Mobile

Apple’s latest earnings report found the hardware giant exceeding expectations amid the ongoing chip shortage. All told, the company marked a 9% growth in iPhone sales, as most of the rest of the market contracted. When it comes to navigating the supply chain, there’s a lot to be said for the leverage that comes with

Spotify acquired podcast discovery platform Podz last summer for roughly $49.4 million, per a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, to help accelerate the streamer’s extensive investments in podcasts. Now, Spotify is testing a feature that leverages the startup’s technology to help users find new podcasts they may like, the company confirmed. Podz had originally attempted

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

Lost-item tracker and AirTag competitor Tile is today introducing its first anti-stalking safety feature, called “Scan and Secure.” The technology was first announced in October with a promised arrival date of sometime in early 2022. Using Tile’s mobile app, users will now be able to scan for unknown Tiles or Tile-enabled devices that may be

Android development these days runs on a monthly cadence, so it’s no surprise that about a month after Google announced the first developer preview of Android 13 (code-named “Tiramisu,” as Google occasionally calls it in its developer documentation) it has now launched the second developer preview. These previews typically still have a lot of rough

After a bullied teen died by suicide, a grieving mother last year sued the platform where the abuse had taken place — Snapchat — for not doing enough to protect its younger users. Another lawsuit, related to another suicide, followed last month. In response to the former, Snap banned the anonymous messaging apps that had

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 latest year-end reports. Global spending across iOS,

Kenya-based agritech Apollo Agriculture, which helps farmers access high-quality farm inputs, financing and markets, plans to double the number of farmers it is serving by the end 2022 and to introduce other products that deliver more value per acre of land. This is after raising $40 million in Series B funding in the equity round

Dating app giant Match Group, already home to Tinder, Match, OkCupid, Hinge and others, is today launching the latest addition to its dating services lineup with Stir, an app designed exclusively for single parents. With the new release, the company aims to address the 20 million single parents in the U.S. who are under-served by

South Korea’s LG Energy Solution, which supplies electric vehicle batteries to Tesla, Lucid Motors, General Motors and Proterra, said on Thursday it is investing $1.4 billion (1.7 trillion KRW) to build a cylindrical battery plant in Queen Creek, Arizona. The move is a clear indication that LG Energy is increasing its presence in the United

Say what you will — Nothing knows how to tease a teaser. In the hardware startup’s defense, it noted that this morning’s event would be a “roadmap” reveal, specifically referring to another device coming to its lineup, without offering much in the way of information on said product. The company has, however, confirmed the much-rumored

FedEx has been working on a new feature for its consumer mobile app that would seemingly allow it to better compete with the popular Shop app by Shopify. One of the bigger selling points for Shopify’s Shop is how it allows users to track their purchases and shipments from across services, including not only Shopify,

D-ID, the Israeli company leveraging artificial intelligence to create unique, viral experiences like “Deep Nostalgia,” which animates the faces of long-lost relatives in your old photos, announced today the raise of a $25 million Series B round of funding led by Macquarie Capital. The additional funds shortly follow D-ID’s recent launch of its Deep Nostalgia

Mark Cuban’s interactive platform Fireside, which helps creators reach audiences through live and virtual shows, is in talks to raise its Series A financing round and plans to make a push into web3 and metaverse in within months, two sources familiar with the matter said. Fireside is engaging with investors to raise about $25 million

Ten game development studios in Africa have come together under one umbrella, the Pan Africa Gaming Group (PAGG), in an effort to unify the continent’s gaming sector, which is currently fragmented. The association is further envisioned to drive the uptake of gaming in the continent, and grow developer talent. The announcement was made today against

A team at Google is today launching a new product for mobile app developers called Checks which leverages A.I. technology to identify possible privacy and compliance issues within apps, amid a rapidly changing regulatory and policy landscape. The freemium solution will be offered to both Android and iOS app developers of all sizes, who will

Spotify’s oddly-named in-car entertainment system, “Car Thing,” is now available to the general public after initial tests that began in 2019. The now $89.99 device — a $10 increase from its limited public release in October — is largely targeted towards vehicle owners who don’t have a built-in infotainment system offering easy access to Spotify,

I fully confess I was a skeptic when Samsung unveiled the first Note. And I certainly wasn’t alone among the crowd at the Messe Berlin that IFA. The 5.3-inch display was unimaginably large in a year when the average screen measured a hair over 3.5 inches. The stylus graced the phone like a vestigial organ

Powered by 25,000 motorcycle taxis at the start of 2020, Safeboda was at its peak, ferrying thousands of pillion passengers in cities across Uganda and Nigeria. And then the covid pandemic hit, throwing everything into a spin. Containment measures like work from home directives meant a slump in business, which was worsened by the lockdowns,

What’s the next step beyond Zoom calls and FaceTime? How about beaming yourself from one device to another in real-time using augmented reality? That’s the premise behind a startup called Beem, which is today announcing its first consumer app, $4 million in seed funding, and its longer-term plan to become a communications technology for the

Those Super Bowl ad spots paid off for a number of tech companies not just in terms of exposure, but also app installs, a new report indicates. But Coinbase’s viral ad — which just bounced a QR code around on a black screen like the old DVD screensaver — outperformed the group, with installs jumping

Michael Chertoff Contributor Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is the author of “Exploding Data: Reclaiming Our Cyber Security in the Digital Age” and executive chairman of the Chertoff Group, a security and risk-management firm with clients in the technology sector. The Open App Markets Act, a bill that would, among many other things, require

Last week, Samsung killed the Note once and for all. It was a symbolic move. For all intents and purposes, the phone will live on as the Ultra tier of the company’s Galaxy S line. But it represents the end of an era for the decade-old brand. It’s also another opportunity for the company to

Remedial Health has secured $1 million in pre-seed funding to digitize pharmacies, and stem the supply of fake and substandard pharmaceutical products, starting with Nigeria before expanding to the rest of Africa. The round was led by Global Ventures and Ventures Platform, with participation from Ingressive Capital, Voltron Capital, Opeyemi Awoyemi’s (Jobberman co-founder) Angel Syndicate

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

Tiger Global-backed ShareChat and Times Internet-owned on-demand video streaming service MX Player have agreed to “strategically merge” their short video apps Moj and MX TakaTak, the two firms said Thursday, in a move they said would create India’s largest short-video platform. The deal is structured this way: MX Media, the parent firm of MX Player

Mdundo, an Africa-focused music streaming service, is banking on more partnerships with telcos across the continent to grow its earnings and user base. Last year, the company signed deals with MTN and Airtel in Nigeria, and Vodacom in Tanzania, which appear to be paying off after its user-base almost doubled as it added paying subscribers

Right on schedule, Google today announced the first developer release of Android 13. These very early releases, which are only meant for developers and aren’t available through over-the-air updates, typically don’t include too many user-facing changes. That’s true this time as well, but even in this early release, the company is already showing off a

Tinder is bringing back the idea of the “blind date” through a new in-app feature, launching today. Except, in this case, Tinder isn’t sending out two members out on a blind date together — it’s introducing them to one another through a social chatting feature that will allow them to interact and chat before they

Consumers spent more than $8.5 billion in 2020 on camping reservations across the U.S., but the camping industry itself has yet to be fully digitized. Today, reserving a space at some campgrounds, both public and private, may require a phone call. And the reservation itself is still often recorded using old-school systems, like pen and paper.