Apple said to be working on modular, high-end, noise-cancelling over-ear headphones

by AirPodsAppleapple incGadgetsHardwareSonyTC

Apple is said to be developing its own competitors to popular over-ear noise-cancelling headphones like those made by Bose and Sony, Bloomberg reports, but with similar technology on board to that used in the AirPod and AirPod Pro lines. These headphones would also include a design with interchangeable parts that would allow some modification with customizable accessories for specific uses like workouts and long-term wear, for instance.

The prototype designs of the new headphones, which are set to potentially be released some time later this year (though timing is clearly up in the air as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, and Apple’s general tendency to move things around depending on other factors), are said to feature a “retro look” by Bloomberg, and include oval ear cups which connect directly to thin arms that extend to the headband. The swappable parts include the ear pads and headband cushion, both of which are said to attach to the headphone frame using magnetic connectors.

These will support Siri on board, along with active noise cancellation and touch controls, but most importantly for iOS and Mac users, they’ll also feature the simple connection across multiple devices that are featured on AirPods and some of Apple’s Beats line of headphones.

Apple has already released Beats over- and on-ear headphone models with AirPod-like features, including cross-connectivity, and that feature onboard noise cancellation. The Bloomberg report doesn’t seem to indicate these new models would be Beats-branded, however, and their customization features would also be new in terms of Apple’s available existing options.

Bloomberg also previously reported that Apple was working on a smaller HomePod speaker as part of its forthcoming product lineup, and a new FCC filing made public this week could indicate the impending release of a success to its PowerBeats Pro fully wireless in-ear sport headphones.

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GoPro lays off 200 employees representing 20% of the company

by coronavirusCOVID-19FinanceGadgetsGoPro

Action camera manufacturer GoPro has announced some massive organizational changes at the company. In particular, the company is laying off more than 200 employees — which represents a 20% staff reduction.

GoPro plans “office space reductions in five geographies” as well as a reduction in operating expenses. The company expects a “0 million reduction in non-GAAP operating expenses in 2020 and plans to further reduce operating expenses into 2021 to 0 million.” The 2021 reduction in operating expenses will come from “non-headcount related operating expenses.”

Behind the scene, GoPro is making some radical changes to its business model. The company is still selling cameras, accessories and subscriptions. But it is switching to a direct-to-consumer model with GoPro.com acting as the main storefront.

The company will stop selling its devices in many retail stores. GoPro will still work with select retailers in some regions as they still generate a lot of sales.

But selling directly on GoPro.com represents the future of the company, which should improve margins. They don’t have to give a cut to retailers when GoPro is acting as the retailer. In 2019, GoPro.com represented a bit more than 20% of European revenue and a bit less than 20% of revenue in the U.S.

“GoPro’s global distribution network has been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, driving us to transition into a more efficient and profitable direct-to-consumer-centric business over the course of this year,” founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman wrote. “We are crushed that this forces us to let go of many talented members of our team, and we are forever grateful for their contributions.”

In addition to today’s layoffs, sales and marketing expenditure will be cut down in 2020 and beyond. Woodman himself won’t take a salary for the remainder of the year. The company’s board won’t receive any cash compensation either.

GoPro has withdrawn earnings guidance for Q1 and 2020. The company now expects revenue of $119 million with a non-GAAP EPS loss of $0.30 to $0.40 per share. In pre-market trading, GoPro shares are currently trading at $2.58, 3% below yesterday’s closing price.

Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly stated that GoPro will only keep offices in five geographies and that the reduction in operating expenses in 2021 could involve further layoffs. Instead, the company is reducing its real estate portfolio in five geographies and the 2021 reduction in operating expenses will come from non-headcount related operating expenses.

FDA authorizes production of a new ventilator that costs up to 25x less than existing devices

by coronavirusCOVID-19GadgetsHardwareHealthScienceTCTeslaUnited States

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorized the manufacture of the Coventor ventilator, a new hardware design first developed by the University of Minnesota. The project sought to create a ventilator that could provide the same level of life-saving care as existing ventilator models, but with a much lower cost to help ramp production quickly and make them affordable to the health institutions that need them.

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Electrical worker safety startup launches a COVID-19 workplace distance and contact tracker

by BluetoothcoronavirusCOVID-19GadgetsHardwareInternet of ThingsStartupsTC

A startup that created a dedicated gadget to help ensure the safety of electrical industry workers has turned their talents to addressing the need for similar workplace protections in the face of another threat: COVID-19. Vancouver-based Proxxi is launching Halo, a wrist-worn wearable device that can provide a vibration notification to alert someone of the presence of another band within 6 feet – the recommended span of separation to ensure proper social distancing.

Truphone raises $38M at $516M valuation as its eSIM business crosses 4M profiles

by EuropeFundings & ExitsGadgetsHardwareRecent FundingStartupsTC

Truphone, a UK-based startup that provides voice and data services for phones, tablets and IoT hardware by way of eSIM software integrated directly into the devices, has raised another round of funding to continue expanding its business. The company, which told TechCrunch today that it counts Apple as a key partner, has raised another £30 million, valuing Truphone at £410 million (or $38 million at a $516 million valuation at current rates).

Truphone said it would use the money to continue investing in software development and network upgrades “to ensure the business is equipped to deliver on further acceleration; and to support an expanding worldwide presence, particularly in North America and Asia Pacific.”

The company said it has now provisioned some 4 million eSIM profiles globally and is seeing further eSIM downloads of 20,000 daily.

Although eSIM technology was conceived as a quick way to switch carriers without physically changing fiddly, tiny physical cards (and subsequent carrier contracts), it’s an interesting datapoint right now, given that we are seeing a big focus on technology and transactions that can be run in a contactless way (thus avoiding the spread of the novel coronavirus).

“We have long championed eSIM as the superior method of connectivity, and it’s immensely rewarding to reap the benefits of this decision,” said Ralph Steffens, CEO of Truphone, in a statement. “We are delighted that our investors continue to support us as we develop this technology which is maturing and accelerating all the time. Backed further by our investors, the future looks bright for Truphone, our partners, customers and a better-connected world.”

Truphone did not disclose the specific names of investors but we have confirmed that the majority of the funds are coming from Vollin Holdings and Minden Worldwide — two investment firms with ties to Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch who also owns the Chelsea football club, among other things.

Collectively, Abramovich-connected entities controlled more than 80 percent of the company when Truphone last raised funding in 2018: part of its large shareholding also stems from an earlier fundraise, when the company raised 9 million to retire existing debt in 2017.

For some additional context, the company was valued at £386 million in its last fundraise in 2018, making this latest raise effectively a slight down round.

Truphone is not a startup in the “young” sense. It has actually been around since 2006, starting out originally as a provider of SIM cards that travellers could use in their phones to get cheap calls and data while roaming outside their home countries. That legacy MVNO business reached breakeven in September 2019, it said today.

In more recent years, it has pivoted to focusing squarely on eSIM services, taking advantage of the advances in hardware design that make it easier to switch carriers (and use cheaper data plans) without physically replacing a SIM card.

It was an early partner of Apple’s — a supporter of eSIM developments, first for its iPad tablets — and said today that in the last year has secured deals with 25 “major operator customers across four continents”, covering some 200 million customers, to expand its network of coverage to allow users to more easily switch between carriers, and seek out cheaper data deals. Its growth, Truphone said, makes it one of the three biggest eSIM providers now globally.

The company today says it provides several flavors of eSIM services. The first of these, an eSIM operating system that it calls SIM OS, works with eUICC and iUICC hardware, and “is a component-oriented, high-performance embedded operating system, fully compatible with most international and industry standards such as ISO, GSMA, Oracle’s Java, Global Platform, 3GPP and ETSI.”

The second of these is a secure remote SIM provisioning service. “Truphone’s platform works with any mobile network operator, is interoperable with any eSIM and supports consumer and M2M eSIM deployments” through this service, it said.

It also launched an entitlements server, an operator-focused service that allows carriers to enable the use, for example, of Apple Watch devices and other connected devices and objects on their networks.

Apple said to be planning fall iPhone refresh with iPad Pro-like design

by Appleapple incBluetoothGadgetsHardwareHomePodiOSiPadiPadsiPhoneTC

Apple is readying a new iPhone for fall to replace the iPhone 11 Pro this fall, Bloomberg reports, as well as follow-ups to the iPhone 11, a new smaller HomePod and a locator tag accessory. The top-end iPhone 11 Pro successors at least will have a new industrial design that more closely resembles the iPad Pro, with flat screens and sides instead of the current rounded edge design, and they’ll also include the 3D LIDAR sensing system that Apple introduced with the most recent iPad Pro refresh in March.

PlayStation 5’s new DualSense controller is a sleek and futuristic gaming accessory

by GadgetsGamingHardwareSonyTC

Sony has revealed the design of the PlayStation 5‘s controller — a follow-on to its popular DualShock line that takes on a new name for a new generation: DualSense.

The DualSense controller is kitted out in black and white, and in some ways looks like a futuristic, plastic armor-plated robot companion more than a gamepad. It’s still recognizably a product of the DualShock legacy, however, and has the same familiar button layout as previous PlayStation controllers. The DualSense incorporates haptic feedback, however, for what Sony says will be a heightened sense of immersion in gaming.

Haptic feedback should be an improvement over the relatively general and non-specific rumble vibration of current generation controllers, and Sony has also added more tactile response thanks to new L2 and R2 “adaptive triggers” that provide different kinds of tension response when performing in-game actions, like “drawing a bow to shoot an arrow,” the company says.

The resulting physical design is a bit chunkier than the DualShock 4, with more room needed inside the case for that adaptive trigger tech. Still, Sony said that it has redesigned the component angles to produce a controller that feels a lot lighter in the hand than it looks.

This controller also does away with the dedicated “Share” button, but replaces it with a “Create” button that sounds like it should offer similar features and much more, though Sony isn’t yet ready to tip its hand as to exactly what that entails, and promises more details to follow.

Meanwhile, there’s a new built-in mic array for voice chat without any headset required — though it sounds like this is intended primarily as a “you have it in case you need it” feature than a dedicated input, since Sony is still advocating use of a headset for longer play sessions.

From a pure looks perspective, Sony clearly decided it wanted to go a bit more bold than its standard all-black look for the first version of a new controller it ships with a console. The two-tone, Stormtrooper palette is complemented by a new light bar that lines both sides of the central touchpad.

Personally, I love this look — and the USB-C port that you can spy at the top of the controller for charging. I don’t even know if I’m all that interested in a new generation of console, but the controller alone might convince me to upgrade.

Bidet startup Tushy scales up to meet demand amid toilet paper shortage

by coronavirusCOVID-19GadgetsStartupsTC

Business at Tushy is booming.

While the circumstances that led to the boom are sobering, the bidet company needed to adapt its strategy after seeing an uptick in business amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Other companies in this cohort include video conferencing service Zoom, meal kit service Blue Apron and Facebook, thanks to its social network, video hardware Portal and Oculus Quest VR headset. These companies all have something in common — they offer solutions to problems that, until recently, were not all that urgent.

Founded in 2015 by Thinx founder Miki Agrawal, Tushy aims to replace toilet paper, CEO Jason Ojalvo tells TechCrunch. Ojalvo, who joined the company as CEO in 2018, says North America has been a holdout when it comes to bidets. As a result, the nation flushes about 15 million trees down the toilet every year.

Tushy, which has raised $2.9 million since its founding, has been profitable for the last two years. That’s in part thanks to the company’s focus on sustainability — not just from an environmental standpoint, but from a business one, Ojalvo says. That means not over-hiring or spending too much on marketing.

“We’re really careful about doing it in a way so we won’t explode like some other direct-to-consumer companies can do when they raise too much money and they over-hire and then they have to let people go,” Ojalvo says. “That’s just a debacle that I’ve seen first hand and I don’t want to be part of it. Not only do I not want to be part of it but I don’t want to be the leader of the company that does that.”

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Tushy saw its growth double year-over-year. Ojalvo says that’s partly been a result of having customers who evangelize on their behalf. Fast-forward to around March 9, when sales really started to double beyond the norm; a few days later, Tushy was having days where it brought in $500,000 in sales.

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R&D Roundup: Ultrasound/AI medical imaging, assistive exoskeletons and neural weather modeling

by Artificial IntelligenceGadgetsHardwareScienceStartupsTC

In the time of COVID-19, much of what transpires from the science world to the general public relates to the virus, and understandably so. But other domains, even within medical research, are still active — and as usual, there are tons of interesting (and heartening) stories out there that shouldn’t be lost in the furious activity of coronavirus coverage. This last week brought good news for several medical conditions as well as some innovations that could improve weather reporting and maybe save a few lives in Cambodia.