Author: azeeadmin

TikTok, the widely popular video sharing app developed by one of the world’s most valued startup (ByteDance), continues to grow rapidly despite suspicion from the U.S. as more people look for ways to keep themselves entertained amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The global app and its Chinese version, called Douyin, have amassed over 2 billion downloads on Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, mobile insight firm SensorTower said Wednesday.

TikTok is the first app after Facebook’s marquee app, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger to break past the 2 billion downloads figure since January 1 of 2014, a SensorTower official told TechCrunch. (SensorTower began its app analysis on that date.)

A number of apps from Google, the developer of Android, including Gmail and YouTube have amassed over 5 billion downloads, but they ship pre-installed on most Android smartphones and tables.

TikTok’s 2 billion download milestone, a key metric to assuage an app’s growth, comes five months after it surpassed 1.5 billion downloads.

In the quarter that ended on March 31, TikTok was downloaded 315 million times, surpassing its previous best of 205.7 million downloads in Q4 2018. Facebook’s WhatsApp, the second most popular app by volume of downloads, amassed nearly 250 million downloads in Q1 this year, SensorTower told TechCrunch.

As the app gains popularity, it is also clocking more revenue. Users have spent about $456.7 million on TikTok to date, up from $175 million five months ago. Much of these spends — about 72.3% — has happened in China. Users in the United States have spent about $86.5 million on the app, making the nation the second most important market for TikTok from revenue standpoint.

Craig Chapple, a strategist at SensorTower, said that not all the downloads are organic as TikTok, which launched outside of China in 2017, has engaged in a “large user acquisition campaign.” But he attributed some of the surge in downloads to the COVID-19 outbreak that has driven more people than ever to look for new apps.

India, TikTok’s largest international market, accounts for the app’s 30.3% downloads, according to SensorTower. The app has been downloaded 611 million times in the world’s second largest internet market.

From a platform’s stand point, 75.5% of all of TikTok’s downloads have occurred through Google Play Store. But the vast majority of spendings have come from users on Apple’s ecosystem ($435.3 million of $456 million).

If you think that action movies generally suffer from an excess of characterization, then “Extraction” is the movie for you.

Almost everything about the film that’s not an action scene is dealt with in a perfunctory way, starting from the sketchy characterization of our hero Tyler Rake (played by Chris Hemsworth) — he’s muscular, competent, has a vague tragedy in his past … and that’s about it.

We actually know more about Rake than virtually any other character in the film. There’s even less to say about the kidnapped son of a Mumbai drug lord (though actor Rudhraksh Jaiswal gives him an affecting vulnerability), or the rival drug lord responsible for the kidnapping, or the various soldiers/goons who either assist Rake in his rescue mission or (briefly, foolishly) try to stop him.

On the bright side, this minimalist approach to scripting leaves plenty of room for impressive action scenes, particularly a 12-minute chase that’s designed to look like it was shot in a single take. To be clear, the film is just as much a fantasy as any of the Marvel movies directed by brothers Anthony and Joe Russo (who took on writing and producing duties here), but the action scenes are very different, with a stunning brutality and kineticism.

Whether that’s enough to make for a satisfying film will probably differ from viewer to viewer. Among your Original Content podcast hosts, Darrell and Anthony enjoyed the film, while Jordan was decidedly underwhelmed.

To decide whether “Extraction” is a movie for you, you can listen to our review in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

And if you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Intro
0:20 “Extraction” review
18:31 “Extraction” spoiler discussion

I wrote about Joue back in January, right before the company participated in (and won) our CES pitch off. The company was one of a handful of crowfunded musical instrument startups at the show that were really worth getting excited about.

This week, the French startup is launch the campaign for Play, a more user-friendly version of the company’s self-titled modular MIDI controller. As I noted in the earlier piece, the system operates similarly to Sensel’s Morph system, with silicone pads that slip on top of a touch interface to mimic a variety of different instruments, including a drum pad, piano, guitar and an electronic musical interface.

The new version of the instrument aims to lower the bar with a connected mobile app that works as follows,

• The instruments are gathered in a circle in the middle
• The timeline shows successive musical events simply and clearly
• The mixer lets you adjust the volume of each instrument
• Recording is accessible directly from the Pads, for maximum reactivity 

In addition to the companion iOS/Mac/Windows app, the Play is also more than $100 cheaper than its its predecessor (at least it is currently on Joue’s Kickstarter page). That price includes the board and five different silicone pads.

It’s a clever product and one designed for a broader audience than the original — which went over fairly well in its own right. Sensel ultimately wasn’t able to ride the Morph beyond the initial wave of excitement, but Joue’s focus on music and the refinement of its hardware looks to be taking the company further.

Unfortunately, the device won’t be available while we’re all still cooped up inside. It’s currently projected to launch in October.

After a quarter in which eBay, tussling with an activist investor, completed the sell-off of its ticketing business StubHub for $4 billion and saw appointed a new CEO after its previous one departed, while also weathering waves of surging demand and dodgy supply resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, today the e-commerce company reported its Q1 earnings after the close of markets.

The company reported revenues of $2.374 billion, down 2% on a year ago, with earnings per share of $0.64 on a GAAP basis and $0.77 non-GAAP, on a continuing operations basis.

This was a mixed result. Analysts on average were expecting $2.38 billion in revenues on earnings per share of $0.72. Ebay itself was expecting sales of between $2.31 billion and $2.36 billion with an EPS range of $0.72 to $0.75. In other words, eBay missed on sales in terms of analyst average projections, beat their expectations on EPS, and beat both of its own internal targets.

At the time of writing, eBay’s stock was down 7 cents in after-hours trading.

“During these unprecedented times, I am extremely proud of how our team has come together to support one another, our buyers and sellers, our communities and the business,” said Scott Schenkel, eBay’s interim CEO, in the earnings statement. “As we look at Q1, I am pleased that we delivered on all of our commitments for the quarter, with key metrics such as Buyers, GMV and Revenue performing at or better than our expectations. Over the past several months, we have remained focused and clear-eyed about the strategic direction of the company and have driven substantial changes to position the business for sustainable and profitable long-term growth.”

“I appreciate the team’s hard work in the first quarter and their efforts to maintain focus amid so many factors affecting the business and the industry,” said Jamie Iannone, the new permanent CEO that it headhunted from Walmart, in a separate statement. “I’m thrilled to return to eBay this week as CEO and I look forward to building on the positive momentum in the business, continuing to evolve the Company’s strategy and maximizing value for our shareholders.”

As expected, the company — like other e-commerce giants — has seen a boost in buyer demand from the throngs of consumers who are currently being ordered to stay at home, but who still need to buy things, and specifically try to source items that they’re finding a challenge to find in more local stores. eBay noted that active buyers are up by 2% and now total 174 million global active buyers.

Despite that, however, gross merchandise volume (GMV, or total sales volume before any cuts are taken) was $21.3 billion, down 1% on an as-reported basis. We might assume that the decline might have been significantly steeper without the current climate, or that it has at least offset other kinds of declines.

Within that, its Marketplace generated $2.1 billion of revenue, down 1%, while Classifieds saw $248 million of revenue, down 3%. That Classifieds business is on the block as part of the company’s wider efforts to restructure. “eBay continues to explore potential value-creating alternatives for its Classifieds business, is holding active discussions with multiple parties, and anticipates having an update by the middle of the year,” the company noted. 

There is a cloud hanging over many e-commerce businesses, even those that are seeing strong demand. The reason for this is that the economy is very shaky right now, and we don’t fully know what the coming months will hold, in terms of public health, government rules on how we can move, whether we will have jobs and money to spend. And all of that is playing into how companies like eBay will perform under its new CEO and continuing pressure from its activist investors.

With all that in mind, Ebay also updated its guidance for the next quarter and reiterated figures for the full year. Q2, it expects, will have revenues of between $2.38 billion and $2.48 billion, with GAAP earnings per diluted share from continuing operations in the range of $0.50 – $0.57 and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share from continuing operations in the range of $0.73 – $0.80.

The full-year figures are unchanged at between $9.56 billion and $9.76 billion, with GAAP earnings per diluted share from continuing operations in the range of $2.20 – $2.30 and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share from continuing operations in the range of $3.00 – $3.10.

“Given the dynamic environment, we are not revising our full year revenue and EPS estimates,” the company notes. “This guidance reflects management’s expectations for operational performance and the impacts seen in both of our Marketplaces and Classifieds platforms to date, but given the uncertainty surrounding the extent and duration of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is difficult to predict what may result as shelter-in-place guidelines are eased and lifted and how global consumer demand, the effects of COVID-19 on the general economy, seller inventory and advertising spending may evolve over time.”

More to come.

The coronavirus pandemic is significantly slowing the growth of Facebook’s ads business, but investors seems pleased with the company’s performance in Q1 after Facebook released its earnings report Wednesday.

The company beat Wall Street expectations on revenues, sharing that they had made $17.74 billion on while follow short on earnings per share at $1.71. The company also shared that monthly active users had swollen to 2.6 billion users, beating expectations of 2.55 billion.

The company’s shares rose upwards of 10% after-hours following the report’s release.

While Facebook’s ad revenues in Q1 showcased 17% year-over-year growth, but Facebook used its earnings announcements to hedge expectations for Q2. The digital ads market has taken a major hit in the past several weeks in light of the pandemic crisis, in its release, Facebook said they had seen a “a significant reduction in the demand for advertising, as well as a related decline in the pricing of our ads, over the last three weeks of the first quarter of 2020.”

Flat growth is far from the doomsday drop-off investors had feared. The company said they would not be providing guidance for Q2 of fill-year 2020, instead indicating that the first three weeks of April indicated flat year-over-year growth in the the company’s outsized ads business. Facebook’s ad revenues for Q4 2019 indicated 25% year-over-year growth by comparison.

Updating

Today Microsoft reported its third-quarter, fiscal 2020 quarter earnings, the period of time corresponding to Q1 2020 on the regular calendar.

The technology giant generated $35 billion in revenue, up 15% from the year-ago period. That top line led to $13 billion in operating income (+25% YoY), and $10.8 billion in net income (+22% YoY). Microsoft saw $1.40 in earnings per share in the quarter.

Investors had expected the company to report $1.26 in per-share profit off of revenue of $33.66 billion, according to Yahoo Finance. Right after reporting its results, Microsoft shares were up around 1.5%. The firm rallied 4.5% during regular trading hours on the back of a strong day of trading for technology equities.

Other headlines from the company’s earnings report include Azure (its AWS competitor) growing 59% from its year-ago result, 25% growth in Office 365 commercial incomes, LinkedIn top line growing 21% from the year-ago period, and roughly flat results from its Xbox, search, and Surface businesses.

However, calendar Q1 (Q3 F2020 for Microsoft) only included a portion of the world’s COVID-19 response. The results reflected that, with the company noting that “COVID-19 had minimal net impact” on revenue in the quarter, boosting cloud usage, lowering some advertising revenue from LinkedIn, raising gaming engagement, and slowing search advertising top line. The balance of that appears to be largely a wash.

The company will talk more about the future on its earnings call, but the firm did warn in its own report that “the effects of COVID-19 may not be fully reflected in the financial results until future periods.”

More to come.

Face ID was a great idea — until large swathes of the world were forced to wear face masks, rendering it largely useless.

Apple has apparently heard our pain.

Users are reporting a subtle new feature in the latest developer version of iOS 13.5 that will make it easier to unlock your iPhone without having to take off your protective face mask.

Videos shared on Twitter by Robert Petersen and Guilherme Rambo show that Apple devices with Face ID will jump to the backup passcode-entry screen if it detects a mask. That’s not only helpful if you’re unlocking your phone dozens of times a day — which we all do — but it’s also helping to keep people safe by not forcing users to take off their masks and potentially exposing themselves to the virus.

Apple’s new Face ID unlock feature in iOS 13.5 beta. (Source: Guilherme Rambo)

It’s not known if this feature will land in the final version of the software update. But one feature that will be included for sure is a new contact tracing API, built by Apple and Google in partnership, which lets national health authorities build apps that can help users privately and anonymously find out if they’ve been exposed to someone with coronavirus.

iOS 13.5 is expected to land in the coming weeks.

The COVID-19 testing picture in the U.S. is far from easy to understand, given the disparate agencies and public and private health organizations involved. Johns Hopkins, building on its excellent work developing COVID-19 case tracking and basic information resources, has developed a new hub called the COVID-19 Testing Insights Initiative that breaks down what kinds of tests are available, as well as where they’re being administered in the U.S., and in what volume.

The new hub offers answers to commonly asked questions like how COVID-19 is currently diagnosed, what the differences are between the two major types of tests used (molecular and serological) and what is required for testing in terms of both payment and qualifying symptoms/exposure risk.

Crucially, it also provides a state-by-state breakdown of how many tests have been performed, graphed against the total number of confirmed cases and the number of deaths in that state. They also provide a report on the weekly rate of change in positive tests across all states, showing whether there’s been an increase in the namer of positive tests or a decrease on a week-over-week basis, and in either case, by how much.

Johns Hopkins notes that the data may not be consistent, since it’s being pulled from a number of publicly available sources, and it notes further that states themselves are not consistent. The school says it’s doing what it can to account for the irregularities that result from inconsistent reporting, but doesn’t want to misrepresent the data.

The overall picture of how many tests have been completed, as well as where and by who, along with positive results, has been a topic of a lot of confusion and debate. The White House has consistently provided numbers that are out of sync with the reality in terms of numbers reported by states, particularly when it comes to test volume.

The Johns Hopkins hub provides likely the best source yet for a good snapshot of the current state of testing on a state-by-state basis, and the resource will be updated regularly with new info as it becomes available. Widespread testing is a key ingredient in any effective COVID-19 control measures, and this should act as a sort of report card to provide an indicator how how well we’re doing on this front.

The NFL’s Thursday Night Football is returning to stream on Amazon. The companies announced today they’ve again renewed their agreement which will allow Amazon Prime Video to offer a live, digital stream of Thursday Night Football to a global audience through the 2022 season. This time around, the NFL and Amazon also announced a new deal allowing Amazon to exclusively stream one NFL game globally on Prime Video and Twitch for each of the next three seasons.

Amazon and the NFL have been partnered on streaming Thursday Night Football since 2017, initially with a one-year deal that was said to be valued at $50 million. The companies renewed that agreement in 2018 for two more years, valuing each season at $65 million (or $130 million in total).

The terms of this new deal weren’t disclosed, but an initial report from CNBC claims the deal price has been upped once again.

That makes sense, of course, given the new agreement is not only arriving two years later but also now includes an exclusive game.

Over time, the audience for the NFL games has grown slightly. The 2019 Thursday Night Football games delivered an average audience of 15.4 million viewers across all properties (broadcast, cable and digital), up 4+% from the 2018 games.

Digital streams in 2019 surpassed an average minute audience of over 1 million, up 43% year-over-year (729K). This includes the streams across Prime Video, Twitch, NFL digital, FOX Sports digital, and Verizon Media mobile properties. (Note: TechCrunch’s parent company is owned by Verizon).

Viewers will be able to stream the 11 Thursday Night Football games broadcast by FOX through the Prime Video and Twitch websites and apps across living room devices, mobile phones, tablets, and PCs. That makes the games available to Amazon Prime’s over 150 million worldwide users in over 200 countries and territories, Amazon notes.

But Amazon won’t be the only place to watch most of these games.

The games are also broadcast by FOX in Spanish on FOX Deportes, and will be simulcast on the NFL Network. This continues the league’s “Tri-Cast” strategy which includes a combination of broadcast, cable and digital distribution.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s exclusively streamed game isn’t a Thursday Night Football game, but instead is a regular season game played on a Saturday in the second half of the season. This game will also be televised over-the-air in the participating teams’ home markets.

As before, the digital streams will include access to Amazon features like X-Ray and Next Gen Stats powered by AWS. Prime members can pick from either the FOX or FOX Deportes broadcast and from a range of alternative audio options exclusive to Prime Video.

Amazon and the NFL will also collaborate on additional content and fan viewing experiences around the game streams in the future.

“As our relationship has expanded, Amazon has become a trusted and valued partner of the NFL,” said Brian Rolapp, Chief Media and Business Officer for the NFL, in a statement. “Extending this partnership around Thursday Night Football continues our critical mission of delivering NFL games to as many fans in as many ways as possible both in the United States and around the world,” he added.

Juul is set to eliminate between 800 to 950 jobs, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Those massive cuts would amount to around a third of the Bay Area vaping giant’s entire workforce.

While the news comes amid a deluge of layoff reports, Juul’s troubles are said not to be a direct result from the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather, they stem from larger ongoing problems. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time the company has made a sizable cut to its staff — in October, it laid off around 650 people.

Juul wouldn’t confirm the specifics of the news, but does appear to acknowledge some big changes are afoot, as the company looks to restructure after struggles. “As part of our ongoing reset, we are constantly evaluating our operations and the best way to position our company for the long term,” it said in a statement. “We remain focused on earning the trust of our stakeholders to advance the potential for harm reduction for adult smokers while combating underage use.” According to reports, some of that evaluation comes in the form of figuring just how many jobs to cut. Figures are likely to be somewhere between one-quarter and 40% of its staff. A final decision will arrive “in the coming weeks.”

A memo leaked to the press notes similar sentiments from CEO K.C. Crosthwaite, who writes:

[W]e are continuing to evaluate our operations and the best way to position our company for the long term. We have made hard decisions over the last six months, and we still have hard decisions to make. You have my word that I will bring you all together when we have final decisions and details to announce.

Ongoing regulatory issues have become a major stumbling block for the company in recent years, along with a swift hit to sales. The company suffered a $1 billion loss last year — a steep drop after a rapid climb.

We’ve reached out for additional comment.