Category Archives: M&A

Apple, Cars, Design, Episodes, Facebook, Google, Harman, M&A, Samsung, Snapchat, Twitter

Episode 71 – Samsung buys Harman, MacBook Pro Review and Apple Design

This week’s episode is back to our usual format, with a News Roundup to kick things off, a Question of the Week, and a third segment, followed by a Weekly Pick.

Our News Roundup covers three stories: firstly, Snap (nee Snapchat) released its Spectacles hardware and reportedly confidentially filed IPO documents with the SEC; secondly, Twitter introduced some muting options to help combat abuse and harassment, while also kicking several figures from the “alt-right” movement off the service’; and thirdly, the fake news story we discussed last week continued to evolve this week with Facebook and Google both making news.

Our Question of the Week is “What are the implications of Samsung buying Harman International?” Aaron did some research this week into this acquisition and its implications, and answers questions about what exactly Samsung is buying, what Harman’s connected car business does, and how the two companies might bring their assets together, and lastly how this is likely to impact consumers and the broader tech industry. (We also weigh in on the idea that Apple should have bought Harman instead).

Our third segment combines a couple of Apple-related items: Jan shares a summary of his MacBook Pro review from earlier this week, and we also discuss the new coffee table book Apple launched this week about its design.

We wrap up with our Weekly Pick, which this week is a movie recommended by 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:

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.