♪ >> this is bloomberg technology. a deal that reshaped the entire wireless industry. in the future of 5g, the justice department gives the thumbs up on t-mobile's acquisition of sprint. apple will not be exempt from china tariffs. president trump pushes the company to move production to the u.s. france moved to tax with the biggest tech company -- tax the biggest tech companies. the s&p 500 soared to a record

high, with t-mobile, netflix all adding fuel to the rally. alphabet posting its one-day percentage gains since july for death july 2015. joining us to discuss, senior markets editor mike regan. alphabet, facebook, twitter, all reporting results. where do we see the biggest move? >> it was a major week for companies. very tech centric. alphabet is the star of the show, rising 10%. they seem to be firing on all cylinders. announcing that major $25 billion share buyback, that is taking the edge of -- edge off

of the concern of the probe of alphabet. also twitter doing well, showing an 18% gain for sales. amazon was an interesting story. they had a big earnings miss, but it was in an amazon typical way. they developed a more robust one-day delivery operation, and that's the type of thing amazon investors in the past sort of embraced, even though it caused a hit in the short-term. i think the semiconductor stocks are a major story this week. we saw texas instruments, semiconductors are a weak spot. texas instruments coming out and saying this is just a typical chip cycle that lasts about five quarters of weakness. they see about three quarters of that.

the semiconductor index rising to a record. this is just another boom and bust cycle in the chip industry. >> next week we've got apple, more chips. what are you watching? >> next week is a major week for semiconductor earnings. qualcomm, there are 10 members of the semiconductor index, about one third of the index next week. while the results are better than expected, they are down a lot. beating estimates by 14%. there doesn't seem to be a huge concern about the trade war yet. there are still semi-socks -- semi stocks to report next week. >> what could the impact of that be? >> it's kind of surprising not to see a little bit more of a selloff in the crypto space because of this. the irs announcing they are basically sending out notifications to 10,000 cryptocurrency holders and

saying you have to go back and amend your past tax returns to report any gains and losses from your crypto transaction. the irs has warned there are criminal prosecutions coming from people who have dodged tax bills on a cryptocurrency transaction. one interesting point a tax attorney told bloomberg is these people will not be eligible -- this program the irs has where people can voluntarily go back and amend the irs of some accounts they did not know about. there could be some crypto busters who could hit -- who could be hit with some big tax bills. >> senior markets editor mike regan. turning to the big story of the

day, the justice department has approved t-mobile's acquisition of sprint, a deal it rejected under the previous administration. t-mobile and sprint agreed to sell multiple assets to dish network. that paving the way to creating a new wireless company. a 5g network would cover 97% of the u.s. population within three years, and 99% within six years. bloomberg's ed hammond spoke to the chair about the deal from tokyo. >> today is a different day. i think the department of justice approval or transaction is just a good day for american consumers, a good day for the country. it gets us closer. things are different today than they were five years ago. the first thing we have to get clearance 5g.

the new company is going to be committed to building the most advanced 5g network to continue to lead the 5g race. in order to foster innovation so it is quite different. >> he said you need to be an a largest player -- and enlarged player. now you need dish as a fourth player. how's that going to work? >> you're going to have three large players racing for 5g. this will anticipate the investment that wouldn't have done otherwise. this will be a strong race to see who can provide the best 5g. sprint -- a 5g spectrum we have, which is called a mid band, gives us the ability to build an advanced network. there is going to be great

competition. we are going to bring competition. this will be off to a good start. charlie has done an amazing job of buying a good amount of spectrum, allowing to build a network. it will allowed to have boosts and a few million customers. >> what is it going to mean for us as users of these services? >> let's start with truly nationwide coverage all over america. you are going to have speeds -- low latency.

this is what's going to enable autonomous vehicles. but for the average consumer, you are going to be able to download movies in less than five seconds. you are going to be able to play gaming against other persons with no latency. >> do you think they are going to get on board? >> i have a lot of faith on the american government and american justice. more importantly this is great for our country, this is great for consumers. i think it's going to be great for each of the states. >> that was ed hammond. he was formerly a yahoo! board member.

i will start with you. let's talk about this dish question. how can dish be a viable competitor when there are going to be so much smaller -- they are going to be somewhat smaller. >> this really sets up dish to be a disruptive player in the wireless industry. it will take time. not only is dish paying $5 billion, this is three p pay -- three prepaid brands. not executing on what they said they would do. they've got some specific targets that they said they would hit that includes covering 20% of the u.s. population of their service by 2022 and 70% of

the population with the new 5g network by 2023. these are serious undertakings they have agreed to. >> ceo john leger tweeted, we can't wait to get to work -- is it really all that of -- all that positive for the consumer for 5g? >> i think it is definitely positive for the consumer. a lot of the concerns about competition are really misplaced. having three strong players will make it much more of a competitive environment. it's going to be a race to be able to rollout 5g. and make it much easier for people -- you no longer need a physical some card to put inside

your phone. -- sim card to put inside your phone. people will get more choice out of it. ultimately, i think that what's going to make a huge difference here is the rollout of 5g and what they have agreed to rollout. it's gong to l -- going to light up so many other services. it's going to be cloud gaming, sports betting. this is what 5g is going to enable. >> you have attorneys general in 13 states and washington, d.c. suing to block the merger. trials set for october 7. do they have a case. >> they came out today, and even after these were announced, they have to not be happy with them. these are buddies don't cover up the ugly truth of this deal and reduce competition.

he also had teacher james come out. how can these companies genuinely help a competitor emerge as a true competitor? she's asking questions about will t-mobile and sprint helped it become a fourth player? at the moment they are still going ahead with the lawsuit. we know sprint and t-mobile are going to be working really hard to settle this before we get to that october -- early october court date. >> promising to have 90% of the u.s. population covered in six years, it's ambitious. >> i think it is extremely ambitious and it might not be realistic. there are so many rural areas, where those areas are not necessarily covered to date. this is a big promise.

i hope they can fulfill this, because it will change the nature of so much of the country. when we talk about this reducing competition, it definitely increases it and makes it much more likely that each of these major carriers are going to try to go into those areas that are way underserved. >> the trump administration has been consistent in approach to telecom mergers. do we expect more deals to pass? are there tales -- deals waiting in the wings? >> that inconsistency is the key word. those are two things that are the fastest way to kill m&a deals. the way this administration has handled the time warner decision -- this deal has been five years in the making.

it has been difficult to get over the line. people are taking stock and saying may be people are reading too much into this decision, because we still don't know if they are going have a cohesive policy going forward. we have a couple of big deals away from the telecom sector. that would need approval. they are not the kinds of market shifting deals like the at&t time warner was or even sprint t-mobile. >> i remember the day the news broke they were going to try to do this deal five years ago. it has been in some time. -- spend some time. the u.s. to permit justice has approved the t-mobile takeover

of sprint. it's not in the clear yet. however we are going to talk about next steps with a commissioner from the fcc. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ >> as we have been discussing the t-mobile-sprint deal expected to shape the country -- the carrier still have to contend with a lawsuit by the state attorneys general because they will harm consumers. the combination has come under fire in a market that is already concentrated. let's bring in fcc commissioner

carr. what do you have to say to the critics here? the lawmakers who say this will leave the u.s. worse off than before? >> i think today is a good win for u.s. leadership and 5g. it has been one of my top priorities for the trump administration. this transaction has been able to accelerate the buildout of 5g to 99% of americans, which is a good win. you mentioned that state ag lawsuit. i think the decision takes a lot of steam out of that. the complaint focuses on services in new york and san francisco. those cities -- by approving this transaction we get 5g not only their but builds out again in 99% of the country. which closes that digital

divide. i think this undermines a lot of their actions in this case. i leave it to the department of justice to work out where that comes from. the lens that i look through this from is how do we make sure that consumers see the benefits of competition. a lot of americans today feel like they have one or no choice for in-home high-speed internet. by combining the assets of sprint and t-mobile together you get some disruption of home in the broadband market. >> speaking of the department of justice, there was diversions between the fcc and the doj. the doj took longer. why was there a split? >> each of the agencies have separate statutes and lenses -- and lenses. i respect the process they run over there. what does it take to compete in

this new 5g world? the next three years in wireless may be different than the last five. you have a third provider that will be the same scope and scale. the amount of investment in spectrum assets you need to deploy this new technology is something that the two separate companies weren't going to be able to do. and what consumers are going to now get can -- now experience of this transaction goes through. >> there has been some sort of inconsistency on how this administration has approached media and telecom deals. what sort of signal should we take about the future of these kinds of mega deals over the next couple of years?

>> i think president trump has been clear about u.s. leadership being a top priority for the administration. right now the u.s. for the last two years have engaged in a number of regulatory forms. most of them below the full of the newspaper. we have been able to leapfrog our global competitors and we now have the world's largest 5g build. 40 cities are planning on going live this year. that is something we weren't seeing two years ago. the administration, congress, the ftc is working to make sure the u.s. wins this right -- wins this race. >> thank you so much for stopping by. still ahead, twitter, while wall street's report in the fastest

growth since 2017, we are going to hear from the cfo next. you can check us out at technology and follow our global breaking news network on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ >> shares of twitter soared friday. the company reporting sales that beat wall street expectations, adding 5 million new users. ringing the total to 139 million. i can't up with the twitter ceo -- cfo and atom what drove growth. >> we have been working for years to drive better relevance, to make sure that people can find the topics and events they care about most. we can continue to make improvements and deliver 14% year-over-year growth. >> that's quite a boost. is there anything specific that turned on or turned off in the last quarter that work especially well?

>> we wouldn't point to any one thing as we would point to years of work, which starts with the clarity of why they come to twitter. when you have that clarity you start doing work that is designed around those things. and the work that we did a year ago and two years ago, that benefits the people that are new to twitter today. it's really an accumulation of our work around those areas that is driven. >> there is a notable blip in the forecast, which is lighter than what analysts had projected. does that change the ad format? >> we got it for seven to 15% growth. that was lower than the grub -- that is lower than the revenue growth. our broad global business began -- really firing on all cylinders. where we grew in the 20's and the united states. second is we actually retired some older ad formats that we

felt. if we prioritize our work and we focus our team on the most important priority, they wouldn't be working on those added formats. you lose some near-term revenue, but there are better long-term decisions for the company. along with long-term projects that will pay off over time that affect the guidance. >> twitter cfo there. coming up, apple urging the u.s. to keep its mac pro out of the trade war, but president trump says the iphone maker -- plus francis coming up with its new digital tags and trump is going to strike back, discussing what it could mean for tech giants like facebook and amazon. ♪

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♪ emily: this is "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang in san francisco. apple and goldman sachs' new credit card is weeks away from launch, possibly as early as the first half of august. the apple card was announced on stage at an event in march, enticing consumers with no fees, iphone integration, and a privacy-centric approach. meantime, speaking of apple, the trump administration has rejected the smartphone giant's bid to avoid tariffs on computer parts it manufactures in china. "apple will not be given a tariff waiver for mac pro parts

made in china. make them in the usa. no tariffs." apple had requested key components to its new mac pro be exempt to 25% import tariffs after shipping production of the computer to china. larry kudlow echoed the president's remarks. mr. kudlow: they have operations in china and he has encouraged the ceo -- we are very friendly with mr. cook. i meet with him a lot. he'd like to see the apple operations moved. i know there was some talk they would be moving production facilities to texas. i think that would be a good thing. that is our preference. emily: joining us now is mark gurman in l.a., josh gallu in d.c., and activate ceo, michael wolf, still with us in new york. mark, what does this mean? mark: for apple, it does not mean anything. they don't expect to get tariff

relief on the mac pro. the price is $6,000 for the base model so it is already expensive. i found it odd that apple would request a tariff waiver on a computer. i understand if it was always made in china, but up until this model for the past six or seven years, this line was actually produced in texas. basically, they are trying to move it from the u.s. to china while maintaining benefits of being in the u.s., so one can see why that would be a controversial topic for this administration. emily: i found it surprising they would do it so publicly, especially after moving production to china from the u.s. was this a last-ditch effort? mark: i guess. it is their responsibility to do what is best for the bottom line and their margins. we can be sitting up here and criticizing apple for not doing that.

they are doing what they have to do. it is an odd circumstance, odd series of events. emily: josh, talk to us about the implications of this for all u.s. companies that might be hoping for some sort of exception? josh: i think the takeaway is that the administration has said this is in a political process to try to get some kind of relief from the $250 billion worth of goods that are being tariffed from china. this is a clear signal that is not necessarily the case. they are supposed to give 14 days of consideration for comment after a request is made for relief. apple's request was made last week and the president came out today and said no. the administration has a pretty dim view of companies that are moving their operations overseas or that have their manufacturing abroad. look at harley davidson. look at apple. they are all getting pretty

negative treatment from the administration. i would think that the sign is others looking for similar relief better have a pretty good argument or at least not be in the situation of apple where they have recently moved operations from a state like texas to china. emily: tim cook has made great efforts to maintain contact and engagement with this administration. michael, what is your take? michael: two broader issues. the first one is that it can really harm apple's ability to be competitive. there are certain processes, certain technologies and a cost structure basis, a lot of things are going to be easier to manufacture in china, also in terms of skills. the other issue is -- and why this policy may be misguided or

likely is misguided is because it will end up causing some sort of china techno-nationalism, where chinese companies are going to start really penalizing their population, their citizens from buying american goods or goods that are manufactured outside the country. we really don't want to be in that position. the technology world is one giant ecosystem more broadly. and these policies are going to end up hurting ultimately the big american technology companies, and it may add a lot of cost for consumers. emily: now, last question, some apple products have been spared thus far. does this mean the mac pro gets a lot more expensive in the fall and could other apple products get more expensive? mark: on the mac pro, they have already announced the $6,000 starting price point beforehand so this is already incredibly expensive. i don't see them changing the baseline price.

it is possible some of the upgraded versions, it will range between $6,000 and $40,000. you might see those upgrade prices be higher. apple has done a lot of price adjustments over the past several years. the ipad pro had a $150 price increase last year. iphones go well north of $1000 now. i don't see fluctuation on the consumer side for apple products anytime soon. emily: mark gurman, thank you for joining us. michael and joshua, you are sticking with us. apple was not trump's only target on twitter. the president threatened retaliation against france after president emmanuel macron signed a digital tax into law impacting big tech companies. the president tweeted "france put additional tax on our great technology companies. we will announce a substantial reciprocal action on the foolishness shortly. i have always said american wine is better than french wine." a 3% revenue tax on companies

that make at least $345 million a year which would include companies like facebook, google and amazon. the white house said the trump administration has consistently stated it will not sit idly by and tolerate discrimination against u.s.-based firms. still with us, michael wolf and josh gallu. the complaint for so many years is u.s. companies have been dodging taxes. we have seen this develop for the last several years. what does this really mean for these u.s.-based tech giants? josh: we will have to see. this is something that looks like it is really going to take a bite. this is a 3% tax on digital services revenues. and, you know, this is something that the u.s. is going to study with a pretty keen eye. they have already announced

earlier in july that when the legislation was passed that they are going to -- they started an investigation to see what kind of harm it will have on u.s. firms. they can make a determination this was going to be too harmful and take a retaliatory stance, which is something the trump administration has shown time and again it is quite ready to do. you know, it appears as though this is something that has gone on -- that the administration has considered for a while and ready to act on it. emily: it is not just u.s. companies impacted by this digital tax. chinese companies, british companies, french companies are impacted by this. but, do you think it moves the needle towards more isolationism that we spoke earlier about? do you see that happening in europe as well? michael: the tax is not going to

be consequential for any of the major tech companies, whether they are u.s. companies or chinese companies. the reality is that all of the major tech companies, they already have a real strength. if you look at the major platforms -- facebook and google and apple -- this is inconsequential to their businesses. and it is not going to enable french companies to compete any better. it's just a way of raising revenue. it's not going to really change behavior. emily: so, how might trump retaliate? he has in the past threatened to do something about french wine. josh: as michael points out, this is largely in part about revenue and trump does not like seeing any tax revenue from u.s. domicile companies going abroad. you indicate he said that he likes american wine more than

french. he has made this threat in the past. once again this afternoon, he said he might put tariffs on french wine. that seems to be something that for whatever reason he has a real concern about. again, he left it open. it seems the administration might be thinking about something more broad that could get the attention of the french, but we will have to see. emily: e shall see. bloomberg's josh al and activate ceo michael wolf, thank you both. coming up, intel beat its expectations this quarter, but analys remain cncerned. spoke to theceo earlier to talk about the chipmaker's forecast for china. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: intel shares rose today beating expectations after reporting second-quarter results. analysts are remaining cautious the chipmaker has been underperforming for years. vonnie quinn asked the ceo bob swan about the forecast for china. bob: china is a big market for us. we have been operating in the country for over 30 years. we have important customer relationships. a global supply chain. we have a really strong employee base. it is a big and important market for us. what we have seen over the last several quarters is two things. one, overall demand has slowed as our customers have digested fairly significant purchases last year. secondly, we saw a bit of an acceleration of demand heading into the second half in the second quarter because the fears of the potential of additional tariffs being imposed. those combination of factors

have china, an important market for us, being a little slower this year than what we had anticipated at the beginning. guy: good morning. judging by the analysts' notes i have read, the concern seems to be that amd will put your gross margin under pressure. what is your answer to that? bob: first, we have a great lineup of products as we go into the second half of the year. for our data center business, we launched a product we called cascade lake which performance was is a real differentiator in the market. secondly for our pc business, we just launched our intel core 10 processor that will have systems on the shelf in the holiday season. we look at our lineup of products and we feel very good

as we go through the second half of the year in terms of 2020. as we are building the high-performance products that our customers expect from us and with that high-performance, we have been able to get a premium price in the market. so, we have a great lineup. we know we have competitive dynamics and that is the challenge you have when the market you are going after is extremely large. you have competition that enters the fray. we feel good about our lineup of products and our relationships with our customers. guy: you are saying with a high degree of certainty that you are not going to witness any growth margin erosion? you will don't see that happening? bob: our gross margins for this year were roughly 60% in the first half and 60% in the second half. those dynamics are a little higher in the third quarter and a little bit lower our expectations in the fourth quarter as we ramp our new products. that is consistent with how our business model works. we launch a new technology process. in the early days, yields a relatively low and that results in a degradation of gross

margins. as we ramp up the volume of products, the expectation is our yields improve and margins get better. it is consistent with what we have laid out a couple weeks ago. we all have a little degradation. process is a good thing because that means we have migrated to the next technology node that allows us to deliver differentiated performance for our customers. vonnie: huawei was 8% of the market last quarter and that is a big customer for you. it obviously takes a lot of your chips. how do you model going forward what happens with huawei and whether restrictions from the u.s. come off, allowing you to continue to ship, or get further imposed? bob: well, during the course of the second quarter, initially when the entity list came out, we abruptly stopped our

shipments to huawei until we can get a better understanding on the implications of the entity list and the impact of export control on our business. after the interpretation, we concluded there were some cases we could ship and some cases we could not. our challenge is always serving our customers, but also abiding by the laws in the countries in which we operate. we felt as we went through the course of the quarter, we were able to ship some products. our second quarter strong results were modestly impacted by the entity list order. as we go into the second half of the year, we have applied per commerce instructions applications for licenses to ship product that are of general purpose computer nature and should have no bearing on what the entity list is trying to accomplish. that is kind of our expectation as we go into the second half of

the year. obviously, we are going to watch the dynamics that happen in washington. and, we will adjust and adapt accordingly. we are going to continue to serve customers best we can and abide by the laws in the countries in which we operate. emily: intel ceo bob swan. for more and the long-term effects of the china-u.s. trade dispute, i want to bring in bloomberg's ian king. why are analysts so not excited about this? ian: you remember three months ago, they drastically reduced expectations. they have come in better than significantly reduced expectations. we just heard from bob, a fair chunk of that came from the fact their customer base is worried

about what might happen in china and going up ahead of the tariffs worsening. emily: they are unloading their modem business to apple. what is apple getting here? it is a business that did not succeed at intel. ian: it has been a terrible business for years. when apple are getting our engineers. if they want to be independent in this particular area which they are pretty much independent and everything else, modems and screens, they need engineers, they need experience. according to analysts we have spoken with, it will be years before they can turn that into something. emily: what is apple doing now? ian: qualcomm, you remember the big settlement. the bitter legal dispute. qualcomm is a 5g maker. emily: what are we looking at for the rest of the year with intel, or even over the next couple of years given what is happening in china? ian: a lot of the questions that bob based on the call were about

that. he was pretty up front. look, i'm assumptions for the rest of the year which is a gradual improvement are based upon the china situation as it exists now. we are not assuming you get better, we are not assuming it gets worse. we don't see a china trade deal. we don't see huawei get help. emily: bloomberg's ian king, thank you so much. still ahead, the vision fund is getting a sequel. we've got details on how the ceo is replicating the $100 billion plan. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ emily: softbank unveiled the second mega fund for tech investments that is even larger than the original vision fund. it aims to raise $108 billion for vision fund 2 for more than

a dozen investors, including apple and microsoft, and kazakhstan's sovereign wealth fund. softbank adding $38 billion to the fund, replacing saudi arabia as investor. joining us to discuss is sarah mcbride. saudi arabia, for all the controversy of saudi arabia being involved in the first run, are they investors or not? sarah: it is leading to all sorts of conspiracy theories, but they will probably quietly commit as an investor later on. emily: how will the new fund different from the first fund? sarah: there are a lot more investors in this new fund. softbank has a much bigger piece of the pie. they are just going to have to try a little harder to find good investments this time around. emily: we didn't talk about it much, but apple, microsoft being in the first fund? sarah: microsoft was not. emily: apple was. talk about the strategy of some

of these tech giants, letting softbank place some fund bets. sarah: there was so much skepticism around the first fund. $100 billion seemed impossible. for their first press release for that fund, they said we will deploy this cash over five years. it has only been three years and they are raising even more. in a way, that has been successful far more than anyone thought possible at the time. emily: you did one of the last big interviews with masayoshi son. sarah: yes. emily: he told you he thought it would last a while. sarah: he is such a big thinker. he was talking about how they would have a successive set of these funds. they would all be around $100 billion. he wanted to have a steady stream of cash to invest over time. emily: where are they going to put this?

sarah: this is going to be harder because all the promising late stage companies they could have talked to about an investment, they have talked to everybody, they have invested where they can. this vision fund, the first one has been about -- there has been investment in the u.s., about almost half. about 40% in asia and the rest elsewhere. in this new one, they will end up investing a lot more in asia. in particular, india. they are just going to have to look harder for companies. in the u.s., they will have to go down to a slightly earlier stage than previously. and they will have to hire a ton more people to make this happen. emily: does the strategy change at all? sarah: i think they are still going to want to be a dominant company in every possible tech industry. in that sense, no. but geographically and stage of a company, yes, perhaps.

emily: all right, interesting. $108 billion on top of $100 billion. sarah mcbride, thank you so much for stopping by. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." next week, earnings continue. apple is out tuesday. catch full coverage and analysis right here on "bloomberg technology." we are livestreaming on twitter. check us out @technology. follow our breaking news network, tictoc, on twitter. it's friday. have a wonderful weekend, everyone. this is bloomberg. ♪

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