Earlier this week, Apple unveiled a new high-yield savings account in partnership with Goldman Sachs. The arrangement’s underpinnings point to a development in fintech land that can’t be ignored: Tech giants leveraging legacy financial institutions to offer new age financial services to their existing users. In the process, customer acquisition costs are kept to a minimum. This dynamic creates a scenario that will make it that much harder for what has been…

GM sent shockwaves through the auto and tech industries last week by saying it was moving away from Apple CarPlay and Android Auto for future electric vehicles unveiled in 2024 and beyond. The auto industry had been displaying a surprising amount of order in recent years considering the amount of change that was said to be coming. GM’s decision has likely interrupted assumptions about where the competitive battle lines will be found.

Bob Iger isn’t wasting time attempting to put Disney on his preferred track. Yesterday, the WSJ reported that Iger had axed Disney’s metaverse and membership teams – two initiatives in their infancy that were spearheaded by Bob Chapek. This follows a reorganization a few weeks back that returned power to the company’s creative executives. Disney is just one of a handful of companies that have been changing strategies to get a better…

Talk of there being a “tech recession” has picked up in recent months. Weakness in advertising, slowing revenue growth in cloud services, and even declining digital goods commerce has fueled the tech recession talk. Amidst all the chatter, one development that has flown under the radar is just how tough it’s become in the consumer gadget space.

The stage needs to be set before going any further. The consumer gadget space has…

Last week, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), known for its 35-year relationship with the tech start-up scene, imploded. It's very easy, and maybe even tempting, to position Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse as something bigger - a canary in the coal mine for Peak Tech. Such thinking breaks down into the following:

In the electric vehicle (EV) space, some of the most interesting observations aren’t found with Tesla or legacy auto. Instead, we need to turn to an EV startup called Rivian.

With a lineup consisting of the $73,000 R1T pickup (accepting reservations with deliveries expected later this year) and the $78,000 R1S SUV (accepting reservations with deliveries expected in 2024), Rivian learned from those who came before it by skipping smaller sedans and…

The recent chatbot craze fueled by ChatGPT, which needs a good dose of cold water thrown on it, has led to renewed talk of search’s future. Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI led some to conclude that Google should be nervous. The thinking goes that the combination of Bing and massive language models will impact Google’s search dominance. I find such thinking rudimentary at best.

Much of the chatbot craze will fizzle out…

Movie theater operators can’t get out of their own way. Last week, AMC, the largest movie theater chain in the world with 950 theaters, unveiled variable seat pricing in the U.S. Customers will be charged based on where they sit in the theater. Seating will be split into tiers:

Meta is the latest company to take a ride on the Wall Street roller coaster. After a horrendous year in 2022 with shares trading down 65%, Meta turned heads last week with the stock popping 24% after reporting earnings. The wild swings left observers scratching their heads as to what may have changed. How could a company considered by some to be fatally wounded see its shares more than double in just…

The auto industry is in a weird place right now. Automakers have benefited from software’s inevitable march into their space. However, the auto space is nowhere near where the tech industry thought it would be by now. In the mid-2010s, autonomy was considered by many to be a problem that would be solved by 2020. Elon Musk positioned full autonomy as a “next year” goal for years although he interestingly stopped making…

Last week, Microsoft and Google joined Amazon and Meta in announcing layoffs. In total, 51,000 jobs will have been eliminated among the four companies in just the past two months.

This development has led pundits to run with various theories explaining the layoffs, ranging from Big Tech being in a recession to the pandemic contributing to something of a tech bubble…

The late 2010s was witness to one the largest head fakes in consumer technology: voice-first or voice only interfaces. Tech pundits and analysts fumbled over themselves with projections that we would converse with speakers positioned around the house instead of looking at screens. Such an idea even permeated through several tech giants including Amazon and Google.

Scott Galloway, who gained a following in tech circles for his bold predictions, said in 2018…

Last week, the largest tech trade show in the world was held in Las Vegas. At least based on my tech-oriented Twitter timeline, you wouldn’t have even known CES took place. For the past few years, CES was increasingly at the receiving end of jokes and mockery for what it has turned into. In what is a worrying sign for CES, this year was different as there weren’t even that many jokes…

Elon Musk continues to make unforced errors as he molds Twitter into his liking. Unnecessary controversies and illogical strategy moves are not only increasing stress and anxiety among some Twitter users, but also clouding what Musk has done correctly. Yes, there actually have been a few positive changes such as the “What’s happening” editorial trends coming to an end.

In finding the top tech story in 2022, the Musk/Twitter saga makes the…

It would be an understatement to say the past month has been an interesting one at Disney. At the request of Disney’s board, Bob Iger, who led Disney for 15 years during the 2000s and 2010s, made a dramatic return as CEO.

Iger’s return was met with sighs of relief and hope from various Disney stakeholders. Something of a Disney wish list materialized overnight. Iger would “fix” Disney parks, reinvigorate Disney animation…

The media loves its villains. While Elon Musk’s Twitter escapades took over much of November’s news flow, Musk is something of a known entity at this point. Sam Bankman-Fried now wins the award for fastest up-and-coming villain. Just a few weeks ago, his name (or SBF initials) only meant something to those in crypto circles. Today, fallout from FTX’s collapse, the crypto exchange that he founded in 2019, continues to grow and…

As Mark Zuckerberg contemplates some of his toughest business strategy decisions to date, Wall Street has already weighed in with its verdict on Meta: The company has about a decade left. While that dire prediction will likely morph with Wall Street’s always-changing mood, a closer examination of Meta’s valuation reveals several intriguing questions applicable to valuing Big Tech in general.

A quick check of stock prices would show that Big Tech has…

Paid video streaming has provided analysts and pundits plenty to talk about in 2022. Competition has intensified as Disney goes after Netflix for the subscriber crown (Disney has already won). Wall Street also turned sour on most streamers, driven by the higher competition and concerns with business model sustainability.

Set within this change and chaos, there is one theme that ended up being quite reliable: Subscription price hikes. In retrospect, higher subscription…

If there were still questions as to how Elon Musk was going to run Twitter, his tweeting a video of himself walking into an empty Twitter HQ carrying a bathroom sink to denote the change of ownership told us that this was going to be an unconventional transition. We were about to see the Musk show, and the first 12 days have certainly lived up to that description.

Unfortunately, much of the…

Judging by stock price moves, Wall Street experienced quite a few surprises last week. Consider the following price moves registered the day after reporting CY3Q22 earnings:  

The odd thing about these moves is that 3Q22 earnings contained very few surprises in Big Tech land. All of the major themes found in the numbers and on management conference calls have been on…