Welcome to the Tech Meme Ride Home for Tuesday, January 8th, 2019.

I'm Brian McCullough today.

Are we in a smartphone recession? More TV news from CES. AT&T wants to make 5G

confusing and why we work is now simply we. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.

This won't get half the attention that Apple's recent revenue forecast warning got but Samsung is itself

forecasting a decline in Q4 operating profits to around 9.65 billion dollars

which is below analyst estimates of $12.4 billion.

Samsung says this is due to weak memory chip demand and competition in smartphones.

Or as the register put it, sorry Samsung, it seems like peak smart phones. Or as the Register put it, sorry Samsung, it seems like Peak

smartphone is here and no one is immune to the industry's first ever

recession. Now another reason that this won't make as many headlines is that device makers in the

Android ecosystem do tend to swing wildly between periods of profitability and the

opposite and Samsung's share of profits in the smartphone industry actually peaked years ago.

But that points to the other thing.

Samsung is more diversified.

Its direct exposure to smartphones as its core business is not as intense.

Apple's problem is the iPhone is so much of everything to their business.

And I do want to come back to that, but first to point out what I just said that Samsung has a ton of other business lines,

a smattering of Samsung headlines from CES.

Samsung says Google is bringing some of its services to Bixby,

Samsung's horse in the personal assistant race.

Those Google services that are coming to Bixby reportedly include

...