Tech Review | Tesla $TSLA May Need A Takeover, Will Apple $AAPL Bite?

Tech Review (TR 2018-05-19)--Domain Mondo's weekly review of tech news with commentary, analysis and opinion, separating signal from the noise: Features • 1)Tesla $TSLA May Need A Takeover, Will Apple $AAPL Bite? 2) America's IT Strongholds 2018, 3) Investing: The Week, Investing Notes, 4) ICYMI Tech News.

1)  Tesla May Need A Takeover (tesla.com) $TSLA, Will Apple Bite? (apple.com) $AAPL

Editor's note: If you think about it, for many consumers there's a synergy in having a premium-priced innovative smartphone matched with a premium-priced innovative "smartcar"--increasingly into the future, together, they may be the essence of having the "best" in mobile devices.

Tesla 2018 (video published by Tesla on May 9, 2018): 

Apple cannot outcompete Android/Google/Waymo, or Asia, for the future mass market smartphone or "smartcar," but it can produce, at a handsome profit, with Tim Cook's supply chain expertise, an aspirational and innovative, premium-priced, Jony Ive-designed, Elon Musk-engineered, auto-mobile. A Tesla takeover also provides Apple additional opportunities in solar energy and battery innovations, for a global market crying for clean energy and distributed electrical grid solutions. Steve Jobs always thought of Apple as an innovative engineering company producing technology devices exhibiting superlative design. Tesla could be the next step in Apple's evolution.

Tesla Powerpacks Balancing the Grid in Terhills, Belgium (published by Tesla on May 14, 2018):

Apple has the cash and cachet to make this happen, both as an attractive deal for long-term Apple shareholders as well as $TSLA stockholders and bondholders. A Tesla deal with Apple is far better than a Tesla chapter 11 any way you look at it. Musk appears to have a persistent, unsolved "execution problem" at Tesla (Model 3 reservations reportedly exceed 450,000), and talented engineers and managers have been heading for the exits. He needs to remember that Steve Jobs was fired by Apple (only years later did Jobs return to reinvent Apple via iPod, iPhone, and iPad). Another option would be for Apple to opt-in via convertible preferred shares or bonds. Time will tell, but as the lawyers say, "Time is of the essence." See also: Apple buying Tesla doesn't sound like a crazy idea anymore — here's why | BusinessInsider.com 27 January 2018: "Tesla needs to be saved from its delusional idea about the company's future growth — and Apple needs to be saved from the disaster of its car project."

Related:

• Tesla Will Need to Raise $5 Billion and Still May Not Survive | TheStreet.com 1 May 2018

• Tesla Will Need Over $10 Billion In New Capital By 2020: Goldman | ZeroHedge.com 17 May 2018
• Hidden by Model 3 Mess, Tesla's Debt Problem About to Emerge | Fortune.com 7 April 2018

• Elon Musk Needs His Own Tim Cook to Take Over Tesla’s Operations | fool.com 26 Nov 2017

• How Much Is Tesla Debt | Google.com

2) America's IT Strongholds 2018 | Statista.com:

"Computing workforce" includes developers, software engineers, systems managers and teachers.

See also: Miami’s growing tech scene tries to level up | Curbed.com: "... Last year, area startups received $1.3 billion in venture capital funding, placing Miami eighth on the list of U.S. cities in terms of VC activity."

3) Investing

The Week: NASDAQ Composite -0.66% | S&P 500 Index -0.54% | DJIA -0.47%

"Going forward, we expect US large cap tech to outperform & #FixedIncome to be under more duress."--DataTrekResearch.com 16 May 2018

Wall Street's Charging Bull

Investing Notes:

a. US: Don’t Poke The (Volatility) Bear | DatatrekResearch.com: "... we see outsized moves in the S&P particularly to the downside as an opportunity to buy the market at more attractive entry points if your investment mandate allows for it."

b. Europe:

The Italian 10 yr yield is rocketing higher. Up 40 basis points in under two weeks. Chart looks very, very bearish. The sands are shifting.

— Jeffrey Gundlach (@TruthGundlach) May 16, 2018

c. Emerging Markets: Who’s Most Afraid of a Latin American Debt Crisis (Apart from Latin America)? | WolfStreet.com.

d. Global Growth? "Forget the noise, the outlook is better than you think, but mind complexity. 'Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Geniuses remove it.'"--Blain's Morning Porridge May 17, 2018.

4) ICYMI Tech News:

a. NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) Q1 FY2019 Results - Earnings Call Transcript | SeekingAlpha.com: NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang: "Okay. We had another great quarter, record revenue, record margins, record earnings, growth across every platform. Datacenter achieved another record with strong demand for Volta and AI inference. Gaming was strong. We are delighted to see prices normalizing and we can better serve pent-up gamer demand. At the heart of our opportunity is the incredible growth of computing demand of AI just as traditional computing has slowed. The GPU computing approach that we've pioneered is ideal for filling this vacuum. And our invention of the Tensor Core GPU has further enhanced our strong position to power the AI era. I look forward to giving you another update next quarter. Thank you."

b. Why women are more likely to get funded on Kickstarter | moneyish.com

c.  Android: Google is starting to require that OEMs roll out regular security patches | xda-developers.com

d.  Zuckerberg agrees to face EU Parliament over Facebook data use | sky.com: "as early as next week" and with GDPR imminent, investigation finds Facebook lacks privacy controls for information inferred about users, including sensitive details used in ad targeting--TheGuardian.com. Also: China is Facebook's second-largest source of ad revenue, after the U.S.--qz.com

e. Supreme Court allows states to legalize sports betting, opening floodgates for online gambling profits | TechCrunch.com: DraftKings.com and FanDuel.com may be early winners, but there’s a market for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and perhaps major networks that hold sports broadcasting rights to open up new sources of revenue. See also British bookmakers odds on to unlock U.S. sports after legal ruling | Reuters.com: GVC already has state licenses in New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware; and European online gaming firm Paddy Power Betfair says it's in talks to buy FanDuel, reportedly for $600M-700M, day after SCOTUS killed U.S. ban on sports gambling--Axios.com.

f. PayPal confirms that it is buying payments startup iZettle for $2.2B in an all-cash deal | TechCrunch.com

g. Online Advertising vs TV--ad revenue report (pdf) by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)--internet advertising revenues in the US rose 21.4% in 2017 from the year earlier to a record of $88 billion, while TV ad revenues declined 2.6% to $70.1 billion. See also: Why Traditional TV Is in Trouble | The New York Times | NYTimes.com.

h. Amazon Stops Buying Prized Shopping Ads on Google | Bloomberg.com: "Abrupt drop in activity hints at Amazon’s own ad ambitions ... Two tech giants are increasingly competing on multiple fronts ..."  

i. Amazon AWS: Amazon is moving into blockchain with a new partnership | CNBC.com: AWS partnering with start-up Kaleido--"Introducing Kaleido to AWS customers is going to help customers move faster and not worry about managing blockchain themselves"--Amazon Web Services (AWS). Register now for the seventh annual AWS re:Invent conference Nov 26-30, 2018, Las Vegas--"deeper technical content, more hands-on learning opportunities, keynote announcements, expanded Expo hours, exciting after-hours events, and the best party in technology."

-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo  

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