6 min read

May 1 2023 - Monday May Day

May 1 2023 - Monday May Day

👋Happy Monday friends. Get ready for another busy week with earnings reports, the Fed's interest rate decision, and the release of the April jobs report. Let's get into it.

Quick Take

  • Earnings season isn't over yet – Apple, Marriott, Starbucks, Ford, Uber, and CVS Health are among the 162 companies in the S&P set to report this week
  • Fed meeting on Tuesday
  • Tech brands are all gearing up to their spring launches
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Top Stories

Apple is planning to bring back widgets as a core part of its smartwatch interface in the upcoming watchOS 10 software update. The new interface will let users scroll through a series of different widgets for activity tracking, weather, stock tickers, calendar appointments, and more, rather than having them launch apps. As part of the overhaul, Apple is testing the idea of changing the functions of some of the watch’s buttons. The move is an admission that the iPhone-like app format doesn’t always make sense on a watch, where users want quick access to bits of information. The update is likely to be the most significant change to the Apple Watch this year.

Google's Pixel Fold has been leaked in what are believed to be the first official images of the device. The phone is expected to be announced at Google's upcoming I/O event on May 10th.

Elon Musk has said that Twitter plans to introduce a one-click payment platform that will allow its users to pay for individual articles from media companies, rather than subscribing to them. “This enables users who would not sign up for a monthly subscription to pay a higher per article price for when they want to read an occasional article,” according to Musk. The Twitter CEO gave no details on the percentage that Twitter would take or related publisher requirements.

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Rundown
  • Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced during the company's Q1 earnings call that Amazon is developing a "generalized and capable" large language model (LLM) to enhance Alexa's capabilities. Although Jassy didn't provide precise details about what the new model would entail, he noted that it would be a more advanced version of the existing LLM, which was released in February.
  • Lyft CEO, David Risher, announced that employees must return to the office for three days a week from this fall, marking a significant change for the company since they adopted remote work due to the pandemic. This comes a day after Lyft laid off 26% of its workforce, and the decision also signals a new chapter for the ride-hailing company under Risher
  • Nissan's 4 hour ad for its new electric SUV has become a viral success, attracting over 17 million views on YouTube. Produced for Lofi Girl, a popular 24/7 livestream of relaxing beats, the ad used a similar soundtrack and aesthetic to the channel. The ad, featuring an animation of a woman driving the Ariya through a beautiful countryside with occasional billboards, was produced by Titmouse. The ad's popularity has made it the second-most-popular video on Nissan USA's YouTube channel.
  • Reddit is trying chat rooms again where users can engage in conversations in real time. Channels will be specific to one topic and embedded within respective subreddits, accessible via the main chat tab on the mobile app. The platform, which previously launched chat features in 2018 and 2020, says it has learned from past failures and is giving moderators their own channels to help manage chats.
  • The annual report of S4 Capital, the holding company of MediaMonks, reveals that the company's executives missed their EBITDA and diversity targets for the second year in a row. The actual performance for EBITDA came in at 13.9% in 2022, below the target of 20%. Although the company's executive team hit their integration targets in the 2021 financial year, the remuneration committee decided none of the targets for improving integration within S4 had been met in 2022.
  • Samsung's profits for Q1 2023 have decreased by 95% compared to the previous year. This is due to the memory chip division posting a $3.4 billion loss during a $160 billion dip in the global memory industry. However, Samsung is not planning to slash its investment in memory chips to maintain its long-term competitiveness. Instead, it plans to reduce memory production to protect against a 70% fall in prices over the last nine months
  • Sony PlayStation is reportedly developing a new handheld gaming device called "Q-Lite," which is said to be a sequel to the PSP and PlayStation Vita. The device could have cloud-based features that sync with the Sony PlayStation 5, an eight-inch LCD display with a wide aspect ratio, and high-speed Wi-Fi. The potential release date for the Q-Lite is November 2023, with a price range of $200 to $300 USD. However, no official confirmation has been made yet.
  • Adidas plans to refocus on its core sportswear products in the United States, with plans to invest more in marketing and innovation. The company aims to double down on US-specific sports, primarily basketball, by investing hundreds of millions of dollars in a new facility in Los Angeles for its basketball product team.
  • A US federal judge has rejected Google's motion to dismiss the government's antitrust lawsuit against it, allowing it to proceed. The lawsuit accuses Google of holding a monopoly in online advertising to the detriment of consumers. Google had argued that the case should be dismissed, in part because the government defined its alleged monopoly too narrowly, but the judge ruled that the case should move forward.
  • A model that generates recipes from images of available ingredients
  • OpenAI has raised a further $175m from a group of investors including GIC and one of its co-founders, Sam Altman. The funds will be used to expand the company's team, enable it to bring more products to market and develop its existing projects, including its GPT-3 language generator. OpenAI has raised more than $1bn since it was founded in 2015, with Microsoft being a notable investor, while Altman now serves as its CEO.
  • Jony Ive and his team at LoveFrom spent four years perfecting a typeface called LoveFrom Serif, which has become a symbol of the company's dedication to craftsmanship. The typeface was created by the same design team behind Apple's San Francisco font and was inspired by John Baskerville.
  • Stagwell's Mark Penn believes that AI and AR will be the biggest disruptors to the marketing industry. Stagwell, which has grown to $2.7 billion in revenue in seven years, runs an annual innovation competition to award winners $1 million to solve marketing and technology problems, some of which have created AR solutions for live events and sports, and generative and predictive AI tools for content. Penn sees AR becoming as pervasive as a phone or watch
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Published by:

Joe Nash

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