Apple News and Google's New Acquisition

its faster signature chip. But how will the global economic uncertainty, inflation, rising gas prices impact consumer demand? We'll discuss and Mandy and off the market. Google beats out Microsoft and its second biggest acquisition. Ever, how this chang changes the cyber defense landscape with Ukraine and Russia related hack attacks on the rise. The new iPhone sc brings the advanced features and exceptional performance of a fifteen to our most affordable iPhone.

It's going to be great for existing iPhone users who want to highly capable and compact iPhone and for new users who want to experience iPhone for the first time. Apple CEO Tim Cook there at the company's first product event kicking off what's likely to be its most prolific year yet for new product releases, I want to break the event down with Juliasca Forster Research on our very own Mark German. So, Mark, we got a new iPhone, new iPad air, we got the the M one chip

in more products. Talked to us about the most significant updates we saw today. Yeah, I think the two most significant product that we we saw today was the new iPhone SC as well as the Max Studio next to your display, I'll consider that, you know, one combined product line. So starting with the SC, I think that's significant because I think it's going to bring over a lot of switchers to the iPhone, particularly people who want to get

a somewhat low priced five G phone. Right, I think the big news for the SC is five G. Now, I'm not at the school thought that thanks five G has really moved the needle in terms of performance, but I do believe five G has been an extremely key marketing term for Apple, Samsung and other phonemakers and of course the carriers you know, for the most part, So I think that is going to drive some interest. Now

the Max Studio. In the Max Studio display. I think the display at six is going to do fairly well. Consumers have been looking for an Apple design Apple sold display since they discontinued their own cinema displays several years ago, I think about six years ago. At this point, at six, it's about a third of the price of their five to six thousand dollar Pro display XTR. So I think

that is going to be a very nice offering. This new M one Ultra chip, I think is really going to give Intel run for its money on the mid tier, sort of ching towards the high end as well on their chip lineup. And I think this Max Studio it's going to be low volume, but it's going to be

popular amongst creative types video editing, photo editors, engineers, etcetera. Julie, Apple's coming off a records heading holiday quarter, but being thrust into several months of global economic uncertainty and it's paused services in Russia cut off product sales there. How do you think these updates will actually drive demand in the coming quarters in the context of what's happening happening

on the macro economic level. Yeah, so I would echo what Mark said, when we look at you, when we look at so many one percent of consumers United States North America already own a smart pophone. So the way that you grow shared by taking it from Android, and our data shows that of iPhone smartphone owner purchasers in the past three months, six percent came from Android devices, So it looks like Apple is making progress there. Also when we look at households on a tablet today, so

there's a lot of upside for Apple there. And when we look at streaming TV services, we show that consumers are watching appwards of four to five hours of streaming TV and games each day. Uh. And Apples third today, um, with you know Amazon being in first place. So there's a lot of upside for Apple as it continues to build on its product portfolio, including the services so you know, Echo marks comments today. Um. And then certainly the chip

sets are impressive. That's always going to give them an advantage, not just in putting more performance, more power efficient devices into smaller and thinner packages. That's always going to be a winning formula, but as we look forward into future experiences having that kind of power on a device and being able to do things like computer vision and speech recognition and security facial recognition on device are all very powerful attributes of those devices. So, Julie, are you worried

about consumer demand? Though obviously you know we're worried about you know, rising gas prices on top of inflation. Could that impact demand for these devices over the next few months. So I'm not an economist, so you know, the answer is is possibly. We haven't seen a slowdown. You know, we all thought the pandemic would impact our spending. That was two years ago. That proved to be wrong. So

we'll not an economist. We don't yet see that in our numbers when we looked at consumer's plant purchases over the next three to six months. But certainly, you know, given what's going on in Ukraine day to day, it's hard to have perfect information and mark obviously focusing on the day to day. We know that Apple pause product sales in Russia. There have been calls from the Ukrainian government for Apple to cut off the app store. Are you expecting Apple to make any more aggressive moves in

the region or not? I mean I saw Pepsi, Coca Cola, McDonald's and Starbucks today. Really the Lover's Apple pulled in Russia are the big ones. They could have done right. They could have paused sale, They could have removed some of the Russian newsps from external app stores outside of Russia. They stopped exports into their sales channels into the country there, and did some changes to maps and other services. But I think pulling the apps or or disabling. People have

called for them to disable iPhones in Russia. You know, I personally think that would be a gigantic step that I don't think the company is ready to take now. At the same time, they do have services like Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, books and podcasts in Russia, and if they were to take those offline, that would match some of the moves you're seeing from the Netflix of the world that have pulled their service temporarily in Russia. What they did do earlier this week is they paused search ads,

which is their advertising service inside of the app. Sturce or developers can no longer sell ads in their store in Russia. Will there be more to come? I think it's possible, but as of today, they haven't done anything additional. Speaking of TV plus, major League Baseball games coming to Apple tv Plus, which is super cool, except for the fact that MLB and the players are in the middle of a lockout and regular season games the first couple of weeks have been canceled. No deal in sight at

this point. Is this something that you think could be material to subscriptions to Apple TV Plus or just a nice to have? I mean, I'll tell you I'm a Laker fan, and I'm sorry if that was for Julie. Go ahead, go ahead, Mark, go ahead, Mark, Julie. I'll let you get a crack at it too. Okay, I'm an NBA fan, you know, first and foremost, not an MLB fan, So if this was an NBA related deal,

maybe it would get me to sign up. We also don't know when this is actually going to kick off because of the negotiations in the MLB world right now, but I do think this is just the first of many. We're probably going to see a racing deal. Given some Eddie Q their head of services as big into that, as is their head of marketing or former head of marketing, Phil Schiller. I think we'll see additional sports over time.

They do have some relationships with the NBA. There's also been talking about NFL, so I think two games a week on Friday nights is not really going to move the needle for Apple TV plus. What the US move the needle for me is the fact that they are trying to get these deals done, and it's possible you'll have one service, Apple TV Plus that has several different sports leads all integrated, whereas some of the competitors either

have only one, two or none at this point. Julie, I am a baseball fan, so I'll give you thirty seconds you take a swing. How important is mL Yeah, yeah, I would echo what Mark said. I think when we look at you know, why aren't people cutting the court yet from their cable operators, who satellite operators to TV? It is because of live sports. I think the question that comes into play though, is becoming very fragmented now

for consumers. I can't just go one place and get all the sports that I want, you know, I'm going to a lot of different steaming services get Thursday night football, Friday night baseball, Sunday night football, whatever it may be. And so it's we'll see how it plays out long term with consumers. So definitely directly it's the right place to go, all right. Jually ask for star Mark German, who covers Apple of course from Bloomberg News thank you both.

More companies joining the growing list of brands assists spending operations in Russia amid its invasion of Ukraine. The latest now PayPal, which is not the only payments company to pull out of the country. MasterCard and Visa announced over the weekend they cut off their networks as a result of the war coming up. Securing the deal, it is the second biggest acquisition ever for Google. Google buying the cybersecurity for Mandy and five point four billion dollars, aiming

to take on Amazon and Microsoft in the cloud. What it means next, this is Bloomberg. Google has agreed to buy the cybersecurity for mandy And for five point for billion dollars cash. It is the company's second biggest deal ever. It will give Google more tools to protect its cloud clients by responding more quickly to online threats. Joining us now are Bloomberg Tech reporter Nico Grant. It covers alphabet for US, Nico y Google and not Microsoft, which was

also in competition for this deal. And what does it mean Well, Google is a company that's trying to catch up to Microsoft and Amazon in the cloud and also

when it comes to offering cybersecurity products. Microsoft kicked the tires at Mandians and was engaged in talks, and our reporting is that more than a week ago Microsoft decided to exit the process, not feeling that Mandians business, which was so dependent on uh cyber events that happened and providing consulting services, Microsoft didn't think that was the best strategic fit for its business. Google, meanwhile, has tried to take advantage of the environment we're in right now in

which you have many cyber attacks that are happening. You have the war of Russia in Ukraine that is happening. That raising the specter and fears even more. And Google can say to customers, we can prevent cyber attacks from happening in the first place, and if they do, we will be best at detecting them and helping you respond to them, and then we'll use that knowledge we learn

to protect all other clients. What impact will this have on the cyber defense landscape as we see the number of hack attacks tied to the Russia Ukraine evolving conflict, continue to wratch it up. Yeah, this is a major concern right now, and there have been reports from Google as well as others that they've seen many attempts to hack Ukrainians and Russians and their organizations as part of

this UM. This is going to be something that Google will say be very helpful for its existing clients who may want to try out Mandiant UH and who could choose to buy access to Mandians intelligence. Ultimately, Mandant is

looking at threats all across the web. It's done a lot of reporting and research on what Chinese hackers and Russian hackers are doing UM and that becomes a big part of, you know, the advisory work that they do with clients more broadly, and so Mandant will be telling customers right now, these are the types of attacks, this is how it might happen. Here's what you can learn, all right, Nicole Grant, thanks for reporting on that. We'll see if that deal in fact closes gets any regulatory

scrutiny as well. Welcome back to Bluber Technology. Emily Check in San Francisco. Well on this international women say, we're taking a moment to celebrate how much women have achieved and how much work there is left to do. Recent data from pitch book shows that so far, in two startups with only female founders have snatched just two point one percent of venture capital, same as last year. Same as I want to bring in Lux Capitals, Dana Shaquier

for more so, Dina. They've already started compiling the data for this year and it's no better than it was last year two, which makes no sense, of course, when women are half the population, what gives? Well? First of all, Happy International Women's Day, Emily, and thank you so much for having me and for uh and for bringing this important topic to the conversation. I am still hopeful, and as I told you last week, I would actually say

I'm optimistic a f um. The data is not quite up to date in terms of where we are for two, at least from what I'm seeing, I think there is still tremendous opportunity. I have to say, and maybe I'm biased. The companies that I'm seeing are not only solo women founders who are coming from deeply technical and clinical fields, but across the board more diverse than I've ever seen in prior years. Things are changing, and I expect the data to follow suit. Okay, what about check writers like yoursel?

Fourteen point three percent of check writers now are women. We know that's critical to getting more women and a greater diversity of ideas funded. But even that number, I believe it's up from like eleven percent a couple of years ago. It's moving so slowly, it really is, and it's not enough. I we have a long way to go.

And there is data which Coffin Fellows has published, along with a plethora of other data, including from Bloomberg, on the importance of cap table diversity, not only in terms of founding teams, but on the performance of those teams, on the performance of those boards, on revenues, on faster time to exit. So this is not about diversity for diversity's sake, or even for the sake of a holiday

like today. It's fundamentally good for business. It's good for investors, it's good for LPs, and it's good for our economy. So we we really need to move the needle here. And I'm again excited to see all of the young talent that's coming to the table, people who may not have considered a future adventure before. Uh, some of the role models that they've had the chance to to see elevated in recent years. Well, women can change the world alone.

We're going to need the help of men and I'm curious in the boardroom, are you seeing male investors, male check writers more open to women founders or women ideas you know? Or is it still the women funding the smart breast pump for the women's health tech solution. Not only am I seeing investors more open to it, I'm actually seeing incredible companies that are innovating for women in women's health and in other areas that are founded by men.

Uh And some of those happened to be in my portfolio, and so I do think there's been a tied ship. There have been incredibly competitive deals um that that we've had the chance to participate in, and many of the folks coming to the table are are men, and so it's really not a gendered preference here. I think it's folks are starting to see that this is fundamentally good for the world, good for our economy, and good for

our investors. What kind of role do you think investors have on keeping the pressure on, especially for younger startups where you are more involved, making sure they have diverse teams, making sure they have women on the board, making sure that women are promoted so that they don't become as sort of male dominated as the big tech companies that have the power today. It's absolutely critical, Emily, and it

has to start in the earliest days. This is not something where you can check the box right before you go public and decide to add, uh, you know, a quote unquote diverse member to your board, because it's it's required at that point. It really does need to be baked into the DNA of the company at the sounding stage. And again I'm seeing that happening even in new co creation in terms of the first hires, in terms of thoughtful founders who recognize the importance of that around the

board room and around the cap table as well. It's very difficult to do it thoughtfully if you wait too long. Women make up thirty thirty five percent of employees at big tech companies, but it's much smaller when you look at those prime technical roles, about of those top tech engineering roles, you know it's going to take years, decades maybe for some of these bigger companies to change. It's like trying to turn the Titanic. How optimistic are you

for the next generation of bigger tech companies? Are we on the right trajectory? You know? Well, speaking of data and ten years it was ten years ago when I was at Google and they first released their diversity numbers when it's specifically when it comes to women in computer science and technical roles, and they were dismal and uh. Following Google, a number of the other large fangs also released their numbers, and there were myriad efforts to address

the gender gap, starting in element free school. I mean, we know now that these kind of biases and self perceptions can be formed as early as eighteen months of age. So it's not something that will move immediately and quickly. It's it's not that easy to generate, you know, multiple PhDs overnight. We have to start that early and that young. We have to see characters in TV shows that you know are excellent engineers and happen to be women, not

exceptional because they are women. We need to see those types of role models on Bloomberg Tech, which you do constantly. These this type of representation is absolutely critical and I think that we'll see that precipitate over time in terms of the numbers. It won't happen quickly, but it can't happen quickly enough. We try, but all of us, even us,

can certainly do better. I want to ask about some of the most rapidly growing parts of the tech economy Crypto Web three, for example, do you see um women you know, taking a fair share of the pie and some of these versioning industries, because I think the narrative is that some of these new uh new tech sub

industries are still quite male dominant. Quickly in many cases they are, but there are incredible organizations coming to the table, like my BFF that are working to change that, like Women in the World, and like our new partner at Lux Grace who's focused on Web three among other things. All right, Tana Shaquire Lux Capital partner, thank you for bringing your optimism to us. I want to soak a little bit of that up and take that with me for the rest of this Internactual Women's Day coming up.

As Web three is becoming a new focus for many companies. One blockchain project known as the Google of DeFi a k A. The Graph is gaining momentum. We'll have more on that next. This is Bloomberg time for our crypto report. Now Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its potential long lasting impacts that I want to bring in our next guest, he can climb the co founder and head of business at Edge and know the t behind the Graph, which

brands itself as the Google of the defied world. This is an indexing and Corey protocol organizing the world's open blockchain data and making open data a public good. Taken, Thanks so much for joining us. So I'm curious how you would describe the mission of the graph and how do you make sure it doesn't become a centralized space for a space that wants to be decentralized. Absolutely. Yeah, So the Graph is on a mission to make all of the world's public data verifiable UM and the Graph

is organizing all of on chain Web three data. So kind of like what Google does for the traditional web, the Graph does for the Web three space. And it is a public good and it has been built in its decentralized ways. There are many notes around the world that operate within the Graph ecosystem and many different contributors, so there's no central point of authority within the Graph network. More,

what is the data then telling you? Taken about sorry shnally, what is the data telling you about the what's going on in the macro an environment right now? Obviously we're really concerned about what this means for traditional assets. Bitcoin is sort of a non traditional assets. Some thought it would be a safe haven, but Ashinali was talking about earlier, it's been very volatile like everything else. Yeah, so macro has definitely been impacting short term trading um. It's definitely

been impacting the crypto markets. But in my opinion, that's quite short sighted, and I think based on some of the unfortunate current events that we're seeing in the world. You know, it's very clear why crypto is very important. Situations in Ukraine, Russia, Canada, people really can't get acts, they can't get money into Ukraine. Money have had to flee and leave their belongings at home in Ukraine. In Russia, people can't get paid. The Central Bank of Russia might

also get their assets frozen. And so crypto self sovereignty really solves for this. But the markets kind of do their thing, and we're really focused on building and so the developer activity has not stalled, it's not declined. It's actually at an all time I and it's growing faster than it ever has before. An Electric Capital, they put out a dev report that showed over eighteen thou open source STAPs joined the space and joined the Web three space.

So that's up, and that's in line with what we've seen within the graph ecosystem. They're over twenty eight thousand developers building on the graph today. Well as more developers build on the graph and as more people, ordinary people who have never transacted in bitcoin before or crypto for that matter, start to use the cryptocurrencies, do you think that centralization serves more of a purpose and verification is

more important. I think decentralization is crucial, So you need to decentralize not just ownership, but power, decision making, control, all of that should be decentralized. It shouldn't be at you know, a platforms um authority, it shouldn't be at a platforms and the platform shouldn't be dictating who is on the platform, who is allowed to speak on the platform,

the truth on that platform. I think that centralization is very crucial, but transparency, open source, permission list, trust less tech is also Those are also core values within Web three. But it feels like this is really getting tested, this entire notion when you have people being kicked off right, you have people like coin ba or exchanges like coin based essentially serving as a central mechanism to really police behaviors here. How does that test what decentralization means in

this industry? So I think it's very clear that exchanges like coin base and also platforms like open sea are that just that their platforms, they're centralized, and that's why it's very important to self custody your assets so that you have control in the kind of this decentralized way, and that way no one can take that away from you. I think this, the situation that's happening now is triggering a lot of memories for a lot of people that have had to flee their countries and they were left

with nothing. And you know, with crypto, you can take it with you so long as you are self custodying and you're not leaving that on a centralized exchange. We're getting also to a White House executive order on crypto, and there's continued to be a lot of uncertainty around crypto regulation. What are you bracing for here and what would you like to see? Yeah, great question. So this

executive order is not a huge deal. It's something that we've been anticipating for quite some time, and so what it is it's expected to kind of instruct agencies to study and come up with a plan UM, and so that study will likely pick up on a lot of the regulatory themes that the industry has been focused on for many months, many years, so like consumer protection, regulating securities and UM security exchanges, and then also compliance with

anti money laundering. So I do think that it's good that the administration is starting to study these issues, or they're studying these issues further rather than just kind of attempting to blank it regulate UM, because I think that that can stifle innovation and kind of push it overseas. And so I'm excited to see more like the knowledgeable founders within the web three space and the crypto space helped to regulate or help to UM helped to educate

regulators UM. So yeah, I'm looking speaking of what regulators do in the US versus abroad. I mean, when you look at kind of the ecosystem that exists, do you think that there is more innovation moving abroad, given you know f t X and the Bahamas and you know so many companies forming in India and other places around the world. Yeah, I mean I would like to see

that regulation stay here in the US. And not move overseas, and so I am looking forward to kind of looking working with regulators so that we can keep that innovation here in a safe way. All right, tnclient engine note co founder, thank you for joining us the Google of defied check it out. Bumble just released fourth quarter results, beating estimates the dating app joining the growing list of companies cutting ties with Russia. I want to get the latest with evercre I s I N Sweats Cajoria just

got off the earnings called swats. This is significant for Bumble because of their huge subsidiary. But do which is big datings I focused on Europe with some users as I understand in Russia. How big a deal is this?

It is so so they actually did this close during the call that Russia accounted for about two point eight percent of their business last year and they are guiding the full year revenue growth excluding Russia for full year twenty two and that implies about two percent of their business. So not a huge piece of the parent company, but meaningful exposure for bad which is part of Bumble's business. So how much of an impact do you think this could have on the business, which, to be fair, has

been struggling when you look at some of the activity. Okay, let me point you to the few things. Core business for Bumble actually seems to be running very smoothly. So let me give you three data points. One is their full Yer twenty two guide if you exclude the impact from Russia, is very very strong for Bumble app, which has very small exposure to Russia itself, So not but do but the Bumble app the core app expects their growth rate to be about thirty four thirty six percent

year over year, meaningfully about whether Street was. That implies that their fair growth or the net editions in their bears will be greater in two than Street was not expecting. That third is that if you exclude the impact from Russia, they expect hundred basis points of IBADA margin expansion, so the revenue growth would be about IBADA margins to expand hundred hundred pips year over year, and bears are growing at a very healthy club. So the core business excluding

Russia for Bumble seems to be firing on all cylinders. Now, if you include Russia, then yes, they guided down for the full year because they're closing in their operations. They have about a hundred twenty people. They're closing their operations in Russia completely UM, so they will face some headwinds there, but the core business seems to be running fairly smoothly. And what's your take on how the macro economic uncertainty could impact consumer behavior whether or not people want to

day and buy those Bumble subscriptions. So there are two things. The demographic and geographic exposure that Bado has is meaningfully different from that of Bumble, So the Bumble app users are different there in English speaking countries and in mostly the developed world, and they're seeing less of an omicron headwind or an impact because of the development of video and audio, etcetera. And in fact, their full year twenty two guide does not have any meaningful tail wind of

reopening economies. That's it's a different story for Buddoo altogether. But do is it more in the emerging market countries including Russia? Um, And they're seeing a little bit more of an impact from COVID now. They do expect as economies open up, they should benefit from reopening economy, but

that is not big in their guidance. A little bit of an omicron headwind for bad but less so for Bumble is this kind of a bummer for Bumble given that you know we're on the tail and hopefully of this pandemic which you know, I imagine would have been a big tail wind for for Bumble and and in person dating it should continue to be a tail wind.

I mean, if we actually look at what Matched, their biggest competitor is saying about Omicron as well as COVID, there is meaningful there's reason to believe that there is meaningful upset to Matches guide. If the recovery in Asia, for example Japan, which is their number two market is is better than expected. The same thing applies here for Bumble.

I think if the reopening UH is better than expected, they could have a much meaning that they could have upset to their guidance, that it could be actually beneficial to Bumber. I Swazekajoria Abricre, thanks for breaking it down. Thanks for it doesn't for us, that doesn't for this edition of Bloomberg Technology, on this International Women's Day, join

us again tomorrow. We've got a conversation with Cruiz CEO Kyle Loot as he takes the throne again, and an interview with the CEO of Marcatta Jason Gardner, This is Bloomberg,