Monthly Archives: May 2022

Alibaba, whose headquarters are pictured here on May 26, said its online physical goods GMV in China, excluding unpaid orders, fell further in April, with a "low teens" decline from a year ago.

Str | Afp | Getty Images

BEIJING Chinese tech giants Alibaba, Tencent and JD.com have all posted their slowest revenue growth on record as Covid and Beijing's tech crackdown took their toll.

Since the fall of 2020, China has fined corporations and scrutinized them for alleged monopolistic practices. A Covid resurgence since March has added pressure to growth, with travel restrictions and stay-home orders disrupting supply chains and logistics.

Reflecting the economic slowdown, e-commerce giant Alibaba reported on Thursday a drop in online shopping for its two main China platforms in the quarter ended March 31.

The company's total revenue rose by 9% in the latest quarter from a year ago the slowest on record, according to financial history accessed through Wind Information.

Tencent's revenue for the quarter was little changed, while JD.com saw a roughly 18% increase from a year ago both the slowest on record, according to Wind data.

Alibaba shares soared by nearly 15% in New York trading overnight after reporting better-than-expected results. JD.com's U.S.-listed shares rose by 5%, while Tencent's climbed more than 1% in Hong Kong trading Friday.

"Macro-sensitive stocks" such as Alibaba and Baidu might temporarily benefit from low earnings expectations, and anticipation that Shanghai is close to ending its lockdown, Jialong Shi and Thomas Shen, analysts at Nomura, said in a note Friday.

"However, we believe the sustainability of this rally will likely be dictated by the pace of recovery for China consumer demand, which the market will likely closely follow over the coming months," the analysts said.

China's already sluggish retail sales fell further in April, down 11.1% from a year ago.

Even online sales of physical goods fell, down by 1% worse than during the initial shock of the pandemic in 2020. That's according to CNBC calculations of official data accessed through Wind Information.

The Nomura analysts said many businesses were deciding to cut marketing spending as a way to ride out the difficult environment, "which might lead to a belated recovery in the ads industry even if China is completely out of the lockdown mode."

Alibaba said excluding unpaid orders, gross merchandise value (GMV) saw a "low single-digit decline" from a year ago, according to an earnings call transcript from FactSet. GMV is a measure of goods sold over a set period of time.

The company said its online physical goods GMV in China, excluding unpaid orders, fell further in April, with a "low teens" decline from a year ago. The company said more than 80 cities in China mostly national economic centers reported confirmed Covid cases in April. That represents more than half of Alibaba's China retail marketplace GMV.

For the April to June quarter, China Renaissance analysts said in a report they expect Alibaba's China commerce GMV to drop by 13.5% year-on-year, for a 6% decline in overall net revenue.

Other Chinese companies reporting results for the latest quarter painted a more upbeat picture.

Baidu: Chinese tech company Baidu's mild 1% quarterly revenue increase was only the worst since 2020, a year that saw two quarters of revenue decline, Wind data showed. The search engine giant has expanded in recent years into cloud services and robotaxis.

"We see solid progress in its various AI initiatives," Daiwa Capital Markets analysts wrote in a report Thursday. They noted Baidu's AI cloud revenue grew by 45% year-on-year in the first quarter, faster than the company's peers.

Dada: Grocery delivery company Dada, which is now majority-owned by JD, reported a 21% year-on-year revenue increase in the latest quarter, the best since the third quarter of 2021, according to Wind. Dada said it was one of the businesses local government approved to maintain operations during lockdowns.

The company reported more than triple the GMV and double the number of active customers in the 12 months ended late March, versus the same period two years ago.

Kuaishou: Short-video, livestreaming and emerging e-commerce app Kuaishou reported 19% revenue growth in the latest quarter, the slowest on record, although only going back to the third quarter of 2020, Wind showed.

"Despite the recent macro uncertainties due to COVID, we think Kuaishou's bottom-up efforts in market share gains in ad and e-commerce and effective cost control could continue to help Kuaishou outperform on fundamentals," UBS analyst Felix Liu and a team wrote this week.

It's "impressive" that Kuaishou delivered growth in the number of active users and time spent per user, while using less-than-expected sales and marketing expenses, the analysts said.

See the article here:

Alibaba, Tencent and JD.com all just posted their slowest revenue growth on record - CNBC

Mehdi Bennis is a professor at the University of Oulu in Finland researching 6G.

Elizabeth Schulze | CNBC

Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark expects 6G mobile networks to be in operation by the end of the decade but he doesn't think the smartphone will be the most "common interface" by then.

Speaking on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos Tuesday, Lundmark said he expects 6G to hit the commercial market around 2030, which coincides roughly with when Huawei expects to see the technology on the market.

Headquartered in Finland, Nokia builds telecoms networks that enable phones and other internet-enabled devices to communicate with one another.

Asked when he thinks the world will move away from using smartphones to using smart glasses and other devices that are worn on the face, Lundmark said it will happen before 6G arrives.

"By then, definitely the smartphone as we know it today will not anymore be the most common interface," he said. "Many of these things will be built directly into our bodies."

He did not specify exactly what he was referring to but some companies, such as Elon Musk's Neuralink, are working on producing electronic devices that can be implanted into the brain and used for communication with machines and other people. On a more basic level, chips can be implanted into people's fingers and used to unlock things.

The exact definition of 6G is currently unclear and the world is only just getting to grips with 5G.

5G refers to next-generation mobile networks that offer super-fast data speeds that promise to support technologies like driverless cars and virtual reality.

Elsewhere, U.S. tech giants such as Meta, Google and Microsoft are working on new augmented reality headsets that could one day replace the smartphone.

Speaking on the same panel, Google CFO Ruth Porat said: "We believe that one of the big advantages of augmented reality is actually solving problems here on Earth."

"It will be things like having glasses and being able to translate as you speak with glasses," she added. "Those are very close."

Google previously launched an AR headset called Google Glass but ultimately pulled it after the device failed to gain traction.

The tech leaders also discussed the opportunities and challenges that the metaverse presents.

By 2030, Lundmark said he believes there will be a "digital twin of everything" that will require "massive computational resources."

In order to transmit all the computers bits that the metaverse will require, networks will need to be at least 100 times or even 1,000 times faster than they are today, Lundmark said.

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Nokia CEO says 6G will be here by 2030 but you might not access it via your smartphone - CNBC

A group of US senators led by Ed Markey of Massachusetts is calling on Apple and Google to implement new app store policies that prohibit developers from collecting data that would threaten women seeking abortions. In separate letters sent to the CEOs of both companies, the group said the two tech giants must act to protect individuals exercising their right to choose from groups that would target them for their decision.

Following the leak of the Supreme Courts draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, we are concerned that anti-abortion prosecutors and other actors will attempt to access and leverage personal information including data regarding location, online activity, health, and biometrics in ways that threaten the wellbeing of those exercising their right to choose, the letter addressed to Google CEO Sundar Pichai states.

Pointing to the prevalence of online platforms selling user information to data brokers, the group warns that abortion prosecutors and even vigilantes could exploit those practices to intimidate women who seek abortions or harass them retroactively.

Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont also signed the letters. The letters follow a separate call from Congressional Democrats that came earlier in the week urging Google to stop collecting location data over many of the same concerns. The idea that various groups, including law enforcement agencies, could weaponize app data isnt an imagined threat. A recent report from Georgetown Laws Center on Privacy and Technology found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has built up a mass surveillance system that includes information about almost all US residents, and it did so partly by purchasing data from private companies. The senators asked Pichai and Tim Cook to respond to the letters by June 17th.

Link:

Senators ask Apple and Google to prohibit data collection that targets abortion seekers - Yahoo Finance

The Chinese government has announced that it will again allow "platform companies" Beijing's term for tech giants to list on overseas stock markets, marking a loosening of restrictions on the sector.

"Platform companies will be encouraged to list on domestic and overseas markets in accordance with laws and regulations," announced premier Li Keqiang at an executive meeting of China's State Council a body akin to cabinet in the USA or parliamentary democracies.

The statement comes a week after vice premier Liu He advocated technology and government cooperation and a digital economy that supports an opening to "the outside world" to around 100 members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC).

Those initiatives contrast with China's recent actions that reined in its big tech companies, and the ongoing campaign to regulate online activities such as gaming, sharing freewheeling opinions, data storage, and anticompetitive behavior.

Those crackdowns have seen some foreign companies leave China, with Linkedin and Yahoo! choosing to depart the Middle Kingdom.

China's strict COVID-19 lockdowns have seen tech execs warn of wide economic damage, and the announcement that platform companies will be allowed to list overseas was made as part of a larger set of initiatives aimed at stimulating the domestic economy.

But for some Chinese tech companies that sought to list abroad, this change could be too little, too late.

Just days after Chinese Uber analog DiDi Chuxing floated on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Beijing's regulators launched an investigation into its data protection policies.

Chinese regulators were specifically concerned about the app's ability to collect personal information in violation of PRC laws and regulations. They promptly removed the app from local app stores, along with 25 others, citing national security concerns.

Regulators then pressured the company to delist from NYSE and list in Hong Kong instead, which it dutifully announced it would do, having been beaten down by the China app store removal and a US Securities and Exchange Commission investigation.

On Monday, the company announced it had advised the NYSE to proceed with its delisting following a shareholder vote. Shares are expected to be delisted in June.

Read more:

Beijing reverses ban on tech companies listing offshore - The Register

WASHINGTON, May 16, 2022 A representative from a growing conservative social media platform said last week that she hopes Twitter, under new leadership, will emerge as a sustainable platform for free speech.

Amy Peikoff, chief policy officer of social media platform Parler, said as much during a Broadband Breakfast Live Online event Wednesday, in which she wondered about the implications of platforms banning accounts for views deemed controversial.

The social media world has been captivated by the lingering possibility that SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk could buy Twitter, which the billionaire has criticized for making decisions he said infringe on free speech.

Before Musks decision to go in on the company, Parler saw a surge in member sign-ups after former President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter for comments he made that the platform saw as encouraging the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, a move Peikoff criticized. (Trump also criticized the move.)

Peikoff said she believes Twitter should be a free speech platform just like Parler and hopes for sustainable change with Musks promise.

At Parler, we expect you to think for yourself and curate your own feed, Peikoff told Broadband Breakfast Editor and Publisher Drew Clark. The difference between Twitter and Parler is that on Parler the content is controlled by individuals; Twitter takes it upon itself to moderate by itself.

She recommended tools in the hands of the individual users to reward productive discourse and exercise freedom of association.

Peikoff criticized Twitter for permanently banning Donald Trump following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, and recounted the struggle Parler had in obtaining access to hosting services on AWS, Amazons web services platform.

While she defended the role of Section 230 of the Telecom Act for Parler and others, Peikoff criticized what she described as Twitters collusion with the government. Section 230 provides immunity from civil suits for comments posted by others on a social media network.

For example, Peikoff cited a July 2021 statement by former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki raising concerns with misinformation on social media. When Twitter takes action to stifle anti-vaccination speech at the behest of the White House, that crosses the line into a form of censorship by social media giants that is, in effect, a form of state action.

Conservatives censored by Twitter or other social media networks that are undertaking such state action are wrongfully being deprived of their First Amendment rights, she said.

I would not like to see more of this entanglement of government and platforms going forward, she said Peikoff and instead to leave human beings free to information and speech.

Screenshot of Drew Clark and Amy Peikoff during Wednesdays Broadband Breakfasts Online Event

OurBroadband Breakfast Live Online events take place on Wednesday at 12 Noon ET.Watch the event on Broadband Breakfast, orREGISTERHERE to join the conversation.

Wednesday, May 11, 2022, 12 Noon ET Mr. Musk Goes to Washington: Will Twitters New Owner Change the Debate About Social Media?

The acquisition of social media powerhouse Twitter by Elon Musk, the worlds richest man, raises a host of issues about social media, free speech, and the power of persuasion in our digital age. Twitter already serves as the worlds de facto public square. But it hasnt been without controversy, including the platforms decision to ban former President Donald Trump in the wake of his tweets during the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Under new management, will Twitter become more hospitable to Trump and his allies? Does Twitter have a free speech problem? How will Mr. Musks acquisition change the debate about social media and Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act?

Guests for this Broadband Breakfast for Lunch session:

Amy Peikoff is the Chief Policy Officer of Parler. After completing her Ph.D., she taught at universities (University of Texas, Austin, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, United States Air Force Academy) and law schools (Chapman, Southwestern), publishing frequently cited academic articles on privacy law, as well as op-eds in leading newspapers across the country on a range of issues. Just prior to joining Parler, she founded and was President of the Center for the Legalization of Privacy, which submitted an amicus brief in United States v. Facebook in 2019.

Drew Clarkis the Editor and Publisher ofBroadbandBreakfast.com and a nationally-respected telecommunications attorney. Drew brings experts and practitioners together to advance the benefits provided by broadband. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, he served as head of a State Broadband Initiative, the Partnership for a Connected Illinois. He is also the President of the Rural Telecommunications Congress.

WATCH HERE, or onYouTube,TwitterandFacebook.

As with all Broadband Breakfast Live Online events, the FREE webcasts will take place at 12 Noon ET on Wednesday.

SUBSCRIBE to the Broadband Breakfast YouTubechannel. That way, you will be notified when events go live. Watch onYouTube,TwitterandFacebook.

See a complete list ofupcoming and past Broadband Breakfast Live Onlineevents.

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Big Tech Reforms Need Review of Cybersecurity to Ensure Capabilities Will Not Be Diminished, Event Hears - BroadbandBreakfast.com

Apple staff wearing masks welcome customers at the opening of a new store in Wuhan, Chinas Hubei province. Ren Yong/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

American tech giants operating in China are hurting badly as the countrys Covid lockdown drags on. Some companies, including Apple, are accelerating their relocation of key production out of China, while others are hesitant aboutgiving up a deeply embedded supply chain that took years to build.

Apple has told some of its suppliers to expand production outside of China in countries like India and Vietnam, according to the Wall Street Journal. Anticipating the ongoing Covid lockdown in China to hinder its global sales by up to $8 billion in the current quarter, Apple has already begun manufacturing some popular products, including the latest generation of iPhones, in India.

Diversifying supply chains will take time, however, as China accounts for more than 90 percent of Apples global manufacturing, according to Counterpoint Research, a Hong Kong-based consumer electronics analysis firm. About half of Apples top 200 suppliers operate in Shanghai, a city that has been locked down for nearly two months.

Other tech giants have yet to announce plans to exit China, despite suffering heavy damages from the lockdown.

Telecom equipment maker Cisco, which has a research and development center in Shanghai, took a $300 million hit directly related to Chinas Covid policies in its most recent fiscal quarter, the company said last week.

Ciscos Shanghai facility sources components from local partners. Its supply was completely cut off during the lockdown,Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins explained during a call with investors last week.

Companies that havent reported April financial data are cutting revenue forecasts. In late April, Texas Instruments, which supplies semiconductors to auto factories and tech companies in China, slashed its 2022 revenue forecast by 10 percent as it expects lockdown impact to last.

Microsoft, which also reported first-quarter earnings in late April, warned that extended shutdowns into May would hurt the manufacturing of its Surface computer and Xbox gaming console.

The Chinese government has told foreign businesses Shanghai will begin to reopen June 1. But given the citys chaotic enforcement of Covid policies over the past two months, executives dont expect things to return to normal overnight.

We dont know exactly what that means, Cisco CEO Robbins said of Shanghais reopening timeline last week. When they open up and allow transportation logistics to start up, we believe theres going to be a high degree of congestion.

Most U.S.companies with manufacturing facilities in China also have large customer bases in the country. Extended lockdowns have already hurt consumer confidence and it may never fully recover, according to a recent survey by Ming-chi Kuo, a consumer tech analyst at TF International Securities known for his analysis of Apple.

Demand is disappearing, not deferred, Kuo said in a series of tweets on May21. Currently [there are] no signs that negative trends for consumer electronics demand will improve.

Apples gradual exit from China may influence more Western companies to follow suit. But for now, most foreign companies arent ready to cut ties with China.

Among European companies, 77 percent dont have plans to shift existing or future investments out of China, according to a survey in late April by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China. An earlier survey of American businesses in China found similar trends.

Companies dont want to quit the market, but they dont know what to do, Nick Marro, a Hong Kong-based trade analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told CNBC last week.Foreign companies are going to be upset about [zero-Covid] policies, but at the end of the day theres not many companies that are going to jeopardize their position in a decades-long market based on a temporary shock.

See the original post here:

Western Companies Really Dont Know What To Do in China as the Covid Lockdown Drags On - Observer

In a new court filing, Epic Games challenges Apples position that third-party app stores would compromise the iPhones security. And it points to Apples macOS as an example of how the process of sideloading apps installing apps outside of Apples own App Store, that is doesnt have to be the threat Apple describes it to be. Apples Mac, explains Epic, doesnt have the same constraints as found in the iPhone operating system, iOS, and yet Apple touts the operating system used in Mac computers, macOS, as secure.

The Cary, N.C.-based Fortnite maker made these points in its latest brief, among several others, related to its ongoing legal battle with Apple over its control of the App Store.

Epic Games wants to earn the right to deliver Fortnite to iPhone users outside the App Store, or at the very least, be able to use its own payment processing system so it can stop paying Apple commissions for the ability to deliver its software to iPhone users.

A California judge ruled last September in the Epic Games v. Apple district court case that Apple did not have a monopoly in the relevant market digital mobile gaming transactions. But the court decided Apple could not prohibit developers from adding links for alternative payments inside their apps that pointed to other ways to pay outside of Apples own App Store-based monetization system. While Apple largely touted the ruling as a victory, both sides appealed the decision as Epic Games wanted another shot at winning the right to distribute apps via its own games store, and Apple didnt want to allow developers to be able to suggest other ways for their users to pay.

On Wednesday, Epic filed its Appeal Reply and Cross-Appeal Response Brief, following Apples appeal of the district courts ruling.

The game maker states in the new filing that the lower court was led astry on many points by Apple, and reached the wrong conclusions. Many of its suggestions relate to how the district court interpreted the law. It also newly points to the important allies Epic now has on its side Microsoft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the attorneys general of 34 states and the District of Columbia, all of who have filed briefs supporting Epics case with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

However, one of Epics larger points has to do with the Macs security model and how it differs from the iPhone. Epic says that if Apple can allow sideloading on Mac devices and still call those computers secure, then surely it could do the same for iPhone.

For macOS Apple relies on security measures imposed by the operating system rather than the app store, and notarization program that scans apps and then returns them to the developer for distribution, Epics new filing states. It says the lower court even agreed that Apples witness on the subject (Head of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi) was stretching the truth when he had disparaged macOS as having a malware problem.

Epic then points to examples of Apples own marketing of its Mac computers security, where it touts apps from both the App Store and the internet can be installed worry-free.

Apple has argued against shifting to this same model for iPhone as it would require redesigning how its software works, among other things, including what it says would be reduced security for end users.

As app store legislation targeting tech giants has continued to move forward in Congress, Apple has been raising the alarm about being forced to open up the iPhone to third-party app stores, as the bipartisan Open App Markets Act and other international regulations would require. Apple said that mandating sideloading doesnt comply with its pro-consumer privacy protections.

In a paper Apple published to further detail this issue, it stated that permitting sideloading could risk users most sensitive and private information.

Supporting sideloading through direct downloads and third-party app stores would cripple the privacy and security protections that have made iPhone so secure, and expose users to serious security risks, the paper read. Apple also pointed to Googles Android operating system as an example of that risk, noting that, over the past four years, Android devices were found to have 15 to 47 times more malware infections than iPhone.

Timed with the release of the new filing, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney was interviewed by the Financial Times where he continued to berate Apple for its alleged anti-competitive behavior. Sweeney said that even if Apple fairly won the hardware market, it shouldnt be allowed to use that position to gain an unfair advantage over competitors and other markets, like software.

They should have to compete fairly against the Epic game store, and the Steam Store, and lets assume the Microsoft Store, and the many other stores that will emerge as they do with any other market in the world, except for digital app stores, Sweeney said.

Epics Response and Reply Brief by TechCrunch on Scribd

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Epic Games points to Macs openness and security in its latest filing in App Store antitrust case - TechCrunch