Mobile

The Covid-19 pandemic continues to impact the mobile app ecosystem, according to an annual retrospective released today by app intelligence firm Sensor Tower. In the early days of the pandemic, a number of apps saw rapidly increased usage — like that focused on online shopping, entertainment, business and education, for example. Though much of the

Spotify is today introducing a new ad format aimed at podcasters which it’s calling “Call-to-Action Cards” — or CTA cards, for short. The feature, which is powered by Spotify’s streaming ad insertion technology, will display a visual ad in the Spotify app when the audio ad begins to play. The cards can be customized by

Tinder confirmed it’s exploring the development of a new feature called Swipe Party which offers a way to make sorting through possible matches a more social experience. According to details spotted in the Tinder mobile app’s code, Swipe Party requires access to the phone’s camera and microphone so your friends can “see and hear you

Consumers worldwide have downloaded Meta’s Oculus app, the mobile companion for Oculus VR devices including the Quest 2, roughly 2 million times globally since Christmas Day, according to new data from third-party app intelligence firms, Apptopia and Sensor Tower. Already, had been some indication that the Quest 2 was a popular holiday gift after the

Google is working with the likes of Intel, Acer and HP to make connecting your phone to your Windows PC through Fast Pair, share files between Android devices and Windows PCs with Nearby Share, set up Bluetooth accessories and sync text messages between the two computing ecosystems. These new capabilities will come to select Windows

CES, in general, isn’t much of a phone show. That certainly applies to Samsung, which tends to save its big mobile news for Mobile World Congress, a month or two from now. Instead, the event is more about big things: TVs, washing machines, etc. Over the past few years, however, the electronics giant has used

OnePlus has seemingly taken a page out of co-founder Carl Pei’s book with the 10 Pro launch. Gone, it seems, are the days where we get everything we want to know about an upcoming device in one handy location. Instead, the company’s meting out information about its latest flagship, piece by piece. Overnight we got

There are more than 54 million family caregivers in the United States. Working family caregivers spend an average of 25 hours a week caring for their loved ones on top of their full-time jobs, and ultimately, the current lack of support and resources drives 32% of them to leave their job to care full time.  Jessica Kim, chief executive

The year 2021 saw more and bigger deals closed in Africa, as tech startups across the continent raised close to $5 billion. This amount was double the previous year’s investment, and nine times what was raised five years ago, an indication of how much the startup scene has transformed over the last few years. Fintechs

It’s easy to forget now in the age of Apple and Android, but at one time, BlackBerry owned the business smartphone market. You could have your Motorolas and your Nokias and your Samsungs, but for business, BlackBerry was it. Stalwart. Secure. Functional. As TechCrunch reported this morning, BlackBerry is shutting down its remaining services, and

The long, lonesome death of the classic BlackBerry brand hits another milestone tomorrow, as the company finally end access to legacy services. Users still hanging onto devices running BlackBerry OS 7.1 and BlackBerry 10 will lose substantial functionality, on Tuesday January 4. The list includes – but is not limited to – key features like

Koko Networks, a Kenya-based bio-fuel technology enterprise has extended its business to cover other fast-moving consumer goods, through a new tech platform that will capitalize on its established distribution networks in low-income neighborhoods. Koko Club, its new business-line, will sell the products directly to consumers through the dukas (small shops) that currently serve as the

When we penned the intro for this piece last year, little did we know that — in many ways — we’d still be deep in it by the time 2021’s feature rolled around. Amid another holiday season marred by a new variant, seemingly the more things change — well, you get the picture. Surprisingly, however,

Apple is breaking with holiday tradition: The company announced early last month that its App Store will continue to review developer submissions over the holidays, welcome news for app developers facing their busiest season. Previously, an app that needed to release a bug fix or a critical update on Black Friday or during the final

Last year’s Essential implosion marked one of the most high-profile consumer electronics startup failures in recent memory. Launched in 2017 with $330 million, a killer pedigree and some truly grand ambitions, the company sputtered through a combination of industry issues, disappointment and troubling allegations against founder Andy Rubin. The firm’s IP was eventually purchased by

GDevelop is a game engine that lets you develop a video game without any specific development experience. While the ‘no-code’ trend has been quite popular this year, GDevelop has been around for a few years already. Florian Rival first started working on GDevelop as an open-source side project. The first public version on GitHub was

Paying bills is hardly a fun thing. So I think it’s safe to say that any technology that can make the process easier is welcome by all. Papaya is a Los Angeles-based startup with a mission to do just that. It has developed technology to give people a way to pay bills outside of traditional

Alitheia IDF (AIF), a women-focused private equity fund in Africa has raised $100 million to invest in gender-diverse businesses across the continent. The fund is looking to bridge the financing gap for women-led or owned businesses in Africa – where women startup founders are less likely to receive funding despite their increasing enterprise. Women-only founders

A digital mobile overdraft facility christened Fuliza, by Kenya’s biggest telco Safaricom Plc, is giving the country’s popular loan apps a run for their money barely three years after its launch. Fuliza allows Safaricom customers to access unsecured credit by overdrawing on M-Pesa – the telecommunication company mobile money wallet that allows its users to

Many brands are using the messaging app Discord to forge a sense of community among their fans. If the fast-food chain Wendy’s can have a Discord with over 60,000 members, why not a viral platform like TikTok? TikTok teased on Twitter that it was making a Discord server, but then confirmed the news on its

TikTok announced this morning it’s taking a new approach to its “For You” feed — the short-form video app’s main feed, powered by its algorithmic recommendations. The company already detailed how its algorithm works to suggest videos based on users’ engagement patterns within its app, but admits that too much of a particular content category

Disney+ is the latest streaming app to add support for Apple’s SharePlay, the iOS 15 feature that offers a co-viewing experience over FaceTime video calls on iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV devices. First announced during Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June, SharePlay rolled out with the iOS 15.1 update, soon offering co-viewing experiences

South Korean startup Kakao Entertainment announced today it has acquired Wuxiaworld, an Asia fantasy fiction platform, via its serialized fiction app subsidiary Radish to bolster the mobile storytelling business. The transaction size is $37.5 million.   Wuxiaworld, which has grown through word-of-mouth, claims it is now the largest English-language Asia fantasy platform in the U.S. in terms of

The crease, it seems, is unavoidable. It’s right there, smack in the middle of the those big, expensive folding displays. And it’s invariably (and perhaps understandably) the first comment on nearly every story I post about a foldable phone. The alternative isn’t ideal, either — a gap between two distinct displays à la Microsoft’s Surface

Kenyan startup Wowzi has secured new funding to expand the reach of its platform, which turns social media users into brand influencers, to West and Southern Africa — as it taps the increasing usage of social sites across the continent driven by the proliferation of smartphones and a deepening internet penetration. Wowzi, which connects social

Apple is now rolling out access to its new, lower-cost Apple Music Voice plan, first introduced this fall at the company’s hardware event. The new service, designed largely for use with HomePod speakers or AirPods, limits consumers to accessing Apple Music using Siri commands. Due to its stripped-down nature, the voice-only service is offered at

There are already a number of ways to gift cryptocurrencies, but today Cash App will make doing so simpler with a new feature rolling out to its peer-to-peer payments app. The app, owned by Block (the company formerly known as Square) will now allow users in the U.S. to send bitcoin, as well as traditional

Whym, a conversational commerce startup founded by former Snap employees, wants to make it easier for consumers to shop online via their mobile devices. Instead of filling out long checkout forms and entering in payment card details by hand, Whym’s solution offers a single-tap checkout experience where customers can pay via Apple Pay or Google

A women-led startup called Honeycomb is launching its private social app for families, backed by $4 million in seed funding led by Peter Boyce at Stellation Capital. Now out of private beta, the app offers families a way to curate and share their favorite moments and memories via their smartphone as an alternative to using

Indonesia-based insurtech startup Fuse announced today it has secured $25 million of Series B extension round as it plans to enter more countries including Thailand and Vietnam in Southeast Asia. The startup has closed three funding rounds of Series B within the past six months, bringing the company’s total raised to over $70 million. The