[HN Gopher] Intel to buy smart urban transit startup Moovit for ...
___________________________________________________________________
Intel to buy smart urban transit startup Moovit for $1B for its car
division
Author : 1cvmask
Score : 95 points
Date : 2020-05-03 15:42 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| gallego2007 wrote:
| Interesting acquisition by Intel, but also equally surprising
| valuation at $1B. I thought Moovit was entirely crowdsourced and
| made up primarily of volunteers[1]... maybe that changed
| recently?
|
| [1] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/crowdsourcing-just-ticket-
| exp...
| 303space wrote:
| Also the article claims "800 million riders" which is
| astounding for an app that is currently #36 in the navigation
| category (iOS App Store). Unless this app is more popular than
| TikTok everywhere outside of the US they've gotta be playing
| fast and loose with those usage statistics.
| bfrog wrote:
| What a terrible purchase. Moovit is worth exactly $0.
| Gys wrote:
| Clearly that depends who you are asking
| en4bz wrote:
| Can someone create an equivalent of the Google Graveyard but for
| dumb Intel acquisitions?
| Zigurd wrote:
| I nominate Spectron. It died twice I think: the corpse was sold
| to Dialogic, then Dialogic was bought by Intel later on, and
| then there was more spinoff/merger pinball.
|
| The original idea was for Intel to wrest control of multimedia
| from Microsoft and create an Intel controlled multimedia
| subsystem. They didn't actually acquire Dragon for the speech
| recognition part, but Dragon's fate was even worse.
| [deleted]
| jSully24 wrote:
| This appears to be a very desperate move by a company just
| realizing the desperate situation they find themselves in. I
| agree with others sentiment that they need to find a way to get
| back to doing well what it is they know, or used to know.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yeah Intel really has their back against that wall, after all
| they are one of the most highly capitalized businesses in human
| history, just recorded their largest annual revenue in the
| history of the firm, and earn a profit of only about $80000 per
| minute. Pure desperation down there in Santa Clara.
| eldavido wrote:
| Financial results are always a lagging indicator in tech.
| That doesn't mean they aren't important, just that you can
| coast on an existing product line for a really long time
| (decade+) and then everyone's "surprised" when unit sales
| decline, and there's nothing else in the pipeline.
|
| An example of this: Sears. Dominant retailer, completely
| missed the boat on ecommerce, now bankrupt. Literally.
| bluGill wrote:
| Sears missed the boat on ecomerce, but that isn't why they
| are gone. Walmart missed the boat too at first, but they
| are still big because their manageme was good. They also
| have adjusted overtime such that now my family does most of
| our shopping there (once this pandemic is done I'm looking
| forward to going back to the local stores I used to go to.)
| jeffbee wrote:
| Microsoft missed the boat on mobile and now they are the
| biggest firm in the universe.
| chx wrote:
| Let me grab this occassion to draw attention to a lesser known
| feature of Citymapper (not everywhere alas): it can make a public
| transit plan augmented by a cab. This is something I have been
| doing without an app myself at my home city in a very clear
| demonstration of the "time is money" principle. This is one of
| the true differentiating capabilities between Citymapper, Moovit
| and Google Maps, otherwise they would be quite similar.
| petra wrote:
| Moovit has audio alerts, which Google Maps doesn't have. It's a
| valuable feature when riding a bus.
| fastball wrote:
| Citymapper has "get off the bus" alerts too.
| cwhiz wrote:
| I actually hate that feature and can't figure out how to turn
| it off. It thinks getting me within 1-2 miles of my destination
| and hailing a car is better than being on a train for 20%
| longer but being much closer to where I actually want to go. I
| outright stopped using the app because it's too annoying to
| make sure the suggested route doesn't involving getting off a
| train and catching a car.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Use the Transit app, it is almost completely focused on city
| transit only + walking.
|
| It suggests ubers and bike shares, but they're pushed down to
| the bottom of the options list.
| kungato wrote:
| Google Maps has this
| mFixman wrote:
| It also interfaces with bike shares in some cities.
|
| Bike share + train multimodal commutes being the norm is the
| dream of every modern urbanist.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Wait... let's rewind. Why does Intel have an "Israeli automotive
| hub" from acquiring "Mobileye, the autonomous driving company" in
| 2017?
|
| It makes sense when a large company acquires a smaller one, or
| founds a division from scratch, because it can provide that
| smaller company/company with uniquely valuable resources. E.g.
| Google/Alphabet founding Waymo because of Google's existing
| expertise in ML.
|
| But how does expertise in processors translate to _any_ kind of
| advantage for autonomous driving? Presumably the microprocessors
| in a self-driving car are one of the most commoditized parts...
| who cares if it 's Intel, AMD or ARM?
|
| Does anyone "in the know" have a clue around Intel's strategy
| here?
|
| I can only guess they want to repeat the "Intel Inside" marketing
| campaign of the 1990's -- i.e. if they lost mobile, they don't
| want to lose cars too. But then wouldn't they want to form strong
| subsidized partnerships, the way they did with Intel Inside?
| Developing their own technology seems like it would make the
| autonomous car industry view them as competitors, not partners,
| and thus _less_ likely to use their chips.
|
| What am I missing?
| jocker12 wrote:
| https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3815790...
| detaro wrote:
| NVidia has product lines specifically for this field. Tesla
| proudly announced to the world that they made their own chip
| for autonomous driving. "Autonomous driving"
| research/development right now means lots of Machine Learning,
| image processing, ... High-performance stuff that benefits from
| GPU-like designs, all the while the systems for that need to be
| reasonably energy-efficient and build in a way that they'll
| survive in an automotive setting. They're not a competitor to
| car companies because car companies typically don't want to
| design chips themselves, they'll happily buy them if they can
| (Tesla is a really odd one out in that regard, and even they'll
| use superior hardware made by someone else if it makes sense).
| If it takes off across manufacturers, Intel very much would
| like a slice of that pie instead of leaving it all to
| NVidia&Co.
| omarforgotpwd wrote:
| MobilEye's key advantage was they fabbed their own chips. Back
| when you couldn't really run a neural net in a car, they
| essentially kind of hard coded the evaluation of a certain
| neural net into a special chip.
|
| Not sure I described this 100% accurately, but it's something
| like that. Hence the Intel acquisition. Their tech is pretty
| good honestly, used to power Tesla Autopilot 1 before they
| decided to build their own solution.
| arijun wrote:
| Actually one of Mobileye's big strengths is their custom chips.
| They are purpose built and very efficient, which allows them to
| mount them under the windshield (important for their main
| business, ADAS), and they are built with the needs of the
| software in mind. I don't know if Mobileye uses any Intel fabs,
| but it's not such a crazy stretch to say one could help the
| other.
| my123 wrote:
| Their competitor here is Nvidia, which has quite good hardware.
| Also, yes the ISA doesn't matter that much in the field,
| because no 3rd-party user-installed apps on automotive by
| design...
| [deleted]
| saipraneeth wrote:
| can someone explain the differences between Moovit, Transit and
| Google Maps.. seems to me that they solve the same problem..
| skrtskrt wrote:
| I've used Transit and Google Maps and to me Transit's
| suggestions are closer to how a human considers transit
| options.
|
| Google Maps seem strangely over optimized for things like
| minimum walking at the beginning of the route. Plus the Google
| Maps "how far away the bus is" doesn't update based on new data
| (from the city bus trackers or crowdsourced data) unless you
| close the app and re open
| jackyinger wrote:
| This sort of stuff is why I quit Intel and sold all my stock. In
| my opinion (and I haven't been following post-Kersanich Intel
| closely) Intel should be focusing on their process and
| processors, I don't think the execs really have the will it would
| take to diversify.
|
| These acquisitions almost always end up being run into the ground
| because Intel is so used to turning the crank on their mature
| (read: awesomely ubiquitous software support) CPU architecture
| that they don't want to spend much on R&D on things that aren't
| proven money makers. But they keep trying to div diversify in a
| very half-assed way because they have such a high market share in
| CPUs (not that it is without legitimate threat from AMD) that to
| continue to grow they want to hit new markets.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I'm just wondering why they have a billion to spend on this.
| Clearly they can walk and chew gum at the same time, yet being
| so under fire directionally makes me think they should be more
| focused on getting their core business right instead of chasing
| extremely expensive pipe dreams. Those side distractions almost
| always get cut at Intel...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The appearance of generating value in the short term until
| executive leadership parachutes out leaving shareholders
| holding the bag.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Around 2008, Intel really needed to become a player in mobile
| computing. Now they're a decade late, and this wasn't what I
| meant by "mobile."
| samfisher83 wrote:
| Lets look at least the Highend cellphone space you have Qcom
| and apple.Even Samsung doesn't really compete with Qcom. Qcom
| has a moat for their mobile business which is their radio
| patents. Even apple uses the Qcom radio chips, but they can
| because they have their insane margins.Lets look at the
| biggest semiconductor company in the world tsmc they
| generated about 4bil in Free cash flow. Intel generated about
| 18, and going after the low cost market is not a good idea.
| The best option would be for intel is just to return money
| back to the shareholders.
| eldavido wrote:
| Completely agree. Had a friend start a career at Intel, moved
| to Apple because he saw it coming.
|
| In case anyone isn't totally clear on why Intel is in such
| trouble: they made a lot of money selling high-end CPUs for
| desktops, and even higher-margin parts to datacenter operators.
|
| On the PC front, when I was in high school (late 90s/early
| 2000s) it was common to have the computers on a "3 year
| replacement cycle" where they'd replace 1/3 or 1/4 of the
| computers every single year. Compare that to today where "2009
| era" iMacs (!!) are floating around, ready for purchase at
| 200-300 dollars. There's no growth here.
|
| On the mobile side, Intel had the chance to make chips for
| Apple but said no. They couldn't make the numbers work volume-
| wise. It's an interesting story, read it if you haven't.
|
| Then comes datacenters. High-performance, high-power has been
| an Intel stronghold for 10-20 years but the whole industry is
| consolidating into AWS/Amazon/Azure who will probably make
| their own CPUs at some point, if not their entire own PCs.
| Either way this is bad for Intel: they face either someone who
| doesn't want their product, or a much larger buyer with much
| more purchasing leverage than a corporate IT department buying
| in small quantities. Same deal with storage -- the larger
| operators aren't paying the crazy EMC/NetApp margins those guys
| could cram down corporate IT's throats. Amazon has already
| announced plans to make ARM EC2 instances for reasons of both
| power and not paying Intel's crazy margins.
|
| The thing Intel still does have is world-leading fab
| capabilities. I remember back in the 90s Intel always
| outperfomred AMD by running at much higher clockspeeds, and
| they could do it because of their superior process technology.
| But that allowed AMD to run laps around them in
| microarchitecture, which is showing with Ryzen. I don't see
| Intel becoming a contract manufacturer soon but I'm sure
| they've discussed it internally.
| gniv wrote:
| I've been hearing this "Intel is in trouble" story for many
| years now. Yet their stock doubled in the last 5 years. What
| gives?
| Traster wrote:
| I actually disagree with your analysis, my experience with
| Intel was from an acquisition. They decided they were going to
| do 'big bets' which involved massively massively investing in a
| few areas. What happened, was they acquired the company and
| told us to grow in certain areas enormously and quickly. So
| it's not that they acquired and then cut R&D. The opposite
| happened, they hugely increased R&D (sure they cut lots of
| other things that caused trouble), but it was like winning the
| lottery, suddenly everyone could hire for everything. So the
| message was "Get on and hire, because it won't be like this
| forever, and if you fail your hiring target, you'll be stuck
| delivering big projects with no staff". Immediately hiring
| became a mess, the weight of bringing on all this new staff
| massively slowed everything down. In most ways we ended up
| delivering less with twice the staff. Needless to say: this
| didn't produce the results they wanted.
|
| Fortunately for my team, Intel completely shitting the bed on
| 10nm meant that all these problems were barely noticed - who
| can blame you if the silicon isn't there.
|
| The thing is, that when you pay a premium, overinvest and
| under-deliver you end up with no choice in the exec team - and
| you end up 'cutting you losses' and doing a McAfee.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> So the message was "Get on and hire, because it won't be
| like this forever, and if you fail your hiring target, you'll
| be stuck delivering big projects with no staff".
|
| Pay attention kids. There are times when a company is
| investing in the future. Do exactly that. Buy equipment that
| will be useful down the road because it won't last.
|
| One place I worked had some awesome custom test stands for
| the product we were developing. I wondered how they ever came
| to be since money seemed tight and we actually had some
| layoffs. Development had been going on since years before I
| got there and they hadn't landed a customer yet. We rebooted
| the design for the 3rd time and did finally win. The business
| became very significant to the company. Sure, they let a
| small team keep trying but we never could have made it
| without that initial investment in equipment/infrastructure.
| Spend the money when it's available, but try to make it
| count.
| Zenst wrote:
| That would be down to how they do accusitions, it's not just
| what they are paying, it's also backedup with a plan and
| investment. So you get a couple of years of nice big budget
| and the expectations would be that it would yeild back within
| that period. Now if those expectations play out, not just the
| product doing as they expected, but also the customers buying
| into it as expected. Those two are sepeate beasts. So either
| the company lives up to expectations and everything aligns
| and carry's on, or it gets a restructuring, which can take
| many forms and can happen more than once.
|
| But like anything new, gets fat marketing budget, then after
| that grace period runs out, they are expected to be self
| sufficient and yielding a return.
|
| Then even if everything goes well, those expectations and
| returns will also grow and eventually things change.
|
| But initially, the honeymoon period is always fun, bit like
| first year at university, then things start to get real, real
| fast.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > doing a McAfee
|
| Do you mean the person or the company? If you mean the
| person, this is going to pretty weird.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Intel was big into antivirus in the early 2010s and bought
| the company
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McAfee#Acquisition_by_Intel_a
| n...
|
| at first they thought it would sell quad-core processors,
| but discriminating consumers learned that third-party
| antivirus makes your machine slow, unstable, hot and runs
| down the battery. Thus it damaged Intel's brand.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It's amazing to me how often this story repeats itself in
| tech, yet the results are almost always the same:
|
| 1. Old, hugely successful company needs to find new growth
| areas.
|
| 2. Company acquires company in high growth area (sometimes
| innovative, sometimes not)
|
| 3. Taking from the MBA playbook that higher investment equals
| more growth, acquired company is given aggressive targets but
| also a huge budget to meet them.
|
| 4. Company goes on a massive, usually relatively untargeted
| hiring spree, things become a major shitshow, acquired
| leadership team is eventually canned.
|
| Instead of finding some realistic _product_ targets and then
| setting a budget around what resources will be needed to
| attain those goals, the budget is allocated based solely on
| desired revenue and somehow hiring all these people without a
| clear plan will make that happen.
|
| I'm genuinely curious, has this ever worked?
| MasterIdiot wrote:
| From what I see in the B2B space, acquisitions are a major
| avenue for quick innovation. Large corporations buy smaller
| startup, do some integration into existing solutions and
| come out with a new product (If they don't just keep the
| new company as a separate costumer-facing identity (Look at
| NetApp + SolidFire, or the whole Dell-EMC conglomerate)
| 1121redblackgo wrote:
| Twitch into Amazon worked, but I do think its an exception.
| What you describe is a very high-level view of how things
| usually turn out.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I think Google did it with YouTube if you want a B2C
| example but this has happened many times in the B2B world
| successfully.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Survivor bias and all that. I wonder what the ratio is
| between
|
| - bought and turned into success
|
| - bought and integrated into the larger business
|
| - bought and closed after running into the ground
|
| - bought and then later spun off due to inability to
| create a successful business or integrate.
|
| Not just for Google, but across IT as a whole.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The number I have heard (from maybe 15 years ago) is that
| "2/3 of corporate mergers meet their goals." That was
| across a range of industries. Tech in 2020 might be
| different, there is a certain kind of mindlessness around
| acquisitions that happens around technology sectors. For
| instance, AOL bought Time Warner, regretted it, AT&T
| bought Time Warner, now the vulture funds like Elliot
| Capital Management are circling and they will have the
| CEOs head.
|
| AT&T's mistakes were made by people who were more
| technical than MBA, but it's a consistent trope that
| "Google bought Company A" and then Company B brings their
| salespeople to muster the next morning to inform them
| what's going to happen at Company A, and the next sales
| retreat is fistbumps all around.
|
| I wonder if we could put a break on mergers and
| acquisitions, not for the sake of communities, workers,
| and competition, but just for the poor stockholders!
| clairity wrote:
| > "The number I have heard (from maybe 15 years ago) is
| that '2/3 of corporate mergers meet their goals.'"
|
| my recollection is that it's closer to half. m&a deals
| tend to be executive vanity projects as often as sound
| strategy.
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| Perhaps when the acquisition target is a smaller but
| fairly mature company who is being asked to scale
| existing processes. I think this is much more difficult
| for a startup when you're essentially asking them to
| scale both their output and shrink their time to maturity
| by orders of magnitude.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah, the cases where I've personally seen it work were
| when the company had product market fit but was money
| constrained for how much it could grow.
| Zenst wrote:
| Agreed, Intel seems to buy companies and then destroy or borg
| only small bits leaving everything else to rot.
|
| But such purchases are good PR for the shareholder perception
| and almost gets down to churning purches thru the books on the
| surface, look good at that level of perception.
|
| Agreed, They should focus upon what they have and with that,
| perish the thought they focused upon there FPGA with toolchains
| and support that could drive it into that and many markets.
|
| If Intel added a small FPGA to their CPU's and they could -
| that could drive a whole new market of development and one in
| which they are placed to capitlise upon what IP they do have.
| Certainly an FPGA would make for a good mix with AI, if Intel
| would make such tools and open up FPGA's more to users and get
| that adoption going. Then the whole CPU/GPU race may well
| change into their favour.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-05-03 23:00 UTC)