Tech Narratives with BAT & Softbank in Asia with Jan Dawson
Jan Dawson from Jackdaw Research & host of Beyond Devices and Tech Narratives podcast joined us in a two part conversation discussing the tech narratives of the technology giants in Asia & the Korean chaebol: the Samsung Group. In the first of the two part conversation, he discussed the motivation behind creating the Tech Narratives site and how he covered the global technology giants in general. In the same conversation, we discussed the major narratives from global expansions to breakthrough technologies such as self driving cars that encompass the Asia technology giants from BAT in China to Softbank in Japan.
Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):
- Jan Dawson (@jandawson), founder of Jackdaw research and host of the Beyond Devices and the Beyond Devices podcast (iTunes, SoundCloud) with Aaron Miller. [1:14]
- Contributor to Techpinions & Techpinions podcast (iTunes, SoundCloud)
- Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? [1:31]
- How is it like covering Asian companies such as BAT from the US? [2:16]
- Tech Narratives (iTunes) [3:05]
- What is the motivation behind setting up the Tech Narratives site and podcast? [3:24]
- How does the website select or feature a tech story and explain the narrative? [7:47]
- Specifically in Asia, what are the major companies with tech narratives that you cover and why? [9:55]
- Let’s discuss a few tech narratives with the major dominant companies in Asia
- Baidu
- Baidu has made a couple of headlines in autonomous vehicles aka self driving cars by opening up their platform and partners with Bosch and Continental. What does this tells us about where they are in the self driving car space? [11:08]
- Alibaba
- Alibaba has announced the $73 speaker similar to the Google Home and Amazon Echo. Are they merely following the footsteps of Amazon or building a different perspective in the home automation front? [16:01]
- Is Alibaba managing expectations with their recent announcements in global expansion? [17:59]
- Tencent
- What is the narrative with Stripe turning on Alipay & Tenpay in China? [20:15]
- Does the market favors Tencent’s dominance in gaming due to the recent annoucement that China has superceded US in the mobile gaming market? [22:16]
- SoftBank
- Why did SoftBank purchase Boston Dynamics and Schaft from Alphabet? [24:24]
- What is the narrative that Softbank is selling with Sprint talking with T-mobile informally on merger again? [26:23]
Podcast Information:
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The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bleongcw) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk on Indiegogo (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, Altizen and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack.
