Apple gives a bunch of people new titles, WhatsApp is back up in Brazil after getting
banned, Lyft redesigns their mobile app for all our big ass phones, and more...
It's Thursday, December 17th and this is Crunch Report.
Apple's moving some executive around, starting with Jeff Williams, who is Apple's new Chief
Operating Officer. Apple hasn't had anyone in the COO role since Tim Cook became Apple
CEO in 2011. Williams joined Apple in 1998, was named VP of Operations in 2004, and has
been running the Apple Watch business. Phil Schiller, Apple's VP of Worldwide Marketing,
will now also be running the App Store across all Apple platforms. This puts Schiller in
charge pretty much all developer-related functions in addition to his other marketing responsibilities,
which includes product, international, education and business marketing on the iPhone, iPad,
Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. The company says more than 11 million developers now build
apps for iOS, OS X, watchOS and tvOS. Couple more musical chairs - Tor Myhren will join
Apple from ad agency Grey New York in Q1 2016, replacing Hiroki Asai, who is retiring as
Vice President of Marketing Communications after 18 years at Apple. Johny Srouji, who
oversees Apple’s semiconductor business and other hardware tech, is now Senior Vice
President for Hardware Technologies. Srouji joined Apple in 2008 and led development for
Apple’s first system on a chip, which was... the A4.
Martin Shk-reli, the pharmaceutical executive who raised the price of Daraprim, a lifesaving
anti-parasitic drug, from $13.50 to $750 and became hated by pretty much everyone, has
been arrested by the FBI and charged with securities fraud. Prosecutors say Shkreli
committed fraud by illegally using stock from Retrophin, the company he ran from 2011 to
2014 and was eventually fired from and sued by, to pay off debts,... this is according
to Bloomberg Business. The arrest is NOT related to his company Turing Pharmaceuticals, which
acquired the drug Daraprim, which is used to treat toxoplasmosis in people with compromised
immune systems, like HIV/AIDs and cancer patients. However, according to a report by Newsweek
, Shkreli’s crimes may go deeper than fraud. The magazine wrote: "A quick summary of the
government’s theory: If there was money, Shkreli took it. If there were facts to be
revealed, Shkreli hid them. If there were securities laws, Shkreli broke them.” Shkreli
was released earlier today on a $5 million bond with his travel restricted to parts of
New York. He will next appear in court on Jan. 20.
Last night, a judge in Sao Paulo ordered WhatsApp to shut down for 48 hours... extremely significant,
because WhatsApp is the single most used app in Brazil, with about 93 million users, or
93% of the country’s internet population, installed on 92.5 percent of Android devices
in Brazil. Here's what's up - Brazilian telcos have been trying to convince the government
that WhatsApp’s voice service is unregulated and therefore illegal, and have blamed the
“WhatsApp effect” for driving millions of Brazilians to abandon their cell phone
lines. According to Band News TV, there was also a specific criminal case involves a drug
trafficker in Sao Paulo, that allegedly used WhatsApp services while committing crimes,
and the court wanted access to his communications with others, which WhatsApp claimed it did
not have access to. Today, a Brazilian judge in a higher court overturned the ban and ordered
the lifting of the 48-hour suspension... which ended up in effect for about 12 hours total,
but still very disruptive...rival messaging system Telegram says it saw 1 million downloads
in Brazil in less than a day, due to the outage. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote of the
shutdown "Until today, Brazil has been an ally in creating an open Internet... I am
stunned that our efforts to protect people’s data would result in such an extreme decision
by a single judge to punish every person in Brazil who uses WhatsApp." WhatsApp is of
course owned by Facebook.
Have you a phablet, kind sir? or madam? If so, join the club. The big phone fad seems
to be sticking for now. You've got the iPhone Pluses, Samsung's got big phones which make
up 66% of the market, then LG, Motorola, and others make a lot more options. But emphasis
on BIG PHONE. What sucks about big phones is that it's really hard to use them with
one hand. Even if you have big hands. So how to we fix this conundrum? Look no further
than Ride hailing service Lyft, which just launched a newly designed app to make getting
picked up even easier with less finger stretching. Passengers can now reach price estimators,
split rides and can contact the driver on the main screen more ergonomically. This app
update also adds jewel toned colors to the app beyond the company's signature hot pink,
and better breaks down the kind of commute people need... early morning riders might
be going to a meeting or the airport and really need to be on time... that's less of an issue,
say, after work meeting friends for drinks, where you might pay a little less for less
urgency.
First Round Capital. VC firm, or musical parody gang? When it comes to the holidays, the answer
is both. First Round just released its annual holiday video, which it's been doing since
2008. It's a mashup of lots of familiar tunes from Beiber, The Weeknd, that stupid Uptown
Funk song, except the lyrics are all shifted to tell the story of when little baby Startup
was born in a manger or something holiday-esque. I don't know. It's really well done, and if
you work in tech, you'll catch a lot of familiar faces, and if you really want to parse the
lyrics, Drew Olanoff has copied the whole thing in his article. Kudos to First Round
for putting a lot of effort into this yuletide tradition. You are better people than I will
ever be.
That’s the report for today. I’m Sarah Lane.
Crunch Report airs every weekday at 7 pm Eastern, 4 pm Pacific, on Techcrunch.com. You can also
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