Techmeme
August 31, 2021, 2:55 AM

Top News

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Source: Apple's planned satellite capabilities for the iPhone are focused on emergencies, enabling texts and crisis reports in areas without cellular coverage  —  - Apple plans an emergency-reporting tool for future iPhones  —  Apple Inc.'s push to bring satellite capabilities to the iPhone …
Hartley Charlton / MacRumors:
Micah Singleton / Billboard:
Apple acquires classical music streaming service Primephonic, giving its users six free months of Apple Music, and will debut its own classical music app in '22  —  Apple has acquired Primephonic, the classical music streaming service, for an undisclosed amount, the company tells Billboard.
Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:
State media says China is restricting online gaming time of minors to 3 hours most weeks of the year, from 8pm to 9pm on Fridays, weekends, and public holidays  —  - The country is imposing its strictest limits yet on play time  — Beijing is waging a campaign to groom productive youths
Dave Nyczepir / FedScoop:
WH announces the US Digital Corps, a two-year fellowship aiming to recruit early-career software engineers and other technologists to work at federal agencies  —  The White House launched a two-year fellowship Monday designed to place early-career software engineers, data scientists and other technologists at federal agencies.
Zoe Schiffer / The Verge:
Some Apple employees say their privacy is not well protected by Apple, as they decry norms and rules that encourage personal iCloud accounts be used at work  —  Jacob Preston was sitting down with his manager during his first week at Apple when he was told, with little fanfare …
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
In an email to some Square Invoices users, Square says it's working on Invoices Plus, a paid version with some features from the free version, plus new ones  —  Square's popular free invoicing software is becoming the company's next big subscription service.
Danny Nelson / CoinDesk:
The Central Bank of Nigeria says it will work with blockchain and payments startup Bitt Inc. to launch Nigeria's eNaira digital currency later this year  —  The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) said Monday it will work with Bitt Inc., a blockchain and payments startup, to launch …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Sensor Tower: Telegram crossed 1B global downloads, with ~214.7M installs in H1 2021, up 61% YoY, and 22% of total global downloads coming from India  —  Popular instant messaging app Telegram has joined the elite club of apps that have been downloaded over 1 billion times globally, according to Sensor Tower.
More: 9to5MacTweets: @kingtutspacs
Toby Sterling / Reuters:
Tech investor Prosus NV says it has agreed to buy Indian payments service BillDesk for $4.7B to complement its own PayU business  —  Technology investor Prosus NV said on Tuesday it had agreed to buy Indian payments platform BillDesk for $4.7 billion to complement its own PayU business.
IDC:
Global smartphone shipments are expected to grow by 7.4% in 2021, reaching 1.37B units, with iPhone shipments growing 13.8% and Android shipments growing 6.2%  —  While the supply chain situation hasn't drastically improved, the smartphone market has shown positive results in recent quarters.
Kate Rooney / CNBC:
Paypal has hired the co-founder of online brokerage TradeKing to lead the “Invest at Paypal” unit, which, sources say, plans to let US customers trade stocks  —  - PayPal is exploring ways to let users trade individual stocks, according to two sources familiar with the plan.
Andrew Ackerman / Wall Street Journal:
Kraken and others want access to Federal Reserve payment systems to process digital asset sales faster; ahead of the Fed's decision, traditional banks push back  —  Efforts by the new breed of financial entities, if successful, could create more competition for traditional banks
Suvashree Ghosh / Bloomberg:
Facebook, Google, and Xiaomi are eyeing India's digital loan market, which Boston Consulting Group estimates to triple to $350B by 2023 and reach $1T by 2025  —  India's digital loan market is becoming a battleground for companies from Facebook Inc. to Xiaomi Corp., as they seek a foothold in what's set to be a $1 trillion industry.

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