Techmeme
January 16, 2024, 12:00 PM

Top News

IDC:
Global smartphone shipments declined 3.2% YoY to 1.17B units in 2023; in a first, Apple gained the top spot with 234.6M units, followed by Samsung with 226.6M  —  The last time a company not named Samsung was at the top of the smartphone market was 2010, and for 2023 it is now Apple.
Bloomberg:
SCOTUS refuses to hear Apple's and Epic's appeals, allowing an appeals court ruling that lets app developers steer users to other payment systems take effect  —  - Billions of dollars in revenue are at stake for iPhone maker  — Fortnite maker seeks to open App Store to cheaper alternatives
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:
Apple details select streaming and sports apps available on Vision Pro at launch, including Disney+, ESPN, MLB, PGA, Max, and TikTok; some will have 3D movies  —  Apple today revealed various streaming services and sports apps that will be available on the Vision Pro at launch, including Disney+ …
Christopher Dring / GamesIndustry.biz:
Ubisoft rebrands its $18/month tier as Ubisoft+ Premium and adds Ubisoft+ Classics on PC; executive Philippe Tremblay says Ubisoft has “millions” of subscribers  —  Ubisoft introduces its Classic service to PC; and ‘more to come’ on Activision Blizzard  —  Feature by Christopher Dring Head of Games B2B
Zheping Huang / Bloomberg:
HashKey, which runs a licensed Hong Kong crypto exchange, raised a nearly $100M Series A at a $1.2B+ valuation; sources say OKX Ventures is a lead investor  —  - The company says its valuation now exceeds $1.2 billion  — HashKey operates a licensed Hong Kong crypto exchange
Thomas Seal / Bloomberg:
Vodafone and Microsoft sign a 10-year, $1.5B deal to develop AI, digital payments, IoT, and other businesses; Vodafone will use OpenAI tech for customer service  —  - Microsoft also plans to invest in Vodafone's IoT spinout  — Vodafone will also use OpenAI technology in $1.5 billion deal
Bloomberg:
Elon Musk says he would rather build AI products outside of Tesla if he doesn't have ~25% voting control in the company; Musk currently owns 12%+ of Tesla  —  - CEO suggests he'll build products elsewhere without 25% stake  — He sold almost $40 billion of shares in 2022 to buy Twitter
Will Nelson / PCGamesN:
Ned Luke, who voiced Michael De Santa in GTA 5, calls out WAME for using his voice in a since-removed chatbot: there is “nothing cool about ripping people off”  —  GTA 5 star Ned Luke has called out the use of his voice as part of an unofficial and now-removed Grand Theft Auto 5 AI chatbot from WAME.
Sam Fleming / Financial Times:
A PwC survey of 4,702 CEOs: 25% expect generative AI to lead to 5%+ cuts in 2024, ~46% expect using generative AI to boost profitability in 12 months, and more  —  Impact of cutting-edge AI tools on work and society set to dominate discussions at World Economic Forum in Davos
Jon Victor / The Information:
Source: Google has increasingly awarded select DeepMind researchers with large grants of restricted stock worth up to millions of dollars, to fend off OpenAI  —  Even as Google makes a major round of staff cuts, it is tapping a special pool of stock compensation to retain …
Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Microsoft debuts Copilot Pro for $20/month/user, offering the latest models, like GPT-4 Turbo, and features, like Office integration and creating Copilot GPTs  —  Copilot Pro, the most advanced and fastest version of Copilot, has been released today by Microsoft.

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Wall Street Journal:
Dan Primack / Axios:
OpenAI:
Hartley Charlton / MacRumors: