Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 09/22 – Quibi Is “Exploring Options”

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Quibi is exploring its options, as they say. The Google Antitrust suit could come next week. Why do you have to return the entire Apple Watch if your wristband doesn’t fit? The CIA has a new plan to compete with Silicon Valley for talent. The SEC and OCC sign off on stablecoins. And the strategy behind Microsoft’s big play for Bethesda. Sponsors: Amazon.com/techmeme PayPal App Links: Quibi Explores Strategic Options Including Possible Sale (WSJ) Justice Department expected to brief state attorneys general this week on imminent Google antitrust lawsuit (Washington Post) PSA: New Apple Watch Owners Have to Return Entire Device for Ill-Fitting Solo Loop or Braided Solo Loop (MacRumors) A $50 Phone is Ambani's Weapon to Dominate India Telecom Market (Bloomberg) SEC, OCC Issue First Regulatory Clarifications for Stablecoins (CoinDesk) CIA’s new tech recruiting pitch: More patents, more profits (MIT Technology Review) You can now stream your Xbox One games to your Android phone for free (The Verge) Microsoft to Buy Bethesda for $7.5 Billion to Boost Xbox (Bloomberg) Microsoft to acquire Elder Scrolls, Fallout, other hit games in $7.5B deal for Bethesda Softworks parent (GeekWire) Watch a demo of Royole’s new folding phone, on sale today for roughly $1,500 (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 right home for Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Quibi is exploring its options, as they say. The Google antitrust suit could come as early as next week. Why do you have to return the entire Apple Watch if your wristband doesn't fit? The CIA has a new plan to compete with Silicon Valley for talent, the SEC and OCC sign off on stable coins, and the strategy behind Microsoft's big play for Bethesda. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Got a lead with this, don't I? Sources are telling the Wall Street Journal that Quibi is exploring several strategic options,

including a possible sale, raising another round of funding, or going public through a merger with a SPAC. Quote, Quibi is working with advisors to review its options. The review process is a sign of strain. Quibi has struggled to meet its subscriber targets after making its debut in the throes of the coronavirus crisis. The company is on pace to miss its announcement. initial paid subscriber target by a large margin, according to a person familiar with the matter. Quibi is also facing a patent lawsuit, backed by a deep-pocketed foe, and has disappointed advertisers with its lower-than-expected viewership, end quote. Yeah, did we talk about this? I don't remember.

Quibi is being sued by interactive video company Echo, which says that that turnstile technology of quibbies where, depending on how you hold the phone, switching from landscape to portrait, the video you're watching shifts in a pleasing way. Echo says that that's their tech and their litigation is being funded by hedge fund Elliott Management and billionaire Paul Singer. It would be ironic if Quibi was sunk by the one thing that they did that was actually innovative, although I guess that's what's being litigated if it actually was innovative. Most people think that Quibi does have money in the bank for at least several months of runway, but if a lawsuit looks like it won't go their way, As you can imagine a ton of snark was on the internet around this, like Zach Kukoff tweeted, quote,

No, you can't just sell worthless assets to retail investors through a SPAC. Quibi, ha ha ha, greater fool theory goes burr. And Amul Sharma tweeted, a not insane idea, actually, quote, What if Quibi became the premium tier of TikTok? I am only sort of kidding, end quote. leaving this here as a placeholder, so you'll be ITK, if it actually does come to pass. Sources are telling the Washington Post that the Department of Justice is briefing state attorneys general tomorrow about its plan to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google,

a case which it might file and announce as early as next week. Quote, the department had been eyeing a September lawsuit against Google. U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr this summer sought to speed up the agency's work, overruling dozens of federal agents who said they needed additional time before they could file a case against Google, the Washington Post previously reported. State Attorney General, meanwhile, embarked on their own bipartisan probe last summer, an inquiry led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. That, too, has broadened considerably since Democratic and Republican state leaders announced their intentions from the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington. It remains unclear which states may ultimately join the Justice Department in any lawsuit at files in the coming days, or whether they could file their own additional complaints.

Some Democratic attorneys general have also signaled they may want to wait until after the 2020 presidential election before deciding their next steps, end quote. You know how the Apple Watch got those cool new wristbands with the new Apple Watchers, the ones that don't have a clasp, you just sort of stretch them onto your wrist? You would think that sizing those correctly would probably be doubly important, and it turns out you would be right. but here's a wrinkle. Customers who chose the solo loop or braided solo loop with a new Apple Watch 6 or Apple Watch

SE, if the loop turns out not to be the right size if it doesn't fit properly, those customers might have to return the entire Apple Watch, the whole kit and caboodle, just to get a new band with the proper size. Quoting Mac rumors. Unfortunately, there are limited supplies of the new Apple Watch Series 6 models and the new bands, so customers forced to make a return are now having to wait from late October to late November for a new Apple Watch depending on the model chosen. There are complaints about Apple's return policy for the Apple Watch bands on Twitter and a long discussion of the solo loop and braided solo loop

bands on the Mac Rumors forums. Apple Watch models that are not fitting properly must be returned in full and Apple's online support staff has been offering no alternative. Because these bands are not adjustable. Apple sells each one in nine different sizes to make sure each person gets a snug fit. To get the right size, Apple offers a printable tool, a PDF, and also measurement comparisons so you can estimate size, but it turns out that sizing isn't always accurate, end quote. On the Reliance Watch, sources are telling Bloomberg that Reliance is in talks with Indian manufacturers to develop a phone that will retail in the neighborhood of $54 U.S. Of course, it will not be sold in the U.S. This is targeting the Indian market, and it will

run Android, and Reliance is aiming for sales in India of around 200 million units in the next two years or so. So, number one, more signs of the Reliance strategy to own the Indian market, and number two, shots across the bow to Apple's ambitions in India for the iPhone, but especially a shot across the bow to Xiaomi's smartphone ambitions there as well. India's most valuable company is in talks with domestic assemblers to make a version of its geophone that would run on Google's Android and cost about $4,000 rupees, said the people,

asking not to be identified since the plans are private. The inexpensive phones will be marketed with low-cost wireless plans from Reliance Geo, the parent company's carrier, they said. Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani is aiming to remake the country's smartphone industry much like he did in wireless services, where his aggressive prices and simple plans quickly made him the dominant force. The billionaire is also aligning himself with the Indian government's plans to build more domestic manufacturing, a possible boost for local assemblers like Dixon Technologies, India,

Lava International, and Carbon Mobiles. Reliance in July struck a broad alliance with Google, in which the alphabet unit would invest $4.5 billion and cooperate on technology initiatives. The partnership is still under regulatory review, so Reliance is for, proceeding with the mobile phone initiative on its own for now, end quote. But nonetheless, that piece of the puzzle involving the Google investment in reliance now makes a ton of sense, obviously. For the first time ever, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of Currency have issued detailed guidance on cryptocurrencies backed by fiat currency, saying national banks can provide services to such stablecoin issuers in the U.S.

U.S., quoting CoinDesk. Stablecoin issuers have been using U.S. banks for years, but in an unclear regulatory environment. Now the OCC wants federally regulated banks to feel comfortable providing services to stable coin issuers, it said, in a press release. An accompanying interpretive letter signed by Senior Deputy Comptroller Jonathan Gould explained that while bankers should conduct due diligence and ensure they assess the risks of banking any stablecoin issues, stable coins are becoming increasingly popular. The letter specifies it refers to stablecoins backed on a one-to-one basis by fiat currencies.

Quote, national banks and federal savings associations currently engage in stablecoin-related activities involving billions of dollars each day. This opinion provides greater regulatory certainty for banks within the federal banking system to provide those client services in a safe and sound manner, acting comptroller of the currency Brian Brooks said in a statement, end quote. The Central Intelligence Agency has announced CIA Labs, a skunk works operation that will let its officers profit from their inventions in fields like AI, data analytics, and quantum computing, quoting MIT Technology Review. The CIA has long been a place cutting edge technology is research, developed, and realized, and it wants to lead in fields like artificial intelligence and biotechnology. However, recruiting and retaining the talent capable of building these tools is a challenge on men. levels, especially since a spy agency can't match Silicon Valley salaries, reputations, and patents.

The agency's solution is CIA Labs, a new skunkworks that will attempt to recruit and retain technical talent by offering incentives to those who work there. Under the new initiative announced today, CIA officers will be able for the first time to publicly file patents on the intellectual property they work on and collect a portion of the profits. The agency will take the rest of the balance. Don Merriks, who heads the agency's science and technology directorate, says the best case scenario is that the agency's research and development could end up paying for itself. It's not the first time the agency has worked to commercialize technology it helped develop. The agency already sponsors its own venture capital firm in QTEL, which has banked companies including Keyhole, the core technology that now makes up Google Earth.

Merrick says the CIA maintains relationships with a variety of other venture capitalists with the same goal. It also works closely with other arms of government like the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects activity to do basic and expensive research where the private sector and academia often don't deliver the goods. What CIA Labs aims to do differently is focus inward to attract and then keep more scientists and engineers and become a research partner to academia and industry, end quote. Microsoft has released an overhauled Xbox app for Android into beta. that includes the ability to remotely play Xbox games streamed directly from your console, quoting the Verge. The Xbox Remote Play feature, known previously as console streaming, lets you remotely connect to an Xbox One console and play games you've already downloaded to it. This is different from Microsoft's XCloud service, as anyone with an Android phone can now stream all of their games directly from their own Xbox One console. XCloud currently only works with Xbox GamePass Ultimate titles, and games are streamed from.

from Microsoft's cloud servers instead, end quote. But since we're on Microsoft and games, Microsoft has also come out and said that it does intend to honor Bethesda's currently announced PS5 exclusives. However, it will assess bringing future games to other consoles on a, quote, case-by-case basis, quoting Bloomberg. Nadella said Microsoft may consider releasing games on other platforms in the future. Quote, when we think about strategy, whether it's in gaming or any other part of Microsoft. Each layer has to stand on its own for what it brings. When we talk about our content, we want our content to be broadly available, end quote. Which sounds to me like, yeah, we'll say we'll work with anybody in the future, but in reality, down the road, we'll see. Because, you know,

this is all about exclusives. In a streaming gaming world, things will start to look a lot like they do in the streaming video world. You'll subscribe to the service that has the games you want, just like you now subscribe to the service that has the shows you want. With the Bethesda acquisition, Microsoft has expanded its game studios from 15 to 23 and added hit Bethesda franchises to Xbox GamePass already. This is a long-term strategic play and it is all about exclusives, quoting Geekwire. In a research note Monday, wed bush analyst Daniel Ives wrote, quote, While Microsoft is firmly well entrenched on the cloud front, which is a two-horse race with AWS, its consumer strategy has been on a treadmill as heavily tied to the mature PC Windows environment.

While Xbox and gaming have been successful, Microsoft recognizes its need for consumer-based revenue growth, which we believe this deal will directly help drive along, end quote. Finally today, it sort of got lost in the tides of history, but the first commercially available foldable phone didn't actually come from Samsung. The first foldable was actually the Royal FlexPy. That phone was a bit of a bust, as frankly all the first-gen photables were. But Royale has gone back to the drawing board and refined things a bit with the new FlexPy 2, formerly launching today in China starting at $9,98 yuan, or roughly $1,471 U.S.

The Verge got a hold of a video demo of this device, which you can see in the linked piece in the show notes. And the Verge's take is as follows, quote, It looks fairly sleek at 6.3 millimeters thick when flat, 12.8 millimeters folded. It's not nearly as thin as the dual-screen Microsoft Surface Duo, but it sounds thinner than Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 2 at 6.9 millimeters frame, including camera, and bulging 16.8 millimeters folded hinge. Royal claims its new specially designed hinge has no gap, which apparently is PR-speak for a very small gap of about 1 millimeter or so. That 7.8 inch screen might be a weak spot, though. Royall says nothing about glass, so it's presumably plastic, and at a somewhat lower 1920 by 1440 resolution than its Samsung and dual-screen Microsoft rivals. These days, that's a pretty big screen for that few pixels. And of course, we're talking about a single fully exposed screen that you'll be folding in half with nothing

to speak of on the other side of the phone. The rest of the specs seem fairly competitive, however, a flagship Qualcomm, Snapdragon 865 processor, 8 gigabytes or 12 gigabytes of RAM, 256 gigabytes or 512 gigabytes of storage, a 4450 MAH battery, and 5G support with an array of four cameras.

64 megapixels wide, 16 megapixels ultra-wide, 8 megapixels with three times optical zoom, and a 32 megapixel portrait camera for selfies, though all four cameras are facing you anyhow. There's also a pair of stereo speakers, two SIM card slots,

Wi-Fi 6 and USBC fast-charging, end quote. I think I say this every year, but fall really is the best season in New York City. There's Paris, of course, in the spring, but it's NYC in the fall, believe me. Actually, October is the best month to visit, if you're thinking of doing so. Wait for the leaves to actually start to fall. And despite the fact that we got designated as an anarchy city or something yesterday, I assure you there is very little anarchy outside my window at the moment, unless you count the fight between the strollers and the bicyclists on Prospect Park West. That happens every day gets quite heated.

Talk to you tomorrow.