Big Tech in February 2025: the light and the dark

Here’s my short roundup of February’s GAFAM news, just the highlights.

The light side

In February, Apple had new-product news almost entirely to itself. The device people had been expecting as the “iPhone SE 4” was announced as the “iPhone 16e.” [1] Perhaps because Apple insisted on building in Apple Intelligence, the price came in a little high, and it seems to have fallen somewhat short of what consumers had hoped for.

Speaking of Apple Intelligence, it is apparently also coming to “visionOS 2.4,” the next OS for Vision Pro, scheduled for April. [2] Apple has had little presence in the race to build LLMs and is said to be behind in AI, but here you can glimpse its approach: use the hardware it is so good at to get the fruits of AI into users’ hands as early as possible. There are also rumors that, to make mixed reality (MR) products go mainstream, Apple is considering a shift from goggles to glasses. [3] I’ll be keeping an eye on where that goes.

Outside Apple, GAFAM’s AI investment is expected to grow from about ¥37.4 trillion (roughly $250 billion) in 2024 to about ¥48.6 trillion (roughly $330 billion) in 2025. [4] At this scale, I can’t even get a feel for the numbers anymore. Some see the “DeepSeek shock,” a Chinese company upending the established order, as a one-off, but the battle for dominance in AI keeps getting fiercer. Still, apart from SoftBank’s role in Stargate, announced last month, Japanese companies have had little presence in all this, which bothers me a little. No, quite a lot, actually. [5]

Even so, a society made more convenient by AI is just around the corner!

The dark side

What caught my attention was how quickly GAFAM seemed to start cozying up to the Trump administration, which took office at the end of last month. Google and Apple both promptly renamed the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America” in their map apps. [6] They also abruptly stopped pushing DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), which they had championed. [7] [8] The impact of steps like ending DEI hiring and training programs may be limited, but only a few years ago DEI was all the rage at foreign companies operating in Japan, so this sudden about-face is surprising, or maybe frightening… Apple alone, though, seems set on keeping its DEI programs. [9]

The lawsuit against Meta over scam ads is another story worth watching. [10] Isn’t this a problem close to home for all of us? Of course the advertisers behind scam ads are the most to blame, but how much responsibility should the platforms bear? In the United States, platforms are said to be relatively well protected by law, but how will Japan handle this going forward?

…Since the Trump administration took over, the world has been in an uproar. These days the quiet of the night feels all the more precious.

References

[1] https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOGN130580T10C25A2000000/ (in Japanese)

[2] https://www.bloomberg.co.jp/news/articles/2025-02-13/SRMQZ3T1UM0W00 (in Japanese)

[3] https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUC23AF30T20C25A1000000/ (in Japanese)

[4] https://www.businessinsider.jp/article/amazon-microsoft-google-meta-ai-spending/ (in Japanese)

[5] https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZRSP685573_S5A120C2000000/ (in Japanese)

[6] https://www.bloomberg.co.jp/news/articles/2025-02-12/SRJEGST0AFB400 (in Japanese)

[7] https://www.bbc.com/japanese/articles/c0lz82n6nk7o (in Japanese)

[8] https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/economy/20250206-OYT1T50044/ (in Japanese)

[9] https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOGN25CQF0V20C25A2000000/ (in Japanese)

[10] https://news.yahoo.co.jp/pickup/6530358 (in Japanese)