Snowman, the small studio behind award-winning iOS games Alto’s Adventure, Alto’s Odyssey, Skate City and others, is spinning out a new company, Pok Pok, that will focus on educational children’s entertainment. Later this month, Pok Pok will debut its first title, Pok Pok Playroom, aimed at inspiring creative thinking through play for the preschool crowd. […]
Apple’s new AirTag item trackers are pretty small, but not quite small enough to slip into most wallets without adding an obvious bit of bulk. Fortunately, as one talented AirTag owner has found, that’s nothing you can’t fix with a heat gun, a bit of soldering and an understanding that you could totally fry your […]
Despite a persistent semiconductor shortage that is disrupting the global automotive industry, investors remain bullish on the chips used to power next-generation vehicles. Kneron, a startup that develops semiconductors to give devices artificial intelligence capabilities by using edge computing, just got funded by Delta Electronics, a Taiwanese supplier of power components for Apple and Tesla. […]
At the same time as it’s cracking down on the advertising businesses run by rivals, Apple is introducing a new way for developers to advertise on the App Store. Previously, developers could promote their apps after users initiated a search on the App Store by targeting specific keywords. For example, if you typed in “taxi,” […]
Lucid Motors is beefing up its executive and technical leadership team, hiring people from Waymo, Intel and Xperi as it prepares to become a publicly listed company. The automaker said Wednesday that Sherry House, who formerly worked at Waymo, will be its new chief financial officer. House was at Waymo for four years, most recently […]
One the same day as Fortnite maker Epic Games goes to trial with one of the biggest legal challenges to the App Store’s business model to date, it has simultaneously announced the acquisition of the artist portfolio community ArtStation — and immediately lowered the commissions on sales. Now standard creators on ArtStation will see the […]
Apple faces an antitrust complaint in Europe, TikTok has a new CEO and YouTube TV disappears from Roku. This is your Daily Crunch for April 30, 2021. Also, this is my last day at TechCrunch, and therefore my last day writing The Daily Crunch. It’s been a blast rounding up the news for all of […]
The European Commission has issued a formal ‘statement of objections’ against Apple, saying today that its preliminary view is Apple’s app store rules distort competition in the market for music streaming services by raising the costs of competing music streaming app developers. Apple has a period of 12 weeks to respond to the preliminary charges. […]
More good news from a smartphone market currently rebounding from the far reaching impacts of the pandemic. New numbers from Canalys put global shipments for Q1 2021 at 27% above where they were the same time last year. The industry was hit early and hit hard by Covid-19. The first quarter saw company running into […]
Huawei’s smartphone rivals in China are quickly divvying up the market share it has lost over the past year. Indeed, 92.4 million units of smartphones were shipped in China during the first quarter, with Vivo claiming the crown with a 23% share and its sister company Oppo following closely behind with 22%, according to market […]