Andy Rubin -- Android inventor

New something to watch. 

The most likely place to see real innovation is with people who have already been innovative.

If you're wondering who might be taking this guy seriously? 

This is a picture of him with Masayoshi Son... And Son was reportedly going to put in 100 million...  a pretty good relationship. They apparently lost the investment over an Apple conflict.

Andy Rubin, a co-creator of Android, lost out on a $100 million investment from SoftBank as Apple deepened ties with the Japanese investor, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.


CNBC

The father of Android, Andy Rubin, is currently kicking the tires on a new smartphone company named Essential. Rubin teased the company's first device on Monday, posting an image to Twitter and noting that he's "really excited about how this is shaping up" and is "eager to get it in more people's hands."

Rubin's tweet suggests that the company is nearing a final unveiling and, likely shortly thereafter, a major launch. Rubin would be wise to get this out the door after the Galaxy S8 hits the market sometime in April and before Apple introduces the iPhone 8 in September.

Foxconn is investor

Patently Apple

To kick off 2017 we learned that Foxconn was a known investor in Andy Rubin's new smartphone venture. Google's Eric Schmidt sat on Apple's board during the crucial years prior to the iPhone's launch wherein Schmidt was privy to developments of the iPhone while at the same time Google was backing Andy Rubin's Android OS to compete with Apple's revolutionary iPhone. Wasn't that a direct conflict of Interest that Schmidt should have told Steve Jobs about? Yes, of course but he didn't. Schmidt played Judas to Jobs. So Andy Rubin's new smartphone company called "Essential Products Inc" is no friend to Apple. The "Essential" smartphone is rumored to be ready to launch prior to Apple's World Wide Developer Conference. Foxconn is backing this company and is likely to manufacture the new smartphone.

Expect a round of Tech Acquisitions at premium prices

This may not relate directly to Microvision, but it will have a very significant effect on the landscape of smaller tech companies. 

Things are about to get really interesting, and the things to watch more numerous.



Gulf Times


The initial investments will likely include $45bn from Saudi Arabia and $25bn from SoftBank, as well as $1bn each from Apple Inc, Qualcomm Inc and Oracle Corp, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. Abu Dhabi investor Mubadala Development Co may join the first round, though it could also wait until a later time, they said. The initial round is likely to exceed $80bn and the timing of the closing may still change, said one of the people. It’s not yet clear when the remainder of the planned financing would be raised.

Son announced plans for the Vision Fund in October, vowing to become the biggest investor in the technology industry over the next decade. He has already been among the most acquisitive, buying Sprint Corp for $22bn and ARM Holdings plc for $32bn along with stakes in hundreds of startups. The new fund will give him cash to cut even larger deals as he aims to capitalise on emerging trends like artificial intelligence and the so-called Internet of Things.
“When I first founded this company, all I could think about is how to stretch the finances until the end of the month,” Son said Wednesday after his company’s earnings announcement. “Recently, the span shifted to 10 and 30 years ahead. I’m now seriously thinking about how to make sure that SoftBank group can grow for the next 300 years.”

***

SoftBank may announce deals within days of the fund’s first closing, one of the people said. The company has had preliminary discussions to make an investment in WeWork Cos., a New York-based startup for sharing office space, said the people, cautioning a deal may not be finalised. WeWork, with more than 140 locations around the world, was most recently valued at $16bn.
SoftBank has also agreed to invest $1bn into OneWeb Ltd, a startup based in Exploration Park, Florida that aims to provide Internet connectivity from satellites. Son said Wednesday that the deal would go into the new fund.

T-Mobile Hates Data Plans, Loves Robohon - Target of Sprint / SoftBank & Son

This morning was a pretty interesting as one rather simple story morphed into a very interesting web.

T-Mobile is coming out with unlimited data and video for ALL of it's plans; and unlimited standard definition video, and unlimited high definition video for $25/month.

Okay, that's pretty cool -- and that can be significant for the adoption of PicoP. Limited

Then a little more digging and I learn something about T-Mobile. It's actually a European company that has coverage over much of Europe and all of the US. Based in Germany, it covers Germany, and 12 other countries in Europe.

Then, apparently Masayoshi Son, head of SoftBank -- recent acquirer of ARM Holdings, wants to buy T-Mobile to merge it together with Sprint that SoftBank already effectively owns.

It's background knowledge, but Legere had great praise for Robohon and wanted to offer it at T-Mobile.

And of course we know -- the more free video bandwidth for mobile devices - the better for PicoP adoption. (T-Mobile and Sprint, have unlimited plans, and Verizon is offering free Video streaming -- on it's own video delivery service.) This is all good news in the background - the ecosystem for mass adoption is in place.

John Legere on Twitter

T-Mobile on Wikipedia

SoftBank's Masayoshi Son Wants to Merge Sprint & T-Mobile
Phone Arena - Still wants a Merger between T-Mobile and Sprint

Bidding on Bandwidth Bloomberg

"There aren’t any current talks between Sprint and T-Mobile -- they’re actually forbidden. Opening bids for federal airwaves started this week in the FCC’s so-called incentive auction. TV broadcasters have agreed to hand over certain radio wave licenses to the agency, which in turn will offer the spectrum for sale to wireless carriers, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. Sprint isn’t participating. The spectrum could fetch as much as $86.4 billion. During the bidding, which could last until early next year if the auction doesn’t raise enough money in the early rounds, carriers are prohibited from any deal discussions. "

Insight -- Masayoshi Son, ARM Holdings

I find that this provides insight about how certain people and companies think.

Japan News Masayoshi Son  -- More at the source.

ARM traces its history back to the mid-1980s, when a group of software engineers decided to design their own microprocessor for the Acorn BBC Micro, a device that introduced a generation of British school children to computing.

Muller said the rise of rival computers based on Intel chips dealt Acorn a fatal blow, but despite the failure Apple had seen something it liked in the technology, which it wanted to use in its Newton handheld device.

With Apple’s backing, ARM was spun out of Acorn in 1990.

The Newton failed, but ARM persevered with its designs and was chosen by another company set to become a global leader — Nokia — for a new mobile phone in the mid-1990s.

“Because Nokia was then becoming the No. 1 mobile phone company, other people knew they’d selected ARM to use in mobile phones, and that drove a lot of adoption from other players,” Muller said.

Nokia chose ARM’s processor designs because they required less power than those from rivals, making them ideal for a mobile device powered by a battery.

An early decision to let its customers innovate using ARM’s core technology was key to its success, Muller said, giving partners such as Apple, Samsung or Qualcomm the freedom to develop their own chips while using ARM’s common architecture that had become the industry standard.

The company and analysts had said that partnership model had made ARM less vulnerable to a takeover because an acquisition by the likes of Apple or Intel could put off its other partners.

SoftBank, a telecommunications and internet company with no presence in semiconductors, largely sidesteps that problem.

Nintendo NX

Another thing to watch more closely. 

This is good noise. ( But keep it basic! )

Been watching Pokemon Go since last year around here, because of Microvision's interest and position in augmented reality. Pokemon Go is also connected to Nintendo. 

The Nintendo NX has been interesting for a long time (following this thing for a few years now.) It is interesting because since the conversation about it began, there was talk of blurring the lines between "console" and "mobile." -- The way I see it, that involves primarily the screen you play on -- and the ONLY way to blur that line is with projection.

It's now clear, that people outside Nintendo are starting to see the Nintendo NX. It's interesting timing, coinciding with the release of Pokemon Go.

SoftBank's Masayoshi Son could have gotten more from a ten-billion investment here than a 32 Billion investment in ARMH. When it gets to the internet of things, everything tiny that needs a screen is going to need MVIS.

From TechCrunch   (more at the source)

The Nintendo NX is one of the most long-teased console releases I can ever remember, especially as an officially acknowledged thing. Speaking on his company’s quarterly earnings conference call yesterday (via IGN), Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot shared some tantalizing impressions about the NX: It’s “really great,” and it should “help the industry continue to grow,” particularly by bringing “more casual players back” into the console gaming fold.

* * *

Guillemot’s comments don’t reveal what the console will look like, but do give us clues about who it’s intended to impress: casual players. Nintendo’s biggest console success, the original Wii, did well primarily because it struck a chord with a non-traditional console gaming audience, thanks to accessible gameplay and unique use of motion controls for participatory play.

The Wii U had the potential to repeat, but since the heydays of the original Wii, the attention of the casual game player has shifted — to mobile. I wouldn’t read too much into Guillemot’s vague statement, but the rumors suggesting Nintendo’s device combines portability with living room chops make a lot of sense if indeed the idea is to recapture the company’s casual appeal.

Masayoshi Son, Japanese executives and Risk

Masayoshi Son has been busy for a long time in tech, but really got some attention when going for ARM holdings this week.

Worth digging around about him. It seems to me that if there ever were a guy who would enthusiastically jump into Microvision, it would be this guy.

He's a risk-taker in risk-averse Japan & Risk averse big business. 

He's of Korean ancestry in Japan. This is quite significant in Japan - even though most outside of Japan don't realize it. He's not really on the inside in Japan -- but not really on the outside -- and the restraining parts of the Japanese culture aren't restraining him. (I'm sure I'll get a note correcting this if I've misstated any of this. DF?)

He understands Japan and the "weird" in Japan. Check out the ad.

What is here is a guy who knows capital. A guy who is willing to risk -- and sometimes lose - which is really important. If it's a sure thing, there isn't any risk, but precious little upside as well. We also have a guy who studies the future and gets it right. 

Microvision is a significant part of the future of portable computing, entertainment & the internet of things. 

Those industries have a huge problem - getting large displays from small devices -- and Microvision is the answer to that problem.

From Financial Times

Critically, say analysts, Mr Son embraces risk with skin in the game: a 19.2 per cent stake in SoftBank that is both stick and carrot to his bravura dealmaking. By contrast, the rest of corporate Japan — increasingly led by a generation of salaryman chief executives who hold minuscule quantities of stock and have risen to their positions by avoiding risk wherever possible — does not do very much of that.

Some larger, cash-rich Japanese companies, following pressure from shareholders, have started to become more proactive in looking abroad for long-term growth and a higher return on equity. They logged a record ¥10tn of outbound M&A deals in 2015. Even so, it was an improvement rather than an outright transformation. Those outbound deals were fairly conservative, led by the insurance and banking sectors looking for large, bolt-on businesses in dependable, developed parts of the world. The scale of the deals — modest by global standards — demonstrated a reluctance on the part of acquirers fundamentally to reshape themselves.

From Wall Street Journal

While companies such as Intel Corp. design and manufacture chips, ARM is strictly a designer. It charges licensing fees and per-chip royalties to other companies that use its schematics. Customers such as Apple Inc., Qualcomm and Samsung Electronics Co. began flocking in the past decade to ARM-based chips because they drew less power than competing chips from the likes of Intel, which made high-performance but energy-guzzling processors.

Yahoo News

"A fresh acquisition is not what the market wants from SoftBank," said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Asset Management.

"It's Mr. Son's style to keep expanding, but isn't he stretching too much?"

Investors fret the purchase of ARM, Japan's largest ever outbound deal, may be too much for SoftBank, still in the throes of turning around U.S. carrier Sprint <S.N> and tackling a $112 billion debt pile.

Others take the longer view.

"There is little synergy with SoftBank's existing businesses, but it makes sense if we look at ARM's future potential," said Tomoaki Kawasaki, senior analyst at IwaiCosmo Securities Co.

"Mr. Son is prioritizing investment for the future over shoring up the balance sheet. It's very Mr. Son-like."

A self-made entrepreneur whom one investment banker described as thinking "in decades", Son, of Korean descent, has long been something of an outsider in corporate Japan.

He wears the somber suits of Japan's salarymen but is an outspoken sometimes outrageous voice, with a celebrity status and 2.5 million followers on Twitter.

Son said he sealed the deal in just two weeks with a handful of advisers. These include Jeffrey Sine, co-founder of niche U.S. merchant bank Raine, who has advised Son for years.

Weird Favorite TV Ad, (HotTopics,

Japan’s favorite TV ad series features a family who sit around bickering and occasionally mentioning the merits of the tariffs offered by mobile network SoftBank.

So far, so ordinary. Mobile operators love to feature regular people and trumpet the joy of communication with bland phrases about being ‘better connected’ and having a ‘world that revolves around you’.

But in the Softbank commercials, the grown up Japanese daughter has a brother who is apparently an American black man. And their father is, well, a white dog.

No one in the ads ever remarks on the weirdness of this.

It’s all very droll, slightly weird and joyfully eccentric.

And wildly popular. Indeed, Japan’s CM Research Center, which conducts TV ad recall surveys says SoftBank’s ‘Otosan’ ads (Otosan is Japanese for father) have topped most of its polls for the last five years — and earned the firm’s ‘Brand of the Year’ prize every year from 2007 to 2011.

***

Son loved to buy and sell, throwing money into 600 technology companies, including GeoCities, Ziff-Davis Publishing and the Comdex computer show. Some of these bets went disastrously wrong, such as Kingston Technologies, which lost Softbank $1 billion.

Others did better.

Ziff-Davis’s chief executive, Eric Hippeau, introduced Son to a struggling small company called Yahoo, which wanted $5 million to develop its search engine tech. Famously, Masayoshi Son offered $100 million. Yahoo founder Jerry Yang replied that they didn’t need that much. To which Son countered: “Everyone needs $100 million.”

Thus, Softbank owned more than one-third of Yahoo when it went public in April 1996.

And Masayoshi Son was similarly prescient about Alibaba, offering a big sum to its CEO Jack Ma when he hadn’t even asked for it. As a result, Softbank got a third of Alibaba – a stake worth $75bn on the day the Chinese giant IPOd last month.

SoftBank’s $20 million investment in Alibaba back in 2000 probably ranks as one of the greatest ever.

Huge Acquisition in Telecom

An exceptionally bright guy is buying up interesting areas in telecom and one of them is a PicoP maker.  --- another something to watch. 



Japan's Softbank to acquire ARM holdings?

Japan's Softbank has agreed to acquire ARM Holdings, the giant U.K. semiconductor firm that supplies part of the chip design used in Apple iPhones, in a deal worth more than $32 billion, the companies announced on Monday. 

ARM, the largest London-listed tech company by market value, is a major presence in mobile processing, with its processor and graphics technology used by Samsung, Huawei, and Apple in their in-house microchips.

Components based on technology licensed by ARM are found in the vast majority of the world's smartphones, and the Cambridge-based group has branched into other connected devices as smartphone growth slows.

As part of its bid to bolster its presence in the growing internet of things (IoT) sector, Softbank will pay £17 per share (about $22.50 a share) for ARM, a 43 percent premium on Friday's closing price, in an all-cash deal. ARM shares rallied over 46 percent in early trade on Monday. 

"This is a company I always admired for the last 10 years," Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive of SoftBank, told reporters in London Monday. "This is the company I wanted to make part of Softbank. I am so happy" 

On whether the deal will face opposition, the CEO said the deal will close quickly because Softbank "does not operate any competitive business against ARM. This will be very straightforward"

Connection?   (From this blog)

From February.....

Foxconn seeks investment from SoftBank to boost bid

OSAKA -- Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry reportedly has sounded out SoftBank Group about joining its bid to acquire Sharp, aiming to sweeten the deal by bringing in a Japanese partner and a major buyer of the troubled manufacturer's mainstay smartphones.

     Hon Hai, the contract electronics manufacturer also known as Foxconn, plans to hold a controlling interest in Sharp, with SoftBank seen taking a roughly 10-20% stake. Having SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son himself buy into Sharp directly is likely on the table as well. Foxconn hopes that having the telecom company on board would boost Sharp's smartphone sales, contributing to its recovery.

Asia Nikkei

From Harvard Business Review

If you look at these carefully, you don’t think the skull has the most value. The brain is more valuable than the skull. But everybody has a brain. Inside the brain are wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom and knowledge are the most valuable things in the body. I want to be number one in the business of supplying wisdom and knowledge all over Japan. But the knowledge industry is too big, too wide. So we specialize in the PC industry’s knowledge.

FORBES -- SPRINT

Sprint , the fourth largest U.S. wireless carrier, has seen its stock price rise by close to 15% over the last week and by approximately 30% in the last three months, outperforming other large cap wireless names. Below we outline some of the likely reasons for the rally.

• Developments at Sprint’s majority shareholder Softbank have been a key driver of the stock over the last few days. Earlier this week, SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son said that he would stay on for another five to ten years, instead of retiring in favor of the company’s president Nikesh Arora. Son noted that one of his key priories in his remaining time would be to develop Sprint to its “true potential,” signaling a vote of confidence in the company.

ARM display processing