Category Archives: Fitbit

Alphabet, Amazon, Augmented reality, Episodes, EU, Fitbit, Microsoft, News Roundup, Voice

Week 109 News Roundup – Fitbit Ionic, Uber CEO, Google ARCore & EU, Cortana – Alexa

This week Aaron was traveling and so you get a solo episode from Jan again, with five news items from this week. First up is Fitbit’s announcement of its Ionic smartwatch, which will be available in October. Second is Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and what he means for the company. Third is Google’s surprise announcement of ARCore, its response to Apple’s ARKit developer tools for augmented reality apps on the smartphone. Fourth is another Google story, this time its intent to comply with the European Commission’s order for changes to its Google Shopping service in Europe. And lastly, the announcement by Amazon and Microsoft that their two voice assistants will work together starting later this year.

As always, you’ll find links to these stories and other things we discussed underneath the SoundCloud player embedded below.

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 (Tech Narratives links unless otherwise stated):

As ever, we welcome your feedback via Twitter (@jandawson / @aaronmiller), the website (podcast.beyonddevic.es), or email (jan@jackdawresearch.com).

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. You can reach the individual hosts on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast. And we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice.

Apple, Episodes, Facebook, Fitbit, GoPro, iPhone, News Roundup

Week 105 News Roundup – GoPro & Fitbit Earnings, FB Hardware, iPhone Leaks, Market Share Numbers

This is the week’s News Roundup episode. We’d hoped to have a Question of the Week for you too, but we had a technical hitch in recording and it’ll be out at some point in the next couple of weeks instead, with a deep dive on Apple earnings as usual next week. For today, we cover two other companies’ earnings: Twitter and Amazon. Both offered more of the same, albeit in very different ways, with Twitter seeing more revenue declines and anemic user growth, while Amazon posted rapid growth but a big drop in margins. We also talk about Apple’s culling of the iPod line and the iPod’s historical significance, and Adobe’s announcement of the end of life for Flash.

As always, you’ll find links to these stories and other things we discussed underneath the SoundCloud player embedded below.

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 (Tech Narratives links unless otherwise stated):

Jan also mentioned his recent podcast episode on Samsung with Bernard Leong on Analyse Asia – that episode can be found here.

As ever, we welcome your feedback via Twitter (@jandawson / @aaronmiller), the website (podcast.beyonddevic.es), or email (jan@jackdawresearch.com).

Please leave us a comment or get in touch via Twitter to give us feedback. We’d love to hear from you. You can reach the individual hosts on Twitter (@jandawson, @aaronmiller), or via email (jan at jackdawresearch dot com). We also have a dedicated Podcast Twitter handle at @BDPcast. And we’d love it if you would leave a review of the podcast on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice.

Apple, Apple Watch, Earnings, Episodes, Fitbit, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Narratives, Roku

Episode 80 – Tech Narratives, Apple Earnings

2 Comments

A quick note: we had an glitch at Aaron’s end, which dramatically reduced the quality of his side of the audio, so he sounds like he’s on the other end of a phone line rather than using a high powered mic. We’re not sure what happened, but it wasn’t fixable, unfortunately. Our apologies, but things should be back to normal next week.

The three topics in our News Roundup this week are pretty diverse. We start with Fitbit’s preliminary earnings, which were below guidance and triggered layoffs at the company, undermining the company’s argument that its recent slowing growth is temporary. Secondly, we discuss the Comcast-Roku partnership which puts Xfinity TV on Roku as an app as a potential replacement for a set top box, with some significant caveats. Lastly, we talk about Slack’s launch of Enterprise Grid, a more sophisticated version of the app for larger, complex enterprises.

Our Question of the Week is “What are narratives in tech and where do they come from?” We talk about the prevalence of narratives in tech news – the stories that get woven around companies and trends in the industry, and which often take on a life of their own, limiting companies’ ability to shape people’s perceptions. We use this topic as a jumping-off point for talking about Jan’s new website, Tech Narratives (www.technarratives.com), which aims to evaluate these narratives and put the day’s tech news in context.

Our third segment is a review of Apple’s earnings for the December quarter. We discuss individual product lines like iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Watch, but also talk about broader issues like the extra week in the quarter, currency headwinds, the potential for finally repatriating some of Apple’s overseas cash in 2017, and what’s really going on in China.

Lastly, our Weekly Pick is a children’s book 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:
  • Question of the Week:
  • Aaron’s Weekly Pick was The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown (Amazon affiliate link), a children’s book Aaron has been enjoying with one of his sons recently (and which, he revealed later on Wednesday, has an emotional ending).

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, Beta program, Episodes, FBI, Fitbit, Huawei, iPad Pro, MWC, Privacy, Samsung, Smartphones, Xiaomi

Episode 35 – State of the Smartphone Market, more Apple/FBI

This week, our News Roundup covers Apple’s response to beta users’ feedback on iPad Pro Pencil navigation support in iOS 9.3, smartphone announcements from Mobile World Congress, and Fitbit’s earnings. Our Question of the Week is “What’s the state of the global smartphone market?”, which Jan addresses. We talk about whether the smartphone market is growing, and where, which players are growing (and which aren’t), we talk about the fact that iOS/Android and Apple/Google are no longer the most interesting competitive dynamics, and offer some predictions for the future. Our final topic is a sequel to last week’s discussion about Apple and the FBI, given all the new information that’s emerged since our earlier discussion. We wrap up with our Weekly Pick, as usual, which this week is a website 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:

  • The Verge story on Pencil navigation in iOS 9.3 and future versions
  • The Verge’s coverage of Mobile World Congress announcements
  • Jan’s live tweeting of Fitbit earnings, as a Storify story
  • Related to Apple / FBI:
  • Aaron’s Weekly Pick, Serious Eats, a cooking blog/website.

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, Beta program, Episodes, Fitbit, iOS, tvOS, WatchOS

Episode 29 – News Roundup, Fitbit, Apple Betas

We kick this week’s episode off with a new format, which is a rapid-fire review of three news items from this week: IDC’s new PC sales numbers for Q4, Buzzfeed’s article about Apple removing itself as the sales middleman for iAd, and rumors that Time Warner is up for sale and both Amazon and Apple might be buyers. We’ve dropped our Question of the Week item for the past two episodes because we had so much else to talk about, but it’s back this week with a review of Fitbit and why its share price has taken such a dive lately. Our final topic is the beta versions of updates to all of Apple’s major software platforms this week, some of which involved fairly major updates somewhat uncharacteristic of Apple’s point software releases. As ever, we wrap up with our Weekly Pick, which this time around is a card game recommendation from Aaron.

Links to many of the items we discussed along with Aaron’s Weekly Pick and some other stuff are under 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.