Murena, a French startup that sells “de-Googled” smartphones replete with its own flavor of Android, is launching an own-brand mobile network as it throws its hat into the fast-growing mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) ring.
Murena Mobile, as the new service is called, is built atop T-Mobile and is available to U.S. customers only.
With Murena Mobile now thrown into the mix, it has another recurring revenue stream to lean on.
Additionally, customers can’t actually sign up for a Murena Mobile plan at the same time as buying one of its eSIM-supported devices — they have to complete that transaction separately.
“In the future, we could think about a complete package with phone, cloud plan and a mobile plan all combined in a monthly subscription.”
The EU suspects Apple of unfairly favoring its own mobile payment tech, Apple Pay, and squeezing out the ability of rivals to develop competing contactless payment offerings on its mobile platform.
It has also committed to applying “fair, objective, transparent, and non-discriminatory” eligibility criteria to grant NFC access to third parties — which will have to conclude an ADP license agreement to gain access.
The Apple Pay competition saga dates back several years at this point.
The Apple Pay case pre-dates ex ante competition legislation the bloc has since enacted and which Apple is subject to; having been designated, in September, as a so-called “gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
And although Apple’s payment tech, Apple Pay, has not been designated a “core platform service” the iOS App Store has.
Bitcoin spot ETF volume rose, Coinbase went to court, Solana Mobile announces new device and Google cuts crypto apps in IndiaWelcome to TechCrunch Crypto, formerly known as Chain Reaction.
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here.
Prior to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s approval of the spot bitcoin ETFs, some experts told me they expected trading volumes to hit $10 billion in a year, not a week.
Monica has spent the last 10 years at Ripple, working her way up from the director of communications to now, president.
What else we’re writingWant to branch out from the world of web3?
Solana Mobile is swinging for the stars after it announced a second, cheaper web3 phone phone dubbed “ Chapter 2 ” earlier this week.
Demand for the Chapter 2 is apparently so high, Solana Mobile hit its 7-day sales goal within the first 24 hours, Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana and president of Solana Labs, exclusively told TechCrunch.
In the first 24 hours after the phone was announced, Solana Mobile saw over 25,000 preorders, and by the 30-hour mark, it had 30,000 preorders, Gokal said.
“For developers, Solana Mobile is creating a massive opportunity for crypto app teams looking to incentivize their users,” Gokal said.
“Giving back to the community has a snowball effect: As more developers start releasing crypto-incentivized apps to Solana Mobile users, we’ll see even greater adoption,” Gokal said.
When it comes to startups’ flight to quality, have we swung too far in the other direction?
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our new Saturday show, where we sit down with a guest, think about their work, and unpack the rest.
This week, we talked to Jenny Fielding, co-founder and managing partner at Everywhere Ventures, a founder collective and early-stage (think pre-seed) venture firm.
Jenny and I discussed a wide variety of topics, including startups’ flight to quality in 2024 and how smaller firms are competing with larger firms in the current investment landscape.
Low-code dev platforms have gained momentum in recent years, in large part because they promise to shorten what’s otherwise typically a lengthy app development cycle.
According to data from analytics firm GlobalData, there was a fivefold increase in VC funding into low-code dev platforms from 2021 to 2022.
But low-code isn’t going anywhere, as evidenced most recently by low-code dev startup FlutterFlow’s financing round.
Leveraging Flutter, Google’s open source UI creation toolkit, FlutterFlow generates what Abel describes as “clean” and “maintainable” app source code.
There’s no shortage of competition in the market for low-code app dev platforms.
For two years, Netflix subscribers have been able to download tons of mobile games, all included for free with their subscription.
Netflix has developed more than 75 mobile games, boasting popular IPs like Grand Theft Auto, Love is Blind, Monument Valley, and Oxenfree, among many others.
Now, Netflix could potentially be exploring ways to generate revenue from its gaming business, a recent report suggests.
These methods are common (and effective) in the mobile gaming world, with consumers expected to spend $111.4 billion on mobile games in 2024.
Netflix appeared to shut down the idea of ads and in-game payments during an earnings call in April 2023.
Arduino is considering manufacturing in India.
Violante considers fake Arduino boards the key reason for this discrepancy.
Therefore, by starting local manufacturing, Arduino would sell its boards in India at reduced prices — in line with those of its Chinese counterparts.
However, most of it results from the growth of local mobile phone manufacturing.
Arduino is currently considering both large international EMS companies and smaller local players in India, which specialize in producing electronic boards or development boards, Violante told TechCrunch.
Firefox maker Mozilla announced today the launch of over 450 new extensions — aka browser add-ons — which are now available on Mozilla’s Firefox Browser Add-ons page.
While Firefox’s nightly builds later enabled more extensions, the publicly available Firefox for Android browser did not have access to these hundreds of extensions, meaning most of Firefox’s mainstream users were also without.
It then began to test and make hundreds more extensions available to Firefox for Android users, culminating in today’s news that there are now 450+ extensions available.
Safari, Samsung’s browser, Opera, and others are also ahead of Firefox in the mobile browser race.
With extensions, you’re free to change the way Firefox for Android looks and behaves.
Tech startups are always looking for ways to get their products in front of as many consumers as possible. This is where paid advertising comes in. Paid advertising can be…
