Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 02/18 - Apple's Coronavirus Warning

Episode Date: February 18, 2020

The Coronavirus crisis forces Apple to miss their already cautious revenue guidance. Wait. Is the Galaxy Z Flip using real glass or not? Qualcomm claps back at Apple with its next gen 5G modem. And Jeff Bezos plans to donate $10 billion dollars to combat climate change. Sponsors: Metalab.co Capterra.com/ride Links: Investor update on quarterly guidance (Apple Newsroom) APPLE WARNS THAT CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK IN CHINA WILL AFFECT REVENUE THIS QUARTER (Daring Fireball) Forget foldable: These leaked images show a phone concept with a slide-out screen (CNET) Galaxy Z Flip durability test calls Samsung’s Ultra Thin ‘Glass’ into question (The Verge) Qualcomm's New 3rd Generation 5G Modem (AnAndTech) Microsoft's new all-in-one Office app is now available for all, but tablets aren't supported (Android Police) Pay Up, Or We’ll Make Google Ban Your Ads (Krebs on Security) Jeff Bezos commits $10 billion to fight climate change (The Verge) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme ride home for Tuesday, February 18th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. The coronavirus crisis forces Apple to miss their already cautious revenue guidance.

Wait, is the Galaxy Z-Flipp using real glass or not? Qualcomm claps back at Apple with its next-gen-gen-modem, and Jeff Bezos plans to donate $10 billion to combat climate change. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. It's looking like the economic impact of the coronavirus is here. not that anybody thought we could avoid any impact whatsoever, but this news is pretty tangible. Apple says it does not expect to meet revenue guidance for its March quarter due to constrained iPhone supply and low demand due to store closures in China. Yes, all due to the coronavirus crisis.

Specifically, Apple wrote this, quote, Our quarterly guidance issued January 28th reflected the best information available at the time as well, as our best estimates about the pace of return to work following the end of the extended Chinese New Year holiday on February 10th. Work is starting to resume around the country, but we are experiencing a slower return to normal conditions than we had anticipated. As a result, we do not expect to meet the revenue guidance we provided for the March quarter due to two main factors. The first is that worldwide iPhone supply will be temporarily constrained, While our iPhone manufacturing partner sites are located outside the Hubei province, and while all of these facilities have reopened, they are ramping up more slowly than we had anticipated.

The health and well-being of every person who helps make these products possible is our paramount priority, and we are working in close consultation with our suppliers and public health experts as this ramp-up continues. These iPhone supply shortages will temporarily affect revenues worldwide. The second is that demand for our products within China has been affected. All of our stores in China and many of our partner stores have been closed. Additionally, stores that are open have been operating at reduced hours and with very low customer traffic. We are gradually reopening our retail stores and will continue to do so as steadily and safely as we can. Our corporate offices and contact centers in China are open and our online stores have remained open throughout. Outside of China, customer demand across our product and service

categories has been strong to date and in line with our expectations, end quote. So this is basically what was feared. Supply chain in China has been affected, and that will lead to shortages globally for some period of time. Consumers in China are literally in lockdown, so are unable or not in the mood to buy new iPhones. But it is worth noting two things that we should remember. Number one, Apple had already issued a wider range of guidance for the March quarter than it usually does, anticipating some sort of coronavirus hit, even though. And then they are now saying that they do not expect to hit even that generously cautious guidance,

which is not good. And then what happens if the coronavirus crisis worsens or continues as is for longer than anticipated? Dot, dot, dot. And the second thing to remember is tech companies are what percentage of S&P earnings at this point? If Apple and tech overall represent the canaries in the earnings coal mine, what does this mean for the broader market? how long until everybody's earnings are affected. The market opened down this morning, but not overly so, maybe half a percentage point, and Apple's stock opened down around 2.6%, which again is not too bad,

but back to Apple specifically for a second for a specific point. John Gruber noted this, quote, The other factor I've been thinking about is how this outbreak may be affecting the development of future Apple products. Apple's guidance here is solely about quarterly revenue for this January, March quarter. But Apple employees need to travel to China every day. Remember a year ago, when United Airlines accidentally leaked that Apple was their biggest client, spending $150 million a year, including 50 business class seats to China every day? Those Apple employees who travel to China aren't doing so for kicks. They have work to do there. Suppliers to meet, parts and prototypes

and assembly lines to inspect. The final products are all stamped designed by Apple in California. assembled in China, but the connection between these two statements is not conducted remotely. It involves a lot of Apple's own employees traveling to China. If that travel has been curtailed by this outbreak, it's a problem, but a problem that has nothing to do with the next few weeks, end quote. Indeed, it won't take many more weeks of the current situation, remaining status quo, before quarterly earnings warnings might translate to full year earnings warnings. On the countervailing, Good News Side this morning Mark German and the gang over at Bloomberg were reporting that the iPhone SE2 launch is still reportedly on track for March. And the updated iPad Pro models we're

expecting with a new camera system are also still expected in the first half of 2020. But at the same time, I saw a trend force analysis of the effects of the coronavirus on the tech industry more broadly, and that predicted a 12% decline in smartphone production this quarter. Then again, the same report also said that next-gen game consoles should be unaffected. So everything's really up in the air at the moment. I might have spoken too soon about glass on foldable phones being more durable and thus maybe making foldable phones a consumer reality now that we're moving away from plastic tests of Samsung's galaxy Z flip and its much-touted ultra-thin glass display show that the durability of the Z-flip display might be on par with the previous plastic screens and not in a

good way. In other words, the Z-flip appears to scratch easily. Zach Nelson got his hands on a Z-flip for one of his famous Jerry Rig Everything tests, and, well, quoting the verge, the Z-Flipps display starts showing permanent marks and scratches far earlier than actual glass would. Part of the tried and true Jerry-Rig-Everything test is putting phones through a gauntlet of hardness picks to test when the display glass starts showing damage. If you've watched Zach's videos before, you've likely heard that modern smartphones have scratch is starting at level six with deeper grooves at level seven. The Z-flip starts picking up damage at level two and more significantly at three,

which is on par with the plastic screens of the Galaxy Fold and the more recent Motorola Razor. Quote, this screen is in no way scratch-resistant whatsoever, Nelson says, near the end of the video. At the end of the clip, he begins poking holes in the screen that make the OLED panel go on the fritz. But there's no sign of any glass fracturing, end quote. Actually, let me play you these two sections from it. For kicks and giggles, we can bump it up to a level four, and I could physically feel the tip of the pick, start to cut the display surface open.

So why in the world would Samsung talk about flexible glass so much on their website, and at the launch of it? It could be that they are using a hybrid plastic polymer, with little specks of glass ingredients inside, and then just, you know, calling it glass. Samsung is calling this glass, but this display clearly doesn't have the scratch resistance or structural benefits that customers are expecting from glass.

If glass isn't glass, then truth doesn't matter. And truth should matter. This isn't American politics. Samsung is currently the number one smartphone manufacturer in the world, and we shouldn't be calling this screen glass when clearly my fingernail is leaving marks on the surface. Over and over. I'm not sure what Samsung's thinking over there,

but we clearly have scratches at levels 2, 3, 4, and fingernails. So is this glass? Samsung swore up and down that it is. Just remember it's ultra thin. I guess we'll have to wait for the teardowns to find out, but until then, click through for the video to see what I'm talking about. Okay, so maybe the dream of a foldable phone is still on the horizon. But if so, then how about this?

Could I interest you in a phone with a slide-out screen? leaked photos from TCL suggest just that. A phone with an extendable screen that you could then slide out to turn your device into a full-sized tablet, quoting CNET. It's a design I've never seen before, and that makes the concept exciting. According to our trusted source, this expandable phone is a device journalist would have seen at Mobile World Congress this month. The world's largest mobile show was canceled in response to health concerns regarding the global spread of coronavirus. TCL did not respond to a request for comment, but, pouring over the photos, the design of this TCL concept phone appears to use one continuous display with curved screens on either side. Between the center of the phone and the dual front-facing camera along the right side, there's a break in the chassis where you can pull the two sides apart to expose the surplus screen.

It would be much like sliding back the sides of your dining room table to add a leaf that seats more guests, end quote. The concept design does look like it's based on the TCL10 Pro, which if you haven't seen one of those looks a lot like a Galaxy S-10. The question is, how flush together would the two sides of the screen be when you slide them out? Forget about a crease. What if you had like a ridge or a visible gap running down the middle of your tablet form factor screen? How tenable would that be? But yeah, without folding, you could clearly stick. to glass, right? Remember the story about Apple not being too pleased with Qualcomm's 5G modem chips and thus perhaps doubling down on designing 5G chips of its own, at least the antenna? Well,

funny, isn't it, that this story popped up this morning. Qualcomm has unveiled the Snapdragon X60 5G modem built on a 5-nometer process, offering up to 7.5GbPS download, and and three GPS upload speeds from Anantec, quote, the fact that Qualcomm is outright saying that their modem is going to be built on five nanometers at this point of the game is very interesting, especially given TSM's recent disclosures on the capability of its five nanometer process and its current timeline of development. With the Snapdragon X60, Qualcomm is promoting support for more features of 5G,

such as carrier aggregation between sub-6 gigahertz bands in FDD-D-Slas T-T similar to LTE carrier aggregation and support for simultaneous carrier aggregation between sub-6 gigahertz and millimeter wave 5G bands. This leads to big jumps in peak bandwidth support with Qualcomm listing up to 7.5 GBPS download over millimeter wave, 3GBPS download, and up to 5GPS download over sub-6 gigahertz. These peak speeds with the X60 modem is going to be achieved through new millimeter wave antenna modules. For the X50-X-55, Qualcomm introduced its QTM-525 module for millimeter wave in a slim packaging to help enable the technology.

Despite the sleek stature, the X-50 and X-55 modems supported four of these modules, and Qualcomm recommended a minimum of three, the replacement of which did require these devices to be of a specific minimum thickness to ensure complete coverage. The new QTM 535 module is promoted to be thinner, reducing that requirement, end quote. Microsoft's All-in-One Office app for Android is now generally available, after it was released as a public preview back in November, and then taken private again for more testing.

But downloader beware because the app seems to lack support for tablets and Chromebooks, which, all right, Android tablets are notoriously struggling for market share, But at the same time, between tablets and especially Chromebooks, those are the devices you'd be super likely to want to do real office-like work on, right? Quoting Android police. The new office application allows you to browse your OneDrive files and edit any Word, PowerPoint, or Excel documents without opening any separate tools. It also synchronizes with the Windows 10 Notes application

and includes a variation of the Office lens scanner. Finally, there's a QR code reader, in case you need one of the Windows. those for whatever reason. Unfortunately, though, there's one major caveat to this new office app. There is no support for tablets or Chromebooks whatsoever. While the existing Word, PowerPoint, and Excel apps work very well on large screen devices, including Chromebooks, the new app is locked to portrait mode and has no tablet-specific UI, end quote. When Android police reached out to Microsoft to find out what's up with this, the company said it had nothing to share at this time. An extortion scam is allegedly threatening website operators with junk ad clicks that are designed

to trigger Google's fraud detection systems and thus get the targeted website to face ad throttling by Google or even a full-on ad sense account ban. The alleged extortion arrives in an email and demands Bitcoin in exchange for not bombarding the publisher's ads with bot traffic. The email reads, very soon the warning notice. From above will appear at the dashboard of your AdSense account, undoubtedly. This will happen due to the fact that we are about to flood your site with huge amount of direct bot-generated web traffic with 100% bounce ratio and thousands of IPs and rotation. A nightmare for every AdSense publisher.

More also will adjust our sophisticated bots to open in endless cycle with different time duration, every AdSense banner which runs on your site, end quote. The message goes on to warn that while the targeted sites' ad revenue will be briefly increased, quote, AdSense traffic assessment algorithms will detect very fast such a web traffic pattern as fraudulent, end quote. Quoting now from Krebs on security, the message demands $5,000 worth of Bitcoin to forestall the attack. In this scam, the extortionists are likely betting that some publishers may see paying up as a cheaper alternative to having their main source of advertising revenue evaporate. The reader who shared this email said, while he considered the message likely to be a baseless threat, a review of his recent AdSense traffic statistics

showed that detections in his AdSense invalid traffic report from the past month had increased substantially. The reader who asked not to be identified in this story also pointed to articles about a recent AdSense crackdown in which Google announced it was enhancing its defenses by improving the systems that identify potentially invalid traffic or high-risk activities before ads are served. Google defines invalid traffic as, quote, clicks or impressions generated by publishers clicking their own live ads, as well as automated clicking tools or traffic sources, end quote.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced yesterday that he is launching the Bezos Earth Fund to fight climate change, and he is committing $10 billion just to get things rolling, the first grants from which will be issued this summer. quoting Bezos's Instagram post, where he featured a photo of the Earth. Quote, climate change is the biggest threat to our planet. I want to work alongside others, both to amplify known ways and to explore new ways of fighting the devastating impact of climate change on this planet we all share. This global initiative will fund scientists, activists, NGOs, any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world. We can save Earth.

It's going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organizations, and individuals, end quote. Quoting Axios. That $10 billion comes from Bezos's personal money, and none of the funds will be used in for-profit enterprises, investing in private companies or startups, a person familiar with the fund told Axios, end quote. Now, there was an absolute ton of snark about this on Twitter overnight. Yes, Amazon as a company contributes around the same amount of carbon emissions as a large power-generating company. And yes, Amazon allegedly didn't want their employees agitating for climate activism, though one wonders if maybe their activism did lead to this announcement. And something something, yes, Amazon does a lot of work with oil and gas producing companies. And yes, Bezos is pledging this amount of money is the equivalent of.

of the average American who has, again, on average, $97,000 in net worth pledging around $7,000 of that or something. But, you know, who has $7,000 lying around just to donate? I know I don't. And also, what's the alternative? You'd prefer it if the billionaires just did nothing? I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm all for being skeptical, and I'm certainly hoping that the money Bezos is spending is spent wisely, and that this isn't just a PR move to get better PR.

But I don't know. I can't find it within myself to be downright cynical about this news. Good for him. That's all for today. Please listen again to a different read of the classified ad from yesterday. I really do want to help this guy find his perfect co-founder. Talk to you tomorrow. Are you a visionary data scientist?

Are you interested in joining a startup at the co-founder level. It would help if you're nutrition focused and a health conscious person yourself. Well, a great new startup still operating in stealth mode is looking for you. If you're the right candidate, you will be able to lead the development of proprietary machine learning, optimization algorithms, natural language processing, and elastic search, and build a scalable and modern database with as many as half a billion, that's billion with a B, data points. Moreover, you will be able to help bootstrap the company, develop a POC, and raise capital to take it to the next level. As the co-founder, you would receive substantial equity in the company rather than being hired on as a regular employee on payroll.

If you think you are the one, email co-founders at iCloud.com. That's C-O-F-O-U-N-D-E-R-S at iCloud.com.