Mobile

The founders of OwnID, Dor Shany and Rooly Eliezerov, previously founded Gigya, a startup that wanted to make it easier to help identify customers. They sold that startup to SAP for $350 million in 2017, but the idea of making it easy to log into websites without friction was always in the back of their

Google Play is today officially launching its own version of privacy-related “nutrition labels” for apps. The company says it will begin to roll out the new Google Play Data safety section to users on a gradual basis, ahead of the July 20th deadline that requires developers to properly disclose the data their app collects, if

A McKinsey and Co. study suggests that while sub-Saharan Africa has the potential to increase (even triple) its agricultural output and overall contribution to the economy, the sector remains untapped largely due to lack of access to quality farm inputs, up to par infrastructure like warehousing and market. This is in an economy that derives

A new startup called Skich wants to help mobile users find games to play that better match their interests. To do so, it’s created a game recommendation app that carefully toes the line in order to not bump up against Apple’s App Store rule that prohibits other apps from acting as App Stores themselves. Instead,

Zenly has always felt like the small social app that could become the next big thing. But it turns it Zenly is quietly becoming a social giant without anyone paying much attention — at least until now. Originally designed in Paris, the app was acquired by Snap back in 2017. But that acquisition was just the

Eye-tracking has long been one of the those computing holy grails. Whether it’s accessibility concerns, opening up new form factors or just trying to put a novel spin on the ways we interact with our devices, decades of consumer electronics are littered with attempts to use the gauze to unlock a new form of input.

The e-commerce market in Latin America has been gaining traction over the past two years and is poised to double in size and be valued at more than $100 billion by 2025. And like in the United States and elsewhere, customers in LatAm expect that when they submit an order online, it arrives at their

The future of Bolt, the Estonia-based ride-hailing company, in Tanzania is hanging in the balance following a new 15% service fee order that came into effect Friday last week. Bolt, Uber’s main rival in Europe and Africa, in response to queries by TechCrunch, said it had reached out to relevant stakeholders including the Land Transport

Netflix plans to offer a cheaper and ad-supported plan to consumers within a year or two, the world’s largest streaming service said, as it pushes to tap a wider set of potential customers. The firm, which reported a loss of 200,000 subscribers in Q1, will introduce the ad-supported plan to give customers more choice, company’s

Are you looking to buy a folding smart phone? Do you want it to be Pokémon-themed? And do you live in South Korea? If all those stars are aligned just right, do we have some good news for you: Samsung is making a Pokémon Edition of the Galaxy Z Flip 3. They somehow decided to

As part of its continued investment into expanding its mobile gaming business, Netflix today announced it will, for the first time, launch a mobile game alongside a TV series from the same franchise. The game and show will be based on the popular Exploding Kittens card game. The mobile game will launch in May exclusively

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the

Meta is throwing billions of dollars into building out the metaverse as the future of social networking but in the near term, the tech giant is looking toward the power of messaging to connect users in a more personal way. On that front, the company today introduced its plans for a significant update to its

Last year, reports began circulating that Google was developing a “Switch to Android” app for iOS users looking to make the jump from iPhone to a smartphone running Google’s Android OS. Now that app has arrived. On Monday, Google quietly launched the Switch to Android app on the App Store in a number of global

As an earlier report had suggested, Spotify today announced it will integrate the live audio capabilities from its companion app, Spotify Greenroom, within the main Spotify streaming app. Greenroom will also rebrand as “Spotify Live” as part of these changes. At launch, Spotify’s main app will only feature live content from select original programming, while

Apple is releasing an iMovie update today for iOS and iPadOS. iMovie 3.0 introduces two new major features — storyboards and Magic Movie. It is available as a free download on the App Store for anyone running at least iOS 15.2 or iPadOS 15.2. With the previous version of iMovie, most people started with a blank

Showing that the product analytics industry is alive and well, Kubit today announced that it raised $18 million in a series A funding round led by Insight Partners, bringing its total capital raised to $24 million. Kubit says that it’ll put the fresh cash toward growing its team and expanding its platform, which helps customers

YouTube has been slower than most to test its picture-in-picture support for iOS; however, according to a tweet, it will be coming to the service in a “matter of days.” [Update: After prompting much confusion about the sped-up time to launch of this long-awaited feature, the YouTube Twitter account returned to “clarify” its earlier —

Google Fi, Google’s cell network provider, has dropped the pricing for its mobile plans by $5 to $10 per month, depending on the customer’s plan. The company decreased the price for its Simply Unlimited plan from $60 to $50 per line for one line, $45 to $40 a line for two lines, $30 to $25

Global digital payments giant Visa has opened up an innovation studio in Kenya, its first in Africa and sixth globally, after posts in Dubai, London, Miami, San Francisco and Singapore. The studio will bring together developers, Visa’s internal and external clients, and other partners to co-create payment and commerce solutions. “Sub-Saharan Africa is a fast-growing

Hulu’s streaming app is the latest to add support for Apple’s SharePlay — Apple’s newer system that allows users to co-watch content, like streaming movies or shows, over FaceTime calls. The update was quietly noted in Hulu’s iOS app update description this week alongside news of a new Live TV feature that will allow users

Spotify’s $90 in-car entertainment system “Car Thing,” which went on sale to the general public in February, is gaining a number of new features. The company announced today it would add one of users’ most-requested features — the ability to add songs and podcasts to a queue — alongside other updates involving voice commands, playlists,

Noissue, a New Zealand-based packaging platform that offers custom, sustainable packaging to businesses of all sizes, has acquired the team and tools necessary to build microsites and dynamic QR codes. On Wednesday, noissue announced the acquisition of London-based Tapkit, a startup that has worked with brands such as L’Oréal, NYX, Haus, TRIBE and Little Cooks

Last year, Apple proved it could still surprise when it announced a Self Service Repair plan. The offering is still limited, and the company — as ever — recommends users take their products in to get fixed, rather than potentially damaging them further. Even so, it marked a major shift for a company that has

YouTube TV is catching up to other streaming apps including Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Prime Video and others by finally adding support for picture-in-picture on iOS devices running iOS 15 or higher. First introduced to iPad users with iOS 13 then to iPhone with iOS 14 in 2020, YouTube has been slow to adopt this

Managing Apple devices can be a chore for small businesses — it takes time to set up each device, and it can be difficult to manage them in the field without being invasive, especially when it comes to “bring your own” devices. Last year, Apple introduced a new program in beta called Apple Business Essentials

Spotify’s popular playlist creation tool, Blend, is getting its biggest update since its offiical launch last year. The feature currently allows two Spotify users to see where their musical tastes overlap by mixing together their favorite songs to find those they have in common. This Blend then updates daily with new songs based on everyone’s

Apple today announced it will begin to allow a subset of applications sold on its App Store to link to an external website where users can create or manage their accounts with the app developer. The change to Apple’s App Store Review guidelines only applies to what Apple calls “reader” apps — meaning, apps designed

Turns out the smartphone market can still surprise — to an extent. You can almost certainly figure out which two companies command the first and second position in the U.S. market these days. You would, however, be forgiven for doing a double-take after hearing that Motorola has managed to shore up third place, according to

You can “collab” on Instagram, but what about on Twitter? The social network is continuing to work on a feature that would allow multiple users to co-author a tweet, which it’s referring to as “Collaborations.” The option has yet to be made publicly available and only works after one user accepts a request to collaborate