Niantic gets additional support for building the metaverse as valuation hits $9B

Niantic is emerging as a key player in building the metaverse and investors are keen to get in on the action.

Tech-focused investment firm Coatue has invested $300 million in Niantic, bringing the company’s valuation to $9 billion.

Matt Mazzeo, a General Partner at Coatue, said:

“Niantic is building a platform for AR based on a 3D map of the world that we believe will play a critical role in the next transition in computing.

We are excited to partner...

23 November 2021 | Gaming

WearOS rocketed from ~4% of the smartwatch market to 17% in Q3 2021

WearOS got the booster shot it needed from the launch of Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4.

Google’s smartwatch operating system has struggled for years to gain traction against not only the might of Apple’s WatchOS but also rival platforms from the likes of Huawei, Fitbit, Amazfit, Garmin, and even Samsung.

Samsung was an early supporter of WearOS but eventually gave up on the platform and switched to its own Tizen-based alternative. Earlier this year, a surprise joint...

22 November 2021 | Platforms

Unity is buying Peter Jackson’s visual effects company for $1.6B

Unity has announced that it’s entered a definitive agreement to acquire Peter Jackson’s visual effects company Weta Digital for $1.6 billion.

Weta Digital has worked on hit films including Lord of the Rings, Avatar, Wonder Woman, and Black Widow. Unity says its acquisition will “democratise” Weta’s powerful tools to make them available for more creators.

“Weta Digital’s pipeline represents the most complete toolchain for 3D creation, simulation, and...

10 November 2021 | Development Tools

Lightship: Niantic empowers developers to start building the real-world metaverse

Niantic is opening its Lightship platform to empower developers to start building their visions for the real-world metaverse.

Metaverses have become an increasingly hot topic, especially since Facebook announced it was changing its company name to Meta to show its new focus.

As the creator of the world’s most popular AR game, Pokemon Go, it’s unsurprising that Niantic also wants to play its part in bringing metaverses to reality.

John Hanke, Founder and...

8 November 2021 | API

HDC 2021: Huawei provides updates on HarmonyOS, HMS Core 6, and more

During this year’s Huawei Developer Conference (HDC 2021), the tech giant took the opportunity to provide key updates on HarmonyOS, HMS Core 6, and more.

The theme of the event was “Together” and was used in regards to both the community and technologies that Huawei is building around its ecosystem.

In this article, we’ll recap some big announcements and interesting tech sessions from this year’s event.

HarmonyOS 3.0

Huawei’s open source in-house...

1 November 2021 | Development Tools

Appwrite raises $10M to build its open-source Firebase rival as community grows by 40,000

Appwrite has raised $10 million to build its open-source rival to Google’s Firebase amid rapid developer community growth.

The open-source Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) provider raised the cash via two successive seed funding rounds led first by Ibex Investors and Seed Camp and followed by Bessemer Venture Partners and Flybridge Capital Partners.

Flybridge is a particularly interesting investor as the firm was an early investor in Firebase back in 2013.

Uri...

28 September 2021 | Development Tools

Twilio Segment’s dev toolkit simplifies differentiated customer experiences

Twilio has introduced a new developer toolkit for its customer data platform Segment to simplify the delivery of differentiated experiences.

The toolkit promises to provide companies with the most powerful data collection and integration capabilities on the market.

Peter Reinhardt, CEO of Twilio Segment, said:

“Every company is investing and innovating in digital customer engagement in order to compete. The trouble is, you can’t buy a one-size-fits-all SaaS...

20 August 2021 | Platforms

Sonatype Lift uses deep code analysis to suggest bug fixes

Sonatype has launched a new deep code analysis platform called Lift which can detect a wide range of bug types.

Lift detects bugs ranging from style issues to complex coding errors commonly found in first-party source code and third-party open source libraries.

Research from Veracode last year found that open-source libraries cause security flaws in around 70 percent of apps. However, open-source libraries are often critical to projects.

Using a deep code...

17 June 2021 | Development Tools

IBM brings Python data science platform Anaconda to Linux

IBM is bringing the Python data science platform Anaconda to the company’s LinuxONE and IBM Z customers.

Anaconda is the world's most popular Python distribution platform and boasts over 25 million users worldwide. Today’s announcement is the latest part of IBM’s effort to bring popular data science frameworks and libraries to its enterprise platforms.

Barry Baker, VP of Product Management for IBM Z & LinuxONE, wrote in a blog post:

“Data scientists...

18 May 2021 | Artificial Intelligence

Q&A, Albert Jordan, HARMAN: On building a platform for connected vehicles

Developer spoke with Albert Jordan, VP of Ignite Automotive Cloud at Samsung subsidiary HARMAN, about building a platform for connected vehicles and why developers should come along for the ride.

Developer: Why should developers launch apps on the Ignite Store over other automotive app platforms?

Albert Jordan: Aside from the Google Automotive Services (GAS) Play Store, there are no standard Android app stores deployed commercially. OEMs have tried to deploy their own...

30 April 2021 | Android