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This Week in Apps: Android ad prices jump, TikTok resumes, Google Play’s antitrust lawsuit

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 industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices […]

Homebrew leads Z1’s effort to bring digital banking to Latin America’s teens

Z1, a Sao Paulo-based digital bank aimed at Latin American GenZers, has raised $2.5 million in a round led by U.S.-based Homebrew. A number of other investors also participated in the financing including Clocktower Ventures, Mantis – the VC firm owned by The Chainsmokers, Goodwater, Gaingels, Soma Capital and Rebel Fund. Notably, Mantis has also […]

Google faces a major multi-state antitrust lawsuit over Google Play fees

A group of 37 attorneys general filed a second major multi-state antitrust lawsuit against Google Wednesday, accusing the company of abusing its market power to stifle competitors and forcing consumers into in-app payments that grant the company a hefty cut. New York Attorney General Letitia James is co-leading the suit alongside the Tennessee, North Carolina […]

Raylo nabs $11.5M to get more mobile users to lease and reuse

UK-based smartphone subscription startup Raylo has tucked $11.5 million in Series A funding into its top pocket, led by Octopus Ventures. The equity round follows a debt raise last year — and brings Raylo’s total raised since being founded back in 2019 to $40M (in equity and debt). Its roster of investors to date also […]

Months later, we’re still making sense of the Supreme Court’s API copyright ruling

Kin Lane Contributor Share on Twitter Kin Lane is chief evangelist at Postman, an API development platform with a user base of over 13 million software developers. APIs, or application programming interfaces, make the digital world go round. Working behind the scenes to define the parameters by which software applications communicate with each other, APIs […]

Barracuda acquires Skout Cybersecurity to enter the XDR market

Barracuda Networks has purchased Skout Cybersecurity, a New York-based channel-only provider of extended detection and response (XDR) services. The deal, the terms of which were not disclosed, will see the California-based cybersecurity vendor enter the fast-growing XDR market. As a result of the ever-increasing attack surface as businesses shift to the cloud and embrace hybrid working, […]

Lego should snap up this rapid-fire brick-finding iOS app

Lego has worked extremely closely with Apple over the years, experimenting with unreleased iOS tech and demoing it onstage at launch events like WWDC; this has included some pretty heavy tinkering on the augmented reality ARKit platform that they’ve integrated several of their play sets with, adding digital experiences to the physical toys. But one […]

Lego should snap up this rapid-fire brick-finding iOS app

Lego has worked extremely closely with Apple over the years, experimenting with unreleased iOS tech and demoing it onstage at launch events like WWDC; this has included some pretty heavy tinkering on the augmented reality ARKit platform that they’ve integrated several of their play sets with, adding digital experiences to the physical toys. But one […]

Apple and Snap partner JigSpace, the ‘Canva for 3D,’ raises a $4.7M Series A

When former Art Director Zac Duff started teaching a game development course online in 2015, he faced the same challenges that teachers around the globe have become all too familiar with after a pandemic-induced lockdown. So, he used his experience in 3D design to build a virtual reality classroom to make remote learning more engaging […]

The first preview of Windows 11 is now available

Microsoft today released the first preview build of Windows 11 to those in the Dev Channel of the company’s Windows Insider program. If you have joined the Insider program and meet Microsoft’s new — and somewhat complicated — system requirements for the new operating system, you should see the update soon. This first preview includes […]

The first preview of Windows 11 is now available

Microsoft today released the first preview build of Windows 11 to those in the Dev Channel of the company’s Windows Insider program. If you have joined the Insider program and meet Microsoft’s new — and somewhat complicated — system requirements for the new operating system, you should see the update soon. This first preview includes […]

Hit iPhone controller Backbone One scores Xbox Game Pass partnership at xCloud’s iOS launch today

Backbone One, the killer iPhone game pad I profiled here late last year, has just scored the mother of all tie-ups for a gaming accessory. It’s getting bundled with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate as it launches on iOS today alongside the xCloud game streaming service. As a part of the deal, Backbone is being bundled […]

Hit iPhone controller Backbone One scores Xbox Game Pass partnership at xCloud’s iOS launch today

Backbone One, the killer iPhone game pad I profiled here late last year, has just scored the mother of all tie-ups for a gaming accessory. It’s getting bundled with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate as it launches on iOS today alongside the xCloud game streaming service. As a part of the deal, Backbone is being bundled […]

MWC 2021 day one wrap-up

“It is great that MWC is back,” Samsung UK’s James Kitto said, opening up this year’s presser. “And behalf of everyone at Samsung, it’s great to be back at MWC.” What, precisely, it means to be “back” in 2021 is another question entirely. Samsung was, of course, one of a number of major industry players […]

Android apps are coming to Windows 11 through the Amazon Appstore

Ecosystems make strange bedfellows. Here’s one of the stranger in recent memory – and one of the most unexpected bits of news from today’s Windows 11 event. Microsoft announced today that it will be making Android apps available on the next major version of its operating system. Chief Product Officer Panos Panay called the addition, […]

Android apps are coming to Windows 11 through the Amazon Appstore

Ecosystems make strange bedfellows. Here’s one of the stranger in recent memory – and one of the most unexpected bits of news from today’s Windows 11 event. Microsoft announced today that it will be making Android apps available on the next major version of its operating system. Chief Product Officer Panos Panay called the addition, […]

An internal code repo used by New York State’s IT office was exposed online

A code repository used by the New York state government’s IT department was left exposed on the internet, allowing anyone to access the projects inside, some of which contained secret keys and passwords associated with state government systems. The exposed GitLab server was discovered on Saturday by Dubai-based SpiderSilk, a cybersecurity company credited with discovering […]