Category: UNCATEGORIZED

PUBG Mobile, the sleeper hit title that was banned in India two months ago over cybersecurity concerns, is plotting to make a return in the world’s second largest internet market, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

The South Korean firm has engaged with global cloud service providers in recent weeks to store Indian users’ data within the country to allay New Delhi’s concerns about user data residency and security, one of the sources said.

The gaming giant has privately informed some high-profile streamers in the country that it expects to resume the service in India before the end of this year, the other source said. Both the sources requested anonymity as they are not authorized to speak to the press. PUBG Corporation did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

The company could make an announcement about its future plans for India as soon as this week. It also plans to run a marketing campaign in the country during the festival of Diwali next week, one of the sources said.

In recent weeks, PUBG has also engaged with a number of local firms including SoftBank-backed Paytm and telecom giant Airtel to explore whether they would be interested in publishing the popular mobile game in the country, an industry executive said. A Paytm spokesperson declined to comment.

Chinese giant Tencent initially published PUBG Mobile apps in India. After New Delhi banned PUBG Mobile, the gaming firm cut publishing ties with Tencent in the country.

Late last month, two months after the ban order, PUBG Mobile terminated its service for Indian users. “Protecting user data has always been a top priority and we have always complied with applicable data protection laws and regulations in India. All users’ gameplay information is processed in a transparent manner as disclosed in our privacy policy,” it said at the time.

With more than 50 million monthly active users in India, PUBG Mobile was by far the most popular mobile game in the country before it was banned. It helped establish an entire ecosystem of  esports organisations to teams and even a cottage industry of streamers that made the most of its spectator sport-friendly gameplay, said Rishi Alwani, a long-time analyst of Indian gaming market and publisher of news outlet The Mako Reactor.

PUBG Mobile’s return, however, could complicate matters for several industry players, including some that are currently building similar games to cash in on its absence and their conversations with venture capital firms over ongoing financing rounds.

It would also suggest that more than 200 other Chinese apps that India has banned in recent months could hope to allay New Delhi’s concerns by making some changes to where they store their users data. (That was also the understanding between TikTok and Reliance when they engaged in investment opportunities earlier this year.)

Rumors have been floating for months that ByteDance is going public with TikTok and Douyin separately. Just last night, Bloomberg reported that ByteDance is seeking a pre-IPO round of $2 billion at a staggering valuation of $180 billion.

Before any of that materializes, ByteDance Chinese rival Kuaishou has moved ahead to file for an initial public offering in Hong Kong Thursday night, and its prospectus is shedding light on a race where both growth and costs are astronomical.

Launched by a former Google engineer in 2011 to share GIFs, Kuaishou has evolved into a nemesis of Douyin, TikTok’s sister in China. 21.5% owned by Tencent, the company reported a net loss of 6.8 billion yuan ($1 billion) in the first six months of 2020 while operating loss stood at 7.57 billion yuan. In contrast, it logged an operating profit of 1.1 billion yuan in the same period just last year.

The increase was in part a result of the company’s aggressive promotion of its lite version Kuaishou Express, which tailors to China’s less tech-savvy demographics. Unlike ByteDance, Kuaishou has had limited success overseas and relies on continuous domestic growth.

Its selling and marketing expenses skyrocketed 354.1% from 3 billion yuan in H1 2019 to 13.7 billion yuan in H1 this year. But the splurge seemed to have paid off: the lite app gained 100 million DAUs within a year. It’s a game of pay-to-play.

The main app Kuaishou itself, as of June, reached 302 million daily users, who spent over 85 minutes on the app per day engrossed in watching clips and live sessions. For comparison, Douyin crossed 400 million DAUs in January.

Though known as a “short-video app”, Kuaishou earns most of its revenue — 68.5% in H1 — from live streaming, during which audiences can send hosts virtual items priced anywhere between 1 and 2,000 yuan. Other monetization avenues include advertising, which accounted for 28% of its revenues, as well as less significant sources like e-commerce and games.

Douyin, on the other hand, pulled in about 67% of its revenues from advertising last year, a source told TechCrunch earlier, while live-streaming made up 17%.

The revenue makeup reflects the core use case of the apps. Kuaishou often prides itself on user engagement; indeed, over a quarter of its 776 million monthly users are creators themselves. That makes Kuaishou more of a social app where the viewers and creators interact frequently through means like live streaming and gifting.

Douyin, with algorithms that favor premium content, acts more like a form of media as some Chinese venture capitalists observed, making it a destination for showing ads.

In terms of revenue size, Kuaishou generated 39.1 billion yuan last year, about one-third of what ByteDance made last year. But one should keep in mind that ByteDance has another cash cow: its news and information aggregator, Jinri Toutiao.

Former Presidential advisor and right-wing pundit Steve Bannon had his show suspended from Twitter and an episode removed by YouTube after calling for violence against FBI director Christopher Wray and the government’s leading pandemic expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Bannon, speaking with co-host Jack Maxey, was discussing what Trump should do in a hypothetical second term. He suggested firing Wray and Fauci, but then went further, saying “I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I’d put the heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats.”

This may strike one at first as mere hyperbole – one may say “we want his head on a platter” and not really be suggesting they actually behead anyone. But the conversation continued and seemed to be more in earnest than it first appeared:

Maxey: Just yesterday there was the anniversary of the hanging of two Tories in Philadelphia. These were Quaker businessmen who had cohabitated, if you wil,l with the British while they were occupying Philadelphia. These people were hung. This is what we used to do to traitors.

Bannon: That’s how you won the revolution. No one wants to talk about it. The revolution wasn’t some sort of garden party, right? It was a civil war. It was a civil war.

Whether one considers this nostalgia for the good old days of mob justice or an actual call to employ it, the exchange seems to have been enough for moderators at YouTube and Twitter to come down hard on the pair’s makeshift broadcast.

Twitter confirmed that it has “permanently suspended” (i.e. it can be appealed but won’t be restored automatically) the account for violating the rule against glorifying violence.

YouTube removed the episode from “Steve Bannon’s War Room” channel Wednesday afternoon after it was brought to their attention. I’ve asked for more information (such as whether the channel’s other content is being reviewed) and will update this post if I hear back.

Online platforms have struggled with finding the line between under- and over-moderation. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tiktok, Instagram and others have all taken different measures, from preemptively turning off features to silently banning hashtags. Facebook today took down a group with more than 300,000 members that was acting as an amplifier for misinformation about the election.

While the platforms have been vigorous in at least some ways in the labeling and isolation of misinformation, it’s more difficult for video platforms. Just minutes ago Trump took to YouTube to detail a variety of unfounded conspiracy theories about mail-in voting, but the platform can’t exactly do a live fact-check of the President and shut down his channel. More than with text-based networks, video tends to spread before it is caught and flagged due to the time it takes to review it.

Teslaquila, the Tesla -branded liquor, that co-starred in CEO Elon Musk’s controversial April Fool’s Day joke about the automaker filing for bankruptcy, has arrived.

The automaker now lists Tesla Tequila (a bit different from the original Teslaquila branding) on its website. The tequila — described as a “small-batch premium 100% de agave tequila añejo made from sustainably sourced highland and lowland agaves,” is housed in a handblown glass bottle shaped in the electric charge symbol. Oh, and it costs $250.

Celeb-produced tequilas are nothing new and often lucrative. Casamigos, tequila brand co-founded by George Clooney, was acquired by Diageo in a deal that valued the company up to $1 billion. Tesla Tequila might be first liquor sold by an automaker. The liquor is produced by Nosotros Tequila, according to the company.

The tequila first popped up in April 2018 when Musk tweeted a photo of himself passed out against a Tesla Model 3 “surrounded by “Teslaquilla” bottles, the tracks of dried tears still visible on his cheeks.” In the photo, Musk is holding a cardboard sign that reads “bankwupt.”

Later that year, Tesla filed an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark “Teslaquila.”

 

Tesla has launched a GPS III satellite on behalf of customer the U.S. Space Force, the second GPS III generation satellite it has launched for the U.S. military this year. The first took off in June, and was the third overall GPS III put in orbit by SpaceX . This is the fourth, and will provide improved GPS navigation capabilities to the U.S., including improved jamming technology to protect against interference.

SpaceX used a brand new Falcon 9 first-stage on this launch, and successfully recovered that rocket booster using a controlled landing on its drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. The company also confirmed that its payload achieved good orbit, and it’s now in the process of making its way to the deployment point where it can release the GPS spacecraft for its final orbital insertion.

This mission flew from Cape Canaveral in Florida, and was the second attempt at delivering this payload, after an attempt at the beginning of September was scrubbed due to an early startup of two engines that caused an auto-shutdown of the launch sequence two seconds prior to liftoff. SpaceX investigated the issue and found that it was due to some trace amounts of a masking material used to protect engine components making their way into fuel lines. That triggered a chance in its engine manufacturing and inspection process.

SpaceX also delayed its forthcoming Crew-1 launch for NASA to resolve the issue, so today’s launch should be another reassurance that that key, history-making flight of an operational ISS crew made up of three NASA and one JAXA astronaut will go ahead as planned on November 14, barring any other delays.

Fresh off of its success on Election Day, Uber is signaling that it will continue to push laws similar to the Proposition 22 measure approved by California voters that will keep gig workers classified as independent contractors. The ride-hailing company’s ambitions for laws that preserve its business model are global.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Thursday during an earnings call with analysts that the company will “more loudly advocate for laws like Prop 22.” He later added that it will be a priority of the company “to work with governments across the U.S. and the world to make this a reality.”

What “loudly advocating” for might look like is unclear. Prop 22 was backed by Uber and Lyft as well as on-demand delivery companies Doordash and Postmates. (Uber is in the process of acquiring Postmates). The push to pass the ballot measure and override a bill passed by the California State Legislature that would have forced companies that use gig workers to classify them as employees was an expensive undertaking. Total contributions to Yes on 22 were around $205 million, making it the most expensive ballot measure in California since 1999.

Here’s his complete thought.

Lastly, on Proposition 22, which we are happy to say passed with a healthy margin in California.

This important question has now been settled in the most populous state in the country. California voters listen to what the vast majority of drivers want: new benefits and protections with the same flexibility. Going forward, drivers and delivery people in California will be guaranteed a minimum earnings standard, health care contributions, accident insurance, increased safety protections and more. We feel strongly that this is the right approach, we should be adding benefits to gig work to make it better, not getting rid of it altogether in favor of an employment only system.

That’s why going forward you’ll see as more loudly advocating for new laws like Prop 22, which we believe strike the balance between preserving the flexibility that drivers value so much, while adding protections that all gig workers deserve. Our proposal for a new pragmatic approach is supported by 82% of drivers and 76% of voters. And it’s a priority for us to work with governments across the U.S. and the world to make this a reality.

For now, Khosrowshahi said the company will be focused on complying with Prop 22, which does require an earnings guarantee of at least 120% of minimum wage while on the job, 30 cents per engaged miles for expenses, a healthcare stipend, occupational accident insurance for on-the-job injuries, protection against discrimination and sexual harassment, and automobile accident and liability insurance. The earnings guarantees and reimbursement for expenses reflects a driver’s engaged time, not for the time spent between rides or deliveries.

“We are very much focused on the execution of Prop 22 as it relates to our drivers” he said. Khosrowshahi said this could raise rates, but noted that an increases “wouldn’t have a significant effect on trip volumes one way or the other, based on the kinds of sensitivities that we have seen in the past.”

The DOJ challenges Visa’s acquisition of a fintech startup, Apple releases the latest version of iOS and goPuff acquires an iconic alcohol retailer. This is your Daily Crunch for November 5, 2020.

The big story: DOJ files suit to stop Plaid acquisition

The Department of Justice is challenging Visa’s $5.3 billion acquisition of financial services startup Plaid. There were reports last month that the DOJ was investigating the acquisition, but now the department has actually filed suit.

“By acquiring Plaid, Visa would eliminate a nascent competitive threat that would likely result in substantial savings and more innovative online debit services for merchants and consumers,” DOJ argued.

Visa responded in a statement arguing that the suit shows “a lack of understanding of Plaid’s business and the highly competitive payments landscape in which Visa operates.”

The tech giants

Facebook takes down ‘Stop the Steal 2020’ group organizing around false claims of election chicanery — Facebook has taken down a group that had amassed more than 300,000 members while sharing misinformation and organizing around false allegations of impropriety during the 2020 elections.

Apple releases iOS 14.2 with new emojis and an accessibility feature that locates people with lidar — Among other things, this release introduces more than 100 new emojis.

Review: Microsoft’s Xbox Series X is ahead of its time — This thing has a lot of specs behind it.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Delivery startup goPuff acquires BevMo for $350M — This comes less than a month after goPuff announced a $380 million round that valued the startup at $3.9 billion.

Proctorio used DMCA to take down a student’s critical tweets — A series of tweets by one Miami University student that were critical of a proctoring software company have been hidden by Twitter after the company filed a copyright takedown notice.

Vivid Money raises $17.6M for its European challenger bank — Vivid Money is a challenger bank with a few nifty features.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Three tips for SaaS founders hoping to join the $1 million ARR club — Building a SaaS company is much, much more difficult if you approach it without a tried and true process.

Implementing a data-driven approach to guarantee fair, equitable and transparent employee pay — The lack of clarity can lead to confusion and negative feelings that affect our productivity and relationships with our employers.

Inside fintech startup Upstart’s IPO filing — The fintech startup facilitates loans between consumers and partner banks, an operation that attracted around $144 million in capital prior to its IPO.

(Reminder: Extra Crunch is our membership program, which aims to democratize information about startups. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

DOJ says it seized over $1 billion in bitcoin from the Silk Road drugs marketplace — In a statement today, the Justice Department confirmed it seized the 70,000 bitcoins generated in revenue from drug sales on the Silk Web marketplace.

NASA wants new and innovative storytelling tech to document its Artemis moon missions — NASA has issued a new request for proposals from partners that would be able to help it supplement its own storytelling in new and innovative ways.

Mixtape podcast: Wellness in the time of the struggle — Shine co-founder and co-CEO Marah Lidey discusses mental health, venture capital, portfolio diversity and connecting with other founders.

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 3pm Pacific, you can subscribe here.

The various iterations of the new iPhone were announced 800 million years ago. Actually, wait, I just double checked — it was only about two or so weeks ago, but it turns out that time has no meaning anymore. Another cursory glance at my calendar tells me that, while the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro were released in late-October, not long after being announced, the iPhone 12 Pro Max and iPhone Mini, meanwhile, won’t be available for sale for another week or so.

You can check out Matthew’s substantial review of those middle of the line devices here. And while we wait for the low and high end of the line to arrive, I spent a little time with the devices and snapped a couple of photos with the products, which you can check out below.

Again, we can talk more in-depth write-ups at some point in the future, likely, but for now a smattering of thoughts and images. Consider this a kind of make up for the sorts of hands-ons with products we used to do at Apple’s in-person events, back in the before times, when Apple had in-person events.

All of the four sizes were present and accounted for. As someone who’s been testing a fair number of large Android devices in recent months, the 6.7-inch Pro Max doesn’t appear exceptionally large. As you can see in that top photo, however, the difference between it and the Mini is pretty pronounced.

It’s amazing how quickly our perceptions of screen sizes have shifted over the years, that a handset sporting a screen two inches larger than the original iPhone is now considered “mini” by a fairly considerable margin. Heck, even the 6-inch Pixel 5 I’ve been using off and on feels pretty small by today’s standards.

The standard iPhone 12 and 12 Pro’s 6.1-inch display seem like a pretty good sweet spot for many or most users. Many of the key specs are surprisingly consistent, given the $400 price difference between the high and low end. All sport 5G connectivity, the new magnetic MagSafe connector, OLED displays and an A14 chip.

[gallery ids="2070393,2070392,2070391,2070390,2070389,2070388,2070387,2070386,2070385,2070384,2070383,2070382"]

Beyond size, storage and battery capacity, the big differentiator are the cameras. No huge surprise there, as that continues to be where most smartphone manufacturers are making their biggest strides. Here’s a chart we made to break down those distinctions:

The iPhone 12 Pro Max and iPhone 12 Mini hit retail November 13.

Florida is renowned for its strange news stories. In recent weeks alone, one resident reported an alligator in her garage that turned out to be a pool floatie; another discovered a python in her washing machine; and a horse needed to be pulled out of a septic tank by firefighters.

Still, don’t dismiss Orlando residents who report seeing flying taxis overhead because they may just be coming. Lilium Aviation, a five-year-old, Munich, Germany-based startup that designs and makes electric vertical take-off and landing jets, is reportedly seeking tax incentives from the city to build a 56,000-square-foot transportation hub with the promise that it will create 100 high-wage jobs in return.

According to the Orlando Business Sentinel, the proposed facility — a takeoff and landing area that would be part of Lilium’s first transportation network in the U.S. — would represent a $25 million investment and, according to the city’s own estimates, generate $1.7 million in economic impact in a 10-year period. (Lilium in September began separately exploring with Germany’s Düsseldorf Airport and Cologne Bonn Airport  how to turn the two airports into regional air mobility hubs.)

It’s probably a smart time for Lillium — whose planes aren’t expected to be up and running until 2025 — to be talking with cities about additional airport revenue. Passenger traffic has fallen through the floor, owing to the pandemic, and cargo traffic has not been immune, either. In the meantime, 95% of revenue from airports comes aeronautical and non-aeronautical services.

Meanwhile, Lilium has a little more spending money, after raising $35 million in fresh funding in June led by Baillie Gifford, the largest investor in Tesla, a round that brought the company’s total funding to date to $375 million.

Earlier investors in the company include Atomico, Tencent Holdings and Freigeist.

We sat down with Atomico founder Niklas Zennström in late 2016 when the firm had just led a €10 million Series A in Lilium, a bet that seemed early at the time despite rivals like Terrafugia and AeroMobile, but that may be a reality fairly soon. Indeed, there are now at least 15 flying ‘cars’ and ‘taxis” in development.

Despite surging delivery demand, Uber’s third-quarter ultimately failed to meet investor revenue expectations in the third quarter.

Uber reported gross bookings of $14.7 billion, in the period, a decline of 10% compared to the year-ago quarter. That level of platform spend generated revenue of $3.1 billion for the company, down 18% from a year-ago result.

Analysts had expected the company to report revenues of $3.2 billion. The company’s top line miss was partially ameliorated by an earnings-per-share beat, with Uber losing $0.62 per share in the quarter, against an expectation of $0.65.

Uber’s third-quarter net loss was $1.1 billion, down a hair form a year-ago net loss of $1.2 billion.

The company’s two core segments were a tale of two cities: Uber’s ride-hailing (Mobility) business shrank, but made money, while Uber’s food delivery (Delivery) business grew, but continued to lose money.

In financial terms, Mobility-adjusted net revenues fell from $2.9 billion in the year-ago quarter to $1.4 billion during the most recent three-month period. That 53% decline led to a 61% decline in “segment adjusted EBITDA,” a heavily-tweaked profit metric, to just $245 million during Q3 2020.

Delivery, in contrast, saw its adjusted net revenue rise from $392 million in the year-ago period to $1.1 billion in the third quarter. That 190% gain led to a sharp decline in the Delivery unit’s unprofitability. The segment was able to cut its adjusted EBITDA from -$316 million in Q3 2019 to -$183 million in Q3 2020.

In total, Uber’s adjusted EBITDA for the company was -$625 million, about 7% worse than what it managed in the year-ago quarter.

Looking around the world, Uber’s fortunes varied greatly. In the United States and Canada, its revenues fell 30% in Q3 2020, compared to Q3 2019. In Latin America, a steeper 39% decline was recorded. But in both EMEA and APAC regions, revenues were up, rising 20% and 43%, respectively.

Uber wrapped Q3 with $6.2 billion in cash and equivalents, along with an additional $1.1 billion in short-term investments. On the other side of the ledger, Uber has around $6.7 billion in debt, net of current portion.

The American tech-ish giant reduced its costs greatly in Q3 2020 compared to Q3 2019, seeing its operations and support line-item dip, along with its expenses relating to R&D. General and administrative spending at the company rose from the year-ago period.

Shares of Uber are off 2.2% in after-hours trading.

Uber is sticking with its profitability goals, even with its mobility gross bookings still down significantly, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said during an earnings call Thursday.

“Based on our current cost structure we are confident that we can achieve total company adjusted EBITDA breakeven with mobility gross booking 10% to 20% lower than Q4 2019 levels,” Khosrowshahi said. “We now expect delivery to be breakeven sometime in 2021.”