Apple is determined to take a slice of in-app purchases, no matter how users access apps or make their payments, it seems. After dropping commissions to 27% following a court ruling that said Apple had to allow app developers the ability to point to their own payment options via the web, the company is now floating the idea that it could take a similar course of action for apps that are downloaded outside its App Store.In the EU, Apple will be subject to a new law that will for the first time allow users to ...

Beijing has quietly pulled the proposed curbs on the video game industry from the official website, weeks after the draft guidelines wiped tens of billions of dollars off the market value of local titans.The link to the draft rules was no longer accessible as of this morning, as first reported by Reuters. Shares of Tencent and NetEase jumped on the news.The move follows Beijing also removing a key official – the head of the publication bureau of Communist Party’s Propaganda Department – over the handling of ...

The iPhone 15 and its many iterations comprised more than half of Apple’s Q4 smartphone shipments of 2.8 million units in India, Canalys said in its quarterly report. The handset has seen remarkable success in India as Apple pushed the latest models during the festive sales, which occur across online and offline channels in the country while its large population celebrates Diwali in the last quarter of the year and bring discounts and offers to attract customers.While Diwali — the festival of light — usuall ...

As Amazon initiates job cuts across its entire business, including its streaming division, the e-commerce giant is now laying off employees within its Buy with Prime segment.“We regularly review the structure of our teams and make adjustments based on the needs of the business and, following a recent review, we’ve made the difficult decision to eliminate a small number of roles on our Buy with Prime team,” an Amazon spokesperson wrote in an email to TechCrunch.Amazon laid off 30 employees, or fewer than 5% ...

After laying off over 1,000 workers across divisions last week and cutting 100 jobs at YouTube, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a memo to its staff warning more layoffs are expected this year.Pichai’s memo said the company will have to make “tough choices” to meet its ambitious goals, as reported by The Verge.The CEO said this year’s cuts won’t be at the scale of last year’s job cuts, where the company let go 12,000 people or 6% of its workforce.“These role eliminations are not at the scale of last year’s red ...

Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 sales will be halted again in the U.S. starting at 5 PM tomorrow, January 18, due to the rejection of a bid by Apple to have the sales ban paused throughout its appeal of an ITC decision that found its blood oxygen feature infringe on patents by medical tech company Masimo.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied the request formally earlier today (via 9to5Mac), based on a number of factors under consideration like whether or not Apple had a good ...

Yet another series of layoffs has hit Google, this time at its video-sharing platform, YouTube. The company will eliminate 100 employees, a spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. Last week, Google laid off more than 1,000 workers across several divisions, including engineering, services and voice-activated product Google Assistant.“As we’ve said, we’re responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” a Google spokesperson said in a provided statement. “To be ...

Apple’s iPhone has overtaken Samsung for the first time ever as the best-selling smartphone in 2023, according to a new report from IDC. The tech giant accounted for 20% of the global market with 234.6 million shipments last year. Samsung closed the year with 226.6 million shipments, while Xiaomi and Oppo saw 145.9 and 103.1 shipments, respectively. Transsion rounded out the top five with 94.9 million shipments.The report notes that the last time a company other than Samsung was at the top of the smartphone ...

General Motors is recalling around 66 electric delivery vans made by its BrightDrop subsidiary after the front drive units in at least two of them caught fire late last year.The automaker says it’s still investigating the root cause of the fires, but believes a manufacturing defect may have caused the drive pinion to pierce the drive unit casing, creating an oil leak that could catch fire during heavy use. GM says in paperwork filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that it bel ...

Microsoft evidently envisions Copilot, the umbrella brand for its portfolio of AI-powered, content-generating technologies, becoming a significant future revenue line-item. And that’s perhaps not far off base; according to the company, more than 40% of the Fortune 100 participated in its Copilot early access program.But given the enormous cost of running GenAI models in the cloud, getting Copilot from expenditure to reliable revenue generator will require sustained — and large-scale, ideally — growth.Surely ...