Jawbone lays off 15% of its staff, Facebook At Work launches a chat client for co-workers,
Tesla recalls every model 5 ever made... and i'm back from vacation!
It's Friday November 20th, and this is Crunch Report.
Hey everyone, I'm back. Did you miss me? I broke my foot on vacation, so I'll probably
never leave again. Turns out I'm not the only one having a bad week in fitness. Jawbone,
maker of the UP fitness tracker, and Jambox speaker, and Bluetooth headsets, has laid
off around 60 employees, which is about 15% of its total staff, and shutting down its
New York office. A company spokesperson tells TechCrunch "As part of our strategy to create
a more streamlined and successful company, we have made the difficult decision to reorganize
the company which has had an impact on our global workforce." Jawbone WILL keep selling
its Jambox speakers and the Era headset, along with their related accessories. Interestingly,
Oprah just listed the UP fitness tracker as one of ther holiday "favorite things" which,
because it's Oprah, may translate into extra big holiday sales. The competition is fierce,
though. According to IDC‘s most current figures, in the second quarter of this year,
Jawbone sold over half a million UP fitness trackers, which ranks it #7 for top wearable
device vendors, with a market share of only 2.8%. Fitbit's still the #1 wearable, with
the Apple Watch already at #2. By the way this is the second round of layoffs at Jawbone
since June, when it laid off 20 employees a couple weeks after it raised $300 million
in financing.
Facebook at Work, which is Facebook's answer to Slack and Yammer for enterprise chatting,
now has its own chat client as well. It's called “Work Chat” and if you already
use Messenger, it'll seem pretty similar, letting you and your coworkers message each
other one on one or in groups, share photos, videos, make voice calls, and of course, send
each other stickers. the Work Chat app showed up on Google's Play store yesterday for those
already testing the Facebook at Work service, and the company says the iOS version is coming
soon. Facebook must be getting close to releasing a freemium version of At Work if it wants
to keep its end of year deadline. 300 businesses are now using Facebook at Work.. big ones
like Royal Bank of Scotland, and Heineken USA, along with smaller startups too. Facebook
will need to add integration partners if it wants to keep up with Slack, though... Slack
already makes adding content from Dropbox, Giphy, Google Drive, and Twitter a pretty
seamless experience.
Can we go back to bad news in wearables? Ok good. Last week the LG Urbane 2nd Edition
LTE...world's first Android Wear smartwatch with access to cellular data, meaning it DOESN'T
need to be paired to a phone — went on sale in the U.S. via AT&T, and was set to hit Verizon
today, November 20th. Instead, LG yanked the watch from stores due to an issue related
to “a new advanced component” that the company was using in a wearable for the first
time. LG also says that “whether the device will be available in the future will be decided
at a later time.” AT&T is already offering refunds to customers while Verizon won't ship
the watch to anyone who already pre-ordered. This is bad for LG but also Google, which
recently added cellular LTE data access to its Android Wear OS. LG does have another
smartwatch that can run LTE, that's the 1st gen Urbane watch — but it's not running
Android Wear. Goodnight, goodnight, pairing is such sweet sorrow.
Downer of a day for electric car maker Tesla, which is recalling every Model S sedan sold,
which is about 90,000 cars, over a seatbelt issue uncovered in a single incident in Europe.
Tesla emailed customers that it knows of no other Model S cars with the same issue, but
is still being more safe than sorry. This isn't Tesla's first recall - you might remember
back in 2014, the company recalled 29,000 Model S wall chargers. But the financial impact
of recalls can also be a pretty big deal... at this time, Tesla has lost around three-quarters
of a billion dollars in value. In other Tesla news, Model S owners in Hong Kong have found
that their semi-autonomous driving technology has been remotely disabled.. apparently, Hong
Kong officials told Tesla to remove the feature until the Hong Kong Transport Department could
confirm the features are actually safe. The autopilot features let the Model S do things
like control direction with no driver hand contact on the steering wheel, change lanes,
and parallel park. But they don't keep drivers from abusing these crutches, either. One YouTube
video demonstrates sitting in the back seat while the car is driving. Tesla probably needs
to make sure that can't happen again.
Today, Samsung's Gear VR, which is the third version of the product, finally hit stores
after going on pre-sale earlier this month. The Gear VR costs $99 and requires either
a Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+ or Note 5 to run.. all Samsung products, obviously. TechCrunch's
Drew Olanoff has already spent about a week with it paired with the S6 Edge+, and says
it's powerful enough to run consumer-ready VR experiences without hiccups. You'll also
need a controller, a pair of headphones and a bag to carry everything. The Gear VR itself
isn't heavy…just over half a pound, and Drew notes that the new VR version has more
cushiony room and support for people who also wear glasses. internal sensors include a gy-ROMeter
and accelerometer work well into tricking your brain to think it's seeing something
in immersive 360-degree 3D experiences. The phone connects via microUSB. For a total rundown
of Drew's experience, read his article, it's VERY thorough. He does compare Gear VR to
the Nintendo Wii, which got people to experience games who might not normally play them. Now
Facebook and Oculus say their consumer product, the Oculus Rift, should hit stores by early
2016, but it'll need a gaming rig and definitely won't be a mobile experience like this. What's
great about Gear VR is that you can take it anywhere.
That’s the report for today. I’m Sarah Lane. Huge thanks to Katie Roof for filling
in for me while I was away. You'll see a lot more her on future Techcrunch videos!
Crunch Report airs every weekday at 7 pm Eastern, 4 pm Pacific, on Techcrunch.com. You can also
find us on iTunes, and on YouTube. See you Monday!