Bloomberg obsessed with Google's Pixel, Apple's iPhone Supply Chain -- but not Google's Pi...

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Comments

  • Reply 41 of 69
    DanielEranDanielEran Posts: 290editor

    Google is not a hardware company.
    Not for much longer. They have a team of chip designers working on their versions of the Apple 'A' series.

    The question is... Will Aphabet get tired of it and like so many things, the close them down.
    Only time will tell.
    A primary problem for Google's custom chip development is that it can't sell hardware at any price. Recall that Apple had a lead with PowerPC in the late 90s, but because Macs were the only customer, PPC fell behind. Google is selling about half the Pixels as Apple was selling Macs back then, and developing a chip (or even a function) differentiatingly competitive with Apple's A11 or Qualcomm, etc is a bigger task than pushing the clock speed of a G5 ahead. 

    The point of Android was that the crappy PC makers were all supposed to lock arms and take down the big bad Apple in smartphones. Instead, they are competing with each other on price (just like they did in PCs!) and Apple is advancing in ways they can't keep up, while they're forced to spend lots of money to make very little profit. 
    applesnorangesbaconstangMuntzmacxpresswatto_cobra
  • Reply 42 of 69
    loquiturloquitur Posts: 137member
    A point of information about Bloomberg -- their online division is likely a webpage ad click-thru business
    like most other commercial websites, and Apple-as-subject is always good for clicks.   However the
    Bloomberg Businessweek magazine itself is admirable for its investigative reporting on subjects that
    much of corporate America may not take a liking to.    I've discerned this via my subscription, long
    tossing aside subs to Forbes and Fortune.  Perhaps this editorial bent is due to the corporate
    rah-rah in the case of Fortune, and the right-wing nature of the Forbes family.  Certainly
    Michael Bloomberg is a billionaire, but rather more left-leaning than Steve Forbes.  At any rate,
    editorial at the paper magazine itself seems very distinct from whatever bias appears online.
    baconstang
  • Reply 43 of 69
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,153member

    Google is not a hardware company.
    Not for much longer. They have a team of chip designers working on their versions of the Apple 'A' series.

    The question is... Will Aphabet get tired of it and like so many things, the close them down.
    Only time will tell.
    A primary problem for Google's custom chip development is that it can't sell hardware at any price. Recall that Apple had a lead with PowerPC in the late 90s, but because Macs were the only customer, PPC fell behind. Google is selling about half the Pixels as Apple was selling Macs back then, and developing a chip (or even a function) differentiatingly competitive with Apple's A11 or Qualcomm, etc is a bigger task than pushing the clock speed of a G5 ahead. 

    The point of Android was that the crappy PC makers were all supposed to lock arms and take down the big bad Apple in smartphones. I
    They were supposed to take Apple down? Really? IMHO they were hoping to compete with them. Who the heck was talking about destroy? Ummm, no one AFAIK. Sounds more than a bit imaginative...
    Circle the wagons much?

    But regarding your primary point about processors I tend to agree with you. I'm not sure there's going to be enough quantity/demand to get great pricing unless there's something else going on that's not yet apparent. 
    edited May 2018 muthuk_vanalingamsingularity
  • Reply 44 of 69
    bb-15bb-15 Posts: 283member
    gatorguy said:
    With that said the lack of sales didn't prevent the blogosphere blasting at full-volume every perceived failure of the Pixel line whether real, imaginary, widespread or one-off. The tech writers are equal-opportunity click-baiters. If there's a "name" and a possible nega-story they will write it. Apple fans already know that.

    Yes, that was true. There are MANY articles written about problems with Pixel phones (particularly Pixel 2 XL, the phone with non-Samsung display) as soon as they were launched. It looked almost as-if Samsung paid tech media to portray Pixel 2 XL in the poorest light possible to me. DED himself wrote few articles about failures of Pixel lineups (both 1st generation and 2nd generation). So not sure, why DED complains about just one website singing praises about Pixel 2nd generation phones when there are PLENTY of articles available in tech media which criticized them.

    I think his point is clear. DED’s column isn’t about other tech media, it’s about Bloomberg. And Bloomberg appears to be beating a drum for Google, despite the data indicators favoring Apple. Bloomberg continues to pigeon hole Apple as a failure and Google as a winner despite it plainly being the opposite. 

    As a leading investor news outlet, Bloomberg’s coverage is puzzling, and itself is newsworthy. 
    All it really proves is that attacking the leader generates more interest than positive coverage. Everyone knows Apple is trouncing their competition, so “bad news” will attract more eyeballs.
    There is more to it than attracting more eyeballs (viewers) as if most of the tech audience was neutral about Apple. 
    - Apple is a niche company. The majority smartphone OS is Android.
    The tendency of large groups is to act in a tribal/school yard way; where the thinking is; my team is good, the other team is the enemy. 
    - There is therefore a huge anti-Apple tech audience.
    This anti-Apple audience doesn’t care about accuracy but is attracted to negative news about Apple even if it is irrational and false. 
    - Tech journalists, like all news outlets, are looking for income and clicks on articles produces that.
    Most tech journalists (and many YouTube tech channels) pander to the large audience which dislikes Apple by spreading misinformation.
    This trend has gone on for many years.
    The MacWorld Macalope column is based on reporting this kind of inaccurate anti-Apple journalism.   
    baconstangkencwatto_cobra
  • Reply 45 of 69
    entropysentropys Posts: 4,148member
    What Bb-15 says, yet even more than that. Apple sets itself above its competitors on price. Apple users by and large are happy users (let’s not bring current macs into this). Those that settle for the cheaper product worry they have t got the best. Or if they think they have the best, cannot fathom why others don’t think the way they do. So they like their views affirmed.
    apple users can be the same in that respect, especially tech people in this and other blogs,although I reckon most Apple users don’t care at all about these little wars. This lack of care about others’ choice just annoys the Apple haters even more of course.
    baconstangwatto_cobra
  • Reply 46 of 69
    Forbes seems to have exactly the same modus operendai - Bad Apple………Amazing Samsung. The simple solution is that I don't read either!
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 47 of 69
    sacto joesacto joe Posts: 895member
    bb-15 said:
    gatorguy said:
    With that said the lack of sales didn't prevent the blogosphere blasting at full-volume every perceived failure of the Pixel line whether real, imaginary, widespread or one-off. The tech writers are equal-opportunity click-baiters. If there's a "name" and a possible nega-story they will write it. Apple fans already know that.

    Yes, that was true. There are MANY articles written about problems with Pixel phones (particularly Pixel 2 XL, the phone with non-Samsung display) as soon as they were launched. It looked almost as-if Samsung paid tech media to portray Pixel 2 XL in the poorest light possible to me. DED himself wrote few articles about failures of Pixel lineups (both 1st generation and 2nd generation). So not sure, why DED complains about just one website singing praises about Pixel 2nd generation phones when there are PLENTY of articles available in tech media which criticized them.

    I think his point is clear. DED’s column isn’t about other tech media, it’s about Bloomberg. And Bloomberg appears to be beating a drum for Google, despite the data indicators favoring Apple. Bloomberg continues to pigeon hole Apple as a failure and Google as a winner despite it plainly being the opposite. 

    As a leading investor news outlet, Bloomberg’s coverage is puzzling, and itself is newsworthy. 
    All it really proves is that attacking the leader generates more interest than positive coverage. Everyone knows Apple is trouncing their competition, so “bad news” will attract more eyeballs.
    There is more to it than attracting more eyeballs (viewers) as if most of the tech audience was neutral about Apple. 
    - Apple is a niche company. The majority smartphone OS is Android.
    The tendency of large groups is to act in a tribal/school yard way; where the thinking is; my team is good, the other team is the enemy. 
    - There is therefore a huge anti-Apple tech audience.
    This anti-Apple audience doesn’t care about accuracy but is attracted to negative news about Apple even if it is irrational and false. 
    - Tech journalists, like all news outlets, are looking for income and clicks on articles produces that.
    Most tech journalists (and many YouTube tech channels) pander to the large audience which dislikes Apple by spreading misinformation.
    This trend has gone on for many years.
    The MacWorld Macalope column is based on reporting this kind of inaccurate anti-Apple journalism.   
    This. I'd also add that it has ever been thus with Apple.

    That said, FUD stories like these can seriously ding not only a stock but product sales. Fortunately for Apple, they're no longer the 98 lb weakling that they once were. And I respect their solution; ignore the detractors, focus on making the best product they can, and let their products speak for themselves. How great this last earnings call was, in part because the nay-sayers were quite literally hoisted on their own petards and left to dangle awkwardly in the wind!

    So, given the existence of a huge anti-Apple audience, and given a multi-week long period of time every quarter when Apple has to sit on the market sidelines (the so-called "quiet period"), it wouldn't take much to start a "slide" in AAPL by upping the quantity of anti-Apple FUD leading up to and during Apple's quiet period. Sell at the high, then buy back after you've dragging AAPL down, then ride it back up when Apple re-enters the market. Rinse, repeat. A thoroughly destructive process for AAPL's long term value, but the gamblers/leeches do love it....

    Only during last quarter's enactment of this little staged performance, in swooped Mr. Buffett and cooly picked up a shit-load of those depressed AAPL shares. And he almost certainly did it this quarter as well. So not only did the anti-Apple click-bait feeders get hoisted, but so did the AAPL manipulators, as Mr. Buffett effectively ate their lunch.

    It'll be interesting indeed to see if the performance is attempted yet again, knowing what we now know about investors like Mr. Buffett, who are definitely NOT constrained from buying during Apple's quiet period.

    This is the kind of thing that puts all those Apple haters in a blue funk. My heart bleeds.... /s
    edited May 2018 watto_cobra
  • Reply 48 of 69
    MuntzMuntz Posts: 26member
    gatorguy said:
    Why would anyone care about "Google's Pixel supply chain"? What exactly would you realistically expect reported and why?

    With that said the lack of sales didn't prevent the blogosphere blasting at full-volume every perceived failure of the Pixel line whether real, imaginary, widespread or one-off. The tech writers are equal-opportunity click-baiters. If there's a "name" and a possible nega-story they will write it. Apple fans already know that. 

    As for HTC they were pummeled by an overwhelming Samsung ad campaign in the West going back to 2010, and hammered by an aggressively-priced Xiaomi in China ever since too, with Huawei putting last nails in their coffin. Their unimaginative 2012-2016 phones helped hasten the slide.

    Google's hardware orders from them were never going to be any more a blip which surprises absolutely no one, so HTC's poor showing since their heyday certainly can't be blamed on Pixels. May as well blame it on Windows Phone which is what they started out with years before Android. It's the HTC Sense phones for T-Mo/Verizon/Orange and those built for the massive Chinese market that were left wanting and thus competed poorly. Where HTC once was in the forefront on smartphone design many of their recent handsets now look dated and uninspired. They simply weren't prepared for the dual assault of Samsung and the high-spec/low-price Chinese manufacturers.

    In hindsight they might have been better off as a contract manufacturer which is where they started. The expectations for their demise have been in the news since 2011, this ain't nuttin' recent. 
    I'm starting to think AI pays you to post here to engage readers and drive forum engagement. I cannot imagine a normal person caring this much about Google—an advertising company—to white knight them in the way that you've done for years.
    baconstangwatto_cobra
  • Reply 49 of 69
    silvergold84silvergold84 Posts: 107unconfirmed, member
    This is the first article that ask the count about the campaign against Apple and iPhone X. Cant be a coincidence that they talk well about android, inventing positive results and tests and in contemporaney invent bad news about Apple. So congratulation really from my heart. Thanks to be honest people. We need article like this! We need someone that say the truth. Thanks again. 
    edited May 2018 watto_cobra
  • Reply 50 of 69
    jbdragonjbdragon Posts: 2,301member
    Let out the Apple Watch which has been doing really well. While Android Wear, or whatever new New Google wants to call it now is DEAD. Not a single Android Wear watch anymore on their Website. Qualcomm hasn't made a CPU for a watch now in a couple years. Samsung, the one selling the most watches is using their own TIZEN OS. But those sales are a joke. AirPods selling like crazy since Apple first released them. I just got myself a set. Google Simi wireless headphones, is there enough sold to register anywhere in the marketplace? Android Tablets are a joke of a Market. No one wants to buy a high end Chrome Laptop. The only place the cheap ones are selling is in U.S. Schools. Outside of the U.S. Chromebook sales are a huge joke. I don't know what's up with Bloomberg, other then in the Fake News Market these days? They can't be this blind on so many things.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 51 of 69
    KITAKITA Posts: 392member

    Google is not a hardware company.
    Not for much longer. They have a team of chip designers working on their versions of the Apple 'A' series.

    The question is... Will Aphabet get tired of it and like so many things, the close them down.
    Only time will tell.
    A primary problem for Google's custom chip development is that it can't sell hardware at any price. Recall that Apple had a lead with PowerPC in the late 90s, but because Macs were the only customer, PPC fell behind. Google is selling about half the Pixels as Apple was selling Macs back then, and developing a chip (or even a function) differentiatingly competitive with Apple's A11 or Qualcomm, etc is a bigger task than pushing the clock speed of a G5 ahead. 

    The point of Android was that the crappy PC makers were all supposed to lock arms and take down the big bad Apple in smartphones. Instead, they are competing with each other on price (just like they did in PCs!) and Apple is advancing in ways they can't keep up, while they're forced to spend lots of money to make very little profit. 
    The Pixel Visual Core utilized development of Google's own ALU technology that's also used in their Tensor Processing Units. The PVC offered 3 TFLOPS of performance on a mobile power budget, that's 5x more than the Neural Engine in the A11. Developing this type of hardware goes beyond just mobile. Google just announced the 3rd generation TPU today with 8x the performance of the previous generation. So a single 4-chip module should have ~1.5 PFLOPS of performance and a full set of racks (256 chips total) will offer 100 PFLOPS. That's a considerable amount of performance that can be utilized for inference of neural networks.
    edited May 2018
  • Reply 52 of 69
    k2kwk2kw Posts: 2,075member
    Forbes seems to have exactly the same modus operendai - Bad Apple………Amazing Samsung. The simple solution is that I don't read either!
    Samsung is the snake carrying google the scorpion across the river.   The only question is when one will try to kill the other.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 53 of 69
    k2kwk2kw Posts: 2,075member
    KITA said:

    Google is not a hardware company.
    Not for much longer. They have a team of chip designers working on their versions of the Apple 'A' series.

    The question is... Will Aphabet get tired of it and like so many things, the close them down.
    Only time will tell.
    A primary problem for Google's custom chip development is that it can't sell hardware at any price. Recall that Apple had a lead with PowerPC in the late 90s, but because Macs were the only customer, PPC fell behind. Google is selling about half the Pixels as Apple was selling Macs back then, and developing a chip (or even a function) differentiatingly competitive with Apple's A11 or Qualcomm, etc is a bigger task than pushing the clock speed of a G5 ahead. 

    The point of Android was that the crappy PC makers were all supposed to lock arms and take down the big bad Apple in smartphones. Instead, they are competing with each other on price (just like they did in PCs!) and Apple is advancing in ways they can't keep up, while they're forced to spend lots of money to make very little profit. 
    The Pixel Visual Core utilized development of Google's own ALU technology that's also used in their Tensor Processing Units. The PVC offered 3 TFLOPS of performance on a mobile power budget, that's 5x more than the Neural Engine in the A11. Developing this type of hardware goes beyond just mobile. Google just announced the 3rd generation TPU today with 8x the performance of the previous generation. So a single 4-chip module should have ~1.5 PFLOPS of performance and a full set of racks (256 chips total) will offer 100 PFLOPS. That's a considerable amount of performance that can be utilized for inference of neural networks.
    Is this chip and software being offered to Google’s OEMs like software?  Or is google keeping it for its Pixel phones.   If so they are rats.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 54 of 69
    matrix077matrix077 Posts: 868member
    Muntz said:
    gatorguy said:
    Why would anyone care about "Google's Pixel supply chain"? What exactly would you realistically expect reported and why?

    With that said the lack of sales didn't prevent the blogosphere blasting at full-volume every perceived failure of the Pixel line whether real, imaginary, widespread or one-off. The tech writers are equal-opportunity click-baiters. If there's a "name" and a possible nega-story they will write it. Apple fans already know that. 

    As for HTC they were pummeled by an overwhelming Samsung ad campaign in the West going back to 2010, and hammered by an aggressively-priced Xiaomi in China ever since too, with Huawei putting last nails in their coffin. Their unimaginative 2012-2016 phones helped hasten the slide.

    Google's hardware orders from them were never going to be any more a blip which surprises absolutely no one, so HTC's poor showing since their heyday certainly can't be blamed on Pixels. May as well blame it on Windows Phone which is what they started out with years before Android. It's the HTC Sense phones for T-Mo/Verizon/Orange and those built for the massive Chinese market that were left wanting and thus competed poorly. Where HTC once was in the forefront on smartphone design many of their recent handsets now look dated and uninspired. They simply weren't prepared for the dual assault of Samsung and the high-spec/low-price Chinese manufacturers.

    In hindsight they might have been better off as a contract manufacturer which is where they started. The expectations for their demise have been in the news since 2011, this ain't nuttin' recent. 
    I'm starting to think AI pays you to post here to engage readers and drive forum engagement. I cannot imagine a normal person caring this much about Google—an advertising company—to white knight them in the way that you've done for years.
    State of human being in a nutshell. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 55 of 69
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,592member
    It’s not necessarily about “caring” about Google pixel, it’s about revealing bias in the media, particularly Bloomberg here.

    To answer your question, however, it is precisely Bloomberg (and the media) which seem to care about Google Pixel.  
    Do you consider DED articles biased?

    You are going to see bias in many places. The reader should source information from a wide spectrum of outlets and try to focus on the facts and actually read any linked sources within articles.

    Over time it is possible to learn which sources or writers are worth reading or not and save some time into the bargain.

    As an aside, one of my pet peeves is jounalists that try to be 'the stars' of whatever they are informing on. Much worse in the case of TV news.


  • Reply 56 of 69
    DanielEranDanielEran Posts: 290editor
    gatorguy said:

    The point of Android was that the crappy PC makers were all supposed to lock arms and take down the big bad Apple in smartphones. I
    They were supposed to take Apple down? Really? IMHO they were hoping to compete with them. Who the heck was talking about destroy? Ummm, no one AFAIK. Sounds more than a bit imaginative...
    Circle the wagons much?

    But regarding your primary point about processors I tend to agree with you. I'm not sure there's going to be enough quantity/demand to get great pricing unless there's something else going on that's not yet apparent. 
    Your desperate attempts to rewrite history are so fantastically delusional. As if Android hasn't been the platform of robot stickers pissing on an Apple logo, and instead was actually some serious group of exceptional hardware makers trying to build good products. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 57 of 69
    DanielEranDanielEran Posts: 290editor
    k2kw said:
    KITA said:

    Google is not a hardware company.
    Not for much longer. They have a team of chip designers working on their versions of the Apple 'A' series.

    The question is... Will Aphabet get tired of it and like so many things, the close them down.
    Only time will tell.
    A primary problem for Google's custom chip development is that it can't sell hardware at any price. Recall that Apple had a lead with PowerPC in the late 90s, but because Macs were the only customer, PPC fell behind. Google is selling about half the Pixels as Apple was selling Macs back then, and developing a chip (or even a function) differentiatingly competitive with Apple's A11 or Qualcomm, etc is a bigger task than pushing the clock speed of a G5 ahead. 

    The point of Android was that the crappy PC makers were all supposed to lock arms and take down the big bad Apple in smartphones. Instead, they are competing with each other on price (just like they did in PCs!) and Apple is advancing in ways they can't keep up, while they're forced to spend lots of money to make very little profit. 
    The Pixel Visual Core utilized development of Google's own ALU technology that's also used in their Tensor Processing Units. The PVC offered 3 TFLOPS of performance on a mobile power budget, that's 5x more than the Neural Engine in the A11. Developing this type of hardware goes beyond just mobile. Google just announced the 3rd generation TPU today with 8x the performance of the previous generation. So a single 4-chip module should have ~1.5 PFLOPS of performance and a full set of racks (256 chips total) will offer 100 PFLOPS. That's a considerable amount of performance that can be utilized for inference of neural networks.
    Is this chip and software being offered to Google’s OEMs like software?  Or is google keeping it for its Pixel phones.   If so they are rats.
    Yes it would be interesting if Google got into the custom chip business and applied its AI savvy into silicon. But so far, all it has done is work to build this hardware into its own proprietary Android phone that was expected to sell at iPhone prices, but failed to sell in any quantity at all. 

    The business of selling advanced chips is not so great, unless you have incredible market power like Qualcomm to enforce complex standards-essential patents necessary to make any phone work on CDMA. What other advanced chip designers are making any real money? briefly Nvidia, mostly because of the short term cryptocurrency boom.

    Putting advanced hardware into a machine is really cool to do: Amiga, Next DSPs, Mac AV DSPs, GPUs, Apple's Mx, Wx, GPUs etc. But unless you can sell hardware, it isn't a good business (only modern Apple has been able to do this). Google could do this as a giveaway (basically duplicating Android to create both its current software OS subsidy and a new silicon subsidy), but what extra revenue makes it worth doing? Phones don't have to be fast and exceptional to serve ads and spy on user behavior. Todays crap $200 Androids are perfect at that.

    Why would Google spend Apple-like money to build advanced premium hardware to cater to customers who are paying Samsung, HTC, Xiaomi etc to build Androids with advanced Google hardware? Google isn't going to be able to take a cut of that retail profit. a) there is little retail profit and b) Android OS has only made any progress by being free. 

    Tech fans get excited about real tech concepts, but unless you can sell them at a profit, they remain good ideas that go nowhere. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 58 of 69
    DanielEranDanielEran Posts: 290editor
    Muntz said:
    gatorguy said:
    Why would anyone ... expectations for their demise have been in the news since 2011, this ain't nuttin' recent. 
    I'm starting to think AI pays you to post here to engage readers and drive forum engagement. I cannot imagine a normal person caring this much about Google—an advertising company—to white knight them in the way that you've done for years.
    I would actually support a GoFundMe to have Gatorguy start his own blog and promise not to drive forum engagement off the rails into insanity here 😂
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 59 of 69
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,153member
    gatorguy said:

    The point of Android was that the crappy PC makers were all supposed to lock arms and take down the big bad Apple in smartphones. I
    They were supposed to take Apple down? Really? IMHO they were hoping to compete with them. Who the heck was talking about destroy? Ummm, no one AFAIK. Sounds more than a bit imaginative...
    Circle the wagons much?

    But regarding your primary point about processors I tend to agree with you. I'm not sure there's going to be enough quantity/demand to get great pricing unless there's something else going on that's not yet apparent. 
    Your desperate attempts to rewrite history are so fantastically delusional. As if Android hasn't been the platform of robot stickers pissing on an Apple logo, and instead was actually some serious group of exceptional hardware makers trying to build good products. 
    So no Android OEM was trying to destroy Apple then counter to what you claimed, but I'm the one trying to rewrite history? Gotcha.
    singularity
  • Reply 60 of 69
    The only rational way to interpret the bad information written about AAPL is to assume stock manipulation. It happens predictably in the run up to earnings season.
    watto_cobra
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