April 26, TMT2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today's highlights: Huawei regains No. 1 spot in Chinese mainland smartphone market, ByteDance says it has no plans to sell TikTok, iPhone activation share falls to a six-year low in the United States, Microsoft's market capitalization falls below $3 trillion and soars after hours, and TSMC is not well rated by American employees.
Huawei regained the first place in the smartphone market in Chinese mainland
According to a report released by Canalys, in the first quarter of 2024, the smartphone market in Chinese mainland will recover for the first time in two years, with shipments unchanged from the same period last year, reaching 67.7 million units. Among them, Huawei regained the first place in the Chinese mainland market, with shipments of 11.7 million units, a year-on-year increase of 70%, and a market share of 17%. OPPO jumped to second place, with shipments of 10.9 million units, down 14% year-on-year, and a market share of 16%. Honor ranked third, with shipments of 10.6 million units, up 9% year-on-year, and a market share of 16%. Vivo ranked fourth, with shipments of 10.3 million units, down 9% year-on-year, and a market share of 15%. Apple fell the most among the top five manufacturers, ranking fifth with 10 million units shipped, down 25% year-on-year, with a market share of 15%.
ByteDance said it had no plans to sell TikTok
ByteDance issued an article on the evening of the 25th: The news of foreign media about ByteDance's exploration of selling TikTok is untrue, and ByteDance does not have any plans to sell TikTok.
U.S. employees don't rate TSMC well
On the U.S. workplace rating website Glassdoor, TSMC has a rating of only 3.2 out of 5 stars, while Intel and Texas Instruments both have 4.1 stars. The poor rating also makes it harder for TSMC to recruit mature engineers in the United States. At present, the progress of TSMC's first phase of factory in Arizona is still seriously lagging behind, and mass production has been postponed to 2025. TSMC said that the main reasons for the slow progress of U.S. factories are the lack of highly skilled workers and high costs. The huge contrast in work culture creates a divide, with American employees not understanding TSMC's strict hierarchy and excessive working hours, and headquarters employees feeling that American colleagues take more and leave work early.
Tencent and Toyota announced the start of a strategic partnership
Toyota Motor announced that it has reached a strategic cooperation with Tencent Holdings, which will focus on Toyota's pure electric vehicles sold in China, combining Tencent's AI model, cloud and digital ecosystem with Toyota's "software-defined vehicle" (SDV). Vehicles equipped with jointly developed software will be launched later this year. So far, Tencent has cooperated with more than 100 car companies and mobility technology companies, serving more than 15 million smart cars.
Nissan will be equipped with Baidu's AI solution
Nissan (China) Investment Co., Ltd. and Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to equip Nissan with Baidu's AI solutions in Chinese models, and will actively promote research and cooperation to jointly explore the application and development of innovative technologies in the future automotive field. Baidu's generative AI capabilities will be applied to Nissan's vehicles in China, which will further accelerate the pace of Nissan's intelligent and electrified vehicles.
iPhone activation share fell to a six-year low in the U.S
According to the latest report from market research firm CIRP, Apple's share of new activations in the U.S. smartphone market fell sharply from last year, falling to its lowest level in six years. In the first and second quarters of 2023, Apple's share of new activations in the U.S. market peaked at 40%. However, as of the first quarter of 2024, this figure has slipped to 33%. This means that for every 3 new smartphones activated in the United States, 2 out of 2 belong to the Android camp. The last time Apple had such a low percentage of activations was back in 2017. CIRP believes that the improvement in the quality of iPhones over the past few years, as well as the decrease in new features, may be one of the reasons for the drop in activation rates.
Microsoft's market capitalization fell below $3 trillion and rose sharply after hours
On April 25, Microsoft's stock price fell, and as of the close, the stock fell 2.45%, and the total market capitalization fell below $3 trillion. As Microsoft's AI investment is facing a UK antitrust investigation. Microsoft announced results for the fiscal third quarter ended March 31, 2024. Total revenue for the quarter was $61,858 million, compared to $52,857 million in the year-ago quarter. Net profit for the quarter was $21.939 billion, compared to $18.299 billion in the same period last year. Azure revenue grew 31% in the first quarter. Revenues from the Productivity and Business Process segment were $19.570 billion, the Intelligent Cloud segment was $26.708 billion, and the More Personal Computing segment generated revenue of $15.580 billion. Microsoft shares rose 4.43% in after-hours trading.
Facebook's parent company's stock price fell more than 10%
Meta Platforms said on Wednesday that spending levels will be raised by up to $10 billion this year to support the infrastructure investments needed for AI investments. Meta shares closed down 10.56% on Thursday. AI is a multi-billion dollar project, and there is no clear timeline for revenue. Investors' tolerance for huge corporate spending in the AI space is showing signs of weakness. At a time when the digital advertising business is booming, costs are falling in other areas, and cash is flowing back, Meta's shareholders are willing to support Mark Zuckerberg's AI ambitions. Now, with revenue growth slowing and costs rising, shareholders are becoming more cautious.
Google intends to buy back up to $70 billion in shares
Google's parent company, Alphabet, announced its first-quarter 2024 results. Total revenue for the quarter was $80.539 billion, up 15% from $69.787 billion in the year-ago quarter. Quarterly net profit was $23.662 billion, an increase of 57% compared with $15.051 billion in the same period last year. Advertising revenue was $61.66 billion, Google Cloud revenue was $9.57 billion, and other business revenue was $495 million. The board also approved a share repurchase program of up to $70 billion.
Italian regulators have fined Amazon 10 million euros
The Italian Competition and Markets Authority (AGCM) announced that after investigation, the agency found that Amazon had unfair business practices, including pre-selection of regular purchases of a large number of products available on the Amazon platform, thereby restricting consumers' freedom of choice, so it imposed a joint and several fine of 10 million euros on two Amazon companies.
Musk xAI is close to reaching a $6 billion funding round
Musk's artificial intelligence AI startup X.AI Corp is close to reaching an agreement to raise $6 billion in a funding round, valuing the company at $18 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Sequoia Capital and other investors will participate in this round of financing. It was previously reported that the company was negotiating a deal to raise between $3 billion and $4 billion to compete with major AI companies, including OpenAI.
Snowflake launches enterprise-grade AI models
Software maker Snowflake has launched a large language model for enterprises called Snowflake Arctic. The company's open AI model, which it calls an "enterprise-grade LLM," is optimized for complex enterprise workloads and surpasses multiple industry benchmarks in SQL code generation, instruction tracing, and more. It will offer an LLM model with an Apache 2.0 license that allows unrestricted personal, research, and commercial use. The company noted that the model will also be available on Amazon's AWS, Hugging Face, Lamini, Microsoft Azure, Nvidia API Catalog, Perplexity, Together AI and more.
Blizzard cancels the 2024 carnival event
Blizzard said it was canceling the 2024 BlizzCon event after careful consideration. Blizzard is exploring more diverse ways to release new content this year, and said, "The enthusiasm for holding BlizzCon again in the future has not diminished." In the coming months, Blizzard will share more details about the titles coming later this year, including World of Warcraft: Battle for the Center of the Earth and Diablo IV's first expansion, Bodies of Hatred.
Transsion's operating income in the first quarter was 17.443 billion yuan
Transsion Holdings, the "King of African Mobile Phones", released its first quarter report for 2024. The company achieved operating income of 17.443 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 88.10%, net profit attributable to the parent company of 1.626 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 210.30%, and non-net profit of 1.354 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 342.59%, and the performance growth continued to be strong.
Snap's first-quarter revenue was $1.195 billion
Snapchat's parent company, Snap, released its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2024. Revenue was $1,195 million, up 21% year-over-year, net loss was $305 million, down 7% year-over-year, and non-GAAP adjusted net income was $49.1 million, compared to $20.0 million in the year-ago quarter, up year-over-year.
LG Electronics' first-quarter sales were the highest on record
LG Electronics announced that the company's operating profit for the first quarter of 2024 (calculated on a consolidated financial statement) decreased by 10.8% year-on-year to 1.3354 trillion won. Sales were 21.0959 trillion won, up 3.3% year-on-year and the highest on a record year. By business segment, the H&A segment had sales of 8.6075 trillion won and an operating profit of KRW 940.3 billion, the automotive parts (VS) segment had sales of KRW 2.6619 trillion and an operating profit of KRW 52 billion, the TV (HE) segment had sales of KRW 3.492 trillion and an operating profit of KRW 132.2 billion, and the Business Solutions (BS) division had sales of KRW 1.5755 trillion and an operating profit of KRW 12.8 billion.
SK hynix turned a profit in the first quarter year-on-year
South Korean chip giant SK Hynix (SK Hynix) released a performance report, preliminarily verifying that its operating profit in the first quarter of 2024 was 2.886 trillion won, turning losses into profits year-on-year. The Flash (NAND) segment increased sales and successfully turned a profit. Sales surged 144.3% year-on-year to 12.4296 trillion won, the highest in the first quarter of the year. Net profit was 1.917 trillion won, which also turned a profit.
Intel lost $381 million for the quarter
Intel announced its first-quarter 2024 results. Net revenue for the quarter was $12,724 million, compared to $11,715 million in the year-ago quarter. Net loss attributable to the company for the quarter was $381 million, compared to a net loss of $2,758 million in the year-ago quarter.
Chinese home appliance manufacturers have become the protagonists of Japan's new life business war
Chinese home appliance manufacturers are becoming the protagonists of Japan's new life business war. Seven out of five home appliances such as BicCamera and refrigerators are products of Chinese manufacturers. At home electronics retailers, Chinese manufacturers have shown a presence. EDION focuses on the sale of its own brand of complete sets of home appliances jointly developed with Hisense and Haier. Yamada Holdings, Japan's largest home appliance chain, outsources the production of its own brand products for new household applications mainly to Chinese manufacturers. According to the data, in the domestic home appliance market in Japan in 2023, refrigerators from Chinese manufacturers will occupy a 28% share. This has almost tripled in the last 10 years.
There is a boom in the market to build data centers
The market has seen a rush to build data centers to meet the explosive demand for artificial intelligence (AI), and the massive amount of components, space, and power required to build these megacenters to house supercomputers has led to a shortage of resources. Data center executives say delivery times for custom cooling systems are four times longer than they were just a few years ago. The lead time for standby generators has been extended from a minimum of one month to two years.