On the heels of Google wading into the music streaming waters with its Google Play Music All Access service, with a $10 fee for all-you-can-eat streamed tracks, the indie music agency Merlin has today published results of a recent survey of its 20,000-label member group, plus an analysis of 6.5 billion music streams over the last year, which spell out where the money is coming from today. → Read More
VERSUS IO, the natural language-styled comparison engine backed by Dave McClure (amongst others), has closed a $2.8 million Series A round led by Earlybird Venture Capital. McClure’s 500 Startups also participated, as did Hightech-Gruenderfonds, Lars Dittrich, and Dario Suter. → Read More
Calling all hardware hackers: the Raspberry Pi camera module has gone on sale online via Pi suppliers including RS Components and Premier Farnell/Element14, providing the eye required for all those computer vision projects you had in mind for Pi. The module actually went on sale yesterday and is currently temporarily out of stock on RS’ website. The module costs between £17 & £19 or around… → Read More
Another funding raise for a collaborative consumption startup: Spain-based private sales club Privalia, which sells branded clothes and accessories at discounted prices to members in the five markets it currently plays in, has closed a new €25m round ($32.3m). The company did not specify which round this latest raise falls under but has previously raised a total of $218m in two rounds. → Read More
As online advertising transitions from desktop to mobile, it stands that startups operating in the wider mobile ad ecosystem are well-placed to benefit. To that end, click-to-call startup Freespee is announcing a neat tie-in today with Nasdaq OMX, Stockholm-listed Tradedoubler that will see the performance marketing network offer advertisers clickable phone numbers and, crucially, call tracking… → Read More
Nokia has added another device to its burgeoning Lumia portfolio of smartphones today, with the introduction of the Lumia 925: a sleek, PureView-branded handset that will be its first flagship on T-Mobile U.S. At today’s London launch, Nokia executive VP of smart devices, Jo Harlow, sat down with TechCrunch to field a few questions. → Read More
Rushmore.fm, a new London-based startup founded by Fictive Kin and Betaworks, is de-cloaking somewhat today with what sounds like the rather lofty but noble mission to fix the music industry. Described as a “music ecosystem”, the (currently) invite-only site initially consists of a Wikipedia-like music resource where you’re encouraged to contribute and follow content, although the site’s broader… → Read More
With a new iPhone app called Limelight, Oliver Cameron (best-known as the co-founder of private social network Everyme) aims to answer the question, “What am I going to watch tonight?”
The app’s basic functionality is pretty straightforward. You can create lists of movies that you’ve watched (rating them between 0 and 5 stars) and that you want to watch. You can also browse lists of highly… → Read More
ShapeUp Club is a startup out of Stockholm which has been making waves recently with a lot of under-the-radar growth. Originally built back in 2008 as a side project, it’s morphed into an interactive calorie counter on iPhone, Android, and web. You get a personal weight loss plan, can track nutrition, exercise and weight. Ok, so it might not sound original set against the likes of bigger players… → Read More
Rightware, a Finnish startup that sells embedded user interface software and performance benchmarking tools to car makers and consumer electronics companies needing to build graphical user interfaces has announced it has closed a $5.2 million Series B round. Investors in the round include Inventure and Nexit Ventures, along with new investor Finnish Industry Investment. → Read More
Nokia is going big on the camera features in its new 925 and 928 Lumia devices, continuing on in its PureView legacy first introduced back when it was still making Symbian devices. Within that it is adding a few key apps to the device — Oggl from Hipstamatic, the slick video sharing app Vyclone and Cinemagraph — but there is still no sign of popular picture-taking and picture-sharing app… → Read More
Fresh from last week’s Verizon Lumia device launch, Nokia has taken the wraps off a new smartphone in its Windows Phone-based Lumia range at an event in London today. The Lumia 925 is its first flagship for T-Mobile in the U.S. This means that following the Lumia 928 launch on Verizon, and factoring in Nokia’s initial launch of the Lumia 920 on AT&T last year, Nokia now has a… → Read More
Gartner has just released its Q1 figures for mobile handset sales, and the key takeaway is that Android continues to steal the show, led by handset maker Samsung. Google’s mobile platform now accounts for nearly 75% of all handset sales, a jump of almost 20 percentage points on a year ago, and equating to 156 million devices sold in the three-month period. Smartphones sales grew by 63 million… → Read More
Here’s some encouraging news for the European startup scene, and London in particular. TransferWise, the online currency exchange that uses the crowd to undercut traditional money transfer services, has announced that it’s closed a $6 million series A round led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures — the first investment in Europe by the PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor’s international… → Read More
Last week we reported that Facebook is in advanced talks to buy Israel-born social traffic and mapping app Waze for up to $1 billion, but that there were still some questions over whether Waze’s R&D efforts would remain in their home country, or move over with the rest of the team, which is in California, to Facebook’s HQ. → Read More
Finnish MeeGo startup Jolla has been trailing the launch of its first handset ever since it started work on its Sailfish UI back in 2012. Since then, Jolla has shown off its MeeGo-based Sailfish software and released an SDK but kept its hardware plans tightly under wraps. That’s set to change very soon though, judging by a press invite sent out today. → Read More
Today UK startup VirtualMob is officially launching its Augmented Reality self-service — Point-at-Me (PAM) — which mixes drag ‘n’ drop content creation, e-commerce, and analytics in a bid to make it even easier for companies to get in on the AR action. → Read More
Rocket Internet, the German-based e-commerce startup incubator from the Samwer brothers, is today announcing another round of funding for its strategy to build out its footprint into emerging markets. Today it’s the turn of Middle-East-based fashion commerce site Namshi, which is getting $13 million from Summit Partners. This is the second time Summit, a Rocket regular, has invested in Namshi… → Read More
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has quit his position as a U.K. director of the company, days after Twitter subsidiary Tweetdeck was dissolved as a separate U.K. business by business registrar Companies House, according to Sky News. We’ve reached out to Twitter for confirmation and comment and will update this story with any response. → Read More
Nokia has run a TV advert teasing a new Lumia device it’s widely expected to unveil at an event in London on Tuesday. The advert ran during a prime time evening slot on Channel 4, during a screening of The Inbetweeners movie. The teaser advert focused on the camera of an unnamed new Lumia smartphone, with close up shots of the lens and flash, and the words “more than your eyes can… → Read More
Today in interesting moves comes the news that serial entrepreneur-turned-investor Russell Buckley – who was first employee at AdMob (which sold to Google) is joining the UK government to accelerate its policies around startups, mainly funding. Specifically, he’s joining the UK Government’s Venture Capital Unit. The Unit, launched last year, is designed to help UK companies attract funding from… → Read More
After reading about WeatherSignal, a new project from London startup OpenSignal which makes use of the latest sensors in smartphones such as the Samsung Galaxy S4 to crowdsource weather information, I was reminded that I recently caught wind of Shaka, an Estonian startup that has built a wind meter accessory for iOS. → Read More
Nokia has given its S40-based range of touchscreen Asha smartphones another push to try to keep up with the low end reach of Google’s Android platform today. The mobile maker has announced a new addition to the range — the Asha 501 — which also ushers in a new version of the Asha touch UI that’s designed to be quicker and slicker, and has a strong focus on swiping gestures. → Read More
There’s something about soccer (and as a Brit, by that I mean football, puh-lease…) that seems to have captured investors’ imaginations of late. Case in point: FTBpro, a large fan-generated content platform, has now secured $5.8 million from Battery Ventures and Gemini Israel Ventures to fund global expansion.
The site currently has 20 million monthly page views, over 1,000 contributing fan… → Read More
OpenSignal, the UK startup that has made a name for itself with its Android and iOS apps that crowdsource cell phone coverage based on data picked up from users’ devices, is branching out into another area that consumers love to obsess about: the weather. Today, the company is launching a new app for Android devices, WeatherSignal, which takes data gathered from different sensors, such as light… → Read More
This October we’re looking forward to bringing you a full-blown, all-hands-on-deck, TechCrunch Disrupt Europe in Berlin, the only Disrupt conference outside North America. This will feature the biggest stars of Silicon Valley meeting with the biggest stars of the European and emerging markets tech scenes. Meanwhile, we’ve begun working with local partners to bring you country-based events. These… → Read More
Nokia is teasing the Lumia 928 — a phone it has not officially announced yet, despite all the leaks, rumours and, er, magazine ads — in a camera comparison video posted on its U.S. website. All this teasing smells like a new strategy for Nokia to try to manufacture a little hype for the forthcoming Windows Phone 8 flagship, which is apparently heading to Verizon. → Read More
More VC money sloshing around Europe. Creandum, the Stockholm-based VC best known for its early investments in the likes of Spotify and Videoplaza, has closed its third fund at €135 million (~$177m), laying claim to being the biggest technology venture capital fund in the Nordics. → Read More
The food delivery wars continue to heat up: today foodpanda, the Rocket Internet-incubated startup that offers a one-stop service to order food from a selection of restaurants and take-out joints to be brought to your door and now working with some 15,000 restaurants globally, is today announcing that it has picked up over $20 million in funding, with participation from Rocket regular AB Kinnevik… → Read More
Inventure-backed Froont has launched in public beta today with a web-based tool that aims to make it easy for designers to create, prototype and share responsive website designs, without the need to code. In fact, Froont offers the potential to leave developers out of the design (and even prototyping) process altogether, which in some cases may be a very good thing. → Read More
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