What's Delta Doing to Business Tech Spending?
The most important thing in tech today is …
whether businesses are leaning into tech spending as the COVID Delta variant surges.?Companies that had planned returns to offices are now having to reconsider those plans; Apple, for example, pushed its September hybrid plan back to October at the earliest. So what’s the impact on the trajectory of spending on products and services like Azure and Office 365, iMacs and MacBook Pros, Google Cloud and digital ads to drive commerce?
We’ll get some insight today when three of the four largest technology companies report earnings and give hints about how business is trending.
It’s a complicated question.?Will companies pull back on spending because of the uncertainty? Or will they lean into it, because they see technology giving them the most options to keep operations humming whatever the circumstance?
More than any other theme or factor, I’ll be listening for this in today’s earnings reports from Alphabet (Google), Apple and Microsoft.
Coming up today on CNBC’s TechCheck, 11 a.m. ET / 8 a.m. PT …
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz
While you were sleeping …
After the Intel Accelerated presentation detailing the company’s manufacturing roadmap, SVP Sanjay Natarajan joined me in a Fortt Knox Deep Dive?and clarified some things about how Intel sees its competitive position:
Instagram has introduced protections for its teenage users?to default young people into private accounts and make it harder for "suspicious" adults to make unwanted contact, the company announced Tuesday.?NBC
In the broader world …
The International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday that there’s a risk inflation will prove to be more than just transitory, pushing central banks to take pre-emptive action.?CNBC
I’m listening to …