Tech & Telecom news — Feb 1, 2019
By: S Winwood
Tags: Quantum Computing, Privacy, Huawei, Regulation, Virtual Assistant

RETAIL

Amazon presented its 4Q18 results and generated mixed feelings, with a record profit of $3bn (+63% yoy), driven by cloud and advertising, but also with an overall growth deceleration, warnings about negative effects of regulation in India and a likely CapEx increase to build own infrastructure (for logistics and cloud) (Story)

PRODUCTS & SERVICES

Video

Comcast is sophisticating voice-based controls for its video delivery platform Xfinity X1. E.g. customers will be able to ask for statistics on the coming Super Bowl game using voice commands. In practice, using video as an anchor, Comcast is turning this into a competitor vs. Alexa for the control of connected homes (Story)

US cable, the traditional model for carriers to become entertainment companies, is progressively shifting to a connectivity-centric business model. E.g. Charter claimed yesterday, at their 4Q18 results, that they were open to become a “supermarket of video services”, and talked about being a “connected video” player (Story)

Applications

Facebook’s impressive 4Q18 results this week are making the company look like invulnerable to public pressure, and some are attributing this to the company’s monopolistic power, that makes it practically impossible for users to abandon the app. According to this rationale, regulation would be the only feasible solution (Story)

HARDWARE ENABLERS

Networks

Political pressure on Huawei may be increasing, but it seems still not enough to improve business perspectives of rivals like Nokia, which has announced a worse than expected 2019 outlook. A possible reason mentioned by analysts is that few countries considering banning Huawei are at the vanguard of 5G deployments (Story)

At their results presentation yesterday, BT said they will “persevere” with 5G rollout plans, amid current Huawei crisis, and suggested the Chinese vendor will keep being “a good supplier”. They also announced a pre-tax profit rise of +20%, as the first sign of a turnaround, after a crisis that led to the exit of previous CEO (Story)

Quantum Computing

The MIT Tech Review just contributed to increasing public awareness of quantum computing technology, and published this nice summary of the subject, claiming that, even if quantum computers won’t probably wipe out classical ones (at least in mid term), they promise to deliver exciting advances in many fields (Story)

SOFTWARE ENABLERS

Artificial Intelligence

Tencent, the Chinese video games leader, and the owner of the most popular messaging app (WeChat), is now entering the car business, by partnering with a local Chinese car manufacturer (GAC) to build a new urban mobility venture to which they will provide AI, mobile payments and cloud technologies

Privacy (Story)

Apple’s move this week to suspend internal iOS apps from Google and Facebook, on accusations that they gathered users’ private data, is seen as one more sign of Apple’s efforts to play a “privacy champion” role, and use this to differentiate vs. rival app providers. Facebook claimed its apps were working again yesterday (Story)

News that a group of scientists has built a system to translate electrical brain signals into human language have now started a new debate on the ethical risks of technology, even if practical applications are still far in the future, as this could be used to violate “neural privacy” and read people’s thoughts against their will (Story)