (AT&T and Verizon) have taken their foot off the gas in selling their TV services (AT&T has instead ramped up its satellite based offerings through DirecTV). All the cable companies have benefited from this, but Comcast perhaps more than most. It’s worth noting, though, that cord cutting is accelerating overall, and Comcast is gaining share in a shrinking market, and its programming costs are also rising as a percentage of its TV revenues. We didn’t get much more clarity on Comcast’s wireless ambitions on the call, other than that the focus will predictably be on bundling. But that service should launch in H1. I’m asked a lot about the prospects for that service, but so much depends on the details of what Comcast launches – on balance, I’m fairly bearish.

    via Comcast


    Alphabet’s Verily Preps for China Entry With Temasek Funds – Bloomberg (Jan 26, 2017)

    Verily is one of the most fascinating Other Bets – in some ways, it’s the most completely removed from much of the rest of what Alphabet/Google does, both in terms of its focus and in terms of the business model, which has largely involved partnering with big pharmaceutical firms so far. (We devoted a big chunk of an episode of the Beyond Devices Podcast to Verily a while back, so if you’re interested it’s probably worth a listen – I also wrote a brief summary of my findings here.) Getting outside investment is an interesting way to reduce Alphabet’s exposure to the risks associated with what are rightly called “Bets”, while also potentially allowing these businesses to move faster than they could with Alphabet cash alone, and move into new markets – Temasek is Singaporean, but invests heavily in China. I’m curious to see whether we’ll see this model applied to additional Other Bets, or whether it’s another unique facet of the Verily business which we won’t see repeated elsewhere.

    via Bloomberg


    Tesla sues ex-Autopilot director for taking proprietary info, poaching employees – TechCrunch (Jan 26, 2017)

    Things are getting nasty between Tesla and one of its prominent former employees, Sterling Anderson, who used to run its Autopilot program. The lawsuit alleges that Anderson both took proprietary data from Tesla when he left and that he tried to poach additional Tesla employees to work on his new venture with Chris Urmson, formerly of Google’s autonomous driving unit. This lawsuit just highlights how competitive the space has become, and how eagerly many different companies including established carmakers, smaller carmakers like Tesla, big tech companies like Apple and Google (and Uber), and startups like Anderson and Urmson’s new venture Aurora are pursuing it. We’re going to see a lot of ugliness, and certainly plenty more hiring and poaching between these various companies, over the coming years.

    via TechCrunch


    This is the Samsung Galaxy S8, launching March 29 – VentureBeat (Jan 26, 2017)

    Evan Blass, who used to publish leaks anonymously under the pseudonym Evleaks and has a great track record of accurate reporting, claims these are pictures of the forthcoming Samsung Galaxy S8. The main changes are a full screen front, with the fingerprint sensor moved to the back, while charging switches from micro USB to USB-C, and Samsung retains the headphone jack. The smaller bezel approach has been widely rumored for the next iPhone this fall, and I think what we’re seeing here to some extent is the same rush into smartwatches in the year or two before the Apple Watch emerged, driven by rumors of where Apple was going. In the smartwatch category, we saw a variety of failed attempts to create something compelling only for the Apple Watch to dominate the market when it launched, and you always have to wonder with this pre-emptive following whether competitors will really be able to crack the concept in a way that’s as compelling as whatever Apple releases. Xiaomi already has an essentially bezel-less phone, LG is reported to be moving in that direction, and now Samsung supposedly is too. It’ll be very interesting to see how this space looks at the end of the year once all these phones (including a new iPhone) are on the market.

    via VentureBeat


    Introducing the New Privacy Basics – Facebook (Jan 26, 2017)

    Facebook’s busy week for news continues. This update to Facebook’s privacy mini site is timed to coincide with Data Privacy Day later this week, but it’s a useful reminder of how far Facebook has come on privacy. Facebook has always had two distinct privacy issues. One is the same that affects all ad-based companies: gathering lots of information about users and using it to target advertising. The other, however, has always been more Facebook-specific, which is that users have often been unaware of how broadly their content was being shared with other users and potentially the general public. It’s come a long way on both points, but especially the latter one. The new Privacy Basics site has lots of information about how to exercise more control over how posts get shared and with whom, and Facebook has done a nice job here. The fact that there are 32 separate interactive guides is perhaps unintentionally funny – protecting your privacy on the service can still be a complex proposition – but at least Facebook is now effective at walking users through some of that complexity. And in general it now does much better at being transparent and reminding users about how they’re sharing, and most importantly seems to have stopped deliberately or merely carelessly getting users to share more broadly than they intend to.

    via Facebook


    Facebook has hired former Xiaomi and Google exec Hugo Barra as its new virtual reality chief – Recode (Jan 26, 2017)

    Earlier this week, Hugo Barra announced that he was leaving Xiaomi, and now the other shoe has dropped – he’ll be taking over as head of VR at Facebook. It looks like that will make him effectively CEO of Oculus, though I wonder whether he’ll also be responsible for some of the less platform-specific stuff Facebook is working on, like taking Facebook’s social experiences into VR (Mark Zuckerberg’s post about the news features a picture of him and Barra – still in China – together in such a VR environment). Facebook certainly wants to have a major stake in the next user interface, and sees that as VR, but also seems realistic about the fact that no one platform – Oculus or otherwise – will have a dominant role there, and so it needs to evolve Facebook for VR in a way that works on lots of different systems. Whether or not Barra will run this broader set of VR activities at Facebook, hiring him is a big coup for the company – he’s a well-known and well-respected name, especially among developers.

    via Recode


    AT&T Reports Fourth-Quarter Results – AT&T (Jan 25, 2017)

    AT&T is the second of the big US carriers to announce its Q4 results, after Verizon earlier this week. On balance, AT&T’s results look a little better, with the lowest postpaid phone losses in a long time, and decent overall TV growth, mostly thanks to DirecTV Now. AT&T is executing on what I’ve called its ampersand strategy, with 7.9m subs now taking a DirecTV-AT&T mobile bundle with unlimited data. This strategy is also the underpinning of the Time Warner merger, which AT&T apparently still expects to close later this year. AT&T continues to report stronger growth in connected devices – everything that isn’t traditional phones and tablets sold to businesses or end users – than any of the other carriers, and that growth has really helped offset some of the weakness in the phone business in recent years, as has its prepaid growth, mostly under the Cricket brand. Overall, AT&T is still pretty well positioned when it comes to US wireless competition.

    via AT&T


    Continuing Our Updates to Trending – Facebook (Jan 25, 2017)

    It’s a big day for Facebook news – I’ve already covered the new Facebook Stories feature and ads in Messenger, both of which are being tested. This is the only one that’s been publicly announced by Facebook, however, and it concerns Trending Topics, which appear on the desktop site. The changes are subtle but important – each topic will now come with a headline and a base URL such as foxnews.com, topics will be identified based on broad engagement by multiple publications and not just one, and the same topics will be shown to everyone in the same region rather than personalized. Though Facebook doesn’t explicitly say so (perhaps because it fears a backlash, perhaps because it would be a further acknowledgement of a thorny issue), but all of these can be seen as partial solutions to the fake news issue. Citing specific headlines and publications allows users to see the source and make a judgment about whether it’s a reliable one, prioritizing broad engagement will surface those stories that are widely covered rather than being promoted by a single biased source, and showing the same topics to all users could be seen as an attempt to break through the filter bubble. These all seem like smart changes, assuming Facebook can deliver better on these promises than some of its abortive previous changes to Trending Topics.

    via Facebook (more on Techmeme)


    NV Energy Announces Solar Agreement with Apple – Press Release (Jan 25, 2017)

    One of the defining characteristics of Tim Cook’s leadership at Apple has been the company’s far greater commitment to corporate social responsibility initiatives, and especially environmental responsibility. Lisa P Jackson leads this effort for Apple, and has been the spokesperson for a lot of its public outreach on the topic. Renewable energy and recycling are two big facets of Apple’s environmental commitment, and this Nevada deal is focused on the former, under which Apple is moving rapidly towards 100% renewable energy use. This kind of stuff doesn’t make a huge difference to most customers, but it’s certainly part of Tim Cook’s apparent commitment to Apple being a force for good beyond just the products it puts into the world (which was always Steve Jobs’ main focus).

    via NV Energy / Apple


    New exploit turns Samsung Galaxy phones into remote bugging devices – Ars Technica (Jan 25, 2017)

    This is another one of those occasions where Android’s relatively open and complex structure allows for malware which couldn’t exist on iOS. In this particular case, it’s the layering of third party software (a customized version of the SwiftKey keyboard) on top of a customization of the UI and services (by Samsung) on top of the Android base layer. To be fair, this attack isn’t nearly as broad a threat as malware distributed through the Google Play Store – it requires a man in the middle attack and is therefore mostly a risk to those who might be deliberately targeted by hackers – but it’s still not good news, especially given the wide distribution of the devices in question. The complex route security patches have to take in the Android world is another element that will hamper the resolution of this issue.

    via Ars Technica


    The Trump bump: Twitter is getting a second look from brands – Digiday (Jan 25, 2017)

    I’ve had lots of calls from reporters ever since the election about whether Donald Trump was going to be the thing that finally turned Twitter around, and I’ve said no every time, for several reasons. Firstly, he’s far from the most followed account on Twitter – the first time I was asked this question, he was only number 100 on the list of accounts with the most followers, and though he’s risen the ranks since then, there are still many above him. Secondly, Twitter’s biggest challenge is that even when it’s in the news, most people who see the news won’t see it on Twitter but on TV, on news sites, or even in the newspaper, meaning that Twitter doesn’t monetize the vast majority of the attention it receives. Thirdly, lots of advertisers have decidedly mixed feelings about wanting to associate their brand with a Trump-led resurgence in interest in Twitter, and Twitter employees have had similar reservations. This article covers some of that, but suggests that interest in Twitter (though not spending) among advertisers has risen since the election. I’m still very skeptical that we’re going to see any kind of meaningful bump for Twitter off the back of all this.

    via Digiday