Crunch Hype

For a company with a two letter name, LG loves nothing so much as an unwieldy title. A form of overcompensation, perhaps? Whatever the case, the lengthening of LG phone names is one of this world’s few constants, and as such, it ought to be no surprise that the company’s first 5G handset happily continues […]

At its MWC keynote in Barcelona today, Microsoft promised to keep the HoloLens ecosystem open. That means third-party app stores and browsers, for example, with Mozilla already announcing its Firefox browser for HoloLens today. “Developers will have the freedom to create their own stares as first-class citizens,” Microsoft’s HoloLens chief Alex Kipman said today and […]

Microsoft closed out today’s big HoloLens 2 debut with a surprise appearance by Epic Games CEO, Tim Sweeney. The gaming exec was clearly impressed by the technology’s future for both developement and consumer augmented reality. “I believe that AR is going to be the primary platform of the future for both work and entertainment,” he […]

Microsoft is really hoping to get down to business with the next version of the Hololens. In fact, the software giant announced a new customization program for the HoloLens 2. How, precisely such customized versions of the XR headset will look remains to be seen, but the company’s first partner, construction hardware company Trimble, is […]

Today’s Mobile World Congress kickoff event was all about the next Hololens, but Microsoft still had some surprises up its sleeve. One of the more interesting additions is the Azure Kinect, a new enterprise camera system that leverages the company’s perennially 3D imaging technology to create a 3D camera for enterprises. The device is actually […]

Microsoft unveiled the latest version of its HoloLens ‘mixed reality’ headset at MWC Barcelona today. The new HoloLens 2 features a significantly larger field of view, higher resolution and a device that’s more comfortable to wear. Indeed, Microsoft says the device is three times as comfortable to wear (though it’s unclear how Microsoft measured this). […]

The Gillmor Gang — Keith Teare, Frank Radice, Denis Pombriant, Michael Markman, and Steve Gillmor . Recorded live Saturday February 23, 2019. Podcast M-and-A as smart speakers wag the video dog. Permission-based metadata thrives in the next generation of bidirectional socialcasting. Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor @kteare, @denispombriant, @fradice, @mickeleh, @stevegillmor Liner […]

Microsoft is set to announce a brand new hardware device at MWC in Barcelona — the new HoloLens headset. The conference starts at 6:00 PM CET (5:00 AM GMT, 12:00 PM ET, 9:00 AM PT). If you’ve ever tried the HoloLens, you know that this it is a magical device. But Microsoft quickly realized that it […]

A group of academics have found three new security flaws in 4G and 5G, which they say can be used to intercept phone calls and track the locations of cell phone users. The findings are said to be the first time vulnerabilities have affected both 4G and the incoming 5G standard, which promises faster speeds […]

Last week a bunch of TCL foldable concepts leaked out — and honestly, a few of them looked pretty cool. But alas, concepts are just concepts, and certainly no guarantee that the things will ever make it to market. The company did have some foldable news to share this week at Mobile World Congress, but […]

Welcome back to Transportation Weekly; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. This is the third edition of our tome, I mean newsletter, and this week let’s settle in for a mind meld on why logistics is the new Hansel, a curious Tesla subsidiary, and discover a new mobility species called the […]

You want camera? The Nokia 9 PureView has them — more than you could ever possibly need, really. The latest premium device from HMD sports a five camera hexagonal array, along with the flash and color sensors. The two front-facing cameras, meanwhile, bring the total up to seven. Overkill? Yeah, probably. But the device certainly […]

HMD was something of an instant success when it launched at Mobile World Congress two years back. That rapid rise owed to a few key things: price, familiar branding and its predecessor’s long time commitment to the feature phone. Those who’ve been following the industry for some time will recall that the original Nokia mobile […]

HMD is holding a press conference at MWC in Barcelona to showcase some Nokia-branded phones. The conference starts at 4:00 PM CET (3:00 PM GMT, 10:00 AM EST). HMD licenses the Nokia brand so that the company can release smartphones under the Nokia brand. It isn’t the company we used to know and love, but […]

Foldable phones are having their moments at this year’s Mobile World Congress. A few days after Samsung debuted the Galaxy Fold on stage at an event in San Francisco, Huawei has just shown off its solution, the Mate X. On the face of it, the device looks like it may well be a step up […]

Today at MWC Barcalona Huawei launched its first consumer 5G products. Aside from its 5G Mate 20 X, the company also updated and new products that will bring 5G to people’s homes and devices through routers and connectivity options. Most consumers will first taste 5G not on a dedicated device like a phone, but through […]

Today at MWC Barcelona Huawei announced it will bring 5G to its flagship phone, the Mate 20 X. This marks the first 5G phone from the Chinese mobile giant. Huawei joins a growing list of companies introducing their first 5G phone in early 2019. In the past week, Samsung, Oppo, and Xiaomi announced 5G versions […]

Foldables are expense. And so are 5G phones. But foldable 5G phones? Well, um, get ready for that second mortgage. At the end of Huawei’s MWC press conference, mobile chief Richard Yu dropped a pricing bombshell, noting that the recently announced Mate X will run €2,299 ($2,600). There’s a pricing premium and then there’s that. […]

The world’s fastest growing mobile company has long had a chip on its shoulder when it comes to Apple and Samsung. For too long, the company has had to go out of its way to remind the world that it’s capable of being every bit as innovative as those better established brands, a concept very […]

Everyone’s favorite MacBook knockoffs are back, with two new models. Of course, for all the talk of stolen trade secrets. Huawei’s got a strong track record of making seriously compelling and premium Windows laptops, and this latest batch certainly doesn’t appear to an exception. Design wise, the systems are pretty similar to their predecessors (which, […]

Accurx, the U.K. startup and Entrepreneur First alumni that has developed a messaging service for doctor surgeries, has raised £8.8 million in Series A funding, TechCrunch has learned. According to multiple sources, London venture capital firm Atomico has led the round, with participation from LocalGlobe and EF. We first heard a term sheet had been […]

Xiaomi doesn’t want to miss the 5G bandwagon — the company just unveiled its first smartphone that comes with a 5G modem at a press conference in Barcelona. The Mi Mix 3 5G is a new variant of the Mi Mix 3, a phone that Xiaomi originally released in October 2018. The company is trying […]

It’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which means that Xiaomi is about to announce a lot of phones. The conference starts at 10:30 AM CET (9:30 AM GMT, 4:30 AM EST). Rumor has it that the company will unveil a phone that supports 5G network. Xiaomi has already showed this phone at various events over […]

Microsoft is scheduled to hold a major press conference at MWC Barcelona later today. With Satya Nadella and Alex Kipman in attendance, the expectation has long been that the company would use the event to show off the next version of its HoloLens mixed reality headset. Just hours before the event, though, Twitter user WalkingCat […]

While Huawei isn’t going to show the P30 at Mobile World Congress, the company says it is going to “reveal the unprecedented”. Like other manufacturers, Huawei has been trying some new designs. The conference starts at 2:00 PM CET (1:00 PM GMT, 8:00 AM EST). Huawei doesn’t unveil its flagship devices at MWC anymore. The […]

An Atlas cargo plane flying on behalf of Amazon Air — Amazon’s own freight delivery service that competes with FedEx and UPS, among others — has crashed outside Houston, Texas, killing three people on board. Amazon and Atlas both confirmed the accident with short statements. Neither provided any details on the nature of the accident. […]

More than 100 Microsoft employees have signed a letter sent to CEO Satya Nadella and President Brad Smith criticizing the company’s plans to build HoloLens AR tech for the military, the organizing group said Friday. The development is part of a $480 million military contract that Microsoft won this past November. The group’s letter demands […]

The internet’s address book keeper has warned of an “ongoing and significant risk” to key parts of the domain name system infrastructure, following months of increased attacks. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, issued the notice late Friday, saying DNS, which converts numerical internet addresses to domain names, has been the victim […]

Through the Extra Crunch EC-1 on Patreon, I dove into Patreon’s founding story, product roadmap, business model and metrics, underlying thesis, and competitive threats. The six-year-old company last valued around $450 million and likely to soon hit $1 billion is the leading platform for artists to run membership businesses for their superfans. As a conclusion […]

It takes a lot more than a good idea and the right timing to build a billion-dollar company. Talent, focus, operational effectiveness and a healthy dose of luck all play a part.

Saturday afternoon is a rough time for a press conference — particularly with the official kickoff of Mobile World Congress still a few days away. That said, there are certain advantages to being an early bird. Chief among them is the ability to claim firsts — namely having the first 5G handset of the show. […]

Plus, Pinterest is going public too, Lyft's IPO is imminent and London is home to the largest pre-seed fund ever.

YouTube will demonetize channels that promote anti-vaccination views, after a report by BuzzFeed News found ads, including from health companies, running before anti-vax videos. The platform will also place a new information panel that links to the Wikipedia entry on “vaccine hesitancy” before anti-vax videos. Information panels (part of YouTube’s efforts to combat misinformation) about […]

Bassem Hamdy has been in the construction business for a long time. He spent the last few years at the construction software business Procore, now a $3 billion company developing technology for the construction industry, and now Hamdy is ready to unveil his next act as chief executive and co-founder of Briq, a new software […]

Ev Wiliams is stepping down from Twitter's board of directors effective at the end of the month, according to documents submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.

Relationships between landlords and their tenants don’t need to be fraught ones. With Y Combinator -backed Latchel, landlords and property managers can access a 24/7 maintenance service that takes requests from tenants and deploys the right professional to fix the things that need fixing. “At first we thought of doing a high-tech property management system,” Latchel founder […]

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been teasing — and his fan base has been making pleas — to host a meme review. And after tweeted hints, meme review has arrived via YouTube star PewDiePie. Musk tweeted last month a photo and a question “Host meme review?” Host meme review? pic.twitter.com/k2SFtIUh1k — Elon Musk […]

Apple has confirmed its plans to close retail stores in the Eastern District of Texas — a move that will allow the company to better protect itself from patent infringement lawsuits, according to Apple news sites 9to5Mac and MacRumors, which broke the news of the stores’ closures. Apple says that the impacted retail employees will […]

The video conferencing company Zoom is aiming to file a public S-1 by the end of March, according to a new report in Business Insider that adds the company could go public as soon as April. Business Insider reported last month that Zoom had filed confidentially with the SEC to go public, just months after […]

Epic Games, maker of the ultra popular Battle Royale game Fortnite, is putting up another $100 million in prize cash for competitive tournaments in 2019. The company made waves in the esports world last year, announcing a $100 million prize pool for the 2018 competitive year, dwarfing every other competitive title in one fell swoop. […]

Instagram is threatening to attack Pinterest just as it files to go public the same way the Facebook-owned app did to Snapchat. Code buried in Instagram for Android shows the company has prototyped an option to create public “Collections” to which multiple users can contribute. Instagram launched private Collections two years ago to let you […]

“I’m a fighter. I believe in our people, I believe in our mission, and I believe that it should exist and must exist.” Sebastian Thrun is talking animatedly about Udacity, the $1 billion online education startup that he co-founded nearly eight years ago. His tone is buoyant and hopeful. He’s encouraged, he says over an occasionally […]

José Ancer is first of all a startup lawyer, with a client portfolio of startups of various stages based around Texas and other similar ecosystems outside of Silicon Valley. He’s also the CTO of Egan Nelson LLP, a boutique firm, where he actively is also building automation software to help the firm compete against larger […]

The field of medicine is, like other industries and disciplines, in the process of incorporating AI as a standard tool, and it stands to be immensely useful — if it’s properly regulated, argue researchers. Without meaningful and standardized rules, it will be difficult to quantify benefits or prevent disasters issuing from systematic bias or poor […]

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. Pinterest files confidentially to go public The business has confidentially submitted paperwork to the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial […]

Daimler AG and BMW Group officially agreed to merge their urban mobility services into a single holding company back in March 2018 with a 50 percent stake each. And now, they want to unify their services under 5 categories by creating 5 joint ventures — Reach Now, Charge Now, Park Now, Free Now and Share […]

Every couple of months, I talk to an entrepreneur who is interested in building a marketplace for buying and selling app businesses (i.e. the actual IP and ownership of an app or other piece of software). These markets always seem to suffer from a lack of liquidity, and one reason why is that it’s really […]

Roku plans to be a billion-dollar company in 2019, the company said on Thursday as part of its announcement of strong earnings. The company beat analyst estimates and reported strong growth in active users and streaming hours with earnings of $0.05 per share, compared with the $0.03 analysts had estimated, and revenues of $276 million, […]

TechStyle Fashion Group, the company behind Kate Hudson’s Fabletics; the children’s brand FabKids; Rihanna’s lingerie brand, Savage X Fenty; and the shoe retailer Shoedazzle, has amassed 5 million members for its discount retail program. Those members were a large driver behind the $750 million in transactions the company saw for 2018, according to co-chief executive […]