A mention of Apple’s long-awaited wireless charging pad surfaced in the company’s online store early Wednesday.
Source: CNET
The assessment comes after NASA tried to bring its main camera back online.
Source: CNET
Infor, a NYC-based enterprise software company, announced a massive $1.5 billion investment today that could be the precursor to an IPO down the road. One analyst is estimating that the valuation could be at least $60 billion.
The investment is being led by Koch Industries’ investment arm, Koch Equity Development, and Golden Gate Capital. Today’s investment comes on top of a $2 billion+ cash infusion from Koch in 2017, bringing the total raised to at least more than $3.5 billion. That’s a lot of cash.
Infor may be the largest company you never heard of with over 17,000 employees and over 9500 customers in more than 100 countries worldwide. All of those customers generated $3 billion in revenue in 2018. That’s a significant presence.
Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research, told TechCrunch that based on that revenue, he believes the valuation could be in the neighborhood of $60 billion. He based that on $3 billion in revenue, while using Oracle and SAP as similar industry comparisons. These companies have 20X price/earnings ratio. He adds, that would make it the largest tech IPO ever for NYC tech company if that comes to pass. Infor would not confirm this number with a spokesperson telling TechCrunch, “We cannot comment on value at this time.”
What does this company do to achieve this size and scope? It’s not unlike many other large enterprise companies, says Wang. It produces cloud software solutions around typical enterprise needs such CRM, ERP and Supply Chain Asset Management.
Daniel Newman, principal analyst at Futurum Research says that Infor, has grown rapidly through a series of acquisitions and an unusual approach to enterprise software. “What makes its approach to enterprise software unique is that rather than building software and then attempting to customize it for the unique [customer] needs, Infor takes an industry-based approach that incorporates both subtle and material capabilities to address specific industry needs that more generic ERP tools aren’t capable of out of the box,” Newman told TechCrunch.
He adds that this difference is attractive to many companies seeking ERP and Enterprise Asset Management tools that are built with their business in mind rather than completely customizing a software designed for any business in any industry.
As it turns out, Koch isn’t just an investor, it’s an Infor customer. “Koch was a customer of Infor before we became an investor in the company, and Koch Industries’ companies continue to move their most mission critical applications to Infor CloudSuites,” Jim Hannan, Executive Vice President and CEO for Enterprises at Koch Industries said in a statement.
The company, which was founded way back in 2002, has been shifting to the cloud over the last five years. It reports that over 70 percent of its revenue is now derived from cloud products, fueled in part by an aggressive acquisition strategy.
Note: There is an investor call shortly. We will update the story with any pertinent information after the call.
Source: TechCrunch
It keeps you motivated when you work out at home — and for a reasonable price.
Source: CNET
Your G Suite applications will soon have a different look. Several of the web apps are getting updated with subtle visual improvements inspired by Google’s Material Design guidelines.
The post Google is giving its G Suite web apps new touches of visual improvements appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Global app downloads topped 194 billion in 2018, up 35 percent from 2016, according to App Annie’s annual “State of Mobile 2019” report released today. Consumer spending across app stores was up 75 percent to reach $101 billion. The report, which analyzes trends across iOS, Android and the third-party Android stores in China combined, follows the company’s earlier report released at year-end, which looked at downloads and spending across just iOS and Google Play.
It also shows how significant China’s role has become in terms of the global app market.
Based on data from the beginning of the year through December 15, 2018, App Annie’s earlier year-end report estimated that global app downloads in 2018 would surpass 113 billion, across iOS and Google Play, and consumer spending would surpass $76 billion.
While the addition of the third-party Android app stores boosted these numbers in the new report, China’s contribution to the app market goes far beyond just the bump those stores provided.
According to the “State of Mobile” report, China accounted for nearly 50 percent of total downloads in 2018 across iOS and the third-party stores, despite the slowdown related to a nine-month long game license freeze in the country. China also accounted for nearly 40 percent of consumer spending in 2018.
Emerging markets played a role in fueling downloads, as well, accounting for three out of the top five markets for downloads (India, Brazil, and Indonesia). Download growth in the U.S., meanwhile, has slowed.
Developing markets played little role in consumer spend, however. Instead the countries contributing the most on that front were (in order): China, the U.S., Japan, South Korea, and the U.K.
However, despite China’s outsized contributions to both downloads and spending, Chinese users don’t have the most apps installed on their phone compared with other countries. Because of the prevalence of low-cost Android devices with limited storage, users in China have just over 50 apps installed, on average. But those in the U.S., South Korea, Japan and Australia, have over 100.
China’s influence on the market can also be seen in the 2018 year-end report released by Sensor Tower today.
It found that Chinese mobile gaming giant Tencent was the global leader for overall revenue across iOS and Android, not counting the third-party Android app stores. It was also the leader in game revenue.
Tencent topped the non-game app chart for 2018, too, with its Tencent Video app clocking in at No. 3.
Other Chinese apps made the year-end charts, too, including online video platform iQIYI which was the No. 4 non-game app, in terms of overall revenue; and ByteDance’s TikTok, which was the No. 4 non-game for 2018. Other high-ranking apps included UC Browser, QQ, Youku, and Tencent’s PUBG Mobile.
TikTok is still growing rapidly, too, having had its best quarter ever in Q4 2018, where it was the No. 3 app by downloads across both iOS and Google Play, and the most-downloaded app on iOS.
Source: TechCrunch
A new Pew survey also finds that more than 50 percent of Facebook users are uncomfortable with how the company compiles their information for ads.
Source: Wired
Intel’s alleged Core i9-9990XE may only be sold at auction to OEMs, meaning that only a few of the 14-core, 28-thread, 5GHz CPUs will ever see the light of day in specific devices and systems.
The post Chip off the auction block – Intel’s i9-9990XE may be sold to the highest bidder appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
China’s massive auto market hit the brakes last year as trade tensions and a softening economy dampened consumer confidence, but one segment soared on account of increasing internet penetration — used car sales.
New passenger car sales fell to 23.7 million last year, representing a 4.1 year-over-year drop according to a new report by China’s Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the country’s top auto association. That marks the very first annual decline in the world’s biggest car market since the 1990s.
A few factors were at play. For one, the tit-for-tat U.S.-China trade war has led to a slew of tariffs on U.S. car imports and weighed on consumers. The standoff prompted Tesla to cut prices for Model 3 in China and Jaguar Land Rover to temporarily close a factory after sales plummeted in the country. Internally, China is coping with a cooling economy that has undermined consumer demand across a spectrum of sectors. Regulators have also rolled back a tax-cut scheme on smaller cars that began in 2017.
Despite the overall industry slowdown, electric and hybrid vehicles continued to enjoy a healthy growth rate at 61.7 percent to clock sales of 1.26 million new units. That comes as expected as China is aiming to cut carbon footprints and lead in the global alternative energy revolution by splurging on subsidies for both consumers and manufacturers. But stumbling blocks remain for the budding industry, such as a lack of charging stations. Beijing is also mulling subsidy cuts on EVs to temper overcapacity in the long term.
As consumers tighten their purse strings amid the economic downturn, cheaper secondhand cars become more appealing. China’s Automobile Dealers Association shows that secondhand car sales reached 12.6 million for the first 11 months of 2018, marking a 13 percent growth.
The sector is only half the size of new cars, but a string of e-commerce channels are fueling the industry in a country where in-person transactions were still the norm just a few years ago. For one thing, online marketplaces inject honesty to the car-buying process by claiming to provide more price transparency for customers. A major turning point came in 2017 when China lifted constraints on cross-provincial used car deals, which means customers in less developed regions — many of whom never owned a car before — now have access to a greater variety of models compared to what’s available in their hinterland homelands.
Some of the top players in the space include Didi Chuxing-backed Renrenche, Tencent-backed Guazi and Uxin, which floated on the Nasdaq last year and recently entered a strategic partnership with Alibaba. In 2017, e-commerce transactions accounted for 17.6 percent of overall car sales in the country, a study from Uxin’s research institute found.
“Over the past few years, consumers have become increasingly receptive to buying used cars as a cost-effective alternative to new vehicles. This is particularly the case for consumers in lower-tier cities,” said Kun Dai, founder and chief executive officer of Uxin . “With extremely limited used car selection in most cities, there is a rapidly growing demand for an online platform that expands access to used cars from across the country.”
Source: TechCrunch
HyperScience, the machine learning company that turns human readable data into machine readable data, has today announced the close of a $30 million Series B funding round led by Stripes Group, with participation from existing investors FirstMark Capital and Felicis Ventures, as well as new investors Battery Ventures, Global Founders Fund, TD Ameritrade and QBE.
HyperScience launched out of stealth in 2016 with a suite of enterprise products focused on the healthcare, insurance, finance and government industries. The original products were HSForms (which handled data-entry by converting hand-written forms to digital), HSFreeForm (which did a similar function for hand-written emails or other non-form content) and HSEvaluate (which could parse through complex data on a form to help insurance companies approve or deny claims by pulling out all the relevant info).
Now, the company has combined all three of those products into a single product called HyperScience. The product is meant to help companies and organizations reduce their data-entry backlog and better serve their customers, saving money and resources.
The idea is that many of the forms we use in life or in the workplace are in an arbitrary format. My bank statements don’t look the same as your bank statements, and invoices from your company might look different than invoices from my company.
HyperScience is able to take those forms and pipe them into the system quickly and easily, without help from humans.
Instead of charging by seat, HyperScience charges by documents, as the mere use of HyperScience should mean that fewer humans are actually “using” the product.
The latest round brings HyperScience’s total funding to $50 million, and the company plans to use a good deal of that funding to grow the team.
“We have a product that works and a phenomenally good product market fit,” said CEO Peter Brodsky. “What will determine our success is our ability to build and scale the team.”
Source: TechCrunch