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.
Tesla Recalls 53,000 Cars Built in 2016 Over Parking Brake Issue (Apr 20, 2017)
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Uber Struggles to Retain Drivers, Develops Plans to Do Better (Apr 20, 2017)
The Information has quite a bit of both data on Uber’s driver retention rates and on its efforts to do better in keeping drivers. The headline I’ve seen shared is that it retains just 4% of drivers, but that’s a bit misleading because it’s based on those that apply to be drivers, only 20% of which make it through that process. The more meaningful retention rate is the 25% of those who drive at least once for Uber who are still driving for it a year later. That’s still low, but far better than 4%. Still, Uber is sometimes compared to an early stage SaaS company, many of which exhibit the same low margins and high growth rates as Uber, and which generally become profitable over time as recurring revenue from earlier cohorts of customers offsets customer acquisition costs. Uber’s problem with such low retention rates is that it continually has to spend massive amounts to attract and retain drivers even as its business matures. In addition, better retaining those drivers going forward ultimately means paying them more, and if it’s also to reduce its subsidies for rides that’s going to mean large price increases, which in turn may well affect demand unless it’s squeezed out all its competitors by that stage, which seems unlikely. As such, even though VCs commonly scoff at the notion that Uber should worry about its lack of profits, I do think there are some legitimate concerns over its current finances.
via The Information
★ Verizon Reports Poor Q1 2017 Results, Offset a Little by Unlimited Reintroduction (Apr 20, 2017)
Verizon today announced its Q1 2017 results, and they completely explained the company’s unexpected and rapid reintroduction of unlimited wireless plans in the quarter. Before it reintroduced those plans, it was on a trajectory for by far the worst postpaid phone losses it’s ever seen, and even with the little bit of growth it saw after the launch, it still had its worst quarter ever by some margin. Tablets also shrank for the first time ever, which in turn led to the company’s first-ever postpaid net losses in a quarter. Churn was up, average revenue per account was down… this was a terrible quarter for Verizon, only salvaged partly by the unlimited launch. Q2 and the rest of the year should be quite a bit better, but it’s clear that Verizon has been suffering recently, most likely at the hands of both T-Mobile and Sprint, which has explicitly targeted it in its advertising. Outside the wireless business, things weren’t that much better – wireline revenues were fairly flat, while margins improved a little. But there’s really no growth driver in the business at the moment, as essentially every part of the business is flat or declining, though the whole thing is still highly profitable.
via Verizon
Apple Makes Big Environmental Push for Earth Day (Apr 20, 2017)
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GoPro Pre-Announces New 360° Camera for Commercial Use (Apr 20, 2017)
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★ Google Home Now Recognizes Multiple Users by Voice (Apr 20, 2017)
This has been a long time coming – in fact, in just a few weeks it’ll be a year since Google debuted Home at its I/O developer conference and implied that it would have multi-user support, though of course it was missing when the device actually launched in the fall. And that’s been a big limitation of a device that’s supposed to get to know you as an individual. So the fact that Google Home now recognizes distinct users by voice is a big deal, and an important differentiator over Amazon Echo. I’ve just tried it with my unit and although it set up accounts for me and my daughter without problems the app conked out when I tried to add my wife, so the results are mixed (I suspect it may be because my wife’s account is a Google Apps account). It does recognize the two voices we set up and will now serve us up different responses, which is great. One big limitation, though, is that each user has to have a Google account and has to download the Google Home app onto their phone, which means it won’t recognize little kids who don’t have Google accounts. And given that it’s using voice recognition rather than, say, different trigger phrases, I can’t set up separate personal and work accounts. But for those who can use it, the Home will now be a much more useful device, serving up calendar information, music preferences and so on on an individualized basis rather than trying everyone in a home as the same person.
via Google
★ iPhone Ownership in US Driven to All-Time High by iPhone 7 Models (Apr 20, 2017)
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Apple News is Starting to Generate Decent Traffic for Some Publishers (Apr 20, 2017)
I recently shared an item about Facebook struggling to help publishers monetize their traffic through Instant Articles, and this article now suggests that Apple News is actually doing fairly well in generating traffic (though not much revenue) for publishers. That gels with what I’ve heard from other sources, who say Apple News is now bringing them decent sized audiences, but isn’t giving them all the tools they need to monetize their content on the platform (analytics and integration with third party services like Nielsen are still pretty rudimentary). I think Apple News has made big strides, and arguably gives publishers a lot more control over how their content appears, while also being the only one of the three big proprietary news formats (Apple News, Facebook IA, and Google’s AMP) to allow for paid subscriptions. It’s got a long way still to go, and those subscriptions are still only open to very few publishers, but it sounds like it’s making some decent progress in building an audience which is willing to consume news content through the app.
via Digiday
Oracle Execs and Other Tech Figures Hold Republican Fundraisers (Apr 20, 2017)
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Many Big Tech Companies (but not Apple) File Brief Opposing New Trump Travel Ban (Apr 20, 2017)
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Apple Acquires First Movie at Tribeca Film Festival (Apr 20, 2017)
This didn’t get a ton of attention, but it’s symbolically important. Apple has so far mostly commissioned content rather than acquiring existing content, while existing online streaming companies Netflix and Amazon have been bidding up prices for movies at festivals for several years now. But Apple has now acquired its first festival film, a documentary about the live of Clive Davis, a music executive. As such, even though the format and origin of the content is different, the subject matter of music is very much the same as Apple’s other original content, suggesting that it still sees Apple Music as the home for this stuff. But Apple is also testing out different models for original content, which will stand it in good stead if (when) it eventually decides to launch its own video streaming service.
via Variety
Google Plans an Ad Blocker it Can Control to Fend Off Ones it Can’t (Apr 19, 2017)
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Qualcomm Details Apple Dispute Financials in Earnings Release (Apr 19, 2017)
Qualcomm has just reported its earnings for the March quarter, and one of the most interesting aspects is its commentary on its dispute with Apple. It says that Apple’s suppliers reported but did not pay around $1 billion in royalties in the quarter, which exactly offset the $1 billion Qualcomm is refusing to pay Apple under the Cooperation Agreement the two companies have, and which Qualcomm says Apple breached. Importantly, that Agreement ended in December, so there are no more payments to be withheld, which means if Apple suppliers continue to withhold royalty payments, they’d affect Qualcomm financially going forward in a way they didn’t this past quarter. As such, it’s given a wider EPS guidance range (25 cents) than usual (it was 10 cents in the last two quarters, for example) because of the uncertainty over these royalty payments (the math here is tricky but I reckon that’s about a $400m range in net income terms). Beyond the Apple dispute, the results are a little tricky this quarter because on paper they look terrible, with revenues and profits way down over the same quarter last year. But that’s partly because Qualcomm had to reduce from its GAAP revenues the nearly one billion dollars it’s due to pay BlackBerry as a result of arbitration between the two companies. The actual results are much better, in keeping with recent trends at Qualcomm, lawsuits aside.
via Qualcomm (see also slide deck)
Largest LIDAR Supplier Announces Much Cheaper, Smaller, Product to Come Next Year (Apr 19, 2017)
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Tesla and Former Employee Settle Lawsuit over Stolen IP, Spin Settlement Differently (Apr 19, 2017)
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★ Amazon Scales Alexa Back-End by Opening Lex Voice and Text Service to All Developers (Apr 19, 2017)
So much of the focus of coverage of voice assistants and interfaces is on the dedicated consumer products which use them, and that’s natural: these are the most visible and measurable signs of a company’s success or failure in this space. And yet the scale of those dedicated voice product is still very small relative to smartphones, which carry their own voice assistants. And scale is vital if these products are to improve, because they require lots and lots of training to get better, and so the more users there are training them, the better they become. As such, I suspect the next phase of competition in this space is going to be about developer voice platforms at least as much as it is about first-party hardware and software, and we’re starting to see signs of this from the big companies in the space, including Google and Amazon. Today, Amazon announced that Lex, which is a back-end service that combines many of the technologies behind Alexa, is opening up to all developers. But critically, this isn’t just a voice platform – it supports text and voice processing, which means that many of the developers might use it in chat bots or other similar environments that have nothing to do with voice but still help train Amazon’s natural language processing tools. Google is doing similar things with its own voice processing technology, but it’s doubtful whether Apple will ever open its voice tools up in the same way. That’s not a huge deal, because it has massive scale in voice on smartphones alone, but it may make a bigger difference over time as these other platforms benefit not only from growing first party scale but increasing third party adoption and use too.
via Amazon
Nintendo Kills off NES Mini but May be Working on SNES Mini (Apr 19, 2017)
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Baidu Changes Strategy for Autonomous Driving, Creating Open Platform (Apr 19, 2017)
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Facebook Details Human-Computer Integration and Connectivity Efforts at F8 (Apr 19, 2017)
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YouTube Algorithm Changes Hit Legitimate Creators’ Ad Revenue (Apr 19, 2017)
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