It’s been a hell of a week for ZTE. News Monday that it was being hit with a seven-year export ban sent the company scrambling. The Chinese handset maker suspended its earnings report and reportedly sent its lawyers to meet with Google to see if anything could be worked out about a punishment that could

When Apple launched its new App Store in iOS 11 back in September, it aimed to offer app developers better exposure, as well as a better app discovery experience for consumers. A new study from Sensor Tower out today takes a look at how well that’s been working in the months since. According to its

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson revealed on Thursday the carrier’s plans to launch another live TV service called “AT&T Watch,” which would offer a cheap, $15-per-month bundle of channels for customers, and be provided to AT&T Wireless subscribers for free. At this price point, the service would be one of the lowest on the market —

Everyone seems to be insisting on installing cameras all over their homes these days, which seems incongruous with the ongoing privacy crisis — but that’s a post for another time. Today, we’re talking about enabling those cameras to send high-definition video signals wirelessly without killing their little batteries. A new technique makes beaming video out

Helios and Matheson Analytics is looking to push additional capital into its prime and wildly popular asset, MoviePass, by raising money in a new stock sale that appears to be giving Wall Street fits. Looking to raise additional capital, Helios and Matheson said it would sell up to $150 million in a stock sale that

Ebay is rolling out an app update designed to make it easier to list items for sale on its online marketplace. Instead of filling out detailed forms on your mobile phone’s small screen, you can now scan the barcode on the item in question or type a description, choose the item’s condition, then click “list

Motorola’s phones aren’t always the flashiest, but there sure are a lot of them. And today, there are even more. The Lenovo-owned brand is launching not one, but four new handsets for your budget-phone-buying pleasure. The new handsets were launched at an event in São Paulo, Brazil. We, sadly, were not there. Instead, we played

Google’s internal incubator, Area 120, is today releasing its next creation: a learn-to-code mobile app for beginners called Grasshopper. At launch, the app teaches would-be coders how to write JavaScript, via short lessons on their iPhone or Android device. The goal is to get coders proficient in the basics and core concepts, so they can

This week Snapchat is rolling out Shoppable AR, a new feature that makes it even easier for advertisers to sell goods through sponsored lenses. The new offering builds on top of the Sponsored Lenses the service rolled out in late-2015, which let advertisers create branded filters, bringing product placements to selfies. Now companies can essentially

500 Startups may soon be coming up on the one-year mark for the end of a tumultuous saga involving its founder, but its accelerator classes still continue to plug along — and its next batch is now getting ready to roll. The firm’s 23rd batch of startups this year consists of the usual mix of

Facebook is about to start pushing European users to speed through giving consent for its new GDPR privacy law compliance changes. It will ask people to review how Facebook applies data from web to target them with ads, and surface the sensitive profile info they share. Facebook will also allow European and Canadian users to

Yesterday was a rough one for ZTE. A year after pleading guilty to violating sanctions with Iran and North Korea, the U.S. Department of Commerce brought the hammer down and announced a seven-year export restriction on goods sporting U.S. components. That applies to more than a quarter of the components used in the company’s telecom

Amazon has quietly launched an Android web browser app for emerging markets, where access to mobile data and high-speed connectivity is more limited. The browser has the rather generic name of: “Internet: fast, lite and private” on Google Play, and promises to be “lighter than the competition.” The app first appeared on the Play Store

Huawei is readjusting its approach the the U.S. In an annual meeting in Shenzhen, the company asserted its commitment on existing customers and markets. It’s a shift in focus for a company that has been aggressively targeting new territories, looking to expand its position as the world’s third largest smartphone manufacturer. It’s understandable, of course.

The cryptocurrency world is a strange one, but at least it has a sense of humor. A new game has you riding a little crypto-car along the wildly fluctuating prices of major and minor currencies. It’s quite ridiculous, and it isn’t even a bad game! It’s called Crypto Rider, predictably, and is very much a

Just last quarter Netflix passed a $100 billion market cap — and we might already be talking about it as a $150 billion company before too long with yet another big financial quarter that sent its stock soaring. Netflix, again, beat out some expectations Wall Street held for the first quarter and provided a pretty

Sony promised an ‘ultra low-light camera’ during its Mobile World Congress press conference back in February. The off-hand announcement was intended to throw a bit of shade at Samsung’s recent flagship, but ultimately had the unintended consequence of undermining the company’s own newly announced XZ2. But, then, Sony’s never been great when it comes to

Tesla is one of the more interesting companies for Wall Street that had an interesting couple of months this year — and it seems even tweets from Elon Musk, who said that the company will be profitable in the back half of the year, may be enough to swing its stock. The Tesla and SpaceX

Games, dating apps and streaming services contributed to a rise in consumer spending in iPhone apps last year, according to new data from app store intelligence firm, Sensor Tower. The firm found that U.S. iPhone users spent 23 percent more on in-app purchases in 2017 than they did the year prior – or, an average

For all the good of Android’s open-source approach, one of the clear and consistent downsides is that the onus to issue software updates falls on the manufacturer. That can mean frustration for those waiting for the latest and greatest feature updates — and in some cases, it can put your phone at risk with delayed

LG is making efforts to improve the user experience on its devices after it opened a “Software Upgrade Center” in its native Korea. The new lab will be focused on “providing customers worldwide with faster, timelier, smartphone operating system and software updates,” the company explained in a brief statement. The idea is to help get

Yesterday we reported that Instagram lacked data portability, knocking the app for the absence of an equivalent to Facebook’s Download Your Information too. Now an Instagram spokesperson tells me “We are building a new data portability tool. You’ll soon be able to download a copy of what you’ve shared on Instagram, including your photos, videos

Tenor is now going to exclusively power GIF searches in LinkedIn messaging after Google a few weeks ago, adding yet another service to its already pretty large portfolio of messaging platforms. Tenor has long positioned itself as a GIF search tool working across a number of different platforms, ranging from its own keyboard to Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg’s flimsy defense when congress asked about a lack of competition to Facebook has been to cite that the average American uses eight social apps. But that conveniently glosses over the fact that Facebook owns three of the top 10 U.S. iOS apps: #4 Instagram, #6 Messenger, and #8 Facebook according to App Annie.

Mark Zuckerberg ran his apology scripts, trotted out his lists of policy fixes and generally dulled the Senate into submission. And that constitutes success for Facebook. Zuckerberg testified before the joint Senate judiciary and commerce committee today, capitalizing on the lack of knowledge of the politicians and their surface-level questions. Half the time, Zuckerberg got

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg officially shot down the conspiracy theory that the social network has some way of keeping tabs on its users by tapping into the mics on people’s smartphones. During Zuckerberg’s testimony before the Senate this afternoon, Senator Gary Peters had asked the CEO if the social network is mining audio from mobile

Facebook didn’t ban Cambridge Analytica when it found out in 2015 that it had received user data from Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, and Zuckerberg called that a mistake during his testimony before the Senate. Cambridge Analytica has since been banned. Zuckerberg explained that “I want to correct one thing that I said earlier in response to

It’s hard to #DeleteFacebook with no viable alternative, but at least you can export all your data. There’s no such option on Instagram . That lack of data portability puts users at the mercy of Instagram’s product and policy decisions. And it could even put users at risk, as those who seek to back up

Entrepreneurs have it rough in Africa, India, Pakistan — places where VC cash doesn’t fall from the sky and necessary infrastructure like reliable banking and broadband can be hard to come by. But companies grow and thrive nevertheless in these rugged environments, and DFS Lab is an incubator focused on connecting them with the resources

Instagram is one-upping Apple with a portrait mode feature that runs on a wider variety of phones and works with video, not just photos. Last month TechCrunch reported about a Focus feature buried in Instagram’s code which began publicly testing a week later. Now Instagram is rolling out Focus, which blurs the background while keeping