Here are a few of the stories that caught my eye over the past couple days
Intel hires new CEO
Intel surprised the tech world on Wednesday by announcing that Bob Swan would be stepping down as CEO, and would be replaced by Pat Gelsinger, who is leaving his role as the CEO of VMware. Gelsinger had previously worked at Intel, so the company is not foreign to him.
The announcement comes as Intel has struggled for years, literally, to advance the underlying processes its processors run on. This difficulty has arguably let competitors pass them in every area in which Intel is in, and the company has gone so far as to divest itself of most of the no CPU businesses it has been in, selling its modem division to Apple and its SSD division to SK Hynix.
This is clearly a shakeup meant to kick start Intel and get it back on a path where it can deliver on a product stack it has been failing to innovate on for over 5 years. Competition is good, so I hope this leads to good things.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/13/22228702/intel-ceo-bob-swan-pat-gelsinger-technical-financial
Trump Administration Taking Last Shots at Chinese Technology Companies
The outgoing Trump administration is taking one last swipe at a large Chinese technology company, classicying smartphone maker Xiaomi as a “Communist Chinese Military Company.” That designation means that US companies are not allowed to invest in Xiaomi, and US citiziens are not allowed to own stock in the company. Any existing investments by individuals or corporations will have to be divested by November 2021 if the classification is not rescinded.
This won’t have any immediate impact on Xiaomi, as this classification does not mean it loses access to supply chains and components it uses to build its products, but it does leave the door open for that to happen.
Now, there is no evidence that Xiaomi is in any way controlled by the Chinese Government or Military, and the company issued a statement that affirms that. Xiaomi also does not make any infrastructure type hardware that has led the US to impose a ban on Huawei, which makes equipment used in the telecom industry. Xiaomi is purely a consumer electronics company, focusing on smartphones and related accessories. Most of its products are not even officially sold in the United States, so It remains unclear what this classification is meant to achieve, aside from being a political stunt.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/01/android-oem-xiaomi-lands-on-us-investment-ban-list/
WhatsApp Delays Privacy Policy Change by 3 Months
After over a week of significant blowback, WhatsApp has now delayed the implementation of the mandatory data sharing with parent company Facebook. WhatsApp says the delay is so it can better communicate what the changes actually mean.
As a quick reminder, WhatsApp previously announced that as of February 8th, users of the Platform would be required to share some personal information with Facebook’s ad service. No message contents would be visible, the data that would be shared with Facebook will be data points such as Name, email address, contact list, and other identifying information. This is being done so Facebook can serve more targeted ads to users, giving the company more data points to help that ad targeting.
WhatsApp had already had this sharing as an optional opt-in for quite some time, but had said it would be mandatory to use WhatsApp after February 8th. A three month delay means the change will not take effect until May 8th.
I expect to be writing about this again in the coming weeks and months.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/15/22233257/whatsapp-privacy-policy-update-delayed-three-months
Google Announces Acquisition of Fitbit is Complete
Originally announced in late 2019, Google’s $2.1 Billion USD acquisition of Fitbit is now complete. Fitbit is one of the oldest wearable technology companies, having step trackers dating back to the mid 2000’s that would sync to a PC. Now the company offers a number of wearable fitness trackers, including the flagship Sense and Versa smartwatches. Before being gifted a Galaxy Watch Active I used a Fitbit Versa and found it to be a very good fitness tracker but a mediocre smartwatch, and reviews of the Sense and Versa 3 seem to indicate that it remains the same. I’ll be very interested to see how google melds Fitbit into its platforms. Will the Fitbit service become part of WearOS? Will Google take Fitibit’s good but not great platform and turn it into a true smartwatch including improved physical hardware and design?
This is definitely one to watch. Pun accidentally intended.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/googles-2-1-billion-purchase-of-fitbit-is-complete/