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Smartphone Penetration In Europe's Big-5 Markets Now At 55%, Apple Continues To Feel The Heat From Fast-Rising Samsung
Dec 17, 11:06AM
Europe's mobile market has reached a tipping point: the top-five markets in the region collectively now have a majority of consumers using smartphones, according to the latest numbers from comScore. France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK are now collectively reporting a 55% smartphone penetration, according to comScore's MobiLens research -- an online survey of "nationally representative" sample of mobile subscribers aged 13 and up.Real-Time Location-Based Q&A iPhone App, LocalUncle, Relaunches With Faster Tech, Slicker Interface, Same Grand Platform Plan
Dec 17, 10:18AM
LocalUncle, a real-time location-based Q&A iPhone app, has relaunched with a new version -- offering faster tech and a cleaner interface in a bid to grow enough users to power its service. The original app launched back in November 2011 but didn't achieve enough user traction to live up to the app maker's grand plan of building a mobile user-to-mobile user Q&A platform.Glossybox, The Samwer Brothers' Birchbox Effort, Opens Its Lid: $72M In Funding And 2M Boxes Shipped
Dec 17, 9:36AM
Rocket Internet is sometimes known for being reticent on how its vast e-commerce portfolio is progressing, but that appears to be slowly changing. Today the company put out its first numbers for Glossybox, its beauty box effort that looks a lot like Birchbox.U.K. Microprocessor Firm Ups Offer For U.S. Chip Designer MIPS: $100M Cash For MIPS' Operating Business, "Certain" Patents
Dec 17, 8:49AM
U.K. microprocessor firm Imagination Technologies will be hoping it's third time lucky in its bid to acquire the operating business and "certain" patents from U.S. chip designer MIPS Technologies. The company has upped its offer to $100m, from the $80m offered earlier this month, after rival semiconductor group CEVA also again increased its offer to $90m.Cross-Browser Extension Development Platform Crossrider Sold For $37M To Markets.com: Report
Dec 17, 8:45AM
Crossrider, a platform that lets developers make extensions that can work across different web browsers like Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox, has been sold for $37 million to Markets.com, the online trading platform, according to reports. Israeli paper Globes first noted news of the sale; Haaretz subsequently reported the buyer. We've reached out to the company for comment.National Rifle Association Hides Facebook Page To Avoid Hosting Flame Wars
Dec 17, 7:24AM
To avoid uncivil debates breaking out on its Facebook Page wall in the wake of the tragic shooting in Newtown, the National Rifle Association has unpublished its Facebook Page, presumably temporarily. The NRA hasn't confirmed it voluntarily hid the Page from the public, but Facebook is refusing to comment rather than saying it's responsible as it typically does when it takes down Pages.With $8M In Seed Funding From Founders Fund, Goldman Sachs; Urban Compass Wants To Build A Hyper-Local, Human-Powered Database
Dec 17, 3:00AM
If there are a lot of companies out there chasing down the Holy Grail of location services, Urban Compass, a startup still in stealth mode, believes it could be one of the lucky ones that might just find it. Urban Compass is co-founded by Ori Allon, a superstar engineer who's been thinking about search and discovery for years already -- having already sold businesses to Google and Twitter -- and Robert Reffkin, a superstar ex-Goldman Sachs banker.Google-FTC Antitrust Suit Reportedly Coming To A Close
Dec 17, 2:32AM
The negotiations in the antitrust case between Google and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is reportedly drawing to a close, with things looking up for Google, according to reports. The Wall Street Journal said that the FTC could agree to end its investigation as early as this week after Google voluntarily agreed to allay the agency's concerns by making some changes to its search practice.Punching Above Their Weight: Opportunity And Challenges For Kiwi Startups
Dec 17, 2:30AM
There are many reasons why entrepreneurs might wish to begin build a business in new Zealand, mainly thanks to the picturesque landscape that prevails nearly everywhere you go. But Kiwis and foreigners who want to be part of the startup experience there should also be aware of the challenges those companies face."Gun" "Control"
Dec 17, 1:30AM
If we as a country, and indeed we as a global community, are going to seriously address the question of gun control, we need to address the issue of fabricated weapons and weapon plans, or else the discussion will be moot. This is because the proliferation of 3D printed weaponry changes both the definition of "gun" and of what it means to "control" it.iPhone 5 Sells More Than 2M Units During First Weekend In China
Dec 17, 1:30AM
Apple announced today that it sold more than 2 million units of the iPhone 5 over the weekend after its launch on December 14. Last year's riots during the launch of the iPhone 4S makes it difficult to compare sales data, but the iPhone 5 is enjoying a much stronger launch than its predecessors.Applifier's Jussi Laakkonen Shows Off Everyplay, His Network For Sharing Mobile Gameplay Footage [TCTV]
Dec 17, 1:00AM
Mobile gaming startup Applifier just raised a $4 million Series B and also launched the SDK (software development kit) that developers can use to integrate Everyplay, the company's network allowing mobile gamers to share footage of their favorite moments with each other. The whole point of a service like Everyplay is that some things can't be captured with words or screenshots, so we invited Applifier CEO Jussi Laakkonen to stop by the TechCrunch office and demonstrate the product, which you can see in the video above. I was flattered — but also a bit alarmed — by the pleasure that Laakkonen seemed to take in throwing the in-game avatar with my face down the stairs.Holiday E-Commerce Sales Up 13 Percent To $34B; This Past Week Was Heaviest Online Shopping Period On Record
Dec 17, 12:32AM
comSocre just released its holiday e-commerce numbers for the week, and according to the report, this past week was the heaviest five-day online shopping period on record. So far, retail e-commerce spending for the first 44 days of the November–December 2012 holiday season was $33.8 billion up 13 percent.>From The Infinity Ventures Summit In Kyoto/Japan: 12 Demos From Japanese Startups
Dec 17, 12:11AM
Japanese VC firm Infinity Venture Partners has organized the so-called Infinity Ventures Summit Fall 2012 (IVS) in Kyoto/Japan earlier this week, a two-day web industry event that's taking place twice a year (the other IVS is held in spring in Sapporo). And just like at every IVS, a few hours of the program were reserved for a total of 12 local startups to demo their services onstage to a panel of judges and a crowd of over 550 people.A Few Reasons Why You'd Want To Download All Of Your Tweets
Dec 17, 12:00AM
Today, we learned that Twitter made good on its promise to start letting its users download all of their tweets from the beginning of their history with the service. For many geeks, there is excitement about this. It means that Twitter is showing how truly "open" they can be when it comes to your data and information, finally catching up with companies like Facebook and Google, which both allow you to grab all of your information at any time.Has Google Finally Found Its Mobile Design Chops?
Dec 16, 11:00PM
Google has never been a hotbed of cool design. Services like Gmail and Google Docs have always been very functional, but few people would describe them as good looking. Google's first mobile efforts were also hit and miss. The first iterations of Android were pretty basic and the company's first dedicated mobile apps - assuming they worked - weren't much to look at, either. All of that seems to be changing, though. The latest group of apps to come out of Google, including the latest version of Currents, the new YouTube app, Google+ for mobile, Gmail for iOS and, of course, the spectacular Google Maps for iOS, show that the company is finally taking design very seriously.The Air Above Our Heads: The Growth Of Ambient Social Networking
Dec 16, 10:00PM
Editor's note: Paul Davison is the CEO and founder of Highlight. When I was young, my dad told me about the short story by H.G. Wells, "The Country of the Blind." In it, a fictitious mountaineer comes across a lost civilization where everyone is blind. They had been cut off from the rest of the world for generations and didn't understand the concept of sight. When he tried to explain it to them, they thought he was crazy.CrunchWeek: Google Brings Maps To iOS 6, Twitter And Instagram's Photo War, & Can Max Levchin Help Save Yahoo?
Dec 16, 9:00PM
It's that time of the week again -- it's CrunchWeek time, wherein a few of us writers turn on the TechCrunch TV cameras and shoot the breeze about some of the past week's most interesting stories.Iterations: Google Challenges Apple At The iOS Application Layer
Dec 16, 6:00PM
Back in September 2011, a full year before the iPhone 5, I wrote an post here speculating, mostly for fun, how Facebook could approach the iOS platform by using a federated strategy to separate their core offerings into single-use apps across Apple's App Store. Of course, this didn't happen, though Facebook has a separate app for private messages (Messenger, through the acquisition of Beluga) and Camera, which was timed curiously around the time the company made one of its most savvy moves: buying Instagram. Since then, Facebook impressively rehauled their entire iOS app away from HTML5 to native and provide a great unified experience in one app, a marvel considering the complexity and scale of their system.Dell Has A New Platform As A Service That Actually Makes Sense
Dec 16, 5:03PM
Dell has a new platform as a service (PaaS) and it actually makes sense. The service is called Project Fast PaaS, part of the new Dell Cloud Labs, which also includes Project Sputnik, the Linux laptop for developers and Crowbar, the open-source cloud deployment framework. Crowbar was originally created to support its “OpenStack- and Hadoop-powered offerings.” FastPaaS and the new Dell Cloud Labs reflects a paradox that I felt all week at Dell World. While Fast PaaS represents the innovation happening at Dell, as with any big enterprise company, it is dependent on making big deals with high margins that serve the basic demands of large enterprises. On Tuesday, I moderated a think tank discussion that unfortunately was stacked with Dell managers. One customer attended. To my fault, a few Dell managers took control of the conversation at certain points, which was unfortunate. But they did express some perspectives that reflect the real conflict at Dell these days. Michael Coté, a former RedMonk analyst who is now Dell’s director of cloud strategy and special programs summed it up well in a blog post yesterday: IT faces a real conflict. It’s a time of rapid technology advancement. Customers want access to the latest and greatest but IT still needs to keep everything running, too. They are expected to make sure the email works and be innovative, too. It’s an impossible mission. In Coté’s words: The mind set of keeping things stable a reliable (the five nines crowd) doesn't fit with coming up with new stuff. Practices like Agile and the rapid delivery cycles in DevOps can help, but at some point, the two paths of ensuring stability and profiting from disruption are divergent enough that you can't perfectly co-mingle them…and yet, that's what we expect from the IT department. Fast PaaS is a great example of how Dell is seeking to be innovative in developing a unique strategy but cloaking it as a “solution.” It tells a good story about what Dell is trying to do with its cloud strategy. Dell does not want to be like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and offer a blank virtual machine. It wants to offer solutions. And I think the strategy works. Project Fast PaaS is built on Cloud Foundry, the open-source PaaS developed initially by VMware and now operating under an Apache license. The PaaS is on-premise — it’s private. Everything comes fully packaged. A developer fills in some forms that include theIf at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
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