Mobile

Krafton, the developer behind PlayUnknown’s Battlegrounds,” and the maker of PUBG MOBILE, last year’s No. 6 top-grossing mobile game on a global basis, is suing the app stores and a rival game maker, Garena, over copyright infringement involving Garena Online’s Free Fire games. The lawsuit alleges Garena’s games copy numerous aspects of its own, including

Around the same time Apple was touting its sizable App Store revenue growth this week, developer and noted App Store critic Kosta Eleftheriou brought to light what appeared to be yet another App Store scammer hiding in plain sight. On Twitter, Eleftheriou documented the earnings for a music syncing app called AmpMe, which claims to

A new social app, Locket, popped to the top of the App Store charts in recent days thanks to its clever premise to put live photos from friends in a widget on your iOS homescreen. In other words, it turns Apple’s widget system — typically used to showcase information like news, weather, inspirational quotes or

Despite facing numerous antitrust lawsuits and tighter regulations in certain markets, Apple today reported new figures indicating record App Store growth in 2021. The company in a press release said it has now paid out more than $260 billion to app developers since the App Store first launched in 2008, a number that’s up from

OnePlus has seemingly taken a page out of co-founder Carl Pei’s book with the 10 Pro launch. Gone, it seems, are the days where we get everything we want to know about an upcoming device in one handy location. Instead, the company’s meting out information about its latest flagship, piece by piece. Overnight we got

Spotify is today introducing a new ad format aimed at podcasters which it’s calling “Call-to-Action Cards” — or CTA cards, for short. The feature, which is powered by Spotify’s streaming ad insertion technology, will display a visual ad in the Spotify app when the audio ad begins to play. The cards can be customized by

Consumers worldwide have downloaded Meta’s Oculus app, the mobile companion for Oculus VR devices including the Quest 2, roughly 2 million times globally since Christmas Day, according to new data from third-party app intelligence firms, Apptopia and Sensor Tower. Already, had been some indication that the Quest 2 was a popular holiday gift after the

Tinder confirmed it’s exploring the development of a new feature called Swipe Party which offers a way to make sorting through possible matches a more social experience. According to details spotted in the Tinder mobile app’s code, Swipe Party requires access to the phone’s camera and microphone so your friends can “see and hear you

Google is working with the likes of Intel, Acer and HP to make connecting your phone to your Windows PC through Fast Pair, share files between Android devices and Windows PCs with Nearby Share, set up Bluetooth accessories and sync text messages between the two computing ecosystems. These new capabilities will come to select Windows

TikTok is testing its own version of Twitter’s retweet with the addition of a new “Repost” button which allows users to amplify videos on the platform by sharing them with their own followers. The new Repost button is found in the “Share” menu where you could otherwise send the video to friends through messages, texts,

It’s easy to forget now in the age of Apple and Android, but at one time, BlackBerry owned the business smartphone market. You could have your Motorolas and your Nokias and your Samsungs, but for business, BlackBerry was it. Stalwart. Secure. Functional. As TechCrunch reported this morning, BlackBerry is shutting down its remaining services, and

Koko Networks, a Kenya-based bio-fuel technology enterprise has extended its business to cover other fast-moving consumer goods, through a new tech platform that will capitalize on its established distribution networks in low-income neighborhoods. Koko Club, its new business-line, will sell the products directly to consumers through the dukas (small shops) that currently serve as the

When we penned the intro for this piece last year, little did we know that — in many ways — we’d still be deep in it by the time 2021’s feature rolled around. Amid another holiday season marred by a new variant, seemingly the more things change — well, you get the picture. Surprisingly, however,

South Korean startup Kakao Entertainment announced today it has acquired Wuxiaworld, an Asia fantasy fiction platform, via its serialized fiction app subsidiary Radish to bolster the mobile storytelling business. The transaction size is $37.5 million.   Wuxiaworld, which has grown through word-of-mouth, claims it is now the largest English-language Asia fantasy platform in the U.S. in terms of

Apple is breaking with holiday tradition: The company announced early last month that its App Store will continue to review developer submissions over the holidays, welcome news for app developers facing their busiest season. Previously, an app that needed to release a bug fix or a critical update on Black Friday or during the final

Alitheia IDF (AIF), a women-focused private equity fund in Africa has raised $100 million to invest in gender-diverse businesses across the continent. The fund is looking to bridge the financing gap for women-led or owned businesses in Africa – where women startup founders are less likely to receive funding despite their increasing enterprise. Women-only founders

Last year’s Essential implosion marked one of the most high-profile consumer electronics startup failures in recent memory. Launched in 2017 with $330 million, a killer pedigree and some truly grand ambitions, the company sputtered through a combination of industry issues, disappointment and troubling allegations against founder Andy Rubin. The firm’s IP was eventually purchased by

GDevelop is a game engine that lets you develop a video game without any specific development experience. While the ‘no-code’ trend has been quite popular this year, GDevelop has been around for a few years already. Florian Rival first started working on GDevelop as an open-source side project. The first public version on GitHub was

TikTok announced this morning it’s taking a new approach to its “For You” feed — the short-form video app’s main feed, powered by its algorithmic recommendations. The company already detailed how its algorithm works to suggest videos based on users’ engagement patterns within its app, but admits that too much of a particular content category

Fuzey, a London-based company providing what it calls a “digital one-stop shop” for small businesses and independent contractors, raised $4.5 million in seed funding. The round was led by byFounders with participation from Flash Ventures, Global Founders Capital, Ascension and a group of angel investors, including Index Ventures’ venture partner Stephane Kurgan and Amplo VC

A digital mobile overdraft facility christened Fuliza, by Kenya’s biggest telco Safaricom Plc, is giving the country’s popular loan apps a run for their money barely three years after its launch. Fuliza allows Safaricom customers to access unsecured credit by overdrawing on M-Pesa – the telecommunication company mobile money wallet that allows its users to

Many brands are using the messaging app Discord to forge a sense of community among their fans. If the fast-food chain Wendy’s can have a Discord with over 60,000 members, why not a viral platform like TikTok? TikTok teased on Twitter that it was making a Discord server, but then confirmed the news on its

The crease, it seems, is unavoidable. It’s right there, smack in the middle of the those big, expensive folding displays. And it’s invariably (and perhaps understandably) the first comment on nearly every story I post about a foldable phone. The alternative isn’t ideal, either — a gap between two distinct displays à la Microsoft’s Surface

There are already a number of ways to gift cryptocurrencies, but today Cash App will make doing so simpler with a new feature rolling out to its peer-to-peer payments app. The app, owned by Block (the company formerly known as Square) will now allow users in the U.S. to send bitcoin, as well as traditional

A women-led startup called Honeycomb is launching its private social app for families, backed by $4 million in seed funding led by Peter Boyce at Stellation Capital. Now out of private beta, the app offers families a way to curate and share their favorite moments and memories via their smartphone as an alternative to using

In the past decade, numerous mobile lending apps have been launched in Kenya, riding on the growing need for quick loans. However, these startups have been operating in an unregulated environment — until today, when the country’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, approved a new law that gives the country’s monetary authority, the Central Bank of Kenya

Two months after its seed round announcement, Singapore-based startup Upmesh has raised a $7.5 million pre-Series A round led by Monk’s Hill Ventures. The new funding brings its total raised so far to $10.5 million.   Upmesh will use the pre-Series A funding to expand its regional presence in Southeast Asia and launch its first Instagram

While most of the market is focused on building and selling 5G infrastructure, an important piece that is overlooked is the application development on 5G networks, according to Vivek Ladsariya, general partner at SineWave Ventures. That’s what makes him excited to support a company like Shabodi. “Application developers have always wanted to abstract away network

After the resounding success of several crowdfunding campaigns for its gamified smart bird feeder, Bird Buddy has raised an $8.5 million seed round. Its first product will ship in a few months, but it’s just the start of what the company hopes will be a new approach to using tech to better enjoy nature. It’s

A few years ago, at the start of the fintech services boom in Africa, Oliver Blantern got an opportunity to work in the continent offering advisory services to high-growth startups. For slightly over three years his company, Riverhouse Technology, helped the emerging tech firms in talent sourcing and acquisition. The trained lawyer did all this