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This Week in Apps: WWDC goes online, coronavirus leads to more cancellations, sneaky spy apps exposed
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads in 2019 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s recently released “State of Mobile” annual report. People are now spending 3 hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.
In this Extra Crunch series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.
This week we’re taking a look at several stories related to the coronavirus outbreak, including the cancellation of WWDC in San Jose, as well as other app industry events that are going online. We’re also discussing the iOS 14 leak, the exposure of Sensor Tower’s app network, a potential ban on TikTok for government workers and more.
Coronavirus Special Coverage
The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are continuing to play out on app stores and across the industry. This week, we’re leading with these stories followed by the other — and yes, still important — news.
Apple finally cancels its WWDC event in San Jose
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Startup founders are building companies on WhatsApp
Lisa Enckell is a partner at Antler, an early-stage venture capital firm and startup generator.
In Asia, where I work as a partner at an early-stage VC firm, startups are regularly rolling out a minimum viable product (MVP) and then transacting on messaging apps.
Companies like shoe brand Portblue, AI e-commerce company Sorabel and Sama, an online recruitment platform for migrant workers, all started life using WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to communicate with customers, onboard users and raise brand awareness.
For many years, WeChat has been the default app for daily life and business in China. It’s estimated that more than 30% of all internet traffic in China is through WeChat, and in 2017 they introduced “mini-programs,” where businesses could build apps inside WeChat. Now you never have to download any apps or go to a browser to access millions of services and businesses in WeChat.
We now see a similar trend in Southeast Asia. Here, WhatsApp is the dominant social platform and, while it has not built the same infrastructure for building apps, startups have found a way around that and now run many services on top of WhatsApp, validating with customers quickly and cheaply. These companies are not only mobile-first, but they are also WhatsApp-first.
Sampingan, an Antler portfolio company founded here in Singapore, provides an on-demand workforce to businesses in Indonesia. The first version of the product was on WhatsApp. The team sourced and managed more than 2,000 blue-collar workers in Indonesia who completed 25,000 jobs in the company’s first three months.
Lisa Enckell is a partner at Antler, an early-stage venture capital firm and startup generator.
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Uber and Lyft plunge, erasing recent gains after promising profits
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
A few weeks ago, Uber and Lyft, kicking bags of the 2019 stock market and regularly cited as examples of venture-backed excess, were back to fighting form.
After encouraging Q3 2019 reports from both ride-hailing giants that included fresh profitability promises and timelines, Uber upped the ante by moving its profitability goal up when it reported Q4 results earlier this year. Shares of the famous company rallied. When Lyft failed to mimic the declaration in its own Q4 earnings report, it was dinged by investors. But from the time of their Q3 2019 earnings reports to recently, Uber and Lyft were coming back up for air.
Suddenly, it was perfectly reasonable to be optimistic about the two ride-hailing companies that had become more famous for their sticky losses than their growth potential; as the pair had matured from upstart to public company, their money-losing methods appeared increasingly permanent, making the Q3 2019 and Q4 2019 profit declarations investor balm.
But after the rally came the novel coronavirus and COVID-19. Since then, the two companies have lost huge amounts of ground. Their shares fell 9.8% (Uber) and 11.8% (Lyft) yesterday alone. In pre-market trading this morning, they are down even more. I wanted to get my head around what could be causing this, so let’s run through each company’s most recent profit forecasts, results, share price gains and losses, and what investors are telling the world through their recent selloff. (Hint: DoorDash’s IPO probably isn’t happening soon.)
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VCs warn coronavirus will impact fundraising for the next 2 quarters
As of this writing, COVID-19 has killed more than 3,400 people around the globe and the coronavirus has infected tens of thousands more. But its impact has gone much further, causing major disruptions in public markets and leading corporations to pull out of conferences and delay travel. Big tech companies are asking workers to stay home and investors are now urging startups to prepare accordingly.
Coronavirus fears are now affecting fundraising for startups. I am seeing advice that tells any company that might run out of cash in 2020 to start raising now before things might get a lot tighter. RIPGoodTimes?
— Josh Elman (@joshelman) March 1, 2020
Sequoia Capital sent a letter to its founders on Thursday warning that the coronavirus was a “black swan” event and startups should “brace themselves for turbulence” by considering if they have enough cash and preparing to face supply chain disruptions. The letter also warned they could have a harder time fundraising, similar to the market downturns of 2001 and 2009.
The coronavirus effect is rippling throughout the tech world. Seattle, which has seen a cluster of cases, seems almost a ghost town in some parts, according to entrepreneur and former Madrona Capital partner Shauna Causey. She told TechCrunch that many of the coffee shops and co-working spaces popular among VCs have gone empty in the last week and all of her fundraising meetings are conducted via Zoom.
Given that fundraising can take several months, if their cash out date is 2020, they should be fundraising soon anyway
also hearing from founders it’s already getting hard
— Evelyn Rusli (@EvelynRusli) March 2, 2020
A Singapore-based VC firm told a startup I’m working with that they’re not going to wire the entire $2m investment they committed to in the Series A, which has been in closing the last few weeks. The rationale was to conserve capital due to coronavirus. The funding risk is real.
— Tommy Leep (@leepnet) March 4, 2020
And already there’s some chatter that funding might be drying up for early-stage startups, though Bloomberg Beta’s Roy Bahat tells TechCrunch that startups should always be fundraising as soon as they can to protect themselves from this type of calamity.
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Anniversary Sale: Get 1 year of Extra Crunch for $99
Last February we launched Extra Crunch, and today we’re celebrating its one-year anniversary. As a token of appreciation to our readers, we’re offering a limited-time deal for annual Extra Crunch membership. From now until the end of February, new users signing up for Extra Crunch in the U.S. can get a full year of membership for only $99 plus tax (normally priced at $150/year).
Get Extra Crunch membership for only $99 (plus tax) here.
Extra Crunch is our membership program and it features how-tos and guides on company building, intelligence on the most disruptive opportunities for startups, a dedicated newsletter, no banner ads, 20% discounts on all TechCrunch events, a series of community perks for annual members and more.
Since launching Extra Crunch, we’ve published more than 1,000 articles on fundraising, early-stage investing, startup PR and other topics targeted to entrepreneurs and investors. In addition to TechCrunch writers, we’ve run contributions from Julian Shapiro at Demand Curve, Jake Saper at Emergence Capital, Rory O’Driscoll at Scale and many others.
Some of our top stories from the past year:
- Where top VCs are investing in fintech
- The $100M ARR Club
- How to trigger FOMO among VCs
- The landscape for enterprise startups is changing
- Inside the venture capital recruiting process
We hope you stay engaged with the TechCrunch community through Extra Crunch. Our focus has and always will be on building a strong relationship with our readers, and we hope you will continue to support us.
Extra Crunch is currently only available to users in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and some European countries, but we are actively looking to expand support in 2020. Extra Crunch is already offered at a discounted rate to users outside the U.S., so unfortunately the $99 price point only applies to users in the U.S.
If you are a monthly Extra Crunch subscriber and want to upgrade to an annual plan to claim the deal, please navigate to My Account (while logged in). Under the “subscriptions” tab, there is a way to upgrade.
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Readers can sign up for Extra Crunch for $99/year (plus tax) here.
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Chargebee offers free subscription billing to Extra Crunch members for up to $100K in revenue
Extra Crunch is excited to announce a new community perk from automated subscription billing startup Chargebee. Starting today, annual and two-year members of Extra Crunch can receive free subscription invoicing until $100,000 in revenue is reached. You must be new to Chargebee to claim this offer.
Chargebee helps you succeed with subscription billing. Chargebee replaces in-house billing systems and spreadsheets by giving teams the ability to set up subscription plans and trials, run pricing experiments at scale, analyze accurate subscription analytics and much more, out of the box.
Chargebee integrates with payment gateways like Stripe, Braintree and PayPal and business applications such as Xero, QuickBooks and Salesforce. You can learn more about the benefits of Chargebee here.
You can sign up for Extra Crunch and claim this deal here.
Extra Crunch is a membership program from TechCrunch that features how-tos and interviews on company building, intelligence on the most disruptive opportunities for startups, an experience on TechCrunch.com that’s free of banner ads, discounts on TechCrunch events, and several community perks like the one mentioned in this article. Our goal is to democratize information for startups, and we’d love to have you join our community.
Sign up for Extra Crunch here.
New annual and two-year Extra Crunch members will receive details on how to claim the perk in the welcome email. The welcome email is sent after signing up for Extra Crunch. If you are already an annual or two-year Extra Crunch member, you will receive an email with the offer at some point over the next 24 hours. If you are currently a monthly Extra Crunch subscriber and want to upgrade to annual in order to claim this deal, head over to the “account” section on TechCrunch.com and click the “upgrade” button.
This is one of several community perks we’ve launched for annual Extra Crunch members. Other community perks include a 20% discount on TechCrunch events, 100,000 Brex rewards points upon credit card sign up and an opportunity to claim $1,000 in AWS credits. For a full list of perks from partners, head here.
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Dig into the key issues in venture today with investor and Techstars co-founder Brad Feld
Few can hold a candle to Brad Feld’s list of accolades in the startup, tech and venture world. As a multi-time founder of both startups and venture firms alike, Feld is widely known for having co-founded the Techstars accelerator — now a Silicon Valley and startup institution — as well as Foundry Group, the early and growth-stage venture fund that has raised nearly $2.5 billion over seven funds, in just over a decade.
Feld is equally, if not more, recognized outside of the investing world as a thought leader through both his widely followed blog “Feld Thoughts” and through authoring a number of books and guides to the startup and venture worlds. Feld recently published the fourth edition of his acclaimed and seemingly timeless book “Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer And Venture Capitalist” (which he co-authored with Foundry Group co-founder Jason Mendelson), which acts as a manual to raising venture capital by walking through tactical advice around negotiating a term sheet, what to consider when selling your business, arguments for and against convertible debt and much more.
TechCrunch’s Silicon Valley editor Connie Loizos will be sitting down with Brad for an exclusive conversation this Thursday, October 10th at 11:00 am PT on Extra Crunch. Brad, Connie and Extra Crunch members will be digging into the latest edition of “Venture Deals,” Brad’s advice to founders and investors and his take on hot-button issues of the day (including dual-class shares, direct listings and what happened at WeWork).
Extra Crunch members will also have the opportunity to ask questions! We will pause during the call to take questions from Extra Crunch subscribers. Alternatively, you can email questions to eldon@techcrunch.com.
Tune in to join the conversation and for the opportunity to ask Brad and Connie any and all things venture.
To listen to this and all future conference calls, become a member of Extra Crunch. Learn more and try it for free.
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Annual Extra Crunch members can receive $1,000 in AWS credits
We’re excited to announce a new partnership with Amazon Web Services for annual members of Extra Crunch. Starting today, qualified annual members can receive $1,000 in AWS credits. You also must be a startup founder to claim this Extra Crunch community perk.
AWS is the premier service for your application hosting needs, and we want to make sure our community is well-resourced to build. We understand that hosting and infrastructure costs can be a major hurdle for tech startups, and we’re hoping that this offer will help better support your team.
What’s included in the perk:
- $1,000 in AWS Promotional Credit valid for 1 year
- 2 months of AWS Business Support
- 80 credits for self-paced labs
Applications are processed in 7-10 days, once an application is received. Companies may not be eligible for AWS Promotional Credits if they previously received a similar or greater amount of credit. Companies may be eligible to be “topped up” to a higher credit amount if they previously received a lower credit.
In addition to the AWS community perk, Extra Crunch members also get access to how-tos and guides on company building, intelligence on what’s happening in the startup ecosystem, stories about founders and exits, transcripts from panels at TechCrunch events, discounts on TechCrunch events, no banner ads on TechCrunch.com and more. To see a full list of the types of articles you get with Extra Crunch, head here.
You can sign up for annual Extra Crunch membership here.
Once you are signed up, you’ll receive a welcome email with a link to the AWS offer. If you are already an annual Extra Crunch member, you will receive an email with the offer at some point today. If you are currently a monthly Extra Crunch subscriber and want to upgrade to annual in order to claim this deal, head over to the “my account” section on TechCrunch.com and click the “upgrade” button.
This is one of several new community perks we’ve been working on for Extra Crunch members. Extra Crunch members also get 20% off all TechCrunch event tickets (email extracrunch@techcrunch.com with the event name to receive a discount code for event tickets). You can learn more about our events lineup here. You also can read about our Brex community perk here.
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This Week in Apps: AltStore, acquisitions and Google Play Pass
The app industry shows no signs of slowing down, with 194 billion downloads in 2018 and over $100 billion in consumer spending. People spend 90% of their mobile time in apps and more time using their mobile devices than watching TV. In other words, apps aren’t just a way to spend idle hours — they’re a big business. And one that often seems to change overnight. In this new Extra Crunch series, we’ll help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps — including everything from the OS’s to the apps that run upon them, as well as the money that flows through it all.
This week, alternatives to the traditional app store is a big theme. Not only has a new, jailbreak-free iOS marketplace called AltStore just popped up, we’ve also got both Apple and Google ramping up their own subscription-based collections of premium apps and games.
Meanwhile, the way brands and publishers want to track their apps’ success is changing, too. And App Annie — the company that was the first to start selling pickaxes for the App Store gold rush — is responding with an acquisition that will help app publishers better understand the return on investment for their app businesses.
Headlines
AltStore is an alternative App Store that doesn’t need a jailbreak
An interesting alternative app marketplace has appeared on the scene, allowing a way for developers to distribute iOS apps outside the official App Store, reports Engadget — without jailbreaking, which can be difficult and has various security implications. Instead, the new store works by tricking your device into thinking you’re a developer sideloading apps. And it uses a companion app on your Mac or PC to re-sign the apps every 7 days via iTunes WiFi syncing protocol. Already, it’s offering a Nintendo emulator and other games, says The Verge. And Apple is probably already working on a way to shut this down. For now, it’s live at Altstore.io.
Very excited to officially announce AltStore: an alternative app store for iOS — no jailbreak required. Launching this Saturday, September 28, but you can download the preview TODAY https://t.co/M7nULBV28p
— Riles
(@rileytestut) September 25, 2019
For the third time in a month, Google mass-deleted Android apps from a big Chinese developer.
Does Google Play have a malicious app problem? That appears to be the case as Google has booted some 46 apps from major Chinese mobile developer iHandy out of its app store, BuzzFeed reported. And it isn’t saying why. The move follows Google’s ban of two other major Chinese app developers, DO Global and CooTek, who had 1 billion total downloads.
Google Firebase gets new tools
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Get 2 months of Extra Crunch for $2
We’re excited to announce a special promotion for Extra Crunch. Starting today, new users signing up for Extra Crunch will get a trial rate of $2 for the first 2 months. After the trial period ends, you’ll be moved over to our monthly plan for $15 per month. This offer ends on June 21, so be sure to take advantage of it before it expires.
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