Techmeme
April 15, 2024, 5:55 AM

Top News

IDC:
Global smartphone shipments in Q1 2024 grew 7.8% YoY to 289.4M units; iPhone shipments fell 9.6% YoY, more than any other top brand, and Xiaomi grew 33.8% YoY  —  Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker , global smartphone shipments increased 7.8% year over year to 289.4 million units in the first quarter of 2024 (1Q24).
Financial Times:
The US awards Samsung $6.4B in CHIPS Act funding and says the company plans to make 2nm chips at its Taylor, Texas plant by 2026, two years ahead of TSMC  —  South Korean group set to outdo rival TSMC with cutting-edge 2nm chip production in US by 2026 as part of $40bn investment
Kamila Wojciechowska / Android Authority:
Source: Google's new Pixel 9 series, next-generation Pixel Fold, and an under-development 5G tablet will use a new Samsung modem that has satellite connectivity  —  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdwN- WKDVec  —  Most people don't consider the modem when considering buying a new phone, and why should they?
Joseph Politano / Apricitas Economics:
An overview of Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which shows California's percentage of US tech jobs has continued to steadily decline since 2020  —  The Golden State Used to Dominate Tech Employment—But Its Share of Total US Tech Jobs has Now Fallen to the Lowest Level in a Decade  —  Thanks for reading!
TechCrunch:
Meta is testing its Meta AI chatbot with WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger users in India and parts of Africa; Meta announced chatbot plans in February 2023  —  Meta has confirmed to TechCrunch that it is testing Meta AI, its large language model-powered chatbot, with WhatsApp …
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Elon Musk's xAI previews Grok-1.5 Vision, its first multimodal model, and says the AI model will be available soon to “early testers and existing Grok users”  —  Elon Musk's OpenAI rival has introduced its first multimodal model.  Not only can it understand text …
Echo Wang / Reuters:
Source: cloud data management startup Rubrik plans to sell 23M shares priced between $28 and $31 each, raising up to $713M and reaching a $5.4B valuation  —  Cybersecurity software firm Rubrik, which counts Microsoft (MSFT.O) among its prominent investors, is aiming to raise as much as $713 million …
More: Bloomberg
Hannah Giorgis / The Atlantic:
A look at BlackPlanet, a social network for African Americans that went live in 1999, had ~15M users in 2008, and arguably laid the foundation for Black Twitter  —  Revisiting BlackPlanet, and a lost era when social media was still fun  —  A few years ago, Stephanie Williams and her husband fielded …
Nicole Sperling / New York Times:
As Netflix's new film chief Dan Lin takes charge, the company aims to shift its film strategy to focus on audience appeal and cost efficiency  —  Dan Lin, the streaming service's new film chief, wants to produce a more varied slate of movies to better appeal to the array of interests among subscribers.
Anuj Ahooja / augment:
An experiment to see how a Threads feed would work on Mastodon, using lists and testing third-party clients, which shows the bright future of the fediverse  —  This is my journey that started as an experiment to see how my Threads feed would look like on Mastodon and ended with me finding experiences …

Sponsor Posts

Google:
Gemini 2.5 Pro: Our most intelligent AI model  —  Gemini 2.5 Pro (experimental) is now available, with thinking capabilities, enhanced performance, and improved accuracy.  Try it at no cost in the Gemini app.
UiPath:
UiPath Unveils 10 Innovations that Will Shape the Agentic Future  —  Orchestration engine, API workflows and agentic testing among key features of new UiPath Platform™ for agentic automation, launched at UiPath DevCon 2025
Zoho:
Recruiters, be that zeroth candidate  —  Welcome again!  Earlier, we looked at how personality assessments are evaluation tools that help look at candidates beyond resumes.  Let's look at how to use …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

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More News

Pilita Clark / Financial Times:
Cristiano Lima-Strong / Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

Wes Davis / The Verge:
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:
Zoë Schiffer / Platformer:
New York Times: