Tag Archives: mobile and cellular telephones

Science

SpaceX launches next-generation GPS satellite

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CNN
 — 

SpaceX fired a new GPS satellite into orbit on behalf of the US military on Wednesday, continuing an effort to bolster the constellation of global positioning and navigation satellites that underpin smartphone apps, wartime operations and more.

The GPS satellite launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 7:24 a.m. ET from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

SpaceX confirmed the satellite had been deployed in a subsequent tweet featuring video of the moment.

The mission carried the sixth spacecraft in a new generation of GPS satellites, called GPS III, to an orbit about 12,550 miles (20,200 km) above the Earth’s surface, where more than 30 GPS satellites are currently operating. They swing around the planet once about every 12 hours and constantly beam radio signals to determine the precise location of objects on the ground. The next-generation GPS III satellites, built by Lockheed Martin, will modernize that system, with plans to build up to 32 of the satellites, including the six that have launched since 2019.

Though GPS services are routinely used by smartphones, Lockheed Martin notes on its website that it also serves military purposes.

“Space has become a more contested environment — with more-competitive adversaries,” the company’s website reads. “Our warfighters need enhanced capabilities to take on evolving threats. The need to return the focus on GPS as a ‘warfighting system’ has never been clearer.”

The previous generation of GPS satellites began entering service in the late 1990s.

After Falcon 9 launched from Cape Canaveral and expended most of its fuel, the first stage — the large bottommost portion that gives the initial thrust at liftoff — detached from the rocket’s second stage and the satellite and returned to a pinpoint landing on a platform at sea. It’s a routine maneuver for SpaceX, which regularly recovers and reuses its rockets to drive down costs.

The first-stage rocket booster used Wednesday previously launched SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission, which carried four astronauts to the International Space Station in October 2022.



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Business

China’s Zhengzhou, home to world’s largest iPhone factory, ends Covid lockdown

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Hong Kong
CNN Business
 — 

The central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, home to the world’s largest iPhone factory, has lifted a five-day Covid lockdown, in a move that analysts have called a much-needed relief for Apple and its main supplier Foxconn.

Zhengzhou is the site of “iPhone City,” a sprawling manufacturing campus owned by Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn that normally houses about 200,000 workers churning out products for Apple

(AAPL), including the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. Last Friday, the city locked down its urban districts for five days as Covid-19 cases surged there.

Foxconn’s massive facility is not part of the city’s urban districts. However, analysts say the lockdown would have been detrimental to efforts to restore lost production at the campus, the site of a violent workers’ revolt last week.

“This is some good news in a dark storm for Cupertino,” Daniel Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, told CNN Business, referring to the California city where Apple is based. “There is a lot of heavy lifting ahead for Apple to ramp back up the factories.”

Ives estimates the ongoing supply disruptions at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou campus were costing Apple roughly $1 billion a week in lost iPhone sales. The troubles started in October when workers left the campus in Zhengzhou, the capital of the central province of Henan, due to Covid-related fears. Short on staff, bonuses were offered to workers to return.

But protests broke out last week when the newly hired staff said management had reneged on their promises. The workers, who clashed with security officers, were eventually offered cash to quit and leave.

Analysts said Foxconn’s production woes will speed up the pace of supply chain diversification away from China to countries like India.

Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at TF International Securities, wrote on social media that he estimated iPhone shipments could be 20% lower than expected in the current October-to-December quarter. The average capacity utilization rate of the Zhengzhou plant was only about 20% in November, he said, and was expected to improve to 30% to 40% in December.

Total iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max shipments in the current quarter would be 15 million to 20 million units less than previously anticipated, according to Kuo. Due to the high price of the iPhone 14 Pro series, Apple’s overall iPhone revenue in the current holiday quarter could be 20% to 30% lower than investors’ expectations, he added.

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Business

Elon Musk claims Apple has ‘threatened to withhold’ Twitter from its app store

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New York
CNN Business
 — 

Elon Musk on Monday claimed that Apple has “threatened” to pull Twitter from its iOS app store, a move that could be devastating to the company Musk just acquired for $44 billion.

“Apple

(AAPL) has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk said in one of several tweets Monday taking aim at Apple

(AAPL) and its CEO for alleged moves that could undermine Twitter’s business.

In another tweet, Musk claimed that Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. “Do they hate free speech in America,” he said, in an apparent reference to his oft-stated desire to bolster his idea of free speech on the platform. “What’s going on here [Apple CEO Tim Cook]?” Musk added in a follow-up tweet. He also criticized Apple’s size, claimed it engages in “censorship,” and called out the 30% transaction fee Apple charges large app developers to be listed in its app store.

The tweetstorm highlights the tenuous relationship between Musk and Apple, which along with Google serves as the major gatekeepers for mobile applications. Long before taking over Twitter, the Tesla CEO said that when the car company was struggling, he considered selling the company to Apple, but that Cook refused to take a meeting with him.

Removal from Apple’s app store, or that of Google, would be detrimental to Twitter’s business, which is already struggling with a loss of advertisers following Musk’s takeover and a rocky initial attempt at expanding its subscription business.

Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Musk’s tweets. The company has previously shown it’s willing to remove apps from its app store over concerns about their ability to moderate harmful content or if they attempt to circumvent the cut Apple takes from in-app purchases and subscriptions.

In January 2021, Apple removed Parler, an app popular with conservatives, including some members of the far right, from its app store following the US Capitol attack over concerns about the platform’s ability to detect and moderate hate speech and incitement. Parler was returned to Apple’s app store three months later after updating its content moderation practices.

In its official app store review guidelines, Apple lists various safety parameters that apps must adhere to in order to be included in the store, including an ability to prevent “content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste, or just plain creepy” such as hate speech, pornography and terrorism. “If you’re looking to shock and offend people, the App Store isn’t the right place for your app,” the guidelines state.

Various civil society groups, researchers and other industry watchers have raised concerns about Twitter’s ability to effectively moderate harmful content and maintain the platform’s safety following widespread layoffs and mass employee exits at the company. Musk has also claimed he wants to amplify “free speech” on the platform and has begun to restore some accounts that were previously banned or suspended for repeatedly violating Twitter’s rules. Musk himself has shared a conspiracy theory and several other controversial tweets since taking over as Twitter’s owner.

Musk, long a prolific and antagonistic tweeter, has not let up at all since taking over the company. And what it may have lost in revenue, he has claimed it has made up for in engagement. Part of the strategy appears to be relentlessly taking aim at enemies, either of him personally or of “free speech.”

In an interview with CBS earlier this month, Cook was asked whether there are any ways in which Twitter could change that would cause Apple to remove it from the app store. “They say that they’re going to continue to moderate and so … I count on them to do that,” Cook responded. “Because I don’t think that anybody really wants hate speech on their platform. So I’m counting on them to continue to do that.”

In an op-ed published in the New York Times last week, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, who left the company earlier this month, suggested that Twitter had already begun to receive calls from app store operators following Musk’s takeover. Roth said the company’s failure to adhere to Google and Apple’s app store rules could be “catastrophic.”

And last weekend, the head of Apple’s app store, Phil Schiller, deleted his Twitter account.

While the state of Apple and Twitter’s relationship is unclear, the iPhone maker was running Black Friday ads on the platform as recently as last Thursday, according to posts viewed by CNN.

Many companies have pulled back on digital ad spending in recent months as the economy declined, and Twitter has likely always only been a small portion of Apple’s ad budget. Apple’s impact on Twitter, however, could be much more significant, including if Musk succeeds in shifting its core business to being more reliant on subscription revenue, and potentially has to pay a 30% cut to Apple.

In one tweet Monday, Musk asked his nearly 120 million followers if they know “Apple puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their App Store?” In another tweet, he posted a picture of a highway exit: one lane headed toward “pay 30%,” the other pointed toward “go to war.” An old car labeled “Elon” skidded toward the latter.



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Business

Apple has a huge problem with its supplier’s iPhone factory in China

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Hong Kong
CNN Business
 — 

A violent workers’ revolt at the world’s largest iPhone factory this week in central China is further scrambling Apple’s strained supply and highlighting how the country’s stringent zero-Covid policy is hurting global technology firms.

The troubles started last month when workers left the factory campus in Zhengzhou, the capital of the central province of Henan, due to Covid fears. Short on staff, bonuses were offered to workers to return.

But protests broke out this week when the newly hired staff said management had reneged on their promises. The workers, who clashed with security officers wearing hazmat suits, were eventually offered cash to quit and leave.

Analysts said the woes facing Taiwan contract manufacturing firm Foxconn, a top Apple supplier which owns the facility, will also speed up the pace of diversification away from China to countries like India.

Daniel Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, told CNN Business that the ongoing production shutdown in Foxconn’s sprawling campus in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou was an “albatross” for Apple.

“Every week of this shutdown and unrest we estimate is costing Apple roughly $1 billion a week in lost iPhone sales. Now roughly 5% of iPhone 14 sales are likely off the table due to these brutal shutdowns in China,” he said.

Demand for iPhone 14 units during the Black Friday holiday weekend was much higher than supply and could cause major shortages leading into Christmas, Ives said, adding that the disruptions at Foxconn, which started in October, have been a major “gut punch” to Apple this quarter.

In a note Friday, Ives said Black Friday store checks show major iPhone shortages across the board.

“Based on our analysis, we believe iPhone 14 Pro shortages have gotten much worse over the last week with very low inventories,” he wrote. “We believe many Apple Stores now have iPhone 14 Pro shortages … of up to 25%-30% below normal heading into a typical December.”

Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at TF International Securities, wrote on Twitter that more than 10% of global iPhone production capacity was affected by the situation at the Zhengzhou campus.

Earlier this month, Apple said shipments of its latest lineup of iPhones would be “temporarily impacted” by Covid restrictions in China. It said its assembly facility in Zhengzhou, which normally houses some 200,000 workers, was “currently operating at significantly reduced capacity,” due to Covid curbs.

The Zhengzhou campus has been grappling with a Covid outbreak since mid-October that caused panic among its workers. Videos of people leaving Zhengzhou on foot went viral on Chinese social media in early November, forcing Foxconn to step up measures to get its staff back.

To entice workers, the company said it had quadrupled daily bonuses for workers at the plant this month. A week ago, state media reported that 100,000 people had been successfully recruited to fill the vacant positions.

But on Tuesday night, hundreds of workers, mostly new hires, began to protest against the terms of the payment packages offered to them and also about their living conditions. Scenes turned increasingly violent into the next day as workers clashed with a large number of security forces.

By Wednesday evening, the crowds had quieted, with protesters returning to their dormitories on the Foxconn campus after the company offered to pay the newly recruited workers 10,000 yuan ($1,400), or roughly two months of wages, to quit and leave the site altogether.

In a statement sent to CNN Business on Thursday after the protests had wound down, Apple said it had a team on the ground at the Zhengzhou facility working closely with Foxconn to ensure employees’ concerns were addressed.

Even before this week’s demonstrations, Apple had started making the iPhone 14 in India, as it sought to diversify its supply chain away from China.

The announcement in late September marked a major change in its strategy and came at a time when US tech companies were looking for alternatives to China, the world’s factory for decades.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that the company was looking to boost production in countries such as Vietnam and India, citing China’s strict Covid policy as one of the reasons.

Kuo said on Twitter that he believed Foxconn would speed up the expansion of iPhone production capacity in India as a result of Zhengzhou lockdowns and resulting protests.

The production of iPhones by Foxconn in India will grow by at least 150% in 2023 compared to 2022, he predicted, and the longer term goal would be to ship between 40% and 45% of such phones from India, compared to less than 4% now.

— Chris Isidore contributed to this report.



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Business

Foxconn protests: iPhone factory offers to pay its workers to quit and leave Zhengzhou campus

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Hong Kong
CNN Business
 — 

Foxconn has offered to pay newly recruited workers 10,000 yuan ($1,400) to quit and leave the world’s largest iPhone assembly factory, in an attempt to quell protests that saw hundreds clash with security forces at the compound in central China.

The Apple supplier made the offer Wednesday following dramatic scenes of violent protests on its campus in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, in a text message sent from its human resources department to workers.

In the message, seen by CNN, the company urged workers to “please return to your dormitories” on the campus. It also promised to pay them 8.000 yuan if they agreed to quit Foxconn, and another 2,000 yuan after they board buses to leave the sprawling site altogether.

The protest erupted on Tuesday night over the terms of the new hires’ payment packages and Covid-related concerns about their living conditions. Scenes turned increasingly violent on Wednesday as workers clashed with a large number of security forces, including SWAT team officers.

Videos circulating on social media showed groups of law enforcement officers clad in hazmat suits kicking and hitting protesters with batons and metal rods. Some workers were seen tearing down fences, throwing bottles and barriers at officers and smashing and overturning police vehicles.

The protest largely tailed off around 10 p.m. on Wednesday as workers returned to their dormitories, having received Foxconn’s payment offer and fearing a harsher crackdown by authorities, a witness told CNN.

The Zhengzhou plant was hit by a Covid outbreak in October, which forced it to lock down and led to a mass exodus of workers fleeing the outbreak. Foxconn later launched a massive recruitment drive, in which more than 100,000 people signed up to fill the advertised positions, Chinese state media reported.

According to a document setting out the salary package of new hires seen by CNN, the workers were promised a 3,000 yuan bonus after 30 days on the job, with another 3,000 yuan to be paid after a total of 60 days.

However, according to a worker, after arriving at the plant, the new recruits were told by Foxconn that they would only receive the first bonus on March 15, and the second installment in May – meaning they must work through the Lunar New Year holiday, which starts in January 2023, to get the first of the bonus payments.

“The new recruits had to work more days to get the bonus they were promised, so they felt cheated,” the worker told CNN.

In a statement Thursday, Foxconn said it fully understood the new recruits’ concerns about “possible changes in the subsidy policy,” which it blamed on “a technical error (that) occurred during the onboarding process.”

“We apologize for an input error in the computer system and guarantee that the actual pay is the same as agreed,” it said.

Foxconn was communicating with employees and assuring them that salaries and bonuses would be paid “in accordance with company policies,” it said.

Apple, for which Foxconn manufactures a range of products, told CNN Business that its employees were on the ground at the Zhengzhou facility.

“We are reviewing the situation and working closely with Foxconn to ensure their employees’ concerns are addressed,” it said in a statement.

On Thursday morning, some workers who had agreed to leave had received the first part of the payment, a worker said in a livestream, which showed workers lining up outdoors to take Covid tests while they waited for departing buses. Later in the day, livestreams showed long lines of workers boarding buses.

But for some, the trouble is far from over. After being driven to the Zhengzhou train station, many couldn’t get a ticket home, another worker said in a livestream on Thursday afternoon. Like him, thousands of workers were stuck at the station, he said, as he turned his camera to show the large crowds.

Zhengzhou is set to impose a five-day lockdown in its urban districts, which include the train station, starting from midnight Friday, authorities had announced earlier.

The protest started outside the workers’ dormitories on the sprawling Foxconn campus on Tuesday night, with hundreds marching and chanting slogans including “Down with Foxconn,” according to social media videos and a witness account. Videos showed workers clashing with security guards and fighting back tear gas fired by police.

The stand-off lasted into Wednesday morning. The situation quickly escalated when a large number of security forces, most covered in white hazmat suits and some holding shields and batons, were deployed to the scene. Videos showed columns of police vehicles, some marked with “SWAT,” arriving on the campus, normally home to some 200,000 workers.

More workers joined the protest after seeing livestreams on video platforms Kuaishou and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, the worker told CNN. Many livestreams were cut or censored. Online searches for “Foxconn” in Chinese have been restricted.

Some protesters marched to the main gate of the production facility compound, which is located in a separate area from the workers’ dorms, in an attempt to block assembly work, the worker said.

Other protesters took the further step of breaking into the production compound. They smashed Covid testing booths, glass doors and advertising boards at restaurants in the production area, according to the worker.

Having worked at the Zhengzhou plant for six years, he said he was now deeply disappointed by Foxconn and planned to quit. With a baseline monthly salary of 2,300 yuan, he has been earning between 4,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan per month, including overtime pay, working 10 hours a day and seven days a week during the pandemic.

“Foxconn is a Taiwanese company,” he said. “Not only did it not spread Taiwan’s values of democracy and freedom to the mainland, it was assimilated by the Chinese Communist Party and became so cruel and inhumane. I feel very sad about it.”

Although he was not one of the new recruits, he protested with them in support, adding: “If today I remain silent about the suffering of others, who will speak out for me tomorrow?”

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Business

Zhengzhou, China: Protesters at Foxconn factory clash with police, videos show

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Beijing/Hong Kong
CNN Business
 — 

Workers at China’s largest iPhone assembly factory were seen confronting police, some in riot gear, on Wednesday, according to videos shared over social media.

The videos show hundreds of workers facing off with law enforcement officers, many in white hazmat suits, on the Foxconn campus in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou. In the footage, now blocked, some of the protesters could be heard complaining about their pay and sanitary conditions.

The scenes come days after Chinese state media reported that more than 100,000 people had signed up to fill positions advertised as part of a massive recruitment drive held for Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant.

Apple

(AAPL) has been facing significant supply chain constraints at the assembly facility and expects iPhone 14 shipments to be hit just as the key holiday shopping season begins. CNN has contacted the company for comment on the situation at the plant.

A Covid outbreak last month had forced the site to lock down, leading some anxious factory workers to reportedly flee.

Videos of many people leaving Zhengzhou on foot had gone viral on Chinese social media earlier in November, forcing Foxconn to step up measures to get its staff back. To try to limit the fallout, the company said it had quadrupled daily bonuses for workers at the plant this month.

On Wednesday, workers were heard in the video saying that Foxconn failed to honor their promise of an attractive bonus and pay package after they arrived to work at the plant. Numerous complaints have also been posted anonymously on social media platforms — accusing Foxconn of having changed the salary packages previously advertised.

In a statement in English, Foxconn said Wednesday that “the allowance has always been fulfilled based on contractual obligation” after some new hires at the Foxconn campus in Zhengzhou appealed to the company regarding the work allowance on Tuesday.

Workers were also heard in the videos complaining about insufficient anti-Covid measures, saying workers who tested positive were not being separated from the rest of the workforce.

Foxconn said in the English statement that speculation online about employees who are Covid positive living in the dormitories of the Foxconn campus in Zhengzhou is “patently untrue.”

“Before new hires move in, the dormitory environment undergoes standard procedures for disinfection, and it is only after the premise passes government check, that the new employees are allowed to move in,” Foxconn said.

Searches for the term “Foxconn” on Chinese social media now yield few results, an indication of heavy censorship.

“Regarding violent behaviors, the company will continue to communicate with employees and the government to prevent similar incidents from happening again,” Foxconn said in a statement in Chinese.

The Zhengzhou facility is the world’s largest iPhone assembly site. It typically accounts for approximately 50% to 60% of Foxconn’s global iPhone assembly capacity, according to Mirko Woitzik, global director of intelligence solutions at Everstream, a provider of supply chain risk analytics.

Apple warned earlier this month of the disruption to its supply chain, saying that customers will feel an impact.

“We now expect lower iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max shipments than we previously anticipated,” the tech giant said in a statement. “Customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products.”

As of last week, the wait time for those models had reached 34 days in the United States, according to a report from UBS.

Public frustration has been mounting under China’s unrelenting zero-Covid policy, which continues to involve strict lockdowns and travel restrictions nearly three years into the pandemic.

Last week, that sentiment was on display as social media footage showed residents under lockdown in Guangzhou tearing down barriers meant to confine them to their homes and taking to the streets in defiance of strictly enforced local orders.

— Michelle Toh, Simone McCarthy, Wayne Chang, Juliana Liu, and Kathleen Magramo contributed to this report.

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Technology

Spotify is going to war with Apple after the App Store rejected its big new feature

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New York
CNN Business
 — 

Spotify is looking to give Apple a good bruising in the press.

The music streamer is taking its grievances with the Silicon Valley goliath public, openly lashing out at the company over a dispute that centers on the 30% App Store fee Apple charges for in-app digital services transactions.

“We are talking about this because it is reflective of Apple’s anti-competitive practices across the board,” Harry Clarke, associate general counsel and Spotify’s lead competition lawyer, told CNN in an interview Tuesday.

Here’s the backstory: Spotify

(SPOT) simply refuses to fork over the whopping 30% cut of its business to Apple. That means that the company cannot sell audiobooks, a business it is trying to break into, inside its iOS app. Spotify

(SPOT), instead, came up with three workarounds, which it believed were consistent with Apple’s policies. But they were all ultimately rejected after undergoing reviews for the App Store, forcing the company to essentially abandon offering its customers an avenue for audiobook purchases in its iOS app.

A version of this article first appeared in the “Reliable Sources” newsletter. Sign up for the daily digest chronicling the evolving media landscape here.

The effect is clear to would-be book buyers. iOS users who scroll through Spotify’s audiobooks library and tap on a selection are greeted with a message: “Want to listen? You can’t buy audiobooks in the app. We know it’s not ideal.” (Apple, of course, also sells audiobooks via its pre-installed Apple Books.)

While Spotify has no real recourse to compel Apple to accept its app featuring its audiobooks workaround, it is using the skirmish to assail Apple in the media and focus attention on the company’s 30% in-app tax, which has long been criticized by the streamer and others. In recent days, Spotify has issued a blistering press release and participated in a lengthy story about the matter with The New York Times.

“We think it is critical that users, policymakers, and competition authorities really understand what is happening,” Clarke explained when asked about why Spotify is creating so much noise around the issue. “Because we have found that once they do understand what is happening, there is almost unanimous agreement that it is unfair.”

Clarke said it is important for the company to raise the issue in the press because Spotify users might not understand why the audiobooks experience in the iOS app is so cumbersome. “One of the challenges of Apple’s rules is that they effectively put a gag order on us to talk about this in the app,” Clarke said, adding that many users “aren’t aware” of the back-and-forth the company has had with Apple.

Apple, for its part, is not directly addressing Spotify’s PR campaign against it. The company referred CNN to a general statement about the dispute, in which it said that it had “no issue with reader apps adding audiobook content,” but that Spotify’s workaround — its in-app purchase method — broke its rules.

Spotify’s public war on Apple is part of a larger trend lately, with other Big Tech companies taking aim at the iPhone maker. Mark Zuckerberg recently took a shot at Apple’s iMessage security features, arguing that his WhatsApp is more secure. And Google has been hammering Apple for refusing to play ball with Android on texting.

And it’s unlikely these types of pressure campaigns will fizzle out anytime soon. Spotify said that it plans to continue to publicly pressure Apple on the matter. “We are going to continue to amplify this issue,” Clarke said, “to help people understand the negative impact Apple’s policies are having.”

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