In this segment from Industry Focus: Tech, Motley Fool analyst Dylan Lewis and senior technology specialist Daniel Sparks explain how Alphabet's (GOOGL 1.27%) (GOOG 1.25%) new autonomous car subsidiary, Waymo, is de-risking its efforts on self-driving car technology, and how this provides both upsides and downsides for the business' potential in the long run.
A full transcript follows the video.
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This podcast was recorded on Dec. 16, 2016.
Dylan Lewis: The quote from John, as we'll refer to him: "We're in the business of making better drivers. We're a self-driving car company, not a car company." I think, if you look back at some of the things that have happened in the last month or so, you see that Apple (AAPL 0.64%) seems to be taking kind of a similar route with their autonomous driving ambitions.
Daniel Sparks: Right. We see these big tech companies, and then you look at the giant automobile segments, where companies like Alphabet and Apple don't have any significant revenue, and in theory, it looks like this awesome opportunity for Alphabet and Apple to start making these cars. Maybe that's why a lot of the speculation received so much attention, thinking about a Google-branded or Apple-branded car is a really powerful idea. It could open up the companies to huge new revenue opportunities. But, when you actually get down to think about it, especially in Alphabet's case, it would really be out of their core competency to start making cars. Even Apple, by outsourcing their manufacturing and building Apple-branded hardware products, along with their software, cars is just a whole 'nother breed. It's a really capital-intensive business. By Alphabet doing this -- and now, like we're going to talk about, Apple focusing on the software part of the business -- it really de-risks these new segments. But on the other hand, may decrease some of the potential upside if things do go well.
Lewis: Yeah, you look at the margin profile for the car business and the smartphone business, and they are dramatically different. It would be very tough to achieve high-30% margins in cars. For as much as I know about the industrials business, I know that. So, you can understand why these huge tech companies are instead choosing to focus on something that's super scalable and can be easily brought into millions of cars without actually having to manufacture them themselves.
