Tech

A customer service representative works with customers at the Apple store as shoppers return to indoor shopping after Los Angeles County eased restrictions at places like the Beverly Center in Beverly Hills on October 8, 2020. Genaro Molina | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images Apple is set to report its fiscal first quarter 2021 earnings on Wednesday, and analyst expectations are bullish. The company failed to excite investors in its fourth quarter, which ended Sept. 26, 2020, due to weak iPhone sales. But the weakness was likely due to the fact that people were waiting for the new iPhone 12, which didn’t go on sale until October. Wednesday’s earnings report will mark the first full season since Apple released its new lineup of iPhones and subscription services bundles. The company’s stock was up about 1% in the premarket, amid broader market gains. Here’s what analysts are saying about the tech giant: Morgan Stanley Research Morgan Stanley analysts said in a Thursday note they expect a record December quarter. “Our recent conversations suggest investors expect Apple to release solid, but not great, December quarter results.

Makan Delrahim, U.S. assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, speaks during the Wall Street Journal Tech Live global technology conference in Laguna Beach, California, U.S., on Monday, Oct. 22, 2019. Martina Albertazzi | Bloomberg | Getty Images Over more than three years at the helm of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, Makan Delrahim has ventured to define antitrust enforcement as much by what it is not as by what it is. It is not only about whether prices go up or down for consumers — a yardstick that would make enforcement of tech platforms offering their services at zero cost to consumers virtually impossible to pursue. It’s also about the quality of services for consumers and whether they have viable alternatives to turn to if they’re not up to par. It is not, however, a “panacea” for all social ills, he often says. Under Delrahim’s leadership, which ended Tuesday, the Antitrust Division has investigated some of the biggest tech companies in the world, brought the first major monopoly case in about 20 years against Google (from which he was eventually recused, having long ago lobbied for

Elad Gil Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images In 13 years as a start-up investor, Elad Gil has backed some of the era’s biggest tech breakouts, such as Airbnb, Instacart, Stripe and Square. He also co-founded genomics company Color, drawing on his Ph.D. in biology and previous work in virology labs. Late last year, before optimistic vaccine news started rolling out from Pfizer and Moderna, Gil combined his science expertise with his start-up success to scout out his next investment. He was projecting that the developed world would be mostly through the Covid-19 crisis by late 2021, so he started looking for businesses hurt by the pandemic that were poised to rebound sharply on the other side. Other than Airbnb, which was already in his portfolio, the next best bet he found was TripActions, a developer of travel and expense management software. TripActions cut hundreds of jobs in March amid a massive cutback in corporate travel. Gil, who previously worked at Google and later ran corporate strategy at Twitter, saw the company positioning itself to capture market share when the economy reopens. Gil connected with

Google Deepmind head Demis Hassabis speaks during a press conference ahead of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match in Seoul on March 8, 2016. Jung Yeon-Je | AFP |Getty Images | Getty Images LONDON — Artificial intelligence researchers don’t like it when you ask them to name the top AI labs in the world, possibly because it’s so hard to answer. There are some obvious contenders. U.S. Big Tech — Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft — have all set up dedicated AI labs over the last decade. There’s also DeepMind, which is owned by Google parent company Alphabet, and OpenAI, which counts Elon Musk as a founding investor. “Wow, I hate this question,” Mark Riedl, associate professor at the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing, told CNBC when asked to pick his standouts. “Reputationally, there is a good argument to say DeepMind, OpenAI, and FAIR (Facebook AI research]) are the top three,” Riedl said. AI investor Nathan Benaich, a partner at Air Street Capital, agreed. Google Brain and Microsoft could potentially be included in the top ranks, Benaich said, before adding that he believed Amazon and IBM

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 chip will be used in premium Android devices that could cost over $1000. Qualcomm Qualcomm’s market share of China’s smartphone chip market plunged in 2020 due to U.S. sanctions on Huawei, according to a new report. As a result, the country’s domestic mobile players turned to alternatives such as Taiwan’s MediaTek, according to CINNO Research. Last year, 307 million smartphone so-called system on chips (SOC) were shipped in China, down 20.8% year-on-year, the report said. SOC is a type of semiconductor that contains many components required for a device to work on a single chip, such as a processor. They are a critical component for smartphones. Qualcomm’s shipments in China shrank 48.1% year-on-year, CINNO Research said without releasing details on the number of Qualcomm chips shipped. The U.S. giant’s market share in China fell to 25.4% in 2020 versus 37.9% in 2019. Part of the reason for Qualcomm’s declining market share is due to U.S. sanctions on Huawei. The Chinese telecommunications giant was put on a U.S. blacklist known as the Entity List in 2019, which restricted American firms — including

The Twitter App loads on an iPhone in this illustration photograph taken in Los Angeles, California. Mike Blake | Reuters Twitter said it locked the account of China’s embassy in the United States over a tweet about Uighur women that violated company policy against dehumanization. The Chinese Embassy account, @ChineseEmbinUS, tweeted this month that Uighur women had been emancipated by government policy from being “baby making machines.” The tweet cited a study reported by state-controlled newspaper China Daily, Reuters reported. “We’ve taken action on the Tweet … for violating our policy against dehumanization, where it states: We prohibit the dehumanization of a group of people based on their religion, caste, age, disability, serious disease, national origin, race, or ethnicity,” a Twitter spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. The ethnic Uighurs, a Muslim minority living in western China, have been repressed by the Chinese government for years, according to the United Nations, United States and United Kingdom. China has repeatedly denied mistreatment of the Uighurs, most recently on Wednesday when its Foreign Ministry angrily responded to former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s characterization of Uighur policy as “genocide.” Twitter

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, January 20, 2021. Brendan McDermid | Reuters Amazon on Wednesday offered to help with the national effort to distribute the Covid-19 vaccine, according to a letter addressed to President Joe Biden, which was obtained by CNBC. “As you begin your work leading the country out of the Covid-19 crisis, Amazon stands ready to assist you in reaching your goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of your administration,” Dave Clark, CEO of Amazon’s worldwide consumer business, wrote in the letter, which was first reported on by Reuters. Clark said Amazon stands ready to leverage its operations, information technology and communications capabilities and expertise to “assist your administration’s vaccination efforts.” He added that Amazon has reached an agreement with a third-party health-care provider to administer vaccines on site at the company’s warehouses. The letter comes as Amazon has been vying for its front-line workers to have priority access to the Covid-19 vaccine. Last month, Clark

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff arrive to the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2021 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong | Getty Images Twitter on Wednesday confirmed that it has transitioned institutional White House accounts from the Trump administration to the Biden administration. The transition comes following the swearing-in of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The accounts include @WhiteHouse, @POTUS, @VP, @FLOTUS and @PressSec. Twitter said it has also created a new account, @SecondGentleman, for Douglas Emhoff, Harris’ husband. Concurrently, the company has archived the accounts from the Trump administration. Tweets from those accounts are now publicly archived at @POTUS45, @WhiteHouse45, @VP45, @PressSec45, @FLOTUS45 and @SecondLady45.

LONDON — President-elect Joe Biden and the European Union are “on the same page” when it comes to regulating tech giants, the head of the European Commission told CNBC on Wednesday. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU’s executive arm, is confident that the new U.S. president will be an “ally” in fighting disinformation online and stepping up the rules on how tech firms operate. The 27-member bloc has big ambitions for the new U.S. administration and it was not shy to demonstrate that on Inauguration Day. “If there’s hate out there, if there’s polarization, fake news, all of these are things that are threats to our democracies and I am sure that we will have an ally to work on that,” von der Leyen said. Tech regulation has been a priority among European officials, but the Capitol riots and the subsequent actions of Twitter, Facebook and others have increased the calls for action. Some lawmakers have questioned whether these companies should be treated as publishers rather than tech firms — meaning they would be more accountable for the content available on their platforms. “Europe is coming forward with these standards, but I am convinced that the

The Netflix Inc. true crime documentary miniseries “Tiger King” overview page is displayed on a laptop computer. Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images Netflix stock soared as much as 15% Wednesday to briefly trade at an all-time high, a day after the company revealed in its Q4 2020 earnings report that it was considering stock buybacks and had surpassed 200 million subscribers for the first time. It’s the largest jump since the company’s stock closed up 19% on October 18, 2016. “We’ve gone from a historical bear on NFLX to a card-carrying bull,” Wells Fargo analysts said Wednesday in a note to clients. The firm also upgraded its price target to $700 per share, up from $510. At least 15 other firms also hiked their price targets. The video streaming giant said it expects to become cash flow positive after 2021, helping to make the bull case for analysts. “We remain bulls on the NFLX story as NFLX offers consumers an increasingly compelling unique entertainment experience on virtually any device, w/o commercials at a still relatively low cost,” Pivotal Research Group analysts said in a note