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April 22, 2020
- Q1 revenue: 49.8 billion SEK (~$4.94 billion) (+2% YoY, -25% QoQ, vs. $5.54 billion expected)
- Q1 earnings: 2.3 billion SEK (~$0.23 billion) (-5% YoY, -49% QoQ)
- Q2 guidance: Financial targets for 2020 and 2022 unchanged, likely some softness in Q2 2020.
The big number: Even with the spread of COVID-19, Ericsson's earnings were surprisingly resilient. President and CEO Börje Ekholm said that the company's improvement in its gross margin was a strong indicator of how well its current strategy is working. Its margin was up to 39.8% (from 38.4% in the same period last year.)
People are talking: "We expect our industry to show resilience throughout the pandemic and we are well positioned with a competitive 5G product offering and cost structure," Ekholm wrote.
Opportunities: According to Ericsson, the current pandemic has shown just how vital telecommunications infrastructure is. The company was already one of the few major non-Chinese players in 5G hardware and said that it's signed contracts with leading network operators that will "start generating material revenues" in 2021, with the company adding that it expects increased investment in 5G infrastructure in North America in the second half of this year. "With current visibility we have no reason to change our financial targets for 2020 and 2022," Ekholm wrote.
Threats: While the long-term future may still look bright, things will likely be rocky in the next quarter. Ekholm said that the second quarter may be "a tad softer" than normal given the uncertainty that COVID-19 has sown around the world. He added that while the company's own business is generally operating well under a remote-work order, it's possible that the longer the restrictions on movement carry on in countries around the world, the more likely it will be that there are disruptions to Ericsson's supply chains.
"The current global uncertainty requires a humble attitude towards predicting the near-term future," Ekholm wrote.
The power struggle: Ericsson's long-term growth hinges on its ability to continue selling 5G hardware. It's making strides in some regions, but others are lagging. "We are concerned that 5G investments in Europe are delayed," Ekholm wrote, "This means that Europe may fall behind on a critical digital infrastructure for the future."
Ekholm added that he believes governments should encourage investment in 5G as a way to restart their economies — but that may prove more challenging in some European countries than others.
Mike Murphy
Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
App store laws, Microsoft AR and Square buys Tidal
Welcome to this weekend's Source Code podcast.
Cole Burston/Bloomberg
March 7, 2021
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.
March 7, 2021
This week on the Source Code podcast: First, an update on Google's user-tracking change. Then, Ben Pimentel joins the show to discuss Square buying Tidal, and what it means for the fintech and music worlds. Later, Emily Birnbaum explains the bill moving through the Arizona legislature that has Google and Apple worried about the future of app stores. And finally, Janko Roettgers discusses Microsoft Mesh, the state of AR and VR headsets, and when we're all going to be doing meetings as holograms.
For more on the topics in this episode:
<ul class="ee-ul"><li><a href="https://www.protocol.com/square-tidal-jack-dorsey-banking" target="_self">Jack Dorsey is so money: What Tidal and banking do for Square</a></li><li><a href="https://www.protocol.com/policy/apple-google-lobbyists-arizona-bill" target="_self">Apple and Google lobbyists are swarming Arizona over a bill that would reform the app store</a></li><li><a href="https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/virginia-second-state-privacy-2650864098" target="_self">Virginia becomes second state with comprehensive privacy law</a></li><li><a href="https://www.protocol.com/microsoft-mesh-ar-vr-platform" target="_self">Microsoft's master plan for consumer AR: Start with the plumbing</a></li><li><a href="https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/next-up/microsoft-mesh-facebook-ar-glasses?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="_self">How Microsoft could beat Facebook in AR</a></li></ul><p><strong>Subscribe to the show: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/protocols-source-code/id1497440658" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Apple Podcasts</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1mc6ODYq0nZ8hrVDuvQfeL?si=HDPznyjDSEqv5EvMZxhKxQ" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Spotify</a> | <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS95OVNfTjJfaw==" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Google Podcasts</a> | <a href="https://pca.st/7ktyvlll" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Pocket Casts</a> | </strong><a href="https://feeds.simplecast.com/y9S_N2_k" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>RSS</strong></a></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.
Sponsored Content
The future of computing at the edge: an interview with Intel’s Tom Lantzsch
An interview with Tom Lantzsch, SVP and GM, Internet of Things Group at Intel
February 28, 2021
Saul Hudson has a deep knowledge of creating brand voice identity, especially in understanding and targeting messages in cutting-edge technologies. He enjoys commissioning, editing, writing, and business development, in helping companies to build passionate audiences and accelerate their growth. Hudson has reported from more than 30 countries, from war zones to boardrooms to presidential palaces. He has led multinational, multi-lingual teams and managed operations for hundreds of journalists. Hudson is a Managing Partner at Angle42, a strategic communications consultancy.
February 27, 2021
An interview with Tom Lantzsch
Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Internet of Things Group (IoT) at Intel Corporation
Edge computing had been on the rise in the last 18 months – and accelerated amid the need for new applications to solve challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic. Tom Lantzsch, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Internet of Things Group (IoT) at Intel Corp., thinks there are more innovations to come – and wants technology leaders to think equally about data and the algorithms as critical differentiators.
In his role at Intel, Lantzsch leads the worldwide group of solutions architects across IoT market segments, including retail, banking, hospitality, education, industrial, transportation, smart cities and healthcare. And he's seen first-hand how artificial intelligence run at the edge can have a big impact on customers' success.
Protocol sat down with Lantzsch to talk about the challenges faced by companies seeking to move from the cloud to the edge; some of the surprising ways that Intel has found to help customers and the next big breakthrough in this space.
What are the biggest trends you are seeing with edge computing and IoT?
A few years ago, there was a notion that the edge was going to be a simplistic model, where we were going to have everything connected up into the cloud and all the compute was going to happen in the cloud. At Intel, we had a bit of a contrarian view. We thought much of the interesting compute was going to happen closer to where data was created. And we believed, at that time, that camera technology was going to be the driving force – that just the sheer amount of content that was created would be overwhelming to ship to the cloud – so we'd have to do compute at the edge. A few years later – that hypothesis is in action and we're seeing edge compute happen in a big way.
<p>The last 18 months have been a wild time to be in technology. We've seen edge compute come to life to help businesses adapt during the pandemic. At the same time, we are also seeing how 5G is going to drive up interest, especially from a networking perspective, rather than a use-case perspective. We also see lot of people that are focused on their data, but the <em>algorithms</em> that companies train with the data are going to be their critical assets. It doesn't matter what company or what industry; <em>this</em> will really become the differentiator for many companies.</p><p>And particularly amid the backdrop of the pandemic, we've seen how companies are using technology to either bring workers back in safely or <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/covid-19-response-sensormatic-article.html" target="_blank">serve their customers in new ways</a>, <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/customer-spotlight/stories/brentwood-academy-customer-spotlight.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">educate children in new ways</a> -- all things that have accelerated the digital transformation that had been underway. I recently read a <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/how-covid-19-has-pushed-companies-over-the-technology-tipping-point-and-transformed-business-forever" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">McKinsey survey</a> that reported on the "speedup in creating digital or digitally enhanced offerings. Across regions, the results suggest a seven-year increase, on average, in the rate at which companies are developing these products and services."</p><p>And based on what we're seeing at Intel, those are lifesaving and industry saving investments happening today – completely re-designing the way that <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/covid-19-response-mic-article.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">patients are treated</a>, and businesses operate.</p><h4>What are you particularly expecting to see this year?</h4><p>What I find most interesting is the work that combines IoT with networking capabilities – and I think this is going to be a year of expansive exploration and working with our customers to put these two things together to solve real business challenges.</p><p>When we first started the integration of networking technology and operational technology capabilities and layered that across the industry verticals, we could count the amount of interested customers and opportunities on one hand. Last year, it was five times that many and this year we see that number increasing significantly already. So, we're excited to see the industry continue to build excitement to scale those types of deployments.</p><h4>What role does AI play at the edge and in what way is Intel involved?</h4><p>An AI use case recently grabbed my attention: employees in a restaurant being screened by a device that checks temperature while the employees are washing their hands – and provides a determination on whether they'd done it adequately before they report to work. I have seen other applications using similar technology in the <a href="https://marketplace.intel.com/s/offering/a5b3b000000TiMSAA0/using-ai-to-make-construction-site-safer?language=en_US" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">construction industry</a>, where an AI algorithm scans to see if employees have their helmet, goggles, vest and other safety equipment on properly to determine if they are ready to work. And the best part is – that the employer can see aggregate data on these interactions to determine if more training on handwashing or helmet wearing is needed.</p><p>At Intel, in addition to providing the fundamental base technology to enable these applications, we work with a lot of third-party developers to create these applications. And we help the developers scale them across multiple industries with our salesforce. So, we may not make the scan technology that determines if you have the right gear on, but we orchestrate that coordination across our ecosystem with all of our partners to effectively put it into a <a href="https://marketplace.intel.com/s/?language=en_US" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">catalog</a> so that if customers are interested in that sort of application, we can provide them with different parties to make that happen.</p><h4>Is there a problem with fragmentation in the market and how can that be solved?</h4><p>It's very fragmented. I gave just two examples of totally different workers coming to work in different industries and I can give you five more that are different again. Although the base technology that Intel creates to enable this type of innovation is very horizontal in nature, the reality is that bringing those to life must be very "vertically-centered" and very "use-case centered" – and must take into account, geography. The two employee use cases I cited look very different if you are talking about employees in North America, India or Germany. So, all in all, this is a holistic ecosystem challenge – and an ecosystem solution.</p><p>At Intel, we're in a unique situation to orchestrate these solutions. </p><p><cite class="pull-quote">People tend to think of Intel as providing the technical footprint that enables edge computing – but we also have the developer reach – and we can use our ecosystem and scale to help our end customers get access to the best solutions.</cite></p><h4>What sort of challenges do customers face when they're attempting to adopt edge computing?</h4><p>There are two common challenges. One is the technical question of 'Who can I work with?' A customer may have a chip focus but actually, it's a more complex question than a chip. We like that complexity, because we can be an adviser to them and <a href="https://marketplace.intel.com/s/partners-by-industry?language=en_US" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">bring to the table partners</a> that they can work with to solve that complexity leveraging our technical knowledge and ecosystem network. </p><p>The second thing that companies struggle with is the challenge of how to fund getting into this space – even if the business case warrants the investment. The world has changed. Companies don't want to write a big capital check for these types of investments – they want a pay-as-you-go model, like you see with the cloud. We've been working with customers to find a way to make that happen – and I think that is going to be a bigger part of the conversation moving forward.</p><p>You can see it across almost every aspect of technology now. We rent compute more than we buy compute. Evidenced by the success of AWS, companies can rent compute from Amazon instead of building their own data center – and there are many benefits to that approach. In the old world, even for this video conference that we're having today we would have installed capital to do this. Now it's just a service. And I think that edge as a service is right around the corner.</p><h4>Do you have an example of that?</h4><p>A customer in Mexico wanted to deploy outdoor WiFi and add security features into it. So, it was an edge-based computing issue that was part connectivity. But there was actually way more to it than just installing it. We not only helped to solved the technological challenge creatively and coordinated the <a href="https://marketplace.intel.com/s/partners-by-industry?language=en_US" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">ecosystem of providers</a> to solve this, but we also found a way so that the customer could get into this market with a service-based model without needing to outlay a lot of capital.</p><p>Other semiconductor companies would have a difficult time partnering on both sides of that challenge, but Intel can do it because we have the scale.</p><h4>How do businesses identify which functions they do want to perform at the edge versus in the cloud?</h4><p>It really comes down to a question of what you're trying to do and how you do it at the lowest cost, highest quality and standard in computability.</p><p>If you have an application and it can perform what you need it to do in the cloud, you'll probably run it there. The cloud is a great thing - there's infinite compute and lots of choice in a well-understood developer environment.</p><p>But there are many things you can't or shouldn't do in the cloud for certain reasons. Take the camera example from earlier. Say you have eight high-density cameras, and you want an action on them immediately. You may not be able to afford the latency that comes with going up into the cloud. Or it may be a financial challenge – that its actually more expensive to send that data to the cloud over and over again, and it makes sense to invest in compute at the edge. There are nuances in the decision-making. It really comes down to what you want the application to do, how quickly and how much it should cost.</p><h4>How does Intel help developers to learn, to build and then test their solutions at the edge?</h4><p>To enable what we know to be interesting and challenging use cases at the edge, required us to change our focus on who these developers are and what they care about. We learned that they <em>really</em> don't care about what hardware they're running on. The modern developers are fairly well extracted from the hardware – they just assume the compute is going to be available for them to do their work.</p><p>To make sure we can deliver on that, we typically target developers by specific capability. The most advanced case that we've been studying on the edge recently is focused video and specifically, video inferencing and AI inferencing. We created a tool called <a href="https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/tools/openvino-toolkit.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">OpenVINO</a>, which was developed in a way that developers didn't have to care about the hardware it runs on. It's a model optimization technology that enables them to easily scale out to different hardware platforms. That's proven to be an interesting value proposition to these developers.</p><p>Our goal with <a href="https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/tools/openvino-toolkit.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">OpenVINO</a> is democratize AI activity and inference at the edge. We want to make it simple -- to put these tools in the hands of non-data scientists and make it work. As a part of that process, we're also creating an environment where they can develop anyplace, anytime, anywhere they want to be. We're so proud of our <a href="https://software.intel.com/content/www/us/en/develop/tools/openvino-toolkit.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">OpenVINO</a> community and are constantly working to grow the community and release new features and capabilities to edge developers.</p><h4>What's the possible next breakthrough that you see for Intel in edge computing and the IoT space?</h4><p>I'm looking forward to the big breakthrough when we show integrated 5G, Virtual Private Network and the edge workloads all in one unit. More to come.</p>
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Saul Hudson has a deep knowledge of creating brand voice identity, especially in understanding and targeting messages in cutting-edge technologies. He enjoys commissioning, editing, writing, and business development, in helping companies to build passionate audiences and accelerate their growth. Hudson has reported from more than 30 countries, from war zones to boardrooms to presidential palaces. He has led multinational, multi-lingual teams and managed operations for hundreds of journalists. Hudson is a Managing Partner at Angle42, a strategic communications consultancy.
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.
Transforming 2021
Blockchain, QR codes and your phone: the race to build vaccine passports
Digital verification systems could give people the freedom to work and travel. Here's how they could actually happen.
One day, you might not need to carry that physical passport around, either.
Photo: CommonPass
February 23, 2021
Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
February 23, 2021
There will come a time, hopefully in the near future, when you'll feel comfortable getting on a plane again. You might even stop at the lounge at the airport, head to the regional office when you land and maybe even see a concert that evening. This seemingly distant reality will depend upon vaccine rollouts continuing on schedule, an open-sourced digital verification system and, amazingly, the blockchain.
Several countries around the world have begun to prepare for what comes after vaccinations. Swaths of the population will be vaccinated before others, but that hasn't stopped industries decimated by the pandemic from pioneering ways to get some people back to work and play. One of the most promising efforts is the idea of a "vaccine passport," which would allow individuals to show proof that they've been vaccinated against COVID-19 in a way that could be verified by businesses to allow them to travel, work or relax in public without a great fear of spreading the virus.
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</div></p><p>But building a system that everyone agrees with — and can access — is no small task. There are several companies working on competing projects to verify vaccinations. But beyond that, there are more than a few hurdles that could prevent vaccine passports from succeeding, from antiquated medical records systems to interoperability issues and privacy concerns. Here's how they could actually succeed. </p><h3>Competing projects, similar standards</h3><p>Pretty much since the first blockchain white paper, people have been looking for perfect examples of where a distributed, immutable ledger could be valuable. There's obviously the push to use it for currencies, and companies have tried to use it for things like tracking <a href="https://www.protocol.com/ibm-blockchain-supply-produce-coffee" target="_self">food production</a> and <a href="https://www.govtech.com/products/Blockchain-Voting-Debate-Heats-Up-After-Historic-Election.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">voting</a>, but there are few use cases that have truly taken off, at least so far. "We've been working on this since 2014; we never thought that health care would be the kind of the use case that we take this mainstream," Jamie Smith, the senior director of business development at Evernym, a company focused on using the blockchain as a basis for verifying identities, told Protocol. </p><p>Smith said Evernym had been discussing its concepts with automakers, retailers, telcos, governments, loyalty companies and banks prior to the pandemic. One of those companies was IAG, the airline group that owns British Airways, which had been interested in the idea of contactless travel based on a single identity credential that follows you from the airport check-in to your gate. With the pandemic, that morphed into thinking about ways to verify that passengers have had negative COVID tests, and eventually, that they've received a vaccine. "From our perspective, it was a really easy lift to see," Smith said. "We're doing contactless travel, and we just added verifiable credentials for test results."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="2">
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</div></p><p>It's a similar genesis for IBM's Digital Health Pass initiative, which leader Eric Piscini said started about two years ago as a way to store people's entire health records in a safe, accessible platform. It also relies on the blockchain for its immutable record of proof, and both Evernym and IBM are part of an open-standards group called the Good Health Pass Collaborative, which aims to bring private credentialed vaccine records to business and people around the world. Companies are working on their own implementations of the standards, but Evernym's Smith said the data is meant to be portable from one passport to another. </p><p>Most of the companies working on passports say their systems are private by design, especially given that they're mainly working off the same open standards. In most cases, the health information only ever remains on a user's phone, but where it asks to verify that the user's information meets a system's standards — such as whether this person has had two COVID vaccines and should be allowed into an office — that information is recorded on a blockchain. "You can, using blockchain technologies, verify that someone has been tested recently, without having access to the underlying data," Piscini said. "I don't know any other technology where you can do that."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="3">
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</div></p><p>Similarly, the nonprofit Commons Project's CommonPass, backed by the likes of Oracle, Microsoft and Salesforce, started out as a project to bring an analog to Apple Health for Android. JP Pollak, a senior researcher at Cornell and founder of the Commons Project, first launched CommonHealth to bring the sort of data and insights that Apple Health offers to iPhone owners to Android users. Last summer, the group started building an app that could take health data and privately share it with others — in that case, it was to help truckers stuck at the borders in <a href="https://www.newtimes.co.rw/opinions/digital-technology-re-opening-africa" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">East African countries</a> who couldn't easily prove they'd taken COVID tests. This morphed into vaccine credentialing, with the group now working to pull together the various data streams needed to get a project like this off the ground. </p><p>"Health care institutions, EMR vendors, retail pharmacies, state vaccine registries, all issuing people a digital verifiable credential of their vaccination record that they could then use in the app of their choice, to be able to get access to various kinds of services," Pollak said. CommonPass is also working with the Mayo Clinic, as well as Epic Systems and Cerner, two of the largest EMR vendors. </p><h3>Something for everyone </h3><p>With so many competing efforts to become the world's digital vaccine passport, it might seem that the country is heading for some sort of VHS versus Betamax format war for proving everyone has had COVID vaccines. But given that so many of the efforts are using the same standards, and in many cases, looking to embed their tech in someone else's app rather than their own, the race might be less about the best tech winning, and more about various approaches working in different situations. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="4">
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</div></p><p>"The intent is not to be the only company; we don't want to be the proprietary platform that everybody has to use because they have no choice," IBM's Piscini said. "That's not who we are right now: That's the IBM from 30 years ago, not the IBM of today."</p><p>For IBM, though, the selling point is that the company already works with so many other massive companies. Why look elsewhere for a vaccine passport solution if your airline booking system is already powered by IBM? "We believe our network is going to be more valuable than any other because of our scale and our ability to integrate the platform with CRM systems, building systems or stadium systems — we can do that every day," Piscini said.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://www.protocol.com/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY2NTc3NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYyMTM1MjYyM30._ykxxCyx3_wDbZrYgCcmK0QT2Ue1tZFdP5pf60kOmPU/image.jpg?width=980" id="2c61a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3967636652192acfdaad341861263bc8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">IATA's digital passport app.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Photo: IATA</small></p><p>For other companies, it's about securing new partnerships with major players in the hopes of finding that scale. Evernym, for example, is working with International Air Transport Association, the airline industry's trade association, on an air travel-specific app called Travel Pass. IATA is working with airlines and local governments to ensure it has the latest requirements to feed the app's rules engine. "It will say, 'Hey, you're flying JFK to Heathrow, you need a PCR test 48 hours in advance before you can land,'" Evernym's Smith said. "And of course, those policy changes are changing every day." Qatar, Emirates and Etihad Airways are all <a href="https://simpleflying.com/qatar-iata-travel-pass-launch/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">expected</a> to start trialing the app in the next few weeks.<br></p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="5">
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</div></p><p>In other instances, the technology will live inside other companies' existing apps; why make someone download yet another app and add another hurdle to compliance? Instead, the experience will be rather like adding a loyalty account or TSA PreCheck number when booking a flight. Airlines and other venues restricting access will require uploading negative test results or vaccine records using one of these services. "You're going to be using the United or the Delta app, and they'll be using our solution or somebody else's, but you will do it via their app," IATA's Travel Pass lead, Alan Murray Hayden, told Protocol.</p><p>The World Health Organization is also working on its own offering, and recently convened the <a href="https://www.who.int/groups/smart-vaccination-certificate-working-group" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Smart Vaccination Certificate Working Group</a>. It's built upon the WHO's nearly century-old notion of the "yellow card" vaccination record, which first was used to document that travelers had been inoculated against diseases such as cholera and yellow fever. Evernym Chief Trust Officer Drummond Reed is part of the working group; he said there should be more to share in the coming months. </p><h3>What could go wrong?</h3><p>It's entirely possible that as more people start to get vaccinated, vaccine passports start to become the norm. You walk to work — still masked, of course — scan a QR code reader in the lobby, and are let in. You go out for lunch, and your loyalty card app has a discount for in-store shoppers verifying they're vaccinated. Your concert ticket is also tied to health pass information that you shared earlier in the day with Ticketmaster. But there are more than a few hurdles ahead of the companies rushing to turn these concepts into realities. </p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="6">
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</div></p><p>First off, there's the … reality … of the real world that any digital system has to contend with. For anyone without access to the internet, digital vaccine credentials will prove difficult to acquire, though all the companies Protocol spoke with said they would offer a paper-based QR code for people who don't have smartphones. But there's also the issue of having to corral so many different stakeholders into one system, especially when some health care providers are still reliant on antiquated database systems or <a href="https://www.protocol.com/manuals/health-care-revolution/electronic-health-records-after-coronavirus" target="_self">even paper records</a>. "The amount of inefficiency in the system is tremendous," IBM's Piscini said. </p><p>But in the U.S. at least, all vaccinators are required to report COVID-19 vaccines to their state. Piscini said that even for people who just received a paper copy of their vaccine records, systems like IBM's can likely link up to the state's immunization registry and allow people to import records to a vaccine passport.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://www.protocol.com/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY2NTc4My9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNzg3MTM2M30.RZtqR7F_FuXK1S24V6jVaqUZ0xOSG-gCwj00xU3fxcM/image.png?width=980" id="b43ef" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="11d8002d92c0cd6ef39b12fc7b8dccf8" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">How CommonPass's app shows your records. </small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="Add Photo Credit...">Image: CommonPass</small></p><p>And states are willing to help out, Pollak said, adding that CommonPass has started working with Hawaii to roll out its offering for would-be tourists. "We're seeing a lot of state governments stepping up and doing a really good job with this," Pollak said. "It would be surprising if there wasn't a coordinated federal effort very soon." That being said, while <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/iceland-covid-passports-canada-1.5904828" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">many countries around</a> the world are committing to working on vaccine passports, getting a straight answer out of the U.S. government on what it's doing has proven difficult. The State Department, which maintains America's traditional, analogue passports, referred me to Homeland Security, which referred me to the White House. The acting director and chief of staff of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, Kei Koizumi, told Protocol that "OSTP can't discuss projects we are working on before they are publicly announced."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="7">
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</div></p><p>But even with systems in place at a federal level, there's still a fair amount of education that needs to happen before people will trust systems like these. "There's a substantial gap in understanding and knowledge of how these systems work, and people's views, in terms of who should get access to which data," Pollak said. </p><p>"We assume there's a Facebook Borg in the sky, monitoring every interaction," Smith said. "The emergence of verifiable credentials breaks down that mental model, where actually it becomes more like decentralized bits of paper that I can carry around, and no one's to know that I've been sharing this information."</p><p>"Our belief is that if you do the right thing, from a platform point of view, protecting your privacy, and giving you control and access to the platform to everybody who wants to use it," Piscini said. "I think those are very basic things that allow the core of the platform that we build to generate adoption by the individuals."</p><p><div class="ad-tag"><div class="ad-place-holder" data-pos="8">
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</div></p><p>Even with a system that works, there may still be holdouts to this potential new normal. "Some people are saying, 'I will never get vaccinated,'" Piscini said, "and I don't know if the airlines are going to say, 'Well, maybe you will never fly again.'"</p>
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Mike Murphy ( @mcwm) is the director of special projects at Protocol, focusing on the industries being rapidly upended by technology and the companies disrupting incumbents. Previously, Mike was the technology editor at Quartz, where he frequently wrote on robotics, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics.
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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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