Daily Crunch: Coronavirus causes likely PC shipment decline
The coronavirus outbreak continues to impact the tech industry, Facebook’s Libra Association signs up a new partner and short-form video service Quibi is available for pre-order. Here’s your Daily Crunch for February 21, 2020.
1. PC shipments expected to drop this year because of coronavirus outbreak
The coronavirus outbreak could result in at least a 3.3% drop — and as high as a 9% dip — in the volume of PCs that will ship globally this year, according to research firm Canalys.
“In the best-case scenario, production levels are expected to revert to full capacity by April 2020, hence the biggest hit will be to sell-in shipments in the first two quarters, with the market recovering in Q3 and Q4,” the firm said.
2. Shopify joins Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra Association
After eBay, Visa, Stripe and other high-profile partners ditched the Facebook-backed cryptocurrency collective, Libra scored a win with the addition of Shopify. The e-commerce platform will become a member of Libra Association, contributing at least $10 million and operating a node that processes transactions for the Facebook-originated stable coin.
3. Quibi’s streaming service app launches in app stores for pre-order
Quibi, the mobile-only streaming service from Jeffrey Katzenberg, is now open for pre-orders. The company declined to fully show off its app only a month ago at CES — instead, demos focused on its “TurnStyle” technology — but it appears the app is ready nonetheless.
4. Volocopter extends Series C funding to $94M with backing from logistics giant DB Schenker and others
With this new funding, Volocopter brings its total raised to around $132 million, and it says it will use the newly acquired capital to help certify its VoloCity aircraft, an air taxi designed to transport people, which is on track to become the company’s first-ever vehicle licensed for commercial operation.
5. Where top VCs are investing in manufacturing and warehouse robotics
With our 2020 Robotics + AI sessions event less than two weeks away, we’ve decided to perform temperature checks across some of the hottest robotics sub-verticals to see which trends are coming down the pipe and where checks are actually being written. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
6. How ‘The Mandalorian’ and ILM invisibly reinvented film and TV production
While a successful live-action Star Wars TV series is important in its own right, the way this particular show was made represents a far greater change, perhaps the most important since the green screen.
7. Shogun raises $10M to help e-commerce brands build faster websites
The company’s first product, Page Builder, offers a drag-and-drop interface to make it easier for e-commerce brands to build their storefronts on Shopify, BigCommerce, Salesforce and Magento. And there’s a new product, Shogun Frontend, which allows brands to create a web storefront that’s entirely customized while still using one of the big commerce platforms as their back end.
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