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Tile secures $40 million to take on Apple AirTag with new products
Tile, the maker of Bluetooth-powered lost item finder beacons and, more recently, a staunch Apple critic, announced today it has raised $40 million in non-dilutive debt financing from Capital IP. The funding will be put toward investment in Tile’s finding technologies, ahead of the company’s plan to unveil a new slate of products and features that the company believes will help it to better compete with Apple’s AirTags and further expand its market.
The company has been a longtime leader in the lost item finder space, offering consumers small devices they can attach to items — like handbags, luggage, bikes, wallets, keys and more — which can then be tracked using the Tile smartphone app for iOS or Android. When items go missing, the Tile app leverages Bluetooth to find the items and can make them play a sound. If the items are further afield, Tile taps into its broader finding network consisting of everyone who has the app installed on their phone and other access points. Through this network, Tile is able to automatically and anonymously communicate the lost item’s location back to its owner through their own Tile app.
Image Credits: Tile
Tile has also formed partnerships focused on integrating its finding network into over 40 different third-party devices, including those across audio, travel, wearables and PC categories. Notable brand partners include HP, Dell, Fitbit, Skullcandy, Away, Xfinity, Plantronics, Sennheiser, Bose, Intel and others. Tile says it’s seen 200% year-over-year growth on activations of these devices with its service embedded.
To date, Tile has sold more than 40 million devices and has over 425,000 paying customers — a metric it’s revealing for the first time. It doesn’t disclose its total number of users, both free and paid combined, however. During the first half of 2021, Tile says revenues increased by over 50%, but didn’t provide hard numbers.
While Tile admits that the COVID-19 pandemic had some impacts on international expansions, as some markets have been slower to rebound, it has still seen strong performance outside the U.S., and considers that a continued focus.
The pandemic, however, hasn’t been Tile’s only speed bump.
When Apple announced its plans to compete with the launch of AirTags, Tile went on record to call it unfair competition. Unlike Tile devices, Apple’s products could tap into the iPhone’s U1 chip to allow for more accurate finding through the use of ultra-wideband technologies available on newer iPhone models. Tile, meanwhile, has plans for its own ultra-wideband-powered device, but hadn’t been provided the same access. In other words, Apple gave its own lost item finder early, exclusive access to a feature that would allow it to differentiate itself from the competition. (Apple has since announced it’s making ultra-wideband APIs available to third-party developers, but this access wasn’t available from day one of AirTag’s arrival.)
Image Credits: Tile internal concept art
Tile has been vocal on the matter of Apple’s anti-competitive behavior, having testified in multiple congressional hearings alongside other Apple critics, like Spotify and Match. As a result of increased regulatory pressure, Apple later opened up its Find My network to third-party devices, in an effort to placate Tile and the other rivals its AirTags would disadvantage.
But Tile doesn’t want to route its customers to Apple’s first-party app — it intends to use its own app in order to compete based on its proprietary features and services. Among other things, this includes Tile’s subscriptions. A base plan is $29.99 per year, offering features like free battery replacement, smart alerts and location history. A $99.99 per year plan also adds insurance of sorts — it pays up to $1,000 per year for items it can’t find. (AirTag doesn’t do that.)
Despite its many differentiators, Tile faces steep competition from the ultra-wideband-capable AirTags, which have the advantage of tapping into Apple’s own finding network of potentially hundreds of millions of iPhone owners.
However, Tile CEO CJ Prober — who joined the company in 2018 — claims AirTag hasn’t impacted the company’s revenue or device sales.
“But that doesn’t take away from the fact that they’re making things harder for us,” he says of Apple. “We’re a growing business. We’re winning the hearts and minds of consumers… and they’re competing unfairly.”
“When you own the platform, you shouldn’t be able to identify a category that you want to enter, disadvantage the incumbents in that category, and then advantage yourself — like they did in our case,” he adds.
Tile is preparing to announce an upcoming product refresh that may allow it to better take on the AirTag. Presumably, this will include the pre-announced ultra-wideband version of Tile, but the company says full details will be shared next week. Tile may also expand its lineup in other ways that will allow it to better compete based on look and feel, size and shape, and functionality.
Tile’s last round of funding was $45 million in growth equity in 2019. Now it’s shifted to debt. In addition to new debt financing, Tile is also refinancing some of its existing debt with this fundraise, it says.
“My philosophy is it’s always good to have a mix of debt and equity. So some amount of debt on the balance sheet is good. And it doesn’t incur dilution to our shareholders,” Prober says. “We felt this was the right mix of capital choice for us.”
The company chose to work with Capital IP, a group it’s had a relationship with over the last three years, and who Tile had considered bringing on as an investor. The group has remained interested in Tile and excited about its trajectory, Prober notes.
“We are excited to partner with the Tile team as they continue to define and lead the finding category through hardware and software-based innovations,” said Capital IP’s Managing Partner Riyad Shahjahan, in a statement. “The impressive revenue growth and fast-climbing subscriber trends underline the value proposition that Tile delivers in a platform-agnostic manner, and were a critical driver in our decision to invest. The Tile team has an ambitious roadmap ahead and we look forward to supporting their entry into new markets and applications to further cement their market leadership,” he added.
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Epic Games appeals last week’s ruling in antitrust battle with Apple
Fortnite maker Epic Games is appealing last week’s ruling in its court battle with Apple, where a federal judge said Apple would no longer be allowed to block developers from adding links to alternative payment mechanisms, but stopped short of dubbing Apple a monopolist. The latter would have allowed Epic Games to argue for alternative means of serving its iOS user base, including perhaps, through third-party app stores or even sideloading capabilities built into Apple’s mobile operating system, similar to those on Google’s Android OS.
Apple immediately declared the court battle a victory, as the judge had agreed with its position that the company was “not in violation of antitrust law” and had also deemed Apple’s success in the app and gaming ecosystem as “not illegal.” Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney, meanwhile, said the ruling was not a win for either developers or consumers. On Twitter, he hinted that the company may appeal the decision when he said, “We will fight on.”
In a court filing published on Sunday (see below), Epic Games officially stated its attention to appeal U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ final judgment and “all orders leading to or producing that judgment.”
As part of the judge’s decision, Epic Games had been ordered to pay Apple the 30% of the $12 million it earned when it introduced its alternative payment system in Fortnite on iOS, which was then in breach of its legal contract with Apple.
The appellate court will revisit how Judge Gonzalez Rogers defined the market where Epic Games had argued Apple was acting as a monopolist. Contrary to both parties’ wishes, Gonzalez Rogers defined it as the market for “digital mobile gaming transactions” specifically. Though an appeal may or may not see the court shifting its opinion in Epic Games’ favor, a new ruling could potentially help to clarify the vague language used in the injunction to describe how Apple must now accommodate developers who want to point their customers to other payment mechanisms.
So far, the expectation floating around the developer community is that Apple will simply extend the “reader app” category exception to all non-reader apps (apps that provide access to purchased content). Apple recently settled with a Japanese regulator by agreeing to allow reader apps to point users to their own website where users could sign up and manage their accounts, which could include customers paying for subscriptions — like Netflix or Spotify subscriptions, for instance. Apple said this change would be global.
In briefings with reporters, Apple said the details of the injunction issued with the Epic Games ruling, however, would still need to be worked out. Given the recency of the decision, the company has not yet communicated with developers on how this change will impact them directly nor has it updated its App Store guidelines with new language.
Reached for comment, Epic Games said it does not have any further statements on its decision to appeal at this time.
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Meet retail’s new sustainability strategy: Personalization
We have been raised to believe in recycling, but it has mostly been a sham — only 9% of all plastic waste produced in 2018 was recycled. The beauty industry produces over 120 billion units of packaging every year, little of which is recycled. Globally, an estimated 92 million tons of textile waste ends up in landfills.
Reducing waste is key to meeting environmental milestones, and some retail firms have narrowed in on a unique approach to minimize what their customers throw away: personalization. Accurate personalization can guide consumers to the right products, reducing waste while increasing conversion and loyalty.
Reducing waste is key to meeting environmental milestones, and some retail firms have narrowed in on a unique approach to minimize what their customers throw away: personalization.
For big brands and retailers, personalization is expected to be the top category for tech investment this year. Moreover, personalization holds high appeal, with 80% of survey respondents indicating they are more likely to do business with a company if it offers personalized experiences and 90% indicating that they find personalization appealing, according to a survey by Epsilon.
Startups that deliver sustainable personalization solutions that also improve business for retailers and brands fall into three categories:
- AR virtual try-on with shade matching.
- Advanced virtual fitting rooms with VR/AR for fashion.
- Smart packaging with IoT and distributed ledger technology.
AR virtual try-on with shade matching
Faces are easy to map, since it’s not difficult to virtually place a lipstick color on a face, but using AR and AI to recommend skin-tone-matching makeup products has been challenging for many AR virtual try-on companies. “I’ve been searching for an intuitive foundation-shade-finder tool since launching Cult Beauty in 2008, and nothing has lived up to the experience of having a professional match you in daylight until I discovered MIME,” says Alexia Inge, founder of Cult Beauty. “There are so many variables like light, skin tones, prevalent undertones, device, screen, OS, formula density, formula oxidation, as well as preferences for coverage levels, finish, brand and skin type,” she says.
MIME founder and CEO Christopher Merkle said, “Virtual try-on has exploded in the past few years, but for color cosmetics, the technology doesn’t help solve the primary customer pain point: shade matching. From day one, I decided to focus our company’s R&D efforts exclusively on color accuracy. I want to make sure that when the consumer receives their foundation or concealer in the mail, it’s the perfect shade once applied to their skin.”
MIME’s Shade Finder AI allows consumers to take a photo of themselves, answer a few questions, then get matched with a makeup color that pairs with their skin tone. MIME helps retailers and brands increase their online and in-store purchase conversion by up to five times. More than 22% of beauty returns are due to poor customer color purchases, but Merkle says MIME can get returns as low as 0.1%.
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Report: India may be next in line to mandate changes to Apple’s in-app payment rules
Summer is still technically in session, but a snowball is slowly developing in the world of apps, and specifically the world of in-app payments. A report in Reuters today says that the Competition Commission of India, the country’s monopoly regulator, will soon be looking at an antitrust suit filed against Apple over how it mandates that app developers use Apple’s own in-app payment system — thereby giving Apple a cut of those payments — when publishers charge users for subscriptions and other items in their apps.
The suit, filed by an Indian nonprofit called “Together We Fight Society”, said in a statement to Reuters that it was representing consumer and startup interests in its complaint.
The move would be the latest in what has become a string of challenges from national regulators against app store operators — specifically Apple but also others like Google and WeChat — over how they wield their positions to enforce market practices that critics have argued are anti-competitive. Other countries that have in recent weeks reached settlements, passed laws or are about to introduce laws include Japan, South Korea, Australia, the U.S. and the European Union.
And in India specifically, the regulator is currently working through a similar investigation as it relates to in-app payments in Android apps, which Google mandates use its proprietary payment system. Google and Android dominate the Indian smartphone market, with the operating system active on 98% of the 520 million devices in use in the country as of the end of 2020.
It will be interesting to watch whether more countries wade in as a result of these developments. Ultimately, it could force app store operators, to avoid further and deeper regulatory scrutiny, to adopt new and more flexible universal policies.
In the meantime, we are seeing changes happen on a country-by-country basis.
Just yesterday, Apple reached a settlement in Japan that will let publishers of “reader” apps (those for using or consuming media like books and news, music, files in the cloud and more) to redirect users to external sites to provide alternatives to Apple’s proprietary in-app payment provision. Although it’s not as seamless as paying within the app, redirecting previously was typically not allowed, and in doing so the publishers can avoid Apple’s cut.
South Korean legislators earlier this week approved a measure that will make it illegal for Apple and Google to make a commission by forcing developers to use their proprietary payment systems.
And last week, Apple also made some movements in the U.S. around allowing alternative forms of payments, but, relatively speaking, the concessions were somewhat indirect: app publishers can refer to alternative, direct payment options in apps now, but not actually offer them. (Not yet at least.)
Some developers and consumers have been arguing for years that Apple’s strict policies should open up more. Apple however has long said in its defense that it mandates certain developer policies to build better overall user experiences, and for reasons of security. But, as app technology has evolved, and consumer habits have changed, critics believe that this position needs to be reconsidered.
One factor in Apple’s defense in India specifically might be the company’s position in the market. Android absolutely dominates India when it comes to smartphones and mobile services, with Apple actually a very small part of the ecosystem.
As of the end of 2020, it accounted for just 2% of the 520 million smartphones in use in the country, according to figures from Counterpoint Research quoted by Reuters. That figure had doubled in the last five years, but it’s a long way from a majority, or even significant minority.
The antitrust filing in India has yet to be filed formally, but Reuters notes that the wording leans on the fact that anti-competitive practices in payments systems make it less viable for many publishers to exist at all, since the economics simply do not add up:
“The existence of the 30% commission means that some app developers will never make it to the market,” Reuters noted from the filing. “This could also result in consumer harm.”
Reuters notes that the CCI will be reviewing the case in the coming weeks before deciding whether it should run a deeper investigation or dismiss it. It typically does not publish filings during this period.
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A new Senate bill would totally upend Apple and Google’s app store dominance
With two giants calling the shots and collecting whatever tolls they see fit, mobile software makers have long complained that app stores take an unfair cut of the cash that should be flowing directly to developers. Hearing those concerns, a group of senators introduced a new bill this week that, if passed, would greatly diminish Apple and Google’s ability to control app purchases in their operating systems and completely shake up the way that mobile software gets distributed.
The new bill, called the Open App Markets Act, would enshrine quite a few rights that could benefit app developers tired of handing 30% of their earnings to Apple and Google. The bill, embedded in full below, would require companies that control operating systems to allow third-party apps and app stores.
It would also prevent those companies from blocking developers from telling users about lower prices for their software that they might find outside of official app stores. Apple and Google would also be barred from leveraging “non-public” information collecting through their platforms to create competing apps.
“This legislation will tear down coercive anticompetitive walls in the app economy, giving consumers more choices and smaller startup tech companies a fighting chance,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), who introduced the bipartisan bill with Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). Klobuchar chairs the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee and Blackburn and Blumenthal are both subcommittee members.
Senator Blackburn called Apple and Google’s app store practices a “direct affront to a free and fair marketplace” and Sen. Klobuchar noted that their behavior raises “serious competition concerns.”
The bill draws on information collected earlier this year from that subcommittee’s hearing on app stores and competition. In the hearing, lawmakers heard from Apple and Google as well as Spotify, Tile and Match Group, three companies that argued their businesses have been negatively impacted by anti-competitive app store policies.
“… We urge Congress to swiftly pass the Open App Markets Act,” Spotify Chief Legal Officer Horacio Gutierrez said of the new bill. “Absent action, we can expect Apple and others to continue changing the rules in favor of their own services, and causing further harm to consumers, developers and the digital economy.”
The Coalition for App Fairness, a developer advocacy group, praised the bill for its potential to spur innovation in digital markets. “The bipartisan Open App Markets Act is a step towards holding big tech companies accountable for practices that stifle competition for developers in the U.S. and around the world,” CAF executive director Meghan DiMuzio said.
Hoping to head off future regulatory headaches, Apple dropped its own fees for companies that generate less than $1 million in App Store revenue from 30% to 15% last year. Google followed suit with its own gesture, dropping fees to 15% for the first $1 million in revenue a developer earns through the Play Store in a year. Some developers critical of the companies’ practices saw those changes as little more than a publicity stunt.
Developers have long complained about the high tolls they pay to distribute their software through the world’s two major mobile operating systems. That fight escalated over the last year when Epic Games circumvented Apple’s payments rules by allowing Fortnite players to pay Epic directly, setting off a legal fight that has huge implications for the mobile software world. Following a May trial, the verdict is expected later this year.
“This will make it easier for developers of all sizes to challenge these harmful practices and seek relief from retaliation, be it during litigation or simply because they dared speak up,” Epic Games VP of Public Policy Corie Wright said of the new bill.
Unlike Apple, Google does allow apps to be “sideloaded,” installed onto devices outside of the Google Play Store. But documents unsealed in Epic’s parallel case against Google revealed that the Play Store’s creator knows the sideloading process is a terrible experience for users — something the company brings up when pressuring developers to stick with its official app marketplace.
The counterargument here is that official app stores make apps safer and smoother for consumers. While Apple and Google extract heavy fees for selling mobile software through the App Store and the Google Play Store, the companies both argue that streamlining apps through those official channels protects people from malware and allows for prompt software updates to patch security concerns that could jeopardize user privacy.
“At Apple, our focus is on maintaining an App Store where people can have confidence that every app must meet our rigorous guidelines and their privacy and security is protected,” an Apple spokesperson told TechCrunch.
Adam Kovacevich, a former Google policy executive who leads the new tech-backed industry group Chamber of Progress, called the new bill “a finger in the eye” for Android and iPhone owners.
“I don’t see any consumers marching in Washington demanding that Congress make their smartphones dumber,” Kovacevich said. “And Congress has better things to do than intervene in a multi-million-dollar dispute between businesses.”
At least in Google’s case, the counterargument has its own counterargument. Android has long been notorious for malware, but apparently most of that malicious software isn’t making its way onto devices through sideloading — it’s walking through the Google Play Store’s front door.
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UK’s CMA opens market study into Apple, Google’s mobile ‘duopoly’
The U.K.’s competition watchdog will take a deep dive look into Apple and Google’s dominance of the mobile ecosystem, it said today — announcing a market study which will examine the pair’s respective smartphone platforms (iOS and Android); their app stores (App Store and Play Store); and web browsers (Safari and Chrome).
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is concerned that the mobile platform giants’ “effective duopoly” in those areas might be harming consumers, it added.
The study will be wide ranging, with the watchdog concerns about the nested gateways that are created as a result of the pair’s dominance of mobile ecosystem — intermediating how consumers can access a variety of products, content and services (such as music, TV and video streaming; fitness tracking, shopping and banking, to cite some of the examples provided by the CMA).
“These products also include other technology and devices such as smart speakers, smart watches, home security and lighting (which mobiles can connect to and control),” it went on, adding that it’s looking into whether their dominance of these pipes is “stifling competition across a range of digital markets”, saying too that it’s “concerned this could lead to reduced innovation across the sector and consumers paying higher prices for devices and apps, or for other goods and services due to higher advertising prices”.
The CMA further confirmed the deep dive will examine “any effects” of the pair’s market power over other businesses — giving the example of app developers who rely on Apple or Google to market their products to customers via their smart devices.
The watchdog already has an open investigation into Apple’s App Store, following a number of antitrust complaints by developers.
It is investigating Google’s planned depreciation of third-party tracking cookies too, after complaints by adtech companies and publishers that the move could harm competition. (And just last week the CMA said it was minded to accept a series of concessions offered by Google that would enable the regulator to stop it turning off support for cookies entirely if it believes the move will harm competition.)
The CMA said both those existing investigations are examining issues that fall within the scope of the new mobile ecosystem market study but that its work on the latter will be “much broader”.
It added that it will adopt a joined-up approach across all related cases — “to ensure the best outcomes for consumers and other businesses”.
It’s giving itself a full year to examine Gapple’s mobile ecosystems.
It is also soliciting feedback on any of the issues raised in its statement of scope — calling for responses by 26 July. The CMA added that it’s also keen to hear from app developers, via its questionnaire, by the same date.
Taking on tech giants
The watchdog has previously scrutinized the digital advertising market — and found plenty to be concerned about vis-à-vis Google’s dominance there.
That earlier market study has been feeding the U.K. government’s plan to reform competition rules to take account of the market-deforming power of digital giants. And the CMA suggested the new market study, examining “Gapple’s” mobile muscle, could similarly help shape U.K.-wide competition law reforms.
Last year the U.K. announced its plan to set up a “pro-competition” regime for regulating internet platforms — including by establishing a dedicated Digital Markets Unit within the CMA (which got going earlier this year).
The legislation for the reform has not yet been put before parliament but the government has said it wants the competition regulator to be able to “proactively shape platforms’ behavior” to avoid harmful behavior before it happens” — saying too that it supports enabling ex ante interventions once a platform has been identified to have so-called “strategic market status”.
Germany already adopted similar reforms to its competition law (early this year), which enable proactive interventions to tackle large digital platforms with what is described as “paramount significance for competition across markets”. And its Federal Cartel Office has, in recent months, wasted no time in opening a number of proceedings to determine whether Amazon, Google and Facebook have such a status.
The CMA also sounds keen to get going to tackle internet gatekeepers.
Commenting in a statement, CEO Andrea Coscelli said:
Apple and Google control the major gateways through which people download apps or browse the web on their mobiles – whether they want to shop, play games, stream music or watch TV. We’re looking into whether this could be creating problems for consumers and the businesses that want to reach people through their phones.
Our ongoing work into big tech has already uncovered some worrying trends and we know consumers and businesses could be harmed if they go unchecked. That’s why we’re pressing on with launching this study now, while we are setting up the new Digital Markets Unit, so we can hit the ground running by using the results of this work to shape future plans.
The European Union also unveiled its own proposals for clipping the wings of Big Tech last year — presenting its Digital Markets Act plan in December, which will apply a single set of operational rules to so-called “gatekeeper” platforms operating across the EU.
The clear trend in Europe on digital competition is toward increasing oversight and regulation of the largest platforms — in the hopes that antitrust authorities can impose measures that will help smaller players thrive.
Critics might say that’s just playing into the tech giants’ hands, though — because it’s fiddling around the edges when more radical intervention (break ups) are what’s really needed to reboot captured markets.
Apple and Google were contacted for comment on the CMA’s market study.
A Google spokesperson said: “Android provides people with more choice than any other mobile platform in deciding which apps they use, and enables thousands of developers and manufacturers to build successful businesses. We welcome the CMA’s efforts to understand the details and differences between platforms before designing new rules.”
According to Google, the Android App Economy generated £2.8 billion in revenue for U.K. developers last year, which it claims supported 240,000 jobs across the country — citing a Public First report that it commissioned.
The tech giant also pointed to operational changes it has already made in Europe, following antitrust interventions by the European Commission — such as adding a choice screen to Android where users can pick from a list of alternative search engines.
Earlier this month it agreed to shift the format underlying that choice screen from an unpopular auction model to free participation.
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Apple announces its 2021 Apple Design Award winners
Apple incorporated the announcement of this year’s Apple Design Award winners into its virtual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) online event instead of waiting until the event had wrapped, like last year. Ahead of WWDC, Apple previewed the finalists, whose apps and games showcased a combination of technical achievement, design and ingenuity. This evening, Apple announced the winners across six new award categories.
In each category, Apple selected one app and one game as the winner.
In the Inclusivity category, winners supported people from a diversity of backgrounds, abilities and languages.
This year, winners included U.S.-based Aconite’s highly accessible game, HoloVista, where users can adjust various options for motion control, text sizes, text contrast, sound and visual effect intensity. In the game, users explore using the iPhone’s camera to find hidden objects, solve puzzles and more. (Our coverage)
Image Credits: Aconite
Another winner, Voice Dream Reader, is a text-to-speech app that supports more than two dozen languages and offers adaptive features and a high level of customizable settings.
Image Credits: Voice Dream LLC
In the Delight and Fun category, winners offer memorable and engaging experiences enhanced by Apple technologies. Belgium’s Pok Pok Playroom, a kid entertainment app that spun out of Snowman (Alto’s Adventure series), won for its thoughtful design and use of subtle haptics, sound effects and interactions. (Our coverage)
Image Credits: Pok Pok
Another winner included U.K.s’ Little Orpheus, a platformer that combines storytelling, surprises and fun, and offers a console-like experience in a casual game.
Image Credits: The Chinese Room
The Interaction category winners showcase apps that offer intuitive interfaces and effortless controls, Apple says.
The U.S.-based snarky weather app CARROT Weather won for its humorous forecasts, unique visuals and entertaining experience, which is also available as Apple Watch faces and widgets.
Image Credits: Brian Mueller, Grailr LLC
Canada’s Bird Alone game combines gestures, haptics, parallax and dynamic sound effects in clever ways to brings its world to life.
Image Credits: George Batchelor
A Social Impact category doled out awards to Denmark’s Be My Eyes, which enables people who are blind and low vision to identify objects by pairing them with volunteers from around the world using their camera. Today, it supports more than 300,000 users who are assisted by over 4.5 million volunteers. (Our coverage)
Image Credits: S/I Be My Eyes
U.K.’s ustwo games won in this category for Alba, a game that teaches about respecting the environment as players save wildlife, repair a bridge, clean up trash and more. The game also plants a tree for every download.
Image Credits: ustwo games
The Visuals and Graphics winners feature “stunning imagery, skillfully drawn interfaces, and high-quality animations,” Apple says.
Belarus-based Loóna offers sleepscape sessions, which combine relaxing activities and atmospheric sounds with storytelling to help people wind down at night. The app was recently awarded Google’s “best app” of 2020.
Image Credits: Loóna Inc
China’s Genshin Impact won for pushing the visual frontier on gaming, as motion blur, shadow quality and frame rate can be reconfigured on the fly. The game had previously made Apple’s Best of 2020 list and was Google’s best game of 2020.
Image Credits: miHoYo Limited
Innovation winners included India’s NaadSadhana, an all-in-one, studio-quality music app that helps artists perform and publish. The app uses AI and Core ML to listen and provide feedback on the accuracy of notes, and generates a backing track to match.
Image Credits: Sandeep Ranade
Riot Games’ League of Legends: Wild Rift (U.S.) won for taking a complex PC classic and delivering a full mobile experience that includes touchscreen controls, an auto-targeting system for newcomers and a mobile-exclusive camera setting.
Image Credits: Riot Games
The winners this year will receive a prize package that includes hardware and the award itself.
A video featuring the winners is here on the Apple Developer website.
“This year’s Apple Design Award winners have redefined what we’ve come to expect from a great app experience, and we congratulate them on a well-deserved win,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations, in a statement. “The work of these developers embodies the essential role apps and games play in our everyday lives, and serve as perfect examples of our six new award categories.”
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Apple’s StoreKit 2 simplifies App Store subscriptions and refunds by making them accessible inside apps
If you’ve ever bought a subscription inside an iOS app and later decided you wanted to cancel, upgrade or downgrade, or ask for a refund, you may have had trouble figuring out how to go about making that request or change. Some people today still believe that they can stop their subscription charges simply by deleting an app from their iPhone. Others may dig around unsuccessfully inside their iPhone’s Settings or on the App Store to try to find out how to ask for a refund. With the updates Apple announced in StoreKit 2 during its Worldwide Developers Conference this week, things may start to get a little easier for app customers.
StoreKit is Apple’s developer framework for managing in-app purchases — an area that’s become more complex in recent years, as apps have transitioned from offering one-time purchases to ongoing subscriptions with different tiers, lengths and feature sets.
Image Credits: Apple
Currently, users who want to manage or cancel subscriptions can do so from the App Store or their iPhone Settings. But some don’t realize the path to this section from Settings starts by tapping on your Apple ID (your name and profile photo at the top of the screen). They may also get frustrated if they’re not familiar with how to navigate their Settings or the App Store.
Meanwhile, there are a variety of ways users can request refunds on their in-app subscriptions. They can dig in their inbox for their receipt from Apple, then click the “Report a Problem” link it includes to request a refund when something went wrong. This could be useful in scenarios where you’ve bought a subscription by mistake (or your kid has!), or where the promised features didn’t work as intended.
Apple also provides a dedicated website where users can directly request refunds for apps or content. (When you Google for something like “request a refund apple” or similar queries, a page that explains the process typically comes up at the top of the search results.)
Still, many users aren’t technically savvy. For them, the easiest way to manage subscriptions or ask for refunds would be to do so from within the app itself. For this reason, many conscientious app developers tend to include links to point customers to Apple’s pages for subscription management or refunds inside their apps.
But StoreKit 2 is introducing new tools that will allow developers to implement these sort of features more easily.
One new tool is a Manage subscriptions API, which lets an app developer display the manage subscriptions page for their customer directly inside their app — without redirecting the customer to the App Store. Optionally, developers can choose to display a “Save Offer” screen to present the customer with a discount of some kind to keep them from cancelling, or it could display an exit survey so you can ask the customer why they decided to end their subscription.
When implemented, the customer will be able to view a screen inside the app that looks just like the one they’d visit in the App Store to cancel or change a subscription. After canceling, they’ll be shown a confirmation screen with the cancellation details and the service expiration date.
If the customer wants to request a refund, a new Refund request API will allow the customer to begin their refund request directly in the app itself — again, without being redirected to the App Store or other website. On the screen that displays, the customer can select for which item they want a refund and check the reason why they’re making the request. Apple handles the refund process and will send either an approval or refund declined notification back to the developer’s server.
However, some developers argue that the changes don’t go far enough. They want to be in charge of managing customer subscriptions and handling refunds themselves, through programmatic means. Plus, Apple can take up to 48 hours for the customer to receive an update on their refund request, which can be confusing.
“They’ve made the process a bit smoother, but developers still can’t initiate refunds or cancellations themselves,” notes RevenueCat CEO Jacob Eiting, whose company provides tools to app developers to manage their in-app purchases. “It’s a step in the right direction, but could actually lead to more confusion between developers and consumers about who is responsible for issuing refunds.”
In other words, because the forms are now going to be more accessible from inside the app, the customer may believe the developer is handling the refund process when, really, Apple continues to do so.
Some developers pointed out that there are other scenarios this process doesn’t address. For example, if the customer has already uninstalled the app or no longer has the device in question, they’ll still need to be directed to other means of asking for refunds, just as before.
For consumers, though, subscription management tools like this mean more developers may begin to put buttons to manage subscriptions and ask for refunds directly inside their app, which is a better experience. In time, as customers learn they can more easily use the app and manage subscriptions, app developers may see better customer retention, higher engagement, and better App Store reviews, notes Apple.
The StoreKit 2 changes weren’t limited to APIs for managing subscriptions and refunds.
Developers will also gain access to a new Invoice Lookup API that allows them to look up the in-app purchases for the customer, validate their invoice and identify any problems with the purchase — for example, if there were any refunds already provided by the App Store.
A new Refunded Purchases API will allow developers to look up all the refunds for the customer.
A new Renewal Extension API will allow developers to extend the renewal data for paid, active subscriptions in the case of an outage — like when dealing with customer support issues when a streaming service went down, for example. This API lets developers extend the subscription up to twice per calendar year, each up to 90 days in the future.
And finally, a new Consumption API will allow developers to share information about a customer’s in-app purchase with the App Store. In most cases, customers begin consuming content soon after purchase — information that’s helpful in the refund decision process. The API will allow the App Store to see if the user consumed the in-app purchase partially, fully, or not at all.
Another change will help customers when they reinstall apps or download them on new devices. Before, users would have to manually “restore purchases” to sync the status of the completed transactions back to that newly downloaded or reinstalled app. Now, that information will be automatically fetched by StoreKit 2 so the apps are immediately up-to-date with whatever it is the user paid for.
While, overall, the changes make for a significant update to the StoreKit framework, Apple’s hesitancy to allow developers more control over their own subscription-based customers speaks, in part, to how much it wants to control in-app purchases. This is perhaps because it got burned in the past when it tried allowing developers to manage their own refunds.
As The Verge noted last month while the Epic Games-Apple antitrust trial was underway, Apple had once provided Hulu will access to a subscription API, then discovered Hulu had been offering a way to automatically cancel subscriptions made through the App Store when customers wanted to upgrade to higher-priced subscription plans. Apple realized it needed to take action to protect against this misuse of the API, and Hulu later lost access. It has not since made that API more broadly available.
On the flip side, having Apple, not the developers, in charge of subscription management and refunds means Apple takes on the responsibilities around preventing fraud — including fraud perpetrated by both customers and developers alike. Customers may also prefer that there’s one single place to go for managing their subscription billing: Apple. They may not want to have to deal with each developer individually, as their experience would end up being inconsistent.
These changes matter because subscription revenue contributes to a sizable amount of Apple’s lucrative App Store business. Ahead of WWDC 21, Apple reported the sale of digital goods and services on the App Store grew to $86 billion in 2020, up 40% over the the year prior. Earlier this year, Apple said it paid out more than $200 billion to developers since the App Store launched in 2008.
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Apple’s new ShazamKit brings audio recognition to apps, including those on Android
Apple in 2018 closed its $400 million acquisition of music recognition app Shazam. Now, it’s bringing Shazam’s audio recognition capabilities to app developers in the form of the new ShazamKit. The new framework will allow app developers — including those on both Apple platforms and Android — to build apps that can identify music from Shazam’s huge database of songs, or even from their own custom catalog of pre-recorded audio.
Many consumers are already familiar with the mobile app Shazam, which lets you push a button to identify what song you’re hearing, and then take other actions — like viewing the lyrics, adding the song to a playlist, exploring music trends, and more. Having first launched in 2008, Shazam was already one of the oldest apps on the App Store when Apple snatched it up.
Now the company is putting Shazam to better use than being just a music identification utility. With the new ShazamKit, developers will now be able to leverage Shazam’s audio recognition capabilities to create their own app experiences.
There are three parts to the new framework: Shazam catalog recognition, which lets developers add song recognition to their apps; custom catalog recognition, which performs on-device matching against arbitrary audio; and library management.
Shazam catalog recognition is what you probably think of when you think of the Shazam experience today. The technology can recognize the song that’s playing in the environment and then fetch the song’s metadata, like the title and artist. The ShazamKit API will also be able to return other metadata like genre or album art, for example. And it can identify where in the audio the match occurred.
When matching music, Shazam doesn’t actually match the audio itself, to be clear. Instead, it creates a lossy representation of it, called a signature, and matches against that. This method greatly reduces the amount of data that needs to be sent over the network. Signatures also cannot be used to reconstruct the original audio, which protects user privacy.
The Shazam catalog comprises millions of songs and is hosted in cloud and maintained by Apple. It’s regularly updated with new tracks as they become available.
When a customer uses a developer’s third-party app for music recognition via ShazamKit, they may want to save the song in their Shazam library. This is found in the Shazam app, if the user has it installed, or it can be accessed by long pressing on the music recognition Control Center module. The library is also synced across devices.
Apple suggests that apps make their users aware that recognized songs will be saved to this library, as there’s no special permission required to write to the library.
Image Credits: Apple
ShazamKit’s custom catalog recognition feature, meanwhile, could be used to create synced activities or other second-screen experiences in apps by recognizing the developer’s audio, not that from the Shazam music catalog.
This could allow for educational apps where students follow along with a video lesson, where some portion of the lesson’s audio could prompt an activity to begin in the student’s companion app. It could also be used to enable mobile shopping experiences that popped up as you watched a favorite TV show.
ShazamKit is current in beta on iOS 15.0+, macOS 12.0+, Mac Catalyst 15.0+, tvOS 15.0+, and watchOS 8.0+. On Android, ShazamKit comes in the form of an Android Archive (AAR) file and supports music and custom audio, as well.
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Apple’s RealityKit 2 allows developers to create 3D models for AR using iPhone photos
At its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced a significant update to RealityKit, its suite of technologies that allow developers to get started building AR (augmented reality) experiences. With the launch of RealityKit 2, Apple says developers will have more visual, audio and animation control when working on their AR experiences. But the most notable part of the update is how Apple’s new Object Capture API will allow developers to create 3D models in minutes using only an iPhone.
Apple noted during its developer address that one of the most difficult parts of making great AR apps was the process of creating 3D models. These could take hours and thousands of dollars.
With Apple’s new tools, developers will be able take a series of pictures using just an iPhone (or iPad, DSLR or even a drone, if they prefer) to capture 2D images of an object from all angles, including the bottom.
Then, using the Object Capture API on macOS Monterey, it only takes a few lines of code to generate the 3D model, Apple explained.
Image Credits: Apple
To begin, developers would start a new photogrammetry session in RealityKit that points to the folder where they’ve captured the images. Then, they would call the process function to generate the 3D model at the desired level of detail. Object Capture allows developers to generate the USDZ files optimized for AR Quick Look — the system that lets developers add virtual, 3D objects in apps or websites on iPhone and iPad. The 3D models can also be added to AR scenes in Reality Composer in Xcode.
Apple said developers like Wayfair, Etsy and others are using Object Capture to create 3D models of real-world objects — an indication that online shopping is about to get a big AR upgrade.
Wayfair, for example, is using Object Capture to develop tools for their manufacturers so they can create a virtual representation of their merchandise. This will allow Wayfair customers to be able to preview more products in AR than they could today.
Image Credits: Apple (screenshot of Wayfair tool))
In addition, Apple noted developers including Maxon and Unity are using Object Capture for creating 3D content within 3D content creation apps, such as Cinema 4D and Unity MARS.
Other updates in RealityKit 2 include custom shaders that give developers more control over the rendering pipeline to fine tune the look and feel of AR objects; dynamic loading for assets; the ability to build your own Entity Component System to organize the assets in your AR scene; and the ability to create player-controlled characters so users can jump, scale and explore AR worlds in RealityKit-based games.
One developer, Mikko Haapoja of Shopify, has been trying out the new technology (see below) and shared some real-world tests where he shot objects using an iPhone 12 Max via Twitter.
Developers who want to test it for themselves can leverage Apple’s sample app and install Monterey on their Mac to try it out. They can use the Qlone camera app or any other image capturing application they want to download from the App Store to take the photos they need for Object Capture, Apple says. In the fall, the Qlone Mac companion app will leverage the Object Capture API as well.
Apple says there are over 14,000 ARKit apps on the App Store today, which have been built by over 9,000 different developers. With the more than 1 billion AR-enabled iPhones and iPads being used globally, it notes that Apple offers the world’s largest AR platform.
Apple’s Object Capture on a Pineapple. One of my fav things to test Photogrammetry against. This was processed using the RAW detail setting.
More info in thread
pic.twitter.com/2mICzbV8yY
— Mikko Haapoja (@MikkoH) June 8, 2021
Apple’s Object Capture is the real deal. I’m impressed. Excited to see where @Shopify merchants could take this
Allbirds Tree Dashers. More details in thread
— Mikko Haapoja (@MikkoH) June 8, 2021
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