What is strategy?

Through a series of weekly newsletters I want to provide an extensive image of what’s going on and why for most interesting and relevant companies.

Strategy

Chat GPT from Open AI has been the star in the business world for the last two weeks. So how companies like Google (Alphabet) did not come faster and with a better product? Well, why kill a ‘golden goose’? Google created LaMBA, a breakthrough conversation technology, and used for business areas that are ad irrelevant, but won’t go further. There is not a clear market potential here; search ads bring most of the $200 bn per year. LINK

I stopped covering Twitter several years ago. The company was run extremely badly and although 6 CEOs tried to fix it, nobody succeeded. Now it seems that the incompetence was larger than we thought, according to an whistleblower. LINK

With Elon as onboard, the company is again under my radar. So, they relaunched this week Twitter Blue, a subscription with multiple advantages with a cost of $8 if you register on the web and 11$ through iOS (because of the 30% App store tax). I detailed recently why the advertising business model is not suited for Twitter and why it has nothing to lose if they will charge for the service. Blue check, New Business Model

Everyone is cancelling everyone. Unpleased with Twitter’s acquisition by Elon Musk, alternatives are on the rise. Post News gets funding from a16z and Mastodon is now the most popular social network based on open web protocols and free, open-source software. Post News, Mastodon

London Stock Exchange and Microsoft launch a 10-year strategic partnership for next-generation data & analytics and cloud infrastructure solutions. The latter agreed to take a 4% equity stake from the Blackstone/Thomson Reuters Consortium. Slowly but surely Microsoft has built an $100bn annual revenue stream from cloud services. An antitrust dispute might be on the horizon sooner than expected.LINK

Skoda considers withdrawal from the Chinese market. Local players are getting better and better at cars. Only premium cars are holding the needle for ICEs cars, while for EVs most cars sold are from Chinese companies like BYD and SAIC. LINK

Bob Iger is back at Disney, after the previous CEO was fired for poor results implementing the strategy Iger designed several years ago. All streaming companies are losing money and Disney+ is not an exception. A restructuring is underway. LINK

Getir (Turkish) buys fast grocery Gorillas (Germany) for $1.2 bn. With higher interest rates the money will exist pretty fast unprofitable businesses. More pain and consolidation lies ahead. LINK

Data

The App industry generated $133 bn in 2021 and Apple accounted for 65% of it with only 25% of the installed phone base. Sooner or later the 30% App store tax will be reduced significantly. Antitrust, of course. LINK

Travel industry was one of the most disrupted industries by COVID-19. This study tackles the concerns regarding transport, flexible commercial policies and anxiety. LINK

37% per cent of the world’s population, 2.9 billion people, have never used the Internet. LINK

One third of Ireland’s electricity will be consumed by data centers in 2028. More than half of UAE’s electricity bill is for air conditioning. LINK

Pugpig 2022 State of the Digital Publishing Market Report. LINK

McKinsey has a very good report on the state of AI. LINK

Predictions for 2023: EY, Deloitte, PWC

Outside interest

More and more people develop ‘one-person’ companies with more than one MMR per year. Here are the top 10 stars. LINK

Old travellers use toilets to hear flight announcements. This will only get worse with Millennials and Gen Z losing hearing at an unprecedented pace. LINK

16 digits numbers keep popping up in Walthamstow (UK). LINK

Deep Learning algorithms can now differentiate between male and female retinas with 87% accuracy. Nobody knows how. More interesting, nobody even realised that a differentiation is even possible. LINK

Women’s earnings increase on average by 4% after their manager becomes a father of a daughter. Study span for 25 years on Danish SMEs. LINK

High quality audio makes you sound smarter. LINK

Bill Gates is pretty good at predictions. Here is his take about the future issued in 1995 and 1996.

Newsletter #1