Year: 2019

Apple could drop LCDs from the iPhone line next year, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. That interesting — if not altogether surprising — revelation in buried in a piece about a Japan supplier’s struggles in the wake of disappointing iPhone XR sales.

The news, which comes courtesy of people familiar with the matter, makes sense, as prices for the display technology should drop, making it more attainable for more people. Whether Apple is giving up on the budget take on its flagship remains to be seen, but the XR appears not to have gotten the reception the company was banking on.

Apple has downplayed any disappointment, noting that the cheaper handset (starting at $250 less than the XS) has been the “most popular iPhone” since going on sale in October. But handset sales are ebbing across the board — a phenomenon that’s hardly specific to Apple.

Besides, moving to a higher end technology across the board is just part of the inevitable march of progress, though the company is still expected to release an LCD-sporting successor to the XR later this year. A number of competitors, meanwhile, will be dipping their toes into the foldable display waters in 2019, though that technology isn’t expected to go fully mainstream any time soon.

2020 will also reportedly be the year Apple makes the move to a 5G iPhone.

French startup Wynd raised another $82 million (€72 million) from Natixis, Sofina and BNF capital. The company started with a point-of-sale solution for restaurants and other brick-and-mortar stores. It now provides a one-stop-shop for all your digital needs when it comes to managing your offline and online sales.

The startup has raised $127 million in total (€112 million) from today’s new investors as well as Sodexo, Orange and Alven.

Wynd provides a software-as-a-service platform for everything that can be powered by computers. The service manages your inventory, handles orders, payments and tells your staff what they’re supposed to do to prepare orders for your customers.

Everything is omnichannel, which means that an online sale and an offline sale are handled the same way in the system — there’s just a different parameter when it comes to delivery. Your inventory is unified across your e-commerce websites and stores. And Wynd can also replace your product information management service.

If you’re already using other services for some parts of your business, Wynd has an API and integrates with third-party services. For instance, you can connect Wynd with your ERP.

Wynd also lets you get detailed reports on your products and your staff. On this front, Wynd competes with Excel and good old static exports. Having dynamic dashboards can help you be more reactive and understand why a specific product is taking off for example.

And now, big brands are using Wynd to manage their sales, such as Carrefour, Total, MK2 and Monceau Fleurs. 30 percent of the company’s revenue comes from other countries.

Starbucks on Monday announced an expansion of its delivery service in partnership with Uber Eats, which is now headed to six other major U.S. cities, starting with San Francisco this week. It will then roll out to Boston, Chicago, L.A., New York and Washington D.C., and is on track to reach one-quarter of U.S. company-operated stores in the weeks ahead, the company says.

Starbucks Delivers, as the service is called, first began as a pilot program in Miami this past fall after a successful launch in China, through a partnership with Alibaba and delivery service Ele.me. After bringing its China-based delivery operation to some 2,000 stores across 30 cities across the country by the end of 2018, Starbucks said it would expand its Uber Eats partnership to bring a similar delivery service to over 2,000 U.S. stores this year.

Today, customers using Starbucks Delivers are able to place orders through the Uber Eats mobile app on iOS or Android. In the app, they can browse both hot and cold food and beverage items, and track their order’s progress as it arrives. Around 95 percent of the Starbucks menu is available through Uber Eats, and orders can be customized just as in the Starbucks app itself.

There’s a delivery fee of $2.49 per booking on these delivery orders.

Despite the increased cost, Starbucks claims it saw strong demand and repeat business throughout the day during its pilot. The company also believes the partnership is enabling the business to reach new customers who are on Uber Eats, but not necessarily venturing out to its stores, while also serving its existing customer base.

“We know we have untapped customer demand for Starbucks Delivers in the U.S. and starting today, we’re expanding our best-in-class experience to our customers both in and out of our stores,” said Roz Brewer, group president and chief operating officer for Starbucks, in a statement about the launch. “We’re building on key learnings from past delivery pilots and by integrating our ordering technology directly with Uber Eats, we’ve unlocked the ability to bring Starbucks to customers for those times when they’re not able to come to us.”

Starbucks now offers delivery in eleven of its global markets, including Miami and Tokyo. It also offers other delivery initiatives in India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Mexico, Colombia and Chile, as well as China.

The company says it will run other delivery pilots outside the U.S. this year. The first of those efforts is London, which has been chosen to be the first European city to test Starbucks Delivers via Uber Eats. London’s test will begin small with company-operated stores before scaling to licensees, says Starbucks.

A little more retail momentum for Apple Pay: Apple has announced another clutch of U.S. retailers will soon support its eponymous mobile payment tech — most notably discount retailer Target.

Apple Pay is rolling out to Target stores now, according to Apple, which says it will be available in all 1,850 of its U.S. retail locations “in the coming weeks”.

Also signing up to Apple Pay are fast food chains Taco Bell and Jack in the Box; Speedway convenience stores; and Hy-Vee supermarkets in the midwest.

“With the addition of these national retailers, 74 of the top 100 merchants in the US and 65 per cent of all retail locations across the country will support Apple Pay,” notes Apple in a press release.

Netflix and Hulu will both have films in the running at the Academy Awards this year. Netflix changed its rules for theatrical releases to give “Roma” a better chance during awards season and it paid off today when the Alfonso Cuarón film was nominated for 10 Oscars, including best picture and best director. Netflix’s “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” directed by Ethan and Joel Coen, received three nominations.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced nominees this morning for the ceremony, which will take place on Feb. 24. “Roma,” Netflix’s first best picture nominee, is also in the running for best leading actress (Yalitza Aparcio), original screenplay (by Cuarón), cinematography, production design, foreign language film, sound editing, sound mixing, and best supporting actress (Marina De Tavira).

“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” was nominated for best adapted screenplay (by the Coen brothers), original song, and costuming.

Hulu’s “Minding the Gap” is competing for best documentary feature, while Netflix’s “End Game” was nominated for best documentary short subject. Out of the three big streaming services, only Amazon didn’t get any nominations, but it also didn’t have any major film releases this year.

“Roma” will be up against “Black Panther,” “BlacKkKlansman,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “The Favourite,” “Green Book,” “A Star is Born,” and “Vice” for best picture.

The other films with the most nominations were “A Star is Born” and “Vice,” both with eight, “Black Panther” with seven, and “BlacKkKlansman” with six. “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Green Book” each received five nominations.

Netflix changed its theatrical release policy to allow theaters an exclusive release window for “Roma,” which won Golden Globes for best foreign language film and best director earlier this month. It had previously insisted that movies could only be released in theaters if they premiered on its streaming service at the same time. This meant few theaters were willing to carry Netflix films, hurting their chances for major nominations. After the rule change, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” was also given an exclusive theatrical run in some markets, as was “Bird Box.”

The entire list of Oscar nominees is here.

We hear a lot about drones having the potential to revolutionize delivery and logistics. It’s easy to be dismissive — in many cases, a robot may take what would be a human’s job — but there are some examples where drone technology could genuinely be transformative.

One such case is Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest country that houses a population of over 260 million people across some 17,000 islands. The country, which is the world’s largest archipelago, is the location for e-commerce giant JD.com’s first drone trial outside of its native China.

JD, which is Alibaba’s biggest rival, has been piloting drones for the past couple of years in China. It recently gained a regional level operating license and its other human-less tech includes self-operating trucks, automated warehouses and unmanned stores. The company is a big believer in Indonesia, having launched its local JD.ID service back in 2015 and since backed local ride-hailing giant Go-Jek, and now it is sampling its advanced tech in the country.

JD said today that it completed its first “government approved” drone delivery in the country earlier this month on January 8.

Rather than ferrying customer orders, the company used the tech to transport books and backpacks over 250km to students at a school in a village near Bandung, the country’s fourth-largest city. This drone-based shipment was a trial that was part of a large donation that was delivered by conventional methods. But still, JD sees the potential to built on this pilot and develop a drone-based delivery system that can help service out-of-reach areas and generally speed up its dispatches.

JD.ID claims more than 20 million registered users in Indonesia and a catalog of over one million products, although it didn’t disclose revenue, active user or merchant figures. The company said its goal is to deliver 85 percent of orders to customers on the same or next day as their order.

But, to give an idea of the challenge, its logistics effort is spread across ten warehouses that span seven islands which cover 483 cities and 6,500 counties. Clearly, nimble airborne solutions could have a huge impact, if JD can make it reliable and gain the necessary government approvals at least.

“We have been using drones for real deliveries in China for over two years now, and have seen the profound impact that the technology can have on people’s lives around the country,” Jon Liao, Chief Strategy Officer at JD.com, said in a statement.

JD launched unmanned convenience stores, a hallmark of its Chinese business, in Indonesia last year, marking its first overseas effort with the technology. The same is also true of this drone deployment.

Citizens Reserve, a Bay Area startup, has a broad goal of digitizing the supply chain. Last fall, the company launched the Alpha version of Suku, a Supply Chain as a Service platform built on the blockchain. Today, it announced a partnership with Smartrac, an RFID tag manufacturer, based in Amsterdam, as a key identity piece for the platform.

Companies use RFID to track products from field or factory to market. Eric Piscini, CEO at Citizens says this partnership helps solve a crucial piece of digitizing the supply chain. It provides a way to trace products on their journey to market, and ensure their provenance, whether that is to be sure no labor was exploited in production, environmental standards were maintained or that the products were stored under the proper conditions to ensure freshness.

One of the big issues in track and trace on the supply chain is simply identifying the universe of items in motion across the world at any given moment. RFID tagging provides a way to give each of these items a digital identity, which can be placed on the blockchain to help prevent fraud. Once you have an irrefutable digital identity, it solves a big problem around digitizing the supply chain.

He said this is all part of a broader effort to move the supply chain to the digital realm by building a platform on the blockchain. This not only provides an irrefutable, traceable digital record, it can have all kinds of additional benefits like reducing theft and fraud and ensuring provenance.

There are so many parties involved in this process from farmers and manufacturers to customs authorities to shipping and container companies to logistics companies moving the products to market to the stores that sell the goods. Getting all of the various parties involved in the supply chain to move to a blockchain solution remains a huge challenge.

Today’s partnership offers one way to help build an identity mechanism for the Citizens Reserve solution. The company is also working on other partnerships to help solve other problems like warehouse management and logistics.

The company currently has 11 employees based in Los Gatos, California. It has raised $11 million, according to Piscini.

After launching apparently successful pilot runs in San Francisco and New York, UPS announced today plans to expand its in-building delivery service to 10 additional U.S. cities. In mid-2019, the parcel service will be adding Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, Miami and Seattle to the list.

UPS’s program was launched last summer, utilizing smart locks designed by New York-based startup, Latch. The Initial roll out was a clear attempt by UPS to take on Amazon’s own efforts in the space. Key by Amazon started as an in-house delivery service partnership with Kwikset, which has since expanded out to included cars, businesses and garages.

UPS service is designed to let delivery people enter into common areas, rather than individual apartments, so they can leave packages in lobbies and foyers when residents are out. Latch currently has a sign up form on its site for those interested in taking part in the program. The move is another key win for Latch, which has been carving out a name for itself in the crowded smart lock space, through deals with retailers like Jet and a recent $70 million raise. 

Starship, an autonomous delivery robot startup, is deploying its first batch of robots as part of a commercial service. Starting today, Starship will begin delivering food to the 40,000 students, faculty and staff at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.  in partnership with Sodexo, a food and facilities management company.

Starship says the deliveries take 15 minutes or less, on average, depending on which items the customer ordered and where they’re located on campus. Each robot can carry up to 20 pounds of food.

“University dining programs are evolving their strategies to meet this generation’s elevated expectations, such as better quality, variety and service delivery,” said Sodexo CEO of Universities East Jim Jenkins said in a press release. “George Mason University’s culture of innovation and early adoption makes it the perfect campus for Sodexo and Starship to introduce this cutting-edge technology and enhance the campus experience for the entire school community.”

At launch, there will be 25 bots roaming around campus delivering food from Blaze Pizza, Starbucks, Dunkin’ and other food retailers. Each on-demand delivery will cost $1.99

To date, Starship’s robots have completed over 25,000 deliveries. Back in October, Starship began delivering packages to residents in the U.K. town of Milton Keynes.

Starship has also previously partnered with on-demand food delivery companies like DoorDash and Postmates to test out its robot delivery service. Last January, Starship partnered with the companies mentioned above for a pilot program in Redwood City, Calif. and Washington, D.C. What makes this deployment at George Mason unique is that it’s Starship’s first truly commercial deployment of autonomous food delivery.

In June, Starship raised $25 million from Matrix Partners and Morpheus Ventures. New investors included Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk, Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn and others. Starship has raised $42.2 million in total.

Adjust, a Berlin-headquartered company focused on mobile ad measurement and fraud prevention, is acquiring bot detection startup Unbotify.

Founded in 2012, Adjust has become increasingly focused on ad fraud, and in fact created an industry group called the Coalition Against Ad Fraud a little over a year ago. Co-founder and CTO Paul Müller argued that although the industry has become increasingly concerned about fraud, Adjust has led the way in taking a more proactive approach: “Instead of just telling our clients, ‘Hey, you just spent money on fraud,’ we actively intervened and rejected attribution to a fraudulent source.”

In Müller’s view, Unbotify fits in with the company’s broader philosophy because the Israeli startup isn’t just trying to detect bots — it also “produces explainable results,” providing a clear explanation of why an impression couldn’t have come from a real human being.

“We strongly believe fraud isn’t a problem that can be solved with a magical black box or eight ball,” he said. “Fraud should not be an opinion. We believe in clear, transparent measurement of why something is fraud.”

Adjust co-founder and CEO Christian Henschel said the entire 25-person Unbotify team will be joining the company, and will continue working as an independent office in Tel Aviv. In fact, Adjust plans to double the size of the team by the end of the year.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Unbotify was founded in 2015 by Yaron Oliker and Alon Dayan. According to Crunchbase, it raised $2 million in funding from Maverick Ventures Israel.

Ultimately, Henschel said, “What we’d like to achieve is to end fraud for digital media.”

Not that they think that Adjust alone can put a stop to all fraud. Instead, they hope to simply make it too costly and difficult for fraudsters to target Adjust customers.

“If you have a lot of houses on the street, and some of the doors are heavily fortified, most of the time [the thieves] will go with the door leaning open,” Müller said. “For us, the goal is not to eliminate fraud on idealistic level, but actually to make it financially unviable.”

The announcement comes just a month after Adjust announced it was buying data aggregation company Acquired.io.