Ford plans to invest more than $850 million to add more production capacity at a second U.S. factory for its next-generation battery-electric vehicle program.
The investment, which will be made through 2023, will focus on expanding Ford’s Flat Rock Assembly Plant in southeast Michigan. The plant investment also includes funding to build the next-generation Mustang and is part of a $900 million investment in Ford’s operations in southeastern Michigan.
The announcement is tied to Ford’s larger and previously announced plan to invest $11.1 billion in developing electric vehicles.
Ford’s all-electric performance SUV, coming in 2020, will be produced at its Cuautitlán, Mexico plant. The next-generation of EVs, which will share a flexible architecture, will be produced at Flat Rock.
“We’ve taken a fresh look at the growth rates of electrified vehicles and know we need to protect additional production capacity given our accelerated plans for fully electric vehicles,” Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of global operations said in a statement. “This is good news for the future of southeast Michigan, delivering more good-paying manufacturing jobs.”
Ford also announced Wednesday it is building its next-generation North American Transit Connect small commercial and passenger van in Mexico, starting in 2021.
Ford’s $11 billion investment will be used to add 16 all-electric vehicles within its global portfolio of 40 electrified vehicles through 2022. At the heart of the company’s electrification effort is its Corktown project, a massive 1.2 million-square-foot space dedicated to its electric and autonomous vehicles businesses.
The goal of Corktown is to create a “mobility corridor” — Ford’s version of its own Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley — that ties hubs of research, testing and development in the academic hub of Ann Arbor to Ford’s Dearborn headquarters, and finally to Detroit.
One of those EVs — and perhaps the most anticipated — will be a Mustang-inspired electric crossover that it plans to bring to market in 2020. Ford shared a teaser image last year, depicting a sketch of the vehicle’s backside, which shows a leaning toward the Mustang profile.
The company has also announced plans to offer electrified options in its popular F-Series pickup line.
Source: TechCrunch
Microsoft has rolled out a patch that will warn Windows 7 users that security updates will soon come to an end.
The patch rolled out Wednesday warning users of the impending deadline, January 14, 2020, when the software giant will no longer roll out fixes for security flaws and vulnerabilities. The deadline comes some 10 years after Windows 7 first debuted in 2009, more than half a decade before Microsoft’s most recent operating system Windows 10 was introduced.
Microsoft’s move to stop issuing security updates is part of the company’s ongoing effort to push users to its latest software, which stands on a greater security foundation and improvements to mitigate attacks.
Starting April 18, users on Windows 7 will begin receiving warnings about the approaching cut-off.
Windows 7 still commands some 40 percent of the desktop market, according to Net Applications. With exactly 300 days before the deadline, the clock is ticking on consumer security support.
Enterprise customers have the option to pay for extended security updates until 2023.
For years, Microsoft allowed Windows 7 users to upgrade to Windows 10 for free to try to encourage growth and upgrades. With those incentives gone, many only have the lack of security updates to look ahead to, which will put business data and systems at risk of cyberattack.
It’s almost unheard of for Microsoft to patch end-of-life software. In 2017, Microsoft released rare security patches for Windows XP — retired three years earlier — to prevent the spread of WannaCry, a ransomware strain that piggybacked off leaked hacking tools, developed by the National Security Agency.
The ransomware outbreak knocked schools, businesses and hospitals offline.
Windows 7’s successor, Windows 8, will continue to receive updates until January 10, 2023.
Source: TechCrunch
Many of the themes and stories found in Hulu’s “Shrill” will be familiar to fans of writer Lindy West — after all, it’s based on her book “Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman,” and she’s a writer on the series.
But “Shrill” has mined the autobiographical material in West’s book to tell a fictionalized story about a young journalist played by Aidy Bryant of “Saturday Night Live” (she also co-wrote the first two episodes).
When we meet Annie, she’s ignored or belittled by everyone — a random yoga instructor, her dismissive boss, her lunkheaded kinda-sorta boyfriend and even her mother — for being fat. Over the course of the six-episode season, Annie begins to understand her own worth, and to stand up for herself.
On this week’s episode of the Original Content podcast, we’re joined by Devin Coldewey to review the show.
“Shrill” pushes boundaries and deals with some pretty serious topics, but it has a light touch — Annie’s empathetic, optimistic outlook seems to be reflected in the broader story. While at least one of us had some reservations about the writing (which can feel a little too on-message), we all agreed that Bryant’s performance is terrific, making the character’s empowerment feel real, specific and earned.
You can listen in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)
Source: TechCrunch
There has been some negative sentiment surrounding the games industry recently, with stock prices of public games companies in question in both the U.S. and China. While being contrarian to market sentiment is always risky, it’s also possible that folks might be taking a long-term solution to a short-term problem. Games industry software/hardware combined revenue could drive well over $200 billion of revenue by 2023, and there was a record $5.7 billion investment in games companies in 2018. So what’s going on?
The games industry isn’t one monolithic sector. Depending on how you slice it, the market is made up of 15 sectors, eight platform types (e.g. mobile, PC, console) and even more proprietary hardware/software platforms (e.g. iOS, Android, Xbox One, Sony PS4, Nintendo Switch).
Games software/hardware sector revenue share versus growth (2018-2023)
(Note: See selected data below. Free charts do not include all the numbers, axes and data from Digi-Capital’s Games Report, with underlying data sourced directly from companies and reliable secondary sources.)
We first forecast mobile’s dominance of the games market way back in 2011. At that time, many traditional games companies didn’t believe mobile/online games could become the driving force for games. Some of those companies no longer exist, so what’s happening today is nothing new.
Total global mobile app store revenues (gross across games and non-games apps, including app store revenue share) topped $100 billion for the first time in 2018. Mobile games delivered around three quarters of that number, as they have consistently for years. So where mobile games drove more than $70 billion gross revenue globally last year, they could top $100 billion revenue (again gross, including app store revenue share) in their own right in the next five years. But like all games sectors, mobile games are hit-driven. And this could be the source of some of the mismatch between the market’s understanding of short-term trends and long-term potential.
For example, Supercell’s Clash of Clans and Clash Royale have delivered over $10 billion revenue to date. However, Supercell also saw revenues and profits decline in 2018 for the second year in a row as its franchises matured. Yet Supercell’s newest franchise, Brawl Stars, delivered $100 million revenue within its first two months. Swings and roundabouts.
Epic Games had the biggest breakout mobile games hit of 2018, with Fortnite contributing significantly to a reported $3 billion profit in 2018. It also anchored part of the interest behind a record $1.25 billion fundraising round last year. Yet the company removed once-dominant mobile franchise Infinity Blade from the App Store, and redirected internal development resources to focus on Fortnite by closing Paragon and stopping further development on Unreal Tournament. We will come back to Fortnite in the context of mobile games becoming platforms in their own right.
Perhaps the biggest concern for mobile games after last year is China, in which the regulator ceased approving new games for most of 2018. This weighed particularly heavily on market heavyweights Tencent and NetEase, although the regulator returned to approving their games this year. However, the regulator again stopped accepting games in February, only to approve more games in March. This regulatory risk has resulted in our downgrading Chinese games revenue growth rates until a clearer long-term pattern emerges.
Niantic’s mobile AR smash Pokémon GO took just over 1 percent of mobile games revenue globally last year, and has been reported to drive some astonishingly big numbers: 800 million downloads, more than $2.5 billion lifetime revenue, 147 million MAU, 5 million DAU, 78 percent of users aged 18 to 34, 144 billion steps taken by users, 500 million visits to sponsored locations and Niantic’s valuation of nearly $4 billion (Note: Not all of these figures have been confirmed by Niantic.) Off the back of this, Niantic is exploring Pokémon GO’s potential to become a platform, with GO Snapshot challenging Snapchat, and the Niantic Real World Platform as a serious AR Cloud player. We’ll come back to these.
PC games hardware/software is made up of four individual sectors, including PC games hardware (gaming computers, upgrades and peripherals), PC games, online (DLC, IAP and subscriptions), PC games (digital sales) and PC games (physical sales). While each subsector has different characteristics, scales and growth rates, together they make up the only part of the market close to mobile games long-term. Google’s new Stadia cloud gaming platform and competitors could also fundamentally impact high-end gaming across all platforms (not just PC). Mobile games software and PC games hardware/software combined could deliver three quarters of total games industry revenues by 2023.
Selected multiplayer PC games (ex-China)
While PC games hardware is massive, users are buying that hardware mainly to play MMO/MOBA games. This part of the market is consolidated around franchises from major public games publishers such as Tencent and Activision Blizzard, as well as independents like Wargaming and Bluehole.
Console games were the market leader for games hardware/software for decades, and remain huge despite no longer being an engine of growth. The highest growth here could come from console games (digital sales) and console games (online), with console games hardware and console games (physical sales) both ex-growth long-term. Despite flattish platform growth for console games hardware/software, they could still deliver multiple tens of billions of dollars revenue by 2023.
Of the remaining market sectors, a handful are small today but have high-growth potential long-term. These include VR games, VR hardware, AR games and esports. Yet taken individually, each sector is likely to deliver in the 1 percent to 2 percent range of total games market revenue in five years’ time. So great for indie developers, but more challenging commercially for the big guns in terms of scale.
Geographical games market discussions tend to focus on China and the U.S., but there are more than 50 country markets driving growth at a global level. Scales and growth rates vary dramatically from giant, stable growth countries such as China (even with its current uncertainty), the U.S. and Japan to higher growth markets like India and Russia. In aggregate, Asia could take around half of global games market revenue by 2023 (despite short-term concerns about China). Europe might deliver around a quarter of global revenue, followed by North America at around one fifth in the same time frame. Countries in MEA and Latin America make up the balance at a much lower level.
Concentration versus growth
The law of big numbers caught up with the games industry years ago, with the 10 largest publicly listed games companies taking three quarters of public games company revenues globally (Note: This ratio does not include private games company revenues, which are substantial). When you already produce billions to tens of billions of dollars in revenue, high growth rates aren’t easy to come by as new hits counterbalance maturing franchises.
Public games company revenue share
(Note: Heat map displays relative revenue scale of publicly listed games companies. Private games company revenues not shown on this chart.)
Top grossing mobile games of recent years (outside China) often came from independents. Standouts include Supercell, King, Epic Games, Niantic, Machine Zone and others. Perhaps in response to this dynamic, there was more than $75 billion of games M&A over the last five years. Major games companies have been buying both growth and cash flow.
The beauty of what Steve Jobs created with the App Store is that it democratized distribution of apps at scale beyond the early social games market. It also enabled indie games developers to build some of the rocket ships we’ve seen over the last decade. Yet despite massive growth, even the biggest mobile games couldn’t really be described as platforms in the traditional sense. Not yet.
Where Tencent’s WeChat messaging platform looks like a domestic app store rival with its “mini-programs,” some mobile games pureplays are taking very different routes to becoming platforms in their own right.
For Epic Games, the recent Marshmello concert in Fortnite held out the tantalizing prospect of the beginnings of the “Metaverse” on ubiquitous, affordable mobile devices. With 10.7 million concurrent attendees, this represents a significant milestone in the evolution of games as platforms. Given Fortnite’s previous records for streaming on Twitch and concurrent esports tournament viewers, the savvy Tim Sweeney is beginning to leverage all that scale in a totally new way. Together with building its own app store and the quality of its Unreal Engine, the lessons learned from Fortnite and partial owner Tencent are leading to new horizons.
Where Epic Games is building a metaverse that is a little like Ready Player One without the headsets, Niantic has taken a different approach. Leveraging the real-world, big data stream coming from Pokémon GO, Niantic is building the core of an AR cloud ecosystem to challenge Google, Apple and Facebook. It could also move the company far beyond its entertainment origins for real-world navigation, social, e-commerce, advertising and more.
Epic Games and Niantic could become two of the most valuable platform companies in the world, with long-term potential even they might not fully understand yet.
All this potential doesn’t mean that short-term concerns aren’t valid, or that some games companies (even those currently at scale) might not fall from grace. Some of the volatility of recent times could turn out to be right on the money. When we talked to Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney about all of this, he said “I think that we’re just in the final days of a long transition away from the old retail-centric game release model. Good times ahead.”
With the long-term prospects for games still looking positive, the brave, bold and lucky could have a bright future.
Source: TechCrunch
Older Android devices—of which there are over 100 million still in use—will remain exposed.
Source: Wired
Starbucks is serving up a steaming hot $100 million cash commitment to anchor a new food-focused fund in partnership with the consumer and tech-focused focused private equity firm Valor Equity Partners.
The behemoth of burnt-coffee said that its commitment to the Valor Siren Ventures fund is an attempt to focus on “new ideas and technologies that are relevant to customers, inspiring to partners (employees), and meaningful to Starbucks business.”
The Starbucks announcement was short on details, except for a general statement that it would focus on investments in companies developing technologies, products and solutions related to food or retail.
As a company, Starbucks has been incredibly innovative — rolling out new tech-enabled services to customers. The company has one of the most popular mobile payment services, is dabbling with cryptocurrency payments, and has a robust on-demand delivery service through UberEats.
Meanwhile, Valor has a long history of investing in both technology and consumer food businesses. Thee firm as investments in companies that run the gamut from SpaceX, Tesla, and Addepar to food services companies and restaurant chains like WowBao, Fooda, and Eatsa.
With its commitment Starbucks joins a growing number of food and beverage companies that are embracing venture capital. Kelloggs, Tyson Foods, General Mills all have affiliated venture funds and even Chipotle is starting an accelerator program.
“We believe that innovative ideas are fuel for the future, and we continue to build on this heritage inside our company across beverage, experiential retail, and our digital flywheel,” said Kevin Johnson, president and chief executive officer of Starbucks, in a statement. “At the same time, and with an eye toward accelerating our innovation agenda, we are inspired by, and want to support the creative, entrepreneurial businesses of tomorrow with whom we may explore commercial relationships down the road. This new partnership with Valor presents exciting opportunities, not only for these startups, but also for Starbucks, as we build an enduring company for decades to come.”
Source: TechCrunch
Oculus plans to phase out its flagship Rift VR headset for its newly created Rift S. The Rift S made its debut this week at the 2019 Game Developers Conference and is expected to be released in spring 2019.
The post Oculus shows off the Rift S, plans to phase out its original VR headset appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
The Oculus Rift S is a bit of an odd one. Three years after the Rift’s initial launch, Oculus has released a product that feels like a lateral move rather than a leap forward. It’s better in a few ways and worse in a few ways. After spending some time playing with it and spending a lot more time thinking about it, it’s not super clear to me why Oculus made it.
The best reason I can think of is that Facebook sees standalone VR as the area where it should be completely ignoring profits to achieve a mass audience and PC VR users should essentially be subsidizing the broader market with hardware they actually make money off of. Oculus seems to be wanting it both ways though, because they could have released a headset that pushed the limits and charged more for it, but they opted to launch a product that moved laterally and made sacrifices, but they still are charging more for it.
We reported that former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe left his position as head of PC VR at Facebook partially over the frustration of this project being settled on, something he saw as representative of the company’s “race to the bottom,” a source told us in October.
I will say that the Rift S looks better in real life than it does on paper, but compared to the Oculus Quest and Oculus Go headsets, it still feels like Oculus is launching something below their own standards with the Rift S and that their co-designer Lenovo ultimately made them a headset on-the-cheap that got the job done while lowering the build-of-materials costs.
Well, what is there to like about the new headset?
The new Insight tracking is great, and while this headset basically feels like a minor upgrade to Lenovo’s Mixed Reality headset, the tracking is undoubtedly better than what is available on Microsoft’s two-camera reference layout. By comparison, the Rift S has 5 cameras which seem to capture a much greater tracking volume which really encapsulates all of those edge cases where the controllers are far out of sight.
This is a great system and while outside-in tracking is probably always going to be more accurate in certain situations, moving away from the old method was worth it in terms of making the setup process easier. On that note, the new passthrough mode which you can use to set up your boundaries in the Guardian system seems quite a bit easier to use.
On the note of displays, Oculus made some sacrifices here moving from OLED to LCD… and from 90hz to 80hz… and from dual adjustable-panels to a single-panel, but I was largely pleased with the clarity of the new, higher-res single display. This is an area that I’ll really need to dig more into with a full review, but there weren’t any apparent huge issues.
Otherwise, not a ton jumps out as a clear improvement.
The new “halo” ring strap system isn’t for me comfort-wise, but I can imagine others will prefer the fit. Even so, it gives the headset a much more rickety build quality, which has taken an overall downgrade from the original Rift in my opinion. Lenovo’s headsets have typically been bulkier and harder feeling than the softer-edged products from Google, Oculus and HTC; Lenovo’s VR design ethos is on full display here.
The removal of built-in headphones seems like the most outright poor decision with this release and while the integrated speakers are serviceable, it’s clear you’ll want to add some wired headphones if you’re looking for a serious experience, which most PC VR users definitely are.
The new Touch controllers are fine, they’re the same as what will ship with the Oculus Quest. They have a different design that feels pretty familiar but they feel smaller and a bit cheaper. The tracking ring has moved from around your knuckles to the top of the controller.
When it comes to gameplay — when the headset is on and you’re buried in an experience — most of these issues aren’t as apparent as when you consider them individually. The issue is that while the Quest and Go are miles better than any other products in their individual categories, this latest effort is just very mehh. It’s actually odd how much more high-quality the Oculus Quest feels than the Rift S when trying one after the other, it seems like it should be the other way around.
I’ll have to spend more time with the headset for a full review, of course, but on first approach the Rift S seems to be a misstep in Facebook’s otherwise stellar VR product line even if the new Insight tracking system is a push forward in the hardware’s overall usability.
Source: TechCrunch
Postmates is launching a new feature called Postmates Party that lets customers within the same neighborhood pool their orders. In return, these customers get the food delivered for free, eliminating a major pinch point for potential Postmates users.
The feature illustrates how Postmates, one of the earlier entrants to the billion-dollar food delivery wars, is trying to remain competitive by appealing to price-sensitive customers.
Customers using the app can tap on the Postmates Party tab, which will show trending merchants that people in their neighborhood are ordering from at that exact moment. By joining the “party,” customers can share the delivery from popular restaurants and get free delivery.
For now, the company’s party feature will only be offered in a handful of the nearly 3,000 U.S. cities it currently operates in. The feature is now available in Chicago, Las Vegas, Long Beach, Calif., Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Phoenix, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Orange County, Calif., and Philadelphia.
And there is an important caveat. The party feature has a five-minute time limit in which the customer must place their order to get the deal.
“We are driven by the vision of creating a logistics infrastructure that allows goods to move throughout a city at nearly zero cost to the consumer. Postmates Party is the latest innovation in on-demand delivery that will help us deliver on this vision,” Postmates CEO and co-founder Bastian Lehmann said in a statement. “Postmates Party is a fun way to give customers the option to save money by ordering from popular restaurants that people all around them are ordering from in real time.”
Earlier this year, Postmates raised an additional $100 million in equity funding at a $1.85 billion valuation.The round comes four months after the eight-year-old startup drove home a $300 million investment that knocked it into “unicorn” territory.
Source: TechCrunch
The latest penalty—stemming from how Google previously displayed search results on other websites—probably won’t act as a deterrent, and critics want more.
Source: Wired