Connect with us

Tech

Apple supplier Foxconn wins AirPod order, plans $200 million factory in India, sources say

Published

on

107158248-1669728297268-gettyimages-1244422233-porzycki-foxconnp221102_npBQM.jpeg


Advertisement
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Advertisement
Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn has won an order to make AirPods for Apple and plans to build a factory in India to produce the wireless earphones, two people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

The deal will see Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics maker and assembler of around 70% of all iPhones, become an AirPod supplier for the first time and underlines efforts by the key Apple supplier to further diversify production away from China. AirPods are currently made by a range of Chinese suppliers.

Advertisement

One source said Foxconn will invest more than $200 million in the new India AirPod plant in the southern Indian state of Telangana. It wasn’t immediately clear how much the AirPod order would be worth.

The person, who requested anonymity as the matter was not public yet, said Foxconn officials had debated internally for months about whether to assemble AirPods due to relatively lower profit margins on making the device, but ultimately opted to go ahead with the deal to “reinforce engagement” with Apple.

Advertisement

“That way, we are more likely to get orders for their new products,” the person said.

The decision to set up production in India was requested by Apple, according to the source.

Advertisement
Apple is probably the safest place to be when it comes to navigating the next 6 months: Gene Munster

Foxconn vies with Taiwanese rivals such as Wistron and Pegatron to win more orders from Apple, the world’s most valuable company.

A subsidiary, Foxconn Interconnect Technology, plans to start construction of a manufacturing facility in Telangana in the second half of this year and begin production by the end of 2024 at the earliest, the person said.

Shares in the Foxconn unit jumped nearly 9% after Reuters first reported the news, reversing an earlier loss of 2.2%. Shares in Foxconn itself traded up 0.5%, while the Taipei benchmark was down 1.1%.

Advertisement

A second person with direct knowledge of the matter, who also declined to be identified as the matter was not yet public, said the Foxconn subsidiary will make AirPods in India without providing further details.

Analysts have previously said Apple has asked suppliers including Foxconn to make AirPods in India, but details such as the size of investment, timeline and which suppliers have manufacturing plans in the country have not been disclosed.

Advertisement

Foxconn declined to comment. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Apple's big China headwinds

Apple and its key suppliers have been shifting production away from China, where strict Covid-19 curbs disrupted Foxconn’s biggest iPhone factory last year. They are also seeking to avoid a potential hit to business from mounting Sino-U.S. trade friction.

Foxconn said on Wednesday it would ramp up investment outside China to meet customer demand and lower its reliance on China for production.

Advertisement

It was not immediately clear whether Foxconn’s production plan would have impact on current AirPod suppliers, including Luxshare Precision Industry.

Luxshare did not immediately reply to a Reuters’ request for comment.

Advertisement

Goertek, another supplier, said in November an overseas client had asked it to suspend assembly work for a smart acoustic product, which analysts at the time identified as AirPods Pro 2, and the suspension would hit revenue by up to 3.3 billion yuan ($480 million).

Goertek did not respond to a request for comment.

Advertisement



Source link

Advertisement

Tech

Apple launches its Pay Later service

Published

on

By

107161974-1670353109910-gettyimages-1424302021-km203691_103b26d2-4228-403a-b5d0-6b8f0df68ff4.jpeg


Advertisement
Apple CEO Tim Cook visits the Fifth Avenue Apple Store on September 16, 2022 in New York City.
Advertisement

Kevin Mazur | Getty Images

Apple on Tuesday introduced Apple Pay Later, which will allow users to split purchases into four payments spread over the course of six weeks.
Advertisement

Affirm dropped 4% on the news.

Apple Pay Later users will be able to manage, track and repay their loans in their Apple Wallet, the company said in a release Tuesday. Individuals can apply for Apple Pay Later loans between $50 and $1,000 and use them for in-app and online purchases made through merchants that accept Apple Pay. Payments have no interest and no fees.

Advertisement

Users can apply for a loan within the Apple Wallet app without it impacting their credit score, Apple said. Once they select the amount they would like to withdraw, a soft credit pull will be conducted to make sure they are in “a good financial position” to take on a loan, according to the release.

Apple will invite select people to access a prelease version of Apple Pay Later Tuesday, and the company said it plans to expand access to all eligible users in the coming months.

Advertisement

Approved users will see a “Pay Later” option while using Apple Pay to check out online and in apps on iPhones and iPads. They will also be able to apply for a loan right at checkout. Apple said purchases using the software will be authenticated using Face ID, Touch ID or a passcode.

The company said users can see the amount due for their existing loans, as well as the total amount due in the next 30 days, in Apple Wallet. Users will be asked to link a debit card as their loan repayment method. Credit cards won’t be accepted.

Advertisement

This story is developing. Please check back for updates.



Source link

Advertisement

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

Microsoft introduces an A.I. chatbot for cybersecurity experts

Published

on

By

106901172-1624474214482-106901172-1624408705315-gettyimages-491551484-MS_WINDOWS_10.jpg


Advertisement
Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., speaks during the Windows 10 Devices event in New York on Oct. 6, 2015. Microsoft Corp. introduced its first-ever laptop, three Lumia phones and a Surface Pro 4 tablet, the first indication of the company’s revamped hardware strategy three months after saying it would scale back plans to make its own smartphones.
Advertisement

John Taggart | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Microsoft on Tuesday announced a chatbot designed to help cybersecurity professionals understand critical issues and find ways to fix them.
Advertisement

The company has been busy bolstering its software with artificial intelligence models from startup OpenAI after OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot captured the public imagination following its November debut.

The resulting generative AI software can at times be “usefully wrong,” as Microsoft put it earlier this month when talking up new features in Word and other productivity apps. But Microsoft is proceeding nevertheless, as it seeks to keep growing a cybersecurity business that fetched more than $20 billion in 2022 revenue.

Advertisement

The Microsoft Security Copilot draws on GPT-4, the latest large language model from OpenAI — in which Microsoft has invested billions — and a security-specific model Microsoft built using daily activity data it gathers. The system also knows a given customer’s security environment, but that data won’t be used to train models.

The chatbot can compose PowerPoint slides summarizing security incidents, describe exposure to an active vulnerability or specify the accounts involved in an exploit in response to a text prompt that a person types in.

Advertisement

A user can hit a button to confirm an answer if it’s right or select an “off-target” button to signal a mistake. That sort of input will help the service learn, Vasu Jakkal, corporate vice president of security, compliance, identity, management and privacy at Microsoft, told CNBC in an interview.

Engineers inside Microsoft have been using the Security Copilot to do their jobs. “It can process 1,000 alerts and give you the two incidents that matter in seconds,” Jakkal said. The tool also reverse-engineered a piece of malicious code for an analyst who didn’t know how to do that, she said.

Advertisement

That type of assistance can make a difference for companies that run into trouble hiring experts and end up hiring employees who are inexperienced in some areas. “There’s a learning curve, and it takes time,” Jakkal said. “And now Security Copilot with the skills built in can augment you. So it is going to help you do more with less.”

Microsoft isn’t talking about how much Security Copilot will cost when it becomes more widely available.

Advertisement

Jakkal said the hope is that many workers inside a given company will use it, rather than just a handful of executives. That means over time Microsoft wants to make the tool capable of holding discussions in a wider variety of domains.

The service will work with Microsoft security products such as Sentinel for tracking threats. Microsoft will determine if it should add support for third-party tools such as Splunk based on input from early users in the next few months, Jakkal said.

Advertisement

If Microsoft were to require customers to use Sentinel or other Microsoft products if they want to turn on the Security Copilot, that could very well influence the purchasing decisions, said Frank Dickson, group vice president for security and trust at technology industry researcher IDC.

“For me, I was like, ‘Wow, this may be the single biggest announcement in security this calendar year,’” he said.

Advertisement

There’s nothing stopping Microsoft’s security rivals, such as Palo Alto Networks, from releasing chatbots of their own, but getting out first means Microsoft will have a head start, Dickson said.

Security Copilot will be available to a small set of Microsoft clients in a private preview before wider release at a later date.

Advertisement

WATCH: Microsoft threatens to restrict data from rival AI search tools

Microsoft threatens to restrict data from rival AI search tools



Source link

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tech

Sam Bankman-Fried paid over $40 million to bribe at least one official in China, DOJ alleges in new indictment

Published

on

By

107184637-16747571292023-01-26t180503z_2630263_rc25jy9fj57j_rtrmadp_0_fintech-crypto-ftx-bankruptcy.jpeg


Advertisement
Former FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried, who faces fraud charges over the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, arrives on the day of a hearing at Manhattan federal court in New York City, January 3, 2023.
Advertisement

David Dee Delgado | Reuters

FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried paid out tens of millions of dollars worth of bribes to at least one Chinese government official, federal prosecutors alleged in a new indictment Tuesday.
Advertisement

The indictment said accounts belonging to Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research, were the target of a freezing order from Chinese police “in or around” November 2021.

The indictment alleges that Bankman-Fried and others “directed and caused the transfer” of at least $40 million in cryptocurrency “intended for the benefit of one or more Chinese government officials in order to influence and induce them” to unfreeze some of these accounts.

Advertisement

Bankman-Fried and his associates considered and tried “numerous methods” to unfreeze the accounts, which contained around $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency, prosecutors allege. Ultimately, after both legal and personal efforts failed, Bankman-Fried agreed to and directed a multimillion-dollar bribe to have the frozen accounts unlocked, prosecutors alleged.

Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund used the unfrozen assets to continue to fund Alameda’s loss-generating trades, continuing on what the government says was a fraud upon customers and investors for another year. FTX and Alameda imploded in November 2022 after concerns about their balance sheet turned into a veritable bank run. Bankman-Fried now faces a federal indictment and civil charges from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Advertisement

The charges indicate that new evidence has been obtained by the federal government about Bankman-Fried’s international dealings, and come one day after U.S. regulators slapped crypto exchange Binance with allegations of facilitating terrorist financing and violations of U.S. derivatives law.

Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried’s collapsed FTX remains mired in Delaware bankruptcy court proceedings.

Advertisement

A spokesperson for Bankman-Fried did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.



Source link

Advertisement

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending