TechCrunch Industry News

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. Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach Facebook managed to beat Wall Street’s estimates in its Q4 earnings despite a seemingly constant beatdown in the press. The company said it hit 2.32 billion monthly users, up 2.2 percent from 2. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you just tried to turn on your Xbox One and were met with nothing but a black screen: you’re not alone. A particularly bad outage in Xbox Live’s core services is causing the console to get stuck at boot. Microsoft is aware of the outage, and says they’ve “identified the cause”. We are aware of reports of Xbox One console startup, title update and sign-in errors. We will keep everyone informed once we have more information to share. Thank you all for your patience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you haven’t been paying attention to TikTok, you haven’t been paying attention. The short-form video app hailing from Beijing’s ByteDance just had its biggest month ever with the addition of 75 million new users in December — a 275 percent increase from the 20 million it added in December 2017, according a recent report from Sensor Tower. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Losing to the computer in StarCraft has been a tradition of mine since the first game came out in 1998. Of course, the built-in “AI” is trivial for serious players to beat, and for years researchers have attempted to replicate human strategy and skill in the latest version of the game. They’ve just made a huge leap with AlphaStar, which recently beat two leading pros 5-0. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

People are increasingly interested in finding a way to participate in the cannabis industry, and for good reason. It’s growing like a weed (yes, we said it). According to a San Francisco-based research company, Grand View Research, the global legal marijuana market is expected to reach $146.4 billion by end of 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we had the gang back together with our own Connie Loizos at the helm, Kate Clark in the studio as well, Alex on the phone, and Ed Sim from Boldstart Ventures onboard as well. A good crew for a busy week. Now that 2019 is fully underway, the news is back to its usual firehose-pace which means we had a lot to get through. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Smartphones are about to get more interesting, but is it enough to drive growth? As sales stagnate, will foldable phones and 5G be enough to save the day? Smartphone numbers are down. In 2018, global shipments dropped 3 percent, and while the long-promised arrival of 5G will help numbers get back into the black, IDC predicts that even then growth will be in the low-single digits. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mixtape, the podcast that goes a bit behind the headlines to bring tech to culture. This week Megan Rose Dickey and I welcome Tiana Kara, the head of partnerships and growth at #builtbygirls (which, like TechCrunch, is owned by Verizon Media Group). The organization connects girls and women between the ages of 15 and 22 with mentors of all stripes in the tech industry based on their interests. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sunil Nagaraj, who’d studied computer science as an undergrad at UNC Chapel Hill, landed two pretty nice gigs after deciding to pursue an MBA at Harvard Business School. First, he founded a venture-backed company called Triangulate — though he recognized when it was time to shut it down two years later. He then wound up working as a principal for Bessemer Venture Partners, a top-tier venture firm with locations around the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’ve got a double dose of exciting news for you, startup fans. First, we’re thrilled to announce that investment firms August Capital, SV Angel and Uncork Capital have partnered with us for the 2nd Annual TechCrunch Winter Party at Galvanize on February 8. And second, today we released into the wild another fresh, though limited, batch of tickets. If you haven’t snagged a ticket to this Silicon Valley shindig, take heed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Most of us believe our time is extremely valuable, certainly worth more than thirty cents. But then you read about human decision-making, and you have to wonder what goes through people’s heads. This time, it is Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at The Wall Street Journal, who wrote a review of Amazon Publishing, the printing house (if you will) of the ecommerce giant. Amazon published more than one thousand titles in 2017, and now commands roughly a majority of all book purchases made in the U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twitter accidentally revealed some users’ “protected” (aka, private) tweets, the company disclosed this afternoon. The “Protect your Tweets” settingtypically allows people to use Twitter in a non-public fashion. These users get to approve who can follow them and who can view their content. For some Android users over a period of several years, that may not have been the case – their tweets were actually made public as a result of this bug. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nasdaq’s BVP Emerging Cloud Index measures the performance of a portfolio of 45 SaaS stocks. Like much of the tech world, and the stock market in general, the final quarter of 2018 was not terribly kind. The good news is that there are signs of life lately. On November 19th, SaaS stocks had a noteworthy bad day. Everything was down, way down. As we reported, some examples included: Salesforce was down 8.7 percent to $121.01. Box was down 6.93 percent to $16.66 Workday was down 7.57 percent to $124. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We’re back! After what I think was our first-ever break, Kate Clark and I sat down to dig into the latest startup venture news. There was a lot. We had to skip a few rounds to squeeze the show down to size, but we still hit the biggest stories. First, Lime and Bird are raising again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Redpoint Ventures is doubling down on China. The firm, headquartered in Menlo Park, has filed documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to raise $400 million across two new China-focused funds. The firm has set a $300 million target for its second flagship China fund, a significant increase from the $180 million it garnered for its debut China fund in 2016. Redpoint is also raising a $100 million opportunityfund that will also focus on the Chinese tech startup market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spotify launches Car View on Android to make using its app less dangerous behind the wheel Spotify is making it easier to use its streaming app in the car, when the phone is connected to the vehicle over Bluetooth. The company today confirmed the launch of a new feature called “Car View,” which is a simplified version of the service’s Now Playing screen that includes larger fonts, bigger buttons, and no distractions from album art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why is one of the most popular Android apps running a hidden web server in the background? ES File Explorer claims it has over 500 million downloads under its belt since 2014, making it one of the most used apps to date. It’s simplicity makes it what it is: a simple file explorer that lets you browse through your Android phone or tablet’s file system for files, data, documents and more. But behind the scenes, the app is running a slimmed-down web server on the device. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

China accounted for nearly half of app downloads in 2018, 40% of consumer spend Global app downloads topped 194 billion in 2018, up 35 percent from 2016, according to App Annie’s annual “State of Mobile 2019” report released today. Consumer spending across app stores was up 75 percent to reach $101 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Philip Rosedale Contributor Philip Rosedale is co-founder and CEO of High Fidelity. A smartphone screen is a wonder of the world. It’s not just that it’s bright and colorful and sharp. In some ways, it’s as good as human biology allows. We’ve packed so many pixels into such a small space that any more would be lost on us. We can’t make the screens themselves bigger, because then they’d become too large to hold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

VLC, the hugely popular media playing service, is filing one of its gaps with the addition ofAirPlay support as its just crossed an incredible three billion users. The new feature was revealed byJean-Baptiste Kempf, one of the service’s lead developers, in an interview with Variety at CESand it will give users a chance to beam content from their Android or iOS device to an Apple TV. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jason Rowley Contributor Jason Rowley is a venture capital and technology reporter for Crunchbase News. More posts by this contributor SoftBank’s Vision Fund inches closer to $100B The top 10 cities for $100M VC rounds in 2018 so far For the global VC industry, 2018 was asupergiantyear. Crunchbase projects that 2018 deal and dollar volume surpassed even the high-water mark left by the dot-com deluge and the drought that followed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gartner has released its quarterly PC sales survey for the fourth quarter of 2018, and it was the same old story. PC sales plunged in the fourth quarter and were down 1.3 percent for the year. The three top players — HP, Dell and Lenovo — accounted for 63 percent of sales worldwide in the quarter. The company found in their preliminary sales research that worldwide sales totaled 68.6 million units in the fourth quarter. That may sound like a big number, but it’s down 4. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two and a half years after doing pushups onstage at Disrupt New York, Bay Area-based sports health company Halo Neuroscience is back with the second generation of its brain stimulating headphones. The biggest update to the spiky wearable this time around is a newfound focus on the headphone aspect of the product. The Halo Sport 2 adds Bluetooth audio — a nice change from its hardwired predecessor. After all, no one wants to be tethered while working out. Co-founder Dr. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

To paraphrase P. T. Barnum, “there’s a Bluetooth speaker born every minute.” At no time of year is that more true than at CES in Las Vegas, where they are bountiful beyond belief. But very few — nay, only one that I found — are made of concrete. And it’s French! The speakers immediately attracted my attention because of their simplicity and of course material. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Silicon Valley loves a party, and we’re ready to help you get your swerve on. We’ve just released a fresh batch of tickets to the 2nd Annual TechCrunch Winter Party. Our fabulous midwinter fete takes place on Friday, February 8 atGalvanizein San Francisco. Here’s a hot tip: buy your ticket now, because they won’t sit around for long. Last year, nearly 1,000 people came to the party and — as cliché as it sounds — a good time was had by all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Handheld retro gaming machines come and go, but few go so simply and effectively to the point as My Arcade’s Retro Champ. You stick in your NES cartridge, hit the power button, and assuming you blew on it beforehand, it powers up. This one sets itself apart with a big ol’ screen, Famicom compatibility, and a whopping 35-hour battery life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In moments of stress and anxiety, there are those of us who find it difficult to breathe — and paradoxically, many reach for a cigarette or vape as a way to manage that. But what if instead of nicotine or smoke, the device you grabbed put fresh air in your lungs and helped you calm down? That’s the idea behind the Kitoki. Looking a bit like an oversized bean with a sippy cup tip on the end, the Kitoki is a striking but not immediately attractive device. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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. Magic Leap and other AR startups have a rough 2019 ahead of them 2018 was supposed to be the year where the foundation of AR was set to expand, but now it looks like momentum has been sucked out of the industry’s heavy hitters. 2. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a new a16z podcast with the venture firm’s founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, there’s a lot to enjoy, from Andreessen’s TV show recommendations to Horowitz’s secret to excellent barbecue. (It’s pretty much just “time,” as you might imagine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s tax season! You know what that means? It’s scamming season, too. You might have heard this story before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We know Disney’s Star Wars Land (or “Galaxy’s Edge”, if we’re being formal) is opening sometime in summer 2019. But thats about as exact as anyone at Disney would get. The rumors said June. Now, it seems, so does Disney CEO Bob Iger. Iger casually dropped the June target in an interview with Barron’s (as spotted by the OC Register). You can read the full interview here, but the key bit comes in a question about the strategic impact of Galaxy’s Edge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Listen, everyone. It’s not every day that a new fact comes to light regarding a game that came out more than 30 years ago. And I happen to love it when retro games get broken in fabulous and entertaining ways. So the news that The Legend of Zelda for NES has a minus world like Super Mario Bros and others hit me like like a freight train. The phenomenon was discovered by Youtuber SKELUX, who starts off his video with a quick explanation of how minus worlds work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Samsung always has a huge presence at CES, but it isn’t the giant TVs and flashy next-generation gadgets that have my attention this year; it’s this simple, flexible monitor that looks like it would be right at home in any workspace. It’s called the Space Monitor, presumably because it gives you space, not because it’s meant for use in space. I don’t see why you couldn’t, though. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Well, what have we here? If it isn’t the Samsung Galaxy S10, courtesy of perennial smartphone outer, EVLeaks. This marks one the first good looks we’ve got at the phone, which is likely due out in a couple of months at Mobile World Congress. It’s a pretty rough photo — the icons are all blurred out and the cropping job isn’t great, likely in an effort to conceal the source. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As anyone from the Gizmondo to the Virtual Boy can tell you, it’s tough to launch a console. Of course, it’s helps when your device apparently comes pre-loaded with thousands of games from big name companies like Nintendo, Sony, Square and Bandai. It was clear the moment they were launched that Soulja Boy’s SouljaGame console and handhelds were too good to be true, in spite of his insistence that he’d struck deals with game publishers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shine, one of the many apps capitalizing on the growing self-care trend, has now brought its app used by 3 million people to Android devices. Originally launched as a simple messaging bot that doled out life advice and motivation, Shine has grown over the years to become a larger self-help platform aimed largely at the millennial crowd – and in particular, millennial women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The timing is… less than ideal. Just as the industry is recovering from a holiday-induced hangover, we’re thrust into the country’s largest consumer electronics show. The timing, of course, is not coincidental. The show is intended to offer a preview for the tech year to come. Many companies thrive on CES’s pace. It’s a five-day deluge of tech news, and, for many, it’s the largest platform they’ll get all year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My parents are approaching 60. When they were young, they hung out at diners, or drove around in their cars. My generation hung out in the parking lot after school, or at the mall. My colleague John Biggs often talks of hanging out with his nerd buddies in his basement, playing games and making crank calls. Today, young people are hanging out on a virtual island plagued by an ever-closing fatal storm. It’s called Fortnite . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Earlier this year, Netflix was seen testing a bypass of iTunes billing across dozens of markets worldwide. As 2018 draws to a close, Netflix – the App Store’s top grossing app –has ditched the ability for new users to sign up and subscribe to the streaming service within its iOS app across all global markets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Think you know tech? Square off against TechCrunch editors with 2018’s year in tech quiz. TechCrunch’s 2018 Year In Tech Quiz Square off against TechCrunch’s reporters and editors in this year’s annual quiz, covering the major stories of the past twelve months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gfycat, a home for GIF-making tools and an online community, is rolling out a new way to create GIFs — it will now let you keep the sound on. With “Gfycat Sound,” as the feature is called, GIF makers will have the option to retain the audio from the video file they’re using to create their “GIF” — something Gfycat believes will be especially popular among gamers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hans Morris is a name to know in fintech, and as finance and tech sectors prepare for tougher time next year, he has some incisive thoughts to share about the kinds of companies that will succeed (or not) in a financial downturn. The managing partner of investment firm Nyca Partners, Morris also serves as the chairman of the board of Lending Club and is a director of other start-ups including AvidXchange, Boomtown, Payoneer and SigFig. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Epic Games is having its own Christmas hangover. On Wednesday, a number of Fortnite players reported long queues that time out and problems logging in to Fortnite’s servers. The company is aware of the issue and tweeted that it’s investigating the cause behind the outage that some users are running into when they try to log in. We are investigating an issue causing some players to encounter a problem with game services and when attempting to log in. https://t. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The UK’s second busiest airport, Gatwick, reopened its runway early this morning after a day of shutdown triggered after drones were repeatedly spotting flying nearby. Drones ground flights at UK’s second largest airport In a media statement issued at 08:00 GMT this morning, the airport said it reopened the runway at 06:00 and that a “limited number” of aircraft are now taking off and landing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

WireGuard is a new VPN protocol that promises to be faster and more secure at the same time. And you can now connect to a WireGuard server on iOS thanks to the official open source app. Compared to other VPN protocols, such as OpenVPN and IPsec, it can maintain a VPN connection even if you change from one network to another. Let’s say you’re in a hotel and you’re heading to a busy conference center. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One by one, European countries are slapping Uber with a penalty for the way it handled its 2016 data breach. Today, France’s data protection watchdog, the CNIL, announced it was fining Uber $460,000 (€400,000). This event was a combination of bad security with bad reaction and good timing. Back in 2016, Uber faced a data breach that affected 57 million users, including 1.4 million users in France. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Knowledge base is one of the departments where Alexa has lagged Assistant. After all, it’s pretty tough to compete with Google when comes to a sheer breadth of knowledge. Wolfram Alpha is a pretty good place to start. The answer engine offers a wide cross section of curated data, with a heavy focus on math and sciences. Starting this week, U.S.-based Alexa users will get access to that information, with roll out completing over the coming weeks and months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Consumer Electronics Show, like Burning Man, is a massive event in the middle of the desert. Also like Burning Man it is populated by some of the greatest minds in technology. But, unlike Burning Man, these people are all dressed and only a few of them are on hard psychotropic drugs. Also CES is mostly inside. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some iPad Pros could come bent out of the box Apple has confirmed to The Verge that some iPad Pro models come slightly bent out of the box due to a manufacturing process. According to Apple, it shouldn’t impact your iPad in any way. But if you buy a new iPad Pro, please make sure that it’s not bent in case you want to exchange it within the first couple of weeks. It’s still unclear if Apple plans to repair bent iPads once you’ve passed the return window. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you’re reading this the year it was written, you’re almost certainly not getting it over 5G. If you’re reading this in the future, congrats, you made it. And hey, remember polar bears? 5G is the latest buzzword to send the mobile industry into a tizzy. This one’s got a particular weight to it, too, given that smartphone sales have started flagging for the first time ever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices