Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Nairobi based internet hardware and service startup BRCK and Egyptian ride-hail venture Swvl are partnering to bring WiFI and online entertainment to on-demand bus service in Kenya.

BRCK will install its routers on Swvl vehicles in Kenya and run its Moja service, which offers free public WiFi—internet, music, and entertainment—subsidized by commercial partners.

Founded in Cairo in 2017, Swvl is a mass transit service that has positioned itself as an Uber for shared buses. “Think ride hailing, but with a bus…and instead of the vehicle coming to you…you go to the bus, and the bus picks you up at a certain point and time,” Swvl’s general manager for Kenya, Shivachi Muleji, told TechCrunch via email.

The company raised a $42 million Series B round in June, with intent to expand in Africa, Swvl CEO Mostafa Kandil said in an interview.

In Kenya, BRCK has installed 15 of its units in Swvl buses and looks to offer its Moja WiFi service in 700 by 2020, BRCK’s chief operating officer Nivi Sharma told TechCrunch.  Swvl pays a monthly fee for the routers and for maintenance of the routers, Swvl confirmed.

Both BRCK and Swvl see a solid fit in pairing up their product offerings. “SWVL’s objectives to provide an alternative in the transportation industry line up nicely with BRCK’s objectives of providing connectivity to commuters,” said BRCK COO Nivi Sharma.

Backed by $10 million from investors including Steve Case’s Revolution VC fund, BRCK built its platform around providing internet solutions in East Africa. Founder Erik Hersman has described Africa’s internet challenges—mainly the lowest penetration rates in the world—as shifting toward more of an affordability than availability problem.

“The demand on internet in Africa is largely driven by the 10 to 15 percent who can afford it. The real massive opportunity is trying to connect the 70 to 80 percent of the people who can’t,” Hersman told TechCrunch in 2017.

To that end, BRCK paired up its Africa specific WiFi routers to its Moja service to offer free internet and content supported by commercial partners. Users can access Moja on their mobile phones, tablets, or laptops on public transportation or in public areas. They earn points from their browsing to apply to faster connectivity or premium content.

In 2018, BRCK began offering SupaBRCK devices to drivers of Nairobi’s highly-used Matatu buses for Kenyan commuters to access Moja. In February, the startup acquired Nairobi based internet provide Surf and its network of hotspots.

BRCK currently has 445,000 unique monthly active users on its Matatu based Moja mobile network in Kenya and Rwanda and 150,000 unique monthly active users on its fixed network—including users connecting at cafes, barbershops, and marketplaces, according to company data.

BRCK and Swvl wouldn’t confirm plans on expanding their mobile internet partnership to additional countries outside of Kenya.

Ride-hail markets in Africa have become an active sector for VC investment and global and local startups. The big players such as Uber  and Bolt are competing in Kampala and Nairobi—where in addition to car-service—they offer rickshaw taxis.

On-demand motorcycle startups are multiplying and piloting EVs with funds from international partners. And many ride-hail companies in Africa are adapting unique product solutions to local transit needs. The collective startup activity is making the continent home to a number of fresh mobility use-cases, including the BRCK and Svl WiFi partnership.

As it forecast earlier this month, Samsung reported a steep drop in its second-quarter earnings due to lower market demand for chips and smartphones. The company said its second-quarter operating profit fell 55.6% year-over-year to 6.6 trillion won (about $5.6 billion), on consolidated revenue of 56.13 trillion won, slightly above the guidance it issued three weeks ago.

Last quarter, Samsung also reported that its operating profit had dropped by more than half. The same issues that hit its earnings during the first quarter of this year have continued, including lower memory prices as major datacenter customers adjust their inventory, meaning they are currently buying less chips (the weak market also impacted competing semiconductor maker SK Hynix’s quarterly earnings).

Samsung reported that its chip business saw second-quarter operating profit drop 71% year-over-year to 3.4 trillion won, on consolidated revenue of 16.09 trillion won. In the second half of the year, the company expects to continue dealing with market uncertainty, but says demand for chips will increase “on strong seasonality and adoption of higher-density products.”

Meanwhile, Samsung’s mobile business reported a 42% drop in operating profit from a year ago to 1.56 trillion won, on 25.86 trillion won in consolidated revenue. The company said its smartphone shipments increased quarter-over-quarter thanks to strong sales of its budget Galaxy A series. But sales of flagship models fell, due to “weak sales momentum for the Galaxy S10 and stagnant demand for premium products.”

Samsung expects the mobile market to remain lackluster, but it will continue adding to both its flagship and mass-market lineups. It is expected to unveil the Note 10 next month and a new release date for the delayed Galaxy Fold, along with new A series models in the second half of the year.

“The company will promptly respond to the changing business environment, and step up efforts to secure profitability by enhancing efficiency across development, manufacturing and marketing operations,” Samsung said in its earnings release.

It’s not just market demand that’s impacting Samsung’s earnings. Along with other tech companies, Samsung is steeling itself for the long-term impact of a trade dispute between Japan and South Korea. Last month, Japan announced that it is placing export restrictions on some materials used in chips and smartphones. Samsung said it still has stores of those materials, but it is also looking for alternatives since it is unclear how long the dispute between the two countries may last (and it could last for a long time).

There’s a double standard when it comes to the sexualities of men versus women, trans and gender non-conforming folks. Unbound and Dame Products, two sex tech startups, have teamed up to bring attention to the issue.

By launching a website, “Approved, Not Approved” and staging a protest outside Facebook’s NYC headquarters, the two startups hope to bring more awareness to the company’s advertising guidelines that seem to favor products that cater to cisgender men. The point of the digital campaign is to show how ads for sex toys and products geared toward men are more likely to be approved than those for women, trans or gender non-conforming people.

“For so long, advertisements have been how we continue to reinforce the status quo of what we view as societally desirable and validating,” Dame Products CEO Alexandra Fine told TechCrunch. “Since we’re in a category that’s often denied, we wanted to create an experience that illuminates the disparity.”

On Facebook, for example, it’s prohibitive to promote the sale or use of adult products or services except for ads that pertain to family planning and contraception. The policy also requires that ads for contraceptives cannot focus on sexual pleasure or sexual enhancement, and have to be targeted to people 18 years or older.

“They’re never going to view sexual pleasure as necessary — only functionality as necessary,” Fine said. “And since the functioning only matters for one sex, then we’re just encouraging shitty sex or at least one-sided sex. Healthy sex should be pleasurable sex. That’s really what I think is important.”

Facebook, however, clearly disagrees since it explicitly bans ads relating to sexual pleasure.

“We have had open lines of communication with both companies about our policies and are always taking feedback,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We are working to further clarify our policies in this space in the near future.”

Unfortunately, there is no telling if and when Facebook and other platforms will change their advertising policies to enable companies like Dame Products and Unbound to reach potential customers through ads.

“I think a lot of us feel like we’ve been silenced by these platforms and they control so much,” Unbound CEO Polly Rodriguez told TechCrunch. “Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest — these are the channels startups live and die by. Not being able to advertise on them is a big deal because, in addition to the policies being biased and genders, it prevents those founders from being able to reach potential customers.”

Unbound CEO Polly Rodriguez. The startup was a finalist at TC Disrupt SF Startup Battlefield finalist in 2018.

In addition to missing out on potential customers, an inability to advertise can have a detrimental effect on a business in terms of raising venture funding.

“I think one of the most frustrating things is trying to raise a round and getting pushback around where you’ll spend the money,” Rodriguez said. “It’s just tough because it’s this vicious cycle where we could be growing at the same rate as a Him or a Roman. It’s definitely in the tens of millions of dollars in terms of foregone profits.”

In addition to the protest, Fine is suing New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority alleging it’s in violation of Dame’s First Amendment rights, the due process clause of the 14th Amendment and the state’s constitutional rights regarding freedom of speech. The lawsuit came in light of the MTA preventing Dame from running its ads on the subway.

Still, despite efforts to squash it, sex tech may finally be getting its moment in the sun. Earlier this month, the sex tech industry had a big win when the organizer of the Consumer Electronics Show finally decided to allow sex tech companies to exhibit and participate in its competition. That came after the Consumer Technology Association, the organizer of CES, royally messed up with sex tech company Lora DiCarlo last year. The CTA revoked an innovation award from the company, which is developing a hands-free device that uses biomimicry and robotics to help women achieve a blended orgasm by simultaneously stimulating the G-spot and the clitoris. In May, CTA re-awarded the company and apologized.

“It’s so rare you see a victory like that and it was because of the press,” Rodriguez said. “It was because it takes. It’s unfortunate these companies don’t do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. They do the right thing when enough people speak out about it.”

A serious crash by a delivery drone in Switzerland have grounded the fleet and put a partnership on ice. Within a stone’s throw of a school, the incident raised grim possibilities for the possibilities of catastrophic failure of payload-bearing autonomous aerial vehicles.

The drones were operated by Matternet as part of a partnership with the Swiss Post (i.e. the postal service), which was using the craft to dispatch lab samples from one medical center for priority cases. As far as potential applications of drone delivery, it’s a home run — but twice now the craft have crashed, first with a soft landing and the second time a very hard one.

The first incident, in January, was the result of a GPS hardware error; the drone entered a planned failback state and deployed its emergency parachute, falling slowly to the ground. Measures were taken to improve the GPS systems.

The second failure in May, however, led to the drone attempting to deploy its parachute again, only to sever the line somehow and plummet to earth, crashing into the ground some 150 feet from a bunch of kindergartners. No one was hit but this narrowly avoided being a worst-case scenario for the service: not just a craft failing, but the emergency systems failing as well, and over not just a populated area but immediately over a bunch of children. The incident was documented last month but not widely reported.

Falling from a few hundred feet, the 12-kilogram (about 26 pounds) drone and payload could easily have seriously injured or even killed someone — this is why there are very strict regulations about flying over populated areas and crowds.

Obviously they grounded the fleet following this incident and will not spin up again until Matternet addresses the various issues involved. How was it even possible, for instance, that the parachute line was capable of being cut by something on the drone?

IEEE Spectrum first noted the news stateside. The company the following statement on the matter:

This is the first time ever that our vehicle parachute system has failed. As stated in the report, the flight termination system was triggered nominally per the drone’s specification, but the parachute cord was severed during the parachute deployment.

At Matternet, we take the safety of our technology and operations extremely seriously. A failure of the parachute safety mechanism system is unacceptable and we are taking all the appropriate measures to address it.

Swiss Post and Matternet reacted to the incident immediately by grounding all the operations involving this vehicle type. Our experts analyzed the incident and proposed the appropriate mitigations which are being evaluated by FOCA. We will restart operations once Matternet and Swiss Post, FOCA and our hospital customers in Switzerland are satisfied that the appropriate mitigations have been applied.

Drone delivery is a promising field, but situations like this one don’t do it any favors when regulators take a look. Despite sunny predictions from the industry, there is a huge amount of work yet to be done in terms of flight proving the technology, and although 2 failures out of some 3,000 may not sound like a lot, if one of those failures is an uncontrolled fall that nearly takes out some kids, that could set the entire industry back.

(This story has been slightly updated to accommodate a new statement from Matternet.)

NASA has opened up a call for companies to join the ranks of its nine existing Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) providers, a group it chose in November after a similar solicitation for proposals. With the CLPS program, NASA is buying space aboard future commercial lunar landers to deliver its future research, science and demonstration projects to the surface of the Moon, and it’s looking for more providers to sign up as lunar lander providers fo contracts that could prove put to $2.6 billion and extend through 2028.

The list of nine providers chosen in November 2018 includes Astrobotic Technology, Deep Space Systems, Draper, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Lockheed Martin, Masten Space Systems, Moon Express and OrbitBeyond. NASA is looking to these companies, and whoever ends up added to a list as a result of this second call for submissions, to bring both small and mid-size lunar landers, with the aim of delivering anything from rovers, to batteries, to payloads specific to future Artemis missions with the aim of helping establish a more permanent human presence on the Moon.

NASA’s goal in building out a stable of providers helps its Moon ambitions in a few different ways, including providing redundancy, and also offering a competitive field so that they can open up bids for specific payloads and gain price advantages.

At the end of May, NASA announced the award of over $250 million in contracts for specific payload delivery missions that were intended to take place by 2021. The three companies chosen from its list of nine providers were Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and OrbitBeyond – OrbitBeyond told the agency just yesterday, however, that it would not be able to fulfill the contract awarded due to “internal corporate challenges” and backed out of the contract with NASA’s permission.

Given how quickly one of their providers exited one of the few contracts already awarded, and the likely significant demand there will be for commercial lander services should NASA’s Artemis ambitions even match up somewhat closely to the vision, it’s probably a good idea for the agency to build out that stable of service providers.

NASA has opened up a call for companies to join the ranks of its nine existing Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) providers, a group it chose in November after a similar solicitation for proposals. With the CLPS program, NASA is buying space aboard future commercial lunar landers to deliver its future research, science and demonstration projects to the surface of the Moon, and it’s looking for more providers to sign up as lunar lander providers fo contracts that could prove put to $2.6 billion and extend through 2028.

The list of nine providers chosen in November 2018 includes Astrobotic Technology, Deep Space Systems, Draper, Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, Lockheed Martin, Masten Space Systems, Moon Express and OrbitBeyond. NASA is looking to these companies, and whoever ends up added to a list as a result of this second call for submissions, to bring both small and mid-size lunar landers, with the aim of delivering anything from rovers, to batteries, to payloads specific to future Artemis missions with the aim of helping establish a more permanent human presence on the Moon.

NASA’s goal in building out a stable of providers helps its Moon ambitions in a few different ways, including providing redundancy, and also offering a competitive field so that they can open up bids for specific payloads and gain price advantages.

At the end of May, NASA announced the award of over $250 million in contracts for specific payload delivery missions that were intended to take place by 2021. The three companies chosen from its list of nine providers were Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and OrbitBeyond – OrbitBeyond told the agency just yesterday, however, that it would not be able to fulfill the contract awarded due to “internal corporate challenges” and backed out of the contract with NASA’s permission.

Given how quickly one of their providers exited one of the few contracts already awarded, and the likely significant demand there will be for commercial lander services should NASA’s Artemis ambitions even match up somewhat closely to the vision, it’s probably a good idea for the agency to build out that stable of service providers.

A few years ago, investors heralded the arrival of a future with robots in the home. Robots like Jibo, Anki’s Cozmo and Mayfield Robotics’ Kuri attracted buzz and hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital. All three companies have since shut down, prompting Kidtech expert Robin Raskin to recently ask, “Has the sheen worn off the tech toy world?”

With the demise of these robots and their makers, it’s fair to wonder if and when there will be a time when robots have a real place in our lives. But some robots are finding a home in a counterintuitive place: schools.

Because for robots to succeed, they need to find an application that integrates with human needs — solving real problems — and sustains their use. At home, the current wave of robots may provide children with a few hours of entertainment before they are tossed aside like any other new toy.

In schools, however, robots are proving that they can serve a purpose, bridging the divide between the digital and physical worlds in ways that bring to life concepts like coding. Savvy teachers are finding that robots can help to bring project-based learning alive in ways that supports development of valuable critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

It would not be the first time that K-12 schools paved the way as early adopters of technology. Forty years ago, the Apple II was widely adopted in schools first, before desktop computers colonized the home. Laptops famously gained early momentum in schools, where their light weight and portability were tightly aligned with the rise of in-class interventions and digital content. Schools were also early adopters of tablets, which, despite a few high-profile failures, are now seemingly ubiquitous in K-12 classrooms.

The rise of robotics in K-12 schools has been buoyed by not just intrigue with the potential of new gadgets, but an increased focus on computer science education. Just a decade ago, only a few states allowed computer science to count toward STEM course requirements. Today, nearly every state allows computer science courses to fulfill core graduation requirements, and 17 states require that every high school offer computer science.

The growing importance of computer science at the high school level has, in turn, trickled down to elementary and middle schools, where teachers are turning to robots as an effective way to introduce students to states’ new K-12 computer science standards. In California, the state’s board of education now suggests that schools use robots to satisfy five of its standards.

From a design level, classroom robots are fundamentally different than those at home. Learning necessitates that — instead of bite-sized, shallow experiences, robots must provide experiences that have the depth and variety needed to keep students engaged over months and years. To succeed in the classroom, they must be accompanied by thoughtful curricular content that teachers can incorporate into their instruction. Because robots are relatively expensive, teachers need robots they can reliably use for a long time.

It’s a trend that hasn’t been lost on companies like littleBits and Sphero, which are quickly pivoting to focus on a K-12 market dominated by legacy players like Lego. Wonder Workshop robots, which gained popularity through retail channels like the Apple Store and Amazon, are now being used in more than 20,000 schools across the world. Although they currently penetrate just a fraction of the K-5 classrooms in the U.S., their success is not only drawing increased interest from investors, but fueling innovations that could have implications for pernicious equity gaps that still plague STEM classrooms — and high-tech fields.

While the toy industry has long marketed its products differently to boys and girls in ways that actually reinforce stereotypes through product design and advertising, robots designed for the classroom must appeal to all students. Earlier versions of Wonder Workshop’s Dash robot, for example, rolled around on visible wheels.

During its initial user studies, the company learned students equated wheeled robots with cars and trucks. In other words, they viewed Dash as something meant for boys. So, Wonder Workshop covered up Dash’s wheels. It worked. Today, nearly 50% of participants in the company’s Wonder League Robotics Competition are girls, with many of the winning teams each year being all-girl teams.

So while the national narrative often imagines a dystopian future where robots come for our jobs, classroom robots are actually helping teachers meet the needs of increasingly diverse classrooms. They are helping students improve their executive function, creativity and ability to communicate with others.

Educators are recognizing the potential of robots, not as toys, but as powerful tools for learning. And children as young as kindergarten are using robots to better and more quickly understand mathematical concepts. Students who have the opportunity to learn from — and with — robots in the classroom today may develop a generation of robots that can play a role in our lives well into the future. They will grow up not merely as consumers of technology, but creators of it.

NASA has selected 13 companies to partner with on 19 new specific technology projects it’s undertaking to help reach the Moon and Mars. These include SpaceX, Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin, among others, with projects ranging from improving spacecraft operation in high temperatures, to landing rockets vertically on the Moon.

Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin will work with NASA on developing a navigation system for “safe and precise landing at a range of locations on the Moon” in one undertaking, and also on readying fuel cell-based power system for its Blue Moon lander, revealed earlier this year. The final design spec will provide a power source that can last through the lunar night, or up to two weeks without sunlight in some locations. It’ll also be working on further developing engine nozzles for rockets with liquid propellant that would be well-suited for lunar lander vehicles.

SpaceX will be working on technology that will help move rocket propellant around safely from vehicle to vehicle in orbit, a necessary step to building out its Starship reusable rocket and spacecraft system. The Elon Musk-led private space company will also be working with Kennedy Space Center on refining its vertical landing capabilities to adapt it to work with large rockets on the moon, where lunar regolith (aka Moon dust) makes and the low-gravity, zero atmosphere environment can complicate the effects of controlled descents.

Lockheed Martin will be working on using solid-state processing to create metal powder-based materials that can help spacecraft deal better with operating in high-temperature environments, and on autonomous methods for growing and harvesting plants in space, which could be crucial in the case of future long-term colonization efforts.

Other projects will tap Advanced Space, Vulcan Wireless, Aerogel Technologies, Spirit AeroSystem, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Anasphere, Bally Ribbon Mills, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Colorado Power Electronics and Maxar, and you can read about each in detail here.

NASA’s goals with these private partnerships are to both develop at speed, and decrease the cost of efforts to operate crewed space exploration, as part of its Artemis program and beyond.

As anticipated, Apple’s hardware numbers were a mixed bag during today’s Q2 earnings report. Apple continues to shift much of its resources to services and content, including a billion dollar push into Apple TV+. But while iPhone number were down, things weren’t all bad on the device front.

Notably, wearables are up in a big way. The category hit $5.5 billion for the quarter, up from $3.7 billion, year over year. The boost came in no small part to the arrival of new AirPods, featuring wireless charging functionality, in spite of the company DOAing its AirPower charging pad.

“This was our biggest June quarter ever — driven by all-time record revenue from Services, accelerating growth from Wearables, strong performance from iPad and Mac and significant improvement in iPhone trends,” Tim Cook said in a press released tied to earnings. “These results are promising across all our geographic segments, and we’re confident about what’s ahead. The balance of calendar 2019 will be an exciting period, with major launches on all of our platforms, new services and several new products.”

The optimism around iPhone isn’t entirely universal at the moment. The quarter marked another decline for the company, from $29.5 billion to $25.9 billion, with the category dipping below 50 percent of the company’s total revenue for the time period. The past several quarters have seen a decline in iPhone sales, thanks to an overall stagnation in the global market, coupled with slower than expected sales in China.

That, in turn, is the result of slowed economic growth in the country. In fact, few manufacturers have been able to buck the trend in China, save for Huawei. The embattled hardware giant has increased domestic sales through aggressive pricing strategy and an increased push for patriotic purchases as it sees political headwinds abroad.

On this evening’s call, Cook said there’s some cause for optimism when it comes to China. “I’d like to provide some color on our performance in Greater China, where we saw significant improvement compared to the first half of fiscal 2019 and return to growth and constant currency,” the exec said. “We experienced noticeably better year over year comparisons for our iPhone business there than we saw in the last two quarters. And we had sequential improvement in the performance of every category.”

Apple, of course, will be announcing new phones later this year, though, though it remains to be seen whether a new feature set will be strong enough to kickstart sales. 5G is expected to be a guy driver in smartphone numbers in the year ahead, though Apple isn’t expected offer the capability until 2020.

The company also recently agreed to purchase Intel’s modem division in an effort to build more components in house.

iPhone revenue has been down year-over-year for the last few quarters. If you were hoping this quarter would be the one to break the streak, no such luck.

In its earnings report this afternoon, Apple disclosed that iPhone revenue for Fiscal Q3 of 2019 came in at $25.9 billion, versus $29.4 billion in the same quarter of 2018. That’s a dip of roughly 12%.

The company grew in most of its other major categories, though. iPad revenue is up 8%, Mac revenue is up 11%, and the services category it’s been putting so much focus into is up 13%.

Most notably: The “Wearables, Home, and Accessories” category (think Apple Watches, AirPods, and HomePods) saw the biggest growth of all, growing nearly 50%. Apple says its wearables business alone would be a Fortune 200 company.

While iPhone revenue is down, it’s still a hugely important part of Apple’s business — the largest single category on Apple’s financials, by far. Of the $53.8 billion in revenue Apple saw in Fiscal Q3, the iPhone accounted for over 48%.