The TechCrunch team is in Barcelona this week to bring you all the action going on at Mobile World Congress 2024.
So far, we’ve seen some big announcements from companies, including new Android features from Google, Lenovo’s new laptop concept and rollable phone concept and Xiaomi’s robotic dog.
Motorola’s rollable concept phoneWhat’s the maximum size of a device that you will wear on your wrist?
The company has designed what it’s calling a “rollable concept phone” for Motorola that folds around your wrist.
In addition to design, Xiaomi has developed the five core EV technologies: E-Motor, CTB Integrated Battery, Xiaomi Die Casting, Xiaomi Pilot Autonomous Driving, and Smart Cabin.
More specifically, it’s a foldable concept device from Lenovo/Motorola showcased on the floor at this year’s MWC.
The company walked us through a demo of a device that’s another terrific example of its ability to get weird with design.
ItHighlights that there’s absolutely zero guarantee the device will ever become a product and Points to why the company is being a bit stingy with demos.
Lenovo says rollable has multiple batteries – though it won’t disclose how many.
Compared to the competition, the Chinese company is fearless when it comes to getting weird with product design – something I’m fully in favor of.
A team led by former Twitter engineers is rethinking how AI can be used to help people process news and information.
The startup was founded last year by former Senior Director of Product Management at Twitter, Sara Beykpour, who worked on products like Twitter Blue, Twitter Video, and conversations, and had spearheaded the experimental app, twttr.
She had been at Twitter from 2015 through 2021, growing her position from software engineering to that of a senior director of product management.
The premise behind Particle, as Beykpour explained last month, is to make it easier to keep up with news using AI.
We’re hoping to talk in more detail about how Particle vets its sources closer to a public launch.
Why OnePlus waited three years to release a new smartwatch A OnePlus exec discusses how the company is squeezing 100 hours out of the Watch 2OnePlus’ second smartwatch captured media interest this week, courtesy of its stated 100 hours of battery life.
If the device does its job correctly, users won’t notice the shift, beyond the extra battery life it brings.
The OnePlus Watch 2 is also notable for the three-year gap between releases.
This morning, ahead of the device’s official unveiling, I sat down with Tuomas Lampen, OnePlus Europe’s head of strategy on a pair of folding chairs outside Google’s MWC booth.
In terms of functionality, the first OnePlus Watch more closely resembled pre-Apple Watch smartwatches.
One of the challenges for alternative proteins, particularly plant-based, is developing a product that mimics the taste of traditional meat.
The company is making “hybrid meat, dairy and eggs” it says, by combining traditional animal proteins with plant-based ingredients.
“We use our meat proteins, oils, water and spices to get to our formulation, and that allows us to create a clean-label product,” Even told TechCrunch.
Our meat proteins cook in the same manner, the same temperature range, etc.
Signed contractsAt two years old, Ingrediome is still pretty early, and it will be at least two more years before it can manufacturer enough product to sell to traditional meat companies.
First-generation products from new startups are notoriously so, regardless of how much money and excitement you’ve managed to drum up.
Given all that, it’s likely few are too surprised that Humane’s upcoming Ai Pin has been pushed back a bit, from March to “mid-April,” per a new video from the Bay Area startup’s Head of Media, Sam Sheffer.
The Ai Pin was finally unveiled at an event in San Francisco back in early November, where we were able to spend a little controlled hands-on time with the wearable.
Humane is positioning its product as the next step for a space that’s been stuck on the smartphone form factor for more than a decade.
The Ai Pin is currently available for preorder at $699.
Ina Herlihy believes e-commerce brands are losing out on organic traffic and potential revenue by relying on third-party community sites, like Reddit and Facebook Groups.
By building an onsite community, brands are able to increase that retention and drive more organic traffic because the community is on their own domain.
In addition, AddGlow integrates with a brand’s catalog so community members can tag products when mentioning them.
“We started partnering with smaller brands, and now we’re building additional functionality to support larger brands, too,” Herlihy said.
Our goal is to foster a safe space for community members to seek personal advice and build meaningful connections.”
After naming Phil Graves the chief financial officer of alternative protein maker Meati Foods at the beginning of February, he is now the company’s new chief executive officer.
The company also said it was reducing its workforce by 13% as Meati works to “build a financially sustainable business,” Graves told TechCrunch exclusively.
Products are now in over 3,600 retail locations nationwide, including Whole Foods Market, Meijer, Cub Foods and Sprouts Farmers Market.
Graves even said the company has a goal of expanding that to 10,000 locations before the end of 2024.
Once fully ramped up, the facility will have the capability of producing more than 45 million pounds of product, Huggins told TechCrunch at the time.
French startup Planity has been taking advantage of France’s love affair with hair salons to launch a SaaS product for these businesses in particular.
Over time, the company expanded to other types of beauty salons, such as barbers and nail salons.
The startup’s co-founder and CEO Antoine Puymirat first started working on online appointment booking in 2007.
Instead of creating an all-encompassing appointment solution, he chose to focus on beauty salons specifically.
The platform handles around 10 million bookings per month — 4 million of them are booked directly by the end customers on Planity.
Clayton Christensen was an amazing observer of business, and his work on disruption is seminal.
But has he been proven wrong in the last 10 years on many major disruptions?
What if the bottom-up cheaper product disrupting the market is a phenomenon limited to commoditized old product categories (think tires and clothes)?
The Christensen theory of disruption could be called “inferior disruption theory” — inferior, cheaper, good enough products that disrupt incumbents over time.
While this clearly happens, there’s a more powerful model for disruption.
