This image from the Twitter page of Elon Musk shows Musk entering Twitter headquarters carrying a sink through the lobby area. Photo / AP
This image from the Twitter page of Elon Musk shows Musk entering Twitter headquarters carrying a sink through the lobby area. Photo / AP
Opinion by Liam Dann
Liam Dann, Business Editor at Large for New Zealand’s Herald, works as a writer, columnist, radio commentator and as a presenter and producer of videos and podcasts.
So in this time of war, pandemic, geo-political tension, natural disaster, inflation and cultural polarisation it's important to celebrate small victories.
With news that Apple has conceded to EU demands, it looks like we're finally moving into a new golden age ofuniversally compatible phone chargers.
For anyone from mixed phone households, this will be a welcome relief.
It should also help bring down the cost of chargers which, frankly, seem to be deliberately designed to self-destruct after a few months in order to impose an ongoing tax on mobile users.
Now an epic showdown between political and corporate power has been played out with the result that one tiny bugbear has been removed from our lives.
Just kidding, we won't solve that any time soon because no one cares about it as much as universally compatible phone chargers.
Sorry to sound cynical. I'm genuinely pleased that my children will live their adult lives in a world of universally compatible phone chargers.
If I'm honest, I was just pleased to see tech-giant Apple forced to back down on something.
It really hasn't been a good week for tech companies ... which means it's been a great week for schadenfreude fans who enjoy watching multi-billionaire tech gurus suffer.
But the meltdown of tech stocks on Wall Street is probably not a good sign for the global economy.
It may be part of the highly anticipated shift to a more recessionary world.
Charger back-down aside, Apple actually got through the week better than its peers.
As of Friday, its share price was only off about 4 per cent on reasonable quarterly results that mostly met market expectations.
Meta - the company formerly known as Facebook - saw the worst of it.
Its share price fell by as much as 25 per cent after it reported that revenue fell for the second quarter in a row.
According to CNBC, that means founder Mark Zuckerberg's wealth plunged by US$11 billion, taking his total losses to more than US$100b in just 13 months.
The poor guy is now worth just US$38b, down from US$142b at the peak of the Covid bull market in September 2021.
Investors don't like how much he is investing in a fully immersive virtual world that looks like a 1990s video game.
It wasn't a good week for tech companies, but Meta - the company formerly known as Facebook - saw the worst of it. Photo / AP
A hundred years from now when people are living in underground bunkers with their brains plugged directly into a virtual universe, perhaps he'll be remembered as a genius.
But right now Wall Street analysts seem to suspect he might just be a self-indulgent boss who has had too many people around him telling him he's a genius for too long.
Almost all the big tech stocks disappointed Wall Street.
Amazon shares were down 20 per cent at one point, shrinking the wealth of Jeff Bezos by billions.
Even trusty old Microsoft and Alphabet (Google's owner) were off by around 10 per cent.
It wasn't a great week for Twitter either - at least not for the employees facing the whirlwind arrival of the world's richest man, Elon Musk.
Musk tried to buy Twitter, then he tried not to. But as of Friday, he is $44b poorer and the proud owner of a second-hand social media site which may or may not still have the power to shape global politics.
It's a worry. Musk is an erratic individual who is prone to doing strange things just to cause a bit of extra chaos in the world.
I think he'd have been a lot more fun 20 or 30 years ago when fomenting a bit of happy chaos seemed like a good idea.
These days we've got enough chaos, thanks Elon.
Last week Musk turned up at Twitter's head office carrying a bathroom sink just so he could tweet a video with the caption: "Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!"
As a fan of dad jokes, I have to admire his commitment to a bad pun.
Thankfully, he also made an effort to reassure the staff he won't be sacking 75 per cent of them and reassure advertisers that he won't actually be allowing Twitter to become a hateful hotbed of unregulated free speech.
He's smart enough to know that tweeting about running something and actually running it are very different propositions.
Meanwhile, with tech stocks floundering, perhaps we should take heart that some old-world companies seem to be doing very well from all the global turmoil.
Specifically, banks and oil companies continue to report record profits at a time when the rest of us are going backwards.
Last week, oil company Shell reported a US$9.5b profit for the third quarter - more than double what it made in the same quarter last year.
Locally, ANZ New Zealand reported a record cash profit of $2.064b for the year to September 30.
That was up 8 per cent on the prior financial year.
That just seems wrong.
But it also seems pointless to blame the companies, in much the same way that it's pointless to blame a cat for killing a bird.
We collectively create the environment for these profits to be made.
When oil prices and interest rates are high, oil companies and banks make money.
If we want real change then we have to fight for it. Like the EU did for phone chargers.
