Headworx

We are in the middle of a quarterly reports season and especially next week with Google, Tesla, Apple and others will be interesting. Last week gave us some hints too, but still it seems people do not listen. Complacency is high. It almost seems like most are considering what happened in March and April as a short gap, a kind of vacations, expecting things getting back to normal soon. Yes there will be back to normal, except this will be new normal. On a press conference Intel nailed it with three words: "contraction of global GDP" ( PDF ). Talking to people and fellow entrepreneurs, they point to me the business outlook does not look bad and expect resume of activities as soon as the lockdown is lifted. But when I asked them about new business won after COVID, they could not name a single contract. All they have in the pipelines are contracts that are results of before-COVID (BC) activities. Simply put - inertia. It seems there is still significant inertia in the ...

Since it became obvious that COVID was not an internal China problem, there has been an ongoing debate on the shape of recovery. V-shaped - versus U-shaped - versus W-shaped - versus L-shaped . And this happened already! At least the stock markets have done it in a V-shaped style. Detaching themselves from the reality. There are many reasons for that, one is definitely the American stock recovery has been artificially driven by the FED-injected liquidity. The reality though is, and will be, very different. It seems very few are prepared for a long journey with the virus. People really started realizing this thing was serious when lockdowns were imposed. And the whole story behind the lockdowns was to flatten the curve . What most seem to have missed is the curve is not symmetrical. The more flat it is (yes, we managed to flatten it), the less steep the down slope becomes. And there may not be the down slop at all for several months to come... as the curve will transform itself ...

I'm lucky to have a fabulous place to shelter for the COVID - a cabin in the woods in a national park. It is normally a quiet place, distanced from trails, but these days it has been unbelievably quiet, especially that the park has been closed for the public. It is like I had the entire planet to myself, an introvert's temple. And despite the physical isolation, this place has been for many years the center of my private R&D. This is where I learned and understood low power wireless technologies, developing a foundation for what has now become the official Bluetooth mesh. For the last 25 years it has also been a test bed for a number of rural Internet access technologies. In 1995 it started with a dial-in 56k modem over an analog phone line. It worked, albeit shaky. Also there was no cell coverage, so I was disconnecting often to allow friends and family call us on the very same landline. Around 2000 I managed to convert the analog service to a digital ISDN 2B+D, wh...

Talking to people and reading [some] news, I feel like watching The Big Short [Reloaded]. A huge disconnect between what is ahead of us and how people think and act. Barely anyone admits the lockdown and the economic downturn will last throughout 2021. Most think this is a painful, but rather short event and things will soon be back to normal. Jamie Shipley: People hate to think about bad things happening so they always underestimate their likelihood. Last Friday U.S. payrolls were reported to fall by 700 thousand (vs the analysts forecast of 100 thousand). And this data covers only the early part of March, before the mandated shutdowns. The jobless rate is expected to surge above 10%, probably to the levels comparable to the 1930's Great Depression. Economy is a chain. One link breaks and it falls apart. It started with travel restrictions, taking down passenger transport, hospitality, services, retail. And essentially everything that is non-essential. It is not hard to im...