The Realme C3 is coming on February 6 but the company has already revealed most of its specifications. Now, Realme has announced that Realme C3 will boot Realme UI, making it the first Realme smartphone to run the company's newest Android 10-based skin out of the box. The Realme C3 is an entry-level smartphone, having the recently announced Helio G70 SoC at the helm. It will arrive in two memory configurations (3GB/32GB and 4GB/64GB) and sport a 6.5" waterdrop notch display, having a screen-to-body ratio of 89.8%. For photography, the Realme C3 will come with three cameras - one on...
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Foldable smartphones are certainly gaining a lot of attention as the new form factor challenges smartphone design as we know it. While we saw foldable smartphones and displays over the last year or so, they were all made with fragile plastic lenses atop the display panels. These are very easy to scratch and can easily cause damage to an otherwise expensive device. Rumors suggested that Samsung's upcoming Z Flip smartphone will use a new ultra-thin type of glass. The latest report from LetsGoDigital suggests a new patent from Samsung's lawyers submitted to the EUIPO (European Union...
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Over a year and a half ago, each of the four major US carriers was in some way involved with an incident that revealed how carriers were selling location data of its subscribers to whoever wanted to pay for them. It involved a couple of "middle men" companies who could eventually sell location data to whoever wanted to buy it. It eventually involved Securus, a prison company that used carrier information to track phones without owners' permission. On Friday, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai sent a letter to key members of Congress, declaring that the FCC has conducted its investigation and concluded...
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After a slight upheave during the Q3 period, worldwide tablet sales have yet again declined in the fourth quarter of 2019. According to the latest IDC report, the tablet market is down by 0.6% year over year as a total of 43.5 million units were shipped during the October-December period. Unsurprisingly, Apple is still the runaway leader as it managed to sell an estimated 15.9 million units in Q4 2019. Samsung with 7 million and Huawei with 4 million round our the top three. Amazon saw a steep decline of 29% compared to Q4 2018 with just 3.3 million shipments this time around while...
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Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
Today we’re digging into One Medical’s IPO pricing, especially as it relates to the company’s valuation and resulting revenue multiples. Our goal this morning is to understand how the IPO process priced One Medical last night, and what its resulting value could mean for other tech-enabled companies.
One Medical, a popular and modern medical provider, is a venture-backed company now worth $14 per share, or about $1.7 billion. Is that a lot? Or do those metrics fit well next to its fundamentals? Let’s find out.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
It was yet another jam-packed week full of big news, IPO happenings, and venture activity. As always we’ve done our best to deliver the gist on what’s been going on. We had Alex Wilhelm and Danny Crichton on hand to handle it all, which went medium-good. In other Equity news, we’re back with guests over the next few weeks, so if you miss us having a venture capitalist along for the ride, fear not, their return is just around the corner.
Up top this week was Jon Shieber’s report that Kleiner Perkins has rapidly deployed its most recent fund, a $600 million vehicle. While the news felt surprising, digging back through our archives we were reminded that the firm had indicated it might put its capital to work quickly. Still, as Danny pointed out, it’s rare that venture capitalists have to go our raising from LPs on an annual basis.
After that, we turned to some funding rounds that held our attention, including the Free Agency round that is working to bring talent management to the technology industry similar to the sports and entertainment worlds.
The concept makes some sense as compensation packages for top talent in the industry can extend into the seven-figures (Free Agency takes a 5-10% cut of an employee’s income using the increasingly popular income-share agreements). Also this round felt a bit like a reminder that the labor market is tight at the moment.
We then moved on to Josh Constine’s story about “Ring for enterprise” startup Verkada, which raised a massive $80 million round at a $1.6 billion valuation. That’s eye popping, since the extremely small dilution implied with those numbers (5%) is very rare in the venture world.
After that we turned to a few rounds that Alex has had his eye on, namely the somewhat-recent Insurify round, the pretty-recent Gabi round, and the most-recent Policygenius. All told they sum to $150 million, which made us ask the question, why are venture capitalists so into insurance marketplace startups?
Finally, we touched on the latest from the intra-SoftBank delivery war between DoorDash and Uber Eats, including who is impacted, and what it means for future consolidation in the on-demand world. Or more precisely, why hasn’t there been more?
Members of European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of a common charger, the resolution passed with 582-40. It urges the European Commission to adopt new rules by July that would make it so buyers don't necessarily get a new charger with each new device. A decade ago, the EU got major phone makers (among which Apple) to voluntarily move towards a common standard. Now MEPs believe that the voluntary approach has not worked out and new legislation needs to be passed. The resolution highlights wireless chargers as a way to reduce electronic waste, but notes that the rules written...
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We've heard plenty of analyses in the past few days, and now we have another report to confirm that Huawei has overtaken Apple in the battle for the second place on the global smartphone market. Counterpoint Research revealed that Cupertino fell under 200 million shipments while its Chinese competitor reached almost 240 million. The analysts reported that switching 2019 strategies lead to improving some results, such as Samsung and its Galaxy A lineup and Apple's relatively more affordable iPhone 11. The non-Pro phone was actually the reason Apple to be the top smartphone maker in Q4...
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Increasingly, the streets of Karachi and Lahore are being flooded with men riding bikes and wearing green T-shirts, a writer friend recently told me. In a sense, these men represent the emergence of Pakistan’s tech startups.
India now has more than 25,000 startups and raised a record $14.5 billion last year, according to government figures. But not all Asian countries are as large as India or have such a thriving startup ecosystem. Long overdue, things are beginning to change in bordering Pakistan.
Bykea, a three-year-old ride-hailing and delivery service, today has more than 500,000 bikes and cabs registered on its platform. It operates in some of Pakistan’s most populated cities, such as Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, Muneeb Maayr, Bykea founder and CEO, told TechCrunch.
Maayr is one of the most recognized startup founders in Pakistan, and previously worked for Rocket Internet, helping the giant run fashion e-commerce platform Daraz in the country. While leading Daraz, he expanded the platform to cater to categories beyond fashion; Daraz was later sold to Alibaba.
The three Galaxy S20 phones have taken their turn running Geekbench 5.1. The models headed to the South Korean and US markets, specifically, which are powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 rather than a home-grown Samsung chipset (it seems that only European models will use Exynos 9830). Korean versions: Samsung Galaxy S20 • Galaxy S20+ • Galaxy S20 Ultra The trio packs 12GB of RAM (the value reported by the benchmark is lower as a part of RAM is reserved for the GPU). The benchmark score is essentially the same for all three phones and matches up with other upcoming Snapdragon...
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Friday typically brings a bunch of new music releases, but this Friday’s new drops includes a new track from an unlikely source – Elon Musk. The SpaceX and Tesla CEO said earlier this week he had written a new song called “Don’t doubt yer vibe,” to be released on “Emo G Records,” but as usual it was hard to tell if Musk was being serious or just having his evening internet fun.
Turns out, he was serious, and we didn’t have to wait long to hear the track. The lyrics probably didn’t take him too long to write – the whole song consists of “Don’t doubt your vibe / because it’s true / don’t doubt your vibe / because it’s you” repeated over and over. Musk says he performed the lyrics, which are modified and distorted to an airy electronic, supernatural sounding final product.
The track itself is backed by a pulsing, ambient kind of EDM arrangement, and all in all it’s not a bad representation of the genre. Listen for yourself and judge:
Musk also tweeted photos of himself in the studio actually recording the track, and shared that the process of putting together the song was maybe harder than he’d anticipated. In the midst of his music-making tweets, he also took time to educate some of his followers on why some of the more dire predictions floating around about the Coronavirus are blown way out of proportion.
No word on whether there’s going to be a full album, but Musk’s timing with this drop actually makes a lot of sense when you consider how things have been going for him lately: Tesla stock skyrocketed on positive earnings reported yesterday; he beat a defamation accusation in court last month; his Starlink project is coming together; and SpaceX is making good progress on its commercial crew flight program, nailing its last major test flight before crewed missions earlier this month.
After opening an office in the city last year, Indian ride-hailing firm Ola said it would officially begin operations in London on February 10. London is one of the world’s biggest markets for ride-hailing services, and the expansion is a key development in Ola’s international strategy as the company widens its competition with Uber, another SoftBank portfolio firm.
Ola said it will be “fully operational from day one” in London, where it has signed up over 20,000 drivers since late November.
The company, which has raised about $3.5 billion to date, emphasized that its platform offers a range of security features such as a 24/7 helpline for drivers and customers and an in-app emergency button.
Ola’s emphasis on safety comes as its rival Uber is engaging with London’s transport regulator to continue its operation in the city, which stripped the American giant of that license — for the second time — late last year. In November, TfL ruled that Uber did not meet the “fit and proper” requirements for private hire operators.
In the ruling, TfL noted that it had found more than 14,000 trips on Uber’s platform that were taken with drivers who had faked their identity. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi had expressed his disappointment at TfL’s decision. “This TfL decision is just wrong. Over the last 2 years we have fundamentally changed how we operate in London,” he said at the time.
Uber’s cabs remain operational in London as the company appeals the decision. Ola says it will continue its “collaborative approach with regulators and local authorities, as well as its clear focus on safety, drawing on industry-leading and global best practices.”
Additionally, Ola says to incentivize drivers on its platform, it will not charge them any commission for six weeks. The company, like Uber, roughly charges between 20% to 25% commission on the final fare paid by a passenger, for instance. (It is also offering £25 worth of ride credit to passengers who sign up in the first week after the launch.)
Simon Smith, Head of Ola International, said the platform has received “overwhelming positive” reception since launching in the UK in 2018. The startup is operational in 28 boroughs in the UK, including cities such as Birmingham, Coventry and Warwick, where it claims to have seen more than double-digit growth in rides in the last quarter. To date, Ola has provided over 3 million rides with more than 11,000 drivers already operating on the platform in the UK.
“We are working closely with drivers to build a high quality and reliable service for Londoners. Launching in London is a major milestone for us and we are keen to offer a first class experience for all our customers,” he said in a statement.
Expansion into the UK capital, one of the world’s most lucrative markets, is a major step for Ola, which has provided about 3 million rides in the UK to date with more than 11,000 driver partners. Over the years, Ola has also expanded to Australia and New Zealand. The company says it is operational in over 250 cities.
Huawei announced the Mate X foldable smartphone last year in February and later in September, it filed a patent with USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) for a new foldable smartphone with stylus support. Now, we are looking at another patent filed by the Chinese phone maker with EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office), and it reveals yet another foldable smartphone which could be the Mate X2. Huawei Mate X The patent describes a form factor similar to the first-gen Mate X, but there are some differences. For starters, the new phone folds inwards while...
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Twitter has confirmed it has temporarily suspended the account of controversial rightwing commentator, Katie Hopkins. The move was reported earlier by the BBC.
Hopkins, a former MailOnline columnist and presenter on LBC radio, is a veteran of the social media platform, joining Twitter just under a decade ago — and using it amplify her brand of far-right leaning, liberal-baiting politics. She regularly tweets anti-immigration and anti-Islam sentiments, and has claimed that white British people are now a discriminated against minority.
It’s not clear which of Hopkins’ tweets led Twitter to finally pull the trigger, although she had recently targeted black British rapper Stormzy for a series of abusive tweets.
In a statement confirming the account suspension, Twitter told us:
Keeping Twitter safe is a top priority for us — abuse and harassment have no place on the service. We take enforcement action against any account that is violative of our rules – which includes violations of our hateful conduct policy and abusive behaviour policy. These rules apply to everyone using our service — regardless of the account involved.
At the time of writing Hopkins’ account is still visible — although all but one of her tweets has been deleted.
It is not clear whether Hopkins herself deleted the majority of her tweets. Twitter pointed out that users may choose to delete their own Tweets at any time, including by using third-party services which provide the option of deleting all tweets
Two non-visible tweets on Hopkins’ feed are listed as ‘no longer available’ for violating Twitter’s rules.
The remaining visible tweet is a retweet of another user accusing her of inciting racial hatred — which contains a screengrab of a number of abusive tweets Hopkins made targeting Stormzy.
If Katie Hopkins’ latest tweets on Stormzy don’t constitute incitement to racial hatred I really don’t know what does. She is a criminal. @Twitter needs to act… pic.twitter.com/CbUO5CGl48
Hopkins’ Twitter biog lists her as “Milo’s Mum” — a reference to Milo Yiannopoulos, another controversial rightwing troll who Twitter banned in 2016 after he incited his followers to harass Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones.
The Nubia Red Magic 5G is shaping up to be a beast of a phone with a 144Hz refresh rate display, Snapdragon 865, dual-mode 5G and blazing fast 80W fast charging. Last week we saw a live demo of the phone's new low latency wireless screencasting feature and now the brand's president Ni Fei took to Weibo again to tease the new super fast charging of the upcoming gaming phone. Nubia Red Magic 5G charging test The photo shows a detailed charging log of the phone which indicates a current of 9.6 amps alongside a voltage of 8.4 which equates to 80W power flow. We also see the device will...
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Skymind Global Ventures (SGV) appeared last year in Asia/US as a vehicle for the previous founders of a YC-backed open-source AI platform to invest in companies that used the platform.
Today it announces the launch of an $800 million fund to back promising new AI companies and academic research. It will consequently be opening a London office as an extension to its original Hong Kong base.
SGV Founder and CEO Shawn Tan said in a statement: “Having our operations in the UK capital is a strategic move for us. London has all the key factors to help us grow our business, such as access to diverse talent and investment, favorable regulation, and a strong and well-established technology hub. The city is also the AI growth capital of Europe with the added competitive advantage of boasting a global friendly time zone that overlaps with business hours in Asia, Europe and the rest of the world.”
SGV will use its London base to back research and development and generate business opportunities across Europe and Asia.
The company helps companies and organizations to launch their AI applications by providing them supported access to “Eclipse Deeplearning4j”, an open-source AI tool.
The background is that the Deeplearning4j tool was originally published by Adam Gibson in late 2013 and later became a YC-backed startup, called Pathmind, which was cofounded to commercialize Deeplearning4j. It later changed its name to Skymind.
SGV is a wholly separate investment company that Adam Gibson joined as VP to run its AI division, called Konduit. Konduit now commercializes the Deeplearning4j open source tools.
Adam Gibson now joins SGV as Vice President, to run its software division, Konduit, which delivers and supports Eclipse Deeplearning4j to clients, as well as offering training development.
SGV firm says it plans to train up to 200 AI professionals for its operations in London and Europe.
In December last year “Skymind AI Berhad”, the Southeast Asia arm of Skymind and Huawei Technologies signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop a Cloud and Artificial Intelligence Innovation Hub, commencing with Malaysia and Indonesia in 2020.
Samsung announced the Galaxy A51 last month and the company will soon follow up with its 5G version that has appeared on Geekbench sporting model number SM-A516N. The benchmark database reveals key specs of the Galaxy A51 5G - an Exynos 980 SoC, 6GB RAM, and Android 10. Geekbench doesn't confirm any other specifications of the Galaxy A51 5G, but from past rumors, we know the smartphone will have 128GB base storage and will be launched in South Korea. More details about the Galaxy A51 5G should surface in the coming weeks. Source | Via
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Realme has released the stable build of Android 10-based Realme UI for the Realme XT. The firmware sports version number RMX1921EX_11_C.01 and brings along new UI and features to the Realme XT. The update is rolling out over the air, but those who can't wait to check out the Realme UI can install the update manually on their device by downloading the update package from here. Here's the complete changelog of the update: Visuals Updated UI to realme UI. Brand new Real Design makes visuals more attractive and operation more efficient. Smart...
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The Samsung Galaxy A41 that we've been hearing about since last November has passed through Geekbench, revealing key specs in the process. According to the benchmark database, the Galaxy A41, bearing model number SM-A415F, is powered by the Helio P65 SoC. It runs Android 10 and has 4GB RAM in tow, but there are likely to be memory options that are yet to be confirmed. Geekbench doesn't reveal any other specs of the Galaxy A41, but if rumors are to be believed, the A41 will come with 64GB base storage, 48MP main camera, 25MP selfie camera and a 3,500 mAh battery with 15W fast...
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Today, Motorola is celebrating a new hurdle pertaining to the popular Moto G series of smartphones. The company has officially sold 100 million units of the midrange smartphone. It was first introduced in 2013 (back while Google still owned Motorola) and offered a well-rounded package for a price below $200 - proving that cheap phones didn't have to suck so much. To celebrate the milestone, Motorola is offering BOGO deals on devices from Motorola.com in the US. The Moto G7 is $100 off at $199 | Buy the Moto G7 for full price ($299) and get a Moto G6 or G6 Play for free ...
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Samsung is announcing the Galaxy S20 family alongside the Galaxy Z Flip at an event on February 11. If you were wondering how soon after that the phones would become available, the company's own website is here to help today. Samsung has created a registration page (see the Source linked below), where you can go and enter your email if you're interested in purchasing any of these upcoming smartphones - aka "the next Galaxy". And right there on the official registration page there's this: "Delivery by March 6 while supplies last". That is of course if you end up pre-ordering an S20,...
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HMD Global has just started sending out invites for its MWC event in Barcelona, which is taking place on February 23 at 4:30pm local time (registration starts half an hour earlier, as depicted on the invite seen below). The company unsurprisingly isn't telling us what to expect specifically, but recent reports have made it clear that a new true Nokia flagship will only arrive later in the year. It might make up for the delay in release with a world first under-display camera, although some of its competitors say that's not currently feasible. Until then, we'll have to make do with...
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It seems that the widespread Wuhan Coronavirus will affect a number of supply chains, including the one for the Samsung Galaxy S20 lineup's accessories. So customers seeking accessories such as cases and screen protectors at launch won't find anything for their brand new phones. MobileFun received a number of letters from manufacturers that there would be shipping delays due to the Coronavirus outbreak and the extended Chinese New Year holidays. The government officially extended the holiday season as a way to battle the spread of infection so a lot of factories have already suspended...
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On Thursday, Apple Maps announced that it is now rolling out a new update to Apple Maps. The new update brings a new map design, and one that shows far more details than before. To start, users will be able to see far more details on land with building outlines to help you search and navigate better. Source: Apple There are now more comprehensive views of shopping malls, airports, parks, roads, and buildings. Apple promises faster and more accurate navigation with the new update. Source: Apple Two new features arrive to Apple Maps, both of which are offered by Google...
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Think you’ve found a glaring security hole in Xbox Live? Microsoft is interested.
The company announced a new bug bounty program today, focused specifically on its Xbox Live network and services. Depending on how serious the exploit is and how complete your report is, they’re paying up to $20,000.
Like most bug bounty programs, Microsoft is looking for pretty specific/serious security flaws here. Found a way to execute unauthorized code on Microsoft’s servers? They’ll pay for that. Keep getting disconnected from Live when you play as a certain legend in Apex? Not quite the kind of bug they’re looking for.
Microsoft also specifically rules out a few types of vulnerabilities as out-of-scope, including DDoS attacks, anything that involves phishing Microsoft employees or Xbox customers, or getting servers to cough up basic info like server name or internal IP. You can find the full breakdown here.
This is by no means Microsoft’s first foray into bounty programs; they’ve got similar programs for the Microsoft Edge browser, their “Windows Insider” preview builds, Office 365, and plenty of other categories. The biggest bounties they offer are on their cloud computing service, Azure, where the bounty for a super specific bug (gaining admin access to an Azure Security Lab account, which are closely controlled) can net up to $300,000.
Just as Amazon was basking in the news of a massive earnings win, the tech giant quietly published — as it always does — its latest transparency report, revealing a slight dip in the number of government demands for user data.
It’s a rarely seen decline in the number of demands received by a tech company during a year where almost every other tech giant — including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter — all saw an increase in the number of demands they receive. Only Apple reported a decline in the number of demands it received.
Amazon said it received 1,841 subpoenas, 440 search warrants and 114 other court orders for user data — such as its Echo and Fire devices — during the six-month period ending 2019.
That’s about a 4% decline on the first six months of the year.
The company’s cloud unit, Amazon Web Services, also saw a decline in the number of demands for data stored by customers, down by about 10%.
Amazon also said it received between 0 and 249 national security requests for both its consumer and cloud services (rules set out by the Justice Department only allow tech and telecom companies to report in ranges).
Amazon’s biannual transparency report is one of the lightest reads of any company’s figures across the tech industry. We previously reported on how Amazon’s transparency reports have purposefully become more vague over the years rather than clearer — bucking the industry trend. At just three pages, the company spends most of it explaining how it responds to each kind of legal demand rather than expanding on the numbers themselves.
The company’s Ring smart camera division, which has faced heavy criticism for its poor security practices and its cozy relationship with law enforcement, still hasn’t released its own data demand figures.
The venture community has been fixated on travel and hospitality since the dot-com era and early-2000s, when mainstays like Kayak and Airbnb were still Silicon Valley darlings. As the multi-trillion-dollar global travel and hospitality market continues to grow, VCs are still foaming at the mouth for the opportunity to redefine the ways we move and stay around the world.
Despite the cyclical nature of the travel sector, deal flow in travel and hospitality has remained strong and largely stable over the last half-decade, according to data from Crunchbase and PitchBook. Over the same period, we’ve seen more than a handful of startups in the space reach unicorn status, including companies like Klook, Sonder, Flixbus, Vacasa, Wheels Up, TripActions and others.
High-profile funding rounds also appear to be popping up across travel andhospitality’s varioussub-sectors, including bookings, activity marketplaces, short-term rental, tourism and hotel platforms. And companies are continuing to pull in funding rounds in the hundreds of millions to billion-dollar range, such as India hotel network company Oyo, which raised $1.5 billion in funding as recently as December.
While VC investment in the space has remained resilient, some investors are predicting it’s only a matter of time before the travel startup world hits a downturn. To get a temperature check on the state of the travel market, the outlook for fundraising and which sub-sectors might present the most attractive opportunities for startups today, we asked five leading VCs at firms spanning early to growth stages to share what’s exciting them most and where they see opportunity in travel, tourism and hospitality tech:
The Samsung Galaxy A50 was Samsung's most popular phone in 2019 and sold in droves. That makes the task of replacing it as big as that of replacing any of Samsung's most expensive flagship phones. A quick glance at the Samsung Galaxy A51 tells us Samsung played it safe, but is that a bad thing? No, it's not. Mid-rangers should be competent at what it does and bring good bang for yourbuck. Both are true of the Samsung Galaxy A51. It has moved the notched selfie camera into the display, which itself is a bit larger now and on the back there's a better camera array and an attractive...
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Avast has made a huge business out of selling antivirus protection for computers and mobile devices, but more recently it was revealed that the Czech-based cybersecurity specialist was also cultivating another, more controversial, revenue stream: harvesting and selling on user data, some of which it amassed by way of those security tools.
But as of today, the latter of those businesses is no longer. Avastannounced that it would be winding down Jumpshot, its $180 million marketing technology subsidiary that had been in the business of collecting data from across the web, including within walled gardens, analysing it, and then — unknown to users — selling it on to third-party customers that included tech giants like Microsoft and Google and big brands like Pepsi and Home Depot.
The significance of the incident extends beyond Avast and Jumpshot’s practices: it highlights the sometimes-obscure but very real connection between how some security technology runs the risk of stepping over the boundary into violations of privacy; and ultimately how big data is a hot commodity, a fact that potentially clouds that demarcation even more, as it did here:
“We started Jumpshot in 2015 with the idea of extending our data analytics capabilities beyond core security,” writes the CEO Ondrej Vlcek in a blog post in response to Jumpshot news. “This was during a period where it was becoming increasingly apparent that cybersecurity was going to be a big data game. We thought we could leverage our tools and resources to do this more securely than the countless other companies that were collecting data.”
Today’s news comes on the heels of a series of developments and investigations highlighting Jumpshot’s practices, stretching back to December, when Mozilla and Opera removed Avast extensions after reports that they were collecting user data and browsing histories. Avast — which has over 430 million active users — later came clean, only for a follow up investigation to get published earlier this week unveiling yet more details about the practice and the specific link to Jumpshot, which was founded in 2015 and uses data from 100 million devices.
In Avast’s announcement, it said that “plans to terminate provision of data” to Jumpshot but did not give a timeframe when when Jumpshot would completely cease to operate as part of the closure. There is still no announcement on Jumpshot’s own site.
“Jumpshot intends to continue paying its vendors and suppliers in full as necessary and in the ordinary course for products and services provided to Jumpshot during its wind down process,” the company said. “Jumpshot will be promptly notifying its customers in due course about the termination of its data services.”
Avast had a key partner in Jumpshot, the business media company that took a $60.8 million, 35% stake in the subsidiary last July, effectively valuing Jumpshot at around $177 million. An internal memo that we obtained from Ascential notes that the company has already sold its stake back to Avast for the same price, incurring no costs in the process.
Avast’s CEO Ondrej Vlcek, who joined the company 7 months ago, apologised in a separate blog post while also somewhat distancing himself from the history of the company and what it did. He noted that he identified the issues during an audit of the company when he joined (although didn’t act to change any of the practices). Perhaps more importantly, he maintained the legality of the situation:
“Jumpshot has operated as an independent company from the very beginning, with its own management and board of directors, building their products and services via the data feed coming from the Avast antivirus products,” he wrote. “During all those years, both Avast and Jumpshot acted fully within legal bounds – and we very much welcomed the introduction of GDPR in the European Union in May 2018, as it was a rigorous legal framework addressing how companies should treat customer data. Both Avast and Jumpshot committed themselves to 100% GDPR compliance.”
We have reached out to the Czech DPA to ask if it is going to be conducting any investigations around the company in relation to Jumpshot and its practices with data.
In the meantime, with the regulatory implications to one side, the incident has been a blow to Avast, which has in the last couple of days seen its shares tumble nearly 11 percent on the London Stock Exchange where it is traded. The company is currently valued around £4 billion (or $5.2 billion at today’s exchange rates).
Apple was the market leader in smartphone shipments in Q4 of 2019, followed by Samsung and Huawei, according to the Strategy analytics report for Q2. The Cupertino maker shipped 70.7M iPhones - a 7% increase compared to the 65.9M iPhones it shipped in Q4 of 2018. That's an impressive feat given that the global market remained flat. All in all Apple shipped an estimated 197.4M iPhones in 2019. Samsung remained the global leader for 2019 with a total of 295.1M smartphones shipped and was a close second to Apple in the fourth quarter with 68.8M Galaxies shipped. Despite a strong...
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It is that time of the year when Korean companies announce their financial reports. Samsung has just revealed the Q4 profit dropped on a yearly basis due to fall in memory chip prices and weakness in display panels. The mobile business in particular saw increased quarterly demand for phones and tablets, mostly because it was the holiday season. However revenue and profit decreased following extensive marketing expenses and the lack of any flagship smartphone announcements. Rounding up Q4 means we have the full numbers for the fiscal year as well. The IT & Mobile Communications...
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If you were the star of every show, would you watch more mobile television? Snapchat is betting that narcissism drives resonance for its new weekly videos that put your and your friends’ customizable Bitmoji avatars into a flurry of silly animated situations. Bitmoji TV premieres on Saturday morning, and it’s remarkably funny, exciting, and addictive. Think cartoon SNL watched on fast-forward with you playing a secret agent, a zombie president, or a Moonlympics athlete.
It’s a style of content only Snapchat could pull off that relies on ubiquitous personalized avatars only Snapchat owns. Snapchat says 70% of its daily active users, or 147 million of its 210 million, have made themselves a Bitmoji. Snapchat bought Bitmoji’s parent company Bitstripsacqu in 2016 for a steal at $62.5 million, and it’s paying off. Amidst a sea premium video and haphazard Stories that blur together across streaming services and social apps, Snapchat finally found something Facebook can’t copy.
“We really believe that we have invented a new category of entertainment. It’s scripted but it’s personalized. You could take that in a million directions” says Bitmoji co-founder and CEO Ba Blackstock who wrote and directed Bitmoji TV. “First and foremost, I hope that everyone who watches this has kind of a mind blowing experience that they’ve never had before.”
Bitmoji TV, which TechCrunch was first to report Snapchat was building last month, will have its own Snapchat Show page where users can subscribe to get notifications and see new episodes on the Discover Page. Users can visit this page on mobile or tap and hold on the Snapcode below while pointing at it with the Snapchat camera.
They’re designed to be PG-13 with some bleeped out swearing and a little bloody violence. The shows are made out of Bitmoji’s Toronto office and are based on North American TV, film, and advertising. Each episode cuts away and back to a main story, with the first two centered around an America’s Best Bitmoji game show and a Mime Cops hostage negotiation. Interspersed are ‘channel flips’ between shorter single-gag clips that take your avatar into sit-coms, soap operas, action movies, and informercials.
But you’re not alone it Bitmoji TV. Your co-star in these segments is the Bitmoji of whichever person you last interacted with on Snapchat. That lets you control whether you want your best friend, your significant other, or some rando alongside you. That decision will change the way you interpret the jokes and scenes.
Getting philosophical, Blackstock explains that “When you say words to me, it’s not just your words in a vacuum. They’re coming from you. You’re the medium . . . In any narrative fiction you learn about the characters, they have back story, they have relationships that exist under the story that color it.” Who you make your supporting actor lends personal subtext that enriches each story. That’s one reason you can’t download or easily share clips of your version of Bitmoji TV, and Snap instead just lets you share a link to watch the real thing. Blackstock says it just doesn’t have the same effect if you’re not in the spotlight.
One thing you won’t find in Bitmoji TV, at least at first, are advertisements. The initial 10 episode season won’t have them. But that does seem to be the plan. When I asked Blackstock about monetizing the show, he said “You can imagine. Discover has a business model of showing ads.” Snapchat would get to keep that ad money since it makes Bitmoji TV rather than paying it out with revenue shares or by buying content. Just as we’ve seen music and video streaming apps move to cut royalty expenses by creating content in-house, Snap seems to have the same idea.
Snapchat has yet to monetize Bitmoji directly beyond its merchandise store where you can get yours on t-shirts and mugs. Surprisingly, it doesn’t sell premium or branded clothes and looks for Bitmoji, nor allow brands to pay to have their apparel featured. Snap did recently start letting people mix-and-match clothes for their Bitmoji, and when asked if that could foreshadow a revenue opportunity, Blackstock said “You gotta build the store before you start selling the clothes . . . this was a foundational evolution designed to not only improve the experience for users but to set the stage for things to come.”
Having watched the first three episodes, I’m pretty certain Bitmoji TV is going to be a hit. The show embodies the whimsy of Snapchat and the youth culture of the community who uses it. It’s rare to see something so premium but so unabashedly weird. It’s remininscent of the Rick & Morty ‘Interdimensional Cable’ episodes that similarly features rapid-fire snippets of fake and absurd TV shows.
Yet “the idea for Bitmoji TV actually precedes Bitmoji. It’s something I’ve been thinking about since those days [before Snapchat acquired it.] In a way it preceding Bitstrips. I’ve been making comics and cartoons since I was a little kid” Blackstock tells me. “That’s how I met two of the co-fodners of Bitstrips was passing them comics in class. Even after school when we had jobs I would draw comics of my co-founder that were very compromising and I would fax them to his office to try to get him fired” he recalls with a hearty laugh. Now he has the budget to make them TV-worthy but meant for your phone.
Snapchat has a good hunch it’s going to work because it’s been testing a comic-stripped down version called Bitmoji Stories. These still or lightly-animated slide shows use the same idea of starring the avatars of you and your friends, but without full-motion video or constant audio. 130 million people have watched Bitmoji Stories since they launched in late 2018.
Blackstock tells me “They were easier to make at a high volume and release ongoingly, which we could put out as a prelude to get our audience ready for personalized content — but also for us to learn from and see how people responded and figure out our own processes in terms of production.” Snapchat had animators and engineers work hand in hand to build a rendering system for Bitmoji Stories and TV. That helps it rapidly produce the personalizable content than can flex to accomodate any shaped avatar without them clipping into their surroundings.
Tonight, Bitmoji TV will receive an in-person ‘silent disco-style’ premiere at Los Angeles’ Soho House. Guests will scan a code on the big screen, don headphones, and each watch on their own phone with themselves as the star.
Snapchat’s head of original content Sean Mills tells me that “New technology will unlock new kinds of storytelling” citing “the power of bringing a user into the experience with their best friends.” Bitmoji TV has certainly found a way to turn vanity into engagement.
If the modern era of visual communication began with the selfie, Snap honed it into a messaging tool. A few words were more interesting with a friend’s face behind it. The original Bitmoji chat stickers let your face say whatever you wanted even without having to get on camera. Snapchat’s new Cameo feature grafts that face into GIFs to express even more complex feelings. And now with Bitmoji TV, an animated version of your face can live out your wildest fantasies or weirdest dreams. That’s something worth tuning into.
Huawei has announced that it will launch a new smartphone called nova 7i on February 14 in Malaysia. However, this isn't really a new smartphone and is actually a re-branded nova 6 SE that was unveiled in China earlier last month. The Huawei nova 7i will have a Kirin 810 SoC at the helm with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage. It will run Android 10-based EMUI 10 out of the box, but due to the US ban, it will not ship with Google's services. The nova 7i will sport a 6.4" FHD+ LCD with a punch hole in the upper-left corner for the 16MP selfie camera. Around the back, it will have a quad camera...
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Motorola's big upcoming event is scheduled for February 23 and will bring us at least four new phones. We've already gathered plenty of details about the Moto G8, G8 Power and the flagship Moto Edge+ but one of the big mysteries was the stylus packing Moto G Stylus midranger. Earlier today we got confirmation of its naming and suggested specs and now we have our first real images of the device. Twitter user Gustavo Gonzalez got a hold of a pre-production unit of the Moto G Stylus giving us our first real look at the device. As expected it packs a hole punch display and a stylus. The...
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Chinese phone maker Poco launched the Poco F1 (aka Pocophone F1 outside India) back in August 2018, and after a long hiatus of more than a year, the company is set to make a comeback on February 4 with its second smartphone - Poco X2. The Poco X2, likely to be based on the Redmi K30, will be sold through Flipkart in India and the e-commerce giant has already revealed that X2 will boast a 120Hz RealityFlow display. Now Flipkart has also confirmed that the X2 will support 27W fast charging. The rest of the specs are yet to be officially confirmed, but if an image received by an Indian...
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Maze wants to reinvent usability tests by letting you turn design prototypes into tests in just a few clicks. It could become the equivalent of a developing test suite for developers, but this time for designers — it could be something that you run before shipping an update to make sure everything works fine. The startup just raised a $2 million funding round and launched a couple of new features.
Since I first covered the company, Maze founders Jonathan Widawski and Thomas Mary still have the same vision. The company wants to empower designers and turn them into user testing experts. With Maze, you can turn your InVision, Marvel or Sketch projects into a browser-based user test.
You can then share a link with a group of users to get actionable insights on your upcoming design changes. Everything works in a web browser on both desktop and mobile.
After running a testing campaign, you get a detailed report with a success rate (how many people tapped on all the right buttons to achieve something in your app), where your users drop off, polling results and more.
That product has been working well, attracting 20,000 users working for IBM, Greenpeace, Accenture, BMW and more.
Now, Maze also supports Figma projects. Given the hype behind Figma, adding this feature is important to stay relevant. It also opens up a new market for Maze — companies using Figma as their main design tool.
Maze has also added a feature that should be particularly useful for companies that are just starting with user testing. The startup can put together a testers panel for you.
This is completely optional and you can just stick with your monthly software-as-a-service plan and work with your own panel. But it provides a good end-to-end experience if you want to centralize all your user testing needs under one roof.
Maze has also raised a $2 million funding round. Amplify Partners is leading the round with existing investors Seedcamp and Partech also participating. Business angels in this round also include Eric Wittman, the former Director of Operations at Adobe and COO at Figma, Peter Skomoroch, the former Head of AI Automation & Data Products at Workday, and Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel.
The Realme C3 is arriving on February 6, but a week ahead of the launch Flipkart has set up a landing page for the C3 on its site revealing most of its specifications. The Realme C3 will be powered by the recently announced Helio G70 SoC and come in two memory versions - 3GB/32GB and 4GB/64GB. It will also likely have a microSD card slot for storage expansion. The Realme C3 will boast a 6.5" waterdrop notch display, which is the largest yet in the lineup. Flipkart doesn't reveal the resolution of the screen, but we are likely looking at an HD+ panel. The display will be protected by...
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Oppo held its Inno Day back in December, where it teased its upcoming smartwatch and true wireless headphones. Now, a Vice President at Oppo shared the first image of the Oppo smartwatch - it will have a square screen with curved edges and two buttons on the side. It bears a strong resemblance to the Apple Watch, but unlike Cupertino's wearable that has one crown and one button, the Oppo smartwach has two keys, with a hole in between them. We think this might be a microphone, meaning you can talk on your Oppo smartwatch without needing the smartphone. The big question remains...
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Xiaomi is about to launch the Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro and we've been seeing multiple leaks for the past few weeks. The latest one comes from China, of course, and it is a screenshot of the About page of the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro. The image suggests the phone will have 16 GB RAM and 512 gigs of storage, along with other impressive specs. We haven't seen a smartphone with 16 GB RAM yet, and there are just a handful of devices on the market that have 12 GB, so we are either looking at a revolution or a fake image. Looking at the image, some of the stuff isn't that surprising - Snapdragon 865...
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HMD Global has postponed the launch of the next Nokia flagship smartphone in order to give it a better chance at competing in the 2020 market, according to recent reports. This means it will only be out sometime during the fall, which gives the company plenty of time to switch to the Snapdragon 865 chipset, which all of its competitors will be using anyway. This delay may also give HMD enough time to pull a first in the mobile world: an under-display selfie camera. Apparently this is now in testing for the Nokia 9.2, according to a source that's been reliable at times in the...
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Motorola's G series is its most successful ever, and over the past few years has been what's kept the manufacturer going. While the company is expected to soon reveal its first true flagship smartphone in years, the Edge+, it's also getting ready to expand the G family even more. Remember that recently leaked stylus-toting Motorola device? Because its official-looking render leaked so soon after the first ever mention of the Edge+, some people assumed it was that, but it's not (and this should have been made obvious by its huge bottom bezel, unworthy of a true high-end device in this day...
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Research firm Canalys frequently releases insight on how smartphone brands perform in various parts of the world. The latest report looks into the smartphone market in India, which performed quite well towards the end-of-the-year quarter. We also get a look at the total performance of 2019 and how it compares to the previous year. In Q4 of 2019, the Indian market grew by 14%, shipping 39 million smartphone units versus 34.1 million in the same quarter of 2018. Xiaomi leads the quarter with 11.2 million units with Samsung and Vivo in the respective second and third ranking spots, each...
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Kleiner Perkins, one of the most storied franchises in venture capital, has already invested much of the $600 million it raised last year and is now going back out to the market to raise its 19th fund, according to multiple sources.
The firm, which underwent a significant restructuring over the last two years, went on an investment tear over the course of 2019 as new partners went out to build up a new portfolio for the firm — almost of a whole cloth.
A spokesperson for KPCB declined to comment on the firm’s fundraising plans citing SEC regulations.
The quick turnaround for KPCB is indicative of a broader industry trend, which has investors pulling the trigger on term sheets for new startups in days rather than weeks.
Speaking onstage at the Upfront Summit, an event at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. organized by the Los Angeles-based venture firm Upfront Ventures as a showcase for technology and investment talent in Southern California, venture investor Josh Kopelman spoke to the heightened pace of dealmaking at his own firm.
The founder of First Round Ventures said that the average time from first contact with a startup to drawing up a term sheet has collapsed from 90 days in 2004 to 9 days today.
Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital: we can look at every company we’ve ever funded, and learned that the time from first email/contact to term sheet has shrunk from 90 days in 2004 to just 9 today.
“This could also be due to changes in the competitive landscape … and there may be changes with First Round Capital itself,” says one investor. “It may have been once upon a time that they were looking at really early raw stuff… But, today, First Round is not really in the first round anymore. Companies are raising some angel money or Y Combinator money.”
At KPCB, the once-troubled firm has been buoyed by recent exits in companies like Beyond Meat, a deal spearheaded by the firm’s former partner Amol Deshpande (who now serves as the chief executive of Farmers Business Network) and Slack.
And its new partners are clearly angling to make names for themselves.
“KP used to be a small team doing hands-on company building. We’re moving away from being this institution with multiple products and really just focusing on early-stage venture capital,” Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman said when the firm announced its last fund.
At the time, as Fortune reported, Palihapitiya and the other Social + Capital partners, Ted Maidenberg and Mamoon Hamid would have become partners in the venture firm under the terms of the proposed deal.
The new Kleiner Perkins is a much more streamlined operation. Gone are the sidecar and thematic funds that were a hallmark of earlier strategies and gone too are the superstars brought in by Mary Meeker to manage Kleiner Perkins’ growth equity investments. Meeker absconded with much of that late stage investment team to form Bond — and subsequently raised hundreds of millions of dollars herself.
Those strategies have been replaced by a clutch of young investors and seasoned Kleiner veterans including Ted Schlein who has long been an expert in enterprise software and security.
“Maybe at this point they think they can raise based on the whole story about Mamoon taking over and a few years from now they won’t be able to raise on that story and will have to raise on the results,” says one investor with knowledge of the industry. “Mamoon is a pretty legit, good investor. But the legacy of the firm is going to be tough to overcome.”
All of these changes are not necessarily sitting well with limited partners.
“LPs are not really happy about what’s going on,” says one investor with knowledge of the venture space. “Everybody thinks valuations are too high since 2011 and people are thinking there’s going to be a recession. LPs think funds are coming back to market too fast and they’re being greedy and there’s not enough vintage diversification but LPs … feel almost obligated that they have to do these things… Investing in Sequoia is like that saying that you don’t get fired for buying IBM.”
Kantar Group released its latest smartphone shipments report, covering the October-December 2019 period. The main takeaway is the solid sales performance of the iPhone 11 which did solidly in markets across Europe, the US, Japan and Australia. 24.3% of all smartphones shipped during the Q4 period in the five major European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom) ran iOS. The iPhone 11 specifically accounted for an estimated 10% of all smartphones shipments during the period in Europe and the US, which is more than double the share of the iPhone XR during the same period...
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At the FAA’s 23rd Annual Commercial Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, DC on Wednesday, a panel dedicated to the topic of trends in VC around space startups touched on public vs. private funding, the right kinds of space companies that should even be considering venture funding, and, perhaps most notably, the big L: Liquidity.
Moderator Tess Hatch, Vice President at Bessemer Venture Partners, addressed the topic in response to an audience question that noted while we’ve heard a lot about how much money will flow into space-related startups from the VC community, we haven’t actually et seen much in the way of liquidity events that prove out the validity of these investments.
“In 2008, a company called Skybox was created and a handful of years later Google acquired the company for $500 million,” Hatch said. “Every venture capitalist’s ears perked up and they thought ‘Hey, that’s pretty good ROI in a short amount of time – maybe the space thing is an investable area’ and then a ton of venture capital investments flooded into space startups, and all of these venture capitalists made one, or maybe two investments in the area. Since then, there have not been many — if any – liquidity events: Perhaps Virgin Galactic going public via the SPAC (special uprose vehicle) on the New York Stock Exchange late last year would be the second. So we’re still waiting; we’re still waiting for those exits, we are still waiting for companies to pave the path for the 400+ startups in the ecosystem to return our investment.”
Hatch added that she’s looking at a number of companies who have the potential to break this somewhat prolonged exit drought in 2020, including five who are either quite mature in terms of their development, naming SpaceX,Rocket Lab, Planet and Spire as all likely candidates to have some kind of liquidity event in 2020, with the mostly likely being an IPO.
Space as an industry was described to me recently as a ‘maturing’ startup market by Space Angels CEO Chad Anderson, by virtue of the distribution of activity in terms of the overall investment rounds in the sector. There is indeed a lot of activity with early stage companies and seed rounds, but the fact remains that there hasn’t been much in the way of exits, and it’s also worth pointing out that corporate VCs haven’t been as acquisitive in space as some of their consumer and enterprise technology counterparts.
The panel touched on a lot more apart from liquidity, which actually only came up towards the end of the discussion, which included panelists Astranis CEO and co-founder John Gedmark; Capella Space CEO and founder Payam Banazadeh and Rocket Lab VP of Global Commercial Launch Services Shane Fleming. Both Gedmark and Banazadeh addressed aspects of the risks and benefits of seeking VC as a space technology company.
“Not every space business is a venture-backable business,” said Banazadeh earlier in the conversation. “But there are a lot of space businesses that are specifically going after raising venture money, and that’s dangerous for everyone – because at the end of the day venture is looking at high risk, high return. The ‘high return’ comes from being able to get substantial amount of revenue in a market that’s big
enough for those revenues to be coming from. But if your idea is to go build, maybe, some very specific part in a satellite, then you have to make the case of why you’ll be able to make those returns for the investors, and in a lot of cases, that’s just not possible.”
Banazadeh also concedes that doing any kind of space technology development is expensive, and the money has to come from somewhere. Gedmark talked about one popular source, government funding and grants, and why that often isn’t as obviously a positive thing for startups as it might seem.
“Small government grants can be great, and obviously a fantastic source of non dilutive capital,” Gedmark said. “But there is a little bit of a trick there, or something to be aware of: I think people are often surprised how much time is spent in the early days of a startup refining the exact idea and the product, and if you’re not certain that you have the that product market fit […] then, the government grant can be extremely dangerous, because they will fund you to do something that is sort of similar to what to what you’re doing, but it really prevents you changing your approach later; you’re going to end up spending time executing on the specific project of the program manager on the government side and you’re executing on what they want.”
VC funds, on the other hand, come with the built-in expectation that you’re going to refine and potentially even change direction altogether, Gedmark says. Depending on the terms of the public funding you’re seeking, that flexibility may not be part of the arrangement, which ultimately could be more important than a bit of equity dilution.
