(April 24, Global TMT2024) Today's highlights: The U.S. Senate passed the bill involving ByteDance to divest TikTok, Apple officially announced that it will hold a press conference on May 7, Huawei released a new brand of intelligent car solutions "Qiankun", UMC and Intel will form an OEM alliance, SenseTime released the Ririxin 5.0 model, and Musk said that it will sell the humanoid robot Optimus as soon as next year.
The U.S. Senate passed a bill involving ByteDance to divest TikTok
On April 23, local time, the U.S. Senate passed a bill involving TikTok. The bill requires Chinese tech company ByteDance to divest TikTok or the app would be banned from the United States. A few days ago, the US House of Representatives voted to pass this bill on the 20th. The bill has now been sent to the White House for President Joe Biden to sign. The bill extends the period for divesting TikTok from 165 to 270 days, and the White House can also exercise the power to extend the deadline for 90 days if the president determines that progress has been made on the sale. This extended the maximum period for ByteDance to sell TikTok to one year. If TikTok does get banned in the United States, it is expected that the main beneficiaries will be those companies that need it the least, with Meta and Google being the winners and Oracle being the losers.
Apple officially announced that it will hold a press conference on May 7
Apple announced that it will host a special event on May 7 at 10 p.m. Beijing time, with the theme "Let Loose." Judging by the posters, the event is expected to focus on the new generation of iPad hardware and accessories. Previously, it was revealed that the new products for spring 2024 include the iPad Pro with an OLED display and M3 chip and the new Apple Pencil 3.
Apple slashed Vision Pro shipments
Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at Tianfeng International Securities, said that Apple has lowered its shipment forecast for Vision Pro headsets in 2024, from the original forecast of 700,000 to 800,000 units to 40 to 450,000 units. Kuo noted that the adjustment was based on a decline in pre-sales orders outside the U.S. market, showing a "sharp decline in U.S. demand that exceeded expectations." As a result, Apple is expected to adopt a more conservative marketing strategy when the Vision Pro is available in more countries. In addition, Ming-Chi Kuo revealed that Apple expects Vision Pro shipments in 2025 to be lower than in 2024, and he also believes that no new Vision Pro models will be launched in 2025.
Huawei Unveils New Brand of Intelligent Vehicle Solution "Qiankun"
The 2024 Huawei Intelligent Vehicle Solution Conference was held on April 24. At present, Huawei has shipped 3 million sets+ of intelligent components for intelligent vehicle solutions, launched 7 strategic cooperation models, and has 300+ ecosystem partners, with a cumulative R&D investment of 30 billion yuan and 7,000 R&D personnel. At the press conference, Huawei unveiled its new intelligent vehicle solution brand, Qiankun, and released 10 new products, including Qiankun Intelligent Driving, Qiankun Car Cloud, Qiankun Vehicle Control, and Hongmeng Cockpit.
Yu Chengdong said that Huawei's high-end intelligent driving of less than 300,000 yuan was sold at a loss
The new flagship brand of HarmonyOS Technology Ecological Alliance, "STELATTO Enjoyment", was officially released. Jointly built by Huawei and BAIC, the Xiangjie S9 is the first executive-level luxury flagship sedan of HarmonyOS Zhixing. Yu Chengdong, Executive Director of Huawei, CEO of Device BG, and Chairman of Intelligent Vehicle Solution BU, said that HarmonyOS has launched four products, with a cumulative sales volume of 105,000 from January 1 to April 22, 2024. He also posted on Weibo, "We have invested a lot in R&D in intelligent driving technology, and Huawei's high-end intelligent driving with a price of less than 300,000 yuan is actually sold at a loss." ”
Baidu Encyclopedia App will be closed for service
According to the notice of the offline of Baidu Encyclopedia App, the Baidu Encyclopedia team has decided to close the service of Baidu Encyclopedia App on June 30, 2024, and will continue to provide services in Baidu Encyclopedia Mini Program in Baidu App. According to the version history, Baidu also updated the Baidu Encyclopedia App on April 23.
UMC and Intel will form a foundry alliance
Semiconductor giants UMC and Intel will form an alliance in the areas of foundry of mature products used in communications and automotive. Some of Intel's U.S. factories will be jointly operated by the two companies to produce products for infrastructure. Catching up with TSMC, the largest foundry company that is expanding its customer base in the U.S. and increasing production in Japan and Europe. The two companies will jointly develop semiconductor technology equivalent to a mature generation with a wire width of 12 nanometers for contract manufacturing. The company will jointly operate Intel's three existing plants in Arizona, U.S., and will start mass production of semiconductors for communications by 2027.
Lenovo and Meta will jointly develop mixed reality products
Lenovo Group has announced a new XR partnership with Meta. Lenovo will initially support Meta Horizon OS and will jointly develop and market Lenovo's mixed reality products by supporting a large hardware ecosystem that will give developers more options to build applications and reach audiences on the platform.
Foxconn has pledged to use full green electricity by 2040
Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn) has announced that its global operations will be fully powered by green electricity by 2040 and has joined the global initiative RE100. The pledge, made on the occasion of Foxconn's 50th anniversary, has accelerated Foxconn's determination to shift its business in a greener and more sustainable direction. Foxconn made its first public pledge on Earth Day 2022 to use at least 50% green energy by 2030, and two years later, the company's renewable energy share has surpassed 40%.
SenseTime released the RiRixin 5.0 model
SenseTime held a new product launch conference and officially released the artificial intelligence model "Ririxin 5.0", which adopts an advanced MOE hybrid expert architecture to enable the model to show higher efficiency and accuracy when dealing with complex tasks. The model is based on more than 10TB of data tokens for deep learning training, and also has up to 200K inference context windows, which comprehensively benchmarks GPT-4 Turbo in knowledge, inference, mathematics, code and other aspects.
Musk said that the humanoid robot Optimus will be sold as soon as next year
Elon Musk updated the timeline for the launch of Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus during the Tesla earnings Telegram conference. Musk has threatened to officially sell Optimus by the end of 2025 at the earliest. A number of technology companies around the world are already betting on the humanoid robot track. Previously, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicted that in the near future, a new category of devices called "humanoid robots" will become mass-marketed products, and their manufacturing costs will be "much lower" than expected.
Microsoft and Coca-Cola have reached a five-year strategic partnership
Microsoft and Coca-Cola will enter into a five-year strategic partnership to align Coca-Cola's core technology strategy system-wide, promote the adoption of cutting-edge technologies, and drive innovation and productivity on a global scale. As part of the partnership, Coca-Cola has committed $1.1 billion to the Microsoft Cloud and its generative AI capabilities. Together, the two companies will try to develop innovative generative AI use cases across a variety of business functions using new technologies such as the Azure OpenAI service.
Google will invest 600 million euros to build a data center in the Netherlands
Google said it will invest 600 million euros in a new data center in Groningen, the Netherlands, and create 125 direct jobs. Since 2014, Google has invested more than 3.8 billion euros in data centers and related digital infrastructure in the Netherlands.
IBM talks to acquire software company HashiCorp
IBM is in advanced talks to acquire software company HashiCorp Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. HashiCorp's software can help companies across a range of industries build digital infrastructure on the cloud, which can reduce costs and accelerate time to market. Representatives of IBM and HashiCorp declined to comment.
SAP incurred a quarterly loss as a result of the restructuring
SAP, Europe's largest software company, announced its results for the first quarter of 2024. Quarterly revenue increased 8% year-on-year to €8.04 billion, while cloud services revenue increased 24% year-on-year to €3.93 billion. Operating loss for the quarter was 787 million euros, compared to an operating profit of 803 million euros in the prior-year quarter, due to a loss due to restructuring.
Shengtian turned a loss into a profit in the first quarter
Spotify Technology, a streaming music service giant, has announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2024. Total revenue for the quarter was 3.64 billion euros, up 20 percent year-on-year. Operating profit was 168 million euros, compared to a loss of 156 million euros in the prior-year quarter. Net income amounted to 197 million euros, compared to a net loss of 225 million euros in the prior-year quarter. Spotify's total monthly active users (MAU) in the first quarter were 615 million, still up 19% year-over-year.
Huawei's smartphone market share in China is close to Apple's
According to the latest data released by Counterpoint Research, China's smartphone sales increased by 1.5% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2024, marking the second consecutive quarter of positive year-on-year growth. In terms of the share of each manufacturer, vivo ranked first, with a market share of 17.4%, down 0.4% from the same period last year. Honor's share was 16.1%, a year-on-year increase of 11.5%. Apple's share was 15.7%, down 19.1% year-on-year. Huawei's share was 15.5%, up 69.7% year-on-year. OPPO's share was 15.3%, down 15.5% year-on-year. Xiaomi's share was 14.6%, up 8.6% year-on-year.
Prices of home appliances in Japan are polarized
The prices of domestic home appliances are polarized. In white goods, the price per washing machine has risen by 30% in 10 years, and the refrigerator has risen by 15%. The number of dual-income households has increased, and the "time-saving demand" to reduce the burden of housework has played a driving role. From the point of view of TV prices, large-size TVs have dropped by about 4%. Watching videos on smartphones has increased, and demand for TVs has been sluggish. Depending on whether it is for housework or entertainment, there is a differentiation of home appliances.