Index Ventures is on a roll. The company is leading Dropbox’s $4 billion valuation round, and today, we’ve heard that the fund is making a major investment in Europe’s Square competitor iZettle. We’ve confirmed the funding with a source close to the company. We’ve also heard from a source the round is 10 million Euros ($14 million) plus.
iZettle, which is based in Sweden, launched earlier this year as a card reader that allows users to take credit card payments from chip-enabled credit or debit cards. The free device plugs into the iPhone’s port, and you download companion app from App Store and sign up for an iZettle account. → Read More
With more than 600,000 apps available for an estimated 350 million Apple and Android mobile devices, it’s not difficult to see how mobile app advertising could soon eclipse online display advertising. In fact, app analytics company Flurry put this chart together to show how mobile app inventory is growing so fast that it could absorb all of the money spent on online display ads by the end of the year. Now, just because there is enough mobile app ad inventory to absorb that spending doesn’t mean it will, but the chart does show the potential of mobile app advertising.
How did Flurry come up with these numbers? → Read More
The Walkman brand has taken a beating over the last decade or so. The culprit, of course, is the iPod, and while other players do sell perfectly well all over the world (Apple’s reach isn’t always good enough), Sony, Creative, and iRiver just aren’t the powerhouses they used to be in the portable audio sector.
Sony’s looking to get back into the game, and is demoing a prototype Android-based media player at IFA. While I’d love nothing more than real competition in the player space, I don’t quite see this thing taking off. → Read More
There isn’t much about an iPad 2 that would lead you to hesitate before buying, except maybe a glance down at the price tag. Today, that’s slightly less of an issue. Apple has started to sell refurbished iPad 2s in its online store, although it looks as though the 16GB models aren’t currently available.
The refurbs are only discounted $50 from the original pricing, but a discount is a discount. → Read More
Today, at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference, founder and CEO Marc Benioff took the stage to adress the event’s 40,000 attendees. We know Salesforce is bullish on the social enterprise and Benioff kicked his keynote off with this statement about Salesforce: “We’re were born cloud, and now we’ve been reborn Social.”
Benioff also said that Salesforce has passed a $2 billion annual run rate in revenue. The company is now powering more than 36 billion transactions a day for over 100,000 customers. And Benioff called out Apple’s Steve Jobs, who he said led the mobile era. → Read More
If you’ve visited TechCrunch on your mobile you know it’s been a generic experience…until now. With the introduction of our new look and snazzy/abominable logo it was time for something better: the all-new TechCrunch.com mobile site. The AOL Mobile web team have done a great job adapting our desktop experience for a plethora of small screens. And when I say a plethora I’m not kidding: iPhone and Android (of course) but also BlackBerry, webOS and feature phones.
It’s lean, it’s mean, it’s a no-nonsense TechCrunch in your pocket. But it’s also the complete experience: not just articles but video, comments, and more. Tap the menu button to get at categories and hot topics. It’s perfect for getting your fix of tech news while waiting for the train. → Read More
Ah, your first days on Twitter. A time of innocence and serendipity.
Look, your friend just made a witty joke about their burnt toast! And there — Oprah’s tweeting about her new favorite book! It’s like your favorite people are in your pocket talking to you, all the time. The future is wonderful.
And then you notice that while there are a few choice nuggets of cleverness and utility, your Twitter stream is often bogged down by self-promotion (#humblebrag lol!) — or worse — someone’s tweet-by-tweet platitude marathon recounting a social media expert’s conference keynote.
Subjot, a NYC-based startup that’s launching today to the public, might have the answer. It wants to help you connect with people you’re interested in, but only around the topics that you want to hear about. → Read More
Following today’s reports that the U.S. Department of Justice has filed a complaint opposing the $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile by AT&T, the big blue carrier has issued a response stating plans to ask for an expedited hearing “so that the enormous benefits of this merger can be fully reviewed.”
The DOJ cites antitrust issues in its complaint, saying “AT&T’s elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low- priced rival would remove a significant competitive force from the market.” But AT&T begs to differ. → Read More
As we reported at Google I/O in May, Google has been working on offline versions of their three most popular apps: Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. Google previously offered offline access for Gmail, Calendar, and Docs but leveraged Gears. But Gears is no longer being supported by Google as Chrome gains many of the same features via HTML5. And offline-acces functionality was limited. Today, Google is announcing that it has rebuilt offline access for these applications, in the form of a HTML5 Chrome web app. Gmail offline will be available today, and offline for Google Calendar and Google Docs will be rolling out over the next week, starting today.
The HTML5-powered Gmail Offline is a Chrome Web Store app that is based on the Gmail web app for tablets, which was built to function with or without web access. After you install the Gmail Offline app from the Chrome Web Store, you can continue using Gmail when you lose your connection by clicking the Gmail Offline icon on Chrome’s “new tab” page. You can read reply, send, and organize email regardless of an email connection.
→ Read More
It seems Sarah wasn’t kidding about working right up until she gives birth. In this week’s positively-last-before-the-birth episode of Why Is This News?, Sarah and Paul are prompted by the ongoing reports of Dropbox’s mega funding to talk about valuations.
The typical outrage is over whether a company like Dropbox is “worth” $4 billion, but as we argue, that’s misses the point. Venture backed valuations are always a function of a company’s promise and how much demand there is to invest, not what a company is worth right now.
But there are reasons to worry about companies getting into valuation traps as the price tags get significantly over the $1 billion level. → Read More
Mobile app analytics firm Flurry released a new report comparing the U.S. mobile app inventory to traditional Internet display advertising spend, and the results are impressive. According to data pulled from over 100,000 mobile apps on Flurry’s network, app inventory is poised to absorb the equivalent of the U.S. online display ad spend by the end of 2011, says the firm, assuming current trends continue.
The best way to visualize this trend, is with the chart Flurry provides. → Read More
Crowdbooster, a Y Combinator-backed startup, is debuting its intelligent social media optimization, monitoring and analytics platform for companies and brands. What differentiates Crowdbooster from other monitoring platforms is that the startup’s technology works behind the scenes to understand a user’s social activity, and then makes recommendations about what to share, when, and with whom.
The company’s platform will automatically surface the most popular links to share; features cross-posting to Twitter and Facebook, based on popularity and content fit; allows you to teceive alerts when influential people follow (measured by Klout); schedule Tweets and posts based on best time; respond to missed Tweets; and thank the most engaged followers. And the company’s customized recommendations surface the best content to share and suggests when to publish for maximum exposure.
→ Read More
Pushpins, Inc., the makers of a mobile app for saving on groceries, have launched a new service called SimpleUPC targeted towards mobile app developers. SimpleUPC, which is available as an API (application programming interface), provides product information as a service for the use in mobile apps like barcode scanners, shopping lists and nutrition trackers.
The API contains data on over 120,000 food, beverage, personal care and household goods from over 15,000 brands and nearly 5,000 manufacturers. → Read More
These days, it’s getting tough for companies that make eBook readers to differentiate. Brief forays into jumbo models aside, Amazon’s Kindle has kept things simple and elegant since day one, while Barnes and Noble went the full-featured Android route with the Nook Color.
Sony, to their credit, was among the first to make readers with appeal that extended beyond hardcore techno-literature buffs, and today’s announcement of the ultra-light PRS-T1 shows that they haven’t quite given up the ghost yet. → Read More
Reports from Bloomberg and the WSJ this morning say that the United States Justice Department is looking to block AT&T’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile on antitrust grounds.
According to the Bloomberg report, the Justice Department filed its complaint in federal court, which included the following excerpt:
“AT&T’s elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low- priced rival would remove a significant competitive force from the market.”
Music streaming service Spotify is releasing a new API today, called ‘libspotify,’ which allows third party iOS developers to write applications for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad with Spotify inside the app.
And these apps can include Spotify’s catalogue of more than 15 million tracks. Libspotify for iOS is available to Spotify Premium users as of today. It’s unclear if the startup will be building a framework for Android. Unfortunately, the use of the API is for non-commercial use, so developers cannot make money off the apps that include the API (Spotify partners with certain developers for commercial use).
→ Read More
You may remember Noca, a startup that wanted to disrupt the payments industry with a debit transaction product that promised low transaction fees for merchants. Today, the company is debuting its credit card offering, which aims to provide a secure, payments experience for both merchants and consumers.
Here’s how it works. Consumers get to choose a PIN (called Noca PIN) at checkout, allowing all subsequent transactions to be completed by entering the PIN as opposed to typing in 80-90 characters in a typical Credit Card or Check transaction. You enter your credit card information at the first transaction, and then simply enter the pin in other transactions. → Read More
Today at the IFA conference in Berlin, Sony Ericsson announced its new Xperia smartphone, the Xperia Arc S. Unfortunately, details were pretty sparse in the initial announcement, but here’s what we do know:
The phone will first be available in October of this year. It’ll run on a 1.4GHz processor and will sport Sony’s Reality display powered by Sony’s mobile Bravia engine. The Arc S can also convert images from 2D to 3D. → Read More
If ever your iPhone or iPad starts acting wonky, chances are you pack it up and head on over to your nearest Genius Bar. It’s a hassle, but it’s a small price to pay for your beloved iStuff. Still, ease of use is one of Apple’s key standards for a device, and that extends way past a navigable interface.
That said, Hardmac is reporting that Apple has internally announced a new web-based diagnostics tool for iOS devices that can be used remotely. In other words, future problems with your iPhone or iPod just got a lot easier to fix.
→ Read More
“It’s not about who makes them first, but who makes them better.” That’s how Sony’s Sir Howard Stringer announced his upcoming tablets. Zing.
Meet the S and P, everyone. Sony just took the wraps off its first generation Android tablets a few moments ago at its 2011 IFA press event. But, as with most non-Apple product launches these days, there isn’t much to report since Sony used teasers and planted leaks over the last few months to generate buzz, which in turn, makes today’s announcement a tad anticlimactic. → Read More
