WEARABLES

Watch this space

Facebook might be flicking its wrist into the smartwatch game, with The Verge reporting it hopes to release its first model in the middle of next year. 

Facebook will have its work cut out for it in terms of privacy and catching up to market leader Apple...but any time a trillion dollar company enters a new space, it's worth paying attention to.

Feature watch

The smartwatch will reportedly arrive in white, black, and gold and feature a front-facing camera primarily for video calling, while its rear-facing 1080p auto-focus camera will serve to capture footage. Both cameras are detachable. 

Working on my fitness: The smartwatch will also reportedly sport a heart rate monitor, and will connect to fitness services like Peloton and Strava via its own 4G connection—standard fare for Apple Watches, and an area of focus for the forthcoming Google-Samsung smartwatches. 

FB’s smartwatch hasn’t entered full scale production (or even been given a name), and Facebook hasn’t formally confirmed its existence. The only comment from Facebook came in a tweet from the VP of Facebook Reality Labs Andrew Bosworth, who cryptically noted that a "wrist-based form factor" could help AR experiences feel more natural via haptics.

It was just a matter of time...

“Facebook’s entry into the wearables space is inevitable considering their business model pivots around collecting user profile data and building a richer social or knowledge graph to attract more advertisers,” Neil Shah, VP of research at Counterpoint Research told us. “The wrist is one of the most interesting spaces after the smartphone to gain user’s physiological health and fitness data.” 

Facebook does have other hardware in the Oculus virtual reality headset and Portal video calling device, but both account for no more than 3% of its revenue combined. 

The competition: Apple reigns supreme over the market with 33.5% of market share in terms of device shipments, per Counterpoint Research. And it’s got new features and designs, like better health sensors, planned for 2022.

• Huawei (8.4%) and Samsung (8%) are the next biggest smartwatch players. 

Looking ahead...the biggest hurdle for Facebook’s smartwatch could end up being its fraught history with data privacy. Compared to Apple’s reputation as a privacy protector, Facebook will have to convince people it can be trusted with sensitive health data, which Shah said is “a massive gold mine for pharmacy, insurance, and healthcare marketers.”

AV

Cartography looks different these days

Map technology has come a long way since the peak days of the Rand McNally Road Atlas (no shade to those who still swear by the glove compartment staple). 

Nvidia, maker of chips and autonomous vehicle software systems, is taking advantage: The company will acquire DeepMap, a high-definition mapping startup founded by alums of Google, Apple, and Baidu.

Why map tech: In recent years, map tech has had to evolve alongside vehicle tech, especially in the AV age. Nvidia creates AV software and driver assistance systems, which you can think of as an AV’s “brain.” 

• Advanced mapping and localization, or where the vehicle is in the context of its surroundings, serve not only as an AV’s eyes, but also as a good chunk of its prefrontal cortex. 

The company’s AV software, Nvidia Drive, helps make a lot of things “go”—including electric vehicles from Volvo, SAIC, and Nio; robotaxis from Zoox, Oxbotica, Pony.ai, and Cruise; and self-driving trucks from Einride, Plus, and TuSimple.

Big picture: The DeepMap acquisition is part of Nvidia’s strategy to make its AV platform safer and more accurate in an increasingly competitive space. And with access to Nvidia’s platform, DeepMap will be able to scale its maps across AV fleets more quickly (while using less data). Expect the acquisition to be set in stone in Q3.—HF 

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TECH POLICY

uBreakuFix

Picture this: Your iPhone is on the fritz, and rather than hoping you’re near an Apple Store, you can go to a local electronics repair shop—or even flip on YouTube and fix it yourself. 

Last Thursday, the New York State Senate passed the US’s first-ever right-to-repair bill, which would allow you to do what’s described above. Rather than rely on manufacturers to repair electronics, the law lets people fix stuff on their own. 

• Companies like Apple, Tesla, John Deere, Medtronic, and AT&T have lobbied hard against right-to-repair, citing quality, intellectual property, and security concerns. 
• It still has to pass the Assembly on a very tight turnaround, as Vice reports, but if approved it’d be the first law of its kind in the US.  

Big picture: Precisely half of the states in the US are mulling their own right-to-repair laws this year. A 2019 Data for Progress/YouGov survey found that 71% of all US voters support such legislation, and just 7% oppose it. 

The inability to repair equipment affects everyone from farmers to soldiers in the US military, both of whom regularly find themselves unable to fix essential gear like tractors or tactical vehicles.—DM 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Nearly 150,000 AI and robotics articles were published in 2019 alone, up 44% from 2015, according to the 2021 UNESCO science report.

Quote: “In some ways, I think Apple is super developer-friendly. In other areas, their market dominance is starting to bump into things.”—RevenueCat CEO Jacob Eiting, in an interview with Emerging Tech Brew

Read: DigitalMint helps ransomware victims with a critical task: quickly paying ransoms in crypto. 

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Cash in on the chicken sandwich war. It may sound silly, but it’s true. Barron’s recently covered the recent nation-wide shortage on just about everything—from factories and equipment to, yes, chicken breasts and sandwich sauce. These shortages are numerous, varied, and changing, which means you should be looking at industrial stocks that help ease bottlenecks in the economy. Snack on the whole story from Barron’s right here.

WEIB

• A bipartisan group in the House introduced five bills to update antitrust law for the Big Tech era. The bills cover platform self-dealing, trust busting, data portability, and acquisitions. 
• Amazon’s cloud gaming service Luna will open to all Prime members starting June 21 (Day 1 of Prime Day). 
• Thailand banned NFTs and meme coins.
• China’s Mars Rover sent a selfie back to Earth.

THREE THINGS WE’RE WATCHING

Monday: E3, the gaming industry’s annual showcase, continues through Tuesday. Microsoft presented over the weekend, highlighting its expansion of Xbox Game Pass and a host of new exclusive titles, and Nintendo is on deck for Tuesday. 

Tuesday: Oracle earnings. 

Thursday: Adobe earnings. The company exceeded Wall Street expectations in 2020 and has been investing heavily in AI editing tools like neural filters—including portrait-specific tools for aging, reverse aging, and adjusting facial expressions.

FROM THE CREW

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Share your referral link to win the sleep swag. The challenge ends Friday. May the best referrers win.

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• The Senate and White House plan to supercharge US technology
• A world tour of new crypto rules and regs
• Federal facial recognition ban will be reintroduced ‘soon,’ Sen. Jeff Merkley says