Category Archives: Earnings

Apple, Earnings, Episodes, Samsung, Snapchat

Episode 79 – Apple Employee Departures, Q4 2016 Earnings Preview Part 2

This week, our News Roundup features three topics: the conclusion and announcement of the findings of Samsung’s Note7 investigation; Samsung and LG’s earnings for Q4 2016; and Snap’s various preparations and signs of increasing maturity ahead of an IPO.

Our Question of the Week is “Are the recent departures from Apple a sign of trouble?” Aaron talks us through some of the recent departures across several parts of Apple’s business, talks about possible explanations, provides some historical context with a discussion of earlier departures, and draws some conclusions about the significance of the current round. We also talk particularly about the Apple-Tesla poaching war.

Our third segment is part 2 of our preview of Q4 2016 earnings season, with a brief discussion of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter and what they’re likely to report in the next couple of weeks.

Lastly, our Weekly Pick is a book recommendation from Jan.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

  • News Roundup:
  • Question of the Week:
    • Article on the effects of Apple’s privacy stance
    • Article on Matt Casebolt’s departure to Tesla
    • Article on Tesla’s PR hire from Apple
    • Article on the Tesla-Apple poaching war
    • MacRumors interview with Chris Lattner
    • Article on Apple hiring Dropcam founder Greg Duffy
  • Jan’s Weekly Pick was Go Like Hell, by AJ Baime (Amazon affiliate link), which recounts the Ford-Ferrari rivalry in racing in the 1960s.

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Earnings, Episodes, Microsoft, Q3 2016, Samsung, Twitter

Episode 69 – Q3 2016 Tech Earnings Review

This week’s episode is a review of earnings for the biggest tech companies that have reported earnings for Q3 2016 so far: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and Twitter. We cover each for a few minutes in alphabetical order, discussing the highlights and trends they suggest.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Alphabet, Apple, Cars, Earnings, Episodes, Google, Google Assistant, Hardware, LeEco, Pixel, TV

Episode 67 – LeEco, Project Titan, Q3 Earnings Preview, Pixel Reviews

This week’s News Roundup is a little longer than usual as we do a deeper than expected dive into three topics. First off, we discuss the US coming-out party for LeEco, a Chinese consumer technology company that’s taking a content-centric approach. Secondly, we discuss reports that Apple is scaling back and refocusing its car initiative. And lastly, we talk about Google’s apparent deal with CBS as part of its planned YouTube-based over-the-top TV service.

Our Question of the Week this week is all about Q3 earnings and what to expect from seven of the top consumer technology companies: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Samsung, and Twitter. Jan talks through each of these companies in turn and talk about what he’s watching out for, and what to expect in both the numbers and the discussion by executives on earnings calls.

Our third segment is a brief roundup of the reviews that came out this week for the Google Pixel smartphone, whose launch we discussed a couple of weeks ago. The reviews were largely consistent, but we discuss some of the areas of disagreement as well as the interesting trends that are emerging from these and other recent reviews.

We wrap up the episode with a Weekly Pick, which this week is a our first Twitter account recommendation, from Aaron.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

  • News Roundup:
  • Jan’s Q3 earnings preview piece on Techpinions (paywall).
  • Aaron’s Weekly Pick was a Twitter account, Mark Miller’s @MDMDeals account, which tweets only the most worthwhile deals on iOS apps.

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Earnings, Episodes, Facebook, Microsoft, Samsung, Twitter

Episode 56 – Q2 2016 Tech Company Earnings Review

We’re back after a two-week break, and this episode is exclusively devoted to a review of major tech companies earnings for Q2 2016, which were reported over the last several weeks. We take a thematic approach to the topic, focusing first on hardware companies, principally Apple and Samsung; then on the big ad-focused companies: Google, Facebook, and Twitter; and then two companies that stand somewhat apart: Microsoft and Amazon. We discuss the themes that emerged from earnings this quarter, and also some of the surprising elements in each company’s results.

Next week, we’ll be back to our usual structure, with a News Roundup, Question of the Week, and Weekly Pick.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

  • The only external link we discussed on the show was a piece in the Atlantic by Ian Bogost entitled “Facebook is not a technology company”. We discussed this right at the end of the episode.

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Apple, Apple Watch, Earnings, Episodes, iPad, iPhone, Mac

Episode 44 – Apple March 2016 Quarter Earnings

For the next few weeks, we’re going to be messing with our usual format as Aaron will be traveling. This week, the only topic was Apple’s earnings for the March quarter. The first twenty minutes or so are mostly Aaron, who had just a brief window before heading to the airport, and the second twenty minutes are just Jan sharing his take on the earnings report and riffing off his two posts on the blog this week. Aaron also explains at the beginning why he’s heading off to Ghana for two and a half weeks.

Over the next couple of weeks, while Aaron is away, Jan will be having conversations with guests instead, so the format will be different from usual, but we’ll still have an episode for you each week.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Alphabet, Android, Antitrust, Apple, Earnings, Episodes, EU, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Uber

Episode 43 – EU Android Antitrust Action, Tech Earnings Roundup

Our three News Roundup topics this week were:

  • China’s blocking of two Apple content services
  • Apple’s MacBook update
  • Uber’s settlement with drivers.

Our Question of the Week is “What should we make of the European Union’s antitrust action against Google?” We discuss the EU’s process for investigation these allegations, the specifics of the allegations against Google, and whether they hold water. We also talk about the parallels and differences with regard to the EU’s case against Microsoft roughly 15 years ago. And we talk about the likely outcomes of this case.

Our third topic is a review of tech earnings over the past week, focusing particularly on Alphabet, Intel, Microsoft, and Netflix. We discuss the common thread of mobile disruption overhanging several of the results, as well as Netflix’s coming price increase and its international expansion.

As ever, we wrapped up with a Weekly Pick, this week a gardening tool recommendation from Aaron.

As usual, you’ll find some links to related content as well as other ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded Soundcloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

  • News Roundup topics:
  • Jan’s blog post about the EU’s Android Mistake, which also has links to the three relevant documents from the EU itself
  • Jan’s follow-up post focused on the relevant market definition
  • Aaron’s Weekly Pick this week was a weeding tool made by Fiskars – you can buy it on Amazon here.

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Earnings, Episodes, iMessage, Messaging, Payments, Twitter

Episode 33 – iMessage as a Platform, Twitter Earnings

We kick off this week’s episode with our usual news roundup. This week, our topics are 5G (and AT&T’s announcement on this topic earlier today), Apple’s rumored March event, and ASICS’ acquisition of the Runkeeper fitness app. Our Question of the Week is finally back after a two-week hiatus for earnings season, and this week we talk about whether Apple should turn iMessage into a platform, and what that would mean. The context here is the Asian messaging apps, such as WeChat, LINE, and Kakao, and the way in which they’ve built platforms around the core messaging experience. As this trend continues, the question becomes whether Apple needs to follow suit, albeit not as a business model but as a way to stay competitive. We talk about what this might actually look like in practice, were Apple to announce it, including user and developer/business features, and the potential for more social elements. Our last topic is Twitter’s earnings this week, and what they signify. We wrap up with our Weekly Pick, which this week is a video service recommended by Aaron.

As ever, there are links to related contents and various formats for the podcast itself beneath the embedded SoundCloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also now have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Alphabet, Earnings, Episodes, Facebook, Google, Yahoo

Episode 32 – Alphabet, Facebook, Yahoo Earnings

As usual, we kick off this episode with our News Roundup. This week, we discuss Microsoft and Amazon’s earnings briefly, including the rather counterintuitive investor reaction to each of them. Then we have a quick conversation about the positive video subscriber additions both Time Warner Cable and Comcast have reported recently, and why they shouldn’t lead us to question the cord cutting trend.

Our main topic today is Alphabet (formerly Google) and Facebook’s earnings. We discuss Alphabet’s new reporting structure and the performance of its “Other Bets” (something Jan wrote about this week on the Beyond Devices blog). We also talk about the fact that both these ad-centric businesses are investing heavily in non-ad businesses that have yet to deliver meaningful revenue, at significant cost, and why that might be. We also talk about the meaning of monthly and daily active user numbers, and the significance of each. To wrap up, we discuss Yahoo’s earnings and the state of Yahoo, as well as the challenges facing the company and its failure to reinvent itself under Marissa Mayer over the last few years.

As ever, you can find some links to related content and other information beneath the SoundCloud player embedded below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also now have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Android, Apple, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Earnings, Episodes, FCC, Google, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Smartphones, Wireless

Episode 31 – News Roundup, Apple Earnings

This week, we once again did our brief news roundup on several topic items, but then we spent the bulk of the time on Apple’s fiscal Q1 2016 earnings, which came out earlier this week (and skipped our Question of the Week and Weekly Pick features).

Our news roundup covered three items: the FCC’s move to open up the cable set-top box market, the disclosure of what are purported to be Google’s revenues from Android as part of the Oracle-Google court case, and insights from the earnings of the US wireless carriers.

In our discussion of Apple’s earnings, we covered the iPhone and guidance for the March quarter, what’s going on with iPhone growth and when it’s likely to turn around again. We talked about the significant foreign exchange impact Apple has been facing, and the fact that it’s been forced to talk about it now that its growth has slowed dramatically. We discussed Apple Watch sales briefly, talked about China and India specifically, and also discussed the iPad, Mac, and the potential for new products in 2017. Lastly, we also covered Apple’s new emphasis on its Services business and the power of its installed base (something Jan wrote about this week on the Beyond Devices blog).

As ever, you’ll find links to related content and various ways to listen to the podcast beneath the embedded SoundCloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also now have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.

Apple, Earnings, Episodes, M&A, News, Predictions

Episode 30 – News Roundup, Media M&A, Apple Earnings Preview

This week, we again kick off with a quick roundup of a few news items, and we’re feeling like this is probably how we’ll start all our episodes going forward. One side effect is that many of our episodes will end up being a little shorter than before – closer to 45 minutes than an hour.

This week, the three news topics we discussed up front were Netflix’s earnings, reports that Apple is applying to open its own stores in India, and the launch on Wednesday morning of an updated GarageBand app for iOS as well as a new Music Memos app. We discuss each of these items briefly and highlight what we think are the most significant aspects. Our Question of the Week this week is about M&A activity in the video content world, and specifically whether big tech companies should expect to be able to fix their streaming video rights issues by acquiring media companies. The context here is the continuing reports that Time Warner might be for sale, and that big tech companies like Apple or Amazon might be buyers. Aaron dives deep for us on which assets are actually for sale, why someone might want them, and what else they’d get by buying one of these companies, as well as the potential downsides.

Our last topic is a preview of Apple’s earnings next week. We run through both what to expect and what to look for as Apple reports iPhone and iPad sales, highlights Apple Watch performance, and provides other tidbits for observers and analysts. As usual, we wrap up with our Weekly Pick, and this week Jan recommends a couple of game apps for iOS.

As ever, you can find links to related content and other useful stuff under the SoundCloud player below.

We invite listeners to submit questions for subsequent weeks in the comments below, on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also now have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast.

As ever, you can also find the podcast on iTunes, in the Overcast app, or your own favorite podcast app. Here is the RSS feed for the podcast if you want to add it manually to your app of choice.

Show notes:

Here are some useful links relating to this week’s episode:

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. Also, we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes.