AT&T Spins Media in Discovery Deal; Apple Music-Lossless Audio to All-No Extra $; Google I/O Looming Tomorrow; Clubhouse-Worldwide on Android by Next Week

AT&T jumped into the media business just 3 years ago, but now is jumping out. The New York Times reports that the Telco will spin off its WarnerMedia Group and merge it with rival programmer Discovery. The deal will combine HBO, Warner Bros. studios, CNN and several other cable networks with a host of reality-based cable channels from Discovery, including Oprah Winfrey’s OWN, HGTV, The Food Network and Animal Planet. The two companies expect the deal to be approved and finalized by the middle of next year. The combined media entity will be bigger than Netflix or NBCUniversal. Together, WarnerMedia and Discovery did over $41 billion in sales lat year, with an operating profit exceeding $10 billion. That places it behind Walt Disney Company as the 2nd largest media company in the US.

Apple ha announced that it is bringing lossless audio to its entire catalog at no extra cost, starting next month. According to 9to5mac.com, the pristine audio will be available on over 75 million tracks in the Apple Music library. Cupertino will also launch support for spatial Audio music with songs authored in Dolby Atmos. Keep in mind that lossless formats use significantly higher bandwidth to stream, so the feature will be opt-in. 

Google I/O starts tomorrow at 10 AM Pacific. CEO of Google/Alphabet Sundar Pichai will be showing the later and greatest…again in virtual form online, as the other major tech companies have all had to do the past year because of the pandemic. Arstechnica.com says that we may see a beta release of Android 12, which has looked from the developer preview to be a pretty major overhaul. Google has already advised that the new Pixel phones will be out on schedule with last year…so that will be August, not tomorrow. We’ll have a recap of things announced tomorrow here, though.

Clubhouse will expand its Android app worldwide next week. Techcrunch.com reports that it will hit Japan, Brazil, and Russia tomorrow, and be worldwide by as soon as Friday Afternoon. Clubhouse started as iOS only last year. The Android version still lacks a number of features the iOS app has…users can’t follow a topic, create or manage a club, link their social profiles, make payments, or change their profile name of user name. The startup said it is working to bring iOS features to the Android app.

US Lifting Ban on Xiaomi; Redfin Forecast-Record Home Sales; Samsung & AMD System on Chip; Chinese Suppliers Gone from Amazon

The US will lift the blacklisting one Xiaomi that was put on by the Trump administration last year. Xiaomi had filed a lawsuit earlier this year over the matter. According to engadget.com, the firm had been added to a US military list of alleged Chinese military companies in January, which blocked any American investment in the company. A joint proposal between them and the US government should be out by May 20th. China asserted that the two company founders held 75% voting ownership, and that there were no military links to the ownership. 

In what would be the largest gain since 2013, Redfin has forecast a record $2.53 trillion in US home sales this year. Geekwire.com says that the market is being fueled by low mortgage rates, high demand, and a wave of migration made possible by remote work. According to Redfin, the national median home sale price hit a record $353,000 in March, up 17% from 2020. They project that even more buyers will enter the market in the 2nd half of this year and during 2022. 

Apple is migrating all the Macs to its new M1 system on a chip (which by Fall will be superseded by the M2), and now Samsung is jumping in to the SoC game, planning to reveal a new Exynos chip for laptops and smartphones in the 2nd half of the year. Arstechnica.com reports the SoC GPU is being developed jointly with Advanced Micro Devices. Samsung is positioning the new Exynos SoC as equal to the Qualcomm chips they have traditionally touted as the superior chip. It’s unclear if they will ditch the Qualcomm silicon (which seems unlikely), or if Samsung will also move to an ARM laptop CPU. 

Meanwhile, Qualcomm is working to get into the SoC game…having bought Nuvia in January. Nuvia hans’t made anything yet, but was tarted by renegades who left Apple’s CPU division, including their chief CPU architect. Qualcomm says they may be shipping internally designed CPUs by the 2nd half of 2022. 

With the sheltering on place and working from home during the pandemic, millions of things have passed through the Amazon store. In January, analysts calculated that 75% of Amazon’s new sellers were in China…up from 47% in 2020. According to TechCrunch.com, Chinese sellers are also filling the ranks of sellers on eBay, and other platforms. Now, comes an interesting wrinkle…at least 11 accounts that originated in China have disappeared from Amazon over the last few days. 

Those accounts had been contributing over a billion dollars in gross merchandise value (GMV) to Amazon. Amazon had no comment, other than a statement that it has “long-standing policies to protect the integrity of our store, including product authenticity, genuine reviews, and products meeting the expectations of our customers.”

“We take swift action against those that violate them, including suspending or removing selling privileges.”  It is an ongoing game of ‘whack-a-mole,’ though…as bad actor selling firms seem to pop up again all the time with new names, and information.

iPhone 13 Rumors; Facebook-Read Article, Like Twitter; Ford F-150 Lightening EV; Bose Hearing Aids

We are roughly 4 months from the rollout of iPhone 13. Here are a few of the rumors swirling around it at this point. Cnet.com reports that the new iPhone 13 may get a bigger battery. The battery life isn’t really bad on the 12 or 12 Pro, but more use per charge is always good. The Samsung Galaxy S21 lasts a couple hours longer than the iPhones. 

Again, this year, we get the rumor that the iPhone will become a completely portliness phone. Even noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has written this, so the 13 could be the iPhone that loses the port forever. With the MagSafe charging system and over the air updates, downloads, and uploads, this might not be totally jarring. If Apple does drop the port, it would stand to reason that they will include data transfer over the MagSafe connector though, just for emergencies when no signal is available or reliable. 

It wouldn’t be an iPhone upgrade without some camera improvements. One mentioned is giving the 13 Pro the same telephoto as the 13 Pro Max. Also…the ultra wide lens may get better low light performance. A video portrait mode is also rumored. 

Finally, one persistent rumor is a return on Touch ID…but operating under the screen…and anywhere on the screen. It would apparently be in a addition to Face ID. That would give double biometric security. 

Since last summer, Twitter has had a feature when you re-Tweet, asking if you want to read the article first. Now, Facebook will join that party. According to theverge.com, a popup on Facebook will ask if a user is sure they want to share an article before clicking on it and posting it. Right now, Facebook is just trialing the feature on about 6% of Android users around the world. I will note that I almost never click through on Twitter to read the article, because normally when I see a Tweet about one in my feed, I have already read the article…either there, or on another trusted news source. Still, it’s a welcome feature if they roll it out 100% to try to get people used to checking things out before they post b.s. that ends up not to be true. 

Ford’s upcoming electric F-150 pickup will carry the name Lightening, a name that was revived from Ford pickups in the 90’s. Techcrunch.com says the truck will have a big enough battery pack to power your house during a power outage! Also, it will feature over the air software updates, and the EV will be quicker than the original F-150 performance truck with a thumping V-8! Ford will reveal the truck via a live stream May 19th. 

Whether you’ve fried your hearing by wearing headphones for 50 years, or from playing in a band, or from going to concerts…or a trifecta…hearing aids may be looking more and more likely. Congress had already passed a law allowing for buying hearing aids without visiting an audiologist or paying thousands. Now, Bose has rolled out the first FDA approved hearing aids sold directly to customers. Engadget.com reports that the gadgets are similar in form factor to a lot of them out there. 

The Bose units will lean on Bose’s expertise in audio, using a Custom Tune feature in a companion app that personalizes volume, tone, treble, and bass for your ears within 30 minutes. You can also magnify quiet sounds or highlight the vocal range to make it easier to hear people talking around you. You can schedule free video appointments if you really want to. The rigs use a standard battery and Bose claims 4 days worth of use,14 hours a day. 

One bummer…they don’t port music or phone through them like some higher end hearing aids. They are $850, and will be available in Massachusetts, Montana, the Carolinas, and Texas starting May 18th. Other states will follow. 

Electric Vehicles=Cheaper Than Gas by 2027; Sony-PS5 Shortages Into 2022; DarkSide Hackers Fess Up to Colonial Pipeline Ransom Hack; Cal Legal Rulings & Effect on Amazon

Electric cars will be cheaper to build than gas and diesel vehicles within 6 years, and could amount to 100% of new vehicle sales by 2035, according to a study out today. Bloomberg New Energy Finance found that sedan and SUV-sized EVs will be as cheap to make as combustion engine cars by 2026! Smaller EVs will match the cost of gas cars by 2027. Light electric vans will be cheaper by 2025, and larger electric van by 2026. An electric sedan, which cost nearly 40,000 euros ($49,000) pre-tax in 2020, is expected to sell at the same price as a combustion model — around 20,000 euros (about $23,300) — in 2026, the study showed. If so, EVs will make up about 50% of all new car sales by 2030.

The Sony PlayStation 5 is a hot seller, but Sony has warned that it may be in short supply into 2022, limiting sales and keeping more buyers from getting the unit. According to engadget.com, Sony sold 7.8 million PS5’s through March 31st, and projects they will sell a bit shy of 15 million by the close of their current fiscal year. As is the case with numerous things electronic…and even autos…the chip shortage is partially to blame. Nintendo just warned last week that they are suffering a component shortage, although they did turn in an epic quarter’s sales. 

It was suspected, but now hacker group DarkSide has come out and admitted that they hacked Colonial Pipeline in last week’s ransomware attack. CNBC.com notes that the pipeline is still down, but expected to come back on line late this week. It supplies about half the gasoline and fuel to a lot of the East Coast. The hacker gang, based in Russia, claims they are in it purely for the money. Although President Biden would not finger the Russian government in questions following a speech this morning, it is widely believed that nothing of this magnitude happens in Russia without at least the tacit approval of Putin. President Biden said a whole of government action is involved in getting the line back online, and that there will be consequences. DarkSide has extorted as much as $20 and $30 million out of companies. 

A couple of California court rulings may have an impact on Amazon’s liability for third party goods it sells. Geekwire.com reports that a recent 2nd Appellate District court ruling against Amazon in the case of a hoverboard they sold catching fire and burning the owner, and a case from last year involving an exploding laptop battery (Bolger v. Amazon.com LLC), may leave the online giant with some legal liability. In the battery case, Amazon’s liability came due to it being fulfilled by the company…which had stored and shipped the item. In the hoverboard case, Amazon never stored or shipped the board, but it was sold via their platform. Third party sales are presently about 55% of sales on Amazon. Policing the millions of sellers and items could be a monumental task. Although their current position is that they are functioning like a shopping mall, Amazon has begun to pivot, and supervise their sellers a bit more closely. 

Chromebook Sales Explode, Facebook Keeps Trump Ban; Facebook Blocks Signal Ads Exposing Facebook’s Targeting; Peloton Problems Increase-Data Leak

Chromebook sales grew a stunning 275% in the first quarter of the year! Geekwire.com reports that Amazon tablet shipments grew by almost 200%! The record Chromebook sales were spread over HP, Lenovo, Acer, Samsung, and Dell. HP scooped up 36.4% of Chromebook sales, with the education market accounting for the majority of Chromebook shipments. 

The Facebook Oversight Board released the promised decision about Donald Trump’s ban from the platform today. According to arstechnica.com, they have recommended to Facebook that the ban stay in place. The Board did say that Facebook should review the ban again within the next 6 months. In the meantime, Trump has launched a blog (no comments) and is posting things that his followers can re-post on Facebook and Twitter. He still claims he will launch his own social media platform in the future.

It’s no secret that Facebook has highly targeted ads…we’ve all noticed it. You look at something somewhere online, and presto! Facebook or Instagram serves up an ad to you about the fool item. Engadget.com says Signal has raised Facebook’s ire by running ads of their own on Instagram which exposes the intimate categories that facebook uses to classify users and serve up such micro-targeted ads. An example: “You got this ad because you’re a certified public accountant in an open relationship. This ad used your location to see you’re in South Atlanta. You’re into natural skin care and you’ve supported Cardi B since day one.” Facebook temporarily shut down Signal’s ad account…allegedly to an unrelated payments issue…but called the ads a ‘stunt.’ Facebook is also battling Apple, which in the latest version of iOS, forces iPhone app makers to explicitly ask users for permission to collect their data to use in ads. 

Under pressure, Peloton has recalled the treadmills that caused the death of a child and injuries to others. Now, TechCrunch.com reports that the company has another PR problem. Apparently, their ‘leaky’ API lets anyone grab a rider’s private data! The data leak works EVEN if your profile is set to private and friends list is set to zero. Many well-heeled and/or famous people ride their bikes, right up to President Biden (who’s is off line by Secret Service decree.) A researcher-Jan Masters, a security researcher at Pen Test Partners- told Peloton about the issue in January, and gave them 90 days to fix it…but they didn’t, so he has outed the problem. 

Seattle Airport Tests Virtual Security Screening Line; Twitter Expands Spaces; Disney Shows ‘Real’ Lightsaber; UAW Wants EV Subsidies Exclusive to US Made Cars

Seattle’s airport is testing out something that will be cheered by travelers…allowing travelers to wait in virtual lines for security screening. According to geekwire.com, with SEA Spot Saver, users can reserve a spot in advance and will be notified when to proceed to a TSA checkpoint. They are also road testing electric screens at kiosks that will detect fingers hovering over the virtual buttons, and you won’t have to press the screen. The tech is being used on check-in kiosks available to various airline passengers, including jetBlue, Spirit Airlines, Korean Air, Volaris, Air Canada and Frontier. Let’s hope this all pans out and spreads soon to all airports!

Twitter has expanded Spaces to anyone with 600 or more followers. Techcrunch.com reports that the feature will be available on both iOS and Android. along with it will come features like Ticketed Spaces, scheduling features, reminders, support for co-hosting, accessibility improvements, and more. The Spaces feature will be denoted by a purple bubble around someone’s profile picture in the Home timeline. A limited group of users will be getting access to Ticketed Spaces in the coming months. Twitter says it will take a small cut, but that the ‘majority’ of revenue will go to the creators themselves. 

After a brief glimpse for shareholders in April, Disney has revealed a first peek at their ‘real’ retractable lightsaber. Theverge.com says it indeed looks very cool. This one doesn’t have a goofy, lit up plastic blade you have to attach. You hear the sound effect and the bad appears to extend from the hilt, like in the films…with appropriate crackling sounds and whirrs when you move it. The new saber is expected to be out in time for the Galactic star cruiser hotel experience when that launches in 2022. As with all things Disney, just cry a little and hand over your credit card. The present lightsabers you build are $200, so you can count on this rascal being even more pricey. 

The United Autoworkers are pressing the Biden administration to apply electric vehicle subsidies only to cars built in the US. According to cnet.com, the union’s vice president Terry Dittes said in a statement. “US taxpayer money should never subsidize products assembled in Mexico or any other country.” President Biden’s proposed infrastructure plan calls for $100 billion in direct point-of-sale rebates for EV buyers, which would reduce the cost of the car while signing paperwork at the dealer, as opposed to a subsidy to the manufacturers. The previous plan, reintroduced in the Green Act in Congress, allows a $7000 tax credit to anyone who buys an EV. 

Verizon Sells Yahoo, AOL, Etc.; Apple 8” Folder iPhone in 2023; iPhone Blood Sugar & Pressure Monitoring; Neuralink President Leaves

Verizon is spinning off its media assets including Yahoo and the various AOL sites…Huff Post, TechCrunch, & Engadget…to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. According to techcrunch.com (one of the aforementioned properties being spun off), Verizon will keep 10% of the company. When the deal closes, it will be branded just as Yahoo. Verizon originally paid a combined $9 billion for the properties when they bought AOL in 2015 and Yahoo in 2017. That sounds like quite a hit…but the media companies…particularly Yahoo Sports, have thrown off good income. The media division generated $1.9 billion in sales in just the first 3 months of 2021, a 10% gain over 2020. 

A little more info on Apple’s rumored folding phone. Ming-Chi Kuo had aid the gadget would have a screen of 7.5 to 8 inches. Now, he says you can plan on an 8 inch (unfolded) screen. It will be OLED, and will be out in 2023. 9to5mac.com says that, although others have already plowed the folding phone ground to mixed results, Apple’s robust cross-product ecosystem should make the handset a hit. He predicts they will sell between 15-20 million of them. 

Another Apple update involves what we reported a couple weeks ago regarding Cupertino looking at making an Apple Watch that will check blood sugar without skin pricks. Some sleuthing by both The Telegraph and Forbes indicates that UK health tech Rockley Photonics has had Apple as their biggest customer for the past two years. Rockley is not only working on blood sugar monitoring sensors, but also blood pressure and blood alcohol level monitoring. It’s unlikely we will see all three by September, but it’s quite possible at least one will make it into the next Watch.

Max Hodak said in a Tweet over the weekend that he’s out as prudent of Neuralink, the company he co-founded with Elon Musk. Theverge.com reports that he didn’t say if he quit or not, but said “I learned a ton there and remain a huge cheerleader for the company! Onward to new things.” The firm was working on brain-machine interfaces. Lately, some scientific and medical communities have criticized the company and expressed skepticism regarding its claims. MIT Technology Review called the company “neuroscience theater,” and said “most of the company’s medical claims remain highly speculative.”

Netflix Releases Shuffle Play Feature; Ford- EV Battery Center in S.E. Michigan; Google Rakes in Cash in Q1; Microsoft Teams-Big Boost in Daily Use

Netflix has rolled out a shuffle play feature. Engadget.com reports it should be a boon to people who are just plain overwhelmed by the thousands of possible shows to watch on the platform. The feature is simply called ‘Play Something.’ It isn’t available on mobile yet, but Netflix says it will be soon. As you watch, Netflix should learn from the choices…like on normal Netflix, and it will try to play something it determines you like. 

Ford will build a new EV battery center in Southeast Michigan which they are dubbing ‘Ion Park.’ The center will encompass all aspects of battery tech development…manufacturing, mining, and recycling, according to Ford. The center will have a staff of 150 when it is up and running next year. It will join Ford’s new Battery Benchmarking and Test Laboratory in Allen Park, Michigan. That site, which opened in 2020, is where the company tests new battery cell types. Ford claims to have tested over 150 different types of cells with various chemistries. Besides the Mustang EV, Ford will bow an electric transit van next year, and a fully electric version of the F-150 pickup. 

After a small drop off of 2% when the pandemic first raged last year, Google has come roaring back. Theverge.com says that at the end of the 1st quarter, Google pulled down $55.3 million…compared to $56.9 million in the final quarter of 2020. It’s a stunning 34% increase year over year. YouTube was a $15 billion per year business in 2020, and $6 billion in the quarter just ended alone!

It’s not a big shock as so many continue to work from home, but Microsoft Teams has now amassed 145 million daily active users. Zdnet.com reports that its up from 115 daily just last October. A year ago, Teams only had 75 million active daily active users. Considering that more people are trickling back to offices, Teams seems to have gotten a pretty huge foothold in the video meeting area…and Microsoft has been working on turning it into nearly an operating system like product as they add features. 

Spotify Bows Podcast Subscriptions; Lift Sells Self-Driving Division to Toyota; Apple’s M1 Chip Successor in Production; Microsoft on Cusp of $2 Trillion Market Cap

Spotify has rolled out podcast subscriptions. Theverge.com reports that Podcasters won’t have to pay Spotify anything for the first two years. Creators will, however, have to cover the cost of transaction fees through Spotify’s payment partner Stripe. In 2023, Spotify will begin taking a 5 percent cut of total subscription revenue. That’s significantly less than Apple will charge; its new subscription service will take 15 to 30 percent of revenue. Podcasters have three monthly pricing options to choose from: $2.99, $4.99, or $7.99. Within Spotify, paid content will be indicated by a padlock icon where you would normally find a play button. You can’t subscribe in-app, but will have to head to the program’s dedicated Anchor landing page. This is kludgy, but what it does is avoids Spotify having to pay Apple for subscriptions old under the App Store terms.

Lyft has sold off its self-driving division to Toyota’s Woven Planet for a tidy $550 million. According to techcrunch.com, around 300 people from the Lyft Level 5 division will go to the Toyota subsidiary. As of early 2020, there were 400 people around the world that worked in Level 5. Those staying will continue to work out of the office in Palo Alto, CA. Besides cash, Lyft expects to save some $100 million in operating expenses. Lyft is shooting to become profitable by the third quarter of this year. 

The successor generation to Apple’s M1 system on a chip is now in production. Asia.kikkei.com says the chip is presumed to be dubbed the M2, and could be shipping by July…and in Apple MacBooks in the second half of the year. The chipset is made by TSMC, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. one of Apple’s prime suppliers. Apple is now the world’s #4 PC maker, behind Lenovo, HP, and Dell. Mac shipments were up 111% last year, mainly due to working from home because of the pandemic.

Microsoft is knocking on the door of the very exclusive $2 trillion dollar valuation club for companies. Right now, geekwire.com reports that MS is at $1.97 trillion market capitalization. Companies that already exceed the $2 trillion benchmark are Apple and Saudi Aramco. A lot of Microsoft’s gain is being powered by the Azure cloud division. Microsoft shares have increased by 20% this year. 

Facebook’s Mini-Player; Apple Will Drop $430 Billion on North Carolina Campus; Zoom Rolls Out ‘Immersive View’; Clubhouse NFL Draft Deal

One of the things Facebook had announced last week was ‘Project Boombox,’ which would allow listening to music and podcasts right inside the Facebook App…including Spotify. Now, techcurnch.com reports that the platform has rolled out a ‘miniplayer’ that will allow Facebook users to stream Spotify via the Facebook app on iOS and Android. The feature is available to both free Spotify users and Premium subscribers. Now, when Spotify users are listening to content they want to share to Facebook, they’ll be able to tap the existing “Share” menu (the three dot-menu at the upper right of the screen) and then tap either “Facebook” or “Facebook News Feed.” In order to use the feature, users will have to have the Spotify mobile app on their phone and a Spotify account. 

Apple has announced a step making good on adding additional facilities here in the US…a $430 billion dollar campus and research hub in North Carolina’s Research Triangle area. According to zdnet.com, it should mean about 3,0000 new jobs in machine learning, AI, software engineering, and other tech fields. Apple will also kicking $100 million to support local schools and community initiatives in the Raleigh-Durham area. Overall, Apple has set a goal of creating an additional 20,000 jobs in states across the US.

Zoom has talked about it, and today rolled out its immersive video feature, claiming it will help businesses to hold more engaging and collaborative virtual meetings. Venturebeat.com says the feature will allow Zoom meeting participants to appear as if they are in the same room together. Immersive View is really pretty much the same as Microsoft Teams’ Together Mode, which has been out for months. The host gets to choose where each participant ‘sits’ in the virtual room. Right now, Immersive view can hold up to 25 participants, and the backgrounds include a boardroom, auditorium, or a classroom. It is activated by default for all free and Individual Pro accounts. 

Clubhouse has announced a deal getting users access to chat rooms during NFL Draft Week. Engadget.com reports that its invitation only, as other Clubhouse connections, and only on iPhone…a Clubhouse Android app is weeks off. For draft fanatics, a chance to be in a Clubhouse chat with athletes, coaches, and network stars could be quite a draw. It’s a big win for Clubhouse, but the NFL may just be doing a test drive to see how it goes, and could expand to Facebook and Twitter if it does well.