Author: TechCrunch News

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app economy in 2023 hit a few snags, as consumer spending last year dropped for the first time by 2% to $167 billion, according to data.ai’s “State of…

Remember when Amazon turned the United States into Thunderdome, making every state battle over the right to host the company’s next big headquarters and 25,000 jobs? Well, after laying off more than half that number, Amazon is tapping the brakes on HQ2 in Virginia, putting off construction of three 22-story office towers. The news was…

The slowdown was inevitable, of course. Nothing stays hot forever — especially in this industry. By tech standards, smartphones have had a good run, but the last few years have seen device makers searching for the magic bullet to help the sales slide reverse course. The arrival of 5G was a nice reprieve, but next-generation…

Japanese marketing tech firm Geniee, part of the SoftBank Group, has paid about $70 million in cash to acquire the revenue optimization platform Zelto (formerly known as AdPushup), a person familiar with the matter said, delivering 40 times return to a number of angel investors in the startup that began its journey in India. The…

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Hello, you crunchy Crunchers! If you’ve been slacking and not bought yourself a Disrupt ticket yet, that’s cool, we still love you. But here’s a hot tip: This is your last chance…

Welcome back to the TechCrunch Podcast, where I’m standing in for Darrell while he’s honeymooning with his lady love. This week, I sat down with Amanda Silberling and Mary Ann Azevedo to talk through some of their interesting stories. You can listen below or subscribe in iTunes or Spotify to get new episodes delivered weekly…

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. G’day, friends! Good to spend some time with you again. Come spend some time with our finely crafted words and god-awful puns. It’s a service we provide. — Christine and Haje The…

Twitter’s paid plan Twitter Blue is now available to more than 20 new countries in Europe. These countries include Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Romania, Czech Republic, Finland, Denmark, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta, and Cyprus. This expansion makes the social network’s subscription service available in more than…

Camilla Tenn is senior public relations strategist at cross-border communications agency Eleven International. It’s only been a couple of months since OpenAI’s ChatGPT exploded into the public consciousness, and it already feels like our news feeds will never be the same again. Whether it’s headlines about AI startups securing massive funding rounds or Twitter threads…

India’s central bank has slapped Amazon Pay’s India unit with a fine of over $373,300 for non-compliance with local guidelines surrounding know your customer and prepaid payment instruments norms. The Reserve Bank of India said in a statement (PDF) that Amazon Pay (India) was non-compliant with certain provisions of the guidelines on prepaid payment instruments…