Techmeme: COVID-19's impact on tech this week: cancelled conferences, supply chain and sales disruptions, murky business outlook for online travel firms, and rise of Zoom (Mike Isaac/New York Times)

Top News

COVID-19's impact on tech this week: cancelled conferences, supply chain and sales disruptions, murky business outlook for online travel firms, and rise of Zoom — Companies are telling investors that sales are slumping because of the outbreak, conferences are being canceled, and workers are being instructed not to travel.

Frank McShan / MacRumors:

Kuo: iPhone production will not significantly improve before Q2, as suppliers like lens manufacturer Genius Electronic Optical struggle to keep up amid COVID-19 — Apple's iPhone production will not significantly improve until the second quarter of 2020, according to a research note …

More: International Business Times, 9to5Mac, BGR, iPhone Hacks, Mashable, iPhone in Canada Blog, and CNET

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:

Rajeev Suri to step down as Nokia CEO after over half a decade; Pekka Lundmark, outgoing President and CEO of energy firm Fortum appointed as President and CEO — Rajeev Suri, the chief executive of Nokia, is stepping down from his leadership role after overseeing the Finnish networking giant for more than 10 years.

More: Nokia, Financial Times, Axios, Wall Street Journal, Protocol, Reuters, South China Morning Post, Silicon Republic, Neowin, Bloomberg, The Economic Times, and Seeking Alpha

Tweets: @nokia, @arashmassoudi, and @financialtimes

Dan Goodin / Ars Technica:

Researcher demos multiple ways of how to take over and repurpose allegedly state sponsored Mac malware — Former NSA hacker repackages in-the-wild Mac malware for his own use. — SAN FRANCISCO—Malware developers are always trying to outdo each other with creations that are stealthier and more advanced than their competitors'.

More: Wired, 9to5Mac, Ubrigens, Malwarebytes Labs, and 🛡️ …

Tweets: @patrickwardle, @dangoodin001, @jamfsoftware, @ihackbanme, and @thomasareed

Ben Gilbert / Business Insider:

Indie game developers and publishers say Stadia's library is sparse because Google wasn't offering devs enough money and may abandon the platform in the future — - Last November, Google finally launched a major gaming platform that was in development for years: Google Stadia.

More: PC Games Insider, Kotaku, MSPoweruser, The Overspill, SlashGear, 9to5Google, Game Rant, VG247, and Android Central

Tweets: @tha_rami, @mcclure111, @carnage4life, @paultassi, @grummz, @jerkob, @vgfgamers, @jeremypenter, @whatusaymark, and @realbengilbert

Andrew J. Hawkins / The Verge:

Union of Concerned Scientists study: ride-hailing trips today result in an estimated 69% more climate pollution on average than the trips they displace — Union of Concerned Scientists recommends more electric cars and pooled trips — Uber and Lyft have weathered criticism about pollution …

More: Union of Concerned Scientists, The Rideshare Guy Blog …, Quartz, VICE, Electrek, Geek.com, Wired, Engadget, and 20 Minutes into the Future

Tweets: @yitgordon, @iamcaps, @serebrisky, and @jen_keesmaat

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Thought Machine, which sells a platform for banking services sold via a B2B2C model, raises $83M Series B led by Draper Esprit — The world of consumer banking has seen a massive shift in the last ten years. Gone are the days where you could open an account, take out a loan …

More: Telegraph. Tweets: @ingridlunden

Rita Liao / TechCrunch:

Apple has been asking for proof of government license for iOS games in China since 2016, but did not enforce the policy, a loophole it is now closing — Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch's China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world.

More: South China Morning Post and Digital Trends

Tweets: @anttikole and @ritacyliao

Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News:

Process Street, which is developing a no-code workflow builder for businesses, raises $12M Series A led by Accel — Process Street, which has developed no-code workflow builder, has raised a $12 million Series A led by Accel. — Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

More: Ausus, Forbes, and Process Street

Don Clark / New York Times:

How CEO Robert Swan is overhauling Intel's culture to improve the relationship between chip designers and manufacturing, and vastly speeding up product design — Robert Swan, who leads the world's biggest chip maker, is pushing his 110,000 employees to confront internal problems more openly.

Tweets: @nytimesbusiness and @jonmasters

Rajiv Rao / ZDNet:

How Apple, after languishing in India for years, became the fastest growing premium smartphone brand in the country in 2019 — For the first time in its brief history in India, the premium brand has gone all out to woo customers with big price cuts, and thanks to local manufacturing efforts, it has worked wonders.

Douglas Busvine / Reuters:

Europe-focused Lakestar raises $735M with one third of the commitments allocated to early stage startups and two thirds to its growth stage fund — BERLIN (Reuters) - Venture capital investor Lakestar said on Tuesday it had raised a total of $735 million (568 million pounds) …

More: Bloomberg

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