♪ emily: i'm emily chang and this is "the best of bloomberg technology" where we bring you all of our top interviews in tech. coming up, earnings are in all swing with result from facebook, amazon, tesla, and more. we will bring you all of the highlights. plus, samsung has delayed the launch of its first foldable smartphone after consumers report defects. just how big of a setback is it? and our exclusive conversation with a grab cofounders, can they

live up the expectation of being the super app of asia? first, to our top story, some of the biggest tech companies in the world are out with their earnings this week, including facebook. they struggle to maintain their growth of its scandals, controversy, and the threat of regulation. joining us now is david kirkpatrick in new york. and we have deborah with us as well. give us your take on the headline numbers, legal bills aside. >> you are right. it is hard to put those aside. necessarily because the idea of a potential settlement is so massive. however, the revenue beat and the user numbers were not a surprise to us. facebook has shown over the past year, and it has been a year since the first news of a which can limit came out, -- cambridge analytica came out, they have shown they have been able to consistently grow revenues, users, the market for facebook is doing well in terms of people

using it, in terms of advertisers wanting to spend money. for us, that part was not a surprise. the big surprise was obviously the $3 billion they are holding back for potential ftc settlements. emily: david, in context, that is a huge fine. i believe the highest ever in terms of the ftc and the u.s. company was in the tens of millions of dollars. how serious is this? david: it is serious and the key question is is it a one-off? going to what debra was saying, advertisers have no place to go besides facebook, and as long as that remains the case and as long as advertisers don't feel there is a serious associative risk, the execution is going to continue to be good because these people have proven they can execute, but there is something so disjunctive about the very moment that they announce a $3 billion set aside for a likely fine that investors still bid the stock up 4% or 5%. you have to wonder when this

company will begin to pay the piper for the fact that it is essentially losing social approval to operate. i don't think they are changing the way they operate fast enough to ensure that that is not going to happen. emily: let's talk about that. i have a chart on the bloomberg that shows user growth over the last several years. incredible growth continuing monthly and daily. active users. despite questions we ask every quarter, saturation in its most mature markets and yet when you talk about that sort of social benefit or social motivation to use facebook, you have congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez saying she stopped using facebook. she is a congresswoman who needs to use social media to further her own campaign, yet she says she is not using it because the costs are too high. debra, does that concern you?

debra: it does not concern me because she is still using instagram. honestly, facebook owns instagram. it is a very popular platform. she has devoted all her resources there. i want to get back to what david said because i agree a lot with many of david's points, particularly the fact that there is this settlement coming up. advertisers who watch facebook need to pay attention to what happens, what transpires, not just the amount of money facebook might have to pay, but what sorts of concessions facebook might have to make in terms of changes to the way it stores user data or the way it uses user data, the way advertisers can use that data for targeted advertising. these are questions that advertisers and companies, people that watch facebook need to pay attention to because this really is big news. emily: david, i saw you chuckle there when debra suggested she still uses instagram. i do want to say that she did say she is scaling back on other social media. do you think this is a bigger problem?

david: it is a bigger problem, there is no question. there is a massive backlash against tech globally, which was largely precipitated by the behavior of this very company. look at europe, for example. apple and google have both already received a massive, multibillion-dollar fines in europe. facebook never has. but facebook could very, very easily start to face major legal problems too. there are certainly legal problems underway. none of them have resulted in massive fines yet. zuckerberg has begun to adopt this idea of this language of having a privacy-focused vision, which is nice. he better start delivering on it. if i can mention one thing that could happen, there is a possibility in the u.k. and possibly elsewhere that new laws may begin to be imposed that no one under 18 can have any data gathered about them or be targeted in any way for digital advertising.

if that happens, that is going to be a huge cost because these companies, not just facebook, don't really have an ability to differentiate between who is above and below 18 in many cases, so there are very complex issues that wall street seems to be more or less disregarding. if you ask me. emily: europe has been out front on tech regulation and much tougher on tech companies than the u.s. has thus far, but speaking to the privacy pivot that zuckerberg is making, zuckerberg did mention that in the earnings release, saying they are focused on building out privacy focus visions. -- focused divisions, -- privacy focused visions working collaboratively around the internet. speaking to that family of apps strategy, more than 2 billion people use facebook, whatsapp, instagram, or messenger every day on average. around 2.7 billion people use at least one of the family of services each month. as the company pivots to this

privacy-focused future, nobody knows exactly what that is going to look like, exactly what mark zuckerberg has in mind, but do you worry that could impact growth as a way we use facebook potentially and all these services becomes more private and changes? debra: yes, that is something we are paying a lot of attention to. as a matter of fact, i am researching a market report now and we are looking at some of those issues. we don't know exactly what it is going to look like. mark zuckerberg and his staff are very smart people. they are certainly thinking about this and thinking about the way that marketers can reach people in these more private environments. or the small group environments. but, it is going to mean a change for advertisers. they are so used to using that newsfeed on facebook to reach people, to get that mass reach , that this is definitely going to pose some challenges for them. i don't know how it is going to roll out, but i do think facebook is going to have a way to get around this.

i also think that mark zuckerberg is saying all the right things when it comes to addressing the ftc concerns, the potential of the settlement, talking about privacy, talking about that they welcome regulation. these are all things that mark zuckerberg needs to say in advance. emily: the next 18 months are going to be a big test for facebook as we gear up for the united states for the 2020 election and facebook works to secure its platform from foreign and domestic meddling. we have seen the mueller report come out in the last week, which did not make facebook look good. the new york times reported today that the former homeland security kiersten nielsen was very concerned about russian interference and continued attempts to threaten u.s. democracy in more advanced ways than the public yet knows. meantime, you've got the son-in-law of president trump saying the russians just bought a couple of facebook ads.

"it is just a couple of facebook ads." david, how much do you think this issue is going to affect facebook over the next 18 months? david: i can't believe it won't affect it quite a lot. i think when it comes to electoral interference on facebook and foreign countries interfering with the elections in other places, that is not just a problem in the united states. it could be a significant factor globally. every country has elections and every country has enemies and every country has observed how effective it was when the russian government interfered with the u.s. election on facebook so you have to believe it is an attractive target on facebook. emily: bloomberg is reporting that facebook is settling with the ftc does not include the ongoing investigations happening with the states and that in total, this whole ftc probe could cost facebook $5 billion.

so, more than that $3 billion they are now setting aside. your reaction? $5 billion is a lot of money. debra: yes, it is. and to david's point earlier, there could be additional settlements in europe and other places outside the u.s. this is something facebook is going to be dealing with. over the course of this year and perhaps even into next year. we are going to be seeing a lot of changes in the way facebook will need to operate. that could potentially lead to changes in the way marketers use facebook. and the way people use facebook and the way facebook is perceived around the world. emily: amazon also reported first-quarter results with investors focusing on profit growth, advertising, and the cloud. here is some early reaction. after amazon posted earnings this week. >> we are joined by our guests. thank you both for joining us.

michael, you have been an amazon bull. lots to like. this is a more profitable company then has historically been true, but some of these warning signs about future spending and future growth -- what do you make of the quarter? michael: the upside is because they generated 43% margin, they just cannot spend all the money. they have $25 billion of gross profit and they managed to only spend $20 billion of it. that is the story. this company has run out of things to spend money on. they are going to keep building fulfillment centers, but that is not going to grow materially year-over-year. they are going to build the same 50 or 100 every year. they are just minting money. the negative in the story is that investors don't appreciate the third-party mix went up yet again. bezos said it was 58% of sales. last year. it is about 60% of sales this

year this quarter if we are using the same map. it is a great margin story. investors are confused by the top line, they get spooked by the guidance. the stock is not up enough on this print but it was up about $100 in the last couple of weeks. >> it really is a remarkable story. it is now a third-party marketplace. a cloud computing company and increasingly, an advertising company. what does this quarter tell you? >> michael hit on the margins. it doubled year on year. if you think about the call that margins could continue to double, you look at the big internet names, they have declining margins. facebook, google are spending to keep up with amazon. it is somewhat of a rare bird in terms of that revenue growth. it is decelerating but you are seeing the margin improved. we think the biggest concern is

that wall street thinks they should be a 20% topline story. we think it is more reasonable to think about it as mid to high teens. you look at the margin profile. that 7.5% margin could get into the teens easily. the recurring subscription business will continue to compound. you also have the business which is going to give investors more predictability and confidence around the future of cash flow. emily: coming up, grab wants to become a super app. how the startup is breaking away from its traditional business to offer food delivery, financial services, content and more. next. if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio and on the app. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: in march, southeast

asia's lead ride-hailing grab brought its latest round of funding to $4.5 billion. the company says it is super sizing the round and plans to raise an additional $2 billion this year. this as it goes head-to-head with rivals and expanding services beyond ride-hailing. grab's co-founder joined us to discuss in an exclusive interview. >> we are already southeast asia's everyday super app. we have seen tremendous traction. in 2018 alone we grew our revenue and our growth verticals that became the flotillas have been growing tremendously. grab food grew more than 45 times in 2018. our payments and financial

services as well grew more than five times in the same year as well. in many different ways, we are already southeast asia's everyday super app. emily: you were talking about parcel delivery, digital payment, on-demand video, digital health care. how would you describe this? is it like amazon for everything? >> no, it is grab for southeast asia. it is important to frame why we are doing certain things with partners as part of the grab platform partnership strategy. let me frame this -- transport, food, payment, financial services. those are growing healthily and we are leading end to end. news, groceries, video, content -- those are things we're doing in partnership with other global players like booking.com, microsoft. because we believe they have

technology and operational assets they can bring to southeast asia. emily: you have already raised $4.5 billion and you want to raise $2 billion more. why? >> we have seen tremendous growth and interest from global and local partners. because of this, this is a great time for us to reinvest back into southeast asia, going from taking transportation from zero to the leading ride-hailing platform and no moving into food, payments, and more. this additional $2 billion is going to be used -- $6.5 billion is going to be used for possibly investing into food, payments and financial services, and doubling down in our largest and fastest-growing market, indonesia. emily: i want to talk to about the regional breakdown you are seeing. what is the evidence of traction in indonesia, for example? >> food has been growing

-- we are already part of the largest payment while it. -- wallet. food has been growing tremendously. last year alone, we grew more than 10 times. and in ride-hailing and transport, we are the largest player with 60% or 70% market share. emily: you doubled revenue in 2018, did you surpass $1 billion in revenue? >> we did. we have a history of executing on our plans well. just last month, my co-founder was in tokyo. they were recommitting $1.5 billion more and wanted to provide us with unlimited support going forward. emily: he said he wanted to provide unlimited support to power your growth. does that also mean unlimited access to capital? >> of course, he just added $1.5 billion to our resource and bank accounts. so, thank you so much. emily: he is not going to give you the next $2 billion? >> he has already contributed approximately $3 billion. we had a long-standing relationship with him since

about 2014. the reason why this is important is because it shows that we have continued to be able to execute well. as you know, matheson has big, ambitious plans and we do, too. along with softbank and other strategic investors are eager to continue executing on that vision and trajectory. emily: the grab co-founder there. coming up, tesla reports first quarter results after a rocky start to the year. we will bring you the highlights next. this is bloomberg. ♪ emily: let's return to our

earnings coverage. tesla has had a rocky start to the year. the company disclosed disappointing delivery numbers. in january, the company cut the workforce by 7%. they warned that the road ahead is difficult making electric cars affordable for the mass market.

we were joined on wednesday to talk about the first quarter results. >> one thing tesla has been good at is saying, don't look at what is happening now, look at the future, and telling this futuristic story. back when they were making an electric sports car that they were only selling to a few hundred people, they were saying, the real thing is the luxury sedan. that has sort of gone on and that started to break down around the model three because the model 3 was kind of the end of the big elon musk plan. and i think what we saw earlier this week with tesla's autonomy day, when they were boring the analysts with the autonomous vehicle strategies is to get people refocusing on the future. emily: shares slightly up right now in after-hours trading. investors were expecting a tough

quarter. when it comes to the actual numbers, yes, they make a great car, as you say, but what is your take on the quarterly performance, which does matter to investors and does matter to analysts? despite how good the product may be. analysts -- >> analysts have to go by some level of guidance from the company to build models and assess some type of share price value. i think tesla would have been better served being a little more conservative in their projections, both from production and also profitability. they really are in a net investing and r&d stage to grow the company. they were profitable at the end of last year and now not going

to be profitable and now back to investing, they do have a lot more investment to do with the buildout of the model y, the semitruck, and other models they want to bring to market, along with the ongoing development of the autonomous technology. even though i think we are still many years away from actually getting into a car and saying, "drive me home," with no driver actually driving it and there will have to be a lot more infrastructure. autonomous vehicles are going to depend on the 5g network, they are going to depend on cars communicating each other, with traffic signals and stop signs and the road itself, but i will say that tesla does have an impressive autonomous capability or autopilot capability right now. i did not see the one most recently demonstrated on the monday event. however, a few months ago, i did test the autopilot system and it was very impressive. emily: that was ivan and max.

it was a busy week for tesla with its investor day happening two days before earnings. ceo elon musk pumped up the self driving future and singled out a tesla design shift that he claims will make this a reality, calling it the best chip in the world. >> not the best by a small margin, the best by a huge margin. it is in the cars right now. all teslas being produced right now have this computer. we switched over about a month ago. we switched over model 3 about 10 days ago. all the cars being produced have all the hardware necessary for full self driving. emily: bloombergs autos editor craig trudeau joined us to discuss. >> i think he has talked about having the hardware necessary for self driving before. he is now talking about the hardware being new and improved with the best computing power

out there, but also walking investors through some of the advancements that they have made on the software side, as well, and that giving them the capability to actually put features out there, enable people eventually to be able to be sort of out of the loop, and then, after that, convince regulators that drivers can basically stop paying attention. all of this again is a bold set of statements and we will see if it is actually something that tesla is able to pull off. he did quantify that this will not be something we will see on streets all over the place, but in a select jurisdiction by sometime late next year. but again, we will see. emily: craig trudell there. sri lanka shuts down social media in the wake of a series of horrific bombings.

how facebook and youtube are feeling the weight of the world. bloomberg tech is livestreaming. follow us on twitter. and follow our global breaking news network, bloomberg on tictoc. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: welcome back to "best of bloomberg technology." i am emily chang. the sri lankan government shutdown social media and messaging channels in the wake of the devastating terrorist attack. they are hoping to stop hate speech that is known to spread on social networks following violent attacks. it includes facebook, youtube, and more. this is not the first time a country has taken this measure to stop hate speech. can it work? a bloomberg senior executive joined us to give us perspective. >> is not just an indictment of

social media, it is a moment in a long trend of lack of responsiveness to the requests of communities, especially non-english-language communities that have received this information and hate speech and harassment in online platforms, and have not been able to get an adequate response from social media companies to address their concerns in a timely manner. emily: give us some examples of where this happened elsewhere. in india for example, whatsapp has been blamed for the spread of viral rumors that have led to fresh waves of the violence. tell us more about how in non-english language communities you can see these tools used for ill. >> at the beginning, this is not only about the tool, this is an integration of how the tools are

used, and trends happening in communities around the world. it is not a determined thing that technology is the only problem. however, we are seeing in many places around the world, we see an increase in hate speech incitement and harassment and in extremist language, and social media platforms are not designed to handle restrictions. they are especially challenged when it is happening in languages other than the ones they are monitoring for. they need to build up teams that can actually proactively respond in a timely manner to the appearance of threats and build content moderation systems. myanmar is a good example and bangladesh as well. emily: they are challenged in english speaking communities as

we have learned. facebook released this statement saying our hearts go out to the victims, and families and community affected by this horrendous act, teams from facebook are working to support law enforcement officers. as well as to remove content that violates our standards. we are aware of the blocking of social media platforms. people rely on our services to communicate with their loved ones. we are committed to maintaining our services during this tragic time. what is interesting is there is no evidence these attacks were spun up on social media or because of social media. there is a preemptive aspect here. what do you make of that? >> there is a lack of trust around social networks, and the behavior and of viral hatred they are capable of inciting. facebook wants to be part of the solution. over the last few years, they have rolled out safety check to

allow people to tell their family and friends they are ok. emergency alerts to help local governments communicate. and yet, more often than not they are used to foment hatred. we see it in india and other countries on the subcontinent. from a numbers perspective, this is a small part of facebook's global business, but it is a terrible symbol of how instead of helping in these kinds of crises, they are viewed quite skeptically. emily: can you give us examples of how after attacks like this you can see the events spun up on social media, further spread of hate and misinformation, even if they were not necessarily involved in the attack itself? >> i want to say before that, it is important to note communities in sri lanka are opposed to this

ban. independent journalists, advocates are not in favor of this, they are frustrated and find it to be ineffective in practice. this goes to your question. emily: why are they frustrating? >> because for them social media platforms are in element in communications. for a long history in sri lanka for the past 20 years, independent nonmainstream journalism digital platforms have been essential to a diversity of voices and perspectives, and that is still true today. when social media platforms are blocked, it decreases their ability to do their work. also, these blocks are ineffective. it is easy to install a vpn and get around them. when the block happened, when sri lanka blocked whatsapp and facebook in march 2018 following communal violence, researchers

found within a day or two something like 50% of facebook's traffic was back. this hurts communities that have less knowledge, fewer resources to be able to build workarounds. it does not hurt people who have resources or are motivated to be online. emily: none of this is black and white. what is right? >> i want to add, there is something unsettling. there is a fine line between shutting down social networking tools to prevent misinformation and mob behavior, and of the government, and authoritarian government or a democratic elected one shutting these down to prevent criticism, to prevent opposition parties from being heard, to prevent the free dissemination of news and information. a troubling development. emily: coming up, we will

discuss twitter performance in the first quarter. as it continues to clean up its platform. and later, samsung's biggest snafu, does this dim the promise of new technology? this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: twitter surged the most since october 2017 in tuesday's session. the social network beat estimates on earnings and revenue and posted an increase in monetizable increase in daily users. this is their new self-reported metric. it continues to crack down on the spread of misinformation and fake account. i asked about the strategy. emily: we disclosed the percentage growth for the last nine quarters. it is been growing in the range of 9%-14% or 15% for the last

couple of years. the work for us is to get out of that range by improving the service and getting people a great experience. we are always working on improving the timeline, improving relevance of the notifications we send you. we will work on a prototype app where you can see what we are experimenting with, and we will bring the best of those to the platform over time. emily: are you expecting that number to grow as quickly as it has grown? >> we are working hard to make it grow. generally, you see a big seasonal uptick in the first quarter where there is large absolute growth, then the work for us is to sustain that in terms of percentage growth over the year. there are events and seasonality that tend to help that number on an absolute basis in q1. emily: this new number is not transparent according to some analysts.

we do not know how you decide what is a monetizable daily active user. should we be concerned about that, and can you give us more information? >> we feel it is transparency, because daily active users are people who go to twitter.com or one of the apps you use on your phone, who log in and see ads every day. we cannot think of a number that is more transparent. importantly, it is the exact number we look at internally. we have been sharing a number externally for some time, which was monthly active users. if we get people to come to twitter once a month, we have failed. we want them to come every day, see value, and keep coming back to find out what is happening in the world. emily: monthly active users is continuing to decline. that is the number you are going to stop reporting. international growth is slowing down. the revenue guidance for q2 was light. should you be worried?

>> mau is a more inclusive metric, people who get text messages with tweets or things we are not designing around. that are not about the best experience you can get with twitter. that number had moved a bit the last year. mau was going down. they are apples and oranges. in terms of revenue growth, we drove a broad recovery outside of the united states. the comps are tougher internationally in the first half of this year, they get harder in the second half of the year in the united states. that is not an excuse, just math and how it works. the challenge for us is continuing to improve to add products, drive better relevance and formats so we can deliver great results regardless. emily: you have been working on improving the health of the platform. you say 30% of content is being flagged by technology and human review.

>> 38% of the abusive tweets we ultimately review our being flagged by machine learning as opposed to humans. that is correct. emily: how much realistically can you get that number up? how much more work can the technology do? and how fast? >> we think it can do more and it will be hard to get to perfect. our goal is to have clear policies, to have a product that can enforce the policies, and good people behind the product who can support it and the policies. hopefully 38% goes up, but we are proud of our progress. emily: there continued to be concerns about misinformation spreading on social media. we had this situation in sri lanka, a series of bombings. and social media was completely shut down. was twitter shut down in sri lanka? >> let me talk more broadly about how we think of these things. we are in a dynamic environment where people are using platforms like twitter in different ways all the time.

we need to be respectful of the tragedies that sometimes will occur, and we need to be thoughtful about how perpetrators use the platform, how victims use it, how people who were seeking news 10,000 miles away use a service like twitter to make sure they can trust the information, and are comfortable being a part of the conversation. emily: what is interesting about sri lanka is that the government shutdown services without any evidence that the crime was spun up on social media. but because they were concerned about misinformation spreading on social media in the aftermath, isn't that a concern? that is the first reaction of an entire country. >> it tells you there is still work for us to do and others to make sure people can trust information on a service like ours that is being used appropriately. it is the reason why health is

our number one priority from a resourcing perspective and a mindset perspective. emily: my interview there with twitter cfo ned segal. true ventures partner as well as jessica lu also joined us to weigh in on the results. >> i think it is good efforts by them. they have a lot of work to do. the market is still riddled with issues. i feel the small product tweaks like hiding comments or allowing them to be hidden, and their party line about machine learning in ai, he mentioned detecting abuse at about 38% -- and continuing to rely on users to self police, those will not change a social network dramatically. i would love to see a stronger position on proactive content moderation and regulation policies explicitly stating what is banned, what is allowed.

harder and more consistent evidence of how they are handling bad actors would be helpful to see from them. are they banning them for life? are they not allowing them on the social network to begin with? and it would be great to see the voices of the users, or surveys to see the actual impact of these cleanup efforts. is the overall health improving from a user perspective? i feel like those questions and answers are missing. emily: would you agree? >> i do agree with jessica but i also understand this is not an easy problem to solve. the challenge for any information system is to actually start to distinguish between rumors, information, news, and half-truths. it is much more difficult to achieve then we on the outside would like to think. but i definitely think twitter should be doing more than they are. they should be looking for ways to validate the actual accounts

more strictly than they are. i think there is a lot of low hanging fruit they could be plucking right now to make it better. emily: jessica, you mentioned you felt this new monetizable daily active users metric was not transparent. ned responded to that concern, and we see that number growing, but it is a number twitter chooses. did his answer satisfy you? >> yes and no. he answered the question of how twitter is defining daily active users, that was helpful to hear directly from twitter. however, those numbers make twitter look good. i realize, yes, it helps them stopping double counting and excluding fake users. when twitters users numbers look

better, the ad pricing and advertisers hinge on those user numbers and impressions. social networks finding a way to improve user numbers helps boost their ad revenue in the long run. there is a ripple effect in media buying, and selfishly from twitter's standpoint to find a number that helps them improve on the user front is good for them. there is a hidden incentive there. emily: minutes after i sat down with ned segal news crossed that jack dorsey had just met with president trump in a closed door meeting. we do not know a lot about the meeting, twitter is not commenting on the meeting but the president did tweet about it saying, a great meeting with jack dorsey. lots of subjects discussed. and the world of social media in general. look forward to keeping an open dialogue.

this is the same day the president was complaining about how republicans are treated on twitter, and twitter doing account cleanup. the president and jack dorsey have both lost followers. i cannot recall mark zuckerberg meeting with president trump. >> tim apple met with the president. if he is the president of the country and he wants to meet an executive, saying no is a choice you can make but as a citizen, you may not like the person but you have to go and meet the president. emily: maybe we are not seeing it in the growth numbers but twitter is a huge part of the national conversation. >> it is where news happens. it is not on cnn or any other network, it is on twitter. that is where the genesis of information is. everything comes from there. it is an important platform,

there is a lot of work to do for these guys. you can't hold a ceo responsible in a meeting with the president. yes, there are a lot of people in silicon valley who do not appreciate the president, but that does not mean you should not go. that is how i see it. emily: bloomberg lp, produces tictoc for twitter. coming up, after eight years of development, samsung unveiled its foldable phone, but customers will not be able to buy it just yet. we will discuss what is keeping the product from the market. next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: samsung has delayed the launch of its foldable smartphone after several reports of screen failures, samsung announced it will be released

without giving a new date. some showed us how the device needs further improvement that could ensure the best possible user experience. to fully evaluate the feedback and run further internal tests, we decided to delay the release, they said, and plan to release the date in coming weeks. mark gurman weighed in on the news. >> this is the phone, and it will be the last time you will see me with this on air until they relaunch it. they are picking it up tomorrow morning. i received the phone last monday, it has a plastic film on it that looks like what you would get on any phone, even samsung phones, iphones, that you remove before using. typical user experience. but about 48 hours after removing that plastic sheet, the phone was completely dead.

the left side of the screen went out completely after about a day. the next day, it was 75% dead across the whole thing. and by wednesday morning, it was completely gone. in my book, the difference between a $2000 phone working and not working should not be a thin piece of plastic. emily: what is your take on this? >> i think i agree with mark. that is a big starting point. overall, this is a big sign that the industry was not ready for this. this is a big issue for samsung in general because their name is attached to this, but it is a bigger issue for the category in general. overall. they are trying to launch something new, there was not consumer demand for it. no consumers were waiting for this, in my opinion. it is a hiccup in the road to a new product category, and there is a lot untold at this point.

we are waiting to see what they will look like when they work. overall most of these companies, samsung first, but a few others behind them were rushing to market with these devices as they want to be first in the new product category. i do not see the initial demand for it. emily: we have had other analysts on the show like bob o'donnell who are excited about this foldable phone. do you see any evidence it is a product consumers want? >> the problem with this incarnation is it is both a phone and a tablet, and you can switch between the modes. the problem is, it is not a very good phone, and not a very good tablet. if you read my review, i go into detail into why it is not very good for either. you are getting for $2000 a bad tablet and a bad phone.

for that money, you can get an ipad, iphone, and an apple watch on top of that and have cash left over. likewise, if you are in the samsung ecosystem, you can do the same thing and have $750 cash left over. there is not a user proposition to buy this thing at this point, especially because how bad it is both on the software and hardware front. emily: when you put it that way, it is hard to argue. samsung had issues with the note 7. the battery catching fire. how bad is this in the context of the broader product lineup? >> personally i would say the note 7 issue was worse, because there were customers waiting for that product. they did have -- and still do have -- a loyal user base that were waiting for the note 7 when it came out. many bought them and experienced those issues. unfortunately. i do not see that there is actual consumers who have been waiting for this product.

i am pretty sure that most do not even know this product was ready to launch. if you look at the marketing campaigns that samsung has done around new products over the past 10 years, i would say this is as minimal as possible in terms of marketing. not only did they just launch the s10 lineup, this felt rushed. it felt very un-samsung like. in the sense that they have gone through issues in the past but i would almost separate those issues. not in defense of them but because they were very different in nature. this was taking too many new technologies and try to get them to market quickly. they had more time to wait on that. emily: that does it for this edition of "best of bloomberg technology." we will bring you the latest in tech throughout the week. you can tune in every day.

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