Month: July 2020

Microsoft’s new screen time and parental controls app, Microsoft Family Safety, is today launching publicly on iOS and Android, following a preview of the experience which had arrived earlier this spring. The app is designed to help parents better understand children’s use of screen time, set limits and create screen time schedules, configure boundaries around web access, and track family members’ location, among other things.

The app competes with other parental control technologies, including those built into iOS and Android — the latter of which is also available as a standalone app, called Family Link. Like its competitors, Microsoft Family Safety will work best for those who have already bought into the company’s own ecosystem of products and services. In Microsoft’s case, that includes Windows 10 PCs and Xbox devices, for example.

Also like many screen time apps, Family Safety displays an activity log of how screen time is being used by kids. It can track the hours spent on devices, including Windows computers, phones, and Xbox, as well as across websites and apps. It can also show the terms kids are searching for online.

A weekly report is emailed to parents and kids, with the hopes of encouraging discussions around healthy use of screen time. This was already a complicated subject before the pandemic. But now, with kids attending school at home and filling summer downtime with hours in games while parents still try to work without childcare, it’s grown to be even more complicated.

Initially, parents may have just given up on screen time altogether, grateful for anything that allowed them that gave them moments of peace. But with staying at home becoming a new normal, many families are now reconsidering what amount of screen time is healthy and how much is too much.

With the new app, parents can set screen time limits that apply across devices — including Xbox. These limits can be narrowly configured to allow for access to educational apps that facilitate online learning, while limiting other types of screen time — like gaming, for instance. When kids run out of time, they can ask for more and parents can choose whether or not to grant it.

Meanwhile, the web filtering aspects of the new app take advantage of Microsoft’s newer browser, Microsoft Edge across Windows, Xbox, and Android. The app will allow parents to set search filters and block mature content. Other content controls will notify parents if the child tries to download a mature game or app from the Microsoft Store, as well.

 

Parents can also control purchases by granting approval to kids’ requests, so there won’t be surprise bills later.

Plus, the app’s built-in location sharing means families can skip downloading additional family locator apps, like Life360, for access to basic location tracking features — like those that show family members on a map and lets you save favorite locations, like “Home.”

Since its preview period, Microsoft has expanded the app’s capabilities to include a handful of new features, including one that lets you block and unblock specific apps, a location clustering feature, and an expanded set of options for granting more screen time (e.g 15 or 30 mins., 1, 2, or 3 hours, etc.). Accessibility options were also updated and improved, including improved visual contrast for low vision users and additional context for screen readers.

You’ll note, however, that some of Family Safety’s experience don’t fully extend to iOS and Android, like purchase controls and web filtering. On iOS, the app can’t even track screen time usage as Apple makes no API available for this, even after launching its own screen time service and shutting down competing apps.

That’s due to how other platforms have their own operating systems and ecosystems locked down to encourage customers to only buy and use their devices. Unfortunately, that means families that have devices from a variety of vendors — like iPhone users who also game on Xbox, or Android users whose computer is a Mac, for instance — don’t have simple tools that let them manage everything from one place.

Microsoft says it will soon roll out two new features to Family Safety following its launch. These include location alerts and drive safety (e.g. aimed teen drivers),, and will be a part of a paid Microsoft 365 Family Subscription.

The new Family Safety app is rolling out now for iOS and Android as a free download. You may not be able to immediately access the app due to its phased rollout, but should sometime this week.

Source: Tech Crunch

When SAP announced it was spinning out Qualtrics on Sunday, a company it bought less than two years ago for an eye-popping $8 billion, it was enough to make your head spin. At the time, then CEO Bill McDermott saw it as a way to bridge the company’s core operational with customer data, while acquiring a cloud company that could help generate recurring revenue for the ERP giant, and maybe give it a dose of innovation along the way.

But Sunday night the company announced it was spinning out the acquisition, giving its $8 billion baby independence, and essentially handing the company back to founder Ryan Smith, who will become the largest individual shareholder when this all over.

It’s not every day you see founders pull in a windfall like $8 billion, get sucked into the belly of the large corporate beast and come out the other side just 20 months later with the cash, independence and CEO as the largest individual stockholder.

While SAP will own a majority of the stock, much like Dell owns a majority of VMware, the company will operate independently and have its own board. It can acquire other firms and make decisions separately from SAP.

We spoke to a few industry analysts to find out what they think about all this, and while the reasoning behind the move involves a lot of complex pieces, it could be as simple as the deal was done under the previous CEO, and the new one was ready to move on from it.

Bold step

It’s certainly unusual for a company like SAP to spend this kind of money, and then turn around so quickly and spin it off. In fact, Brent Leary, principal analyst at CRM Essentials, says that this was a move he didn’t see coming, and it could be related to that fat purchase price. “To me it could mean that SAP didn’t see the synergies of the acquisition panning out as they had envisioned and are looking to recoup some of their investment,” Leary told TechCrunch.

Holger Mueller, an analyst with Constellation Research agreed with Leary’s assessment, but doesn’t think that means the deal failed. “SAP doesn’t lose anything in regards to their […] data and experience vision, as they still retain [controlling interest in Qualtrics] . It also opens the opportunity for Qualtrics to partner with other ERP vendors [and broaden its overall market],” he said.

Jeanne Bliss, founder and president at CustomerBLISS, a company that helps clients deliver better customer experiences sees this as a positive step forward for Qualtrics. “This spin off enables Qualtrics to focus on its core business and prove its ability to provide essential technology executives are searching for to enable speed of decision making, innovation and customization,” she said.

Show me the money

Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst at Moor Insight & Strategy sees the two companies moving towards a VMware/Dell model where SAP removes the direct link between them, which could then make them more attractive to a broader range of customers than perhaps they would have been as part of the SAP family. “The big play here is all financial. With tech stocks up so high, SAP isn’t seeing the value in its stock. I am expecting a VMware kind of alignment with a strategic collaboration agreement,” he said.

Ultimately though, he says the the move reflects a cultural failure on the part of SAP. It simply couldn’t find a way to co-exist with a younger, more nimble company like Qualtrics. “I believe SAP spinning out Qualtrics is a sign that its close connection to create symbiotic value has failed. The original charter was to bring it in to modernize SAP but apparently the “not invented here” attitudes kicked in and doomed integration,” Moorhead said.

That symbiotic connection would have involved McDermott’s vision of combining operational and customer data, but Leary also suggested that since the deal happened under previous the CEO, that perhaps new CEO Christian Klein wants to start with a clean slate and this simply wasn’t his deal.

Qualtrics for the win

In the end, Qualtrics got all that money, gets to IPO after all, and returns to being an independent company selling to a larger potential customer base. All of the analysts we spoke to agreed the news is a win for Qualtrics itself.

Leary says the motivation for the original deal was to give SAP a company that could sell beyond its existing customer base. “It seems like that was the impetus for the acquisition, and the fact that SAP is spinning it off as an IPO 20 months after acquiring Qualtrics gives me the impression that things didn’t come together as expected,” he said.

Mueller also sees nothing but postivies Qualtrics. “It’s a win […] for Qualtrics, which can now deliver what they wanted [from the start], and it’s a win for customers as Qualtrics can run as fast as they want,” he said.

Regardless, the company moves on, and the Qualtrics IPO moves forward, and it’s almost as though Qualtrics gets a do-over with $8 billion in its pocket for its trouble.

Source: Tech Crunch

This week has brought with it two tasty pieces of IPO news — Rackspace’s return to the public markets and BigCommerce’s debut will be far more interesting now that we know what a first-draft valuation for each looks like.

But amidst the numbers is a question worth answering: Why aren’t cloud-focused Rackspace and e-commerce-powering BigCommerce worth more?

Using a basic share count and the top end of their initial ranges, Rackspace is targeting a roughly $4.8 billion valuation, and BigCommerce a $1.3 billion price tag. Given that Rackspace had $652.7 million in Q1 2020 revenue and BigCommerce reaped $33.2 million in the same period, we have a puzzle on our hands.

Let me explain. At its IPO price, Rackspace is worth around 2x its current revenue run rate. For a company we associate with the cloud, that feels cheap at first glance. BigCommerce is targeting a valuation of around a little under 10x its current annual run rate, which feels light compared to its competitor Shopify’s current price/sales ratio of of 66.4x (per YCharts data).

We did some maths to hammer away at what’s going on in each case. The mystery boils down to somewhat mundane margin and growth considerations. Let’s dive into the data, figure out what’s going on and ask ourselves if these companies aren’t heading for a second, higher IPO price range before they formally price and begin trading.

Margins and growth

Let’s unpack Rackspace’s IPO pricing first and BigCommerce’s own set of numbers second.

Rackspace

While Rackspace has a public cloud component, its core business is service-driven, so it isn’t a major cloud platform that competes with Microsoft’s Azure, Google’s GCP or Amazon’s AWS.  This isn’t a diss, mind, but a point of categorization.

The company has three reporting segments:

• Multicloud Services
• Apps & Cross Platform
• OpenStack Public Cloud
  

  
  Source: Tech Crunch

GoPro is now in the merch game with a new line of gear that prominently feature GoPro’s logo. From bags to hats, this gear is priced attractively and has the standard affair of features. But in the end, it’s about the GoPro brand. GoPro, even while struggling to remain relevant as sales drop, cultivated a rich brand identity and this merchandize embodies the GoPro lifestyle.

The line is called “Lifestyle Gear”, and it’s a nice sampling of outdoor gear featuring GoPro’s logo. Right now, there are nine products in the line but it’s easy to see room for expansion.

Outdoor gear is a massive market, and the products launched to by GoPro seem up to par with quality material and features. There are waterproof backpacks, durable duffles, and compact cases for the compact cameras. If done correctly, soft goods often sell with healthy margins, which could be a good win for GoPro.

GoPro has struggled the last few years after storming onto the scene. The stock has been under $10 a share since 2017 though it’s trending upward this year. Over the last few years, the company revamped its product offering several times, and most recently, started branching off into different products including flashlights and now soft goods. Right now, in the second half of 2020, the company sells four cameras, but two are carryovers from 2019.

Source: Tech Crunch

According to a new court filing, multiple California state offices are actively investigating Amazon over worker safety concerns as the coronavirus continues to rage throughout the U.S.

In the filing, reported by Reuters, a San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman writes that California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health and San Francisco’s Department of Public Health have all opened investigations into the online retail giant’s workplace practices in light of the pandemic. The Attorney General’s office declined to comment when reached by TechCrunch.

While Amazon faced frequent criticism for worker well being before the pandemic, the ongoing crisis has made those concerns even more stark. With white-collar workers sent home, the virus has spread quickly through clusters of employees at factory floors and warehouses nationwide where social distancing isn’t enforced. Amazon’s own shipping centers have reported outbreaks, including one in the Pocono Mountains and another in Oregon and by May eight Amazon warehouse workers had died from the virus.

The disclosure of the three California state investigations came out of court case accusing Amazon of failing to adequately protect workers in a San Francisco Amazon Fresh Fulfillment Center. In the lawsuit, filed in March, Amazon Fresh worker Chiyomi Brent accuses the company of taking risks, including sharing the suits they wear into freezers without cleaning them after each use. Brent also filed a complaint with California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, which is now looking into Amazon’s distribution center practices.

Source: Tech Crunch

Tenet has long been expected to be a bellwether for filmgoers’ readiness to return to theaters. Director Christopher Nolan is a blockbuster machine, and if anyone can get butts in seats amid the worst pandemic in modern memory, it’s probably him. And to be fair, the film really has served as a kind of litmus test — just not kind Warner Bros. was hoping for.

After numerous delays, Tenet has a new release date. Not a final release date, mind. If there’s one thing that COVID-19 has taught us, it’s that things can always get worse. For now, however, the mysterious sci-fi thriller is slated to hit theaters in select North American cities on September 3, for the Labor Day Weekend.

Notably, however, the film will receive an international release in 70 territories next month. The list includes Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia and the U.K. While U.S. theater owners have eagerly been waiting the film’s arrival, shutdowns in too many key markets have continued to make a wide release untenable. Among other things, the move can be viewed as a kind of indictment of the United States’ on-going inability to curb the virus’s spread.

And while, as Variety notes, global day-and-date releases aren’t unheard of for these kinds of blockbusters, much of Tenet’s appeal has hinged on the film’s mysterious nature. The trailers thus far released for the film have remained purposefully obtuse. An international release ahead of the the U.S. will almost certainly go a long ways toward removing some of that mystery through piracy and online spoilers.

Other upcoming releases Mulan and A Quiet Place 2 have also seen further delays in recent days.

Source: Tech Crunch

BMW said it will offer the all-electric versions of X1 compact SUV and the 5 Series as part of the German automaker’s plans to have 25 electrified models in its portfolio by 2023.

BMW didn’t say exactly when an all-electric X1 or 5 Series might be available (TechCrunch reached out and will update if we get an answer). The all-electric drive train will be one of four options to buyers of the BMW X1 and BMW 5 Series vehicles. The sedan and SUV are also available as a plug-in hybrid as well as diesel or gas with 48-volt mild hybrid technology.

The two vehicles are the latest to join BMW’s expanding electrified portfolio. Earlier this year, the automaker said its flagship 7 series sedan would also be offered with an all-electric drive train.

BMW has said that half of the 25 “electrified” models slated to be on roads by 2023 will be fully electric. The term electrified can also mean a hybrid and plug-in hybrid. The company’s longer term goal is to have more than 7 million electrified BMW Group vehicles on the road by 2030. BMW has said it wants two thirds of those to have a fully-electric drive train.

The automaker is bringing five all-electric vehicles to market by the end of 2021, including the BMW i3, the Mini Cooper SE, the BMW iX3, the BMW iNEXT and the BMW i4. The i3 is a well-known member of the wider EV industry. But the others likely less so. The Mini Cooper SE has the i3 motor and with 110 miles of EPA-rated range from its 32.6-kWh battery, the vehicle is marketed as a fun-to-drive urban commuter.

The iX3, which is based off of the X3, is an electric crossover that will be assembled in China. The iX3 is not coming to the United States. Instead, the vehicle will go on sale in the first half of 2021 in China.

The BMW i4, an all-electric four-door Gran Coupe with an estimated EPA range of 270 miles and the ability to produce 530 horsepower, is slated to enter production in 2021. The iNEXT, which is meant to be the flagship of its EV lineup, is expected to be in production next year.

Source: Tech Crunch

Following earlier reporting, Google has confirmed that it will continue to allow employees to work from home through the end of June of next year. The company told TechCrunch that Sundar Pichai announced the plan in an email sent to staff earlier today.

“To give employees the ability to plan ahead, we are extending our global voluntary work from home option through June 30, 2021 for roles that don’t need to be in the office,” the CEO wrote.

The move marks the company’s most aggressive extension of its remote work policy to date. Like many other tech companies, it appeared cautiously optimistic that things might return to normal after a couple of months. Lately, however, it’s clear that the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic won’t be going away any time soon.

Back in May, Pichai outlined plans to allow a small number of employees to return to various offices this month, all while maintaining social distancing and keeping buildings at around 10% occupancy. That same month, Twitter sent a memo noting that staff would be able to continue working from home on a permanent basis.

Depending on how long the pandemic continues to rage on, it seems reasonable to expect that even the largest tech corporations are rethinking their approach to remote work.

Source: Tech Crunch

Mobile consumers are downloading and using more apps than ever before. According to recent data from App Annie, mobile users now have 93 apps on their phone as of the end of 2019, up from 85 apps at the end of 2015. They also now use around 41 apps per month, up from 35 in 2015. Related to this increase, users are now also spending more hours per day using apps. Worldwide, daily time spent in apps has grown to 3.1 hours per day in 2019, up from 2.1 hours per day in 2015, for instance.

But with that growth has also come increased diversity among the top apps, the report found. That means top apps now make up a smaller proportion of consumers’ total time spent in apps, compared with five years ago.

It’s worth noting that this report was commissioned by Facebook, App Annie says, with a goal of offering a more detailed look at the evolving app ecosystem over the past five years. The report aims to determine how growth is playing out in terms of popular app categories, among the top publishers, and how quickly newly successful apps are achieving sizable growth.

Facebook, in the past, had generated this sort of market research data first-hand by way of its Onavo VPN application — now shuttered over privacy concerns — and other similar efforts.

Turning to App Annie’s data team is just a new way for the company to get at the same sort of data.

App Annie’s market analysis, in part, is similarly derived by way of third-party apps. The company acquired Distimo in 2014, and as of 2016 has run the VPN app Phone Guardian under the Distimo brand. It also acquired Mobidia in 2015 and has operated My Data Manager (now on the App Store under Distimo). Both apps disclose their relationship with App Annie and explain that the apps are used for market research purposes, with specific examples of the type of data collected.

The new report’s findings may not be all good news for Facebook and other top app publishers. As the app economy evolved, users now have more places to spend time on mobile.

Over the past five years, worldwide downloads continued to grow to reach a record of 120 billion in 2019, with several key countries now driving growth including India (10% year-over-year growth in 2019), Brazil (9%), Indonesia (8%) and Russia (7%).

Downloads in mature economies also hit record levels in 2019, including the U.S. (12.3B), Japan (2.5B), U.K. (2.1B), South Korea (2B), Germany (1.9B), and France (1.9B).

As users grew their time in app to 3.1 hours per day, they also began to use more of a variety of apps. According to the report, 35 of the top 100 apps were new entrants in 2019, up from 27 in 2016 across categories that included social, photography, video, communications, entertainment, and more.

This is likely worrisome data for top app publishers, like Facebook, which has for years maintained a suite of top apps including not only its flagship app, but also Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. As the competitive pressure increases, these top apps make up a smaller proportion of the time spent on mobile devices as users have grown more comfortable trying out newcomers — particularly across gaming, entertainment, and video categories.

The top 30 non-game apps accounted for 69.4% of U.S. users’ total time spent in 2016 among non-games. That dropped to 65.5% in 2019, a nearly 4% decline. Among games, the share fell from 49% to 39%, a 10% drop. (This data was sourced from Google Play in the U.S.)

Not only are consumers more open to trying new apps, the report found that new apps can also quickly achieve app store success. In the U.S., for example, over 60% of apps are able to reach their category’s Top 30 in their first 6 months.

This is aided by larger initial marketing pushes as well as improvements in terms of consumer’s devices themselves — like more storage and processing power, which encourages more downloads.

There are also more apps than ever before capable of achieving the once milestone metric of 1 million monthly active users (MAUs). In 2019, over 4,600 apps saw 1 million MAUs, including those outside of social and communications like Netflix, Roku, Disney, CBS, Amazon, Alibaba, Walmart, Target, PayPal, Venmo, Chase, Capital One, Uber, DoorDash, McDonald’s, and Starbucks.

Apps are also achieving the 1 million downloads milestones more quickly, in data analyzed from 2015 to 2018. In the video, finance, communications, social, photo, and entertainment categories, 67% of apps achieved the 1 million downloads milestone within their first 12 months, App Annie says.

Because of the increases, there’s now a lot of overlap in between top apps. Today, mobile consumers will often choose and use multiple apps within and across categories to address similar needs, including on social, the report found.

For example, 89% of Snapchat’s users also used YouTube in April 2020 in the U.S., and 75% also used Instagram.

TikTok saw the greatest year-over-year increase in cross-app usage of Snapchat, rising from 17% in April 2019 to April 2020 — an indication of how much it has captured the youth demographic.

Meanwhile, video apps and gaming are taking up more of users’ time spent in apps. This broad category of “play”-focused apps accounted for 22% of the growth in time spent in apps in 2019.

Plus, top gaming apps are also implementing social features, including Top 50 games like Fortnite, Clash of Clans, Call of Duty: Mobile, Township, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, New Yahtzee With Buddies, Golf Clash, and Slotomania, for example.

More than two-thirds of the Top 50 games have added at least one social feature, whether that’s inviting friend to play, social assists for progressing, guilds or clans, or in-app chat. This, in turn, has led to players spending more time in games as they can connect with friends there.

Fortnite, as one key example of this trend, rolled out Party Hub based on its acquired Houseparty technology, in September 2019. In the three months after the rollout, time spent in Fortnite grew 130%.

Outside of games, TikTok has risen by blending elements of top categories like social, video and entertainment. After merging with Musical.ly, it has rapidly rolled out more video editing features and increased ad spend aggressively to grow its user base and drive engagement. By December 2019, U.S. users were spending 16 hours, 20 minutes in the app per month, on average, up from 5 hours, 4 minutes in August 2018.

The full report also delves into country-by-country breakdowns but, overall, found that most countries saw record downloads in 2019 and similar trends in terms of app usage frequency increases and time spent.

One notable point of comparison is that U.S. users have more apps installed than in other markets (97 vs. 93), but tend to use fewer apps compared with worldwide trends (36 vs. 41). They also spend slightly fewer hours per day in apps, on average, than the worldwide average at 2.7 hours versus 3.1 hours.

“This report shows that the app industry is more competitive today than ever. New companies are succeeding with innovative apps that meet needs people might not even know they have,” said Ime Archibong, Head of Facebook’s New Product Experimentation team, an internal team at Facebook looking to find new models for social apps. “All of this choice and competition fuels innovation, and that’s the heart of our work at Facebook,” he added.

App Annie’s report is available upon request here.

Source: Tech Crunch