The latest budget iPhone arrived this month to largely positive reviews. The next flagship, on the other hand, may have to wait. The COVID-19 pandemic is having all manner of knock-on effects on the global economy, and the supply chain is certainly not immune. The Wall Street Journal this morning is reporting that the iPhone […]

Face ID was a great idea — until large swathes of the world were forced to wear face masks, rendering it largely useless. Apple has apparently heard our pain. Users are reporting a subtle new feature in the latest developer version of iOS 13.5 that will make it easier to unlock your iPhone without having […]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Apple device sales have taken a hit, but the company’s services are doing swell. The iPhone, the longtime cornerstone of the company’s hardware portfolio, hit $28.96 billion in revenue for Q2, down from $31.1 billion from this time last year. The iPad and Mac lines saw drops […]

Apple’s earnings show the impact of COVID-19, NVIDIA’s top scientist shares an open source ventilator design and Amazon anticipates big spending in the coming months. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 1, 2020. 1. iPhone sales are down, ahead of uncertain times for the industry Apple device sales have taken a hit, but the company’s […]

Quarter after quarter, familiar stories have appeared. The smartphone market, once seemingly bulletproof, has suffered. The list of factors is long, and I’ve written about them ad nauseam here, but the CliffsNotes version is: costs are too high, innovation is too incremental and most people already own a device that will be plenty good for […]

The UK has this week started testing a coronavirus contacts-tracing app which NHSX, a digital arm of the country’s National Health Service, has been planning and developing since early March. The test is taking place in the Isle of Wight, a 380km2 island off the south coast of England, with a population of around 140,000. […]

Even though Apple did not invent the mouse pointer, history has cemented its place in dragging it out of obscurity and into mainstream use. Its everyday utility, pioneered at SRI and Xerox Parc and later combined with a bit of iconic* work from Susan Kare at Apple, has made the pointer our avatar in digital […]

Got something in your medical history that first responders should know about if you call 911? Things like known drug allergies, or the medications you’re on? The iPhone and Apple Watch will soon be able to share this information with first responders automatically (if you opt to let it do so). When a user with […]

The UK may be rethinking its decision to shun Apple and Google’s API for its national coronavirus contacts tracing app, according to the Financial Times, which reported yesterday that the government is paying an IT supplier to investigate whether it can integrate the tech giants’ approach after all. As we’ve reported before coronavirus contacts tracing […]

Apple has awarded $10 million from its Advanced Manufacturing Fund to COPAN Diagnostics, a company focused on producing sample collection kits for testing COVID-19 to hospitals in the U.S. The money comes from the fund that Apple established to support the development and growth of U.S.-based manufacturing, but is particularly notable because to date, the […]

It’s fair to say that even before the impact of COVID-19, companies had begun a steady march to the cloud. Maybe it wasn’t fast enough for AWS, as Andy Jassy made clear in his 2019 Re:invent keynote, but it was happening all the same and the steady revenue increases across the cloud infrastructure market bore […]

This week we continue to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of apps, plus the use of live-streaming apps as fundraising tools and more.

It was only the other week that Andreesen Horowitz announced their second blockchain-focused fund of $515 million. In the announcement, they said: “We are still early in this Web 3 build-out. High-performance programmable blockchains will make decentralized network development much more accessible. After years of R&D, we are excited that a number of next-gen programmable […]

Apple and Google are providing additional resources for developers working with the first version of their Exposure Notification API, the development tools the companies have created and are working on in order to provide a cross-platform way for public health agencies to notify individuals of a potential exposure to a person with a confirmed case […]

The UK’s data protection watchdog confirmed today the government still hasn’t given it sight of a key legal document attached to the coronavirus contacts tracing app which is being developed by the NHSX, the digital transformation branch of the country’s National Health Service . Under UK and EU law, a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) […]

Google Meet — the video call service formerly known as Hangouts Meet, which itself was an offshoot from Hangouts, not to be confused with Google Chat, Duo, Allo or any of the company’s other communications products — is finally making its debut on Gmail accounts, where it probably should have been since 2010. Everyone with […]

For all of its strengths, Google hasn’t exactly led the way in podcasting. After years of letting third-party developers dominate the category on Play, the company finally introduced its own Podcasts app. Since then, however, it’s been largely eclipsed by Spotify as second place to Apple’s longstanding efforts. Google Podcasts is finally available on iOS […]

The UK has this week started testing a coronavirus contacts-tracing app which NHSX, a digital arm of the country’s National Health Service, has been planning and developing since early March. The test is taking place in the Isle of Wight, a 380km2 island off the south coast of England, with a population of around 140,000. […]

The Indian government has said that its contact-tracing app Aarogya Setu “by design” fetches the location data of its 90 million users and allows them to view the concentration of people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in their vicinity. New Delhi issued the statement after France-based security researcher Baptiste Robert found what he […]

Facebook has a new connectivity app called Discover to help those who can’t afford to get online access information on the web. The service, available through mobile web and Android app, allows users to visit any website in text format (no video, images, audio and other elements that eat up large amounts of data) and […]

Google today announced that it is extending the preview period of Android 11 by about a month. So instead of launching a beta this month, as it had previously planned, it’ll release a fourth developer preview today instead. The first beta will officially launch on June 3, during an Android -centric online event it’ll hold […]

The UK may be rethinking its decision to shun Apple and Google’s API for its national coronavirus contacts tracing app, according to the Financial Times, which reported yesterday that the government is paying an IT supplier to investigate whether it can integrate the tech giants’ approach after all. As we’ve reported before coronavirus contacts tracing […]

YouTube TV is expanding its lineup of channels thanks to a new, multi-year distribution agreement with ViacomCBS, announced this morning. The Google-owned streaming TV service is gaining 14 new ViacomCBS channels as a result of the deal, including news, sports, and entertainment offerings. It will also continue to carry CBS broadcast stations, CBS Sports Network, […]

Apple has awarded $10 million from its Advanced Manufacturing Fund to COPAN Diagnostics, a company focused on producing sample collection kits for testing COVID-19 to hospitals in the U.S. The money comes from the fund that Apple established to support the development and growth of U.S.-based manufacturing, but is particularly notable because to date, the […]

YouTube is giving advertisers a few more tools to reach consumers and measure ad effectiveness on TVs. These tools already exist for YouTube on other platforms, but now the Google -owned video service is bringing them to connected televisions. In a blog post, it says this is in response to how YouTube viewership has grown […]

Google today is launching a new app, Read Along, that aims to help elementary school students practice their reading skills and stay educationally engaged amid school closures due to coronavirus. The new Android app is based on Google’s existing application, Bolo, which launched in India last year with a catalog of read-along stories in both […]

Locatee, a Swiss startup that uses existing sensors and IT infrastructures to provide employers and commercial real estate owners with detailed data about how their spaces are utilized, today announced that it has raised a $4 million Series A funding round led by San Francisco-based FYRFLY Venture Partners and Zurich-based Tomahawk VC. “We started the […]

The coronavirus is proving to have an unexpected upside for the adtech industry. The U.K.’s data protection agency has paused an investigation into the industry’s processing of internet users’ personal data, saying targeted suspension of privacy oversight is merited because of disruption to businesses as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigation into adtech […]

“Is Greta Thunberg a hypocrite?” Google that phrase and you will get thousands of results. It just goes to show that, to a large extent, the “Q&A” model is broken on the internet. Where once Yahoo Answers and Quora were considered the bright young things of Web 2.0’s “Read/Write Web,” today there is only the […]

Google today launched an update to its Duo video chat app (which you definitely shouldn’t confuse with Hangouts or Google Meet, Google’s other video, audio and text chat apps). There are plenty of jokes to be made about Google’s plethora of chat options, but Duo is trying to be a bit different from Hangouts and […]

Pillar of country’s economy resumes operations despite concerns over workers’ health

Keeping cinemas open will not stop operators from falling into a sea of red ink

Producers overwhelmed as supply chain disruption fuels fears of shortages

Companies lean heavily on equity in effort to dent blow from coronavirus

Canberra’s call for an inquiry into the origins of coronavirus has provoked threats from Beijing

The outlook looks weak for shares exposed to the local economy

Boost for world’s largest producer of the canned fish as consumers stockpile long-life goods

Tech Scroll Asia, your guide to the billions made and lost in Asia tech

Chinese ecommerce giant to help expand 50-floor Axa Tower

Catering and ground-handling company excluded from Canberra’s coronavirus support scheme

Banks try to limit fallout from collapse of Singapore commodities trader Hin Leong

The fallout for Asian banks’ exposed to the oil and trading sector has just begun

Vice-chairman Lee Jae-yong’s claim that family will release control over tech giant met with scepticism

Coronavirus has added months to game console’s lifespan, but not years

Jump in downloads helps Japanese video game group score 41% rise in profit

Bank alleges collapsed Singaporean company raised money through duplicate invoices

Charles Li will not seek reappointment when contract expires in October 2021

Phone-based system controls entry and exit to neighbourhoods and taxi cabs

Research finds WeChat analyses messages from users registered outside China to train its algorithms

Kingdom offers crude to US at a premium but shows reluctance to lose Asian market share