September in tech land marks the start of the very busy new product unveiling season. The giants will show their hands for the upcoming holiday shopping season. In a few days, Apple will host its annual September event. Amazon, Google, and Meta are expected to follow in the coming weeks.

For the third year in a row, companies are unveiling new products into a very challenging environment. It’s a stretch to say…

In just the past few months, a lot has taken place in the paid video streaming market. Netflix, prematurely crowned by consensus as the streaming winner, is now having something akin to an identity crisis while being surpassed by a more capable competitor in Disney. Consumers have plenty of choice in the market and are beginning to show signs of hitting some kind of subscription stacking plateau. Increased churn is likely not…

Scooter Mania Fizzles

It’s tough to find good news in the scooter industry. Publicly-traded Bird is trying to survive. Uber-backed Lime is trying to find a way to IPO. All the while, the way scooters were quickly embraced in the late 2010s feels like a distant memory.

Bird describes themselves as “developing mobility solutions that put people and communities first.” These solutions revolve around “lightweight electric vehicles readily available to rent or…

This past Friday, Amazon announced its intention to buy iRobot, best known for its Roomba vacuum cleaner, for $1.7 billion. In describing the deal, Amazon’s hardware chief applauded iRobot’s “ability to reinvent how people clean with products that are incredibly practical and inventive…” This may make some people think that Amazon wants to go after Dyson for having the best vacuum cleaner on the market. There’s much more to the story. The…

Disney is in a weird position when it comes to the box office: Its strategy is being questioned. For years, Disney was considered to have mastered the evolving box office to maximize profit while protecting future interests. Although “Thor: Love and Thunder” got off to a good box office start last month, the subsequent 68% drop in ticket sales during its second weekend was alarming. The steep drop follows another recent Marvel…

Snap Is the Canary in the Ad Coal Mine

Last week, Snap reported a disaster of an 2Q22 earnings report and conference call. Snap went from having 50% revenue growth to pretty much no growth in a year. Even though the company had previously warned results would be bad, things were even worse than expected. Snap’s problems, which are long and varied, serve as a warning for nearly all ad-based business models…

With recession and inflation concerns continuing to build in the tech space, attention has shifted to where pockets of strength will be found. One such pocket may come as a surprise: luxury. At first, the idea of high-priced gadgets and services selling well in a high inflation and slow growth period may seem like a stretch. However, continued supply chain issues and software’s ongoing invasion of new industries bode well for companies…

Twitter is on a roller coaster named Elon Musk. There hasn’t been a shortage of surprise dips and turns. The initial courtship and even befriending that took place between Twitter leadership and Musk now seems like a distant memory. It’s hard to believe Twitter had initially tried to offer Musk a board seat in order to curb his Twitter stock purchases. Passive aggressiveness then set in once Musk’s intentions became known. This…

There is something about the way the tech industry continues to prop up and push VR that doesn’t sit right with me. Too many companies are using VR to distract from a genuine rise in competitive pressure and unattractive business performance. As a result, we are getting warped expectations of what may materialize over the next three to five years.

It’s easy to understand why so many people are quick to compare…

One of the largest shifts in the tech landscape is underway. The way we share and consume information on platforms ranging from Facebook and Twitter to Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube is changing. Social media is starting to mean something entirely different to both content creators and consumers.

Beginning in the mid-2000s and really taking off in the 2010s, social media served as a way to both connect with friends and family and…

Inflation fears continue to grow. What had flown under the radar for far too long is now unavoidable. With inflation at 40-year highs, entire industries are needing to learn how to deal with a macro scenario that had been nothing more than a risk factor talked about in financial filings. While the tech industry won’t be able to avoid inflation, many software-driven companies are in a much stronger position than is being…

In just the last week, there were two high-level and noteworthy departures at the giants:

Earlier in the year, two noteworthy departures were found among smaller companies striving to one day become giants:

At first, the four departures may seem unrelated to each other. They each have their own…

Ridesharing remains an industry in search of a business model. With gas prices soaring, inflation at 40-year highs, and Wall Street volatility returning with a vengeance, companies like Uber and Lyft have been left with no choice but to raise prices. Industry estimates peg ridesharing pricing as being up by as much as 30% on a per mile basis between 2019 and 2022. This has led to the ridesharing business model receiving…

One takeaway from the just concluded earnings season in tech land is that the giants are not alike. Each is facing its own set of business and financial challenges – both macro and micro. Despite the challenges, each of the giants is determined to fund the next big thing. What had been periodic jitters about ballooning costs and expenses has turned into full-fledged anxiety and concerns on Wall Street.

In terms of…

After two years of pandemic-induced demand and supply shocks to the system, we are getting our first good look at the new normal. At the same time, the stock market’s bout of turbulence has impacted wide swaths of the tech sector. Many are now connecting the two developments and declaring the start of some kind of pandemic-induced tech recession. History is being rewritten, and current developments are being misdiagnosed.

The pandemic was…

Based on regulators’ and lawmakers’ comments, the tech giants are unstoppable because they don’t have to worry about competition. Meanwhile, a long list of smaller competitors are said to face major growth hurdles due to built-in advantages that the giants have given themselves.

The past few months have shown such narratives about competition are crumbling apart. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like those tasked with ensuring proper competition is present in markets are…

Elon Musk Buys Twitter

It’s been quite the April for Elon Musk. Within just three weeks, Musk went from disclosing that he had spent months quietly amassing a 9% stake in Twitter, to accepting and then turning down a Twitter board seat, to finally having Twitter’s board accept his hostile takeover bid for $44 billion.

Musk buying Twitter is a big deal for a few reasons:

Twitter finds itself between a rock and a hard place. With Elon Musk now as its largest shareholder, Twitter’s CEO and its board are wholly unprepared for handling the accompanying unknown. This became visible this past week as Twitter made one questionable move after another. The uncomfortable truth now needs to be discussed: Twitter has a leadership problem.

In last week’s Inside Orchard essay, we discussed the two issues that Musk…

Earlier today, Elon Musk revealed that he had quietly amassed a 9% stake in Twitter valued at nearly $4 billion. The news kicked off a whirlwind of speculation as to Musk’s plans. While the investment was deemed passive, that distinction has already proved meaningless given some of Musk’s recent tweets.

It’s not likely that Musk bought a nearly 10% stake in Twitter because he thought it was a good investment. It is…

For the past two years, the European Commission has been formulating a series of regulations aimed at curtailing the tech giants in its 27 member states. Last week, the Digital Markets Act reached a finalized draft stage. While additional steps are needed before the end is reached, we are at a point where the major points of contention have been determined with implementation set to begin later this year. We are seeing…