Techmeme
January 12, 2022, 5:30 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Sony confirms PlayStation 4 production will continue in 2022, which sources claim will help the company offset some PlayStation 5 production pressure  —  Sony Group Corp. will continue producing PlayStation 4 consoles throughout 2022 as it navigates disruptions to the global supply chain …
Sam Reynolds / CoinDesk:
Jack Dorsey and others propose a legal defense fund for Bitcoin developers, citing “multi-front litigation” and “threats”  —  The main purpose of the fund will be to defend developers from from lawsuits regarding their activities in the Bitcoin ecosystem …
Ron Miller / TechCrunch:
Canalys: worldwide PC shipments grew 15% YoY in 2021 to 341M, the highest annual shipments since 2012; Apple's market share grew by 28.3%, Acer's by 21.8%  —  It would be easy to think PC sales dropped worldwide last year amid chip shortages, but that conventional thinking would be wrong.
Poynter:
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
App Annie: consumers spent $170B on mobile apps globally in 2021, up 19% YoY, downloading 230B apps; the average American spent 4.1 hours in apps per day  —  Consumer spending on mobile apps reached $170 billion in 2021, according to App Annie's newly released “State of Mobile 2022″ report …
Peter Rudegeair / Wall Street Journal:
London-based Checkout.com, which offers payment processing tools, raises $1B in a share sale at a $40B valuation  —  The $1 billion deal vaults the digital-payments processor past all but a handful of other startups  —  Checkout.com didn't raise money from outside investors until 2019.
Lucy Harley-Mckeown / The Block:
Coinbase says “nearly the entire company will shut down” across four separate “recharge weeks” for employees in 2022  —  Quick Take  — Coinbase is giving employees four ‘recharge weeks’ off in 2022 in order to counteract what it called an intense working environment.
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Samsung, after announcing a Jan. 11 event for the Exynos 2200, didn't show up to the product's launch and says it will unveil the new chip with a new smartphone  —  The Exynos 2200 was supposed to launch on January 11.  It didn't.  —  So here's a crazy story.
Justin Hendrix / Tech Policy Press:
Over 260 health professionals tell Spotify to implement a misinformation policy, after a Joe Rogan Experience episode featured a discredited scientist  —  More than 260 doctors, nurses, scientists, health professionals and others have signed an open letter calling on the streaming media platform Spotify to …
Bloomberg:
Sources: Microsoft has hired a veteran semiconductor designer from Apple, as it seeks to develop its own chips for Azure servers  —  Microsoft Corp. lured away a veteran semiconductor designer from Apple Inc. as it looks to expand its own server-chips efforts, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Sensor Tower: Instagram became the world's most downloaded app in Q4 2021, its best quarter since 2014 with installs up 10% QoQ, followed by TikTok and Facebook  —  Instagram is benefiting from TikTok's ban in India, and has now reclaimed the top spot in terms of total global downloads as of the fourth quarter of 2021.
More: Sensor Tower BlogTweets: @kantrowitz
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Wordle clones are starting to disappear from Apple's App Store, after reports surfaced about many capitalizing on the guessing game's popularity  —  It seems Apple has taken action  —  Has Apple taken action against apps that cloned the popular web game Wordle?
Bloomberg:
Alphabet Workers Union complains that contract workers receive COVID-19 testing that is inferior to the $949 Cue Health devices given to full-time WFH employees  —  - Full-time employees at home get instant results from Cue  — Contractors in office are offered cheaper mail-in tests
Casey Newton / Platformer:
The FTC's suit against Meta comes too late to really matter, but its scrutiny of Meta's VR acquisitions shows it's determined not to make the same mistake twice  —  Why an FTC inquiry into the company's VR ambitions matters more than today's lawsuit ruling  —  Just over 13 months ago …
Cat Zakrzewski / Washington Post:
Felix Onuah / Reuters:
Nigeria will lift its ban on Twitter after suspending it on June 4 last year; Twitter has agreed to open an office in Nigeria, among other agreements  —  Nigeria will lift a ban on Twitter (TWTR.N) from midnight after the social media platform agreed to open a local office …
More: TechCrunch

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