This new wireless charger from Zens nearly fulfills the promise of Apple’s AirPower

Apple’s cancellation of its AirPower wireless charging mat was one of the company’s few big public flubs, but the concept behind the cancelled product remains attractive: A wireless charging pad that supports multiple devices, and that isn’t picky about how you set down your device in order to make a connection. Wireless charging accessory maker Zens has actually created such a device with the Liberty Wireless Charger, and while it doesn’t offer everything that AirPower claimed to be able to do, it’s a big step up from current wireless chargers and a a great companion for iPhone, AirPods and Apple Watch.

Coils, coils coils

The Zens Liberty is special because of how it uses the wireless charging coils that are responsible for the charging ability of any wireless chargers – wound circular loops of copper cable that provide the induction power received by devices like the latest iPhones and AirPods charging case. Zens has stacked 16 such coils in an overlapping array – which, conveniently, you can see in pretty much full detail in the transparent glass edition charger that’s available today alongside the fabric-covered version.

These overlapping coils are the key to the unique abilities of the Zens Liberty: Specifically, their arrangement means you can place your devices down in basically any orientation and they’ll begin charging right away. Most charging pads, by comparison, have one, two or sometimes three coils placed in specific locations, meaning you have to make sure your device is properly situated above one to actually get it to start charging. If you’ve been using wireless chargers for any length of time, you’ve probably had the unfortunate opportunity to get this orientation match-up wrong, resulting in a phone that didn’t charge at all when you wake up the next morning.

Zens’ Liberty does indeed solve this annoyance, and I found I was able to put devices down basically however I wanted them and have them charge up.

Flexible seating for two

Up to two Qi-compatible devices can be charged at once, and they’ll each work with up to 15w of power, which is at the top end of what any current devices support. I tested it out with Android phones, iPhones and AirPods (plus AirPods Pro) and found that all worked without issue and basically however I wanted to lay them across the surface. The caveats here are that you should think of the areas around the edges of the charger as basically non-active, so stay around an inch in from the outer surface and you should be fine.

This flexibility may not seem like much (why not just pay attention when you’re putting your devices on a more traditional charger?) but it actually is a very nice convenience. Just that small assurance that you can easily put your device down on the Liberty’s generous surface and not worry too much about checking whether a connection was actually made is a big relief, when you charge a device as much as you do your iPhone or your AirPods.

Apple Watch, too

The Zens Liberty can’t charge the Apple Watch on the pad, the way that Apple had advertised the cancelled AirPower would’ve been able to. But with an accessory, the pad can become a truly all-in one charging station for your mobile Apple kit, Watch included. An officially supported Apple Watch charger with a USB A connector on one end is an add-on option that Zens offers, and it conveniently slots right into a USB port present on the Zens Liberty (and protected/hidden by a rubber flap when not in use).

This port actually supports any kind of USB powered device, so you can also use it with a cable to charge another gadget, like an iPad for instance. But it’s perfectly designed for the new Zens Apple Watch charger accessory, which comes with a little plastic shelf that snaps in to support your Watch when it’s charging. It provides just the right angle for Apple Watch’s Nightstand mode, and is a necessary addition for anyone looking for an all-in one solution.

Bottom line

The Zens Liberty is the best all-around charging option available currently, based on my testing so far. It’s also powered by an included 60w USB-C charger, which comes with two international plug adapters that makes it a great travel brick for other devices, too. That means you can also use standard USB-C power bricks with it, too, rather than requiring some kind of proprietary power adapter.

There are some downsides to keep in mind, however: You should realize that this is a big charger, for instance. That’s good in that it supports multiple devices easily, but it’s also going to take up more space than your average wireless charger. It’s also thick, which allows for the stacked coils and cooling system (this is the only wireless charger I’ve used that has clear and obvious vents, for instance).

That said, the Zens Liberty makes good on the true promise of wireless charging, which is convenience and flexibility. And it’s well-designed and aesthetically attractive, in both the fabric-covered and striking transparent glass designs. Zens is now accepting pre-orders for these, with shipping starting sometime this month, and the standard fabric version retails for €139.99 ($155 USD) while the glass edition is €179.99 ($199 USD), and the Apple Watch USB stick sells for €39.99 ($44.50 USD).

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The story of why Marc Benioff gifted the AppStore.com domain to Steve Jobs

In Marc Benioff’s book, Trailblazer, he tells the tale of how Steve Jobs planted the seeds of the idea that would become the first enterprise app store, and how Benioff eventually paid Jobs back with the gift of the AppStore.com domain.

While Salesforce did truly help blaze a trail when it launched as an enterprise cloud service in 1999, it took that a step further in 2006 when it became the first SaaS company to distribute related services in an online store.

In an interview last year around Salesforce’s 20th anniversary, company CTO and co-founder Parker Harris told me that the idea for the app store came out of a meeting with Steve Jobs three years before AppExchange would launch. Benioff, Harris and fellow co-founder Dave Moellenhoff took a trip to Cupertino in 2003 to meet with Jobs. At that meeting, the legendary CEO gave the trio some sage advice: to really grow and develop as a company, Salesforce needed to develop a cloud software ecosystem. While that’s something that’s a given for enterprise SaaS companies today, it was new to Benioff and his team in 2003.

As Benioff tells it in his book, he asked Jobs to elucidate on what he meant by an application ecosystem. Jobs replied that how he implemented the idea was up to him. It took some time for that concept to bake, however. Benioff wrote that the notion of an app store eventually came to him as an epiphany at dinner one night a few years after that meeting. He says that he sketched out that original idea on a napkin while sitting in a restaurant.

“One evening over dinner in San Francisco, I was struck by an irresistibly simple idea. What if any developer from anywhere in the world could create their own applications for the Salesforce platform? And what if we offered to store these apps in an online directory that allowed any Salesforce user to download them?”

Whether it happened like that or not, the app store idea would eventually come to fruition, but it wasn’t originally called the AppExchange as it is today. Instead, Benioff says he liked the name AppStore.com, so much so that he had his lawyers register the domain the next day.

When Benioff talked to customers prior to the launch, while they liked the concept, they didn’t like the name he had come up with for his online store. He eventually relented and launched in 2006 with the name AppExchange.com instead. Force.com would follow in 2007, giving programmers a full-fledged development platform to create applications, and then distribute them in AppExchange.

Salesforce AppExchange Revolutionized Software Distribution When It Launched Ten Years Ago Today

Meanwhile, AppStore.com sat dormant until 2008 when Benioff was invited back to Cupertino again for a big announcement around iPhone. As Benioff wrote, “At the climactic moment, [Jobs] said [five] words that nearly floored me: ‘I give you App Store.”

Benioff wrote that he and his executives actually gasped when they heard the name. Somehow, even after all that time had passed since that the original meeting, both companies had settled upon the same name. Only Salesforce had rejected it, leaving an opening for Benioff to give a gift to his mentor. He says that he went backstage after the keynote and signed over the domain to Jobs.

In the end, the idea of the web domain wasn’t even all that important to Jobs in the context of an app store concept. After all, he put the App Store on every phone, and it wouldn’t require a website to download apps. Perhaps that’s why today, the domain points to the iTunes store, and launches iTunes (or gives you the option of opening it).

Even the App Store page on Apple.com uses the sub-domain ‘app-store’ today, but it’s still a good story of how a conversation between Jobs and Benioff would eventually have a profound impact on how enterprise software was delivered, and how Benioff was able to give something back to Jobs for that advice.

How Salesforce paved the way for the SaaS platform approach

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Tech’s biggest companies are worth ~$5T as 2019’s epic stock market run wraps

Look, this is the last post I’m writing in 2019 and I’m tired. But I can’t let the year close without taking stock of how well tech stocks did this year. It was bonkers.

So let’s mark the year’s conclusion with some notes for our future selves. Yes, we know that the Nasdaq has been setting new records and SaaS had a good year. But we need to dig in and get the numbers out so that we can look back and remember.

Let’s cap off this year the way it deserves to be remembered, as a kick-ass trip ’round the sun for your local, public technology company.

Keeping score

We’ll start with the indices that we care about:

• The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 35% in 2019
• The SaaS-heavy Bessemer Cloud Index rose 41% this year

Next, the highest-value U.S.-based technology companies:

• Microsoft was up around 55% in 2019
• Apple managed an 86% gain in the year
• Not be left out, Facebook rose 57%
• Amazon posted its own gain of 23% in 2019
• Alphabet managed to grow by 29%, as well

Now let’s turn to some companies that we care about, even if they are smaller than the Big Five:

• Salesforce? Up 19% this year
• Adobe was up 46% in 2019, which was astounding
• Intel picked up 28% in the year, making it no slouch
• Even Oracle managed to gain 17% in 2019

And so on.

The technology industry’s epic run has been so strong that The Wall Street Journal noted this morning that, powered by tech companies, U.S. stocks “are poised for their best annual performance in six years.” The Journal highlighted the performance of Apple and Microsoft in particular for helping drive the boom. I wonder why.

How long will we live in the neighborhood of Nasdaq 9,000? How long can two tech companies be worth more than $1 trillion at the same time? How long can the biggest tech companies be worth a combined $4.93 trillion (I remember when $3 trillion for the Big Five was news, and I recall when the group reach a collective value of $4 trillion).¹

But the worst trade in recent years has been the pessimists’ gambit. No matter what, stocks have kept going up, short-term hiccoughs and other missteps aside.

For nearly everyone, that is. While tech stocks in general did very well, some names that we all know did not. Let’s close on those reminders that a rising tide lifts only most boats.

2019 naughty list

Several of the most lackluster public tech companies were 2019 technology IPOs, interestingly enough. Who didn’t do well? Uber earns a spot on the naughty list for not only being underwater from its IPO price, but also from its final private valuations. And as you guessed, Lyft is down from its IPO price as well, which is not good.

Some 2019 IPOs did well in the middle of the year, but fell a little flat as the year came to a close. Pinterest, Beyond Meat and Zoom meet that criteria, for example. And some SaaS companies struggled, even if we think they will reach $1 billion in revenue in time.

But it was mostly a party. The public markets were good, and tech stocks were great. This helped create another 100+ unicorns in the year.

Such was 2019. On to 2020!

1. In time, those numbers will look small. But sitting here on December 31, 2019, they appear huge and towering and, it must be said, somewhat perilously stacked.

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Just how good was 2019 for wireless headphones? Very, very good.

Companies sold a lot of wireless headphone in 2019. You already knew that though, right? What you probably didn’t know was precisely how many constitutes the aforementioned “lot.” New numbers from Canalys shed a light on those successes. The research firm’s classification of audio products is a little wonky, but it drives the point home nonetheless.

In their terms, we’re talking specifically about “true wireless stereo” products under the umbrella of “smart personal audio devices” — in other words, wireless headphones. Taken as a whole, the category (which also includes tethered wireless earbuds and over/on ear wireless headphones) hit 96.7 million shipments in Q3, making a 53 percent year over year growth. For the fourth quarter (including the holidays), the number is expected to break 100 million, pushing things to around 350 million for the full year.

The “true wireless stereo” segment (fully wireless earbuds) saw a 183% growth for the quarter, overtaking wireless earphones and wireless headphones in the process. Another not surprising thing: Apple led the pack, far and away. The company controls 43% of the market, per the firm. Xiaomi and Samsung are a distant second and third, respectively, at 7% and 6%, respectively. And Apple’s numbers will likely continue to look pretty good with the warm reception of the AirPods Pro.

The market is likely to get even more interesting in 2020 with the arrival of new products from giants like Google and Microsoft, coupled with an increased presence of low cost alternatives. But Apple’s stranglehold, particularly among iOS users, will be a tough one to break.

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Google Pixel 4A renders include a headphone jack and hole-punch display

It’s the slowest week of the year for gadget news. Christmas is in the rearview, and it’s a few days until the new year. After that, it’s a straight shot to CES and then MWC. Meantime, best we’ve got going for us are a handful of rumors, including a peek at what Google’s next budget might could potentially possibly conceivably look like.

Per renders from OnLeaks and 91Mobiles, a vision of the Pixel  4A has appeared — or, a render, rather. The handset will no doubt be an important one for Google. After all, the 3A (pictured at top) helped the company recover from some lackluster sales last year. A couple of pieces jump out at first glance. The display appears to finally buck the company’s longtime notch dependency, in favor of a hole punch camera on the front.

Perhaps even more compelling, the device seems to hold the torch for the headphone jack. In 2020, that could well be a standout feature even among mid-range handsets. As the company eloquently put it around the time of the 3A’s release, “a lot of people have headphones.”

And here comes my last late #Christmas gift in form of your very first and early look at the #Google #Pixel4a!
360° video + gorgeous 5K renders + dimensions, on behalf of my Friends over @91mobiles -> https://t.co/rsvRkjVOln pic.twitter.com/sqG6J5knSR

— Steve H.McFly (@OnLeaks) December 28, 2019

Other notable features on the forthcoming devices include the addition of the squircle phone bump on the rear, a design element borrowed from the Pixel 4. Likely the handset will stick to a single camera, instead of adopting the flagship’s truly excellent dual-camera set up. Even so, Google’s been able to accomplish some solid imaging technology with just the one sensor, courtesy of clever ML software.

The display, too, will be slightly larger than its predecessor, bumping up one or two tenths of an inch. The handset is reportedly dropping around May, probably just in time for I/O 2020.

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Chinese apps are losing their hold on India to local developers

Apps from Chinese developers have been gaining popularity on Indian app stores for sometime. Last year, as many as 44 of the top 100 Android apps in India were developed by Chinese firms.

But things have changed this year as local developers put on a fight. According to app analytics and marketing firm AppsFlyer, Indian apps as a whole have recaptured their original standing.

41% of top 200 apps in Indian editions of Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store in Q2 and Q3 this year were developed by Indian developers and local firms, up from 38% last year, the report said. Data from App Annie, another research firm, corroborates the claim.

“This uptick happened chiefly at the expense of Chinese apps, which fell from their lead position to 38% from 43% in 2018. Altogether, Chinese and Indian apps make up almost four-fifths (79%) of the list,” the report said.

The shift comes as scores of Indian firms have launched payments, gaming, news, and entertainment apps in the last year and a half, said AppsFlyer, which analyzed 6.5 billion installs in the second and third quarters of this year.

But Chinese developers are not giving up and continue to maintain an “impressive” fight in each category, the report said.

India — which is home to more than 450 million smartphone users and maintains relatively lax laws to support an open market — has naturally emerged as an attractive battleground for developers worldwide.

Many Chinese firms including Xiaomi and ByteDance count India as one of their largest markets. TikTok app has amassed over 200 million users in India, for instance. Xiaomi, which leads the Indian smartphone market, is quickly building a portfolio of services for users in India. It launched a lending app in the country earlier this month.

Gaining traction among first time internet users, most of whom have lower financial capacity, can prove challenging. Those developing travel apps had to spend about 170 Indian rupees ($2.4) for each install, for instance. Food and drink app makers spent 138 Indian rupees ($1.9) per install during the aforementioned period, while games cost 13.5 Indian rupees.

Data from @AppsFlyer state of App Marketing 2019 India – key highights:
– Indian Apps claimed more installs in 2019 vs chinese Apps
– Apps in finance category spent the most in non-organic install (easy to guess which ones)
– As a result, finance Apps saw 59% uninstall on Day 1 pic.twitter.com/ROADpk9VQK

— Deepak Abbot (@deepakabbot) December 23, 2019

Despite the marketing spends, retention rate for these apps was 23.4% on day 1, a figure that plummeted to 2.6% by the end of the month. (This is still an improvement over 22.8% day 1, and 2.3% day 30 retention rates from last year.)

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Max Q: Launches from SpaceX, Boeing and the ESA

Max Q is a new weekly newsletter all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Sundays in your inbox.

Typically, the holiday season is a slow one in the tech industry – but space tech is different, and this past week saw a flurry of activity including one of the most important rocket launches of the year.

Just about every significant new space company got in on the action during the past seven days, either with actual spacecraft launches, or with big announcements. And everything that went down sets up 2020 to be even crazier.

Boeing’s big year-end mission doesn’t go as planned

Boeing managed to get a crucial test launch in for its commercial crew program – which is NASA’s effort to get U.S. astronauts launching from U.S. soil once again. Boeing launched its ‘orbital flight test’ or OFT on Friday, and the actual rocket launch part of the flight went exactly as intended.

Unfortunately, what came next didn’t match up with what was supposed to happen: The Starliner spacecraft (which wasn’t actually carrying anyone for this test) ran into an error with its onboard mission clock that led to it expending more fuel more quickly than it should have, leaving it with not enough on board to make its planned rendez-vous with the ISS.

… but at least it stuck the landing

The Starliner capsule didn’t dock with the Space Station, but it still completed a number of key objectives, like demonstrating that its docking arm extended properly. Maybe most importantly, it also landed back on Earth on time and on target, per the revised mission plan that Boeing and NASA hammered out once they determined they couldn’t reach the station as planned. In space as in startups, even failures are successes of a kind.

SpaceX launches Falcon 9 but misses the fairing catch

SpaceX’s latest launch took place on Monday, and it was a success in just about every regard – except in terms of one of its secondary missions, which was an attempt to catch the two fairing halves that together cover the payload as the rocket ascends to space. SpaceX has been trying to catch these with ships at sea equipped with large nets, and it’s caught one previously. It’ll keep trying, just like it did with rocket booster landings, and could save up to $6 million per launch once it gets the process right.

Europe launched a planet-watcher

The European Space Agency also launched a rocket this week – a Soyuz carrying a new satellite that will observe exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) from orbit. It’ll be able to assess their density from that vantage point, giving us valuable new info about the potential habitability of distant heavenly bodies.

Apple might enter the satellite constellation game

Smartphone iPhone XS mockup. Design template for graphic design, motion graphics, digital marketing.

Apple apparently has its own team internally working on satellite communication technologies. This effort may or may not involve the iPhone-maker actually developing its own spacecraft, but it seems like the overall goal is to develop its own direct wireless communication network to work with iPhones and other Apple hardware.

Amazon is opening a dedicated HQ for its satellite business

Meanwhile, Amazon’s own satellite business is a known quantity called ‘Project Kuiper,’ and the company is going to double down on its investment next year with a new dedicated space for Kuiper’s R&D and prototype manufacturing. Eventually, Kuiper will be a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites providing broadband to underserved and unserved areas of the globe.

Rocket Lab is already working on its third launch pad

Rocket Lab will be opening a third launch pad, the company announced, just after declaring its second in Virginia this month. The third launch site will be at the same spot as its first – on the Mahia peninsula in northern New Zealand.

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