Apple makes WWDC online-only, amid COVID-19 concerns

Apple today announced that it would follow moves by other major tech firms by canceling the in-person element of its annual World Wide Developers Conference in June. Rather than holding the big event in San Jose as it has in recent years, the company will move to an online-only format. Apple cited “the current health situation” as the driving factor for the decision. 

“We are delivering WWDC 2020 this June in an innovative way to millions of developers around the world, bringing the entire developer community together with a new experience,” SVP Phil Schiller said in a release. “The current health situation has required that we create a new WWDC 2020 format that delivers a full program with an online keynote and sessions, offering a great learning experience for our entire developer community, all around the world. We will be sharing all of the details in the weeks ahead.”

Now entering its 31st year, the show has become a major event for developers and consumers alike, showcasing the latest developments for software like iOS and macOS, often accompanied by hardware releases. The official graphic features a MacBook, perhaps hinting at the arrival of new laptops. Beyond the opening keynote, the show consists of several days of workshops aimed at developers. Apple has long offered video of many of the workshops afterward, along with some live streamed elements. The announcement so far is light on the details of how it will approach them this June.

WWDC just the most recent in a long line of events that have been postponed, reformatted or canceled in the wake of the growing global pandemic, joining events like Mobile World Congress and Google’s I/O developer conference. Yesterday, San Clara County joined nearby San Francisco in banning gatherings of more than 1,000 people. The county, which houses San Jose, has reported 48 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and one death, as of the most recent report.

The county had declined to institute a ban a week prior. “Because our emerging data tells that we have more extensive community spread than was apparent to us even five days ago, we must take more actions to slow the spread of disease and to protect the public,” Santa Clara County health officer Sara Cody said in a news conference earlier this week. While it’s impossible to say what the situation will look like come June, Apple’s move clearly makes the most sense for all parties. Apple also promised to  commit $1 million  to San Jose-based organizations to help offset revenue lost from the event.

 

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Stocks sharply rebound as markets rally on expectations of government bailout, testing

As America’s fractured Congress inches closer to an agreement on a comprehensive bailout for the economic hardships businesses and workers are facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, stocks are poised for a big rally on Wall Street.

The move is more than welcome after stock markets recorded their worst day in over thirty years yesterday.

All the major indices (and bitcoin) were up in pre-market trading the morning after Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said that Republican and Democratic leadership had a deal in place to move forward with a financial stimulus package to support businesses hit by the coronavirus outbreak.

At the open markets went up:

• The Dow Jones was up 1,301.20, or 6.14% , to 22,501.82 at the open
• The Nasdaq was up 391.93 points, or 5.44%, to 7,593.73 at the open
• The S&P 500 was up 139.54 points, or 5.63%, to 2,620.18 at the open

In addition to the federal government’s agreement with congressional leadership to make it rain, the agencies tasked with overseeing the nation’s health are moving forward quickly to bring new testing capabilities online in an effort to get a clearer picture of the spread of the novel coronavirus in the U.S.

— THE FDA will create an around-the-clock hotline for labs if they can’t get authorized tests, need to process tests or have issues validating a test.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) March 13, 2020

It’s a clutch of good news for people who don’t like bad news, and there’s been a lot of bad news lately. The seeds of a potentially more coordinated government response have borne fruit in a brighter outlook for tech darlings like Apple, which was up 7.45% or $18.49 per-share in pre-market trading. Tesla shares were up 7.75% at the market open to $604.01 per share. Microsoft is up over 7% as well.

Damage

Not all damage is set to be undone, however. At its current open, the Nasdaq is still off about 22%, leaving it not only far from recovered, but still firmly encamped in bear-market territory.

Similarly, bitcoin’s modest rally in the past half day is not a full recovery. This morning’s trading leaves the price of the most famous cryptocurrency down a little less than 50% down from recent highs (bitcoin traded for more than $10,000 in mid-February.) Other cryptos remain hard-hit, with XRP down more than 50% from its February highs, and Ethereum down a similar percent over the same timeframe.

But still, the day’s positive news is welcome. Hard-hit companies like Uber and Lyft are up sharply, providing some balm to investors who had wagered on recent technology IPOs. More when the markets close, of course, but keep an extra close eye on Slack, which fell after-hours yesterday when its earnings report failed to excite investors. This morning, however, it appears to have pared those declines.

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Yahoo Mobile is a $39.99 unlimited phone and data plan

As a cell phone plan, Yahoo Mobile seems pretty straightforward — there’s just one pricing tier, where you pay $39.99 per month for unlimited calls, data and mobile hotspot usage.

But you may be wondering why Yahoo is getting into the phone business. It makes more sense when you recall that Yahoo is owned by Verizon, as part of the Verizon Media business. (Verizon Media also owns TechCrunch.)

Verizon has also spun out a startup called Visible, which also offers unlimited cell service for the same price.

And Yahoo Mobile basically sounds like the Visible service, albeit with the additional feature of a pro Yahoo Mail account. It even offers Visible insurance plans and the same financing through Affirm for people who want to purchase a new Pixel 4, iPhone 11 or iPhone XS. And it includes the same caveats, namely being U.S.-only and coming with the possibility of throttling your data, plus a speed limit of 5 Mbps on the mobile hotspot.

In the official announcement, Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan said:

With the launch of Yahoo Mobile, we are continuing to evolve our business by bringing a new, personalized Yahoo experience to the market that feeds our users’ passions, and also attracts new audiences. Combining the strengths of Verizon’s assets in wireless, technology, and media will enable us to deliver a valuable consumer offering and experiences that give people more of what they want.

Verizon’s unlimited data carrier Visible starts selling iPhones, announces Android compatibility

 

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Apple could announce new MacBook models with scissor-switch keyboards soon

According to a new report from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple could unveil new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models with scissor-switch keyboards. MacRumors first noticed the report, TechCrunch obtained the research note as well.

Apple has already updated the big MacBook Pro in November. The company slightly increased the size of the display from 15” to 16” without any meaningful changes in overall size. Apple also abandoned the controversial butterfly keyboards. The 16-inch MacBook Pro now relies on a more traditional scissor-switch keyboards.

But Kuo thinks Apple will ship updated MacBook models with a scissor-switch keyboard at some point during the second quarter of 2020. So you can expect a MacBook Air and small MacBook Pro update in the near future. Apple could use this opportunity to increase the size of the display of the 13-inch MacBook Pro model as well.

In addition to those minor but important updates, rumor has it that Apple is already planning bigger changes for the MacBook lineup. The first laptop with an Apple-designed ARM processor could ship in the last quarter of 2020 or the first quarter of 2021.

This change will have wide implications for developers as they’ll need to recompile their apps to run on ARM processors. Apple will likely lay out a roadmap so that third-party developers have enough time before releasing an ARM-based laptop.

There could also be a brand new laptop design in Q2 or Q3 of 2021. But Kuo is a bit vague on this front. Apple plans could still change.

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Amazon rolls out Alexa-powered voice shopping experience in India

Amazon today rolled out Alexa-enabled voice-powered shopping feature in India as the e-commerce giant looks for new ways to engage with customers in one of its key overseas markets.

The American giant said the feature, currently rolling out to Android users, is available “primarily in English” though it understands proper nouns and regional words across various languages.

“As we brought this functionality to Indian customers, we built custom functionality to cater to India’s unique requirements. We built this keeping the Indian customer at the center, optimizing for myriad accents and products relevant to the Indian customer,” an Amazon spokesperson told TechCrunch.

This is the first time Amazon is bringing this feature outside of the U.S., the spokesperson said.

Customers will be able to use Alexa to search for items on the e-commerce platform, add them to the cart, and proceed to checkout — by saying commands such as “Alexa, show me sarees,” “Alexa, add saree to my cart,” and “Alexa, go to checkout.”

Once the order has been placed, users can check the whereabouts of the order through voice as well, by asking “Alexa, where is my delivery?”

Amazon has claimed in the past that its voice-enabled shopping feature is gaining traction, but according to one 2018 report, most users were not showing great appetite for this experience.

But India, where the company has vast presence and has invested over $5.5 billion in the local business, may provide the company with some breakthrough.

As hundreds of Indians came online in the last decade, many have gravitated toward voice to engage with apps and internet services and make searches as they are not comfortable with typing in English. Last year, Google reported that voice queries had grown by 270% over a year in India.

“Recognizing the opportunities, several well-known brands have enabled voice-activated search, including ride sharing apps, e-commerce sites, telcos, and car brands, to name a few,” it wrote in a blog post.

Amazon’s Alexa now speaks Hindi

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Tree planting search engine Ecosia is getting a visibility boost in Chrome

Ecosia, a not-for-profit search engine which uses ad generated revenue to fund planting trees, is set to get a visibility boost in Chrome. A change Google is making to its chromium engine will see it added as a default search engine choice in up to 47 markets for the version 81 release of Google’s web browser.

Ecosia will soon be included on Chrome’s default search engine list in several major markets, including the UK, US, France and Germany — alongside the likes of Google Search, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo!

It’s the first time the not-for-profit search engine will have appeared in Chrome’s default search engine choice list. And while users of Chrome can always navigate directly to Ecosia to search, or download an extension to search via it directly in the browser’s URL bar, those active steps require prior knowledge of the product. Whereas being listed as a default option in Chrome means Ecosia will be put in front of people who aren’t yet familiar with it.

The Berlin-based search engine said Google Chrome’s selection of default search engines is based on search engine popularity rankings in different markets.

The full list of markets where it will be offered as a choice in the v81 release is: Argentina, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bahrain, Brunei, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Switzerland, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Germany, Denmark, Ecuador, Spain, Faroe Islands, France, Guatemala, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Lebanon, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mexico, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Oman, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Paraguay, Sweden, El Salvador, Taiwan, United States, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela and Vietnam.

The shift comes after what Ecosia said was a record year of usage growth for its search engine — with monthly active users rising from 8 million to 15 million during 2019.

The company dedicates 80% of advertising profits to funding reforestation projects in biodiversity hotspots around the world, and says it has planted 86 million+ trees since it was founded back in 2009 — a total it’s expecting will grow as a result of Google’s decision to include Ecosia as a default choice.

Commenting in a statement Ecosia CEO Christian Kroll said: “Ecosia’s growth over the last year shows just how invested users are in the fight against the climate crisis. Everywhere, people are weighing up the changes they can make to reduce their carbon footprint, including adopting technologies such as Ecosia. Our addition to Chrome will now make it even easier for users to help reforest delicate, at-risk and often devastated ecosystems, and to fight climate change, just by using the internet.”

“It’s also good news for user choice and fairness,” he added, pointing to recent research which he said indicates that providing a choice of search engines has the potential to increase the collective mobile market share of Google alternatives by 300-800%.

“It’s important that there are independent players in the market that don’t just exist for profit. We put our profits into tree planting and we are also focused on privacy, so users can have a positive impact on the environment while having greater control over their personal information.”

The chromium update will also see rival search engines DuckDuckGo and Yahoo added as a default in more markets when the v81 release of Chrome is pushed out.

These are the latest revisions to Chrome’s search engine defaults. But in a major shift this time last year Google quietly expanded the choice of search product in a way that gave the biggest single boost to the visibility of pro-privacy search engine rival DuckDuckGo.

It said then that the changes derived from “new usage statistics” from “recently collected data.”

But the company’s business had been facing rising attention over privacy and competition concerns.

As, indeed, Google still is…

Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia are pushing an antitrust investigation against Google

In Europe, meanwhile, antitrust enforcement around how Google operates its Android smartphone platform has already forced the tech giant to offer a choice screen that surfaces alternative search engines and web browsers alongside its own products.

In 2018 the EU’s competition competition concluded Google had violated antitrust rules by requiring Android device makers pre-install its own search and browser apps. It was fined $5BN and ordered to cease the infringement — initially responding with a choice screen prompt that appeared to select products based on marketshare. Before announcing it would move to a ‘pay-to-play’ auction model to assign the non-Google slots on the screen starting early this year.

Rival search engines including Ecosia, DuckDuckGo and French pro-privacy search engine Qwant have been highly critical of this pay-to-play switch — hitting out at the limited slots and sealed bid auction structure Google devised. And DuckDuckGo has remained critical despite winning a universal slot on the screen early this year.

Ecosia chose to boycott the auction entirely — telling the BBC in January it’s at odds with the spirit of the Commission ruling.

“Internet users deserve a free choice over which search engine they use and the response of Google with this auction is an affront to our right to a free, open and federated internet. Why is Google able to pick and choose who gets default status on Android?” Kroll said then.

Asked for current Android usage metrics the company told us Ecosia’s total daily active users on Google’s platform have grown from 489,422 this time last year to 1,245,777 now — a 155% year over year rise in DAUs.

Though it remains to be seen whether Google’s shift to a paid auction model which Ecosia is not participating in — given doing so would require the not-for-profit to spend money paying Google to appear as a choice rather than ploughing those revenues into planting more trees — will put a dampener on Ecosia’s Android growth this year.

A spokesman for Ecosia pointed us to statcounter figures that estimate it took a 0.22%market share of mobile search in Europe between February 2019 and February 2020.

On desktop the search engine takes a higher regional share, per statcounter, account for 0.5% of desktop searches.

Overall, across mobile and desktop, Google’s share of the European search market over the same period is 93.83% vs 0.33% for Ecosia.

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Desperate to exit, a $10B price tag for Magic Leap is crazy

Augmented reality headset maker Magic Leap has struggled with the laws of physics and failed to get to market. Now it’s seeking an acquirer, but talks with Facebook and medical goods giant Johnson & Johnson led nowhere according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Ed Hammond.

After raising over $2 billion and being valued between $6 billion and $8 billion back when it still had momentum, Hammond writes that “Magic Leap could fetch more than $10 billion if it pursues a sale” according to his sources. That price seems ridiculous. It’s the kind of number a prideful company might strategically leak in hopes of drumming up acquisition interest, even at a lower price.

Startups have been getting their valuations chopped when they go public. The whole economy is hurting due to coronavirus. Augmented Reality seems less interesting than virtual reality with people avoiding public places. Getting people to strap used AR hardware to their face for demos seems like a tough sell for the forseeable future.

No one has proven a killer consumer use case for augmented reality eyewear that warrants an expensive and awkward-to-wear gadget. Our phones can already deliver plenty of AR’s value while letting you take selfies and do video chat that headsets can’t. My experiences with Magic Leap at Sundance Film Festival last year were laughably disappointing, with its clunky hardware, ghostly projections, and narrow field of view.

Apple and Facebook are throwing the enduring profits of iPhones and the News Feed into building a better consumer headset. Snapchat has built intermediary glasses since CEO Evan Spiegel thinks it will be a decade before AR headsets see mainstream adoption. AR rivals like Microsoft have better enterprise experience, connections, and distribution. Enterprise AR startup Daqri crashed and burned.

Magic Leap’s CEO said he wanted to sell 1 million of its $2300 headset in its first year, then projected it would sell 100,000 headsets, but only moved 6,000 in the first six months, according to a daming report from The Information’s Alex Heath. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai left Magic Leap’s board despite Google leading a $514 million funding round for the startup in 2014. Business Insider’s Steven Tweedie and Kevin Webb revealed CFO Scott Henry and SVP of creative strategy John Gaeta bailed in November. The company suffered dozens of layoffs. It lost a $500 million contract to Microsoft last year. The CEOs of Apple, Google, and Facebook visited Magic Leap headquarters in 2016 to explore an acquisition deal, but no offers emerged.

Is AR eyewear part of the future? Almost surely. And is this startup valuable? Certainly somewhat. But Magic Leap may prove to be too little too early for a company burning cash by the hundreds of millions in a market newly fixated on efficiency. A $10 billion price tag would require one of the world’s biggest corporations to believe Magic Leap has irreplicable talent and technology that will earn them a fortune in the somewhat distant future.

The fact that Facebook, which does not shy from tall acquisition prices, didn’t want to buy Magic Leap is telling. This isn’t a product with hundreds of millions of users or fast-ramping revenue. It’s a gamble on vision and timing that looks to be coming up snake eyes. It’s unclear when the startup would ever be able to deliver on its renderings of flying whales and living room dinosaurs in a form factor people actually want to wear.

 

One of Magic Leap’s early renderings of what it could supposedly do

With all their money and plenty of time before widespread demand for AR headsets materializes, potential acquirers could likely hire away the talent and make up the development time in cheaper ways than buying Magic Leap. If someone acquires them for too much, it feels like a write-off waiting to happen.

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