A look at the fading dominance of Apple Podcasts, as a study of 603 weekly podcast consumers finds 31% use YouTube, followed by Spotify at 21%, and Apple at 12% — Hello! Welcome back to Soundbite. Today we're looking at the fading dominance of Apple Podcasts.
Japanese chipmaker Kioxia applies for a Tokyo Stock Exchange listing; source: Kioxia plans to list as soon as October and raise $500M+ at a $10B+ valuation — Memory products maker could achieve $10bn valuation as investors pile into AI and chip stocks — Kioxia, the Japanese chipmaker taken private …
Twitch plans to raise its new Tier 1 sub and gift sub prices on mobile in 40+ countries on October 1; in an email, Twitch says Tier 1 will rise by $2 to $7.99 — Twitch has announced yet another increase to the price of subs after already raising the cost earlier in the summer.
Since 2023, Chinese investors, including Alibaba and Tencent, have valued 6+ China-based startups developing LLMs, dubbed “Little AI Dragons”, at $1B+ each — Since 2023, 40% of Alibaba's deals in China and 30% of Tencent's have targeted AI startups
Xiaomi reports Q2 revenue up 32% YoY to ~$12.5B, above ~$12.2B est., and a ~$715M net income, above ~$533M est., as its core smartphone business recovers — Sales rose a better-than-projected 32% to 88.9 billion yuan ($12.5 billion), versus the average analyst estimate of 86.9 billion yuan.
TSMC breaks ground on its €10B chip fab in Dresden, Germany, its first European plant; the EU approves Germany's ~€5B subsidy for the project — - Taiwanese firm begins work on its first European chip plant — German subsidies will cover about half of the fab's costs
Stephen Chamberlain, who faced the same charges as Mike Lynch over Autonomy's sale, died after a road accident, per his lawyer, days before Lynch went missing — Stephen Chamberlain, once Mike Lynch's co-defendant in the U.S. fraud trial over the sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard …
Girls In Tech, Women Who Code, and other groups that aimed to diversify Silicon Valley are closing or rebranding to stay afloat, as critics attack DEI efforts — Groups like Girls In Tech and Women Who Code promised to attract women and people of color to the tech industry.
In Q2, Walmart said its ad business grew 30% in the past year; eMarketer says Walmart will claim 6.8% of 2024 US retail media spending, for $3.7B in ad revenue — A high-margin and fast-growing ad business is changing the chain's relationship with brands — Walmart last week reported rising sales …
AMD agrees to buy New Jersey-based ZT Systems, founded in 1994 to design and make servers, server racks, and other infrastructure, for $4.9B, closing in H1 2025 — ZT Systems produces servers, other equipment used in data centers for artificial intelligence
How Worldcoin is building its World ID identity system, trying to assuage government and privacy activists' concerns about its iris scanning tech and data usage — More than a dozen jurisdictions have either suspended the project's operations or looked into its data processing
Arize AI: 56% of Fortune 500 companies cited AI as a “risk factor” in their recent annual reports, up from 9% in 2022; 86% of software firms cited AI as a risk — Study finds more than half of Fortune 500 groups cited new technology as a potential hazard in their latest annual reports
A look at Apple's work on its in-house modem chip, which may debut in some niche models next year, with the full rollout taking a few years to complete — Apple's move to drop Qualcomm modem chips won't have a payoff at the outset, but it could set the stage for bigger things later.
A survey of 2,012 people in Germany finds ~50% wouldn't use the digital euro over privacy fears; the European Central Bank will decide on a rollout by 2025 end — - ECB officals to decide on rollout by end of next year — Half of people in Germany can't imagine using e-euro
Runway debuts Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, a faster and cheaper model than Gen-3 Alpha, capable of generating 5- or 10-second-long video clips, available for all plans — After showing it off in preview late last month, Runway has officially released Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, the latest version …
Joanna Chiu / Rest of World : A look at GFWeb, which tracks millions of domains to uncover the Great Firewall's domain blocklists; GF...
