Author: azeeadmin

Apple is kicking off the Entrepreneur Camp in Cupertino. 11 female-founded app development companies have been invited to Cupertino for multiple workshops and meetings with Apple employees. And Apple used that opportunity to share a new number when it comes to App Store revenue.

Since the creation of the App Store, Apple has given back $120 billion in revenue to App Store developers. It means that the App Store has generated more revenue than that in total. But if you remove Apple’s cut, $120 billion have been wired to developers.

App Store revenue is still growing rapidly as over $30 billion of developer revenue has been generated in the last twelve months alone. Apple reported $100 billion in developer revenue at WWDC back in June 2018.

Apple only counts direct App Store revenue, such as paid downloads, in-app purchases and subscriptions. Developers could have also generated more revenue through ads and subscriptions on a website for instance.

If you’re curious about the Entrepreneur Camp, Apple has invited the developers of Bites, Camille, CUCO: Lembrete de Medicamentos, Deepr, D’efekt, Hopscotch, LactApp, Pureple, Statues of the La Paz Malecón, WeParent and Seneca Connect. There will be a new session every quarter.

Owners of the upcoming Porsche Taycan will get three years of free charging at hundreds of Electrify America public stations that will blanket the U.S. in the coming months.

And in many cases, that will include access to DC fast chargers that will allow the Taycan, which is designed to have an 800 volt battery that can take a 350 kW charge, to get 60 miles of range in just four minutes. That charging speed blows away competitor Tesla, which has set up its own vast network of fast chargers called Superchargers.

Porsche and Electrify America, the entity set up by Volkswagen as part of its settlement with U.S. regulators over its diesel emissions cheating scandal, announced the agreement Monday.

The Porsche Taycan, which is coming later this year, is hotly anticipated, even without the free access to Electrify America’s network. But the agreement, along with an additional $70 million investment to add DC fast chargers to Porsche dealerships, shows the automaker wants to ensure this electric bet pays off.

Electrify America will have more than 300 highway stations in 42 states and another 184 sites in 17 metro areas. Each location will have an average of five charging dispensers, with some having as many as 10. In all, Electrify America says 484 locations will be installed or under construction by July 1.

The company is expected to build out a second phase beginning July 2019.

The highway stations will have a minimum of two 350 kW chargers per site, with additional chargers delivering up to 150 kW. Charging dispensers at metro locations will have 150 kilowatts of power.

The highway stations will be spaced along multiple routes — as can be seen in the map above — and no more than 120 miles from each other. The distance between highway stations will average 70 miles.

In addition to this 484-station Electrify America network, all 191 Porsche dealerships will be installing their own DC fast-charging units. More than 120 of these dealerships will feature Porsche Turbo Charging, which is the automaker’s own DC system that delivers up to 320 kW and also uses the CCS plug. The remaining dealerships will install 50 kW fast chargers.

Electrify America has had an early hiccup with its growing charging network.

On Friday, supplier Huber + Suhner recommended its customers suspend the operation of all charging stations with its high-power charging system after a short-circuit was reported at a charging station on a test site in Germany. Electrify America has shuttered these chargers while the supplier completes tests of its liquid-cooled cables. Other EV charging companies, including Fastned and Ionity in Europe, have also shut down their chargers with Huber + Suhner’s high-power cables.

In the meantime, all 89 Electrify America charging locations are open to charge electric vehicles, a spokesman said. These charging locations all have CHAdeMO connector 50 kW chargers available and some have CCS connector charging. Electrify America also has high-power liquid-cooled cables from another supplier, ITT Cannon, which are operating.

Electrify America’s engineers are working with the company closely so it can get all of its chargers back and available for users, the spokesman said.

Owners of the upcoming Porsche Taycan will get three years of free charging at hundreds of Electrify America public stations that will blanket the U.S. in the coming months.

And in many cases, that will include access to DC fast chargers that will allow the Taycan, which is designed to have an 800 volt battery that can take a 350 kW charge, to get 60 miles of range in just four minutes. That charging speed blows away competitor Tesla, which has set up its own vast network of fast chargers called Superchargers.

Porsche and Electrify America, the entity set up by Volkswagen as part of its settlement with U.S. regulators over its diesel emissions cheating scandal, announced the agreement Monday.

The Porsche Taycan, which is coming later this year, is hotly anticipated, even without the free access to Electrify America’s network. But the agreement, along with an additional $70 million investment to add DC fast chargers to Porsche dealerships, shows the automaker wants to ensure this electric bet pays off.

Electrify America will have more than 300 highway stations in 42 states and another 184 sites in 17 metro areas. Each location will have an average of five charging dispensers, with some having as many as 10. In all, Electrify America says 484 locations will be installed or under construction by July 1.

The company is expected to build out a second phase beginning July 2019.

The highway stations will have a minimum of two 350 kW chargers per site, with additional chargers delivering up to 150 kW. Charging dispensers at metro locations will have 150 kilowatts of power.

The highway stations will be spaced along multiple routes — as can be seen in the map above — and no more than 120 miles from each other. The distance between highway stations will average 70 miles.

In addition to this 484-station Electrify America network, all 191 Porsche dealerships will be installing their own DC fast-charging units. More than 120 of these dealerships will feature Porsche Turbo Charging, which is the automaker’s own DC system that delivers up to 320 kW and also uses the CCS plug. The remaining dealerships will install 50 kW fast chargers.

Electrify America has had an early hiccup with its growing charging network.

On Friday, supplier Huber + Suhner recommended its customers suspend the operation of all charging stations with its high-power charging system after a short-circuit was reported at a charging station on a test site in Germany. Electrify America has shuttered these chargers while the supplier completes tests of its liquid-cooled cables. Other EV charging companies, including Fastned and Ionity in Europe, have also shut down their chargers with Huber + Suhner’s high-power cables.

In the meantime, all 89 Electrify America charging locations are open to charge electric vehicles, a spokesman said. These charging locations all have CHAdeMO connector 50 kW chargers available and some have CCS connector charging. Electrify America also has high-power liquid-cooled cables from another supplier, ITT Cannon, which are operating.

Electrify America’s engineers are working with the company closely so it can get all of its chargers back and available for users, the spokesman said.

iOS is easily one of the best things AirPods have going for them. Flip open the cap and, boom, there are the headphones and case, each sporting their respective battery levels. Pairing AirPods to your desktop has been doable as well, albeit markedly less convenient.

Guilherme Rambo of 9 to 5 Mac has a convenient new solution, however, beating Apple to the punch in the process. Now available through Gumroad (for a suggested donation of $5+), AirBuddy brings the same convenient iOS experience to desktops running Mojave (10.14) or later.

Once installed, opening the AirPod case next to a Mac will pop up the familiar floating AirPods icon, letting you know what’s left of your battery (or how much time you’ve got left to charge). There’s also a nice added feature here, “A simple click and you’re connected and playing your Mac’s audio to AirPods,” the developer writes. Oh, it also makes sure the audio input of your Mac is NOT switched to the AirPods so you can get the best possible quality.”

The system requires Bluetooth LE to work. It should also work for other nearby Apple devices that have connected via Wi-Fi, including iPhones, iPads and Beats headphones sporting the W1 chip.

iOS is easily one of the best things AirPods have going for them. Flip open the cap and, boom, there are the headphones and case, each sporting their respective battery levels. Pairing AirPods to your desktop has been doable as well, albeit markedly less convenient.

Guilherme Rambo of 9 to 5 Mac has a convenient new solution, however, beating Apple to the punch in the process. Now available through Gumroad (for a suggested donation of $5+), AirBuddy brings the same convenient iOS experience to desktops running Mojave (10.14) or later.

Once installed, opening the AirPod case next to a Mac will pop up the familiar floating AirPods icon, letting you know what’s left of your battery (or how much time you’ve got left to charge). There’s also a nice added feature here, “A simple click and you’re connected and playing your Mac’s audio to AirPods,” the developer writes. Oh, it also makes sure the audio input of your Mac is NOT switched to the AirPods so you can get the best possible quality.”

The system requires Bluetooth LE to work. It should also work for other nearby Apple devices that have connected via Wi-Fi, including iPhones, iPads and Beats headphones sporting the W1 chip.

Sapphire Ventures, formerly the corporate venture capital arm of SAP, has lassoed $115 million from new limited partners (LPs) to invest at the intersection of tech, sports, media and entertainment.

A majority of the LPs for the new fund, called Sapphire Sport, have ties to the sports industry, from City Football Group, which owns English Premier League team Manchester City, to Adidas, the owners of the Indiana Pacers, New York Jets, San Jose Sharks and Tampa Bay Lightning, among others.

The firm plans to do five to six investments per year, sized between $3 million and $7 million. So far, they’ve deployed capital to five startups: at-home fitness system Tonal, live soccer streaming platform mycujoo, digital sports network Overtime, ticketing and events platform Fevo and gaming studio Phoenix Labs. Sapphire began backing tech startups in 2008; in 2016, the firm closed on $1 billion for its third flagship venture fund.

Sapphire managing director and co-founder Doug Higgins is leading the effort alongside newly tapped partner Michael Spirito, who joined from 21st Century Fox, where he focused on business development and digital media for the Fox Sports-owned Yankees Entertainment and Sports (YES) Network, in September.

Higgins was an investment manager at Intel Capital for four years prior to co-launching Sapphire. Throughout his career, he’s managed the firm’s investments in LinkedIn, DocuSign, Square and more.

“We invest in anything that tech is disrupting,” Higgins told TechCrunch. “We were early investors in Fitbit, so we saw the beginning of digital fitness and how tech can impact the lives of anyone, not just high-performance athletes … We are also investors in Square, TicketFly and Paytm and what we’ve been seeing — the dream as a VC — is these massive markets in the sports, media and digital health world that are getting disrupted by tech.”

Sapphire is betting its traditional and well-established venture platform, coupled with the expertise of leading sports entities on board as LPs, will give it a competitive edge as it targets some of the best emerging sports tech companies.

“We see a lot of FOMO happening in this world, where everyone wants to have a play, but to make the best investment you need to have the widest perspective,” Higgins said. “So if you’re a team owner of a particular football team you are going to make better decisions if you are able to share perspectives with owners of other teams.”

“The best entrepreneurs, the ones we all want to invest in, there’s not a draft, they have to select you,” he added.

Investment in esports and gaming has skyrocketed, surpassing a total of $2.5 billion in VC funding in 2018. According to PitchBook, a handful of startups have already raised a total of $65 million in VC backing this year, including a $10.8 million financing for ReKTGlobal, a provider of esports infrastructure services.

“You can’t ignore the numbers on esports,” Higgins added. “They just continue to grow massively and people who have teenage kids, like myself, [those kids] want to grow up to be the next ninja, not the next Tom Brady .”

Sapphire Ventures, formerly the corporate venture capital arm of SAP, has lassoed $115 million from new limited partners (LPs) to invest at the intersection of tech, sports, media and entertainment.

A majority of the LPs for the new fund, called Sapphire Sport, have ties to the sports industry, from City Football Group, which owns English Premier League team Manchester City, to Adidas, the owners of the Indiana Pacers, New York Jets, San Jose Sharks and Tampa Bay Lightning, among others.

The firm plans to do five to six investments per year, sized between $3 million and $7 million. So far, they’ve deployed capital to five startups: at-home fitness system Tonal, live soccer streaming platform mycujoo, digital sports network Overtime, ticketing and events platform Fevo and gaming studio Phoenix Labs. Sapphire began backing tech startups in 2008; in 2016, the firm closed on $1 billion for its third flagship venture fund.

Sapphire managing director and co-founder Doug Higgins is leading the effort alongside newly tapped partner Michael Spirito, who joined from 21st Century Fox, where he focused on business development and digital media for the Fox Sports-owned Yankees Entertainment and Sports (YES) Network, in September.

Higgins was an investment manager at Intel Capital for four years prior to co-launching Sapphire. Throughout his career, he’s managed the firm’s investments in LinkedIn, DocuSign, Square and more.

“We invest in anything that tech is disrupting,” Higgins told TechCrunch. “We were early investors in Fitbit, so we saw the beginning of digital fitness and how tech can impact the lives of anyone, not just high-performance athletes … We are also investors in Square, TicketFly and Paytm and what we’ve been seeing — the dream as a VC — is these massive markets in the sports, media and digital health world that are getting disrupted by tech.”

Sapphire is betting its traditional and well-established venture platform, coupled with the expertise of leading sports entities on board as LPs, will give it a competitive edge as it targets some of the best emerging sports tech companies.

“We see a lot of FOMO happening in this world, where everyone wants to have a play, but to make the best investment you need to have the widest perspective,” Higgins said. “So if you’re a team owner of a particular football team you are going to make better decisions if you are able to share perspectives with owners of other teams.”

“The best entrepreneurs, the ones we all want to invest in, there’s not a draft, they have to select you,” he added.

Investment in esports and gaming has skyrocketed, surpassing a total of $2.5 billion in VC funding in 2018. According to PitchBook, a handful of startups have already raised a total of $65 million in VC backing this year, including a $10.8 million financing for ReKTGlobal, a provider of esports infrastructure services.

“You can’t ignore the numbers on esports,” Higgins added. “They just continue to grow massively and people who have teenage kids, like myself, [those kids] want to grow up to be the next ninja, not the next Tom Brady .”

Apple has released an update on its spending in the U.S. According to the company, Apple is now working with 9,000 different companies in the U.S. Those companies mostly work on hardware components and chipsets for Apple’s devices.

You may remember that Apple announced last year it would spend $390 million to expand Finisar’s production in the U.S. Finisar has been working on a key component for the iPhone and iPad Pro — the TrueDepth camera system.

That investment was part of a commitment to spend $1 billion in U.S.-based companies with its Advanced Manufacturing Fund in order to build new facilities and help manufacturers.

But Apple is already spending much more money with American companies. In 2018 alone, Apple spent $60 billion, which represents a 10 percent increase compared to 2017. The company estimates that it represents around 450,000 jobs.

In addition to Finisar, Apple names a few partners in its announcement — Corning, Cincinnati Test Systems and Broadcom.

Finally, if you take into account everybody working for Apple in one way or another, there are now 2 million people in the U.S. helping Apple as an employee, a contractor, a store manager, a supplier, etc. This number is up from 600,000 in 2011.

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. Dropbox snares HelloSign for $230M, gets workflow and e-signature

Dropbox’s SVP of engineering Quentin Clark sees this as more than simply bolting on electronic signature functionality to the Dropbox solution. For him, the workflow capabilities that HelloSign added in 2017 were key to the purchase.

“What is unique about HelloSign is that the investment they’ve made in APIs and the workflow products is really so aligned with our long-term direction,” Clark said. “It’s not just a thing to do one more activity with Dropbox, it’s really going to help us pursue that broader vision.”

2. Google and IAB ad category lists show ‘massive leakage of highly intimate data,’ GDPR complaint claims

The complaint — lodged last fall by Dr. Johnny Ryan of private browser Brave; Jim Killock, 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.

3. Too few cybersecurity professionals is a gigantic problem for 2019

That’s according to Robert Ackerman Jr., founder and a managing director of AllegisCyber, an early-stage cybersecurity venture firm.

4. Naspers takes full control of Russian classifieds site Avito in $1.16B deal

South African internet conglomerate Naspers is best known for backing Chinese tech giant Tencent, but it also operates a vast network of online classifieds businesses. That network just got a little larger.

5. Contentsquare, the digital experience insights platform, raises $60M Series C

Contentsquare offers cloud-based software that helps businesses understand how and why users are interacting with their app, mobile and web sites.

6. Scribd has more than 1M paying subscribers

The company also says it’s been profitable since early in 2017, and that it’s currently bringing in $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

7. It’s not Monday without a TechCrunch podcast roundup

This week, the Equity team covers the latest news from scooter startups, while Original Content reviews the dueling Fyre Festival documentaries and Mixtape talks to the team at #builtbygirls.

Apple is slowly building a lineup of content subscriptions. According to a report from Cheddar, Apple may also be working on a gaming subscription. Alex Heath managed to get five people to talk about the rumored service.

If Apple goes ahead and launch such a service, users could pay a monthly subscription fee to access a library of games. It’s still unclear how much it would cost and what would be included in the subscription.

Given that many iOS games are now free-to-play games, it’s hard to see how it would work. Apple could choose to focus on paid games and give those games for free as part of the subscription. The company could also give you free coins and perks when it comes to free-to-play games.

Apple has to talk with potential partners to put together the service — that’s probably how Cheddar learned about Apple’s plans. The company isn’t going to develop a bunch games overnight (remember Apple’s Texas Hold ‘Em?). But it could act as a sort of game publisher by promoting and distributing new games in a subscription tier.

Games are by far the most popular category on the App Store. They generate a ton of downloads and revenue. And it sounds like Apple thinks it could generate more revenue by switching to a different business model, beyond the usual 30-percent cut on in-app purchases.

Apple has also been signing deals with TV producers in order to put together a streaming service. The company wants to compete with Netflix and other streaming platforms.

Apple has been working on a magazine subscription service as well. The company acquired Texture back in March 2018 to build the foundation of the service. And that new subscription should launch pretty soon. You can find a landing page for Apple News Magazines in the beta version of iOS 12.2.

And of course, Apple has attracted 56 million subscribers for Apple Music. Now let’s see if the company can replicate the same success with other services.