Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 03/17 – Samsung’s 2nd Unpacked Brings New A-series Phones

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

Samsung’s second Unpacked event of the year brings new midrange phones. But are they really discontinuing the Galaxy Note, and are chip shortages the real reason why? Are reductions in app store fees really what they’re cracked up to be? Has Uber had a change of heart or just an acknowledgement of the inevitable? And the bear case for Clubhouse that everyone is talking about. Sponsors: NewYorker.com/techmeme promocode techmeme Tovala.com/ride Links: Samsung’s midrange phones now feature fast refresh rate screens, stabilized cameras (The Verge) Samsung Warns of Severe Chip Crunch While Delaying Key Phone (Bloomberg) Google cuts app store fees for developers on first million in annual sales (CNBC) Google and Apple are giving up less than 5% of their revenue from apps with payout changes, analytics firm estimates (CNBC) Uber grants UK drivers worker status after losing major labor battle (CNBC) Pinduoduo Founder Colin Huang Steps Down From Company (WSJ) Clubhouse Tweet Thread (ShaanVP) Tampa Twitter hacker agrees to three years in prison (Tampa Bay Times) 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 Tech meme right home for Wednesday, March 17th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Samsung's second unpacked event of the year brings new mid-range phones, but are they really discontinuing the galaxy note and are chip shortages the real reason why? Are reductions in app store

fees really what they're cracked up to be? Has Uber had a change of heart or just an acknowledgement of the inevitable? And the bare case for Clubhouse that everybody's been talking about. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. At its second unpacked event of the year, Samsung updated its mid-range galaxy lineup, quoting The Verge. Samsung officially unveiled three of its next A-series phones, the Galaxy A-52, A-52, 5G, and A-72. While the company isn't sharing U.S. pricing or availability yet, it has confirmed European pricing. $349 for the A-52 or about $415, $429,000 for $429,000 for $1,000. the A52-5G, about $510, and $449 euro for the A72 or about $534.

Key specs across the board include IP67 water and dust resistance, brighter screens with faster refresh rates, and a 64 megapixel main camera with optical image stabilization. All three models include a micro-SD card slot for expandable storage and will ship with a charging brick in the box, features that you won't find. in the S-21 series flagships. Each is built on an unspecified octacore dual 2.3 gigahertz plus hexa, 1.8 gigahertz processor, and will ship with Android 11 and Samsung's 1UI 3.0. Storage variance of 128 gigabytes and 256 gigabytes will be offered for all models

with RAM configurations that will vary by region. Like all recent galaxy phones, these devices are guaranteed at least four years of security updates. The Galaxy A52 and A52 5G will both feature a 6.5 inch super Amel-led screen. As rumored, the A52s display will offer a 90-hertz refresh rate, while the A52 5G will have a 120 hertz screen. Each will feature a rear quad camera array, though one of those four cameras is a 5-mapixel depth sensor. The main 64-mixel camera is accompanied by a 12-magixel ultra-wide, 5-magixel. macro and 32 megapixel selfie cam. The Galaxy A72 offers a slightly larger 6.7 inch super Amelette screen with a 90 hertz refresh rate.

It offers the same basic rear camera array, but includes an 8 megapixel 3X telephoto camera instead of the depth sensor. The A72 is an LTE only model. A 5G version is likely to come, but Samsung hasn't confirmed this, end quote. Meanwhile, sort of confirmation of something that we mentioned. before as a rumor. Samsung says it is considering not launching a new slate of its Galaxy Note phones this year. Now, they say that this is in aid of streamlining its product lineup, but is that the truth, or is the truth really something else we've been talking about lately,

that growing global shortage in semiconductors, quoting Bloomberg. Samsung Electronics warned it's grappling with the fallout from a serious imbalance in semiconductors globally, becoming the largest tech giant to voice concerns about chip shortages spreading beyond the automaking industry. Samsung, one of the world's largest makers of ships and consumer electronics, expects the crunch to pose a problem to its business next quarter, co-chief executive officer Kodong Jin said during an annual shareholders meeting in Seoul. The company is also considering skipping the introduction of a new galaxy note, one of its best-selling models this year, though Coe said that was geared toward streamlining its

lineup. Quote, there's a serious imbalance and supply and demand of chips in the IT sector globally, said Coe, who oversees the company's IT and mobile divisions. Despite the difficult environment, our business leaders are meeting partners overseas to solve these problems. It's hard to say the shortage issue has been solved 100%. End quote. If Samsung is publicly talking about future products, you know that the Silicon Crunch is serious, said Avi Greengart, analyst and founder of consultancy, Techspinential. Coe said Samsung may decide not to introduce its Galaxy Note during 2021 second half, breaking a year's long streak of annual launches for the marquee line. The Note series contributed roughly 5% of Samsung smartphone shipments over the past two years.

IDC estimates, but accounts for a more significant chunk of revenue because it's one of the priceiest in the lineup. Quote, Note series is positioned as a high-end model in in our business portfolio, he said, it could be a burden to unveil two flagship models in a year, so it might be difficult to release note models in the second half of the year. The timing of note model launch can be changed, but we seek to release a note model next year, and quote. I miss covering this yesterday, but Google announced yesterday that beginning July 1st, it will cut. It's cut that it takes from revenue generated in the Play Store to 15% down from the traditional 30% cut. Now, note that this is only on the first $1 million earned by devs per year.

Dollar 1 after that first million dollars, the usual 30% fee kicks in, quoting CNBC. The move follows a similar decision from Apple in December, although Apple's program only applies to developers which make under $1 million per year from Apple's App Store. The change will address some of the developer complaints around app stores and their fees which have come under scrutiny from regulators over their control of smartphone operating systems and the price they charge developers. Google says it will share more details ahead of the program starting on July 1. Google's program offers a fee reduction to 15% on the first $1 million to all developers, even those making millions of dollars. Quote, with this change, 99% of developers globally that sell digital goods

and services with play will see a 50% reduction in fees. Google Vice President Samir Samad said in a blog post, these are funds that can help developers, scale up at a critical phase of their growth by hiring more engineers, adding to their marketing staff, increasing server capacity, and more, end quote. So Google pretty much had to do this after Apple did it, right? And basically, this is both of the biggest app stores bowing to pressure and antitrust scrutiny. But this little headline also caught my eye. Let me quote again from CNBC, but from a different piece. quote, new estimates from analytics firm's censor tower suggests neither Apple nor Google is giving up a substantial amount of revenue by changing the fees they charge developers. If the 15% fee schedule on

revenue up to $1 million had been in place on Google Play in 2020, Google would have missed out on $587 million or about 5% of Censor Tower's estimate of $11.6 billion in Google Play fees for the year. If Apple's program had been in place for 2020, Censor Tower estimates that it would have missed out on $595 million or about 2.7% of its estimated $21.7 billion in App Store fees in 2020. The Censor Tower estimate underscores that apps are a winner-take-most business and that while the changes from Apple's App Store and Google Play Store will help a substantial number of smaller app makers, the companies that make the most from the store will still pay close to 30% of digital sales. That was the point made by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney on Tuesday in response to Google's

news. Epic Games is currently suing Apple and Google seeking to make changes to their app stores to allow for third-party payment processors as well as other changes. Quote, it's a self-serving gambit. The far majority of developers will get this new 15% rate and thus be less inclined to fight, but the far majority of revenue is in apps with the 30% rate, Sweeney tweeted, and quote. Yes, but that's why. folks like Epic Games and Spotify are fighting this fight, right? They have both the resources and the incentives to do so. Speaking of bowing to pressure, this is more of the fight, fight, fight, fight up until the very moment that you have to bow to the inevitable category. Uber is reclassifying

its drivers in Great Britain as workers, granting them vacation pay, a minimum wage, and access to a pension plan, but not full employee benefits, quoting CNBC once more. Earlier this year, Uber lost a major legal battle in the UK around this issue. The country's Supreme Court upheld a ruling that a group of drivers were workers, not independent contractors. While the decision applied to a small group of drivers, thousands more have taken action against the company. In an op-ed in the evening standard, Uber CEO Dara Kosra Shahi wrote that following the Supreme Court ruling, quote, we could have continued to dispute driver's rights to any of these protections in court. Instead, we have decided to turn the page.

I know many observers won't pat us on the back for taking this step, which comes after a five-year legal battle. Kosra Shahi said, they have a point, though I hope the path that we chose shows shows our willingness to change, end quote. Echoing my comment at the top of this segment, quoting James Temperton on Twitter, Uber didn't struggle to identify solutions or decide to turn the page. It spent years fighting tooth and nail to deny driver's basic rights enshrined in law. It's only doing this because the Supreme Court left it no choice, end quote. I know we've discussed China and the sort of crackdown on startups in that country, three days in a row now. But I'm flagging this because if you read between the lines, see if you don't think that this might be exactly related to what we've been talking about.

Quoting the Wall Street Journal. Chinese e-commerce company Pinduoduo's founder and chairman Colin Wong, stepped down from the company on Wednesday, even as the five-year-old company overtook Alibaba to become the country's largest e-commerce company by annual active buyers. Mr. Huang 41 is resigning as China's powerful Internet sector comes under growing government scrutiny. His resignation follows another departure from a major company in the sector, Financial Tech Giant Ant Group's chief executive Simon Hu stepped down earlier this month. In a letter to shareholders, Mr. Huang said he was stepping down to pursue personal interests

in life sciences. He is in talks with Chinese universities to set up research labs on biotechnology. A person familiar with the matter said, for his next step, he will study biotechnology at these labs, the person said, end quote. I mentioned when Jeff Bezos announced he was stepping down as Amazon CEO. Sometimes if you're successful enough, you don't need the hassle of, I don't know, spending years in court fighting antitrust and regulations. But regulation in China looks like it's a bit more intense, right? So, yeah, if you've been successful there, then maybe you really don't need that kind of hassle. I wanted to mention a long read real quick because everyone was talking about it overnight, and if I wait for the weekend to share it, you'll have missed out on the conversation.

It's a long read that's a tweet thread. Believe me, though, it's a long tweet thread. Sean Puri has an in-depth look at basically why he believes Clubhouse will fail. He doesn't want it to fail, but he believes that failure might be inevitable. TLDR, he thinks it's just too hard to find something interesting on Clubhouse right away. That's not Clubhouse's fault. That's the nature of live content. And since you can't algorithmically compensate for that, most of the content people end up consuming on Clubhouse is sort of meh. Read the whole thing because he did a weirdly, really good sort of narrative job of painting a picture of what he believes is going on here. If I did a bad job of summarizing his points. Here's a bunch of other people's takes. Ian Bremmer said on

Twitter, quote, clubhouse fails because live content across all the channels can't be sufficiently interesting for people to keep dropping in, to which Antoine Nabon tweeted, signal to noise ratio is already dropping dramatically. You can scroll through a lot of direct to get the gems on Twitter, but the time commitment is different for audio. Henry Blodgett tweeted, for anything that can be listened to or watched at any time. Live is inconvenient and inefficient for both speakers and listeners. Yes, there's the excitement and camaraderie of listening together, but the show needs to be really good, end quote. Brad Sam's on Twitter said, remember HQ trivia? Live entrance are rarely a product, more of a feature. And Charles Arthur made an interesting point, quote,

Clubhouse relies on the live experience, but the live experience across everything, unlike Twitch, end quote. So important to note that Sean does, in fact, work at Twitch, and he addresses this in his piece, quote, Twitch is vertically focused on gaming. Clubhouse is horizontal. You need great content across every category. On Clubhouse, if you join a conversation 45 minutes late, you miss the best talking points and might be lost. But with Twitch, the game stores the content. No matter when I join, I look at the game and I know what the player is doing. So it's live, but not urgent, end quote. Right. I can quickly join any Twitch stream right now and see if something exciting is happening right now. Not so with an audio room. You got to wait to find out if the good

stuff is happening. And very often the really good stuff, you tend to miss it if you weren't, forgive me, in the room where it happened. If only there was some sort of melding of clubhouse and podcasting that could be done. And finally today, a small little follow-up to a preview story that made a lot of headlines not too long ago. Remember when a bunch of prominent Twitter accounts got hacked and the hacker used those accounts to solicit Bitcoin, of which around $100,000 and Bitcoin was turned over to the hacker? Well, the Florida teen accused of hacking the accounts was sentenced to three years in a plea deal yesterday, quoting the Tampa Bay Times. In a deal with prosecutors, Graham Ivan Clark agreed to serve three years in prison, followed by three years

probation. Clark was 17 when he was accused of masterminding a brazen social media hack that targeted some of the world's most famous names among them. President Joe Biden, former president Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Floyd Mayweather, Kim Kardashian, Apple, Uber, and other companies. The agreement allowed Clark now 18 to be sentenced as a youthful offender, avoiding a minimum 10-year sentence that would have followed if he had been convicted as an adult. The mandatory minimum will only apply if Clark violates his probation. He will serve time in a state prison designated for young adults. He may be eligible to serve some of his time in a military-style boot camp, end quote.

Nothing to share with you today. Talk to you tomorrow.