Strategic Foresight - Insights in Business and Technology

 IBM a Tech Giant - How it Lost its Way Key Indicators  Market Cap – $129.39Bn EV – $173.4Bn Debt - $57.5Bn, Cash - $17.9Bn  P/B – 8.57  P/E (Trailing) – 60.44 (Growth)  P/E (Forward) – 14.3 (Div. Centric,  No Growth) Economic Moat: Narrow (under threat)   Where is the Growth How it Lost its Way IBM a more than 100-year-old company that used to be a trendsetter in the technology space has become a laggard and is struggling to get its Mojo back. It is facing headwinds, and it is not clear how it will modernise its business. Today, IBM has 3 business segments, Infrastructure, Software and Consulting, and all of them are declining YoY. There are multiple reasons why IBM's revenues are declining except for the minor surge in 2021, and 2022. Let's look at the key reasons. Unlike its peer group players like Salesforce and ServiceNow which specialises in providing packaged application software in the Cloud (SaaS), IBM has no application software to offer. Instead, IBM's software o

 Generative AI - Changing the World, Key Players and Their Progress - Part One  

 What is Singularity? A singularity is a theoretical condition that could arrive in the near future when a synthesis of several powerful new technologies will radically change the realities in which we find ourselves in an unpredictable manner.  The term "singularity" was first used in the context of technology by mathematician and computer scientist John von Neumann in the 1950s. However, it was popularised by futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil in his 1999 book "The Age of Spiritual Machines."  In 2005 Ray Kurzweil further extended this concept and wrote in his book titled: "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology".  In his book, Ray Kurzweil defines the "singularity" as "a point in the future when technological progress becomes so rapid and profound, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilisation ." He believes that the singularity will be triggered by the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI)

Tesla - It's not a Car, It's an AI Device on Wheels Tesla - Evolution Tesla - AI Device on Wheels Teslas Secret of Success Anecdote: In 2013, Elon Musk sent a meeting request to Apple's CEO Tim Cook, but Tim refused to meet him.  Musk confirmed this by tweeting in Dec 2020, that he had tried to sell Tesla to Apple for 1/10 of its current value during "the darkest days of the Model 3 program ."  It's still a mystery why Apple didn't end up buying Tesla, but there are a few theories out there. One possibility is that Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, just wasn't interested in acquiring Tesla. Another theory is that Cook was worried about some of the difficulties Tesla was going through at the time, like production delays and financial losses. Lastly, it's also possible that the two companies couldn't agree on a fair price for Tesla. Occasionally, there is a rumour that Elon Musk aspired to become the CEO of Apple . Following Steve Jobs' passing in

Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) - The Chipmaker That Runs The World Key Indicators   Domain: Semiconductors  Comp. (Chip Manf) – Samsung, SMIC, GFS, UMC Growth Segment – HPC AI Chips (Up) Economic Moat – Wide Cyclical - Yes Key Customers (Total 530+) TSMC's revenue is made up of 26% from Apple and 7% from Nvidia. Apple has a 10-year partnership with the chip maker.  Apple designs chips for iPhones and Mac computers, while Google designs Tensor Chips for Pixel smartphones. Qualcomm and MediaTek design processors for Android phones. Nvidia designs Gaming and Artificial Intelligence (AI) processors and AMD and Nvidia design advanced processors for Tesla.  TSMC chips are also used by major cloud providers like AWS, MSFT, Google, Oracle, and IBM for data centres, networking, and software. Broadcom designs chips for broadband and wireless markets.   TSMC is able to offer its customers its manufacturing capabilities in the areas of Smartphones, High-Performance Computing (HPC), Internet of Th

 Oracle's Evolution - Database Leader to AI Innovator   Market Cap – 290.15 Bn EV – 369.18Bn Debt - $88.94Bn (High), Cash – $12.08Bn  P/B – 122.43 (intangibles in the book)  P/E (Trailing) – 31.05 (Growth)  P/E (Forward) – 19.43 (Growth) Economic Moat: Wide (product sales, under threat)    Domain: Enterprise Software and Database Comp. (Business Apps) – IBM, SAP, Workday, MSFT, Salesforce Comp. (Database) – MongoDB, MySQL, Cassandra, AWS, Azure, IBM  Growth Segment – OCI (Up)  Oracle's Facing Headwinds - In the Age of No SQL The emergence of Digital Transformation in the early 2010s has brought multiple challenges to Oracle's relational database segment. Today, it is facing stiff competition from both commercial and open-source vendors. It must constantly innovate and create new products and services to stay ahead of the database market. Despite the challenges, it is rising to the occasion by developing its own cloud-native database products and investing in artificial inte

Google the King of Search - What the Future Beholds in the AI World  Google's Evolution   Google King of Search - Where is the Growth Google Search - Economics with Gen AI Google Cloud's - AI and ML Play Googles AI Journey  Googles $100Bn Blunder Google - Risks to its Growth My other posts on  AI Value Chain ,  Amazon the King of Retail -WhyAWS is the Crown Jewel ,  Microsoft the King of AI in Software ,  Salesforce under the AI Cloud  and how  Generative AI can transform Telecoms ,  Energy and Utilities Source:  Seekingalpha ,  Bloomberg , Martinfowler.com,  Databricks.com , Linkedin,  Nvidia ,  Google ,  AWS ,  Fourweek MBA Blog ,  Amazon