NZ Under Surveillance plus AI enable devices from HP and Samsung

Episode Transcript (computer-generated)

Paul Spain:
Hey, folks, greetings and welcome along to the New Zealand Tech Podcast. I’m your host, Paul Spain, and great to have Bill Bennett back in the studio. How are you, Bill?

Bill Bennett:
I’m good, Paul.

Paul Spain:
Always very good to catch up and we always have great, great chats. So I’m looking forward to our discussions today. Maybe you can remind listeners where you fit into this big, wide world of journalism and tech in New Zealand.

Bill Bennett:
Well, yeah, I’m a journalist. I write a lot about business and amongst that, lots of technology. In fact, probably I’m better known for most people as a technology journalist.

Paul Spain:
Well, let’s jump in. And of course, big thank you to our show partners to One NZ, Spark, HP, 2degrees and Gorilla Technology. Now, on the New Zealand front, there’s quite interesting topics to delve into. So we’re going to get into that. A big piece that RNZ published over the weekend around the surveillance society. Who is watching you and how. And so I wanted to tap in on, you know, tap in on that topic also the role of AI cameras, or AI and cameras, I guess you can call them AI cameras on buses from a local perspective. And following on from something that you’ve published in the last couple of weeks, delving a little bit into the impact of Huawei effectively exiting the New Zealand market when it comes to smartphones and so on.

Paul Spain:
Keen to look at some of the newer gadgets. So at the moment I’m using the new HP Omnibook, which is one of their newest laptops. And this is one of these co pilot plus PCs, as Microsoft liked them to call it. And it includes the Snapdragon X Elite chip, which is, I guess what traditionally we would have thought of as a smartphone chip, but inside the laptop. So we’ll delve into that. And also have been having a little bit of a look at Samsung’s new, newest handsets. They’ve got the Z Fold and the Z Flip, or the Z Fold and the Z Flip, depending on whether you want to apply New Zealand terminology. And then there’s some interesting international topics that probably cross over in some ways with what we’re talking about in New Zealand and also things happening around the world, the riots and so on going on in the UK.

Paul Spain:
So let’s see how we go for time. But I’m keen, Bill, to start by having a little bit of a chat around this story. Phil Pennington, longstanding reporter for RNZ, he’s.

Bill Bennett:
Good at this kind of story too.

Paul Spain:
Really, really fascinating. I had the link sort of shared with me and I guess I was sort of thinking this was going to be a pretty short piece that tapped in on a couple of topics. But there’s a fair bit that’s gone into looking at the role of surveillance in New Zealand’s society. And I think it’s important that we do delve in and the media reports on these things that we get the chance to have some discussion. And as society, technology brings changes, and some of those changes are really, really good. Some of them are unwanted and some of them are in the sort of hazy in between. And we’re trying to work out, well, how do you weigh up the good from the bad and land on the. The right, the right pieces?

Bill Bennett:
Well, for most of, most of human history, if you thought people were watching you all the time, that was kind of a bit of a mental health problem and. But these days they probably are watching you all the time.

Paul Spain:
Yes. So I should look over my shoulder a little bit more.

Bill Bennett:
Yeah. And I mean, I remember years ago asking people if there’s actually a word for justified paranoia as opposed to just paranoia. But the thing is that, yeah, I mean, it’s funny, if you go somewhere like China, for example, you kind of assume that you’re being watched by these cameras all the time because it’s a totalitarian state. And, you know, they’re basically watching that you don’t in any way oppose or threaten them. But it seems to be everywhere now. Everywhere you go, you’re watched by cameras pretty much all the time. And I was actually thinking about this from a slightly different point of view. I was thinking, what if I decided I didn’t want to be watched by cameras? Would I be able to go to the supermarket? I don’t think so, because I think the moment you get into a supermarket.

Bill Bennett:
I was in my local supermarket a couple of days ago and I noticed that the woman behind the counter who cuts the ham and the cheese and so on, on the deli counter was wearing a body cam on the front of her tunic. And clearly that’s because they’re having problems with people being violent or something in supermarkets. But that’s a another level of surveillance, really. You’re being constantly watched by these things with people. If people in supermarkets behind the supermarket cheese counter are wearing body cams, then I think it’s time to assume that this stuff is everywhere now.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, look, it’s a great point. And I guess it makes me wonder, do we have any choice at all in this matter? Is it even worth us having a.

Bill Bennett:
Do we have free will?

Paul Spain:
Is it worth us having a chat about it, Bill.

Bill Bennett:
Yeah, that’s philosophy. Do we have any choice? No, we don’t have any choice. I don’t. I mean, you could go bush, you can go off grid. It’s not really a practical option for most people. For the vast majority of us, I think it’s part of life. Now. I think you’re going to be watched all the time.

Bill Bennett:
You know, back in medieval times, people were, like, concerned. They thought that angels might be watching them if they did something naughty. And, you know, there would be divine retribution. Nowadays, there’s not angels that watch you. It’s usually bots that are watching you. And, you know, it’s not quite divine retribution if you do something naughty, but you’re going to get caught.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, look, yeah, I do find this quite fascinating because, you know, we’ve had. We’ve had enough, you know, situations where we, you know, we’ve. We’ve seen it, you know, surveillance technology used in solving a lot of crimes.

Bill Bennett:
Yeah.

Paul Spain:
Right. It’s, you know, I think from. From that perspective, it’s very strong. And I remember a discussion going back a good few years ago on the New Zealand tech podcast around encryption. And there was a push at that time. It could even be going back ten years, but certainly, yeah, it would have been more than five years ago, I think. And I guess what I had in my mind was, hey, we’ve been successful historically with wiretaps on phones and monitoring text messages of criminals and so on. And there was this push coming through from one government or another that they wanted encryption protected apps and chat platforms and so on to be opened up so that the government could effectively have access if they needed to.

Paul Spain:
Now, I think at that time, we were probably talking of sort of court order type stuff that they would be able to gain some sort of access. And I think the pushback on the flip side of it was, well, as soon as you open things up, so government’s got access, you also open things up from a perspective of it’s going to be easier for hackers, and there’s a whole lot of other perspectives depending on how you open it up.

Bill Bennett:
Right.

Paul Spain:
With the backdoor. So depending on what type of mechanism you use for that backdoor, you potentially leave things open. But of course, since that time, yeah, we’ve just kind of kept becoming more and more digital as a society. And some of these things. And looking in the article, there’s references to a lot of non government type surveillance things, as well as government type mechanisms. So reference to AI tech being used for recognizing number plates. And I remember discussing that. I think it might have even been something like the us border control, where they were paying for a technology to do that and get some sort of visibility on the vehicles going backwards and forwards across the borders.

Paul Spain:
I don’t know whether it was to look for particular patterns or criminals.

Bill Bennett:
There was a system like that in New Zealand too, which recognizes dump plates.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. So there’s that happening in New Zealand, the US one. I remember what happened was the private entity that was kind of doing it, they got breached and so all of the data was effectively gone. And we’ve seen that kind of happen by governments around the world as well. There’s an aspect here of, in some ways, whether it’s government that does it or private entities, there’s a risk in terms of where that data can go. Right. You can’t control it, which kind of crosses into that encryption, breaking encryption sort of discussion of. You start these things out with particular things in mind, but you don’t actually know where things are going to end up.

Paul Spain:
And even where the data goes, there’s not necessarily any confidence you can have in the security of the data.

Bill Bennett:
Well, the other thing that occurs to me about this is we don’t seem to be any safer for all this either. Not at all. If anything, crime is up and there’s more of it, you’re less safe walking around, say, central Auckland today than you were back before this was all possible. And yet everywhere in central Auckland there are security cameras and surveillance going on. So.

Paul Spain:
So what do we need to do? Step it up, Bill.

Bill Bennett:
Well.

Paul Spain:
Well, pre crime, there’s some movies. No way we can go.

Bill Bennett:
My fear is that people are using security cameras, society in general and governments and local governments and organisations and so on, using security cameras where they perhaps ought to have more coppers on the beat and more security people, you know, in shops and things, rather than just relying on cameras, because the cameras don’t stop the crime being committed, they just record it.

Paul Spain:
Yeah.

Bill Bennett:
And so not really a deterrent these days. No, it’s not really.

Paul Spain:
It might have been once.

Bill Bennett:
It’s clearly not a deterrent. Yeah. So it’s not working. But having said that, I can’t see it going away. I think the thing is, it just gets cheaper and easier to do this and now that you can use AI to monitor the camera footage, it becomes even more ubiquitous. So, look, it’s a horrible thing. I would love for us to be able to legislate against it and for it to be stopped, but that’s just not going to happen. So I don’t know.

Bill Bennett:
I mean, one day we’ll rise up and destroy the machines, perhaps, but I just think this is locked in now and it’s not a good thing. It’s not a good change.

Paul Spain:
And I guess coming back to has it helped us? And so on? I mean, I would imagine it will have, will have helped and, you know, certain degrees, but obviously it doesn’t address the sort of underlying issues that sort of lead to, you know, the crime and the issues that we see in societies. Right. Those things are more deeply rooted. And putting a bit of technology over the top doesn’t solve them.

Bill Bennett:
No, that’s right. And you can sometimes it can push some of that activity further underground. So, as well, at the same time. But, yeah, look, I’m not comfortable with it. I’m really not comfortable with certain aspects of it. I wasn’t all that comfortable with the idea of the lady behind the cheese counter having a surveillance. I mean, if it’s for her safety, then that’s fair enough, but I don’t know that it is. I think it’s almost a case of we do this because we can.

Bill Bennett:
And who knows, maybe somewhere down the track, we can mine that data. We can mine that image of Bill Bennett buying some tasty cheese from the lady in the new world shop and flogging something, you know, use our algorithms and all our systems and so on to go back and sell him things. You know, I think it’s as extreme as that.

Paul Spain:
And there’s a degree that even if it’s. Even if it’s not for that sort of cause, you know, where do we. Where do you draw the line? Right? You know, we start seeing a lot of crime in toilets. What do you do? You go, well, we’re going to put cameras in the toilets because there’s crime in the toilets. We’re getting too much graffiti. Right?

Bill Bennett:
Do we put them in schools?

Paul Spain:
You know, so, I mean, how many.

Bill Bennett:
Cameras should be in a school?

Paul Spain:
Not more than 1000.

Bill Bennett:
Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, exactly.

Paul Spain:
I mean, but actually there is, you know, most schools, even though kids aren’t allowed to use their phones, as the students and the teachers have got, obviously got devices. So, you know, there is a level to which, you know, technology does run away on us. And I think you could probably look at sort of the social media world. And it’s an interesting example. In some ways, it’s simpler because the world of social media is largely tied up in the hands of a very small number of countries globally with the dominance. But, yeah, when you look at it, there’s a huge amount of harm that is caused through the use of social media. But it’s very, very complicated in some ways to get your head around, well, what’s the right way to balance that out? And I think probably we’ll have a whole mix of opinions. When you talk to people across society based on how they’ve been impacted, how they’ve been scammed, well, I don’t think we’d be.

Bill Bennett:
I don’t think we as a society were beginning to address these problems yet. I think the day will come. I think it’s one of these things which I think that just suddenly, one day there will be something that happens and suddenly everyone is onto it and will. And it will become a big issue. That tends to be the way these crises come to a head. But look, no, I’m not comfortable. And I’m not sure it’s the appropriate use of technology either.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, that article, if folks want to look it up, we’ll link to it from the NZ tech podcast. It’s called the surveilled society. Who is watching you and how. And, yeah, really it goes into some of these mechanisms where we’re being watched. The body cams are mentioned. Speed safety cameras. You know, billboards that have got, you know, at times have had cameras. Cameras.

Bill Bennett:
Oh, the billboards. Now they actually can serve up ads depending on who they can see in the crowd in front of the billboard. So if they. If the billboard can detect that there’s people looking in front of the billboard are mainly saying they’re mainly women, for example, then they can put up advertising which is mainly aimed at women. If they. If it’s children, they can put up advertisements mainly aimed at children. Billboards are that smart now to know who’s looking at them. And they also use that to count how many people actually look at the billboard as well as just walk past and look.

Paul Spain:
I think a lot of these use cases, they make a reasonable amount of sense. But of course, in every case, there’s a flip side. How long the data is kept, what other databases do they tap into and so on, because there are public databases that probably 99% of New Zealanders will be captured in, or whatever that percentage is. That’s one of those statistics made up on the spot, by the way.

Bill Bennett:
But you’re quite right. We used to think this kind of dystopian future was a, the future, and b, something would happen in countries which weren’t democratic and otherwise uncomfortable places to live. But now it’s everywhere. And it’s. Stop the bus. I want to get off.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we’ll have to find some folks who have done, you know, sort of dug a bit deeper on. On these things and see if we can. We can, you know, maybe do a. Do an episode or two to delve into a little bit more, because I know there are, you know, there are, you know, folks that are in. Yeah, they’ve been spending a lot of time sort of looking at. Looking at these things. It is an area, though, that, you know, I guess you can end up in a kind of conspiracy theory type of, type of place.

Paul Spain:
But to some degree, you know, I think it is actually. It’s good to explore the thoughts and the possibilities. And I guess you say, look at. Look at China where you. Yeah, they’ve got a social credit or social scoring system and their cameras and so on tie into that. Maybe it’s not so conspiracy when you look at these places of what the worst sort of possibilities are and the likes of, I guess, Black Mirror and Netflix, other shows give us some sort of a taste of the possibilities. And we need to make sure. Yeah.

Paul Spain:
As a society, we actually, you know, we steer in the better directions, not the worst ones.

Bill Bennett:
Well, there’s another angle to this that I just want to mention. I don’t think we should delve too far into this, but do you remember the fuss or the fuss when people started putting in smart speakers in their homes and they. You can be listened to all the time by these things? Well, recently, there’s been quite a lot of stories about how those smart speakers, they’re not making money. It’s not a profitable business. I mean, it’s not a profitable business for different reasons. The reason is that no one thinks of using a smart speaker to buy their next lot of washing powder or toothpaste or whatever. It’s not a great UI for that kind of role, and that’s why it doesn’t make money. But the point is that that kind of surveillance technology, which.

Bill Bennett:
That’s what it is, it’s a form of surveillance capitalism. Smart speakers are a form of surveillance capitalism. It doesn’t necessarily work under its own terms. And I think that goes with a lot of this other stuff, is that it’s there that’s watching you, but it’s not necessarily working and doing the job that people think that it’s doing. It’s just a bloody annoyance.

Paul Spain:
And when the financial aspects don’t line up, that can also be, you know, have an impact on where the corners are cut. Yeah.

Bill Bennett:
Or whether we can find another more abusive business model that will bring us into.

Paul Spain:
When I walk out the front door of our building, you know, there’s cameras, you know, standing there and, you know, it’s like, yeah, that’s just how it is on, I guess, you know, most. Most streets today. But what I would do if I was uncomfortable with, let’s say, the information that the local, my bank or somebody that I’m a customer of, I can get in touch and say, well, you need to, through the privacy laws, I can get in touch and say, tell me what data you have on me. And then you can go back to them and say, please remove that data. I want to exit as a customer, and I don’t want you to hold all that, you know, all that data on me. When you’ve got cameras in the street, you don’t necessarily, you know, they’re not labeled. They don’t say, oh, this is a council camera. This is a traffic camera.

Paul Spain:
This camera is owned by the Secret Service, the landlord of the building, or the russian secret Service in your conspiracy theory case there, Bill. But, hey, who knows? And who knows how all those sort of dots join up? In fact, there was some news coverage of an Auckland security company recently, and I could probably look up the name and it highlighted. It was either news coverage or somebody within that sector told me. And so I’m just seeing if I can see anything about it. But basically, this particular security company, which has a fair bit of market share in the Auckland market, is now chinese owned. And so you join these dots back up. You were mentioning our totalitarian regime. Oh, okay.

Paul Spain:
And then, you know, China has a certain level of kind of power. If they want access to data owned by, you know, chinese organisations. You know, you join those dots up. And actually, it’s not necessarily a conspiracy to say that, you know, if they had a lot of cameras. Now, I don’t know if this company has a lot of cameras or has access to it, but if they’re in the security space, then there may be. Then, you know, what are the possibilities there?

Bill Bennett:
I don’t know if I mentioned this previously on the podcast, but I. The business about the chinese vehicles, the Byds and so on, all have equipment which knows where your car is all the time. And I think the Teslas have the same thing. What that could conceivably mean is that both through Tesla, the us government, and through BYD, the chinese government have got extraordinarily good maps of New Zealand roads. Should they ever. Should their military ever need that information.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess they could fire up Google maps and so on, too. Yeah. So just having. Having a look here. Simply, security have recently sold 90% of their shares to chinese investors as listed with the companies office, armor guard and first security. The two largest security companies in New Zealand are offshore owned as well. Without any sort of reference back now.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, I mean, these are just things to be, you know, to be thinking of in the sort of broader picture when there is so much surveillance and it’s not necessarily completely controlled from New Zealand, then maybe we do have a challenge.

Bill Bennett:
Also, those petabytes of surveillance data that companies accumulate, turning that into money can be their exit strategy. So, you know, selling it to someone at some point down the road can be their exit strategy. So, yeah, look, it’s awful and if you start to think about it too much, you’re just not going to sleep.

Paul Spain:
At nights because we’ll solve it on this show, Bill. There’ll be more episodes coming up. We’ll find a solution.

Bill Bennett:
We’ll fix it. Yeah.

Paul Spain:
And, yeah, I guess one of the other stories that came up was around Hayden. AI NeC New Zealand deploying these AI cameras on New Zealand buses to improve road safety by monitoring traffic violations.

Bill Bennett:
Well, that’s a nice way of putting it, but you could say that the robots are dobbing you in.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, I don’t want to be seen by these cameras. Look, yeah, it’s really hard because we do have issues that, yes, you could do them with people, you know, you could address traffic violations with more police. But I think there’s a degree to which, yes, we probably will increase the number of police in New Zealand, but we are a society that’s going to lean in on technology, too. And it’s kind of a matter of finding what are the appropriate ways in which we can get that technology leverage. Right.

Bill Bennett:
The thing is. The thing is, right, is that on the one hand you can say, and you can make a really good case, right. That if every traffic violation is punished, well, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Right. You can make that case, but sometimes there’s a really good reason why you went five k over the limit for this particular stretch of road. I can remember when the cameras first came in on Auckland council vehicles. I got pinged for turning across the bus lane on Simon Street. I didn’t go drive in the bus lane, I turned across the bus lane to turn into a driveway.

Bill Bennett:
But because I happened to be just there at the moment when the car went past, I got a 40, but fine. And I know that I didn’t drive in the bus lane. I just drove across it. Because, trust me, I have driven in bus lanes. Right. I’m prepared to confess, but that time I wasn’t. And I just felt then that it’s. It’s kind of arbitrary, you know, it’s.

Bill Bennett:
It’s that some of those violations which are perceived by cameras and bots and so on, might. There might be really good reasons why you’ve put your foot down, just briefly, because, you know, to avoid something, for example. But the robot doesn’t know that a copper would, you know, if you got stopped by a cop, you had a chat.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And look, I mean, I have had similar issues with. With some of those same traffic violation type systems. One in Newmarket where I came around a corner, I kind of slightly clipped the bus lane. So the camera showed me clipping the bus lane, but it could clearly show that I wasn’t in the bus lane. I just clipped the corner of it as I was just turning the corner. Right. Cause the bus lane started quite close into the turning into Khyber Pass road.

Paul Spain:
And then a little further up, it showed me in the bus lane. And I was thinking, well, I already wasn’t in the bus lane. Why would I be in the bus lane? And when I sort of thought back, I recall doing a U turn. And I think what I did was I clipped into the bus line so I would wider, so I could do a full U turn without it being a, you know, three point turn on the road. Legally, quite legitimate, because you can only get pinged. I think, if you’re. You’re in that lane for whatever it is, 50 meters or something, there’s some limit. But of course, their camera takes two stills and it’s like, oh, I joined that one up where I clipped the corner, but I wasn’t actually in the line with one, you know, 50 metres up or whatever.

Paul Spain:
And there we go. You get the two dollar 200 fine.

Bill Bennett:
It may be logical, it may be rational, but you can’t reason with it.

Paul Spain:
There we go. Yeah. Well, yeah. And they don’t. They don’t seem to respond so well to letters these days or emails or whatever you send in. Now, also on the New Zealand front, you wrote recently on your blog at Billbennett Co, NZ in download weekly that you produce in your newsletter around sort of the impact on New Zealand telecommunications over recent years with the big change, I guess you were referring to being that Huawei’s largely exited the market in the last. What are we talking? Five years.

Bill Bennett:
Yeah, it started in 2019. Really. Look, the thing is, unlike other countries, we didn’t ban Huawei. We didn’t have to, because what the government did at the time, when I think it was. Andrew Little was the minister at the time, the decision was kind of dedicated to the thing called the ticsa legislation, which is like, it’s a telecommunications something something.

Paul Spain:
Interception capability and security. 2013. Yeah, right.

Bill Bennett:
And basically, there’s a. Basically, equipment has to be certified that it’s suitable for the network. And the Huawei gear didn’t pass that certification process. And that’s kind of a politically polite and nice way of saying thank you, but no thank you to Huawei, whereas other countries just came out and banned them.

Paul Spain:
And that this was particularly looking at their technology being incorporated into cell sites.

Bill Bennett:
At a network level, specifically on 5g networks as well.

Paul Spain:
The mobile front’s different, isn’t it? Because that’s where we saw Google put under pressure by us government to basically. Well, it wasn’t just Google. We’ll come back to chip makers and Google and so on.

Bill Bennett:
Yeah, but we’ll come back to that, Paul, because that’s kind of weird, the way that worked. But if we go back to the network equipment, particularly on the 5g network now, the thing is, up until that point, Spark was heavily committed to what basically, Huawei dug spark out of a hole. After about 15 years ago, the Spark XT network went down and it went down two or three times. And that was.

Paul Spain:
That was a huge embarrassment for Spark.

Bill Bennett:
And so when they came to upgrade their network, they moved to Huawei.

Paul Spain:
Sorry, telecom, as they were at that stage.

Bill Bennett:
Telecom, that’s right. And that was when Paul Reynolds was in charge. When they came to upgrade their network, Huawei dug them out of a hole. And the Huawei kit was excellent quality kit. Huawei had been in two degrees, I think, from the start of two degrees in New Zealand as well. So two degrees and spark were largely built their 4g networks with. And not just their 4G, but their 4.5 g and their 4.9 g and their 4.99 g and so on. It was all Huawei.

Bill Bennett:
And the kit was excellent and it was a good price. There’s all kinds of criticisms people make of the company, how they may have had some ip theft in their history and so on. By the time that they were building 4g networks, that was ancient history. And they were doing a great job of it. And it was actually. It wasn’t just that they were. The equipment was good quality. I mean, it’s not particularly brilliant quality, but it was of good enough quality to run those networks.

Bill Bennett:
But they were rolled out quickly and efficiently and they were up. They were upgraded really quickly and efficiently, too. And the thing was that Huawei were. They were very competitive on price. Very, very aggressive and competitive on price, because chinese companies are. And there are some advanced chinese companies have with exchange and what goes on back in tacit support from the chinese government and so on.

Paul Spain:
Cost of labor. When you stack up all those things, of course, they could undercut anybody in the world and deliver, just be very competitive and be able to have the resourcing for good service.

Bill Bennett:
That’s right. And at the time, Vodafone, as it was then, which is now one New Zealand, they were the mobile company that didn’t have Huawei kit. Now, when Spark, when Simon Mooter went to the government and he wanted to use Huawei kit for the 5g build and they applied for a license from the. I think it’s GCSB, but it’s certainly a government security agency. They applied for the license and they got turned down because they failed to meet the ticks regulations. And that’s when this started. What the immediate consequence of that was that Spark couldn’t get to start building 5g as early as it would like to have done it. It was probably, probably twelve to 18 months delay on getting started with its 5g build, um, simply because of that ruling.

Bill Bennett:
Um, but not only did we, not only did that slow down, the introduction of thing that’s really happened over the intervening five years is that spark and two degrees, and to some extent, also, uh, one New Zealand pay more for telecommunications network equipment because there’s nothing the competition. There’s not the competitive pressure on the companies that are remaining in that market to sharpen their pencils. There is competition still, but it’s just not as intense. Trust me. Huawei’s competition was intense. And that would have lowered the price for everyone, even those people that weren’t Huawei customers. So we got. So basically, our telcos ended up paying more for the 5g network equipment than I otherwise would have done.

Bill Bennett:
The upshot of that was they probably rolled it out a little slower because they, you know, they’ve got to raise the money to buy the kit. And their budgets wouldn’t stretch so far. So that in year one, if you’re budgeting 100 million for year one of your build, you get fewer towers than you would have done if you were buying from Huawei. So it’s probably slowed down the build a bit. I also wanted to look at whether or not we missing out of on technology that Huawei has, which is particularly brilliant and other countries are using and we don’t. And that’s actually not really the case. The one case that you could possibly make is that in countries where Huawei is still operating, some of those countries have moved to 5g standalone quicker than we have. And that’s just basically a next generation of 5g, which is.

Bill Bennett:
It’s just a better version of 5g. But we’re moving to 5g standalone around about now. I mean, Spark’s actually doing that as we speak. So we’re probably a little slower with rollouts, a little slower of introducing new technology and we’re paying a bit more for it. And of course, the thing is, it ends up, the consumer pays more for that.

Paul Spain:
So.

Bill Bennett:
It’S. It’s not damaging. We’re not really damaged because we’re just paying a little bit more than we otherwise would. And we’re perhaps a little slower down that curve than we would be. Now, if we go back to the business with the phones, the handsets, you’re quite right that it wasn’t any government legislation here that brought it out. It’s basically the fact that the us government wouldn’t let Google put the full G suite of Android, everything on their phones.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. No more play store. Basically makes your phones unsightly, massively degraded. Right. And then there were other things around, chips and so on that were able to be used. So it became a combination of issues.

Bill Bennett:
Yeah, absolutely. And that was, that was really something that affected the entire world outside, again, outside of China. Did we lose out there? Yes, we did lose out there because. Because our phone, our handset market has two companies matter, really. Samsung and Apple. Samsung and Apple probably have about 82 83% of the New Zealand handset market. And the remaining 20% is largely those unbranded phones that one New Zealand sells in its stores. After those three, there’s almost nothing.

Bill Bennett:
I mean, the next player is probably on two or 3% of the market. So again, we don’t have the competition in the hand, the price competition, and not only the price competition, but the thing that when the market had three players, the three players, Huawei, Samsung and Apple, were falling over themselves to innovate and push things forward. And you’ll notice that in the last five years, phones, they’re better, but they haven’t really moved forward in the way they move forward in a decade before five years ago. We’re really seeing the damage. Isn’t huge, but we’re just not seeing some of the benefits that we could otherwise have had.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, I just did a look online and I mentioned we’re going to chat around some of the new hardware. The HP Omnibook comes with their HP AI companion. And so rather than googling it, I just asked the question, how much market share has Oppo got? Because from my thinking, Oppo has been sort of the biggest winner in terms of handsets, from, if you put aside the benefits for Apple and Samsung. But in terms of the chinese brands, Oppo seems to have kind of picked up the most share and it’s saying it’s single digit, 5.2% is what they’re saying is their market share in New Zealand. So as kind of the third player when it comes to hands, but a long way behind, it’s not much of a market share, is it?

Bill Bennett:
Well, yeah. And strangely, I mean, I wasn’t going to mention this, not because I’m squeamish or anything, but the thing about Oppo is, is if Huawei is too chinese to get hold of that technology, how come Oppo isn’t? Because it’s just as chinese as Huawei. And in fact, I don’t know if it’s true now, but at one point, Oppo had some chinese government involvement in the ownership, I believe that was certainly.

Paul Spain:
The case with ZTE. I’m not sure about Oppo.

Bill Bennett:
No, certainly. Sorry. You’re sorry? I’m confusing them with ZTE. Yeah, you’re right there. But anyway, the thing is, they’re still chinese brands. I mean, whatever threat Huawei had to Huawei handsets would have had to the west. Oppo has to be the same threat if there is a threat. And the truth is, there isn’t really a threat.

Bill Bennett:
The thing about the network equipment is there are arguments that you can make that those bans and I song were justified with the handsets. You can’t say that it’s justified stopping Huawei and not justified stopping Oppo. You know, you just. You just can’t make that case.

Paul Spain:
Well, yeah, there were different cases that were made. It wasn’t that they were from China specifically. I think it was, you know, there were some sort of nuances to, you know, particularly particular concerns around the activities of each company.

Bill Bennett:
Well, no, I think the main thing about the Huawei phone ban, with the fact that Huawei’s was shut out of american technology, probably had a lot more to do with trade policy in the US than anything to do with security. I mean, it was basically at a time when the us government was very keen on bashing China and promoting the idea that China was commercially an enemy. And so I think that. I just think that’s a bit odd. I’m not saying that these companies are fine and dandy and we should just accept everything. I’m just saying that there’s one rule for Huawei and another rule for Oppo and that’s odd.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, look. Yeah, it’s a fascinating area. There’s a fair bit of info online around these sort of market shares. You’re just looking at some historical data. So this is IDC 2024 data. Yeah. You’ve got Samsung and Apple kind of, you know, crossing over the last, you know, in the last couple of years, actually, in this particular chart showing. Showing Samsung beating out Apple.

Paul Spain:
But this hasn’t been updated.

Bill Bennett:
No. Over the years. It usually does perfectly.

Paul Spain:
So you get. Yeah, you get that. And then they’ve got oppo sort of moving between sort of, I don’t know, six or seven and 15%. And this graph sort of shows them ending up under. Under ten. You mentioned about the sort of no name or the generic brands, one NZ kind of neck and neck with them around a very similar with their phones. So, yeah, it’s something that, from what consumers spend. Yeah, we’re probably spending a chunk more even on that consumer side too, than we would otherwise.

Paul Spain:
That’s, I guess, just the reality of it.

Bill Bennett:
Well, up until that came in, most of the Android phone brands around the world weren’t really profitable. I mean, I think Samsung was just about profitable. But Samsung made more money selling screens to Apple for its iPhones than it made from selling the Galaxy phones. And, you know, there’s a whole conga line of brands that were pretty big enough. I mean, Sony. What happened to Sony Ericsson phones? They’ve gone, LG. They’ve gone. They weren’t making money.

Bill Bennett:
They weren’t profitable.

Paul Spain:
They make good phones, though.

Bill Bennett:
Yeah. All of them. Yeah.

Paul Spain:
Now, I do want to talk a little bit about some of the hands on with gadgets. So I’ve got here, talking of Samsung, the Z Fold, which is Samsung’s newest, and they released the Z fold and the Z flip. Now, they’ve sent this, the Z Fold, which is the one that effectively, if you fold it open, you’ve got a tablet of sorts in your hands. It’s a reasonably large screen. It’s almost square when it’s in your hand. Probably a couple of observations. Yes, there is some AI sort of stuff that you can run locally on there nothing that’s getting. That’s really got me too excited when, you know, when Samsung ran through the highlights.

Paul Spain:
So I’m not generally super excited about the hardware from that perspective. What I do like around it is you’ve got really good Samsung cameras in it. You do have the option now of a case to protect it. So if you drop the thing, you haven’t necessarily done $3100 to $3,800 worth of, you know, damage. And, of course, there’s a level of repairability with these devices. That one that I’ve been using and having a look at comes with, comes, well, it had sent separately a case which can carry the stylus. So, you know, for those who like to be able to do the scribbling on your screen and so on, then, you know, that device does it, the Z fold.

Bill Bennett:
And the fold is so much better than the earlier ones, isn’t it?

Paul Spain:
I think they’ve got to a point now of really some maturity. And, you know, I guess if you were to. If you were to look across at Apple, sometimes they wait until, you know, until these technologies have got, you know, mature and good and reliable and, yeah, look, it really, really feels like a really nicely polished piece of hardware. Now, certainly there’s the premium that you pay for it, and there’s a segment of the market that wants that and is absolutely happy to pay for it. I also like the fact that they’ve got to the point where basically, if you’ve got it closed, you’ve still got an external screen that is virtually edge to edge in terms of the screen. Once you’ve got a bit of a case on it, and it’s not dramatically different. It’s a slightly different aspect ratio, a bit taller than a typical smartphone, but actually, you don’t have to open it up if you just. Just want to use it as a normal smartphone.

Paul Spain:
Now, it’s pretty chunky when it’s folded like that. But, yeah, I think we’ve kind of got to a point of some maturity. One thing that they have not been able to address, I guess, because of the hinging, is they’re not dust proof yet. So while you’ve got a level of water resistance, they warn you against getting it near to alcohol and seawater and so on. But, you know, fresh water, you’ve, you know, you’ve got some. Some protection there.

Bill Bennett:
Yeah, no, I’m actually quite impressed by the. By them, but I think we’re still in the. Well, it’s still a niche product, and I don’t think it’s just the price that makes it niche. I think it’s still, I mean, it’s nice and folding screens because. And I can see that there’s a lot of you sort of folding. I mean, I could use that folding screen a lot more than other people because of. Because my nature of my work, you know, it’s. It would give me a, in effect, an iPad, a tablet, and you almost said an iPad, but it’s obviously Samsung, but it would give me a tablet as well as a phone.

Bill Bennett:
That’s, that’s, that’s great. But it’s. It hasn’t really caught the public’s imagination in the way that, you know, it might have done. And I don’t think it’s going to now. I think it’s the same with the other technology, which is in a similar position is VR. You know, those VR headsets, they’re kind of good now, but they really just haven’t caught the public’s imagination. And I’m thinking back a decade to when 3d television was the thing, and it kind of came in and looked great for a bit. And then you just realized, well, actually.

Paul Spain:
Yep.

Bill Bennett:
I don’t know, you know, and I’m a bit like that didn’t really catch on. Yeah.

Paul Spain:
Yeah. Look, I’m. I’m a little bit here nor there on them, but I get why people are into them, you know? Would, would I carry one as my, as my primary phone? Yeah, I, you know, I probably, you know, I probably would, you know, if that was. If that was an option. I guess what. What I found over the years is, you know, different companies will send me different equipment to review, sometimes for short term, sometimes for longer. I probably still lean in towards looking for a device that’s really secure. And I think, look, this is an area where Android and Samsung have made real strides over the last few years.

Paul Spain:
You get years and years worth of guaranteed operating system updates now on the latest Samsung phones, even down to a sub dollar 500 handset. You know, you get years of updates, even more years of, I think it’s usually four years of operating system updates across, you know. Yeah. Even, as I say, the sort of, some of the sub dollar 500 handsets, maybe down to dollar 300 type price points. So things are a lot more competitive when it comes to some of these important areas. And ultimately, it’s now a lot closer from that security standpoint. And, you know, I think you’ll come across cybersecurity practitioners that are iOS, and you’ll come across cybersecurity practitioners that are all in on Android. And, yeah, I think that’s probably somewhat hard to argue whether Apple should sort of hold that, that dominance that they, you know, they traditionally did from a security standpoint.

Bill Bennett:
Yeah, look, I think, I think that’s true. I think the thing about, thing about Apple is Apple has the phones and the computers and the tablets, and if you, if you’re really interested, the watches as well, whereas the, with, if you’re, if you’re not Apple, then you tend to have Windows and Android. And I’m not sure, I mean, I know that they, I know that they integrate nicely. I know that Windows computers work well with Androids, but it just doesn’t feel as smooth to me, the move between a Windows computer and an Android phone as perhaps moving between two Apple things just not. It’s just nothing as smooth and as sweet. But look, it’s functionally, it’s as good for most people.

Paul Spain:
One thing that I should mention to listeners is that moving from iOS to Android or Android to iOS has got a lot easier in recent years, and that includes, if you’ve got messages that are in the messages app and so on, bringing a lot of that sort of stuff over, particularly if their text messages back to a mobile number as well.

Bill Bennett:
I still find it really jarring to move between Mac OS and windows, though.

Paul Spain:
You haven’t done it enough, Bill. You obviously haven’t done it enough.

Bill Bennett:
I think life’s too short.

Paul Spain:
So as I mentioned, I’ve been using, spending some time looking at the likes of HP Omnibooke. We will come in future onto some of the other equipment that uses the Snapdragon processes. And I guess the big dream of these was incredible battery life. So I’m just looking here at the battery. I’m on 25% battery. Looking at the, the HP Omnibook now, it’s been running for definitely over an hour, and I probably started about, I think, 32%. So I’ve got up more than an hour and used up 7%. Now.

Paul Spain:
Yes, I’ve not been sort of super active. We’ve been talking, but I’ve been looking bits and pieces up and using the device. And I think what we’re seeing here is that difference between the intel based laptops that we’re used to and the arm based laptops have definitely got a better battery life. But I think we look back, and it was a few episodes ago that we chatted to Avraham Pilch, the editor at Toms hardware. And if you haven’t heard that one and you’re kind of interested in this. That’s worth going back to listen to because he talked about the, the battery life differences and I think certainly, you know, I’d maybe drunk a little bit too much of the Kool Aid in terms of, you know, how good this difference was going to be. Not as dramatic as say your m two m three based MacBooks in terms of the battery life.

Bill Bennett:
But this is the first generation of these.

Paul Spain:
Well I would argue this is long from the first generation because the ArM based Windows machines started about twelve years ago and Microsoft have had so many goes at this and trying to get the hardware. But what we are doing is we’re hitting a spot now where this becomes a viable option. We’ve got the best compatibility windows has ever had and I think the best performance on Arm. But there are still gaps. There’s a lot of apps that are not available natively to work with these new arm chips, so they have to go through an emulation layer or in some cases they won’t work at all. So I think there’s still a level of hey, buyer beware on this sort of thing. I guess if you were to buy one from a retailer. Yeah, you might well be covered by the Consumer Guarantees act if you have an issue there.

Paul Spain:
So that might be something to, to consider. I’d be curious what the return rates might be.

Bill Bennett:
What are the big headline apps that won’t run?

Paul Spain:
Good question. In my world, Adobe audition is one of them that hasn’t been running yet. There are lots and lots that will just run through emulation and they will be okay. But I think this, it creates a challenge. Of course, we’ve kind of got the two audiences between those that are buying personal devices or for small business where you might buy one or two devices for a single person business. And then as you get into the broader business world where organisations are buying devices with Windows professional on them for the varying security and other benefits that fit in there. And I would say what we’re going to see in that business world is probably a slower, a level of interest, but there will be more caution because often they’re buying fleets of devices in big chunks and you can’t afford to be in a position where you’ve got a whole chunk of devices that don’t work. There also seems to be a reasonable sort of premium on these laptops at this point, but we’re already seeing those, you know, some of those price points come, come down.

Paul Spain:
So look, I think HP with the Omnibook and this is one of the consumer level devices, but it looks very, very slick. And I’m not sure I shouldn’t check whether this is exactly what the materials are, whether it’s all aluminium or with some titanium or, or what have you, but a really nice quality looking laptop, especially considering that it’s a consumer one. The sort of $3,000 odd price point. Yep. It’s not your bargain basement laptop, but yeah, this is where it’s going. And I would imagine that in the years ahead we will see a lot of these on the market and a lot of people using them.

Bill Bennett:
I think I’d like to see the business model as well, actually. I mean, I’d really like to see the business model, but, yeah, look, I think we were chatting before we came onto the podcast about how HP seems to have listed its game again recently. I don’t know if you get that impression, but I mean, HP has always been number one in the New Zealand.

Paul Spain:
Marketplace for a long time.

Bill Bennett:
Yeah, for years now. And it dominates here in ways that it just doesn’t dominate in other markets. I mean, pretty much every second laptop sold in New Zealand is a HP laptop. But there’s been sort of times over the history of HP laptops where they’ve kind of come in, they’re really good for a bit, and then they just fall behind a little bit and the other Windows ones start to catch up and HP seems to have done that move that sort of big step forward again. Is that, is that your perception of the HP laptop?

Paul Spain:
Look, I think what my team have seen, because when I look back at Gorilla, we had very good experiences with Lenovo for a long period and sometimes variable experiences with other brands. And I guess we started relooking at HP probably going over a decade back now. And what I’ve sort of noticed over that period is a consistency. And one of the benefits they have is that market share in New Zealand, what it means is there’s more stock. They’ve got a. Yeah, really good support is not always perfect, but generally, you know, very good. It’s not, you know, as far as I’m aware, it’s not sort of, you know, outsourced over the fence to, you know, to another party and so on. So it seems to be done, you know, pretty, pretty well all round.

Paul Spain:
And so, you know, I guess that’s one of the reasons we were happy to have them as a partner, you know, on the New Zealand tech podcast, because it’s a brand that, you know, I’m happy to use. You know, I’m comfortable to do that. But you’d ask me about some of the other brands and no, wouldn’t be interested in, you know, having, having for.

Bill Bennett:
A long time, I had a long time. I’ve used Macs, but I also had a HP for when I needed to do windows work. And I. Yeah, I really enjoyed the HP. I like their machines. They’re, they’re excellent. Quite frankly, I think they’re sort of let down a bit by the software. But.

Paul Spain:
Well, I will just mention before we wrap up the episode, I was pretty skeptical around this HP AI companion. I’m not saying I’ve completely thrown my skepticism out the window, but having tried it and having looked into it, looks like they’re using OpenAI. Is GPT four 40 at the moment in terms of what it can do locally? Yeah, probably not a whole lot. So it is going out online. So that’s something that businesses will need to look at. It’s still in beta, but one thing that it does allow you to do is to bring in some source files. The only limit I’ve seen so far, I haven’t seen a limit to the number of files, but you have to go and kind of attach or link files. So you can give it your own local data sources in terms of say word documents or PDF’s, and then you can go into, they call it the analyze section.

Paul Spain:
And so you can go in and then, you know, be asking questions that relate to that data that you’ve fed in. So in the Microsoft world to do that, that means you’ve got to have their co pilot for Microsoft 365, which is a 600 odd dollar investment on an annual basis. So here you’ve got this capability. At this stage, it’s built in, no cost on the consumer devices. I’ll be interested to explore what that means from a business perspective because if that’s part of the capability that is going to come with these HP laptops, then that becomes a competitive advantage. So yeah, we’ll have to see how that plays out. And obviously there’s a huge difference between that and copilot for Microsoft 365, but they are still delivering a capability. And of course there’s lots of other ways of, of getting these sorts of capabilities, but by having these sorts of things built in.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, it becomes a plus for sure.

Bill Bennett:
I think my next task for tomorrow is to contact HP and see if I can get a borrower of one.

Paul Spain:
Yeah, sounds worthwhile, Bill. All right, well, thanks everyone for listening in. Thank you, Bill. Great to catch up. There’s a couple of other topics we didn’t get into. There’s probably, and in some ways, there will be some alignment around the aspects of this society under surveillance topic and a move towards digital ids. I think there are some similarities, they are very different, but there is also some dots that join up there. And Bill, you mentioned before the show started around these, you know, some of the activities going on in relation to digital id in Australia and in particular a QR code that is going to be able to be used.

Paul Spain:
So you can, you can verify yourself when you go out to the nightclub, you go out for a night on the Terps, you can prove who you are and what your age is.

Bill Bennett:
You can get into the RSL to watch midnight oil or whoever is their replacement. 2024. Yeah.

Paul Spain:
And there’s been, obviously moves in New Zealand, also new legislation that’s come in very, very recently as far as, you know, digital id, but it hasn’t had much attention and probably because, you know, it’s a kind of complicated topic, you know, what do you, what should you say about it? So we’ll try and track down, you know, some folks that have done some thinking on, on these topics and delve in a little bit more. And then there was the DDoS attack that Musk’s been talking about as he’s been doing his live stream interview with Trump. And you had a comment on that one, Bill?

Bill Bennett:
Yeah. Well, an ex Twitter engineer said that there was no denial of service. If there was any denial of service, it was the fact that he got rid of the network assurance team, which was checking that the network’s working. And I think that probably rings true, actually.

Paul Spain:
Interesting. Yeah. Well, we will possibly never, never know, but, yeah. Great to have you on the show, Bill. Thanks, everybody, for listening in. Of course, a big thank you to our show partners, Gorilla Technology, One, NZ, HP, Spark and 2degrees of. And all the best. We will catch you all next week.

Paul Spain:
All right, see you.