Mar 12, 2021

Mobile News - Week of March 8, 2021

Issue #132 — View online — Suggest a link

Mobile

The latest news and information about startups and innovations from the mobile world.

Is the SPAC boom just too good to be true?

In 2019, 59 SPAC IPOs raised $13.6 billion. In 2020, 248 SPACs raised $83 billion. In 2021, 228 SPACs raised $73B and it’s only March folks!

Just this past week, Warburg Pincus launched two SPACs ($250M Warburg Pincus Capital I-A and $500M Warburg Pincus Capital I-B) and Khosla Ventures launched a $300M Khosla Ventures Acquisition SPAC. Even Jay-Z (Subversive Capital Acquisition), Serena Williams (Jaws Spitfire Acquisition) and Steph Curry (Dune Acquisition) have launched their own SPACs.

The majority of these SPACs are averaging about $250M. The minute they go public, the clock is on and it has up 24 months to find a company to merge with.

From a founder and CEO’s point of view, the SPAC route to go public is much less risky for the company compared to an IPO. The CEO sign a deal with the SPAC sponsor for a fixed and negotiated price, and the deal is done! From an venture investor’s point of view, this is certainly another way for companies to exit and go IPO.

However from a public market investor point of view, do these companies deserve to go public? Do they have consistent and predictable revenue with a healthy growth rate? Do they have a strong management team?

Will this SPAC bubble burst in 2021? Only time will tell…

Here are the top mobile news this week >

Apple - iPhone 12 mini 70% reduce production
Apple - UK government Appstore investigation
Paramount - 277k downloads in 5 days
FCC - Payment app scam
T-Mobile - 5G rollout

Apple slashes planned iPhone 12 mini production for 1H

Apple is cutting production of the iPhone 12 mini in the first half of this year. Planned production of the smallest iPhone 12 model has reportedly been reduced by 70% or more in the first half of this year, making up the majority of a 20 percent cut in total iPhone 12 production.

Some suppliers have been asked to temporarily stop producing iPhone 12 mini-specific components, while other parts are being reallocated to the Pro and Pro Max.

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UK government investigates Apple over suspected anti-competitive behavior

We’ve been arguing about app stores for a decade, but now regulators are getting involved, and the UK and the EU are both opening cases. Epic’s case will go to court in the US in a few months, but where the US is still narrowly focused on finding a breach of a 19th century law, the the UK and EU will happy write new laws around this.

The sandboxed app store model has been hugely good for consumers and developers, but Apple has too many rules that are based merely on its own preference and taste, not any user benefit (eg. banning streaming games), and too often enforces the rules in arbitrary and inconsistent ways.

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Paramount+ downloaded 277k times in first five days, new CBS app ranks higher

Paramount+ launched on March 4th in a similar fashion to how HBO Max launched in May 2020, in that it took an existing app (CBS // HBO NOW) and simply transitioned it into a new product.

In its first five days of launch, Apptopia estimates Paramount+ was newly installed 277,184 times globally, with 241,140 of them coming from the United States. Before launch, CBS offered the public a limited time deal of 50% off the price with a one year commitment. This lead to $86.7k generated via in-app purchase revenue on March 2nd, the highest single day take ever estimated for the app since launch in 2013.

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As More Consumers Adopt Payment Apps, Scammers Follow

Payment apps saw big growth over the past year as consumers looked for contactless options to everything. Unfortunately, the influx of new users also came with an influx of scamming activity. Scammers realized that it was far easier to get someone to donate to a fake person/charity on a payment app than it was to convince someone to send a gift card over email.

Cash App, Zelle, Venmo and more. Stay vigilant, folks.

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T-Mobile’s long-promised 5G home broadband will launch later this month

T-Mobile has been testing wireless broadband in a limited pilot program for a couple of years. Now, the company says it will officially launch 5G home internet later this month.

The company has been promising 5G-based wireless broadband since before its acquisition of Sprint, saying that the merger would make it possible to offer service that would challenge the dominant cable companies. Before the deal was approved, T-Mobile went ahead and started testing out the service with a limited group of customers.

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Techstars Startup Digest Mobile is curated by:

Edith Yeung - General Partner at Race Capital
edith.yeung@startupdigestmail.com

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