Google’s Hardware Bet Isn’t Working
One of the major tech themes from the past ten years has been the giants increasing their bets on hardware. The moves, clearly aimed at catching up to industry-leader Apple, have been met with very few pockets of success.
Some companies, like Amazon, were able to get customers to bite out of the gate even though longer-term engagement trends have disappointed. Other companies, like Meta, have discovered just how expensive hardware is to develop. Even hardware businesses such as Microsoft Surface, which were thought to be doing OK, have hit a brick wall in the consumer segment.
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Google’s Strategy for Coexisting With TikTok
We are at the point where discussions taking place among the giants regarding TikTok need to be about how to survive against the company. It is too late to try to stop or slow TikTok’s momentum. Attempts at outflanking TikTok are also off the table.
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Selling the Disney Experience
Having spent close to a decade covering the tech industry, I have always seen Disney occupy an interesting competitive position. The company isn’t in the same league as the giants from a software perspective. However, lumping Disney in with its content peers feels wrong. Netflix is no Disney although Netflix executives think otherwise.
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Peloton’s Ride Is Ending
We are at the point where we can begin writing Peloton’s eulogy. Last week, Peloton co-founder and former CEO John Foley stepped away from the company by resigning from the board. He had moved into the executive chairman role this past February after bringing in Barry McCarthy to fix his errors and miscalculations.
Peloton’s user trends continue to worsen.
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A Live Sports Saga
Last month, the sports and digital media worlds collided as the Big Ten chose the winners for its seven-year sports rights deal. Depending on your perspective, the $7 billion announcement was either a surprise or business as usual. The auction did a good job of highlighting where the media space is right now and the challenges / opportunities facing the tech giants when it comes to live sports programming.
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Waiting for Mixed Reality
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.
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Roku’s Bad Bet
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 far behind.
Set within this highly evolving and volatile market, Roku is a company stuck in the middle.
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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 own…” Smartphones and electric powertrains stood to be game changers contributing to the rise of the sharable scooter industry. In my view, scooter mania is akin to a stepping stone that doesn’t represent the future but rather provides a sneak peek at something that truly resembles a better transportation option for the last mile.
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Amazon’s iRobot Deal Isn’t About Vacuums
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 iRobot deal is the latest evidence pointing to Amazon’s grand vision: digitizing our homes.
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Movie Theater Cracks Grow
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 movie that similarly saw far less in the way of staying power with consumers. A broader look at the Marvel slate of movies suggests bigger issues may be at play.
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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. Things are going to become turbulent.
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A Luxury Safe Haven
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 playing in the premium sector of the economy.
As inflation trends at close to 40-year highs, the question hasn’t been if households will continue to spend cash in the tech space but rather how they would allocate budgets to make better use of their remaining purchasing power.
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The Musk Ride Continues for Twitter
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 quickly turned into support once acquisition funding had been lined up. A few months later, we now see Twitter being put in the awkward position of suing Musk to force him to see his acquisition through as he sows doubt about the accuracy of Twitter’s financial disclosures.
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A VR Head Fake
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 the move into VR and AR to what happened with mobile.
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Social Media’s Days Are Numbered
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 serve as a communication medium in which we were able to cut out intermediaries to go direct to the world. Facebook profiles became our new websites. Tweet threads became blog posts.
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Inflation’s Impact on Tech Is Complicated
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 implied by financial markets.
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An Advertising Pivot Is Beginning
In just the last week, there were two high-level and noteworthy departures at the giants:
Meta’s advertising head (who served as COO)
Amazon’s consumer retail chief
Earlier in the year, two noteworthy departures were found among smaller companies striving to one day become giants:
Spotify’s chief architect of its podcasting strategy
Roku’s head of platform business
At first, the four departures may seem unrelated to each other.
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Ridesharing’s Ongoing Search for Sustainability
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 a renewed look as to its long-term sustainability and competitiveness. What is found isn’t pretty.
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Funding the Next Big Thing in Tech
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.
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The Pandemic Tide Is Receding in Tech
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.
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