Week Ending: Weekly Wireless Report June 23, 2017 This Week’s Stories Uber CEO Kalanick Relinquishes Power After Investor Mutiny Inside This Issue: June 21, 2017 This Week’s Stories Travis Kalanick has resigned from his job leading Uber Technologies Inc., giving up his effort to hold Uber CEO Kalanick Relinquishes onto power as a torrent of self-inflicted scandals enveloped him and the global ride-hailing leviathan Power After Investor Mutiny he co-founded. Tech CEOs Meet With Trump On Pressure from investors, who’ve poured more than $15 billion into a company that has burned Government Overhaul through billions, ultimately did what the board could, or would, not: It convinced the 40-year-old chief executive officer to step aside. Five of Uber’s major investors, including Fidelity Investments and Products & Services Benchmark, asked Kalanick to step aside in a letter to him titled “Moving Uber Forward,” according to Amazon’s Echo Show Gets More people familiar with the matter. Practical By Adding Support For Smart Home Camera Feeds Kalanick, who grew Uber’s bookings to $20 billion last year, has played a starring role in many of the company’s controversies. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's New Mission: Bring The World He referred to his business as “Boob-er.” He argued with a driver about pay in a video published by Closer Together Bloomberg. He’s said to have questioned whether a female passenger had been raped by a driver Google Wants To Help You who was convicted of the crime in India. Kalanick co-authored corporate values that included “Always Search for A New Job Be Hustlin’,” “Meritocracy and Toe-Stepping” and “Principled Confrontation.” Uber now plans to scrap many of those tenets on the advice of former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who just Emerging Technology concluded an investigation into the cultural failings of a company built in Kalanick’s image. The Future Is Waiting: Private Enterprise Is Making Sci-Fi “I love Uber more than anything in the world, and at this difficult moment in my personal life, I have Technology A Reality accepted the investors’ request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight,” Kalanick said in a statement. He will remain on the board of directors, Intel Signs Olympics Deal To Uber said separately. Show Off Drones And Virtual Reality Tough Time Mergers & Acquisitions The campaign to convince Kalanick to step aside, led by Benchmark partner and Uber director Bill Snapchat Acquires Social Map Gurley, couldn’t have come at a more painful time in his life. Kalanick’s mother died in a freak boating App Zenly For $250M To $350M accident in May that severely injured his father. After the CEO’s resignation, Gurley tweeted: “There will be many pages in the history books devoted to @travisk - very few entrepreneurs have had such Adobe Acquires Mettle’s SkyBox a lasting impact on the world.” Fidelity declined to comment, and Benchmark didn’t respond to Tools To Expand Its VR Video requests for comment. Portfolio Kalanick began an indefinite leave of absence on June 13, leaving day-to-day management to a Industry Reports committee of 14 top executives. Regional operations heads continue to oversee the company’s core Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T Tied In business. Network Speed Tests Uber has been searching for a chief operating officer. With Kalanick’s departure, the company is now Apple Seeks To Void Patent also looking for a CEO -- a far more desirable position for a business leader. Whoever takes the helm Claims, Fees In Qualcomm will have to plug a leadership vacuum. Uber also needs to hire an independent board chair, chief Dispute marketing officer and general counsel. Many of the company’s top executives were promoted internally after their bosses left, including heads of business, policy and communications, and product. Connect with us Visit our website www.ksrinc.com Pag e | 2 Kalanick’s closest confidant Emil Michael was ousted by Uber’s board following Holder’s recommendations. Like Kalanick, he was tied to the mishandling of an Indian rape case and attended an outing to a karaoke bar in South Korea that triggered a human resources complaint. Business Booming This month, the company shared the recommendations of Holder’s law firm. More than 20 people were fired as part of a separate probe by another firm into sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation and other HR complaints. Despite recent turmoil, Uber’s business is growing. Revenue increased to $3.4 billion in the first quarter, while losses narrowed -- though they remain substantial at $708 million. Kalanick is a paper billionaire thanks to his approximately 12 percent stake in the company, with a net worth of $6.7 billion, according to calculations by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Uber itself has been valued at $69 billion. Kalanick won’t receive severance or other post-employment benefits, said a person familiar with the matter. As is often the case, company executives who depart of their own free will typically walk away with nothing. And many tech businesses, including Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., employ executives at will and don’t offer special payouts in case of a termination or if the company is bought. Kalanick will retain his stake in Uber, where he exerts significant influence over the company through super-voting shares. He, along with two longtime friends Garrett Camp and Ryan Graves, control much of the board. While the three will stay on as directors, the board approved a plan to recruit more independent directors and a chair to tilt power away from Kalanick. Nestle SA’s Wan Ling Martello is the first such appointment. Uber plans to fill the board seat left by David Bonderman, a TPG Capital founding partner who resigned last week after making a sexist joke, with his colleague David Trujillo, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Trujillo, who was integral in TPG’s 2013 deal for Uber, is expected to help with recruiting as the company tries to fill the many gaps in leadership. ‘Bold Decision’ Uber has sought to head off a defection of drivers by adding a function to its app that lets customers provide tips, a feature offered by U.S. rival Lyft Inc. Kalanick was against letting riders tip, calling his opposition “principled” since he believed restaurants and taxi companies use tips to underpay their workers. Now, in Kalanick’s absence, the company is trying to take a new tack. bloomberg.com Tech CEOs Meet With Trump On Government Overhaul June 19, 2017 President Donald Trump met on Monday with the heads of 18 U.S. technology companies including Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp, seeking their help to make the government's computing systems more efficient. The White House wants to update government information technology systems, cut costs, eliminate waste and improve service. Trump on Monday cited estimates that the government could save up to $1 trillion over 10 years through such measures. "Our goal is to lead a sweeping transformation of the federal government’s technology that will deliver dramatically better services for citizens," Trump said. "Government needs to catch up with the technology revolution." Connect with us Visit our website www.ksrinc.com Pag e | 3 The executives are part of the so-called American Technology Council that Trump formed in May to support efforts to modernize the U.S. government. “The U.S. should have the most modern government in the world. Today it doesn’t,” Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos said he wanted the Trump administration to make use of commercially available technologies, worker retraining, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Before meeting with Trump, the CEOs met in 10 small group sessions with Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, along with the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ohio State University. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and adviser, said the administration wanted to "unleash the creativity of the private sector to provide citizen services in a way that has never happened before." He said the administration was scrapping unneeded regulations for government computing systems, such as a rule on preventing Y2K issues. Most of the government's 6,100 data centers can be consolidated and moved to a cloud-based storage system.The White House is seeking to shrink government, reduce the federal workforce and eliminate regulations. Trump in March signed an order to overhaul the federal government and tapped Kushner to lead a White House Office of American Innovation to leverage business ideas and potentially privatize some government functions.Many of the tech executives are eager to get White House help in dealing with regulatory and other policy issues such as visas for highly skilled workers. Others attending include Alphabet Inc Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Chairman John Doerr and the CEOs of Microsoft Corp International Business Machines Corp, Intel Corp, Qualcomm Inc, Oracle Corp and Adobe Systems Inc. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was invited but could not attend because of a conflict, the company said. A 2016 U.S. Government Accountability Office report estimated the U.S. government spent more than $80 billion in IT annually, excluding classified operations.In 2015, the U.S. government made at least 7,000 separate IT investments and some agencies were using systems that had components at least 50 years old. "This structure is unsustainable," Kushner said. reuters.com Products & Services Amazon’s Echo Show Gets More Practical By Adding Support For Smart Home Camera Feeds June 22, 2017 Amazon today announced a notable new trick for its next-generation Echo device, the Echo Show “One statement that all the (aka the one with the screen), which could make it a more compelling purchase: it will be able to vendors made when display the live streams from a number of smart home cameras.