Orange and Google form new partnership to invest in and buy EMEA startups

Google, more recently by way of parent company Alphabet, has been a prolific investor in startups across the globe by way of entities like GV and CapitalG. Today, it announced its newest effort in this area, specifically outside of the US. The search and Android giant is partnering with Orange Digital Ventures, the corporate venture fund of the French carrier Orange, on a new effort to find, fund, and potentially acquire startups in the EMEA region, and specifically in the areas of the internet of things, cybersecurity, cloud services, AI, fintech and connectivity solutions.

The two are not disclosing a specific fund size, nor are they talking about any financial terms in this deal at this point, except to note that the investments could potentially be made at any stage, from seed to growth, depending on the startup in question.

The two expect the first investments to be announced later this year.

“Our goal is to join forces in financing the most promising digital startups,” said Marc Rennard, the CEO of Orange Digital Ventures (ODV), said in an interview. “We will then work together to qualify them, and when a common interest is there, we will join forces to invest in them.”

To be clear, Google has confirmed to me that this is not an extension of GV or CapitalG but activity out of its corporate development arm, which also makes investments into companies when they are viewed as strategic to Google and a potential route to an acquisition. (One, slightly outsized, example of one these investments in a third party would be Google’s $1.1 billion deal to buy a part of HTC.)

“We are delighted to support Orange’s ecosystem of start-ups and innovation and to explore alongside them opportunities for co-investment in Europe, Africa and the Middle East (EMEA),” said Carlo d’Asaro Biondo, EMEA President of Google Partnerships, in a statement. “Orange’s ecosystem is consistent with Google’s know-how and our ability to accelerate the growth of start-ups. This partnership is a way to enhance our collective contribution to innovation in this region.”

Indeed, in a sense, the deal is mutually beneficial for both sides.

On the part of Google, the company has strong dealflow and outreach particularly among US startups, in keeping with it being based there, and when it comes to GV or CapitalG either in the US, Europe, or elsewhere, the efforts are not intended primarily to be strategic to Google’s own interests. But when it comes to connecting with startups in EMEA that might be useful companies for Google to work with and potentially acquire to expand its business, it may not be seeing as many of those as it wants to.

Rennard said that Orange, on the other hand, gets on average around 1,200 startups pitching it for investment each year, and that’s before you consider startups that might get introduced through other VCs it works with already like Partech.

The thinking here is that working with Google will help ODV better filter some of those opportunities to make sure that the most interesting startups with the most potential get spotted and backed, and also to help Orange and Google both get in on the best deals in what appears to be a competitive investing environment at the moment.

“Have we missed opportunities? Yes. Can we improve? Yes. Could we have invested in an Amazon or Google before they became what they are now? Yes, and maybe we should have,” said Rennard. He also admitted that Orange has found it a challenge to get in on some of the more obvious and interesting startups in EMEA.

“From time to time, it’s difficult to have a place at the table. When a startup decides to call for investors, they might cover all their needs from others, without any possibility of us entering too,” he said. “But with Google plus Orange, I think the company will think twice before rejecting us, so it may help us.”

There is another reason why it may serve Google well to do more in Europe. The company has been under a lot of scrutiny for its anticompetitive practices in advertising and in its Android mobile operating system. By investing in startups in Europe (and beyond) it’s one way for Google to position itself as a team player, supporting smaller tech businesses.

Orange and Google have been working together for some 10 years already in other aspects of their businesses including developing and building out connectivity solutions in Africa, which has also extended into developing cheap handsets together, and this investment plan is an extension of that as well.

Orange is no stranger to trying to work closer with tech companies to bring some of their ethos, culture, and rapid customer growth to their business — which, like many large carriers, continues to bring in huge amounts of cash and strong margins, but is often based on legacy services and therefore runs the risk of shrinking, being curtailed by regulators, or simply becoming less appealing to consumers. Previously, the company also partnered with Facebook to develop an infrastructure accelerator, also focused on emerging markets.

ODV was first established back in 2015 as a $23 million fund for early stage investments, a way for Orange to gain a better foothold in Silicon Valley, and has since grown to handling just under $500 million in investments across the world. Included in that, the carrier has also partnered with a number of other third parties, such as ad giant Publicis, to invest in companies that could potentially serve them to bring more cutting-edge technology into their businesses.

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The Microsoft Launcher for Android now lets you track your kids’ whereabouts

Microsoft is launching an update to its Android launcher today that gives parents the ability to track their kids’ location. This is one out of a number of parent- and kid-focused announcements the company made today. Others include the ability to block sites in Microsoft Edge on Android and the launch of MSN Kids, a new curated news website for children.

At the core of these new features are Microsoft’s family group settings that already allowed you to do things like track a child’s activity on Windows 10 and Xbox One devices or limit screen time in general.

“As a mother to a young and curious daughter, I deeply understand the need for tools to help balance the use of technology in the home as well as out of the home,” writes Shilpa Ranganathan, the General Manager of Microsoft’s Mobile Experiences group, in today’s announcement. “It’s especially near and dear to me as leader of a team building experiences for mobile devices. We emphasize the idea of transparency as a guiding principle for these new experiences.”

The new tracking tool is rolling out with today’s update of the Microsoft Launcher for Android and will put the latest known location of your kids right in its personalized news feed.

I’m not sure how useful blocking access to sites in Edge for Android really is, but if you manage to lock your kids out from Chrome or any other pre-installed browser — and block them from downloading them — then I guess this could work.

As for MSN Kids, Microsoft notes that the site will curate information from trusted sources, including Time for Kids, Popular Science, Sports Illustrated for Kids, National Geographic, and USA TODAY. It’s worth noting that there is no sponsored content or advertising on the site.

 

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Klaxoon gets $50M to try to make boring meetings more interactive and productive

If you’ve ever been in a pointless meeting at work, odds are you’ve spent part of the time responding to messages or just putzing around on the Internet — but Klaxoon hopes to convert that into something a bit more productive with more interactive meetings.

The French startup today said it’s raised $50 million in a new financing round led by Idinvest Partners, with early round investors BPI, Sofiouest, Arkea and White Star Capital Fund also participating. The company offers a suite of tools designed to make those meetings more engaging and generally just cut down on useless meetings with a room of bored and generally unengaged people that might be better off working away at their desk or even taking other meetings. The company has raised about $55.6 million in total.

The whole point of Klaxoon is to make meetings more engaging, and there are a couple ways to do that. The obvious point is to translate what some classrooms are doing in the form of making the whole session more engaging with the use of connected devices. You might actually remember those annoying clickers in classrooms used to answer multiple choice questions throughout a session, but it is at least one way to engage people in a room — and offering a more robust way of doing that may be something that helps making the session as a whole more productive.

Klaxoon also offers other tools like an interactive whiteboard (remember Smartboards, also in classrooms?) as well as a closed networks for meeting participants that aims to be air-gapped from a broader network so those employees can conduct a meeting in private or if the room isn’t available. All this is wrapped together with a set of analytics to help employees — or managers — better conduct meetings and generally be more productive. All this is going to be more important going forward as workplaces become more distributed, and it may be tempting to just have a virtual meeting on one screen while either working on a different one — or just messing around on the Internet.

Of course, lame meetings are a known issue — especially within larger companies. So there are multiple interpretations of ways to try to fix that problem, including Worklytics — a company that came out of Y Combinator earlier this year — that are trying to make teams more efficient in general. The idea is that if you are able to reduce the time spent in meetings that aren’t really productive, that’ll increase the output of a team in general. The goal is not to monitor teams closely, but just find ways to encourage them to spend their time more wisely. Creating a better set of productivity tools inside those meetings is one approach, and that’s what Klaxoon seems to hope is the one that plays out.

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iOS App Store has seen over 170B downloads, over $130B in revenue since July 2010

The App Store has seen over 170 billion downloads over the past decade, totaling over $130 billion in consumer spend. This data was shared this morning by app intelligence firm App Annie, which is marking the App Store’s 10th Anniversary with a look back on the store’s growth and the larger trends it’s seen. These figures aren’t the full picture, however – the App Store launched on July 10, 2008 with just 500 applications, but App Annie arrived in 2010. The historical data for this report, therefore, goes from July 2010 through December 2017.

That means the true numbers are even higher that what App Annie can confirm.

The report paints a picture of the continued growth of the App Store over the years, noting that iOS App Store revenue growth outpaces downloads, and that nearly doubled between 2015 to 2017.

iOS devices owners apparently love to spend on apps, too.

The iOS App Store only has a 30 percent share of worldwide downloads, but accounts for 66 percent of consumer spend, the report says.

But this isn’t a complete picture of the iOS vs. Android battle, as Google Play isn’t available in China. App Annie’s data is incomplete on this front as it’s not accounting for the third-party Android app stores in China.

China today plays an outsized role, as App Annie has repeatedly reported, in terms of App Store revenue, even without Google Play. In fact, the APAC region accounts for nearly 60 percent of consumer spend – a trend that began in earnest with the October 2014 release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in China.

But when you look back at the App Store trends to date (or, as of July 2010 – which is as far back as App Annie’s data goes), it’s the U.S. that leads by a slim margin. China has quickly caught up but the U.S. is still the top country for all-time downloads, with 40.1 billion to China’s 39.9 billion; and it has generated $36 billion in consumer spend to China’s $27.7 billion.

iPhone users are heavy app users, too, the report notes.

In several markets, users have 100 or more apps installed, including Australia, India, China, Germany, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, and France. The U.S., U.K., and Mexico come close, with 96, 90, and 89 average monthly apps installed in 2017, respectively.

Of course the numbers of apps used monthly are much smaller, but still range in the high 30’s to low 40’s, App Annie claims.

The report additionally examines the impact of games, which accounted for only 31 percent of downloads in 2017, but generated 75 percent of the revenue. The APAC regions plays a large role here as well, with 3.4 billion game downloads last year, and $19.3 billion in consumer spend.

Subscriptions, meanwhile, are a newer trend, but one that’s already boosting App Store revenues considerably, accounting for $10.6 billion in consumer spend in 2017. This is driven mainly by media streaming apps like Netflix, Pandora, and Tencent Video, for example, but Tinder makes a notable showing as one of the top five worldwide apps by revenue.

Thanks to subscriptions and other trends, App Annie predicts the worldwide iOS App Store revenue will grow 80 percent from 2017 to $75.7 billion by 2022.

And while the App Store today has over 2 million apps, it has seen over 4.5 million apps released on its store to date. Many of these have been removed by Apple or the developers in the months and years, which is why the number of live apps is so much lower.

The full report with the charts included is here.

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iOS App Store has seen over 170B downloads, over $130B in revenue since July 2010

The App Store has seen over 170 billion downloads over the past decade, totaling over $130 billion in consumer spend. This data was shared this morning by app intelligence firm App Annie, which is marking the App Store’s 10th Anniversary with a look back on the store’s growth and the larger trends it’s seen. These figures aren’t the full picture, however – the App Store launched on July 10, 2008 with just 500 applications, but App Annie arrived in 2010. The historical data for this report, therefore, goes from July 2010 through December 2017.

That means the true numbers are even higher that what App Annie can confirm.

The report paints a picture of the continued growth of the App Store over the years, noting that iOS App Store revenue growth outpaces downloads, and that nearly doubled between 2015 to 2017.

iOS devices owners apparently love to spend on apps, too.

The iOS App Store only has a 30 percent share of worldwide downloads, but accounts for 66 percent of consumer spend, the report says.

But this isn’t a complete picture of the iOS vs. Android battle, as Google Play isn’t available in China. App Annie’s data is incomplete on this front as it’s not accounting for the third-party Android app stores in China.

China today plays an outsized role, as App Annie has repeatedly reported, in terms of App Store revenue, even without Google Play. In fact, the APAC region accounts for nearly 60 percent of consumer spend – a trend that began in earnest with the October 2014 release of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in China.

But when you look back at the App Store trends to date (or, as of July 2010 – which is as far back as App Annie’s data goes), it’s the U.S. that leads by a slim margin. China has quickly caught up but the U.S. is still the top country for all-time downloads, with 40.1 billion to China’s 39.9 billion; and it has generated $36 billion in consumer spend to China’s $27.7 billion.

iPhone users are heavy app users, too, the report notes.

In several markets, users have 100 or more apps installed, including Australia, India, China, Germany, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, and France. The U.S., U.K., and Mexico come close, with 96, 90, and 89 average monthly apps installed in 2017, respectively.

Of course the numbers of apps used monthly are much smaller, but still range in the high 30’s to low 40’s, App Annie claims.

The report additionally examines the impact of games, which accounted for only 31 percent of downloads in 2017, but generated 75 percent of the revenue. The APAC regions plays a large role here as well, with 3.4 billion game downloads last year, and $19.3 billion in consumer spend.

Subscriptions, meanwhile, are a newer trend, but one that’s already boosting App Store revenues considerably, accounting for $10.6 billion in consumer spend in 2017. This is driven mainly by media streaming apps like Netflix, Pandora, and Tencent Video, for example, but Tinder makes a notable showing as one of the top five worldwide apps by revenue.

Thanks to subscriptions and other trends, App Annie predicts the worldwide iOS App Store revenue will grow 80 percent from 2017 to $75.7 billion by 2022.

And while the App Store today has over 2 million apps, it has seen over 4.5 million apps released on its store to date. Many of these have been removed by Apple or the developers in the months and years, which is why the number of live apps is so much lower.

The full report with the charts included is here.

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The queer dating app Her expands with curated community spaces

After carving out a niche as the first dating app by and for queer women, Her is broadening its mission. Today, the app formerly known as Dattch is launching a Communities feature — kind of like a set of mini queer subreddits — to let people connect around interests and identity as a group.

“We spent the past three years bringing people together in one on one conversations and introductions — communities is about taking it beyond the one on one,” Her founder Robyn Exton told TechCrunch.

“We started paying attention to the number of queer spaces that are closing,” Exton said, noting that women’s centers, lesbian bars, queer bookshops and other queer IRL spaces are closing in record numbers in recent years. “We actually think they’re needed more than ever.”

Her’s new Communities feature aims to create a digital version of those collective queer spaces, letting users connect with interest and identity-based groups, with message boards custom built for Her’s unique user base. Users can post content in Communities or follow another person’s feed to stay up to date on what’s going in the Her universe.

A curated starter pack of Communities launches today, though Exton plans to add more over time with the potential for user-generated Communities and pop-ups around specific events. The first set includes a space for queer women of color, one centered around mindfulness and wellbeing and another for news and entertainment, among others.

The categories are pretty broad for now, but it sounds like Her plans to adapt Communities to whatever its users end up wanting. That flexibility coupled with Exton’s commitment to maintaining a space that’s “so ragingly queer” set Her apart from dating apps that generally fumble any dating experience that isn’t explicitly for straight people or gay men.

Her also plans to push toward internationalization in 2018 to grow its 3 million registered users. The app is already live in 55 countries and its largest non-English speaking markets are France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and the Philippines. The app will host events tailored toward each of those locales in the coming year.

Just in time for Pride Month, Her is also launching a rebrand aimed at making the app more inclusive and reflective of what Exton calls “the future of fluidity that we believe in.”

“Our community and our audience has changed hugely, even in the last three years,” Exton said. “We needed to reflect that as a brand.”

According to Exton, there’s been a massive spike in Her users under the age of 29 describing their gender as non-binary or their sexuality as pansexual — a shift reflective of language and identity evolution in the queer community at large. The language of the rebrand describes a vision in which “sexuality and gender are found on a spectrum, where labels remain but are not set in stone.”

Exton hopes that Communities will create meaningful spaces in which Her users can gather and explore their own identities as they evolve and change. “So much queerness that happens inside of Her,” Exton said. “People describe it as feeling like you’re coming home.”

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Alcatel’s $100 Android Go phone hits the U.S. next week

At MWC, ZTE promised that its Tempo Go would be the first device to bring Android Oreo (Go Edition) to the States. But, well, stuff happened, and the company’s had a lot bigger things to deal with the intervening months. Alcatel, however, is on the case with the 1X. 

TCL announced this morning that the budget device will be hitting Amazon some time next, priced at an extremely affordable $100, unlocked. It will also be arriving at Best Buy and Walmart soon after, no doubt taking advantage of the fact that it’s the only Android Go handset available in the U.S. for the time being.

The specs are unsurprisingly uninspiring. There’s a 960 x 480 5.3-inch screen, a MediaTek chip and 1GB or RAM. The good news, however, is that the new, lightweight version of Google’s mobile operating system is built for exactly those hardware restraints, which means you ought to get a much smoother Android experience than you would on a similarly-speced handset running the full OS.

While the operating system is well positioned to get a foothold in developing countries, Google was quick to point out that it wasn’t limiting Android Go’s availability to those parts of the world. But while a number of manufacturers have signed on, none appeared too eager to launch the handsets in the States — well, aside from ZTE, but we all know how that went.

Another Android Go devices is on the way as well, with HMD bringing the Nokia 2.1 to the States in July.

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Pinterest gives advertisers a way to show promoted videos that take up the screen

Pinterest is continuing its push into video as a potential avenue for advertisers by today saying that it will offer advertisers a promoted video tool that takes up the width of the entire screen.

While Pinterest normally offers users a grid that they can flip through — compressing a lot of content into a small space — taking up the full width of the screen with a promoted video would offer advertisers considerable real estate if they’re looking to get the attention of users. Pinterest pitches itself to advertisers as a strong alternative to Facebook or Google, giving marketers a way to reach an audience that behaves a little more differently than when on those other platforms and coming to Pinterest to discover new things.

The company also said it’s hired Tina Pukonen as an entertainment strategist and Mike Chuthakieo as an industry sales lead. Pinterest says more than 42 million people in the U.S. come to Pinterest for entertainment ideas, and that potential tool offers an interesting niche opportunity for advertisers to capture the attention of a user for a product — say, a movie — that needs a lot of awareness marketing. Getting a user’s attention for just a few seconds can be more than enough time to at least plant the seed of potentially buying a product down the line.

It’s that argument that what gives Pinterest potential value for advertisers. The company offers an array of advertising products designed to target users at all phases of a potential buying cycle, whether that’s just clicking around on the platform looking for ideas down to actually saving an idea or buying it — through Pinterest or through a referral. Most of Pinterest’s content consists of images and other content from brands or businesses. That makes sense given that it’s a place where people tend to go to plan life events, whether that’s parties, or weddings, or home improvement — and those events center around products that they may in theory one day buy. All the while Pinterest is accumulating a lot of different plays at advertising products and an experienced level of senior hires, including hiring its first COO Françoise Brougher, who was the former VP of SMB global sales and operations at Google and business lead at Square.

Pinterest, interestingly, seems to have been a little more tolerant of making what might seem like small design changes but may have substantial user implications. The company added a tab for followers at the bottom of the app, shaking up what is often seen as a core navigation bar for any app. But the company continues to grow, crossing 200 million monthly active users in September last year.

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Feeling pressure from Russia, Telegram says Apple has blocked updates since mid-April, app missed GDPR deadline

Encrypted messaging app Telegram is feeling the squeeze out of Russia, where regulators are not letting up in their ongoing attempts to block the app because its publishers refuse to provide regulators with access to messages on the platform. Pavel Durov has announced that Telegram app for iOS is no longer updating after the iOS 11.4 update this week: updates are being “prevented” by Apple after the Russian regulator ordered Apple to remove Telegram from the App Store altogether. Durov said this has also meant that Telegram has not been able to issue its GDPR update to comply with the new European regulations that went into effect last week.

For now, Telegram is still in the App Store, albeit with an out-of-date, non-GDPR-compliant version of the app.

The news caps off what has been a troubling week for Telegram. Days ago, the Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor (RKN) announced that it had made a formal request to Apple to stop distributing the app, and also to stop enabling push notifications for those who already have the app downloaded in Russia.

Durov’s full statement, plus some more context below that:

“Unfortunately, some Telegram features, such as stickers, don’t work correctly under iOS 11.4 that was just released – even though we fixed this issue weeks ago,” Durov wrote minutes ago in his Telegram channel.

“Apple has been preventing Telegram from updating its iOS apps globally ever since the Russian authorities ordered Apple to remove Telegram from the App Store. Russia banned Telegram on its territory in April because we refused to provide decryption keys for all our users’ communications to Russia’s security agencies. We believe we did the only possible thing, preserving the right of our users to privacy in a troubled country.

“Unfortunately, Apple didn’t side with us. While Russia makes up only 7% of Telegram’s userbase, Apple is restricting updates for all Telegram users around the world since mid-April. As a result, we’ve also been unable to fully comply with GDPR for our EU-users by the deadline of May 25, 2018. We are continuing our efforts to resolve the situation and will keep you updated.

“Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.”

Notably, for now it seems that the app — an older version of it — is still available in the App Store. Apple, according to a report this week, has one month from May 28 to comply with a request to remove it completely. It’s not clear what the consequences would be if it failed to do so.

“We sent them [Apple] a legally binding letter and are awaiting their legally binding reply. Because Apple, like other transnational companies, is a company with a high degree of red tape, we expect the reply within a month,” RKN’s head Alexander Zharov said to Russian news agency Interfax.

RKN has been seeking to shut down use of Telegram in the country for months, but for most of that time Telegram has been working around the issue by appealing to people to use VPNs to access the service, and also by hopping around IPs at hosting companies sympathetic to its attempt to continue offering its service without sharing data with Russian authorities.

Its hopping had the unintended consequence of RKN knocking out entire swathes of IP addresses to stop Telegram, some 19 million at its peak, causing a number of other services to go down as well. But even so, the app has gone viral with the attention, which had also prompted a number of protests.

But despite the attention, it is unclear how this might have translated to usage and app installs. The most recent figures released by Telegram note that there are about 200 million monthly active users, with 14 million in Russia, although those figures predate the scuffle with Russian regulators. Downloads as tracked by AppAnnie, in fact, seem to point to a slight dip in downloads in Russia after the RKN blocks started in April, although those numbers only count App Store downloads.

Surprisingly, and maybe because of how popular the resistance was proving to be, it looked like several of the key cloud hosting companies, such as Google and Amazon’s AWS, where Telegram along with many other sites and apps host their data and operations, had decided to hold firm to see how things would develop, even when their own consumer-facing services were suffering.

So it seemed only a matter of time before RKN would soon turn to app store operators to turn the screws further. Apple, it seems, has been the first to go down, specifically with regards to updating the app in the App Store. Logically, it seems that the Play Store and others might also feel the squeeze, too.

We are contacting Apple for further comment, and also Google to see if the Play Store is also being affected, and we will update this post as we learn more.

More to come.

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Nokia closes digital health sale to Withings founder Eric Carreel, who plans relaunch by EOY

Nokia has closed the books on its unlucky foray into digital health devices and services, and with it, a business is marking its return to the world of startups. Today, the Finnish telecoms giant announced that it has closed the sale of its digital health division, along with 200 employees, to Eric Carreel, the former chairman and co-founder of Withings. Now Carreel plans to relaunch the business once again under the Withings brand by the end of this year, with products focused on preventive health.

Withings had formed the core of Nokia’s digital health business after it acquired the company, famous for its smart scales, in 2016 for €170 million. Nokia later rebranded the business as Nokia Digital Health.

“I am delighted to start working again with the brilliant teams that made the brand such a great success” said Carreel in a statement. “We have an exciting challenge ahead of us as we continue to push the boundaries of connected health.”

The deal comes less than a month after Nokia announced that it had entered into exclusive negotiations with Carreel for the sale, part of a larger reorganization at the company to refocus away from unprofitable businesses.

There were no financial terms revealed in the sale, nor any details about how the new Withings will be financed. (We are asking.) In its previous incarnation as a startup before its exit to Nokia, Withings had raised just under $34 million with investors including Bpifrance, Ininvest and and Ventech starting in 2008. The new startup will be based out of Paris with operations also in the U.S. and Asia.

Alongside the news about Withings, there are some executive changes at Nokia, too.

Gregory Lee — who joined the Nokia Technologies division in part to restructure the business by hiving off unprofitable operations like digital health — is now leaving the company altogether. Maria Varsellona, who is the company’s Chief Legal Officer, will now also be the president of Nokia Technologies.

This change makes some (disheartening) sense: Nokia has a huge trove of patents from its long history, which included helping forge and for a long time leading the mobile phone industry. While Nokia’s mobile phone business eventually collapsed, quite dramatically, it has held on to a number of patents, and has added to that in recent years. And this is why it is unsurprising to have Nokia’s legal head also leading its Technologies division: it shows where the company’s priorities are today. 

Back at Withings, in addition to connected scales, the company today makes activity tracking watches, blood pressure monitors, a smart thermometer, and a sleep tracking pad, which work with an app it calls Health Mate. The focus on preventive health sounds like it will keep all of these in place.

The story of hardware startups is one of many optimistic and often exciting ideas, but also a lot of failures, as the realities set in of developing supply chains, trying to find the right economies of scale and of course finding customers for your shiny new gadgets. Withings is some way out of the initially hard part of simply getting products designed, working, made and out into the market, but it will still have to contend with keeping the business operating and growing — challenges that Nokia clearly could not surmount.

One thing in its favor is the rise of AI and the general expansion of possibilities that come with all the data that can now be collected. Putting aside clunkers like Theranos, a number of startups — such as Ava, which is focusing on women’s health — have been exploring not just what kind of data they can gather from wearables and other devices, but how to “read” that data and match it up with new understanding about disease pathology and health, to gain more insights about us and how we work.

This seems to be the direction that Withings hopes to go, too.

“We are still only just starting to discover what connected health can really bring to people,” said Carreel in a statement. “From now on we must concentrate our efforts on developing tools capable of advanced measurements and the associated services that can help prevent chronic health conditions. Today’s technologies allow us to imagine solutions that have the potential to benefit the lives of millions of people, and our ambition is to ensure that we, as Withings, lead the way with technological advances and intuitive designs.”

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Pinterest gives advertisers a way to show promoted videos that take up the screen

Pinterest is continuing its push into video as a potential avenue for advertisers by today saying that it will offer advertisers a promoted video tool that takes up the width of the entire screen.

While Pinterest normally offers users a grid that they can flip through — compressing a lot of content into a small space — taking up the full width of the screen with a promoted video would offer advertisers considerable real estate if they’re looking to get the attention of users. Pinterest pitches itself to advertisers as a strong alternative to Facebook or Google, giving marketers a way to reach an audience that behaves a little more differently than when on those other platforms and coming to Pinterest to discover new things.

The company also said it’s hired Tina Pukonen as an entertainment strategist and Mike Chuthakieo as an industry sales lead. Pinterest says more than 42 million people in the U.S. come to Pinterest for entertainment ideas, and that potential tool offers an interesting niche opportunity for advertisers to capture the attention of a user for a product — say, a movie — that needs a lot of awareness marketing. Getting a user’s attention for just a few seconds can be more than enough time to at least plant the seed of potentially buying a product down the line.

It’s that argument that what gives Pinterest potential value for advertisers. The company offers an array of advertising products designed to target users at all phases of a potential buying cycle, whether that’s just clicking around on the platform looking for ideas down to actually saving an idea or buying it — through Pinterest or through a referral. Most of Pinterest’s content consists of images and other content from brands or businesses. That makes sense given that it’s a place where people tend to go to plan life events, whether that’s parties, or weddings, or home improvement — and those events center around products that they may in theory one day buy. All the while Pinterest is accumulating a lot of different plays at advertising products and an experienced level of senior hires, including hiring its first COO Françoise Brougher, who was the former VP of SMB global sales and operations at Google and business lead at Square.

Pinterest, interestingly, seems to have been a little more tolerant of making what might seem like small design changes but may have substantial user implications. The company added a tab for followers at the bottom of the app, shaking up what is often seen as a core navigation bar for any app. But the company continues to grow, crossing 200 million monthly active users in September last year.

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Pinterest gives advertisers a way to show promoted videos that take up the screen

Pinterest is continuing its push into video as a potential avenue for advertisers by today saying that it will offer advertisers a promoted video tool that takes up the width of the entire screen.

While Pinterest normally offers users a grid that they can flip through — compressing a lot of content into a small space — taking up the full width of the screen with a promoted video would offer advertisers considerable real estate if they’re looking to get the attention of users. Pinterest pitches itself to advertisers as a strong alternative to Facebook or Google, giving marketers a way to reach an audience that behaves a little more differently than when on those other platforms and coming to Pinterest to discover new things.

The company also said it’s hired Tina Pukonen as an entertainment strategist and Mike Chuthakieo as an industry sales lead. Pinterest says more than 42 million people in the U.S. come to Pinterest for entertainment ideas, and that potential tool offers an interesting niche opportunity for advertisers to capture the attention of a user for a product — say, a movie — that needs a lot of awareness marketing. Getting a user’s attention for just a few seconds can be more than enough time to at least plant the seed of potentially buying a product down the line.

It’s that argument that what gives Pinterest potential value for advertisers. The company offers an array of advertising products designed to target users at all phases of a potential buying cycle, whether that’s just clicking around on the platform looking for ideas down to actually saving an idea or buying it — through Pinterest or through a referral. Most of Pinterest’s content consists of images and other content from brands or businesses. That makes sense given that it’s a place where people tend to go to plan life events, whether that’s parties, or weddings, or home improvement — and those events center around products that they may in theory one day buy. All the while Pinterest is accumulating a lot of different plays at advertising products and an experienced level of senior hires, including hiring its first COO Françoise Brougher, who was the former VP of SMB global sales and operations at Google and business lead at Square.

Pinterest, interestingly, seems to have been a little more tolerant of making what might seem like small design changes but may have substantial user implications. The company added a tab for followers at the bottom of the app, shaking up what is often seen as a core navigation bar for any app. But the company continues to grow, crossing 200 million monthly active users in September last year.

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