Author: azeeadmin

As predicted, Twitter’s subtle new feature showing which clients tweets are sent from is already embarrassing brands.

Following on from a Korean boyband sponsored by LG and Apple’s own Music staff, Huawei is the latest to be embarrassed after it sent a New Year’s Eve message using an iPhone.

A since-deleted message included the embarrassing tell-tale detail: “Twitter for iPhone” indicating that the Huawei account had tweeted from an iPhone. The tweet was replaced by another sent from Twitter Media Studio client, which is developed for brands and advertisers and isn’t a fierce rival’s smartphone, but the damage was done.

The internet being the internet, the gaffe was noticed and preserved by many keen people who were to point out the contradiction. The mistake also gained lots of attention on Chinese social network Weibo.

Embarrassed by the episode, the Chinese smartphone firm has slapped those responsible with a fine.

That’s according to Reuters, which got its hands on an internal memo which reveals that two employees responsible have had their salaries reduced by 5,000 yuan, that’s around $730. In addition, one of the pair — reportedly Huawei’s digital marketing director — will have their income “frozen” for a year. While we don’t know their full salary packages and a $730 drop may be less than the cost of an iPhone, it is still bound to sting.

Worst of all, perhaps, it seems that they were not directly at fault for the mistake, which Huawei senior VP Chen Lifang said had “caused damage to the Huawei brand.”

The incident, Reuters reports, was due an error by an agency hired by Huawei:

The mistake occurred when outsourced social media handler Sapient experienced “VPN problems” with a desktop computer so used an iPhone with a roaming SIM card in order to send the message on time at midnight, Huawei said in the memo.

The irony here is that Apple’s near-blanket ban on VPN apps means it would probably have been easier to get access to Twitter using an Android phone. Instead, the agency apparently went to the trouble of acquiring a Hong Kong-based SIM card in order to hop over the Great Firewall and send this ultimately ill-fated missive.

It’s fun to joke about consumer companies relying on their archrivals, but the incident comes at a particularly challenging time for Huawei.

The company’s CFO is currently on bail in Canada where she awaits extradition to the U.S. on charges of fraud that could see her jailed for up to 30 years. But its core business is also under pressure.

Huawei may be best-known for its smartphone business, which ranked second in Q3 2018 with 14.6 market share according to IDC, but its telecom equipment unit has always been its biggest seller and now its future is uncertain. Intelligence leaders from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S — the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ — are reported to have agreed to a ban on all equipment from Huawei and fellow Chinese firm ZTE, and that’s something that allies such as Japan appear to be joining in on.

The founder of Korea’s Nexon, one of the biggest gaming companies on the planet, today appeared to acknowledge his intention to sell his controlling interest for around $9 billion.

The divestment has been a hot rumor after a report from newspaper Korea Economic Daily this week [via Reuters] suggested that Jung-Ju Kim, who founded Nexon back in 1989, is moving to sell nearly all of his holdings in the firm, which is listed on the Tokyo stock exchange. Kim, the paper claimed, is tired of the ups and downs of the industry and, fresh from overturning a bribery charge last year, is ready to channel his energies into new areas.

In a statement released today, Kim said he is “contemplating various ways to back up Nexon in becoming a more globally competitive firm” while also assessing “new challenges, without growing complacent.” More information will be announced soon, Kim added.

Nexon provided TechCrunch with a copy of the statement in Korean — you can read it on Google Translate here — while the company also issued a relative no comment of its own.

There have been several media reports in connection with a potential transaction by NEXON
Co., Ltd. (“NEXON”)’s major shareholder, NXC Corporation (“NXC”), or its shareholders.

None of these reports are based on any releases made by NEXON.

While it may be true that NXC or its shareholders are considering various options about their
asset management/transactions, nothing has been decided.

If a decision is made by NXC or any other relevant parties, NEXON will make a release or
disclosure in a timely manner.

Nexon went public in Tokyo in 2011 raising over $1 billion in the year’s biggest listing. Kim’s holdings, which he shares with his wife, are in NXC, which is the biggest backer of Nexon.

Already, games giants Tencent and EA have been linked with a bid for the shareholding. Korean media reports suggest that Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley have been enlisted to manage the sale.

Nexon specializes in free-to-play games. Initially, its focus was on the PC but it has extended its reach into mobile in recent years. Some of its most popular titles include Maplestory, Vindictus and Dungeon and Fighter.

In its most recent financial report in November, Nexon made a net profit of 22.3 billion JPY ($206.5 million) on total revenue of 69.3 billion JPY ($641.7 million), that was up 14 percent and 15 percent year-on-year, respectively. Korea is the company’s biggest market by revenue, followed by North America, Japan and China.

The company is also active in areas outside of gaming, including crypto where its subsidiaries have made acquisitions, and it is an investor, too. Its most recent deal was an uncharacteristic early investment in Embark Studios, an ambitious new gaming venture from former EA executive Patrick Söderlund.

In more bad news for Apple, the company’s iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 models are not currently on sale in its own retail stores in Germany.

This follows an injunction issued by a Munich court last month related to patent litigation brought by chipmaker Qualcomm that’s being enforced from today. The patent dispute concerns smartphone power management technology that’s used to extend battery life.

In December the Munich court sided with Qualcomm, finding that Apple is infringing its patented power savings technology in the two models — granting a permanent injunction.

The court ordered Apple to cease the sale, offer for sale and importation for sale in Germany of infringing iPhones.

Apple has said it will appeal.

The Apple Germany website currently offers the newest models of the iPhone, the XS, XS Max and XR; and older models from 2014 (iPhone 6 and 6 Plus); 2015 (iPhone 6S and 6S Plus); and 2016 (iPhone SE). But buyers looking for 2016’s iPhone 7 or 2017’s iPhone 8 will be disappointed.

Yesterday Qualcomm announced it had posted security bonds totalling €1.34BN required by the court, enabling the injunction issued by the District Court of Munich on December 20 to be enforced.

The bonds are required to cover potential damages incurred by Apple should the judgment be overturned or amended on appeal. Qualcomm had said on December 20 that it would post the bonds “within a few days”.

In a statement yesterday the chipmaker also claimed the court had ordered Apple to recall infringing iPhones from third party resellers in the market.

But at the time of writing the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 models are still being offered by Apple resellers in Germany.

Amazon.de currently offers both handsets, for instance. While Gravis, Germany’s biggest reseller of Apple products, also told Reuters it was still selling all Apple products including the two models.

Qualcomm has also been pursing patent litigation against Apple in China and the U.S., and last month Apple appealed against a preliminary injunction banning the import and sales of old iPhone models in that market.

In that case the patents relate to editing photos and managing apps on smartphone touchscreens.

While, in the US, Qualcomm has most recently accused Intel engineers working with Apple of stealing trade secrets.

The feud dates back further though. Two years ago the FTC filed charges against Qualcomm accusing it of anticompetitive tactics in an attempt to maintain a monopoly in its chip business — with Apple officially cited in the complaint.

Cupertino also filed a billion-dollar royalty lawsuit against the chipmaker at the same time, accusing it of charging for patents “they have nothing to do with”.

The legal battle between the pair shows no signs of fizzling out, and has led Apple to reduce its reliance on Qualcomm chips — with Intel the short term beneficiary.

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment on the latest litigious development in Germany but pointed to its statement from December 20 in which it takes a broad swipe at Qualcomm’s “tactics”.

In the statement Apple also said resellers in the market would continue to stock all models.

It writes:

Qualcomm’s campaign is a desperate attempt to distract from the real issues between our companies.  Their tactics, in the courts and in their everyday business, are harming innovation and harming consumers.  Qualcomm insists on charging exorbitant fees based on work they didn’t do and they are being investigated by governments all around the world for their behavior.

We are of course disappointed by this verdict and we plan to appeal. All iPhone models remain available to customers through carriers and resellers in 4,300 locations across Germany. During the appeal process, iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 models will not be available at Apple’s 15 retail stores in Germany. iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR will remain available in all our stores.

The sideswipe at Qualcomm’s “tactics” is perhaps also a tactic reference to the use of a controversial PR firm, Definers, which — as we reported in November — had sent pitches slinging mud at Apple seemingly on Qualcomm’s behalf.

Late last year Facebook confirmed it had severed its own business relationship with the PR firm after it was revealed to have used antisemitic smear tactics to try to discredit Facebook critics.

We’ve asked Qualcomm for comment on its use of the PR firm.

Roads in a Chinese city have gotten much quieter in recent years. Shenzhen, widely called the Silicon Valley of hardware, has been pouring resources to phase out rattling diesel vehicles chugging through the city of 12 million people.

All public buses in the city went electric by the end of 2017. Taxis soon followed suit. The Transport Commission of Shenzhen announced on its official site this week that 99 percent of the city’s more than 21,000 cabs are now powered by batteries.

However, 1,350 vehicles from the fleet are still waiting to be deployed because of a shortage of charging stations, a sign the city’s infrastructure is not up to speed with its electric car movement. A survey done by newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily last year showed that 80 percent of Shenzhen’s cab drivers were unsatisfied with the supply and allocation of charging stations in the city.

Shenzhen, where Warren Buffet-backed battery and car manufacturer BYD stations its headquarters, is spearheading China’s electric dream. Its electrifying evolution dates back to 2010 when the city became part of China’s grand plan to pilot hybrid and all-electric vehicles with deep subsidies for both manufacturers and consumers. Underneath the ostensible goal of improving air quality is China’s ambition to be a world leader in battery technologies, which could subsequently drive employment and export sales.

Shenzhen’s traffic authority claims that electric cabs are 70 percent more energy efficient compared to those powered by fossil fuel. The entire fleet of electric cabs is estimated to cut carbon emissions by 856 thousand metric tons a year for Shenzhen. That’s equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions neutralized by 1,007,445 acres of US forests in one year, according to a greenhouse gas calculator provided by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

It’s worth noting that the environmental perks of EVs are dependent on how a city is generating electricity. The dirtier the energy source, like coal and oil, the dirtier its electric cars are.

A major beneficiary in Shenzhen’s green push is BYD, which manufacturers a big portion of the city’s non-petrol buses and taxis. Recently, the carmaker has made forays into overseas markets to electrify their public transportation system as China weighs subsidy cuts on electric cars. The Shenzhen automaker is trecking across the globe and shipping fleets to the UK, Chile and Egypt. In Asia, it’s sold electric vehicles to neighboring Macau, Singapore and Japan.

Another sizeable cash injection for big data biotech: Sophia Genetics has announced a $77M Series E funding round, bringing its total raised to $140M since the business was founded back in 2011.

The company, which applies AI to DNA sequencing to enable what it dubs “data-driven medicine”, last closed a $30M Series D in fall 2017.

The Series E was led by Generation Investment Management . Also investing: European private equity firm, Idinvest Partners. Existing investors, including Balderton Capital and Alychlo, also participated in the round.

When we last spoke to Sophia Genetics it had around 350 hospitals linked via its SaaS platform, and was then adding around 10 new hospitals per month.

Now it says its Sophia AI platform is being used by more than 850 hospitals across 77 countries, and it claims to have supported the diagnosis of more than 300,000 patients.

The basic idea is to improve diagnoses by enabling closer collaboration and knowledge sharing between hospitals via the Sophia AI platform, with an initial focus on oncology, hereditary cancer, metabolic disorders, pediatrics and cardiology. 

Expert (human) insights across the network of hospital users are used to collectively enhance genomic diagnostics, and push towards predictive analysis, by feeding and training AI algorithms intended to enhance the reading and analysis of DNA sequencing data.

Sophia Genetics describes its approach as the “democratization” of DNA sequencing expertise.

Commenting on the Series E in a statement, Lilly Wollman, co-head of Generation’s growth equity team said: “We believe that leveraging genetic sequencing and advanced digital analysis will enable a more sustainable healthcare system. Sophia Genetics is a leader in the preventive and personalized medicine revolution, enabling the development of targeted therapeutics, thereby vastly improving health outcomes. We admire Sophia Genetics not just for its differentiated analytics capability across genomic and radiomic data, but also for its exceptional team and culture”.

The new funding will be put towards further expanding the number of hospitals using Sophia Genetics’ technology, and also on growing its headcount with a plan to ramp up hiring in the US especially.

The Swiss-founded firm is now co-based in Lausanne and Boston, US.

In another recent development the company added radiomics capabilities to its platform last year, allowing for what it describes as “a prediction of the evolution of a tumour”, which it suggests can help inform a physician’s choice of treatment for the patient.

Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank with more than a million customers and a unicorn valuation to boot, has quietly began working on a U.S. launch, TechCrunch has learned.

According to multiple sources, the fintech startup has set up a small team to begin laying the ground work to bring a version of Monzo to North America, which will initially be powered by a U.S. banking partner while Monzo works on the necessarily regulatory licenses to go it alone.

The plan, which could still be subject to change, is for Monzo to create a “lite” version of its product for U.S. customers, much in the same was as it first launched in the U.K. with a pre-paid debit card before eventually offering a fully fledged bank account.

The thinking, according to one person familiar with the company’s strategy, is that this will enable Monzo to build up a U.S. customer base and iterate its product for the U.S. market in parallel with the challenger bank’s federal charter bank application.

I understand that the plan is for the initial Monzo U.S. product to offer in-app signup, the trademark “hot coral” Monzo debit card, an account and routing number, the ability to make and accept payments, ATM withdrawals, and realtime transaction notifications. In other words, many of the same features that has endeared Monzo with U.K. customers.

Contacted by TechCrunch, a Monzo spokesperson provided the following statement:

We’re really excited about international expansion over the coming months and years. After all, it’s hard to build a bank for a billion people in the UK alone!

However, we don’t have anything specific to share at this stage about those plans. When we do, we’ll be sure to tell the world.

Meanwhile, news that Monzo has begun executing U.S. expansion plans isn’t entirely surprising, even it appears to be happening significantly faster than previously thought.

Co-founder and CEO Tom Blomfield has openly talked about his ambition to bring Monzo to the U.S. one day and the London-based challenger bank boasts an array of U.S. investors. They include most recently General Catalyst, along with the likes of Thrive Capital, Goodwater Capital, Stripe, Michael Moritz, and Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom.

The fintech company also recently opened a Las Vegas office, from which it offers twilight hours customer support for U.K. customers. Or at least that is the party line. Now it appears that Las Vegas could soon have Monzo customers closer to home to keep happy, too.

An ongoing case in Singapore is testing the legal boundaries of virtual conferences. A court in the Southeast Asian city-state this week convicted human rights activist Jolovan Wham of organizing a public assembly via Skype without a permit and refusing to sign his statement when ordered by the police.

Wham will be sentenced on January 23 and faces a fine of up to S$5,000 or a jail term of up to three years. The judge in charge of the case, however, has not provided grounds of his decision, Wham wrote on Twitter.

Wham, 39, is a social worker at Community Action Network Singapore consisting of a group of activists, social workers and journalists advocating civil and political rights. He previously served as executive director of migrant worker advocacy group Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics.

On November 26, 2016, Wham organized an indoor forum called “Civil Disobedience and Social Movements” at a small event space inside a shopping mall in Singapore. The event featured prominent Hong Kong student activist Joshua Wong who addressed the audience remotely via a Skype video call.

The event’s Facebook Page indicates that 355 people were interested and 121 went. The Skype discussion, which lasted around two hours, was also live streamed on Facebook by The Online Citizen SG, a social media platform focused on political activism, and garnered 5,700 views.

Despite being advised by the police prior to the event to obtain a permit, Wham proceeded without said consent, according to a statement by the Singapore Police Force. Wham faced similar charges of organizing public assemblies without police permits and refusing to sign statements under the Penal Code.

In Singapore, it is a criminal offence under the Public Order Act to organize or participate in a public assembly without a police permit. The Police described Wham’s act as “recalcitrant” in regard to organizing and participating in illegal public assemblies.

Commenting on the charge against Wham, a joint statement from Joshua Wong and members of CAN Singapore argued that the event was “closed-door”.

“Skype conversations that take place within the confines of a private space are private matters that should logically, not require permits before they can be carried out,” raged the statement. “Wham’s discussion with Wong ended peacefully and would not have drawn any further attention if authorities hadn’t decided to act.”

FloWater, an eight-year-old, Burlingame, Ca.-based company whose reusable water bottle refilling stations produce purified water, has raised $15 million in its first major round of funding, it quietly announced last month.

Bluewater, a Swedish company that sells water purifiers, among other things, led the round.

FloWater caters to schools, colleges, fitness centers, hotels, and offices, and, in the words of CEO Rich Razgaitis, set out to address four environmental concerns from the outset: obesity in the U.S. which has been tied in part to the rise of sugary, carbonated beverages; the nearly 40 billion single-use plastic water bottles that are used up and tossed aside every year;  the millions of barrels of oil and hundreds of millions of pounds of CO2 byproduct waste used to create and transport bottled water; and the toxins in single-use plastic bottles, including endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

It has  a pretty compelling case to make, in short, as other purveyors of refilling stations would surely argue, and which clearly persuaded 13 investors altogether (according to a new SEC filing) to write checks to the company.

And it all started with an $18,600 bank loan, according to the company’s founder, Wyatt Taubman, who remains on the company’s board but stepped aside as head honcho in 2015 and has since founded a cold-pressed juice company.

Per his LinkedIn, Taubman, says he used that bank loan to launch a pilot refill station, before shaking $125,000 out of friends and family, and a second, $62,000 loan to launch additional refill stations. The company later raised $950,000 from the Tech Coast Angels and the Hawaii Angels, hired Razgaitis, redesigned the look of its product and, in 2016, raised $2.6 million in Series A funding.

FloWater customers include Google, Airbnb, Specialized Bikes, and, somewhat ironically, Red Bull.

It says its stations are now in nearly 50 states.

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.

What the Space Monitor does is very simple: it clamps to your desk and sits straight up from the edge — up against the wall if there is one — and takes up about as little space as it’s possible for a display to.

When you want to bring something closer, or lower, or just need to adjust the angle or whatever, the neck of the monitor lets you bring it down all the way to the level of your desk and tilt it up or down as well (though not side to side). Cables go up through the stand so you won’t see them at all.

Combined with very thin bezels on the sides (there’s a thicker, but still very reasonable one on the bottom) this makes for quite a minimal presence, and it could allow someone (like me) to shrink their workspace in some dimension or other. I like my Dell Ultrasharps, but if I was putting together a new desk situation, I’d probably look very hard at these Samsungs.

Sure, you could do a wall mount, but this is much easier and you don’t have to fiddle around with tools or load calculations. Just clamp it on there.

There are two models, a 27-inch QHD (2560×1440) model and a 32-inch 4K one (3840×2160); the latter costs $500, so the former will probably be a bit less. They use VA panels, which hopefully will be about as good as IPS, though of course not quite so good as OLED (though for that tech you’d have to add another zero to the price).

Only downside: 60 Hz maximum refresh rate. That’s a possible dealbreaker for some. But the specs also list a 4 ms response time, without explaining further. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood, but I asked Samsung to explain the discrepancy. The specs for the 27-inch display could also differ.

It feels nice to have a reason to visit the actual CES main halls this year. And of course, for the maximalists out there, I’ll also be sure to check out the mammoth new ultrawide:

Mobile AR gaming startup Niantic has closed a $190 million round of funding according to newly-filed SEC docs.

The filing comes after a WSJ report last month suggested the company was in the process of closing a $200 million raise from investors including IVP, aXiomatic Gaming and Samsung at a $3.9 billion valuation. The round closed shortly after that report on December 20 according to the new documents.

With the close of this round, Niantic has now raised more than $415 million to date. The startup’s other investors include Founders Fund, Spark Capital and Alsop Louie Partners, among others. The filings details that there were 26 investors in this funding round.

The new influx of cash comes as the creator of Pokémon GO prepares to release its next major title, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. The augmented reality game does not have a release date yet, but is expected to launch this year.