Apple hits record iPhone sales mark in India despite global slowdown

by Hansraj Agrawal | Aug 4, 2023 | Technology

By Bloomberg News

Apple Inc. grew revenue in China a surprisingly strong 8 per cent while setting a record for Indian iPhone sales, bright spots in an otherwise disappointing quarterly check-in from the world’s most valuable company.

Those twin milestones stood out after Apple posted its third straight quarter of declining sales and predicted a similar performance in the current period, hurt by an industry-wide slump that has sapped demand for phones, computers and tablets. The iPad and Macbooks maker reported a better-than-expected 7.9 per cent rise in revenue from China — which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan — to $15.7 billion. And iPhone sales in India grew double-digits to a new high, though executives didn’t disclose precise numbers.

China in particular has been a major drag on the global smartphone arena since last year, and has failed to bounce back as anticipated because of post-Covid economic turbulence. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook suggested users in the world’s biggest mobile market were abandoning Android alternatives from its biggest rivals, which include Xiaomi Corp. and Huawei Technologies Co.

“Switchers were a very key part of our iPhone results for the quarter, we did set a record,” Cook told analysts on a post-results briefing.

China’s smartphone market is struggling alongside a sputtering economy. Shipments have shrunk every quarter since the start of 2022, as consumers tighten their budgets to deal with a post-Covid downturn. The market could bounce back in the fourth quarter when Apple and its rivals typically release their latest devices, but that growth could be weaker than expected, IDC predicts.

While unsurprising, the Indian performance also vindicates the company’s renewed focus on a market where the iPhone has long been beyond the reach of many consumers. Apple now views the fast-expanding country as both a massive retail opportunity and an important production base for its gadgets in the longer term.

Apple’s revenue there grew by nearly 50 per cent in the year through March to almost $6 billion, Bloomberg News has reported. The company, which just opened its first stores in the country, is planning to extend its network in India as part of an Asia-wide thrust.

First Published: Aug 04 2023 | 9:28 AM IST

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Apple faces longest streak of sales slowdown in 2 decades as iPhone slumps

by Hansraj Agrawal | Aug 4, 2023 | Technology

By Mark Gurman

Apple Inc. posted its third straight quarter of declining sales and predicted a similar performance in the current period, hurt by an industrywide slump that has sapped demand for phones, computers and tablets.

After the company reported a revenue decline of 1.4% in the fiscal third quarter, Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said on a conference call that Apple’s performance would be similar this period. An additional drop would mark the longest streak of declines in two decades — a startling slowdown for the world’s most valuable company.

“The environment is challenging,” Daniel Flax, a senior research analyst at Neuberger Berman, said in an interview with Scarlet Fu on Bloomberg Television. “Consumers face pressure from general interest rates, higher inflation. There are a lot of cross currents that Apple, like a lot of other companies, cannot outrun.”

Though Apple’s overall revenue of $81.8 billion came in just above Wall Street estimates last quarter — helped by record-setting services sales — iPhone demand was weaker than predicted. That jarred investors, who sent the stock down as much as 3.2% in extended trading.

Apple shares had been up 47% in 2023 through the close, part of a broader tech-fueled rally this year. If the stock slide continues in regular trading on Friday, Apple risks losing its $3 trillion valuation — a historic milestone that it reached in June.

On the call with analysts, executives blamed foreign exchange headwinds for hurting results. A stronger dollar has eroded the company’s revenue, most of which comes from overseas. Maestri, along with Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, stressed that sales would be up on an annual basis if currency were held constant.

Still, the report showed that Apple’s much-prized iPhone hasn’t evaded a downturn that has rattled rivals and partners. Qualcomm Inc., a mobile-device chipmaker and iPhone supplier, had already sparked fears about demand with its earnings Wednesday, sending its shares plunging ahead of Apple’s report.

It didn’t help that Apple had a dearth of new products last quarter — beyond marginal updates to its high-end desktop computers and a larger MacBook Air. The current quarter will be a different picture, with the new iPhone 15 and Apple Watches set to be unveiled during the period.

Sales of the iPhone, Apple’s biggest moneymaker, slipped 2.4% to $39.7 billion in the third quarter, compared with a $39.8 billion estimate. Notably, Apple’s executives admitted that the smartphone market is going through a slowdown, particularly in the US.

Apple also has been reining in spending. The company slowed down hiring in several areas, Maestri said. “We are very pleased with our ability to decelerate some of the expense growth.”

China was a bright spot, bucking a trend among some of Apple’s tech peers. Maestri said that wearables — including the Apple Watch and AirPods — did particularly well in the country. The iPhone also held up in China, serving as “the heart of our results there,” Cook said.

Demand for the iPhone 14 model is tapering off as the company prepares to unveil the next version, which promises to be the most significant upgrade in three years. New iPhones typically debut in September, a few weeks before the fourth quarter ends. That means the bulk of revenue comes in the following period, Apple’s fiscal first quarter, which is invariably its most lucrative time of year.

The iPhone 15 Pro models will add new features like a titanium frame, thinner borders around the screen and a faster processor. But given the sluggish state of smartphone spending, it may still be hard to entice some consumers to upgrade.

Apple has informed suppliers that it expects shipments of the device to remain flat with the year before through the balance of 2023, at about 85 million units. Other phone makers, including Samsung Electronics Co., have also seen sales of their devices slow or remain flat.

In the current quarter, Apple expects the year-over-year performance of the iPhone and services to improve. That will outshine the Mac and iPad divisions, which the company said would decline by a percentage in the double digits.

Touching on a hot-button issue, Cook said that the company has been researching generative AI technologies for years. Bloomberg reported last month that Apple has developed its own large language model — a technology like the one used for training AI chatbots such as OpenAI Inc.’s ChatGPT — and is preparing a generative AI push for next year. Such tools can create written content or images based on text prompts.

The iPad, meanwhile, suffered a sales decline of 20% last quarter. That business generated $5.79 billion, versus calls for about $6.33 billion. Apple hasn’t updated any of its tablets since last year and won’t make any significant changes to the lineup until 2024. The company is preparing to announce a revamped iPad Pro with a superior display in the first half of that year, Bloomberg has reported.

Apple tried to explain away its tablet troubles by blaming a tough comparison with the launch of the iPad Air last year. But that model remains a small part of overall iPad revenue.

In the current quarter, tablets and Macs will be down in part because of factory shutdowns in 2022, Apple said. The disruption prevented consumers from getting products in the third quarter of that year, leading to a surge in the next period. The company won’t see that effect this time around, Apple said.

The Mac did perform better than expected this past quarter, even with the lingering slump. Though its sales fell 7.3% to $6.84 billion, that topped an average estimate of $6.37 billion. The only major new products that Apple launched in the third quarter were Macs: The new larger MacBook Air and pro-focused desktop machines were introduced in June.

The wearables, home and accessories segment, which includes the Apple Watch and AirPods, brought in $8.28 billion. That missed estimates of $8.38 billion. Apple is preparing to release new watches in September with better performance and new colors — though not much in the way of new features. Last fall, the company launched three new models, including a high-end Ultra version, that helped boost the average selling price of the devices.

Services revenue was a clear highlight, climbing 8.2% to $21.2 billion. That topped estimates of $20.8 billion. The growth was “driven by over 1 billion paid subscriptions,” Cook said.

The Cupertino, California-based company cited advertising and Apple Music as two record-setting categories, and added that its partnership with Major League Soccer is performing better than it had anticipated. Apple began broadcasting the league’s games on its TV+ streaming service earlier this year.

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Google illegally cut contract staffers who worked on AI, alleges union

by Hansraj Agrawal | Aug 4, 2023 | Technology

By Davey Alba and Josh Eidelson

Alphabet Inc. illegally ended contract employment for a majority of Google Help workers as they were trying to unionize, organizers alleged in a complaint to the US labor board.

The Alphabet Workers Union accused the internet giant of violating federal labor law, which prohibits retaliation against employees for organizing. More than 70% of the proposed bargaining unit — which includes 118 writers, graphic designers and launch coordinators who create internal and external Google content — were told in July that they will lose their jobs, according to a Thursday filing with the National Labor Relations Board.

The workers, whose jobs have included improving the quality of answers in Google’s search engine and artificial intelligence chatbot, are employed through the vendor Accenture Plc. But the union contends Alphabet is also legally their boss. It has asked the NLRB to designate the internet giant a “joint employer” of the Accenture staff, meaning a company that exercises enough control over a group of workers to be liable for their treatment and, if they choose to unionize, obligated to negotiate with them.

The decision to cut people’s jobs “feels retaliatory,” said Anjail Muhammad, who was told her role as a writer with Accenture will be eliminated. “It’s obvious that this timing is incredibly suspicious, and that is why we are filing an unfair labor practice charge — to hold Google and Accenture accountable for their behavior.”

Accenture didn’t immediately provide a comment. When Accenture announced it was cutting the workers’ jobs in July, a company spokesperson said in a statement that Accenture supports the rights of its people to form or join unions. They added: “As conveyed to our people recently, these workforce decisions were made prior to any notification to us of potential union activity.”

A spokesperson for Google said in July that the company respects the workers’ rights but that organizing was “a matter between them and their employer, Accenture,” and that “Google does not control their employment terms or working conditions.” The company on Thursday said it still stands by that statement, and rejected the idea that changes for the Accenture Google Help contract were for any purpose other than savings and efficiency. Google said it chooses its partners and staffing agencies carefully and reviews their compliance with the company’s Supplier Code of Conduct.

The workers, who are based in Austin, Texas; the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere in the US, were told about the cuts during a livestreamed “town hall” that did not allow questions or comments, according to several employees who attended the session, who declined to be identified sharing non-public information. Later, they received a follow-up about “the Content Creation team supporting Google,” according to an email reviewed by Bloomberg. “As discussed during the townhall, the account team has adjusted our support for this project to meet the needs of our client,” it said. The team would be reduced on a rolling basis through November, according to emails from Accenture, with the first round of terminations coming on August 7.

Tahlia Kirk, a writer and team trainer, said that with the layoffs, employees working on the Accenture contract for Google will be reduced to 40 US-based people, from about 130. She said they have been instructed to train their replacements who work in the Philippines and India. But even with the reduced headcount, Kirk said, “I’m confident that we have such strong support that we will win the union election, no matter what.”

The dispute is the latest controversy over what Alphabet owes its vast army of contract staff, who in 2018 became the majority of its global workforce. Another group of Alphabet contract staff, employed by Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. to work on YouTube Music in Texas, voted 41-to-0 to unionize in April. On July 19, NLRB members in Washington DC upheld a regional director’s ruling that Alphabet was a joint employer of those workers, meaning the company is required to collectively bargain with them, a first in its history. But Alphabet has signaled it will still refuse to negotiate with the workers, who it contends are not its employees, meaning the issue is likely to end up in federal appeals court. “We’ll continue to assert our position that we’re not a joint employer,” spokesperson Courtenay Mencini said last month.

In interviews, workers disputed the idea that Google had little control over their jobs. Laura Greene, a multimedia team leader, said she spent her time at work coordinating with full-time Google employees on content strategy, and that she had created internal white papers and infographics for people who report directly to Alphabet’s chief executive officer.

“Most of my work week, I am talking to Googlers, working with Googlers,” Greene said. “I’ve worked with them a lot more closely than I do Accenture managers. I have a Google email, I use their proprietary systems and equipment. And if I have a problem with my equipment, I call Google tech support.” Google said it was not abnormal for some contract staffers to work with Googlers or communicate on Google systems to perform their assignments.

Complaints filed with the NLRB are investigated by regional officials, whose task in the Google Help case would include determining whether Alphabet is in fact a joint employer. If a regional director finds merit in the union’s claims and can’t secure a settlement, they would prosecute the case before an agency judge, whose ruling could be appealed to the NLRB members in DC and from there into federal appeals court.

Kirk, the team trainer, said Google and Accenture’s decision to cut the majority of jobs on the team would cause “irrevocable damage” to the quality of the content work, given the loss of institutional knowledge and the substitution of US employees for overseas workers who will need to be rushed through training.

“I think a lot of people are going to say about the layoffs, ‘Well, what do you expect from a big tech company?’” Kirk added. “But people constantly forget that unionizing is a federally protected right. If these companies are trying to lay us off to prevent us from voting in our union election — and that is what appears to be happening — they are breaking the law.”

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What are room-temperature superconductors and what’s the LK-99 controversy?

by Hansraj Agrawal | Aug 4, 2023 | Technology

In late July, a group of South Korean scientists claimed they had developed a lead-based compound, LK-99, which displayed superconducting properties at room temperature and normal pressure conditions. The scientists from the Quantum Energy Research Centre said that LK-99 is a material made up of lead, copper, and phosphorus.

The claims led to unprecedented excitement among experts in the field and also triggered scepticism in the scientific community. But what is a room-temperature superconductor? And why is this claim making news?

What is a superconductor?

A superconductor is a material that conducts electricity with almost 100 per cent efficiency. This means that the material offers no resistance to electricity, thereby preventing any energy loss in the form of heat, sound or other forms of energy. Simply defined, a superconductor is a material that offers electrical current zero resistance.

Superconductivity is a condition in which electrical resistance drops to zero. It can be achieved only under extremely low temperatures or high-pressure conditions.

The importance of low temperature

Some metals become superconductors under extremely low temperatures. The temperature at which the resistance drops to zero is known as the critical temperature.

For aluminium, the critical temperature is 1.2 Kelvin (or -271.9 degrees Celsius). Indium attains superconductivity at 3.4 K (-269.75 degrees Celsius). Mercury at 4.2 K (-268.95 degrees Celsius) and Lead at 7.2 K (-265.95 degrees Celsius).

But what if there was a superconductor that did this at room temperature? The search for such superconductors is one of the holy grails of materials science. Till now, the search for such material has proved elusive.

This is the reason the claims by the South Korean scientists regarding LK-99 have made the scientific world sit up.

How will room-temperature superconductors impact the future?

Superconductor technology like LK-99 could lead to a tectonic shift in the fields of power and transportation. Such a material could lead to a new age of frictionless high-speed trains, lossless power lines and super-efficient quantum computers. Particle accelerators and nuclear fusion devices could also be run in a cost-efficient manner.

Superconducting materials are already in use in a variety of applications around the world, such as MRI machines, but they require extremely low temperatures or extremely high pressures. Such conditions are difficult and expensive to maintain.

Despite many previous claims about room-temperature superconductors falling flat, the prospect of discovering such material has motivated researchers to push forward.

How do superconductors work?

At normal temperatures, all materials offer some amount of electrical resistance. Modern materials that are used to conduct electricity, like wiring supplying energy to homes, are inefficient. As electrons move from one end of the wire to the other, they keep bumping into atoms and are slowed, creating heat and causing energy to be lost. But if wires were to be made from a superconductive material, these losses could be nullified.

The nuclei of all atoms vibrate at a constant rate. In a superconducting material, the electrons move from atom to atom in a coordinated way, in sync with the vibrating nuclei. This efficient movement leads to no collisions; therefore, there is no resistance to the flow of electricity. The movement of electrons and nuclei becomes more organised at colder temperatures. Hence, the existing crop of superconductors only works at extremely low temperatures.

Why the need for a room-temperature superconductor?

Since the electric current flowing through metal wire suffers losses due to the wire’s electrical resistance, a significant amount of electricity is lost in transmission. Scientists have pondered the existence of materials that would offer no resistance to the flow of electricity.

Such superconducting materials were discovered more than a century ago. In 1911, Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovered that mercury, a liquid metal at room temperature, becomes a superconductor at an extremely cold temperature of -268.95 degrees Celsius. Such temperatures at which materials such as lead, aluminium, tin, niobium, and several others become superconductors are known as critical temperatures. In the late 1970s, scientists believed that superconductors couldn’t function at more than -240 degrees Celsius.

After several years of research, scientists concluded that superconductivity in metals could be achieved if they can be cooled down to suitably low temperatures.

Researchers also realised that along with being perfect conductors of electricity, superconductors also have many other properties that could lead to monumental breakthroughs in the fields of energy, transportation and computers.

Hence, the challenge before scientists has been to discover a material that can conduct electricity without resistance at an ordinary temperature and pressure.

Controversy over LK-99

Scientists have expressed doubts about the claims of the South Korean researchers as several versions of the LK-99 paper have appeared on the preprint platform arXiv with inconsistent data, and their findings have not been put through basic tests used to confirm superconductivity.

Critics said the research paper is waiting to be peer-reviewed for publication and contains low-quality data.

The Korean Society of Superconductivity and Cryogenics stated that it had asked the Quantum Energy Research Centre to submit samples to verify its researchers’ findings of a room-temperature superconductor material, Reuters reported on Thursday.

“Based on data from the two archived papers and the video made public, the materials … cannot be called room temperature superconductors at this point,” the group said.

Recent claims of room-temperature superconductivity have been met with scepticism, as none of them has been able to withstand rigorous scientific scrutiny. In July, Physical Review Letters, a prominent scientific journal, decided to retract a paper by Ranga Dias, a physicist at the University of Rochester, apparently because of faulty data. Nature retracted another paper by Dias in September last year after researchers could not reproduce the results.

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India’s success case study in using technology to transform lives: MoS IT

by Hansraj Agrawal | Aug 4, 2023 | Technology

Minister of State for Information and Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Thursday said India’s success is a case study in using technology to transform citizens’ lives and underscored that digital India framework boosted the confidence of a whole new generation of young Indians, a press release said.

Addressing World Bank Digital Economy Conclave 2023 on Thursday, the minister said “In 2015, through the launch of Digital India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi set unconventional expectations through three broad goals – technology should improve the lives of citizens, impact governance and democracy and further expand and create an architecture for an innovation economy. Over the past nine years, India has taken a lead in creating technologies as opposed to being a mute spectator and consumer of technology.”

He emphasised the milestones achieved through Digital India in the past nine years, which catalysed the country’s rapid progress towards a five trillion US dollar economy by 2026. “India’s success is case study in using technology to transform citizens’ live,” said MoS Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

The statement further added that Rajeev Chandrasekhar also highlighted how digitisation of government services has facilitated the formalisation of informal sectors that now use digital payments and micro-credit. “These services which are part of the India stack are now being offered to countries who are keen on digitising Governance,” the IT minister said, said the release.

“The digitisation of government services has facilitated the formalisation of informal sectors, like street vendors, who now use digital payments and micro-credit. The transformation brought about by the India stack, including initiatives like UPI and Aadhaar, has not only improved governance but also created a vibrant innovation ecosystem. India’s success in deploying technology to transform lives has drawn interest from other countries looking to digitise their economies and governance. The India stack, with its innovative ecosystem, is being offered as a partnership to these countries,” the Minister further added.

The Minister, during his interaction with executives from World Bank, spoke about how the Government was revived from dysfunctional Governance that prevented distribution of resources to people living in remote areas, it added.

“For many years, the narrative about India, despite being a tech country with talented people, revolved around the issue of dysfunctional governance that failed to reach the people. This described the challenges India faced in governance. However, in 2015, when Digital India was launched, an architecture and framework for technology’s expectations and outcomes were introduced and understood. This has significantly boosted the confidence of a whole new generation of young Indians,” the Minister explained.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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WhatsApp’s new animated avatar feature for Android users: All details here

by Hansraj Agrawal | Aug 3, 2023 | Technology

WhatsApp, one of the most widely used messaging applications, is reportedly working on an improved version of an avatar pack that features animated icons. Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) resources from Meta, WhatsApp’s avatar creation page can generate personalised animated avatars from a single image.

With the latest beta version 2.23.16.12 update for Android users from Google Play Store, WhatsApp is introducing an animated version of the current avatar pack. “A few beta testers may finally experiment with animated icons due to this recent update,” noted WABetaInfo, a website that monitors WhatsApp updates.

Insights on WhatsApp’s new animated avatar feature

The animated avatars are categorised into several sections based on their appearance, including blissful, entertaining, angry, bright, etc. These animated avatars, similar to Snapchat’s Bitmoji, add an extra layer of emotion that can be expressed in your WhatsApp chats due to their additional animations.

The avatar creation page in WhatsApp, using AI resources from Meta, creates personalised animated avatars from a single image. When a sender selects an animated avatar, it is sent as a sticker. The recipient can then add this animated icon as a sticker to their favourites section.

Utilising the new animated avatars on WhatsApp

To use this animated avatar feature, users must have an avatar set up on their WhatsApp accounts, which can be done by navigating to Settings > Avatar > Create your Avatar. Once the avatar is created, users on the latest beta version of WhatsApp will find an extra tab next to the emoji, sticker, and GIF section. From here, users can send animated avatars to others.

Note that the animated avatar feature is currently available only for beta users of WhatsApp running version 12.23.16.12 or higher. Currently, the feature appears to work only on Android phones. WhatsApp may soon roll out animated avatars in the stable version as well.

Only the sender needs to be on the beta version to create and send animated avatars. Recipients using older or stable versions of WhatsApp can still view and receive animated icons as animated stickers on both Android and iPhone.

Additional information on avatars on WhatsApp

Android users can join the WhatsApp beta programme via the Google Play Store. Alternatively, users can manually install the latest beta version of WhatsApp via APK to test out the avatars. In addition to avatars, WhatsApp has also been observed testing a feature that allows users to set group settings even before creating a group. This feature was spotted in a previous beta version.

Besides, WhatsApp is working on a spam protection feature to help identify and filter out spam calls. This will supplement the existing feature where users can mute unknown callers on WhatsApp.

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