Amazon’s Alexa heads Toni Reid and Rohit Prasad are coming to Disrupt

It’s hard to believe that Alexa was only announced in November 2014. In fewer than six years, the smart assistant has gone from consumer electronics curiosity to a nearly ubiquitous tech phenomenon. Launched alongside the first Echo device, Alexa has helped define a new paradigm of voice computing, alongside Apple’s Siri and Google’s Assistant.

According to recent numbers, 29% of U.S. internet users also use a smart speaker. With that demographic Amazon has been utterly dominant, with roughly 70% of all U.S. smart speaker owners using an Echo. Alexa’s reach spread far beyond that, of course, to all manner of smart home devices, laptops, cars, phones, wearables and TVs. We’re excited to announce today that the heads of Amazon’s Alexa team will be joining us at Disrupt this September to discuss the smart assistant’s growth and the future of voice computing.

Toni Reid is the vice president of Alexa Experience & Echo Devices at Amazon, a company she’s been with for over a decade. She’s being a driving force in Alexa’s dominance of the category. Rohit Prasad is the vice president and head scientist, Alexa Artificial Intelligence. He’s an expert in natural language understanding, machine learning, dialog science and machine reasoning.

Together the pair have been the driving force in Alexa’s growth and domination of the smart assistant category. Hear how it all got started from Reid and Prasad at Disrupt 2020 on September 14-18. Get a front-row seat with your Digital Pro Pass for just $245 or with a Digital Startup Alley Exhibitor Package.

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MariaDB raises $25M more to expand its SkySQL cloud database platform

Cloud services continue to be a key component of how organisations remain operational even as so much else — such as physically working in enclosed offices — is forced to change because of the COVID-19 health pandemic. Today, MariaDB Corporation, the company behind MariaDB SkySQL and one of the startups leading the charge on open-source cloud databases, is announcing $25 million in funding to continue its growth.

The money is coming in the form of an extension to the company’s Series C round, and it’s being led by SmartFin Capital, a Belgian VC, with participation from previous investor GP Bullhound.

(Side note: Extensions to existing rounds seem to have become more frequent in recent months. That’s in part because extensions can be faster to close than opening and closing completely new rounds, in part because they are typically smaller amounts and in part because fundraising has become a lot more challenging and harder to do in recent months, with people travelling and meeting in person much less, and sometimes not at all.)

Notably, however, being an extension doesn’t mean the valuation is not changing. This latest infusion brings the total raised by MariaDB Corp. to over $125 million, “doubling our valuation,” CEO Michael Howard noted in a statement.

Howard didn’t reveal the exact figure of that valuation, but for some context, the company — founded in Helsinki, Finland and now co-headquartered in Redwood City, California — was last valued at €300 million ($340 million at today’s rates) in 2017, in a $27 million round led by Alibaba. That would put today’s round at a €600 million valuation ($680 million), a big leap for the startup — and for open source — in the space of three years.

Part of the boost for MariaDB’s business is coming directly as a result of the demands we’re seeing in the enterprise sector today for database-as-a-service tools built on cloud and open-source architecture, Howard noted.

“Expanding MariaDB SkySQL cloud operations is our key focus,” Howard said in a statement. “There is an addressable and immediate market need with a growing number of companies who want to enable faster innovation and agility by adopting cloud technologies and shifting database management to DBaaS solutions.”

MariaDB says that DBS Bank, ServiceNow, Walgreens, Samsung and more than 75% of the Fortune 500 customers run MariaDB in both private and public clouds, speaking to the reach of the platform.

MariaDB Corp. is not disclosing its own growth numbers — we’re asking and will update as and when we learn more — but it’s likely they have been strong, judging by the valuation hike.

“MariaDB continues to exceed our expectations,” said Jürgen Ingels, founding partner, SmartFin Capital, in a statement. “The company’s innovation in cloud database technology will help support the rapid growth in IT modernization that businesses large and small are pursuing to keep up with the world around us. We feel MariaDB is well-positioned to take a large share of the growing cloud database market as companies continue to push forward into the cloud. We are proud to invest more in MariaDB to continue their exceptional growth.”

Apart from the more immediate effects of the health pandemic, MariaDB Corp.’s growth speaks to other trends in enterprise IT that have been in play for years.

Gartner estimates that 75% of all databases will have migrated to cloud architectures by 2022 either with all-in or hybrid deployments, “with only 5% ever considered for repatriation to on-premises.”

While MariaDB remains committed to open source — indeed there is a MariaDB Foundation that includes members like Microsoft, Booking.com, Tencent and Alibaba — MariaDB Corp. has positioned itself as something of a consolidator in terms of building commercial services on top of the open-source relational database. Its acquisitions have included Clustrix and MammothDB to expand its functionality, and this funding will be used to that end as well, particularly around scaling and improving the speed of SkySQL.

“MariaDB has risen to be a household name in the IT industry,” said Per Roman, co-founder and managing partner of GP Bullhound, in a statement. “We have been particularly interested in MariaDB’s focus on bringing its flexibility, security and stability to the cloud. That’s why we’re excited to invest in MariaDB, as we see enormous opportunities for its SkySQL product.”

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iOS 14 gets rid of the app grid to help you find the app you’re looking for

{rss:content:encoded} iOS 14 gets rid of the app grid to help you find the app you’re looking for https://ift.tt/324WjAL https://ift.tt/2Ylnk0C July 09, 2020 at 07:15PM

Apple unveiled the next major version iOS a few weeks ago. I’ve been playing around with beta versions of iOS 14 and here’s what you should expect when you update your iPhone to the final release of iOS 14 this fall.

The most interesting change is something you’re not going to notice at first. The home screen has been rethought. In some ways, the iPhone now works more like Android devices. You can add widgets to the home screen and there’s a new app launcher called the App Library.

If you’ve been using a smartphone for many years, chances are your device is cluttered with a dozen apps you frequently use, some of apps you only need a few times a year and a ton of apps that are no longer useful.

Maybe your home screen is perfectly organized and you’re thinking that this doesn’t apply to you. Arguably, you’re part of the minority. Many people tell me they don’t even know where app icons are located anymore and they just pull down to use the search feature.

With iOS 14, changes are not immediately visible. If you want to keep using your phone just like before, nobody is stopping you. But the home screen is now more customizable.

When you tap and hold on a home screen icon, there’s a new menu that lists all the widgets you can install on your home screen. Many default apps already support widgets, such as Reminders, Calendar, Stock, Weather, Music etc. And each widget comes in multiple sizes if you want to see more or less info.

The most interesting thing about widgets is that you can stack them and flip through them. Otherwise, they’d quickly take over your entire home screen. Apple also tries to surface the widget that is more relevant to the time of the day and what you’re doing.

The second big change with the home screen is that there’s a new page at the right of your last page. The App Library groups all your apps on your phone by category. Some icons are bigger than others as Apple tries once again to surface the most important apps to you.

In my experience, categories don’t work that well as they’re based on the broad categories of the App Store. But you can always tap on the search bar at the top to display an alphabetical list of your apps. It could be useful if you can’t remember the name of an app for instance.

Image Credits: Apple

Fighting app fatigue

Those changes for the home screen might seem minor, but they are important to change the current app paradigm. People simply don’t want to download new apps. They don’t want to create a new account and they don’t want to have another icon.

Now that you can hide pages of apps and that there’s the App Library, downloading new apps has become less intimidating. If you combine that with Sign in with Apple, you can go from no app to interacting with content in no time.

In addition to that, Apple is introducing App Clips. They are sort of mini apps that you can launch without installing an app. It’s a small part of an app that you can easily share. I haven’t had the chance to try it out yet as third-party developers have yet to take advantage of App Clips.

There are many ways to share App Clips. You can launch those apps from the web, from Messages, from Maps, from NFC tags or from QR codes. Get ready to see stickers at cafés, on scooters or in museums. Scan a code or tap your phone on it and you get an app-like experience. If you want to dive deeper, you can download the full app from the App Library.

But it’s also going to have some major impacts on utility apps, apps that you don’t use that often or travel apps for instance. Sure, you may keep your favorite social app on your home screen. But you’re going to forget about apps that only live in the App Library.

Developers will be happy that downloading apps is easier. And yet, it is going to be harder to make people come back to your app after the first launch.

Image Credits: Apple

Some app refinements

Let me list some quality-of-life improvements that are going to make your phone works better. In Messages, you can now pin conversations to the top. Group conversations are also receiving a major update with the ability to @-mention people, reply to specific messages and set a group of photos. Once again, Apple is bringing Messages closer to WhatsApp and Telegram. But it’s not a bad thing.

In Maps, there are many new features that I already detailed in a separate post. I encourage you to read it if you want to learn more about guides, electric vehicle routing, cycling directions and more.

Apple Maps to tell you to refine location by scanning the skyline

The Home app has been improved with a new row of icons that describe the status of your home. For instance, you can see the temperature, see if a door is open, see if lights are on, etc.

Like every year, Notes and Reminders are getting some small improvements. For instance, document scanning has been improved, search has been improved, you can assign reminders to others and more. Those apps have become really powerful with these small incremental updates.

Image Credits: Apple

All the rest

There are many things that I haven’t mentioned yet or that I haven’t tried because I can’t use those features yet. Similarly, it’ll take some time before developers start adopting those features. Here’s a quick rundown:

• Incoming calls don’t take over the entire screen anymore. You get a notification at the top of the screen, which is so much better if you don’t want to answer a call.
• Similarly, Siri doesn’t overtake the screen. Your display fades out. I think more people are going to use Siri because of this as it doesn’t feel as invasive.
• Your AirPods will automatically switch between your iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc.
• When you’re on a FaceTime call or watching a video, you can switch to another app and keep the video in a corner. There’s not much else to say other than it’s nice.
• Cycling directions in Apple Maps: I’m a bike lover but the feature isn’t available in Paris. It’s hard to know whether directions make sense in San Francisco or New York as I don’t know cycling infrastructure that well in those cities.
• When you pull down to search for something, iOS now automatically highlights the first result. You can tap Go on the keyboard to hit the first result. It’s so much better.
• HomeKit-compatible security cameras can now recognize faces based on tags in Photos.
• You can unlock cars with your phone using NFC if you have a compatible car.
• Following the acquisition of Dark Sky, you’ll be able to see next-hour precipitation in Apple’s Weather app.
• You’ll be able to choose a different web browser and email client as default apps with iOS 14.

What about stability?

The big issue of iOS 13 was that it was quite buggy when it launched in September 2019. It’s hard to know whether iOS 13 is going to perform better on this front as it’s still a beta.

But, as you can see, Apple didn’t try to reinvent the wheel with default apps. There are a ton of improvements across the board, but no big redesign of Photos or Messages for instance. And I think it’s a good thing.

Changes on the home screen as well as App Clips could have wider implications for developers. It could change the way you discover and install apps today. So it’s going to be interesting to see if the developer community embraces App Clips.

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Apple just released the first iOS 14 beta to everyone

{rss:content:encoded} Apple just released the first iOS 14 beta to everyone https://ift.tt/2ZfjwOV https://ift.tt/3efYpjA July 09, 2020 at 07:15PM

This is your opportunity to get a glimpse of the future of iOS — and iPadOS. Apple just released the first public beta of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, the next major version of the operating systems for the iPhone and iPad. Unlike developer betas, everyone can download those betas without a $99 developer account. But don’t forget, it’s a beta.

The company still plans to release the final version of iOS and iPadOS 14.0 this fall. But Apple is going to release betas every few weeks over the summer. It’s a good way to fix as many bugs as possible and gather data from a large group of users.

As always, Apple’s public betas closely follow the release cycle of developer betas. And Apple released the second developer beta of iOS and iPadOS 14 earlier this week. So it sounds like the first public beta is more or less the same build as the second developer build.

But remember, you shouldn’t install an iOS beta on your primary iPhone or iPad. The issue is not just bugs — some apps and features won’t work at all. In some rare cases, beta software can also brick your device and make it unusable. You may even lose data on iCloud. Proceed with extreme caution.

But if you have an iPad or iPhone you don’t need, here’s how to download it. Head over to Apple’s beta website and download the configuration profile. It’s a tiny file that tells your iPhone or iPad to update to public betas like it’s a normal software update.

You can either download the configuration profile from Safari on your iOS device directly, or transfer it to your device using AirDrop, for instance. Reboot your device, then head over to the Settings app. In September, your device should automatically update to the final version of iOS and iPadOS 13 and you’ll be able to delete the configuration profile.

The biggest change of iOS 14 is the introduction of widgets on the home screen, a new App Library to browse all your apps and the ability to run App Clips — those are mini apps that feature a small part of an app and that you can run without installing anything.

There are also many refinements across the board, such as new features for Messages with a big focus on groups with @-mentions and replies, a new Translate app that works on your device, cycling directions in Apple Maps in some cities and various improvements in Notes, Reminders, Weather, Home and more.

If you want to learn more about iOS 14, I looked at some of the features in the new version:

iOS 14 gets rid of the app grid to help you find the app you’re looking for

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Kernel raises $53 million for its non-invasive ‘Neuroscience as a Service’ technology

LA-based bio science startup Kernel has raised $53 million from investors, including General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, Eldridge, Manta Ray Ventures, Tiny Blue Dot and more. The funding is the first outside money that Kernel has taken in, though it’s a Series C round because founder and CEO Bryan Johnson has provided $54 million in investment for Kernel to date. Johnson also participated in this latest round alongside external investors.

The funding will go toward further scaling “on-demand” access to its non-invasive technology for recording brain activity, which consists of two main approaches. Kernel has distinguished these as two separate products: Flux, which detects magnetic fields created by the collective activity of neutrons in the brain; and Flow, which measures blood through the brain. These are both key signals that researchers and medical practitioners monitor when working with the brain, but typically they require use of invasive, expensive hardware — or even brain surgery.

Kernel’s goal is to make this much more broadly available, offering access via a “Neuroscience as a Service” (NaaS) model that can provide paying clients access to its brain imaging devices even remotely. Earlier this year, Kernel announced that this platform was available generally to commercial customers.

The technology sounds like sci-fi — but it’s really an attempt to take what has been a relatively closed and prohibitively costly, expert and potentially dangerous-to-its-subjects tech, and make it available as an on-demand capability — in much the same way that many human genome companies have emerged to take advantage of the advances in the speed and availability of human genome sequencing to do the same, for the business and research community.

Johnson’s ambitious long-term goal with the company is to ultimately develop a much deeper understanding in the field of neuroscience.

“If we can quantify thoughts and emotions, conscious and subconscious, a new era of understanding, wellness, and human improvement will emerge,” Johnson writes in a press release.

It’s true that the brain’s inner workings are still largely a mystery to most researchers, especially in terms of how they translate to our cognition, feelings and actions. Kernel’s platform could mean significantly more people studying the science behind the operation of the brain, and provide explanations for areas of neuroscience that still aren’t well understood, just by virtue of making it more accessible to more intelligent people from more disciplines and backgrounds.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Kernel raises $53 million for its non-invasive ‘Neuroscience as a Service’ technology https://ift.tt/3egYvrg

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K Fund’s Jaime Novoa discusses early-stage firm’s focus on Spanish startups

Earlier this month, Spanish early-stage venture capital firm K Fund officially launched its second fund, which sits at €70 million, up from €50 million the first time around.

Targeting Spanish startups with an international outlook, the seed-stage firm plans to invest from €200,000 to €2 million, writing first checks in 25-30 companies. Meanwhile, a portion of the fund will also be set aside for follow-on funding for the most promising of its portfolio.

Described as business model- and sector-agnostic, K Fund currently has a mix of B2B and B2C companies in its portfolio across a wide variety of sectors, such as travel, fintech, insurtech and others. They include online travel agency Exoticca, HR software Factorial, insurtech startup Bdeo and Hubtype, a conversational messaging tech provider.

I caught up with K Fund’s Jaime Novoa to delve deeper into the firm’s investment remit, how the Spanish startup and tech ecosystem has developed over the last few years and to learn more about “K Founders,” the VC’s new pre-seed funding program.

TechCrunch: K Fund’s first fund was announced in late 2016 to back startups in Spain with an international outlook at seed and Series A. At €70 million, this second fund is €20 million larger but I gather the remit remains broadly the same. Can you be more specific with regards to cheque size, geography, sector and the types of startups you look for?

Jaime Novoa: We’re both agnostic in terms of business models and industries. Since our focus is, for the most part, Spain, we do not believe that the Spanish market is big enough to build a vertically focused fund, either in terms of business model or sector.

With our first fund we invested in 28 companies, with a slightly larger number of B2B SaaS companies than B2C ones, and across a wide variety of sectors. We do have a bit of exposure to travel and fintech/insurtech, but that’s because we’ve found several interesting companies in those spaces, not because we proactively said, “let’s invest in fintech/travel.”

In terms of check sizes, the core of the fund will be to make the same type of investments as in our first fund: first cheques from €200k to €2m and then sufficient capital for follow-on rounds. We’ll probably do a similar number of deals compared to the previous fund, but we want to have additional capital for follow-on purposes.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J K Fund’s Jaime Novoa discusses early-stage firm’s focus on Spanish startups https://ift.tt/3efWjR1

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Creandum backs Amie, a new productivity app from ex-N26 product manager Dennis Müller

Amie, a new productivity app from ex-N26 product manager Dennis Müller, has picked up $1.3 million in pre-seed funding to “kickstart” development and hiring.

Backing 23 year-old Müller is Creandum — the European VC best known for being an early investor in Spotify — along with Tiny.VC and a plethora of angels. They include Laura Grimmelmann (Ex-Accel), Nicolas Kopp (CEO, N26 U.S.), Roland Grenke (Dubsmash co-founder) and Zachary Smith (SVP of product at U.S. challenger bank Chime).

Founded early this year and with a planned launch in early 2021, Berlin-based Amie is developing a productivity app that combines a person’s calendar and to-dos in one place. Previously called coco, it promises to work across all devices, with an interface that “works just like you think”.

“Back in the day, you had a calendar on your office wall, and a to-do list on a notepad,” Müller tells me. “You could take your list with you elsewhere, but not your calendar. Those were digitized instead of rethinking the flow. Most productivity apps solve very specific problems, creating a new one, [and] users need too many tools”.

Amie pre-release app screenshot

Müller says Amie is built on the principle that “to-dos, habits and events all take time, and all belong in the same place”. Many people already schedule to-dos and the startup wants offer the fastest way to create to-dos, schedule events, check your calendar “and even jump into Zoom calls”.

As a glimpse of what’s to come, Amie promises to let you drag ‘n’ drop to-dos into your day, or turn links and screenshots into to-dos. “With Amie’s Alfred-like app, you can create an event and invite people in a different timezone, all while other apps are still loading,” says the young company.

More broadly, Amie wants to act as a central workspace, letting you also do things like join video calls, take notes, and do email, without the need to open extra browser tabs and therefore avoid “context switching”.

“Amie will target professionals who are currently using Google Calendar, due to our integration,” adds Müller. “The waitlist already counts thousands of users, who are mostly professionals working in the tech industry e.g. designers, developers, bizdevs, etc”.

https://ift.tt/2Zf7rck Creandum backs Amie, a new productivity app from ex-N26 product manager Dennis Müller https://ift.tt/2ZS0Nbf

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As pandemic drags on, interest in automation surges

Today, the U.S. exceeded three million COVID-19 cases and 132,000 deaths. In several states, new hotspots have rolled back plans to reopen businesses. The novel coronavirus has — and will continue — to profoundly impact the way we live and work.

For the moment, that includes a shift in the employment status of many Americans. More than 50 million people have filed for unemployment since mid-March. And while many states have made efforts to reopen businesses and return some sense of normality, these moves have led to a spike in cases and may prolong the pandemic and its ongoing economic impact.

Technology has been a lifeline for many, from food delivery to the 3D printing I highlighted last week, which has worked to address a nation suffering from personal protective equipment shortages. Automation and robotics have also been a constant in conversations around tech’s battle against COVID-19.

Robots don’t get sick, tired or emotionally burnt out, and unlike us, they aren’t walking, talking disease vectors. Automation advocates like to point to the “three Ds” of dull, dirty and dangerous jobs that will eventually be replaced by a robotic workforce, but in the age of COVID-19, nearly any essential job qualifies.

The robotic invasion has already begun in earnest. The service, delivery, health care and sanitation industries in particular have all opened a massive gap over the past several months that automation has been more than happy to roll right through. A recent report from The Brookings Institute notes that automation arrives in the workforce in fits and starts — most notably, during times of economic downturn.

“Robots’ infiltration of the workforce doesn’t occur at a steady, gradual pace. Instead, automation happens in bursts, concentrated especially in bad times such as in the wake of economic shocks, when humans become relatively more expensive as firms’ revenues rapidly decline,” the study found. “At these moments, employers shed less-skilled workers and replace them with technology and higher-skilled workers, which increases labor productivity as a recession tapers off.”

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J As pandemic drags on, interest in automation surges https://ift.tt/2Cm0opi

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Nuggs rebrands as Simulate with new cash, a new CTO and an expanded line of faux-meat foods

Nuggs, the alternative-meat company founded by serial entrepreneur Ben Pasternak (who previously co-founded the social media app Monkey), has raised $4.1 million and gotten itself a new name and a new CTO as it looks to move beyond chicken nuggets.

Now called Simulate, Pasternak’s startup is readying the launch of new products including spicy nuggets, a “chicken burger product” and, eventually, a hot dog, which required a branding change to befit its newly broadened ambitions in the ultra-competitive industry out to reform consumers’ carnivorous impulses.

Since Pasternak first began pitching his direct to consumer chicken nugget replacements a bit over a year ago, the company has sold 1 million pounds of nuggets. Over the next week, Simulate’s frozen nuggets will make their debut in around 30 Gelson’s supermarkets in California. The company has plans to release its chicken patty within the next few months and a hot dog replacement, DOGGS, in the fourth quarter.

Pasternak began to rebrand earlier this summer when his company launched the second iteration of its nuggets in June.

In addition to his new brand, and new investors including Lerer Hippeau, AgFunder, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, former Whole Foods chief executive Walter Robb and model Jasmine Tookes, Pasternak also has a new chief technology officer.

Bringing on Thierry Saint-Denis, the former senior director of research and innovation at Danone, as CTO is a coup for the company. As a business, Nuggs seemed to be more of a marketing play backed by a savvy founder and a frozen food giant that wanted to make a play for the burgeoning market for meat substitutes and replacements. Now, with Saint-Denis, the company brings on a developer of food products that have reached nearly $1 billion in sales who holds more than 14 patents related to functional ingredients, probiotics and enzymes.

With the new executive in place, new and previous investors like McCain Foods, Rainfall Ventures, Maven Ventures, NOMO Ventures, MTV founder Bob Pittman and Casper founder Neil Parikh are now backing a company with a bit more technical heft behind it.

Not that Nuggs wasn’t improving its product line over the past year. Pasternak touts the company’s iterative approach to product development, embodied in its different “release notes” as the company toyed with different formulations.

That software-driven approach may also yield other sales options, like a subscription service, Pasternak said. “We have seen this core community of people obsessively purchasing the new versions. We are looking at launching some kind of beta testing subscription thing shortly.”

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Nuggs rebrands as Simulate with new cash, a new CTO and an expanded line of faux-meat foods https://ift.tt/3ffcgrP

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Joe Coffee raises another $1.3M to help more coffee shops take mobile orders

Gone — or at least on hold for a long while — are the days of hanging around a coffee shop, poking around the internet on the free Wi-Fi while sipping the same coffee for three hours. The entire idea feels kind of alien right now. A little anxiety-inducing, even.

But coffee shops still want to find ways to safely stay in business, and people still want their coffee. With many states limiting orders to pickup/to-go, mobile ordering is seeing a massive uptick across the food industry. That’s great for Starbucks and anyone else who already had mobile ordering in place, but it leaves many smaller shops scrambling for a solution. Building your own app is complicated — and getting people to download it can be its own challenge.

For the last few years, Seattle-based Joe Coffee has been building a mobile ordering “network” for indie coffee spots — basically, a one-stop app for ordering from nearby coffee shops that aren’t Starbucks. The team had raised $2.2 million previously; after seeing a massive uptick in usage and interest from coffee shops in recent months, the company has raised another $1.3 million to scale up with demand.

CEO Nick Martin tells me that they’ve seen sales volume increase by roughly 20x since March. He also notes that they’ve seen the average tip increase by over 200% during the pandemic — a nice sign that people are trying to show love to the folks behind the counter right now.

This round — a second seed, as the company calls it — is led by Craft Ventures, and backed by Flying Fish Partners (which also invested in Joe’s previous funding).

Joe Coffee’s role here is a two-parter: On the consumer side, they provide the mobile app and web interface for taking orders and offering up promos, with a loyalty points system that works across the “Joe network.” On the coffee shop side, they’re providing signage to get customers into the app, the interface for baristas to process orders and set up deals, along with reporting/analytics to help figure out what’s working best. In exchange, they take 9% per order, which includes credit card processing fees.

Image Credits: Joe Coffee

Joe Coffee initially focused strictly on its home turf of Seattle, where it’s supporting around 300 coffee shops. They started to expand to other regions in August of last year, opening it up nationwide in January of 2020; today, Martin tells me, they’re working with more than 1,000 shops across the U.S.

https://ift.tt/2BK6Tmd Joe Coffee raises another $1.3M to help more coffee shops take mobile orders https://ift.tt/3fergWS

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Coronavirus impact sends app downloads, usage and consumer spending to record highs in Q2

{rss:content:encoded} Coronavirus impact sends app downloads, usage and consumer spending to record highs in Q2 https://ift.tt/2BN1CdA https://ift.tt/38KCyQu July 09, 2020 at 05:51PM

As the world continued to cope with the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, the second quarter of 2020 became the largest yet for mobile app downloads, usage, and consumer spending. According to new data from app store intelligence firm App Annie, mobile app usage grew 40% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2020, even hitting an all-time high of over 200 billion hours during April. Consumer spending in apps, meanwhile, hit a record high of $27 billion in the second quarter. And app downloads reached a high of nearly 35 billion.

The growth in app usage has been fueled by social distancing and lockdown measures, as countries around the world try to quell the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Image Credits:

In India, for example, time spent in apps grew 35% in Q2 2020 from Q4 2019. Italy and Indonesia saw growth of 30% and 25%, respectively. In the U.S., time spent in apps grew 15%.

App Annie says that now, the average user is spending 4 hours and 20 minutes per day on their smartphones.

Image Credits: App Annie

 

But consumers aren’t just launching apps they already have installed on their phones — they’re also downloading new ones. In the second quarter, consumers downloaded a nearly 35 billion new apps, an all-time high.

Google Play accounted for 25 billion of those downloads, representing 10% year-over-year growth. India and Brazil were the the two largest markets for Google Play in the quarter.

Image Credits: App Annie

iOS downloads grew 20% year-over-year to reach nearly 10 billion. The U.S. and China were iOS’s biggest markets for downloads, but the U.S. and Saudi Arabia saw the most quarter-over-quarter growth. The latter was likely attributed to a nationwide lockdown and school closures, driving app downloads in the country to a all-time high in April and 100% year-over-year growth on iOS.

Games were downloaded at record levels in the quarter, App Annie noted, totalling 14 billion games. In the first week of Q2, weekly mobile game downloads broke records at over 1.2 billion, and weekly download levels remained at 1 billion on average throughout the quarter, up 20% year over year.

Image Credits: App Annie

Non-gaming apps represented over half (55%) of the new downloads on Android and 70% of those on iOS.

More specifically, top categories outside of games included “Tools” and “Entertainment” on Google Play and “Photo and Video” and “Entertainment” on iOS. But other categories saw strong growth, including “Business,” “Health & Fitness” and “Education” which saw quarter-over-quarter growth in downloads of 115%, 75% and 50% respectively on Google Play.

On iOS, “Health and Fitness,” “Shopping,” and “Medical” apps saw strong quarter-over-quarter growth of 30%, 25% and 20%, meanwhile.

With record downloads and usage, consumer spending also grew significantly as a result, particularly among streaming video services.

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In the second quarter, consumers spent a record $27 billion in apps, up 15% year-over-year to $17 billion on iOS and up 25% to $10 billion on Android.

Games accounted for $19 billion of the spend, up 15% quarter-over-quarter. Google Play saw sizable growth at 25% quarter-over-quarter, which was 2x the growth rate on iOS.

Image Credits: App Annie

Non-gaming apps were 35% of the spend on iOS. The U.S. and China the largest contributors in both games and non-game apps on iOS in the quarter. However, the U.S. notably took back the top position as the largest market for consumer games — a spot previously held by China — with 30% quarter-over-quarter growth in Q2.

Non-games were 15% of the spend on Google Play. The U.S., Japan, and South Korea were the largest markets in both non-games and games alike on Google Play.

Top Google Play categories in addition to “Games” included “Social” and “Entertainment.” Growth in the “Entertainment” category was driven largely by Disney+ and Twitch, App Annie noted.

On iOS, “Entertainment” and “Photo and Video” were the largest categories by consumer spend, in addition to “Games.” Here, TikTok drove growth for the “Photo and Video” category, becoming the No. 1 top grossing app on iOS App Store globally in Q2 2020 thanks to sales of virtual gifts used to tip streamers.

Image Credits: App Annie

While much of the activity taking place on mobile devices during the pandemic is related to having fun — like watching videos or playing games, for example — several of the top apps in the quarter were work-related.

Zoom, for instance, became the No. 2 of most downloaded app globally in Q2 2020.  Google Meet was No. 7.

TikTok, meanwhile, was the top app by downloads and spending, and the No. 7 by monthly active users. That will likely change in the months ahead, due to its ban in India. A proposed U.S. ban has also recently seen TikTok rivals gaining ground. Amid this disruption, local competitors in India have seen increased usage, and elsewhere, competitors like Byte and Likee have surged.

 

 

 

 

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Freshworks acquires IT orchestration service Flint

Customer engagement company Freshworks today announced that it has acquired Flint, an IT orchestration and cloud management platform based in India. The acquisition will help Freshworks strengthen its Freshservice IT support service by bringing a number of new automation tools to it. Maybe just as importantly, though, it will also bolster Freshworks’ ambitions around cloud management.

Freshworks CPO Prakash Ramamurthy, who joined the company last October, told me that while the company was already looking at expanding its IT services (ITSM) and operations management (ITOM) capabilities before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, having those capabilities has now become even more important given that a lot of these teams are now working remotely.

“If you take ITSM, we allow for customers to create their own workflow for service catalog items and so on and so forth, but we found that there’s a lot of things which were repetitive tasks,” Ramamurthy said. “For example, I lost my password or new employee onboarding, where you need to auto-provision them in the same set of accounts. Flint had integrated with a Freshservice to help automate and orchestrate some of these routine tasks and a lot of customers were using it and there’s a lot of interest in it.”

He noted that while the company was already seeing increased demand for these tools earlier in the year, the pandemic made that need even more obvious. And given that pressing need, Freshworks decided that it would be far easier to acquire an existing company than to build its own solution.

“Even in early January, we felt this was a space where we had to have a time-to-market advantage,” he said. “So acquiring and aggressively integrating it into our product lines seemed to be the most optimal thing to do than take our time to build it — and we are super fortunate that we made placed the right bet because of what has happened since then.”

The acquisition helps Freshworks build out some of its existing services, but Ramamurthy also stressed that it will really help the company build out its operations management capabilities to go from alert management to also automatically solving common IT issues. “We feel there’s natural synergy and [Flint’s] orchestration solution and their connectors come in super handy because they have connectors to all the modern SaaS applications and the top five cloud providers and so on.”

But Flint’s technology will also help Freshworks build out its ability to help its users manage workloads across multiple clouds, an area where it is going to compete with a number of startups and incumbents. Since the company decided that it wants to play in this field, an acquisition also made a lot of sense given how long it would take to build out expertise in this area, too.

“Cloud management is a natural progression for our product line,” Ramamurthy noted. “As more and more customers have a multi-cloud strategy, we want to you give them a single pane of glass for all the work workloads they’re running. And if they wanted to do cost optimization, if you want to build on top of that, we need the basic plumbing to be able to do discovery which is kind of foundational for that.”

Freshworks will integrate Flint’s tools into Freshservice and like offer it as part of its existing tiered pricing structure, with service orchestration likely being the first new capability it will offer.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Freshworks acquires IT orchestration service Flint https://ift.tt/3eeoiAn

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