INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
The coronavirus outbreak continues to impact the tech industry, Facebook Libra Association signs up a new partner and short-form video
service Quibi is available for pre-order
Here your Daily Crunch for February 21, 2020.
1
PC shipments expected to drop this year because of coronavirus outbreak
The coronavirus outbreak could result in at least a 3.3% drop —
and as high as a 9% dip — in the volume of PCs that will ship globally this year, according to research firm Canalys.
&In the best-case
scenario, production levels are expected to revert to full capacity by April 2020, hence the biggest hit will be to sell-in shipments in the
first two quarters, with the market recovering in Q3 and Q4,& the firm said.
2
Shopify joins Facebook cryptocurrency Libra Association
After eBay, Visa, Stripe and other high-profile partners ditched the Facebook-backed
cryptocurrency collective, Libra scored a win with the addition of Shopify
The e-commerce platform will become a member of Libra Association, contributing at least $10 million and operating a node that processes
transactions for the Facebook-originated stable coin.
3
Quibi streaming service app launches in app stores for pre-order
Quibi, the mobile-only streaming service from Jeffrey Katzenberg, is now
The company declined to fully show off its app only a month ago at CES — instead, demos focused on its &TurnStyle& technology — but it
appears the app is ready nonetheless.
4
Volocopter extends Series C funding to $94M with backing from logistics giant DB Schenker and others
With this new funding, Volocopter
brings its total raised to around $132 million, and it says it will use the newly acquired capital to help certify its VoloCity aircraft, an
air taxi designed to transport people, which is on track to become the company first-ever vehicle licensed for commercial operation.
5
Where top VCs are investing in manufacturing and warehouse robotics
With our 2020 Robotics + AI sessions event less than two weeks away,
we&ve decided to perform temperature checks across some of the hottest robotics sub-verticals to see which trends are coming down the pipe
and where checks are actually being written
(Extra Crunch membership required.)
6
How ‘The Mandalorian& and ILM invisibly reinvented film and TV production
While a successful live-action Star Wars TV series is important
in its own right, the way this particular show was made represents a far greater change, perhaps the most important since the green
Shogun raises $10M to help e-commerce brands build faster websites
The company first product, Page Builder, offers a drag-and-drop interface
to make it easier for e-commerce brands to build their storefronts on Shopify, BigCommerce, Salesforce and Magento
And there a new product, Shogun Frontend, which allows brands to create a web storefront that entirely customized while still using one of
the big commerce platforms as their back end.
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