Tag: Mobile

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Apple’s new editorial franchise, Apple Podcasts Spotlight, to highlight interesting creators

Apple today announced a new editorial franchise called Apple Podcasts Spotlight, which aims to highlight rising podcast creators in the U.S. The editorial team at Apple will select new podcast creators to feature every month and then give them prominent screen real estate in the Apple Podcasts app and promote them across social media and elsewhere. This will allow creators to reach a wider audience, similar to how the App Store showcases a selection of recommended apps and games with large banners at the top of its screen.
The first Spotlight creator is Chelsea Devantez, who hosts the podcast …

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This Week in Apps: Parler deplatformed, alt apps rise, looking back at 2020 trends

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020.
Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per day, but now spends four hours per day on their mobile devices.
Apps aren’t …

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Daily Crunch: WhatsApp responds to privacy backlash

WhatsApp delays enforcement of a controversial privacy change, Apple may get rid of the Touch Bar in future MacBooks and Bumble files to go public. This is your Daily Crunch for January 15, 2021.
The big story: WhatsApp responds to privacy backlash
Earlier this month, WhatsApp sent users a notification asking them to consent to sharing some of their personal data — such as phone number and location — with Facebook (which owns WhatsApp). The alert also said users would have to agree to the terms by February 8 if they wanted to continue using the app.
This change prompted legal threats and an investigation …

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Bumble files to go public

The dating and networking service Bumble has filed to go public.
The company, launched by a former co-founder of the IAC-owned Tinder, plans to list its share on the Nasdaq stock exchange, using the ticker symbol “BMBL.” Bumble’s planned IPO was first reported in December.

Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd was on the founding team at Tinder before starting Bumble. She filed suit against Tinder for sexual harassment and discrimination, which was at least somewhat inspirational in her quest to build a dating app that put women in the driver’s seat.
In 2019, Wolfe Herd took the helm of …

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Daily Crunch: Samsung unveils Galaxy S21 line

Samsung lowers prices with its latest Galaxy S phones, Google completes its Fitbit acquisition and Beyond Meat is coming to Taco Bell. This is your Daily Crunch for January 14, 2021.
The big story: Samsung unveils Galaxy S21 line
Samsung’s new line of phones includes the S21, S21+ and S21 Ultra, priced at $799, $999 and $1,119 respectively, an across-the-board price cut of $200. Brian Heater writes that the Ultra, in particular, “has one very important trick up its sleeve” — namely compatibility with the S Pen.
All three phones are available for pre-order now and start shipping on January 29.
In addition, Samsung announced the Galaxy …

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This Week in Apps: Social apps react to riots, Parler gets booted, FTC threatens regulation

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.
The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in global consumer spend in 2019. Consumer spend also hit a record $112 billion across iOS and Android alone.
Not including third-party Chinese app stores, iOS and Android users downloaded 130 billion apps in 2020. Due to COVID-19, time spent in apps jumped 25% year-over-year on Android.
Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re also a big business. In 2019, …

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TikTok bans videos of Trump inciting mob, blocks #stormthecapital and other hashtags

For obvious reasons, Trump doesn’t have a TikTok account. But the president’s speeches that helped incite the mob who yesterday stormed the U.S. Capitol will have no home on TikTok’s platform. The company confirmed to TechCrunch its content policy around the Capitol riots will see it removing videos of Trump’s speeches to supporters. It will also redirect specific hashtags used by rioters, like #stormthecapitol and #patriotparty, to reduce their content’s visibility in the app.
TikTok says that Trump’s speeches, where the president again reiterated claims of a fraudulent election, are being removed on …

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Samsung’s next Unpacked event is January 14

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Samsung’s next flagship is set to debut January 14. The company just confirmed earlier rumors surrounding the date for its next Unpacked event (virtually, of course). This one sports the name, “Welcome to the Everyday Epic.”
“Over the past year, mobile technology has taken center stage in everyday life as people are working remotely and spending more time at home,” the company writes. “The accelerated transition to a mobile-first world brings with it the need for devices that can transform everyday life into an extraordinary experience.”
The event’s timing is …

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T-Mobile says hackers accessed some customer call records in data breach

T-Mobile, the third largest cell carrier in the U.S. after completing its recent $26 billion merger with Sprint, ended 2020 by announcing its second data breach of the year.
The cell giant said in a notice buried on its website that it recently discovered unauthorized access to some customers’ account information, including the data that T-Mobile makes and collects on its customers in order to provide cell service.
From the notice: “Our cybersecurity team recently discovered and shut down malicious, unauthorized access to some information related to your T-Mobile account. We immediately started an investigation, with assistance from leading cybersecurity forensics …

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IoT Mobile App Development: Benefits, Challenges, and Impact

Can you close your eyes for a moment and think of when you didn’t connect your everyday objects such as kitchen appliances, thermostats, TV sets, and baby monitors to the internet through embedded devices? That’s hard.In this day and age, our physical world meets the digital world. Digital systems record, monitor, and adjust every interaction between connected physical items. Interestingly, by 2025, we will have more connected devices than Earth’s inhabitants of Earth. But wait, the phenomenon has a name. Known as the Internet of Things, IoT refers to an ecosystem comprising physical objects accessed through the …

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