Daily Crunch: EU to investigate Spotify’s Apple complaints

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1. The EU will reportedly investigate Apple following anti-competition complaint from Spotify

The European Commission plans to investigate Spotify’s claim that Apple uses its control over the App Store to “deliberately disadvantage other app developers,” according to the Financial Times.

Specifically, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek raised concerns about Apple’s 30% cut of in-app spending, as well as its restrictions on communication between app publishers and users, “placing unfair restrictions on marketing and promotions that benefit consumers.”

2. Watch Microsoft’s Build 2019 keynotes right here

CEO Satya Nadella will already be onstage by the time you get this newsletter, but you may still catch the tail end of his “vision keynote.” Then at 11am Pacific, we’ll have technical keynotes by Scott Guthrie and Rajesh Jha. (And, of course, I’ll recap the big announcements in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

3. NBCUniversal’s scannable ShoppableTV takes viewers directly to e-commerce sites

The Shoppable TV feature displays QR codes during specific moments in TV shows, taking viewers directly to e-commerce sites once scanned.

4. Carta was just valued at $1.7 billion by Andreessen Horowitz, in a deal some see as rich

The company — which helps private and public companies, investors and employees manage their equity and ownership — is the latest tech unicorn.

5. Security lapse exposed a Chinese smart city surveillance system

Security researcher John Wethington found a smart city database accessible from a web browser without a password. He passed details of the database to TechCrunch in an effort to get the data secured.

6. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts

The latest episode of Equity discusses the two new funds raised by Andreessen Horowitz, while the Original Content team put together a super-sized episode about “Avengers: Endgame” and the big battle episode of “Game of Thrones.”

7. Takeaways from F8 and Facebook’s next phase

A discussion with Josh Constine and Frederic Lardinois about the major announcements that came out of Facebook’s F8 conference. (Extra Crunch membership required).

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2YayzpA

Week-in-Review: The iPhone fades and SpaceX confirms an explosion

After a dozen years of riding high, the iPhone is showing signs of weakness in a struggling smartphone market where Apple is still managing to be the biggest loser.

Here’s a snapshot of where things are…

Apple hasn’t been broadcasting its quarterly unit sales the past few quarters, so we’ll have to lean on external researchers, but even the rosiest portrayal from Canalys suggests that the Cupertino giant saw a 23% drop in year-over-year iPhone unit sales, selling 40.2 million iPhones in Q2 of this year compared to 52.2 million iPhones a year ago.

That egregious drop takes Apple to its lowest Q2 unit sales since 2013, though the company has been solidly bumping up the average selling price in a move that has largely been working, though iPhone revenue was down 15% year-over-year, as well.

It’s not Apple’s cross to bear alone; the broader smartphone market has been in decline, down 6.8% year-over-year, according to the same report. But the iPhone’s decline contributed to roughly half of the global market’s missing units while China’s smartphone triumvirate of Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi managed to buoy the broader sector from diving even lower.

Huawei’s unit sales shot up more than 50%.

Apple wasn’t the only non-Chinese phone maker wallowing in misery. Google cited a rough market for smartphones after delivering disappointing earnings, while Samsung saw a 10% decline in unit sales this quarter, according to Canalys.

Shoot me tips or feedback
on Twitter @lucasmtny or email
lucas@techcrunch.com

The smartphone market has had six straight quarters of year-over-year sales declines. This was the lowest quarter of smartphone unit sales in nearly five years. Whether Apple can better perform might be a question of how they can seek to differentiate themselves in China while still managing to squeeze consistent revenues from markets where it leads.

More doom-and-gloom from my buddy Brian Heater here:

iPhone hard hit as global smartphone shipments nosedive

On to the cheerier topic of dead robots…

AMY OSBORNE/AFP/Getty Images

Trends of the week

Here are a few big news items from big companies, with green links to all the sweet, sweet added context.

• Zuckerberg tries again
  Facebook is dead as you know it, or at least that’s what CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants you to think after his audacious relaunch of the company as a lover of privacy. The company gave its Facebook app and desktop site a major face lift and spoke at length about being better. Sitting in the audience, I couldn’t help but think that Zuckerberg was spinning for extra credit with decisions that had long been made. More from my colleague Josh Constine.
• SpaceX cops to an explosion
  Elon Musk’s space company may have to push back its timeline for a manned launch after the company confirmed that its Dragon crew capsule exploded during testing. The disappointing development suggests SpaceX has some more work ahead of it before it’s ready to safely transport humans into space.
• Another dead robot
  Cozmo won’t be scooting into any new homes; the startup behind the cute little robot is dead after the dissolution of a new funding round. Anki raised a staggering $182 million over the course of its life and sold 1.5 million of the curious, little wheeled bots, but now it seems to face the same lonely death as Jibo, which similarly perished a couple of months ago.
• Palantir not so nice after all
  Peter Thiel’s Palantir has long held onto this very nefarious reputation as an evil company that’s working with government agencies and screwing over progressive ideals in the process. It wasn’t always super clear how true this was because it kind of seemed like Alex Karp and company was just scrambling to get private sector customers so it could justify its private valuation ahead of an IPO. Well, turns out the company is shitty after all.
• Headset hullabaloo
  The VR market may be dead, but don’t tell that to the companies making VR headsets. Yes, the new headsets are still all bulky and weird but they are undoubtedly better. Oculus’ introduction of the Quest (reviewed here by me) and Rift S (review from me, again) next month might just add a little life to the dead VR dreams — and if that doesn’t work, Valve has a $1,000 option it’s now hocking.

Forward-looking statement

What’s coming up next week? Well, you can expect a bunch of Microsoft news at its Build developer conference and there will also assuredly be a lot emerging from Google I/O, where I’ll be spending a couple of days next week. Here’s what we think is coming…

What to expect from Google I/O 2019

“…It’s shaping up to be a biggie, too, if this week’s Google earnings call was any indication. Sundar Pichai teased out a number of upcoming offerings from the company that we can expect to see on full display at the show…”

HVEPhoto/Getty Images

GAFA Gaffes

How did the top tech companies screw up this week? This clearly needs its own section, in order of awfulness: (This week was admittedly a little light on the gaffes, but don’t be too disappointed, that’s good!)

1. Googlers aren’t happy about workplace retaliation:
   [Google employees are staging a sit-in to protest reported retaliation]
2. Researchers studying Facebook’s ad platform aren’t getting the access they say they need:
   [Facebook accused of blocking wider efforts to study its ad platform]
3. Apple wades into anti-competitive criticism with latest app bans:
   [Apple defends its takedown of some apps monitoring screen-time]

Horacio Villalobos//Corbis/Getty Images

Extra Crunch

Our premium subscription service roars ahead. We had a fascinating piece go up this week diving into Slack’s financial filings that discovered some discrepancies in the VC funding that was reported versus what was actually raised:

The curious case of Slack’s missing $162 million

“…Given that most of the stories covering Slack derived from the company’s own announcements, you would expect that those stories and the data in the S-1 would match. In short: they do, somewhat…”

Here are some of our other top reads this week for premium subscribers — you should catch up with our full Niantic deep-dive if you haven’t already; this list is a nice primer though…

• Nine lessons on how Niantic reached a $4B valuation
• What we want to know in the We Company (We Work) S-1
• Key secrets to building extraordinary teams

Want more TechCrunch newsletters? Sign up here.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2J6edL1

The EU will reportedly investigate Apple following anti-competition complaint from Spotify

The spat between Spotify and Apple is going to be the focus on a new investigation from the EU, according to a report from the FT.

The paper reported today that the European Commission (EC), the EU’s regulatory body, plans to launch a competition inquiry around Spotify’s claim that the iPhone-maker uses its position as the gatekeeper of the App Store to “deliberately disadvantage other app developers.”

In a complaint filed to the EC in March, Spotify said Apple has “tilted the playing field” by operating iOS, the platform, and the App Store for distribution, as well as its own Spotify rival, Apple Music.

In particular, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has said that Apple “locks” developers and their platform, which includes a 30 percent cut of in-app spending. Ek also claimed Apple Music has unfair advantages over rivals like Spotify, while he expressed concern that Apple controls communication between users and app publishers, “including placing unfair restrictions on marketing and promotions that benefit consumers.”

Spotify’s announcement was unprecedented — Ek claimed many other developers feel the same way, but do not want to upset Apple by speaking up. The EU is sure to tap into that silent base if the investigation does indeed go ahead as the FT claims.

Apple bit back at Spotify’s claims, but its response was more a rebuttal — or alternative angle — on those complaints. Apple did not directly address any of the demands that Spotify put forward, and those include alternative payment options (as offered in the Google Play store) and equal treatment for Apple apps and those from third-parties like Spotify.

The EU is gaining a reputation as a tough opponent that’s reining in U.S. tech giants.

Aside from its GDPR initiative, it has a history of taking action on apparent monopolies in tech.

Google fined €1.49 billion ($1.67 billion) in March of this year over antitrust violations in search ad brokering, for example. Google was fined a record $5 billion last year over Android abuses and there have been calls to look into breaking the search company up. Inevitably, Facebook has come under the spotlight for a series of privacy concerns, particularly around elections.

Pressure from the EU has already led to the social network introduce clear terms and conditions around its use of data for advertising, while it may also change its rules limiting overseas ad spending around EU elections following concern from Brussels.

Despite what some in the U.S. may think, the EU’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has said publicly that she is against breaking companies up. Instead, Vestager has pledged to regulate data access.

“To break up a company, to break up private property would be very far-reaching and you would need to have a very strong case that it would produce better results for consumers in the marketplace than what you could do with more mainstream tools. We’re dealing with private property. Businesses that are built and invested in and become successful because of their innovation,” she said in an interview at SXSW earlier this year.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Y9bMKN

The EU will reportedly investigate Apple following anti-competition complaint from Spotify

The spat between Spotify and Apple is going to be the focus on a new investigation from the EU, according to a report from the FT.

The paper reported today that the European Commission (EC), the EU’s regulatory body, plans to launch a competition inquiry around Spotify’s claim that the iPhone-maker uses its position as the gatekeeper of the App Store to “deliberately disadvantage other app developers.”

In a complaint filed to the EC in March, Spotify said Apple has “tilted the playing field” by operating iOS, the platform, and the App Store for distribution, as well as its own Spotify rival, Apple Music.

In particular, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has said that Apple “locks” developers and their platform, which includes a 30 percent cut of in-app spending. Ek also claimed Apple Music has unfair advantages over rivals like Spotify, while he expressed concern that Apple controls communication between users and app publishers, “including placing unfair restrictions on marketing and promotions that benefit consumers.”

Spotify’s announcement was unprecedented — Ek claimed many other developers feel the same way, but do not want to upset Apple by speaking up. The EU is sure to tap into that silent base if the investigation does indeed go ahead as the FT claims.

Apple bit back at Spotify’s claims, but its response was more a rebuttal — or alternative angle — on those complaints. Apple did not directly address any of the demands that Spotify put forward, and those include alternative payment options (as offered in the Google Play store) and equal treatment for Apple apps and those from third-parties like Spotify.

The EU is gaining a reputation as a tough opponent that’s reining in U.S. tech giants.

Aside from its GDPR initiative, it has a history of taking action on apparent monopolies in tech.

Google fined €1.49 billion ($1.67 billion) in March of this year over antitrust violations in search ad brokering, for example. Google was fined a record $5 billion last year over Android abuses and there have been calls to look into breaking the search company up. Inevitably, Facebook has come under the spotlight for a series of privacy concerns, particularly around elections.

Pressure from the EU has already led to the social network introduce clear terms and conditions around its use of data for advertising, while it may also change its rules limiting overseas ad spending around EU elections following concern from Brussels.

Despite what some in the U.S. may think, the EU’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has said publicly that she is against breaking companies up. Instead, Vestager has pledged to regulate data access.

“To break up a company, to break up private property would be very far-reaching and you would need to have a very strong case that it would produce better results for consumers in the marketplace than what you could do with more mainstream tools. We’re dealing with private property. Businesses that are built and invested in and become successful because of their innovation,” she said in an interview at SXSW earlier this year.

from iPhone – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Y9bMKN

The EU will reportedly investigate Apple following anti-competition complaint from Spotify

The spat between Spotify and Apple is going to be the focus on a new investigation from the EU, according to a report from the FT.

The paper reported today that the European Commission (EC), the EU’s regulatory body, plans to launch a competition inquiry around Spotify’s claim that the iPhone-maker uses its position as the gatekeeper of the App Store to “deliberately disadvantage other app developers.”

In a complaint filed to the EC in March, Spotify said Apple has “tilted the playing field” by operating iOS, the platform, and the App Store for distribution, as well as its own Spotify rival, Apple Music.

In particular, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has said that Apple “locks” developers and their platform, which includes a 30 percent cut of in-app spending. Ek also claimed Apple Music has unfair advantages over rivals like Spotify, while he expressed concern that Apple controls communication between users and app publishers, “including placing unfair restrictions on marketing and promotions that benefit consumers.”

Spotify’s announcement was unprecedented — Ek claimed many other developers feel the same way, but do not want to upset Apple by speaking up. The EU is sure to tap into that silent base if the investigation does indeed go ahead as the FT claims.

Apple bit back at Spotify’s claims, but its response was more a rebuttal — or alternative angle — on those complaints. Apple did not directly address any of the demands that Spotify put forward, and those include alternative payment options (as offered in the Google Play store) and equal treatment for Apple apps and those from third-parties like Spotify.

The EU is gaining a reputation as a tough opponent that’s reining in U.S. tech giants.

Aside from its GDPR initiative, it has a history of taking action on apparent monopolies in tech.

Google fined €1.49 billion ($1.67 billion) in March of this year over antitrust violations in search ad brokering, for example. Google was fined a record $5 billion last year over Android abuses and there have been calls to look into breaking the search company up. Inevitably, Facebook has come under the spotlight for a series of privacy concerns, particularly around elections.

Pressure from the EU has already led to the social network introduce clear terms and conditions around its use of data for advertising, while it may also change its rules limiting overseas ad spending around EU elections following concern from Brussels.

Despite what some in the U.S. may think, the EU’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, has said publicly that she is against breaking companies up. Instead, Vestager has pledged to regulate data access.

“To break up a company, to break up private property would be very far-reaching and you would need to have a very strong case that it would produce better results for consumers in the marketplace than what you could do with more mainstream tools. We’re dealing with private property. Businesses that are built and invested in and become successful because of their innovation,” she said in an interview at SXSW earlier this year.

from Android – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Y9bMKN
via IFTTT

Why carriers keep your data longer

Your wireless carrier knows where you are as you read this on your phone—otherwise, it couldn’t connect your phone in the first place.

But your wireless carrier also has a memory. It knows where you took your phone in the last hour, the last week, the last month, the last year—and maybe even the last five years.

That gives it an enormous warehouse of data on your whereabouts that can help your wireless carrier fix coverage gaps while revealing much more. Depending on the density of cell sites around you at any one point, the location data triangulated from them can not only highlight your home and office but point to the bars you frequented, the houses at which you spent the night, and the offices of therapists you visited.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2DOablZ

SEC hits failed Apple sapphire glass manufacturer with fraud charges

Way back in 2013, Apple spent a whopping $578 million on sapphire glass. The sum, spread out over four installments, was an advance to GT Advanced Technologies. Already in use on the company’s home buttons and camera, the plan was to implement the extremely hard material on a larger scale, replacing Gorilla Glass in the process.

The following year, however, GT exited the business. The company shut down its plants, sold off its furnaces and announced plans to settle its debt. Today, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has hit the New Hampshire-based manufacturer and its former CEO with fraud charges.

The filing charges GT of misleading investors over its abilities to manufacture the material, along with misclassifying north of $300 million in debt to Apple. “To avoid recognizing the debt as current,” the SEC writes, “which would have had an immediate impact on its status as a going concern, GT took an unsupported, undisclosed position that Apple had breached part of the agreement, thus releasing GT from its performance obligations.”

The commission accuses the company’s then-CEO Thomas Gutierrez of falsifying GT’s abilities to hit its production targets on a 2014 earnings call and later offering up “unsupported sales projections.” Later that same year, the company filed for bankruptcy, only to exit and become a privately held company.

“GT and its CEO painted a rosy picture of the company’s performance and ability to obtain funding that was paramount to GT’s survival while they were aware of information that would have catastrophic consequences for the company,” the associate director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement Anita B. Bandy said in a statement tied to the release. “We will continue to hold chief executives accountable when they breach their most fundamental duty to make full and truthful disclosures to investors.”

Apple was no doubt looking to GT as  away to differentiate iPhones from the sea of devices that rely on Corning’s technology. In the wake of GT’s failure to reach goals and eventual collapse, however, Gorilla Glass remains a mainstay on Apple’s phones.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2H03Vd5