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Daily Crunch: Smartphone sales decline again
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Smartphone sales declined again in Q2, surprising no one
After years of growth, the smartphone market’s recent slide has continued in the second quarter of 2019, according to Gartner.
It’s not a huge decline — 1.7% year over year — but this could turn into an ongoing problem for manufacturers. And the biggest hit is coming at the high end of the market, as higher prices combine with longer refresh cycles and fewer compelling features.
2. Yelp will let users personalize their homepage and search results
If you’re a vegetarian, or if you’re a parent who’s usually looking for kid-friendly restaurants, you no longer have to reenter that information every time you do a search. Instead, you can enter it once and Yelp will prioritize those results moving forward.
3. Ron Johnson’s e-commerce startup Enjoy raises $150M, expands in U.K.
Through partnerships with other companies, including AT&T, Sonos, Google and now EE, Enjoy creates an online mobile store where customers can shop for devices and receive same-day delivery. They can also opt to have an Enjoy expert deliver the item and help them get set up, free of charge.
Fairphone 3 running Android 9 out of the box
4. Can Fairphone 3 scale ethical consumer electronics?
Fairphone, the Dutch social enterprise that’s on a mission to rethink the waste and exploitation that underpins the business of consumer electronics, announced its third smartphone today.
5. Facebook is working with HackerOne on a bug bounty program for its Libra cryptocurrency
Facebook is moving ahead with its cryptocurrency project, even as government regulators have called for the company to suspend it while they assess its legality.
6. The BBC is developing a voice assistant, code named ‘Beeb’
Why is a publicly funded broadcaster ploughing money into developing a voice assistant? A BBC spokesperson said the intent is to “experiment with new programmes, features and experiences without someone else’s permission to build it in a certain way.”
7. How to use Amazon and advertising to build a D2C startup
In-depth tips from VMG Ignite, a consultancy that’s worked with dozens of direct-to-consumer startups trying to both find product-market fit and achieve scale through Amazon and online advertising. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
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Daily Crunch: A big funding round for Boll & Branch
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Bedding startup Boll & Branch raises $100M
The company sells sustainably sourced sheets, pillows, mattresses and towels. Until now, it had only raised $12 million in outside capital.
This new funding comes from L Catterton. CEO Scott Tannen compared Boll & Branch to the firm’s previous investments The Honest Company and Peloton — companies that “have become the winner in the startup competition” and are ready to “really become household names.”
2. Nvidia and VMware team up to make GPU virtualization easier
Nvidia today announced that it has been working with VMware to bring its virtual GPU technology to VMware’s vSphere and VMware Cloud on AWS.
Founded by three Tsinghua University graduates in 2011, Megvii is among China’s leading AI startups, with its peers (and rivals) including SenseTime and Yitu. Its clients include Alibaba, Ant Financial, Lenovo, China Mobile and Chinese government entities.
4. Watch the first look at ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ from Disney’s big fan event
This video goes really heavy on the nostalgia.
5. Experimental US Air Force space plane breaks previous record for orbital spaceflight
The Boeing-built X-37B space plane commissioned and operated by the U.S. Air Force has now broken its own record for time spent in space. Its latest mission has lasted 719 days as of today.
6. Is Knotel poised to turn WeWork from a Unicorn into an Icarus?
Knotel has reversed the WeWork “co-working” model. Instead of “WeWork” branding everywhere, Knotel simply leases buildings, takes a small office for its staff and then kits out the space in a way where a company can just move straight in and call it their own. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts
John Vrionis of Unusual Ventures joins Equity to talk about why he thinks “stage-agnostic” investing doesn’t make any sense. And on Original Content, we review the Netflix movie “The Red Sea Diving Resort.”
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Daily Crunch: Apple plans Pro iPhones
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
Here come the leaks around Apple’s fall hardware event (rumored to be scheduled for September 10). According to Bloomberg, we’ll get new iPhones — including a new Pro model that replaces the XS line and adds a third, wider angle rear camera.
Beyond 2019, Apple also reportedly has plans for iPhones that support 5G in the next year, plus a more affordable HomePod.
2. Google ditches desserts as Q becomes Android 10
Google’s official reasoning is more diplomatic than, “we couldn’t think of anything that started with ‘Q.’ ” Instead, it says that the desserts simply weren’t universal enough for the 2.5 billion active devices it has deployed around the world.
3. Our 12 favorite startups from Y Combinator’s S19 Demo Day 2
Over the course of two days, the TechCrunch team witnessed more than 160 on-the-record startup pitches, spanning healthcare, B2B services, augmented reality and life extension. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
Image via Working Partnerships USA / Jeff Barrera
4. Hundreds of Uber and Lyft drivers to launch a protest caravan across California
Over 200 drivers in more than 75 cars plan to drive south to north — with more drivers joining along the way — to take dramatic action in advocating for California State Legislature bill AB5, and for a drivers’ union.
5. Eminem’s publisher accuses Spotify of copyright infringement in new lawsuit
Eight Mile Style has filed a lawsuit against Spotify, accusing the service of “blatant copyright infringement” in streaming “Lose Yourself” and other Eminem songs.
6. Splunk acquires cloud monitoring service SignalFx for $1.05B
SignalFx provides real-time cloud monitoring solutions, predictive analytics and more. The acquisition should make Splunk a far stronger player in the cloud space.
7. Google proposes new privacy and anti-fingerprinting controls for the web
If fully realized, this initiative will make it harder for online marketers and advertisers to track you across the web.
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Daily Crunch: Samsung unveils the Galaxy Note 10
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. This is Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10 and 10+
The landscape has changed dramatically since the Galaxy Note was first unveiled in 2011, with Samsung pulling the rest of the industry into a world of bigger screens.
Now, the question is how to make the latest updates compelling. With the Note 10 and 10+ (available August 23 at a starting price of $950), Samsung is splitting the line into two distinct devices, and it’s getting rid of the headphone jack.
2. Google launches ‘Live View’ AR walking directions for Google Maps
The Live View feature isn’t designed with the idea that you’ll hold up your phone continually as you walk. Instead, in provides quick, easy and super-useful orientation by showing you arrows and big, readable street markers overlaid on the real scene in front of you.
3. Lyft’s stock is a roller coaster after its Q2 earnings release
Despite big losses, what made Wall Street happy was Lyft’s optimism for Q3, as well as the full-year 2019.
Photo: TechCrunch
4. Netflix signs multi-year deal with ‘Game of Thrones’ showrunners
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the deal is worth $200 million. This follows expensive Netflix pacts with other high-profile showrunners, including Ryan Murphy ($300 million) and Shonda Rhimes ($100 million).
5. Instagram ad partner secretly sucked up and tracked millions of users’ locations and stories
Hyp3r, an apparently trusted marketing partner of Facebook and Instagram, has been secretly collecting and storing location and other data on millions of users, violating the policies of the social networks, according to Business Insider.
6. Sperm storage startups are raising millions
Both Dadi and Legacy recently raised funding, hoping to leverage venture capital dollars to become the dominant men’s fertility brand.
Danny Crichton argues that although August is generally considered a black hole for VC, using it effectively for fundraising is perhaps the single most important factor for success in the coming season. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
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Daily Crunch: Yep, Apple is buying Intel’s modem business
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Apple acquiring most of Intel’s smartphone modem business in $1B deal
Apple has entered into a deal to acquire a majority of Intel’s modem business, including Intel IP, equipment, leases and employees — it’s bringing over 2,200 new roles and 17,000 wireless technology patents.
The deal confirms earlier rumors that Apple would acquire the business in order to permanently uncouple itself from Qualcomm, the source of much contention for both parties over the last several years.
Worth noting: The second Vision Fund’s list of expected limited partners does not currently include any participants from the Saudi Arabia government.
3. Twitter Q2 beats on sales of $841M and EPS of $0.20, new metric of mDAUs up to 139M
The U.S. continues to be Twitter’s revenue engine, the company said. It accounted for $455 million of its sales, up 24%, while international revenue was $386 million, up just 12%.
(Photo by Cheriss May/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
4. Trump threatens Apple with tariffs, Google with investigation on Twitter
The president of the United States called out two of the nation’s largest tech firms in a pair of tweets this morning.
5. Google says it doubled Pixel sales year-over-year
It looks like the mid-range Pixel 3a is the hit Google surely hoped it would be. The news came as part of the solid earnings that parent company Alphabet reported yesterday.
6. SpaceX succeeds with first untethered StarHopper low altitude ‘hop’ test
StarHopper is a scaled-down test vehicle designed to help SpaceX run crucial preparation trials for the new Raptor engine ahead of building its full-scale Starship reusable spacecraft.
7. Africa’s ride-hail markets are hot spots for startups and VC
The big players such as Uber and Bolt are competing in Kampala and Nairobi — where, in addition to car service, they offer rickshaw taxis. Meanwhile, many ride-hail companies in Africa are adapting unique product solutions to local transit needs. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
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Daily Crunch: Layoffs at HQ Trivia
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. HQ Trivia lays off ~20% as it preps subscriptions
The cuts hit HQ’s HR, marketing and product engineering teams, according to LinkedIn profiles of employees let go. The cuts could further hamper morale at the startup following a tough first half of the year.
It also could leave the company short-handed as it attempts to diversify revenue with the upcoming launch of monthly subscriptions.
2. Tesla shows off next-gen automated emergency braking stopping for pedestrians and cyclists
The upcoming features include automatically engaging the brakes on a vehicle when the system detects a pedestrian crossing the car’s path, and doing the same for a cyclist.
3. Internet group brands Mozilla ‘internet villain’ for supporting DNS privacy feature
The trade group for U.K. internet service providers nominated Mozilla for the title because of a proposed security feature that ISPs say will allow users to “bypass U.K. filtering obligations and parental controls, undermining internet safety standards in the U.K.”
4. Apple reportedly shifting to new keyboard design in 2019/2020 MacBooks
Apple is set to replace the technology underlying the keyboards found in its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro computers, according to a new report from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
5. Sony’s new wireless earbuds pack great noise-canceling and battery life
Brian Heater has only had a limited time with Sony’s WF-1000XM3, but he says they seem custom-built for long flights.
6. Waresix hauls in $14.5M to advance its push to digitize logistics in Indonesia
Like others in its industry — which include Chinese unicorn Manbang and BlackBuck in India — Waresix is focused on optimizing logistics by making the process more transparent for clients and more efficient for haulage companies and truckers.
7. What everyone at a startup needs to know about immigration
Over the past three years, immigration policies and procedures have been in a state of flux and the process has become more unforgiving for even the smallest mistakes. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
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Daily Crunch: Google’s not making any more tablets
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Google says it’s not making any more tablets
“For Google’s first-party hardware efforts, we’ll be focusing on Chrome OS laptops and will continue to support Pixel Slate,” the company said in statement.
Google SVP Rick Osterloh took to Twitter to emphasize that while Google’s hardware team will be “solely focused on building laptops moving forward,” the company will still be working with partners on Android and Chrome OS tablets.
2. Slack’s value rockets as stock closes up 48.5% in public debut
At the close of trading yesterday, Slack’s market cap sat well above $20 billion, or nearly 3 times its most recent private valuation of $7 billion.
3. One of NASA’s robotic astronaut helpers just flew on its own in space for the first time
The robot — called “Bumble” and one of a series of Astrobee robots that NASA developed to work along with astronauts on the ISS — is the first ever to fly on its own in space.
4. Samsung exec says the Galaxy Fold is ‘ready to hit the market’
Just last week, Huawei noted that it was holding off on its own Mate X release. But Samsung, at least, may finally be ready to unleash its foldable on the world, two months after the planned release.
5. Meet your new chief of staff: An AI chatbot
Mailbox’s founders are back with their second act: An AI-enabled assistant called Navigator meant to help teams work and communicate more efficiently.
6. Terry Gou resigns as Foxconn’s chairman to run for president of Taiwan
Gou, who founded Foxconn 45 years ago and is also its biggest shareholder, will remain on the company’s board.
7. A chat with Niantic CEO John Hanke on the launch of Harry Potter: Wizards Unite
Built in collaboration with WB Games, Wizards Unite is a reimagining of Pokémon GO’s real-world, location-based gaming concept through the lens of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter universe. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
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Daily Crunch: Slack makes its Wall Street debut
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Slack prices IPO at $26 per share
Slack is debuting on the New York Stock Exchange today. Trading hasn’t opened yet as I write this, but The Wall Street Journal reports that the company has set a price of $26 per share.
The enterprise communication company is pursuing a direct listing, eschewing the typical IPO process in favor of putting its current stock on to the NYSE without doing an additional raise or bringing on underwriter banking partners.
2. Waymo takes its self-driving car ambitions global in partnership with Renault-Nissan
Waymo has locked in an exclusive partnership with Renault and Nissan to research how commercial autonomous vehicles might work for passengers and packages in France and Japan.
3. UK age checks for online porn delayed after bureaucratic cock-up
Digital minister Jeremy Wright said the government failed to notify the European Commission of age verification standards it expects companies to meet. Without this notification, the government can’t legally implement the policy.
4. iRobot acquires education startup Root Robotics
Root Robotics is the creator of an eponymous coding robot, a two-wheeled device designed to draw on whiteboards and other surfaces, scanning colors, playing music and otherwise playing out coding instructions.
5. SaaS data protection provider Druva nabs $130M, now at a $1B+ valuation, acquiring CloudLanes
Druva has made a name for itself as a provider of cloud-based solutions to protect and manage IT assets.
6. Why all standard black Tesla cars are about to cost $1,000 more
Tesla will start charging $1,000 for its once-standard black paint color next month, according to a tweet by CEO Elon Musk.
7. Tally’s Jason Brown on fintech’s first debt roboadvisor and an automated financial future
We sat down with Tally’s founder and CEO Jason Brown to discuss a new funding round, Tally’s growth strategy and the company’s vision for an automated financial future. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
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Daily Crunch: Telegram faces new attack in China
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Telegram faces DDoS attack in China… again
The popular encrypted messaging service Telegram is once again being hit with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in Asia as protestors in Hong Kong take to the streets.
As they look to evade surveillance measures by government officials, Telegram is one of the tools that organizers have turned to. Four years ago, a similar attack struck the company’s service, just as China was initiating a crackdown on human rights lawyers in the country.
2. Bird confirms acquisition of Scoot
This acquisition means Bird may finally get to operate shared electric scooters in San Francisco.
3. LaLiga fined $280K for soccer app’s privacy-violating spy mode
Users of the LaLiga app were outraged to discover the smartphone software does rather more than show minute-by-minute commentary of football matches: It can use the microphone and GPS of fans’ phones to record their surroundings in a bid to identify bars that are unofficially streaming games.
Details of the Pixel 4 have been swirling around this week, so Google decided to just leak the design of its next phone via its official Twitter account, revealing the backplate and new camera module on the smartphone.
5. NFC gets a lot more powerful in iOS 13
This opens up a range of new application possibilities, Apple said, including the ability to create apps that read passports and contactless smart cards and interact with NFC-enabled hardware.
6. Facebook collected device data on 187,000 users using banned snooping app
The social media giant said in a letter to Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s office — which TechCrunch obtained — that it collected data on 31,000 users in the U.S., including 4,300 teenagers. The rest of the collected data came from users in India.
7. Uber’s annual flying taxi summit reveals Uber Air has a ways to go
We talked to Uber Director of Engineering for Energy Storage Systems Celina Mikolajczak at the company’s third annual Elevate Summit in Washington, D.C. this week. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
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Daily Crunch: Salesforce is buying Tableau
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Salesforce is buying data visualization company Tableau for $15.7B in all-stock deal
This is a huge deal for Salesforce as the company continues to diversify beyond CRM software and into deeper layers of analytics.
Salesforce reportedly worked hard to buy LinkedIn (which Microsoft ultimately picked up instead). And while there isn’t a whole lot in common between LinkedIn and Tableau, this deal should help the company extend its engagement with existing customers.
2. Maker Faire halts operations and lays off all staff
Financial troubles have forced Maker Media, the company behind crafting publication MAKE: magazine as well as the science and art festival Maker Faire, to lay off its entire staff of 22 and pause all operations.
3. Google Assistant comes to Waze navigation app
Google Assistant in Waze will provide access to your usual Assistant features, like playback of music and podcasts, but it’ll also offer access to many Waze-specific abilities, including letting you ask it to report traffic conditions, or specifying that you want to avoid tolls when routing to your destination.
4. Microsoft acquires Psychonauts-maker Double Fine Productions
In addition to making Psychonauts, Double Fine notably raised around $3 million in a Kickstarter campaign to create the adventure game it eventually titled Broken Age. As is the case with past Microsoft studio acquisitions, it sounds like Double Fine will continue to operate externally, underneath the Xbox Game Studios umbrella.
5. Former Unity Technology VP files lawsuit alleging CEO sexually harassed her
In a statement to TechCrunch, a Unity spokesperson said the allegations are not true and that it intends to “vigorously defend against the false allegations.”
6. Economic development organizations: good or bad for entrepreneurial activity?
In developing VC markets such as the Midwest, some may think that funding from the government or economic development organizations are a godsend — but entrepreneurs need to ensure that this money isn’t a double-edged sword. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts
The Equity team has some thoughts on SoftBank’s Vision Fund, and what its difficulties raising more money mean for the late-stage investment landscape. Meanwhile, Original Content reviews Netflix’s “Always Be My Maybe,” and we also have a bonus interview with the director of “I Am Mother.”
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