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Chinese e-commerce challenger Pinduoduo is raising over $1 billion more

06 Feb 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Jon Russell

The price of competing with e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com is immense. That’s evidenced by challenger Pinduoduo, commonly known as PDD, which is raising more than $1 billion in fresh capital just six months after it went public.

The company announced plans to sell 37 million shares in a move that will raise over $1 billion, going potentially as high as $1.25 billion if underwriters exercise their full share purchase option. The secondary event will also see a number of existing backers sell a portion of their stock, those sellers including Sequoia China, Lightspeed China and Banyan, according to a filing.

PDD went public in July when it raised $1.6 billion through a Nasdaq listing.

Founded in September 2015 by ex-Googler Colin Huang, it adds a social twist to e-commerce by offering discounts for shoppers who gang up with friends or family to make group orders. That’s resonated in particular with consumers, who tend to be female, the company said. PDD claims 385.5 million active buyers with an annual GMV of RMB 344.8 billion, or $250.2 billion, as of Q3 2018.

That’s helped it make a dent in China’s e-commerce …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Apeel partners with Nature’s Pride to bring spoilage resistant fruits and veggies to Europe

05 Feb 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Jonathan Shieber

Apeel Sciences, the developer of a new technology that makes fruits and vegetables more resistant to spoilage, and Nature’s Pride, one of the largest vendors of avocados and mangos in Europe, are partnering to bring longer-lived avocados to market.

Subject to regulatory approval in the EU, Nature’s Pride said it will integrate Apeel’s plant-based preservation technology into its avocado supply chain — bringing avocados with double the edible shelf life to European homes.

Apeel’s technology takes the naturally occurring chemicals found in the skins and peels of plants and applies it to fresh produce, providing what the company calls “a little extra peel” that slows the rate of water loss and oxidation — which cause vegetables and fruits to spil.

The company says that its produce will stay fresh two to three times longer than untreated produce. Apeel touts that its technology can lead to more sustainable growing practices and less food waste.

Across Europe, 88 million tons of food is thrown out every year, at a cost of 143 billion euros (or roughly $163 billion dollars).

As part of the agreement with Nature’s Pride, Apeel Sciences …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Hulu teams up with that world record Instagram egg to raise awareness of mental health

04 Feb 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Jon Russell

🥚

Remember that egg that became Instagram’s most-liked post? It used its recently-acquired fame to shed light on mental health and the pressures of social media.

The account now has 10 million followers — its record photo has over 52 million likes — and it put that audience to use with a 30-second video that aired on Hulu around the Super Bowl. The account had teased a major revealed in recent weeks, and it proved to be the short spot with Hulu that promotes mental health awareness, particularly around the context of using social media.

“Recently I’ve started to crack… the pressure of social media is getting to me,” the video reads as the egg’s shell begins to crack before breaking into pieces.

“If you’re struggling too, talk to someone,” the egg says before it is resurrected with a full shell once again.

The video closes with a link to the Mental Health America website.

Hulu’s Egg reveal is a mental health PSA which I love pic.twitter.com/Mb46prevKR

— Alexandra Able (@AlexandraAble) February 4, 2019

The video received praise from Mental Health America and many others on Twitter, but plenty of its <a target=_blank href="https://crunchbase.com/organization/instagram" target="_blank" …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Here’s the first trailer for the VR sequel to Groundhog Day

02 Feb 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Jonathan Shieber

Sony Pictures is taking audiences back to Punxsutawney… this time in virtual reality.

Whether it’s an abomination and a perversion of one of the best movies in the Bill Murray oeuvre or a great way to immerse a viewer in one of the most perfectly realized worlds brought to the silver screen (I unrepentantly love Groundhog Day) is TBD. That’s for players to decide.

In Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son players embody Phil Connors Jr., the son of Groundhog Day’s central character.

For anyone not familiar with the film, Bill Murray’s character was forced to relive the same day until he made all of the right choices to change the trajectory of his life.

In the sequel, his kid faces the same dilemma, reliving the same day over and over until, as Sony’s messaging puts it, “he learns the true value of friends and family.”

Published and produced by Sony Pictures Virtual Reality, the VR Groundhog Day sequel is co-produced by MWM Immersive, the division of Madison Wells Media — which also made Chained: A Victorian Nightmare — and developed by Tequila Works, the Madrid-based video game developer behind Deadlight and RiME.

<a target=_blank …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Apple’s long-time Siri leader reportedly no longer in charge

02 Feb 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Lucas Matney

The man who has headed up Siri at Apple since 2012 is no longer at the helm, according to The Information. Bill Stasior remains at the company in a different role, the report states.

We’ve reached out to Apple for comment.

Stasior joined Apple to take over Siri in 2012 after being poached from Amazon’s A9 retail search team. At this in time, most of the original Siri co-founders had already left Apple and Stasior was tasked with taking on the mantle of deciding where the digital assistant should move next.

Siri has had a troubled history at Apple. Though the voice assistant arrived with a big splash, the company’s inability to iterate the product quickly left its competitors ample opportunity to leapfrog its capabilities. Something that both Amazon and Google clearly have with their Alexa and Google Assistant platforms.

This past April, Apple hired Google’s John Giannandrea to lead AI and machine learning efforts at the company, a division that includes Siri and CoreML. Giannandrea is expected to be leading the search for a new leader for the Siri team, the report says.

…read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Nintendo to open its first official store located in Japan

01 Feb 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Catherine Shu

Fourteen years after unveiling its first location in New York, Nintendo is finally opening an official store in Japan, too. Nintendo Tokyo will be located in Shibuya Parco, the new flagship of the Parco department store chain. Nintendo Tokyo is scheduled to open at the same time as the shopping center in fall.

In an announcement, Nintendo said “we are preparing to make this store, which will be a new base for communicating Nintendo information in Japan, an enjoyable place for a wide range of consumers.” In addition to games, consoles, accessories like amiibo, and branded merchandise, Nintendo Tokyo will also host gaming kiosks and events (if the New York store, in Rockefeller Center, is anything to go by, these might include tournaments, demos, and launches).

Nintendo recently posted strong third-quarter revenue growth, but also cut its Switch forecast for the year. Sales may pick up again, however, if Nintendo releases a smaller and less expensive version of the console, as Japanese financial publication Nikkei reported it plans to do.

…read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Samsung posts fourth-quarter profit drop, warns of weak demand until the second half of 2019

31 Jan 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Catherine Shu

Samsung Electronics reported its largest quarterly profit decline in two years during its earnings report today. As the Galaxy maker warned in its earnings guidance earlier this month, its results were hurt by slower-than-expected demand for semiconductors, which had bolstered its earnings in previous quarters even when smartphone sales were slow.

Samsung’s forecast was also dour, at least for the first half of the year. It said annual earnings will decline thanks to continuing weak demand for chips, but expects demand for memory products and OLED panels to improve during the second half.

The company’s fourth-quarter operating profit was 10.8 trillion won (about $9.7 billion), a 28.7 percent decrease from the 15.15 trillion won it recorded in the same period one year ago. Revenue was 59.27 trillion won, a 10.2 percent drop year over year.

Broken out by business, Samsung’s semiconductor unit recorded quarterly operating profit of 7.8 trillion won, down from 10.8 trillion won a year ago. Its mobile unit’s operating profit was 1.5 trillion won, compared to 2.4 trillion won a year ago.

Smartphone makers, including Samsung rival Apple, have been hit hard by slowing smartphone sales around the world, especially in China. Upgrade …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Chat app Line’s mobile payment service is getting its own Visa card

30 Jan 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Jon Russell

Brown, Cony and the gang are coming to a credit card near you in Japan. Line, the messaging app company behind the cute sticker characters, announced today that it is bringing its payment service to plastic through a tie-in with Visa.

Line is Japan’s largest chat app with an estimated 50 million registered users. The cards will be released later this year and they’ll allow Line Pay, the company’s digital wallet service, to stretch beyond its existing merchant base to allow users to pay at any retailer accepting Visa . In addition, the first year of use will see customers get 3 percent of their spending back in Line’s ‘Points’ virtual currency, which is used to buy stickers and other content.

The partnership is a step up from Line’s own payment cards, which were introduced in 2016 and supported by JCB.

It’s an interesting deal because mobile is generally seen as being the future form factor for payments. In China, for example, using cash or card to pay is considered antiquated — you’ll get glares from other patrons forced to wait while you complete your transaction — but digital payments face a struggle in most other …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Apple disables group calling in FaceTime in response to eavesdropping bug

29 Jan 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Jon Russell

Apple has disabled the group calling feature within its FaceTime calling service while it works on a patch to fix a nasty bug that allows eavesdropping.

Apple’s status page shows that group calling via FaceTime is “temporarily unavailable” — that’s a stop-gap move while the company to deliver a more permanent fix to the problem this week. We were unable to set up a group call when we tried, having earlier been able to do and replicate the issue.

All being well, this fix means that users don’t need to completely disable FaceTime due to the bug, but it is understandable if some people are hesitant to switch it on again.

The vulnerability was unearthed on Monday and it is activated when a user initiates a group call but adds themselves as a participant, as we explained in our earlier post:

The bug relies on what appears to be a nasty logic screwup in FaceTime’s group call system. While we’re opting to not outline the steps here, the bug seems to trick the recipient’s phone into thinking a group call is already ongoing. A few quick taps, and FaceTime immediately trips over itself and inexplicably fires …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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Google and IAB ad category lists show “massive leakage of highly intimate data”, GDPR complaint claims

28 Jan 2019/0 Comments/in /by

By Natasha Lomas

Male impotence, substance abuse, right-wing politics, left-wing politics, sexually transmitted diseases, cancer, mental health.

Those are just a few of the advertising labels that Google’s adtech infrastructure routinely sticks to Internet users as it watches and tracks what they do online in order to target them with behavioral ads.

Intimate and highly sensitive inferences such as these are then systematically broadcast and shared with what can be thousands of third party companies, via the real-time ad auction broadcast process which powers the modern programmatic online advertising system. So essentially you’re looking at the rear-end reality of how creepy ads work.

This practice is already the target of a legal complaint in Europe, filed under the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The real-time bidding (RTB) complaint, which was lodged last fall by Dr Johnny Ryan of private browser Brave; Jim Killock, previously director of the Open Rights Group; and Michael Veale, a data and policy researcher at University College London, alleges “wide-scale and systemic breaches of the data protection regime by Google and others” in the behavioral advertising industry.

It argues the personalized ad industry has “spawned a mass data broadcast …read more

Source: Tech Crunch

    

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