During the second quarter of 2016, smartphone shipments saw a modest return to growth after a first quarter which saw the first ever year-over-year decline in worldwide smartphone sales, according to research firm Canalys. But sequentially, shipments didn’t improve, and historical data reveals that the year-ago quarter was also relatively disappointing, all of which points to this return… Read More
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Today Big Health, which is already backed by Index Ventures, is disclosing that it has raised $12 million (£9.15m) in new funding led by Octopus Ventures. Also participating are Kaiser Permanente Ventures, Index, Sean Duffy (CEO, Omada Health), and JamJar Investments (the UK-based investment fund of the innocent drinks founders). Noteworthy is that Esther Dyson, and Peter Read are also… Read More
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Daimler isn’t about to let Tesla own any more ‘firsts’ in electric transportation; the German company revealed the Mercedes-Benz Urban eTruck today in Stuttgart, an all-electric truck with a total admissible weight capacity of 26 tonnes (29 U.S. tons), which makes it the first clean energy big rig of its kind.
As the name implies, it’s designed for use in urban… Read More
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Israeli startup Zeek, whose app lets you buy and sell unwanted store gift vouchers, has closed $9.5 million in Series B funding.
The round was led by Scale-Up Venture Capital, with participation from a long list of additional investors, some of which contributed to the company’s Series A early last year. Read More
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Apple’s third quarter results came out today. They’re pretty good! Or, at least, not bad — and good enough to keep investors happy. Very happy, actually: the stock jumped more than 7%, recovering pretty much all of the value it lost when it reported a complete whiff of a second quarter. It’s no monster crash or jump like Twitter regularly experiences, but 7% is enough… Read More
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With an IPO on the horizon, subprime lender Elevate will have an additional $545 million credit faculty to support its growing customers. Elevate’s niche right now is providing loans to borrowers with creditscores between 575 and 625. As the company expands, it wants to provide loans to customers with even lower credit-scores. Ken Rees, CEO of Elevate, is quick to note that 65 percent… Read More
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Tracking your period, peeing on a stick and carrying around a thermometer have been the dominant technologies over the past 20 years to help families conceive. If it sounds outdated, that’s because it is. TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield alum Ava is hoping to change that with a wearable that helps couples pinpoint when a woman is in her fertile window and the time is right to… Read More
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Apple needed a breakout quarter after its last whiff, and boy did it get one. The company reported revenue of $42.4 billion and earnings of $1.42 per share. Analysts were expecting earnings of $1.38 per share on revenue of $42.09 billion. As a result the company added tens of billions of value back to its share price, which rose more than 6% in extended trading. (6% might not feel like a… Read More
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Xiaomi dropped a surprise today when it outed its first laptop — perhaps predictably a cheap rival to Apple’s Macbook — at an event in Beijing, but it also made a more routine reveal: the Redmi Pro. 
PSA Group — the carmaker behind brands Peugeot, Citroën and DS — has acquired a majority stake in European auto-repair marketplace Autobutler.