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July 14, 2020
The U.K. finally announced Monday that Huawei equipment will be banned from the country's 5G network — a big shift from its earlier policy. Back in January, the U.K. put limits on Huawei products, but stopped short of a ban. That decision "disappointed" the Trump administration, which claims the company is a security threat.
Some have speculated that American annoyance was part of the reason for the U.K. changing its mind — especially given that a post-Brexit Britain desperately needs a U.S. trade deal. But U.K. Trade Commissioner for North America Antony Philipson, who is responsible for negotiating the deal, recently told me that he'd played no part in discussions about banning Huawei.
Still, the U.K. admitted that the U.S. was responsible for the change — just in a slightly roundabout way. In May, the Trump administration started requiring all chipmakers using U.S. equipment or software to obtain a license before they could supply Huawei-designed chips — effectively cutting the company off from basically all its suppliers.
- According to Ian Levy, technical director of Britain's National Cyber Security Centre, the U.S. rule has made Huawei's products riskier. In a blog post, Levy explains that Huawei faces a "massive engineering challenge," which will likely result in it using new chipmaking processes or non-Huawei-designed chips in its products. That is "highly likely to introduce security and reliability problems," Levy writes, and will make it much harder for the NCSC to evaluate those products' security.
- The NCSC's decision shows just how much influence the U.S. has over global tech. Even if it can't ban other countries from using a company, it can hurt a company so badly that other countries have no choice but to ditch it.
But this isn't just about security. The NCSC told the government that Huawei 5G equipment already present in U.K. networks could continue to be used safely, but the government demanded network operators remove it. It's hard to see the security justification for that, giving this otherwise security-focused decision a bit of a trade war tinge.
This article will appear in Wednesday's edition of our daily newsletter, Source Code. Sign up here.
Shakeel Hashim
Shakeel Hashim ( @shakeelhashim) is a growth manager at Protocol, based in London. He was previously an analyst at Finimize covering business and economics, and a digital journalist at News UK. His writing has appeared in The Economist and its book, Uncommon Knowledge.
‘It’s not OK’: Elastic takes aim at AWS, at the risk of major collateral damage
Elastic's long-running dispute with AWS entered a new chapter last week with big changes to two of its open-source projects. AWS now plans to take those projects under its wing.
"I don't know why this is surprising to people," Elastic CEO Shay Banon said in an interview with Protocol.
Photo: Michael Nagle/Getty Images
January 21, 2021
Tom Krazit ( @tomkrazit) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering cloud computing and enterprise technology out of the Pacific Northwest. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET, paidContent, and GeekWire. He served as executive editor of Gigaom and Structure, and most recently produced a leading cloud computing newsletter called Mostly Cloudy.
January 21, 2021
Fed up with what he sees as unfair competition from AWS, Elastic CEO Shay Banon felt he had no choice but to restrict the way third parties can use two important open-source projects developed by his company. Yet much of enterprise tech thinks he just threw the baby out with the bathwater.
Last Thursday, Elastic published a blog post — curiously titled "Doubling down on open, Part II" — announcing that Elasticsearch and Kibana, two widely used open-source projects in enterprise tech, would no longer be available under the permissive Apache 2.0 license. Instead, all subsequent releases to those projects will only be available under either a controversial new license known as the SSPL, or the Elastic License, both of which were designed to make it difficult for cloud companies to sell managed versions of the open-source projects they're applied to.
<p>Elastic has never tried to hide its disdain for AWS, a feud that dates back to the <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-elasticsearch-service/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">2015 launch of Amazon Elasticsearch Service</a>. The introduction of that AWS service, a managed version of the Elasticsearch open-source project, was arguably the low point in <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2018/open-source-companies-considering-closed-approach/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the strained history</a> between enterprise tech companies based around open-source projects and AWS.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>It is, <a href="https://mostlycloudy.substack.com/p/for-the-new-york-times-a-swing-and" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">of course</a>, completely legal for AWS — or any company — to build its own service around any permissively licensed open-source project. In fact, <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/stepping-up-for-a-truly-open-source-elasticsearch/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">AWS reacted to Elastic's decision Thursday afternoon</a> by announcing plans to <a href="https://opensource.com/article/18/7/forks-vs-distributions" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">fork</a> the two projects, or to take them in a new AWS-led direction, under the same permissive Apache 2.0 license.</p><p>But a generation of open-source enterprise companies (and their venture capitalist backers) see AWS as an anticompetitive gorilla stomping on their opportunity to monetize innovative software, and Elastic took particular offense to AWS' use of the Elasticsearch trademark.</p><p>"I don't know why this is surprising to people," Banon said in an interview with Protocol. "I'm making a stand here. I'm drawing a line and saying this is not OK."</p><p>However, critics argued Banon's decision paved the way for Amazon to turn its open-source distribution of the Elasticsearch project, the <a href="https://opendistro.github.io/for-elasticsearch/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Open Distro for Elasticsearch</a>, into a proper fork. The move had enormous potential to disappoint contributors to the Elasticsearch and Kibana projects who expected their work would be freely available to the community, only for that promise to be discarded once it was no longer economically comfortable for its corporate backer.</p><p>"Choosing to fork a project is not a decision to be taken lightly, but it can be the right path forward when the needs of a community diverge — as they have here. An important benefit of open-source software is that when something like this happens, developers already have all the rights they need to pick up the work themselves, if they are sufficiently motivated," AWS said in the post announcing its decision.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>After AWS published its decision, Banon issued an additional statement: "<em></em>When we announced the change, we sadly expected this. This what made it so hard. But I am also relieved. Relieved we are free to focus on products vs. battle abuse. Relieved that I can trust our community will see through this misinformation & confusion.<em>"</em><br></p><p>While legal experts believe Banon has a solid trademark case against AWS, the licensing changes clearly did not deter AWS, and they have no effect on companies like Microsoft and Google Cloud, which have signed deals with Elastic.</p><p>"They are aiming to hit Amazon, but what they are doing is throwing a boulder at Amazon floating peacefully in a pond of an ecosystem," said <a href="https://www.vmbrasseur.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">VM (Vicky) Brasseur</a>, a corporate strategist and former vice president of the <a href="https://opensource.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Open Source Initiative</a>. "I don't think it's worth it. They are going to destroy their ecosystem."</p><h3>Quite a stretch</h3><p><a href="https://www.elastic.co/enterprise-search" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Elasticsearch</a> is an open-source search engine first released in 2010 by Banon, who would go on to co-found Elastic in 2012. It is often used alongside two other Elastic open-source projects, Logstash and Kibana, to form the "<a href="https://www.elastic.co/what-is/elk-stack" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ELK stack</a>," which is well known in enterprise tech circles among companies that want to build search capabilities for their websites while also using those search capabilities to pursue their system logs for events such as errors.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Customers can buy a managed version of this stack <a href="https://www.elastic.co/pricing/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">called Elastic Cloud</a>, which runs on all three major U.S. cloud providers, or manage it themselves on either their own hardware or clouds. But there are also some companies and individual users that are happy to take on the burden of managing <a href="https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">the open-source version</a>.</p><p>The new licensing changes, however, mean that companies using this open-source version must now agree that they won't use Elasticsearch and Kibana as part of their own cloud service, and that has raised questions. The changes are directed at big cloud providers, but there are many small and medium businesses that could be using the open-source projects as part of their own software stack in a way that may or may not be infringing on the new licenses, depending on the quality of the lawyers involved in any dispute.</p><p>"If you're using them, please look at how they fit into your software supply chain, look at how this is going to impact your product and your projects. Don't just overlook it and assume it's nothing," Brasseur said.</p><p>Banon said "the vast majority" of Elasticsearch and Kibana users will not be affected by these licensing changes, but he acknowledged there will be valid concerns felt inside the Elasticsearch community.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>"I'm very worried about [alienating community members]; this is why we didn't make this change lightly," Banon said. "Regardless of how much we try to relax our user base, some people will end up being alienated, and others, which I'm more worried about, might be fed by FUD," the tried-and-true "fear, uncertainty and doubt" campaigns that have been part of enterprise tech marketing for decades.</p><p>Brasseur agreed that the licensing move comes with significant risks to Elastic's goodwill inside its community of contributors.</p><p>"They're now taking these contributions, which were given by external contributors freely and openly with the assumption that their contributions would be freely and openly available, and now they're locking them up behind a non-open license," she said. "It's perfectly fine to do that. But you better be talking to your community up front and telling them how and why, and then I think it's probably wise for you to be then compensating people for the value that they have provided to your company. Otherwise, you're just using them."</p><h3>Off the mark</h3><p>The root cause of the dispute between Elastic and AWS mostly centers on the trademark issue, which prompted <a href="https://searchaws.techtarget.com/news/252471650/AWS-faces-Elasticsearch-lawsuit-for-trademark-infringement" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a lawsuit from Elastic in 2019</a> that continues to work its way through the court system.</p><p>The use of that trademark caused a great deal of confusion among Elastic's customers, according to Banon, who believed that the AWS service was the result of collaboration between the two companies when it was really just a repackaging of the open-source Elasticsearch project. <a href="https://twitter.com/Werner/status/649738362086027265?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">A tweet from Amazon CTO Werner Vogels</a> calling the new service a "partnership" certainly did not help.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>"To modify Elastic's product and call it Amazon Elasticsearch is, in my view, a pretty clear trademark infringement," said Pamela Chestek, <a href="https://chesteklegal.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a trademark attorney</a> and former intellectual property attorney at IBM's Red Hat.</p><p>But when <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2019/elasticsearch-distribution-amazon-web-services-sends-shockwaves-open-source-software/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">AWS launched the Open Distro for Elasticsearch in 2019</a>, the trademark dispute also turned into a dispute over code.</p><p>AWS charged that Elastic was co-mingling open-source code with proprietary code, making it hard for users to know if they required a paid subscription or not to use certain features. The Open Distro was pitched as a way to get the benefits of open-source Elasticsearch with the features needed to make it work properly, and it was released under the Apache 2.0 license.</p><p>Elastic denied that it was trying to confuse its users, and alleged that AWS was using third-party code in that distribution that was a copy of its own work.</p><p>"Recently, we found more examples of what we consider to be ethically challenged behavior. We have differentiated with proprietary features, and now we see these feature designs serving as 'inspiration' for Amazon, telling us their behavior continues and is more brazen," <a href="https://www.elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-AWS" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Banon said in a blog post Tuesday</a>.</p><h3>License to print money</h3><p>As with all disputes in enterprise software, this one really comes down to money. Elastic doesn't make money when people use the open-source versions of its software, and all things considered, would prefer they pay for the licensed versions.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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</div></p><p>From the outside it's hard to pinpoint exactly how much money AWS has made from its Elasticsearch services, but it's a non-zero amount: AWS likely recorded more than $12 billion in overall cloud revenue during the fourth quarter of 2020. At the same time, Elastic's own cloud services are growing quite strongly as the world shifts to cloud-based software.</p><p><a href="https://s2.q4cdn.com/265747582/files/doc_financials/2021/q2/Q2-FY21-Earnings-Press-Release.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Elastic revenue rose 43% in its most recent quarter</a>, with SaaS subscription revenue for Elastic Cloud driving much of that growth. Over the course of 2020, Banon wasn't worried enough about the competitive threat from AWS to mention it during the quarterly conversations with the financial community.</p><p>In fact, in answering a question about competition with the cloud providers from a financial analyst during Elastic's December earnings conference, Banon said: "We feel like we're ahead of the pack on all three when it comes to the maturity and the future readiness of our products, and that's reflected, I think, by the usage of it." Elastic's stock has more than doubled in the last 12 months.</p><p>"We're doing well as a business, and I'm not going to sit here and apologize for it," Banon said. "It's not about doing well or not doing well as a business, it's about doing what's right."</p><p>In the aftermath of the licensing changes, however, what's "right" for Elasticsearch users, open-source contributors, and Elastic shareholders takes on different meanings, depending on where you sit.</p><p>"I would have been a lot more sympathetic to Elastic if they said, 'look, these choices we made when we were very young, they aren't working out for us anymore. They aren't working out with our business plan,'" Chestek said. "A lot of people would be unhappy with that, but it would be honest."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="7">
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</div></p><p><strong><em>Update:</em></strong><em> This article was updated at 3:45 p.m. PT to include a statement from Elastic following the release of AWS' blog post.</em></p>
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Tom Krazit ( @tomkrazit) is a senior reporter at Protocol, covering cloud computing and enterprise technology out of the Pacific Northwest. He has written and edited stories about the technology industry for almost two decades for publications such as IDG, CNET, paidContent, and GeekWire. He served as executive editor of Gigaom and Structure, and most recently produced a leading cloud computing newsletter called Mostly Cloudy.
Politics
What the Biden administration can learn from Ajit Pai’s FCC
The Biden administration's goals for internet infrastructure would be best pursued using economic incentives rather than heavy-handed directives, argues Douglas Holtz-Eakin.
FCC chairman Ajit Pai gave the private sector plenty of latitude. Will that continue under the Biden administration after Pai steps down?
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
December 22, 2020
Douglas Holtz-Eakin (@djheakin) is president of the American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office.
December 22, 2020
As Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai prepares to step down on Jan. 20, there are more than a few lessons the incoming Biden administration could learn from his tenure at the agency. Perhaps the most important lesson is that each of the new administration's goals for internet infrastructure — bridging the digital divide, universal broadband, rapid deployment of 5G — is best pursued using a regulatory approach that emphasizes economic incentives over heavy-handed directives.
Since March 1, internet usage has increased by roughly 30%, yet our networks have not buckled under pandemic-era pressures. Unlike much of Europe, we have not seen our access or speeds limited. This level of resilience is no accident. Under Pai, the private sector has had the appropriate incentives and latitude to do what it does best: invest in opportunity and innovate. The regulatory strategy and decisions got us to where we are today.
<p>Many did not expect this outcome. When Pai's FCC repealed net neutrality two years ago, there was a flood of concern and consternation that this repeal would enable opportunistic and malicious internet providers to throttle access or slow down speeds. No pervasive bad behavior emerged. Instead, by lifting these regulatory burdens, the FCC helped spur <a href="https://www.ustelecom.org/broadband-capex-investment-looking-up-in-2017/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a surge of private investment</a> in broadband deployment, not only <a href="https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broadband-america/raw-data-measuring-broadband-america-eighth" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">connecting more Americans</a> in hard-to-reach or underserved communities, but also supporting more nimble, resilient networks that can handle rapid changes and growth in internet demand. At the same time, broadband prices <a href="https://www.ustelecom.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/USTelecom-2020-Broadband-Pricing-Index.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">continue to decline</a> even as speeds continue to increase. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>In the presence of this hands-off regulatory approach, most Americans today are able to telework, learn online, and participate in remote health care consultations with little to no fuss. To be sure, we are far from finally closing the digital divide, but the current FCC has left us with a blueprint of the most efficient way to meet this goal and others for our internet infrastructure. </p><p>That blueprint is straightforward: Solutions to the connectivity and economic challenges we face today — from getting and keeping our students and educators online during the pandemic, to expanding remote access to health care delivery, to expanding the reach of high-speed connections — can only be sustained when the economics make sense. We need a rigorous, data-driven approach to solving these challenges. The Pai FCC has pursued this path, often on a bipartisan basis, and in the process has helped to boost connectivity in underserved communities, expand economic opportunity and — unknowingly — prepare our country to navigate an unprecedented public health and economic crisis. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>The next FCC chair and the Biden administration as a whole should not abandon this light-touch approach; they should double down on it. In order to finish the job of connecting all Americans to high-speed internet service, the incoming FCC should avoid interfering in the marketplace and burdening companies with unnecessary restrictions. As my colleague Jennifer Huddleston has explained, this is the exact approach that we should continue taking with regard to <a href="https://www.americanactionforum.org/insight/keeping-a-clear-path-to-5g/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">development and deployment of 5G</a>. </p><p>5G has the potential to bring high-speed connections to the hardest-to-reach places, but the federal government is considering building and running a single national 5G network — the exact opposite approach of the Pai FCC's approach. Taking this kind of single-contractor approach to 5G, as Huddleston mentioned, is <a href="https://www.atr.org/conservatives-unite-send-message-congress-don-t-nationalize-5g" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">likely to be costlier for taxpayers</a>, take significantly longer to deploy and undermine the competitive system we have today in which multiple actors are working to develop and deploy 5G and related technologies. In a truly competitive marketplace, consumers benefit from greater choice, while businesses are rewarded for their ability to provide cutting-edge services. The future of 5G and the emerging technologies it will enable are full of promise, and it would be a shame to throttle the development and deployment of 5G when our country has all the right tools to succeed. </p><p>To swiftly and meaningfully expand broadband and 5G connectivity, the new administration must continue to rely on the tested economics that has encouraged innovation and investment across our entire internet infrastructure. As the transition team prepares for a new FCC Chair, they must remember that the United States built a robust and innovative digital economy by limiting government interference. It would be foolish to abandon that strategy now.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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Douglas Holtz-Eakin (@djheakin) is president of the American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office.
The New Enterprise
Nine companies that could define the future of enterprise software
From streamlining software development to changing the way companies communicate, here are the software trends headed to your offices in the coming years.
A bunch of enterprise software companies want companies to do things a little differently.
Image: Protocol
December 4, 2020
Hirsh Chitkara (@ChitkaraHirsh) is a researcher at Protocol, based out of New York City. Before joining Protocol, he worked for Business Insider Intelligence, where he wrote about Big Tech, telecoms, workplace privacy, smart cities, and geopolitics. He also worked on the Strategy & Analytics team at the Cleveland Indians.
December 3, 2020
Software may have eaten the world, but the world has changed — and a new wave of enterprise software has an appetite.
Heading into 2021, the enterprise software industry has a wealth of opportunity before it, not least as a result of COVID-19. As companies raced to make better use of cloud computing, their needs shifted: They now need to build, deploy and monitor software in wholly new ways. At the same time, companies are also using digital systems more than ever — whether that's for customer engagement, internal communication, staff training or something else entirely. And on top of all that is the natural march of technological progress as technologies like AI and VR mature and finally become usable in the workplace (or home office).
<p>Of course, there's no denying the influence of Big Tech on the enterprise software landscape: The tech giants accounted for 58% of global cloud infrastructure services spend as of Q3 2020, <a href="https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/worldwide-cloud-market-q320#:~:text=Cloud%20infrastructure%20services%20spend%20in,2019%20according%20to%20Canalys%20data." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">according to Canalys</a>, while Microsoft 365 and G Suite together <a href="https://www.ciodive.com/news/Google-Microsoft-Office-collaboration/571740/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">account</a> for virtually the entire enterprise productivity suite market.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>But to better understand the future of enterprise software, it makes more sense to look at the smaller companies that are innovating their way to success with powerful, focused products. These are the kinds of companies that will inspire new ideas inside Big Tech, be acquired by it or — if things go very well — forge whole new sectors for themselves.</p><p>Protocol surveyed the enterprise software landscape to find some of the most interesting companies hoping to define the future of enterprise computing. They're not all obvious choices — one, Discord, has no immediate plans to enter the enterprise market; another company, OpenAI, was founded as a research nonprofit — but they could all go on to have an outsized influence on the future of enterprise software.</p><h2>Snowflake</h2><ul class="ee-ul"><li><strong>What it does: </strong>Snowflake pioneered cloud-based data warehousing, a specialized form of database that acts as a central repository for internal data sources. Compared to data lakes (another popular enterprise database type, also <a href="https://www.snowflake.com/workloads/data-lake/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">offered</a> by Snowflake), data warehouses are more <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/big-data/datalakes-and-analytics/what-is-a-data-lake/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">structured</a>, allowing for faster, more responsive SQL queries. </li><li><strong>Why it matters: </strong>Making an SQL query is often a first step for business analysis using tools such as Tableau, R and even Excel. So data warehouses could serve as the foundation for enterprises to build out their data analysis capabilities, to better anticipate demand, price products more effectively and analyze customer behavior. In April, Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman <a href="https://www.protocol.com/snowflake-cloud-investment-salesforce" target="_self">told</a> Protocol that the pandemic has catalyzed demand in data services: "When things get dislocated like this, the need for data and analytics becomes much more pronounced." </li><li><strong>How it's doing:</strong> Snowflake managed to <a href="https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/pop-alert-snowflake-starts-trading" target="_self">raise</a> nearly $3.4 billion through its <a href="https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/pop-alert-snowflake-starts-trading" target="_self">IPO</a> in September, adding to the $1.4 billion it had <a href="https://www.protocol.com/snowflake-ipo" target="_self">raised</a> from 2016 onward. For all the investor confidence, though, Snowflake's data warehouse offering <a href="https://www.g2.com/products/snowflake/competitors/alternatives" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">competes</a> in a crowded sector against Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, Cloudera, Databricks and IBM Db2. (Amazon also happens to be Snowflake's primary cloud provider: Snowflake <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/16/snowflakes-ties-to-amazon-are-a-risk-as-investors-prepare-for-ipo.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">committed</a> to spending at least $1.2 billion on AWS services over the next 5 years.)</li></ul><div></div><h2>HashiCorp</h2><ul class="ee-ul"><li><strong>What it does:</strong> HashiCorp's managed services help software developers test, provision and deploy software on cloud services. Terraform, one of its most popular tools, <a href="https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/infrastructure-as-code?utm_medium=OSocial&utm_source=Youtube&utm_content=000023UA&utm_term=10010608&utm_id=YTDescription-101-Terraform-Explained-LH-Infrastructure-as-Code&cm_mmc=OSocial_Youtube-_-Cloud+and+Data+Platform_Cloud+Platform+Digital-_-WW_WW-_-YTDescription-101-Terraform-Explained-LH-Infrastructure-as-Code&cm_mmca1=000023UA&cm_mmca2=10010608" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">allows</a> developers to set up public cloud infrastructure, add security features and automatically adjust capacity based on demand.</li><li><strong>Why it matters: </strong>HashiCorp's services can help enterprises adopt a multicloud approach, which reduces reliance on any one public cloud provider. Most of HashiCorp's core services are open source, though it sells them as managed services with additional features. For now, this model appears to be giving HashiCorp's customers the best of both worlds: Managed services tend to be more user-friendly, while open source tools offer more flexibility. (In fact, this hybrid model helped popularize the open-source Kubernetes standard, which didn't gain much traction until Google <a href="https://www.protocol.com/google-gives-up-direct-control-knative-open-source-project" target="_self">launched</a> the cloud infrastructure project as managed services.)</li><li><strong>How it's doing:</strong> The San Francisco-based company <a href="https://www.protocol.com/hashicorp-cloud-managed-services#:~:text=HashiCorp%20has%20raised%20%24350%20million,independent%20player%20in%20cloud%20computing" target="_blank">has raised $350 million in funding</a> since its start in 2012, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/16/hashicorp-soars-above-5b-valuation-in-new-175m-venture-round/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">garnering</a> a $5.1 billion valuation. Like Snowflake, HashiCorp maintains a fraught symbiotic relationship with big cloud providers: HashiCorp's services spur demand for cloud services, but Amazon, Microsoft and Google <a href="https://www.protocol.com/hashicorp-cloud-managed-services" target="_self">operate</a> their own managed services that, to some degree, also compete against those offered by HashiCorp. </li></ul><h2>Twilio</h2><ul class="ee-ul"><li><strong>What it does: </strong>Twilio's APIs allow developers to integrate text-, voice- and video-based communications into their apps. </li><li><strong>Why it matters: </strong>In the near term, Twilio is helping enterprises adapt to the pandemic by shifting customer engagement to digital channels. For example, Alaska Airlines <a href="https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2020/10/27/twilio-twlo-q3-2020-earnings-call-transcript/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">expanded</a> its relationship with Twilio to send boarding passes over SMS, reducing agents' potential exposure to the coronavirus. Longer term, Twilio's success will be predicated on its ability to help companies foster more personalized communications, which it can do by integrating customer data tools into its APIs. </li><li><strong>How it's doing:</strong> Twilio's customers already <a href="https://customers.twilio.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">include</a> big names such as Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Yelp, DoorDash and Inuit. (When you get a text message saying an Uber arrived, you're benefiting from Twilio's services.) But it's recently prioritized reducing its reliance on a handful of its biggest clients: The company's top 10 customers <a href="https://s21.q4cdn.com/963721274/files/doc_presentations/2019/Q4'19-Earnings-Presentation_Final.pdf" target="_blank">accounted</a> for 31% of total revenue in 2016, but that figure <a href="https://s21.q4cdn.com/963721274/files/doc_financials/2020/q3/Twilio-10Q-3Q20.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">declined</a> to 14% of total revenue by 2020. In October 2020, Twilio <a href="https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/cloud/why-did-twilio-pay-3-billion-for-segment-developers?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="_self">agreed</a> to acquire Segment — whose API allows enterprises to integrate consumer data sources — for $3.2 billion in stock.</li></ul><h2>Oculus</h2><ul class="ee-ul"><li><strong>What it does: </strong>Oculus makes VR headsets, enterprise VR applications and an enterprise VR platform for third-party developers.</li><li><strong>Why it matters: </strong>It isn't an obvious candidate, given that Facebook <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2014/03/facebook-to-acquire-oculus/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">purchased</a> Oculus in 2014 for $2 billion based on Mark Zuckerberg's thesis that "Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever." But it went on to <a href="https://www.oculus.com/blog/introducing-the-new-oculus-for-business/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">launch</a> Oculus for Business in April 2019 (primarily focused on VR for training simulations) and in September 2020 chartered a more ambitious course with the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_bVkbG1ZCo" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">introduction</a> of Infinite Office, a fully virtual office environment accessible through VR. Infinite Office is definitely ahead of its time (if that time arrives), but the general concept of VR workplace collaboration is already gaining traction for niche use cases.</li><li><strong>How it's doing:</strong> Oculus is the only entity on our list that is part of a Big Tech company, so cash isn't much of a problem: While Facebook has poured ample <a href="https://www.protocol.com/oculus-quest-games" target="_self">resources</a> into growing VR as an entertainment and social platform, it has sensibly also attempted to position VR as an enterprise tool. Companies including <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/29/why-f500-companies-use-virtual-reality-to-train-workers-of-the-future.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Walmart</a> and <a href="https://business.oculus.com/case-studies/hilton/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Hilton</a> have used Oculus headsets to develop training modules, simulating difficult scenarios employees may face (including Walmart's ostensibly unpleasant Black Friday simulation). But there are only so many companies that spend enough on employee training to justify the cost of custom-made VR programs. To spur the development of more accessible enterprise VR applications, Oculus launched a <a href="https://business.oculus.com/isv-program/directory/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">developer</a> partnership program that has attracted more than 120 participants. </li></ul><div></div><h2>JFrog</h2><ul class="ee-ul"><li><strong>What it does: </strong>JFrog's end-to-end DevOps platform helps companies manage code repositories, monitor the software development pipeline and eventually deploy applications across hybrid and multicloud environments.</li><li><strong>Why it matters: </strong>JFrog's core value proposition is making it cheaper and faster to develop software, particularly in cloud environments — which tend to increase the complexity of the development process. JFrog's breadth of offering is what's really caught the attention of DepOps types; its Xray product, for instance, can continuously monitor software packages at all stages of development for security vulnerabilities.</li><li><strong>How it's doing:</strong> Co-headquartered in California and Israel, JFrog was <a href="https://investors.jfrog.com/static-files/68ef5254-6e40-4fa0-b751-00be6ddfcdff" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">founded</a> in 2008 by Fred Simon, Shlomi Ben Haim and Yoav Landman. Over a decade later, JFrog <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-15/software-firm-jfrog-s-ipo-is-said-to-raise-509-million?sref=18veDlX6" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">raised</a> $509 million by going <a href="https://www.protocol.com/jfrog-ipo" target="_self">public</a> in September 2020. Its DevOps <a href="https://investors.jfrog.com/static-files/b61ccdab-300f-4ee0-926b-4ebd63d8f3ea" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">platform</a> is used by more than 75% of Fortune 100 companies. Right now, JFrog doesn't have any one-to-one competitors, though some of its offerings compete against products from Microsoft-owned GitHub, IBM's Red Hat, VMware and Pivotal Software.</li></ul><h2>OpenAI</h2><ul class="ee-ul"><li><strong>What it does:</strong> OpenAI is a research organization dedicated to advancing artificial general intelligence. It created GPT-3, one of the world's most <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">advanced</a> language models.</li><li><strong>Why it matters: </strong>OpenAI, along with Google's DeepMind, is at the forefront of attempts to develop an AGI, rather than AI for a specific commercial use case. It's difficult to say right now exactly how the company could transform the future of enterprise — for instance, Microsoft <a href="https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/09/22/microsoft-teams-up-with-openai-to-exclusively-license-gpt-3-language-model/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">aims</a> to commercialize OpenAI's GPT-3 model, which could be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/science/artificial-intelligence-ai-gpt3.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">used</a> to improve customer service chatbots, aid with legal research or <a href="https://twitter.com/FaraazNishtar/status/1285934622891667457?s=20" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">automate</a> aspects of coding — but if it does crack the problem of AGI, business everywhere will be transformed.</li><li><strong>How it's doing: </strong>OpenAI was <a href="https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">founded</a> in 2015 as a nonprofit, with $1 billion in funding from donors including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman and Reid Hoffman. The group set out to open-source research findings to help <a href="https://openai.com/blog/introducing-openai/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ensure</a> that AI "benefit[s] humanity as a whole" but since then OpenAI has embraced a commercial approach. In 2019, the company <a href="https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">shifted to a "capped-profit" model</a>; later that year, Microsoft invested $1 billion in it. And in 2020, OpenAI <a href="https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/09/22/microsoft-teams-up-with-openai-to-exclusively-license-gpt-3-language-model/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">announced</a> that its GPT-3 language model — arguably its largest known accomplishment so far — would be licensed exclusively to Microsoft, though it's still available to the broader public through an API. </li></ul><h2>Scale</h2><ul class="ee-ul"><li><strong>What it does: </strong>Scale uses machine learning and human contractors to label data sets that are then used by its clients to train autonomous systems.</li><li><strong>Why it matters:</strong> Data labeling is one of the most labor-intensive stages of AI development: Data scientists report spending up to 80% of their time aggregating, cleaning and labeling data, <a href="https://cset.georgetown.edu/research/messier-than-oil-assessing-data-advantage-in-military-ai/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">according to</a> Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Scale claims to speed up the overall AI development process by making it faster and cheaper to obtain high-quality training datasets.</li><li><strong>How it's doing:</strong> Scale is only four years old, but its <a href="https://scale.com/customers" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">client list</a> is impressive: General Motors, Toyota, Airbnb, OpenAI, Otto Motors and the <a href="https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2365695/#SCALEAI092920" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">U.S. military</a> have all relied on it to help develop training data for AIs. Earlier this month, Scale <a href="https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/data-labeling-startup-scale-reaches-3-5-billion-valuation-in-series-d-round" target="_self">announced</a> the close of its Series D funding round through which it raised $155 million at a $3.5 billion valuation, more than triple its previous valuation.</li></ul><h2>Discord</h2><ul class="ee-ul"><li><strong>What it does:</strong> Discord is a consumer chat platform that blends Slack-like public channels with private group messaging, with a focus on voice. </li><li><strong>Why it matters:</strong> Discord isn't an enterprise company, nor has it come forward with plans to become one in the future. But we included it on the list because it has become one of the most innovative consumer chat companies, and many of these innovations will likely be co-opted by enterprise platforms. For instance, in October, Slack <a href="https://slack.com/blog/news/exploring-better-ways-to-work" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">introduced</a> Lightweight, a riff on Discord's signature always-on audio channels, which makes it easier to drop in and out of calls. And there's always the chance that Discord decides to take the enterprise route itself.</li><li><strong>How it's doing:</strong> Discord was <a href="https://www.protocol.com/discord" target="_self">launched</a> in 2015 as a chat service primarily aimed at gamers. It has since <a href="https://blog.discord.com/your-place-to-talk-a7ffa19b901b" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">surged</a> in popularity among a wider audience, with 100 million active monthly users as of June 2020. Discord reached a $3.5 billion valuation over the summer, but it hasn't fully developed a monetization model — the company has avoided selling user data or ads, though it added an optional premium subscription tier.</li></ul><h2>Okta</h2><ul class="ee-ul"><li><strong>What it does: </strong>Okta helps enterprises manage user authentication and provides IT teams with dashboards that make it easier to control user access and understand how internal applications are being used. It has also layered new services onto its core product, including consumer identity authentication. </li><li><strong>Why it matters:</strong> User authentication services help enterprises manage proliferating software portfolios: Enterprises on Okta's access management service <a href="https://www.okta.com/businesses-at-work/2020/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">used</a> an average of 88 applications, while 10% of the customer base used over 200 applications — and that trend shows no signs of slowing. The need for user authentication has also grown as companies shift to remote work: Workers seek the flexibility that comes with being able to securely access enterprise software across multiple devices, including personal phones and tablets. </li><li><strong>How it's doing:</strong> Okta was founded in 2009 and went public in 2017. It has benefited significantly from the pandemic-induced shift to remote work, with usage of its core multi-factor authentication service nearly <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-28/okta-s-bodybuilder-ceo-becomes-billionaire-on-remote-work-boom" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">tripling</a> year-over-year in Q2 2020. Okta has focused on expanding its partnership ecosystem and deepening integrations to remain a step ahead of the competition.</li></ul>
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Hirsh Chitkara (@ChitkaraHirsh) is a researcher at Protocol, based out of New York City. Before joining Protocol, he worked for Business Insider Intelligence, where he wrote about Big Tech, telecoms, workplace privacy, smart cities, and geopolitics. He also worked on the Strategy & Analytics team at the Cleveland Indians.
People
How the pandemic has changed tech business travel to China
In 2020, visiting China for business can be a bit like playing the lottery.
After concluding his 14 days in isolation, startup adviser Kevin Yang was free to continue his business trip.
Photo: Kevin Yang
October 21, 2020
Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
October 21, 2020
Kevin Yang has traveled to China countless times. As a former Huawei and Oppo executive, he used to visit the country almost every quarter. However, when Yang recently got ready to visit a Chinese startup he is advising, he quickly realized that the pandemic would make this a very different trip.
Yang has been documenting his trip in a series of LinkedIn posts, which offer some fascinating insights into the state of business travel during COVID, the ever-growing importance of WeChat in a country recovering from the pandemic, and shifts in the Chinese tech industry as it adapts to a rapidly changing world.
<p>One of Yang's most striking observations is the omnipresence of WeChat in China, and the way the pandemic has reinforced its importance to the Chinese. To prepare for his trip, Yang joined a number of WeChat groups, which helped him get his documents in order. (To get a special visa, China currently requires an invite, a negative COVID test and more from foreign visitors). He also joined a dedicated WeChat group for passengers of his flight, and one to chat with people who had taken this very flight in recent weeks. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>Once Yang landed in China, WeChat became even more important. Instead of filling out a customs form on paper, he prepared his customs declaration in a WeChat mini-app, which then generated a QR code that was scanned by customs officials. At the airport, he was prompted to scan another QR code to prepare for his local travel — all within WeChat. "The Chinese government wanted to make all the processes contactless," Yang told Protocol.</p><p>WeChat has long been a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/technology/wechat-china-united-states.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">daily utility in China</a> for everything from communication to cashless payments. However, the embrace of WeChat as an essential tool for international travel during the pandemic comes at a time when the Trump administration <a href="https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/wechat-ban-judge-halt" target="_self">is pushing to ban the app from U.S. app stores</a>. "It would make the process very difficult for foreign travelers," Yang said about a possible WeChat ban.</p><p>Once Yang arrived in China, he had to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine in a randomly assigned hotel. "Finding out the quarantine hotel is like opening a mystery box in 2020," he wrote on LinkedIn. On one of his WeChat groups, people had crowdsourced a number of hotels used to quarantine international travelers, complete with reports on whether the hotels allowed guests to order outside food. "Some were overjoyed to find that they were assigned to the so-called 'Lottery Hotels,'" he wrote. "Some were disappointed when they got a crappy hotel."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>Yang ended up staying in two relatively basic hotels, one of which didn't allow outside food. Instead, hotel staff dropped off meals outside of his room three times a day. Yang was a bit disappointed by the choice of food, but some of his fellow international travelers had a much harder time. One visitor from Spain in particular wasn't exactly familiar with some of the traditional Chinese dishes, including chicken feet. "He complained all the time," Yang said.</p><p>One day, an ambulance arrived at the hotel to pick up one of the quarantined guests. On WeChat, other travelers started freaking out, worried that one of the guests had gotten COVID. But soon after, they learned that it was the Spaniard, who was being relocated to a Western-style hotel. He hadn't been ill; he just didn't like chicken feet.</p><p>Yang used much of his time in quarantine doing video chats to catch up with friends and colleagues, including some who he got to work with as a procurement director for Huawei. Many of the folks working in the chipset industry were especially upbeat, he noted on LinkedIn: "China is investing heavily […] in replacing American chips with homegrown solutions." Prompted by the escalating trade war, and attempts of the Trump administration to cut off companies like Huawei from the U.S. semiconductor supply chain, the Chinese government has rolled out massive incentives to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/14/china-semiconductor-industry-tries-to-catch-up-with-us-chip-makers.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">kickstart homegrown chip production</a>. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>These measures include direct financial assistance from the government, as well as easier access to land and real estate to build out manufacturing capabilities. A year ago, it was still challenging to raise money for chip manufacturing in China, Yang said. These days, it has become one of the country's hottest investment areas. "This moment is huge," Yang said. "It's a gold rush."</p><p>Yang was able to leave quarantine after 14 days and another negative COVID test. Since then, he has been able to move about in China with few restrictions. He's taken taxis, subways, airplanes and other forms of transportation, noting at one point on LinkedIn that this alone felt like "a luxury in a world terrorized by COVID." "It's a very different feeling," he told Protocol.</p><p>In the end, Yang is glad that he traveled to China, even with the hassle of mandatory quarantine. Still, he cautioned that it can be especially challenging for anyone not fluent in Chinese. "Right now, it's difficult to travel to China for foreigners," Yang said. "Be prepared," he advised. "Do some research." </p><p>And, one might add, get ready to expand your culinary horizons.</p><p><em><strong>Correction</strong>: The caption on the photo for this story misrepresented how many days Kevin Yang spent in quarantine. It was 14, not 11.</em><br></p>
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Janko Roettgers (@jank0) is a senior reporter at Protocol, reporting on the shifting power dynamics between tech, media, and entertainment, including the impact of new technologies. Previously, Janko was Variety's first-ever technology writer in San Francisco, where he covered big tech and emerging technologies. He has reported for Gigaom, Frankfurter Rundschau, Berliner Zeitung, and ORF, among others. He has written three books on consumer cord-cutting and online music and co-edited an anthology on internet subcultures. He lives with his family in Oakland.
Power
Why this year’s iPhone launch matters more than most for Apple
Tuesday could be a big moment for Apple One, 5G, AR and more. Or it could highlight the tech industry's biggest problems.
In the midst of so much technological change and economic uncertainty, the iPhone 12 will hit the market at a complicated moment.
Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
October 12, 2020
David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
October 12, 2020
On Tuesday, Apple will announce a new iPhone. This is not news: Apple has announced a new iPhone every fall for more than a decade.
But something's different about this year's launch.
<p>In the midst of a pandemic and a heated election season, a new iPhone may sound low-stakes. But this year, the immediate future of 5G seems to hang in the balance. So does Apple's push into services. Whether Apple and its suppliers can keep up with a "supercycle" of demand that <a href="https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/index/iphone-12-apple-launch-stock-expectations-supercycle?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="_self">many analysts predict</a> will say a lot about the world's supply chains. And how — or whether — Apple talks about augmented reality will help define the narrative on that tech for a while to come. </p><p>In a way, the launch of the iPhone 12 doubles as something like The State of the Tech Union. And a lot of people will be watching.</p><p>As for what Apple is expected to launch at its "Hi, Speed" event, it obviously starts with the iPhone 12. Or iPhone 12s, plural: Bloomberg reported Apple will have <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-09/apple-prepares-to-launch-5g-iphones-into-unready-u-s-market?sref=18veDlX6" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">four models</a>, ranging up to a 6.7-inch device that would be Apple's biggest iPhone ever. They're reportedly all getting new designs and updated displays. Some models are widely expected to offer 5G connectivity, and at least one will likely have a lidar chip that would help the device map the real world in real time, making for much more powerful (and accurate) AR experiences.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="1">
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</div></p><p>The phones may not be the only announcements at Tuesday's event. Apple has reportedly developed a pair of over-ear AirPods, and it has stopped selling other companies' similar products in the Apple Store in the run-up to their launch. Cupertino's not giving up on the HomePod, either: It may have a smaller, cheaper model to show off. And this could be the time for Apple to finally launch AirTags, its location-tracking Tile competitor that's been rumored and leaked for years.</p><p>But the iPhone is the thing. It's still Apple's golden goose, bringing in $26.4 billion for Apple in the last quarter alone, more than all its other hardware combined. And the iPhone deserves some credit for the $13.1 billion in services revenue Apple generated last quarter: The iPhone is the tip of the spear for Apple Music and its estimated 68 million subscribers, and the primary source of the half-trillion dollars Apple proudly said flowed through the App Store in 2019.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>The iPhone is also Apple's best chance to turn its services bundle, Apple One, into an Amazon Prime-level smash hit. Apple has a long history of bundling its services (and the occasional U2 album) with new iPhones, and the company's unlikely to miss a chance to introduce tens of millions of upgraders to the latest and greatest in Apple software. The iPhone doesn't just make Apple money: It's an unbeatable marketing engine for almost everything else that makes Apple money. </p><p>That power, of course, is precisely what developers and competitors have begun to fight. Whether it's <a href="https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/sourcecode/apple-epc-app-store-antitrust" target="_self">Epic and Fortnite</a> or the many demands of the <a href="https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/sourcecode/apple-vs-app-fairness" target="_self">Coalition for App Fairness</a>, the industry understands more than ever exactly how much power the iPhone gives Apple. As long as most users are on recent, updated iPhones, there's practically no pressure on Apple to loosen its policies or pull back on its values: People buying iPhones is affirmation of the company's values, it can say. Developers and competitors have no choice but to play by Apple's rules. (At least, <a href="https://www.protocol.com/antitrust-proposals-big-tech" target="_self">until regulators say otherwise</a>.)</p><p>Heavy-handed pronouncements of the iPhone's imminent death are a staple of the industry — and have never been true. Even its one blip in sales growth was followed by a roaring quarter. This year's iPhones arrive at an uncertain moment, though: Apple's reportedly building at least 75 million devices, roughly in line with last year's figure. Some see things going even better; analysts are throwing around phrases like "once in a decade opportunity" and "upgrade supercycle." "We expect this fall's launch to be the most significant iPhone event in years," Morgan Stanley's Katy Huberty <a href="https://www.ped30.com/2020/10/07/apple-5g-event-huberty/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">wrote</a> last week.</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>At the same time, unemployment numbers are staggering, the stock market whipsaws, supply chains are constrained, and there are a dozen reasons to be uncertain around the future. Last time there was a big recession, the iPhone was barely a year old and most people were still thumbing their BlackBerries. There's also a growing belief that buying the latest, greatest smartphone is <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/latest-smartphone-iphone-mobile-waste-of-money-report-b837371.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a waste of money</a>. Apple has projected confidence through the pandemic, but nobody's sure what happens next.</p><p>The stakes for the iPhone 12 go far beyond Apple, too. Qualcomm is reportedly providing the 5G modems for the devices, which will be a big test of its tech. It'll also test the wireless carriers, which may soon see exponential growth in the number of people using their still-new networks. They're surely hoping to not repeat 2012, when the iPhone 5 crushed LTE networks for a long time after its launch. Most of all, the 5G industry is hoping Apple will convince people to upgrade to 5G. So far, the (false) idea that 5G causes cancer seems more prevalent than the idea that it's a must-have new feature.</p><p>Apple's rarely the first to launch a new feature, but it leads the industry's conversations with almost everything it does. (One recent example: home screen widgets. It was like the whole world discovered the idea together, never mind that Android has had widgets forever.) So when Tim Cook and his team talk about lidar and explain why augmented-reality is going to be cool and fun and useful, folks at Oculus, Magic Leap, Microsoft and elsewhere will take note. If Apple talks about high-refresh-rate displays, all the companies already selling them will sit up straight. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>Apple doesn't want to be The iPhone Company anymore, and it's making progress in that direction. But for now it's still The iPhone Company. Everything it does, every bit of the power it has to shape and change the industry, starts with the iPhone. In the midst of so much technological change and economic uncertainty, the iPhone 12 may be — for better or for worse — the most consequential one yet.</p>
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David Pierce ( @pierce) is Protocol's editor at large. Prior to joining Protocol, he was a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, a senior writer with Wired, and deputy editor at The Verge. He owns all the phones.
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