Connect with us

Published

3 years ago

on

Apple CEO Tim Cook attends the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 08, 2021 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

At Apple’s annual launch event this week, it revealed new iPhones, iPads and Apple Watches, all of which were refinements of previous models.

What Apple didn’t release, however, was a new kind of product — Apple’s “next big thing” which customers hope will be extremely cool and investors hope will drive another decade or more of Apple growth, like the iPhone did before it.

In previous years, Apple and its CEO Tim Cook have emphasized “augmented reality,” or AR, which is a term for a collection of technologies that use advanced cameras and modern chips to be able to understand where objects are in relation to the user and place computer graphics or information over a screen showing the real world.

Eventually, believers like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg say augmented reality technologies will be bundled into a headset or glasses, which could represent a sea-change for the technology industry like how the original iPhone’s touchscreen created billion-dollar companies.

But at Tuesday’s event, augmented reality technology didn’t make an appearance, except for a brief mention of one AR app that runs on iPads.

Justine Ezarik, who goes by iJustine on her popular YouTube page, brought up the lack of AR at the launch in a video interview with Cook posted after the event.

In his answer, Cook repeated some of the things he’s said about AR in the past, but continued to be very bullish on the technology, calling himself “AR fan number one.”

“I think AR is one of these very few profound technologies that we that we will look back on one day and went, how did we live our lives without it?” Cook said.

Cook said that the main uses for AR technology include education, collaboration and shopping for furniture while making sure it fits in the user’s home.

“And that’s at the early innings of AR,” Cook said. “it will only get better.”

Competitors releasing glasses

AR backers say that wearing computer glasses will be a normal, everyday experience, like using a smartphone is today.

Apple has never confirmed it is building AR headsets, despite buying several startups working on key building blocks like transparent screens built into lenses and hiring hundreds of employees to work in its Technology Development Group on the project.

Some of Apple’s closest competitors have already released headsets.

Facebook released camera-equipped Ray-Ban sunglasses this week, which the company says is a precursor to more advanced products. Microsoft has been developing a high-end headset called Hololens and has a contract with the U.S. military potentially worth billions of dollars. Google kicked off the Silicon Valley obsession with computer glasses when it released Google Glass in 2013.

The lack of AR announcements at Apple’s event is not a hint that Apple has given up on the technology. Apple’s launch events are focused on hardware and products customers can buy now — not providing clues about releases in upcoming years.

None of Apple’s new devices got AR hardware, unlike in the past few years, when some models added lidar sensors that can measure how far away an object is. The new iPhone Pro’s cameras do have improved night mode, which could be a useful feature for headsets in low-light.

So far, in public, Apple has generally treated AR as a software feature. It built tools called ARKit and RealityKit for app developers to make their own iPhone AR apps without doing hard physics like triangulating the location of the user or detecting hands and faces.

Those tools did make an appearance before Apple’s event. Users with AR-capable iPhones could download a file from Apple’s website that created a portal to a California landscape, which was the theme of Apple’s launch.

Apple’s new city navigation feature in Apple Maps.
Apple

The iPhone software launching on Monday, iOS 15, includes a mode where Apple Maps overlays walking directions onto the real world — big arrows telling the user where to go, on the iPhone’s screen — in a preview of what could be a major feature for a headset.

One challenge about these technologies is what to call them. Some people in the industry prefer the term “mixed reality,” which is less technical-sounding. The CEOs of Microsoft and Facebook, which are perhaps the most enthusiastic big companies about augmented reality, have started to talk about a “metaverse,” or a digital world overlaid on top of the real world.

Cook and Apple, for now, are sticking with “augmented reality.”

“There’s clearly different words out there. I’ll stay away from the buzzwords and for the moment just call it augmented reality,” Cook said in an interview with Time published this week.

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Technology

Meta shares plunge on weak revenue guidance even as first-quarter results top estimates

Published

17 hours ago

on

April 24, 2024

By

Meta shares plunge on weak revenue guidance even as first-quarter results top estimates

Meta shares plunged more than 11% in extended trading on Wednesday after the company issued a light forecast, which overshadowed better-than-expected first-quarter results.

Here are the key numbers:

  • Earnings per share: $4.71 per share vs. $4.32 per share expected by LSEG
  • Revenue: $36.46 billion vs. $36.16 billion expected by LSEG

Revenue increased 27% from $28.65 billion in the same period a year earlier, the fastest rate of expansion for any quarter since 2021. Net income more than doubled to $12.37 billion, or $4.71 per share, from $5.71 billion, or $2.20 per share, a year ago.

One reason for the pop in net income is that, while revenue growth accelerated, sales and marketing costs dropped 16% in the quarter from a year earlier.

Meta said it expects sales in the second quarter of $36.5 billion to $39 billion. The midpoint of the range, $37.75 billion, would represent 18% year-over-year growth and is below analysts’ average estimate of $38.3 billion.

The company no longer reports daily active users and monthly active users. It now gives a figure for what it calls “family daily active people.” That number was 3.24 billion for March 2024, a 7% increase from a year earlier.

Meta has raised investor expectations due to its improved financial performance in recent quarters, leaving little room for error. The stock is up about 40% this year after almost tripling last year. In February 2023, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors it would be the “year of efficiency,” which initiated the rally.

At the time, Zuckerberg said the company would be better at eliminating unnecessary projects and cracking down on bloat, which would help Meta become a “stronger and more nimble organization.” The company cut about 21,000 jobs in the first half of 2023, and Zuckerberg said in February of this year that hiring will be “relatively minimal compared to what we would have done historically.”

Headcount declined by 10% in the first quarter from a year earlier to 69,329.

Capital expenditures for 2024 will be $35 billion to $40 billion, an increase from a prior forecast of $30 billion to $37 billion “as we continue to accelerate our infrastructure investments to support our artificial intelligence (AI) roadmap,” Meta said.

Average revenue per user in the quarter was $11.20, Meta said.

The Facebook parent has been clawing back digital ad market share after a dismal 2022. At that time, the company was reeling from Apple’s iOS privacy update and macroeconomic concerns that led many brands to rein in spending.

Zuckerberg spearheaded an initiative to rebuild the ad business with a focus on AI. On the company’s last earnings call in February, finance chief Susan Li said Meta has been investing in AI models that can accurately predict relevant ads for users, as well as tools that automate the ads-creation process. 

Advertising revenue, which accounts for the vast majority of Meta’s business, jumped 27% to $35.64 billion.

Meta is benefiting from a stabilizing economy and surge in spending from Chinese discount retailers like Temu and Shein, which have been pumping money into Facebook and Instagram in an effort to reach a wider swath of users. Some analysts have warned that slower spending from China-based advertisers could be a source of concern in the first quarter and as the year progresses.

The company’s Reality Labs unit, which houses the company’s hardware and software for development of the nascent metaverse, continues to bleed cash. Reality Labs reported sales of $440 million for the quarter and $3.85 billion in losses, bringing total losses since the end of 2020 to over $45 billion.

Analysts expected the division to show an operating loss of $4.31 billion for the quarter.

Executives will discuss the company’s results on a call with analysts at 5 p.m. ET.

Continue Reading

Technology

Meta’s Reality Labs posts $3.85 billion loss in first quarter

Published

18 hours ago

on

April 24, 2024

By

Meta's Reality Labs posts .85 billion loss in first quarter

Facebook co-founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, speaks at an Oculus developers conference while wearing a virtual reality headset in San Jose, California.

Glen Chapman | AFP | Getty Images

Meta shows no signs of substantially trimming its losses from investing in the metaverse, as competition heightens between the Facebook parent and Apple in the virtual reality market.

In its first-quarter earnings report Wednesday, Meta disclosed that its Reality Labs unit recorded a $3.85 billion operating loss. Revenue in the metaverse division was $440 million, up about 30% from $339 million a year ago and representing only around 1% of Meta’s total sales for the quarter.

Analysts were expecting a $4.31 billion operating loss and sales of $512.5 million for the quarter, according to StreetAccount.

Reality Labs has now lost more than $45 billion since the end of 2020, when Meta first began reporting the business segment separately.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has called the metaverse “the next frontier,” imagining a digital world that facilitates both productivity and recreation. He changed the name of his company from Facebook to Meta in 2021 to reflect his vision for the future of computing.

For now, developing metaverse technology remains a fledgling and costly effort.

The company unveiled in September the Quest 3 VR headset, the latest version of its mixed reality hardware, with a starting price of $499. Apple started selling its $3,499 Vision Pro in February, touting a so-called “spatial computing” experience.

Meta announced Monday that it will partner with third-party hardware companies to create new VR headsets using the same Meta Horizon operating system that powers its Quest headsets. Zuckerberg said that while Apple “basically won out” in the phone market with its closed ecosystem, Meta’s move aims to ensure the “open model defines the next generation of computing.”

Continue Reading

Technology

IBM to acquire HashiCorp in $6.4 billion deal, reports another revenue miss

Published

18 hours ago

on

April 24, 2024

By

IBM to acquire HashiCorp in .4 billion deal, reports another revenue miss

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna appears at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 16, 2024.

Stefan Wermuth | Bloomberg | Getty Images

IBM shares slipped as much as 6% in extended trading on Wednesday after the hardware, software and consulting provider said it would acquire cloud software maker HashiCorp and reported first-quarter revenue that was lower than analysts had predicted.

In a statement, IBM announced that it intends to pay $35 per share in cash for HashiCorp in a deal with a $6.4 billion enterprise value, net of cash. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that IBM was getting close to acquiring HashiCorp, sending shares upward. Bloomberg said earlier on Wednesday that IBM was looking to offer $35 per share.

The deal would be accretive to adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in the first full year after close, and accretive to free cash flow in the second year after close. IBM said it expects the transaction to close by the end of 2024. Dave McJannet, HashiCorp’s CEO, will report to Rob Thomas, IBM’s senior vice president in charge of software, if the deal goes through, a spokesperson said.

HashiCorp would complement Red Hat, which has contributed to IBM’s revenue growth since the $34 billion acquisition in 2019. IBM now sells Red Hat’s version of the Linux operating system for use on multiple public clouds, making it a neutral entity. HashiCorp pioneered open-source software that developers rely on to control cloud infrastructure. Premium versions of the Terraform cloud-management software and other products have brought revenue to HashiCorp.

In 2021 HashiCorp shares started trading on the Nasdaq. But revenue growth has slowed, and the company has continued to report losses. Still, it’s adding revenue at a faster pace than IBM.

HashiCorp shares moved 4% higher in extended trading following the acquisition announcement.

Here’s how IBM did in comparison with the consensus among analysts polled by LSEG:

  • Earnings per share: $1.68 adjusted vs. $1.60 expected
  • Revenue: $14.46 billion vs. $14.55 billion expected

IBM’s revenue increased around 1.5% year-over-year during the quarter, according to a statement. This marks the company’s third revenue miss in the last five quarters.

Revenue from software, at $5.90 billion, increased about 6% and was below the $5.96 billion consensus among analysts surveyed by StreetAccount.

IBM’s consulting revenue came in at $5.19 billion, down slightly and just under the $5.20 billion StreetAccount consensus.

Infrastructure revenue totaled $3.08 billion. It declined 0.7% but came in higher than the StreetAccount consensus of $2.94 billion.

During the quarter, IBM said it was providing its 160,000 consultants with artificial intelligence assistants to boost productivity, and the company completed the divestiture of The Weather Company to Francisco Partners.

Notwithstanding the after-hours move, IBM shares are up about 13% so far this year, outperforming the S&P 500 index, which is up 6% over the same period.

Executives will discuss the report with analysts on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

WATCH: IBM’s in-office ultimatum: Move near office or leave company

IBM's in-office ultimatum: Move near office or leave company

Continue Reading

Trending