Covid-19: After economic fallout, Apple, Xiaomi show some recovery in China

Apple Inc shipped roughly 2.5 million iPhones to China in March, a slight rebound after one of its worst months in the country ever, according to government data published on Friday.

Smartphone companies are hoping for a strong recovery in demand in China, where the deadly coronavirus is now subsiding, just as it spreads across the world and looks set to trigger a global recession.

Mobile phone shipments in China in March totalled 21 million units, according to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a government think-tank.

That was a more than three-fold increase from February, yet still down roughly 20% compared with March 2019.

Chinese retailers largely resumed operations by early March, with brick-and-mortar outlets re-opening and e-commerce logistics getting back in gear after the virus and tough containment measures brought much of the economy to a standstill in the first two months.

Apple shipped roughly 500,000 phones in China in February, according to the CAICT.

Many smartphone makers are now hoping that sales in China can cushion declines in overseas markets in coming months.

In its quarterly earnings call, the then-CFO of Xiaomi Corp said that the Chinese market had recovered to roughly 80% of its normal levels.

"The (Chinese) market has entered a full recovery stage, and… has already recovered to 80 to 90% of the normal level," Chief Financial Officer Shou Zi Chew said on an earnings call.

He said sales in China fell in the first quarter due to the economic impact of the virus, but did not say by how much.

Chew said he expected demand for smartphones to be resilient globally even though the virus was spreading to other countries. The company will take a hit in global sales during March and April, he said, but expects to see signs of recovery in May.

"If we take reference from China's experience, I think smartphone demand is resilient," said Chew. "I think it will rebound quickly."

Now you can access 300 magazines with Apple News Plus subscription service

Technology News

Apple, a Cupertino, US-based technology giant, on March 25 announced the Apple News+ -- a news subscription service with content from over 300 magazines, newspapers and digital publishers. Available only in the US and Canada currently, the service is available via app for iPhone, iPad and Mac. The app will be available in UK and Australia from later this year.

Apple News+ subscribers can access current and past issues and individual articles from magazines such as The Atlantic, Better Homes & Gardens, Bon Appétit, Condé Nast Traveler, ELLE, Entertainment Weekly, ESPN The Magazine, Esquire, Food & Wine, Good Housekeeping, GQ, Health, InStyle, Martha Stewart Living, National Geographic, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, O, The Oprah Magazine, Parents, People, Real Simple, Rolling Stone, Runner’s World, Sports Illustrated, TIME, Travel + Leisure, Vanity Fair, Vogue, WIRED and Woman’s Day.

In addition, Apple News+ includes The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and Toronto Star, Canada’s largest daily newspaper. Apple News+ also provides access to premium online publications such as theSkimm, The Highlight by Vox, New York Magazine’s sites Vulture, The Cut and Grub Street, and Extra Crunch from Verizon Media’s TechCrunch.

Pricing and availability

Apple News+ is currently available in the US for $9.99 a month and in Canada for $12.99 a month. Customers can sign up for a free one-month trial, and the plan automatically renews after the trial ends.


 To sign up for Apple News+, customers must update to iOS 12.2 or macOS 10.14.4. Through Family Sharing, up to six family members can share one Apple News+ subscription. Apple News+ will be available in the UK and Australia later this year.

Apple has News: Launches $10 monthly magazine, subscription service

Technology News
Apple Inc. presented its long-anticipated magazine subscription service on Monday, bundling access to selected glossy titles, websites, and newspapers for $10 a month.

The new service, called Apple News+, will be incorporated into the existing Apple News app that comes pre-installed on iPhones, iPads, and Macs, Roger Rosner, vice president of applications, said Monday at an event at Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters.

More than 300 magazines will be part of the service, he said. It will also include The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, but not The Washington Post or The New York Times. Bloomberg Businessweek will be part of the magazine section. A demonstration showed that some magazines, like National Geographic, have dynamic, moving covers.

The service launches today for $9.99 a month, with the first month free. It will be available in the U.S. and Canada, with the U.K. and Australia coming later in the year.

The News+ service will be its own tab in the existing News app and won’t interrupt the free section, the demo showed. Magazines can be downloaded automatically for offline reading. The News+ tab features access to magazine cover stories, new issues, and individual articles. Magazine creators are tweaking their issues depending on whether the story is read on an iPhone or the bigger iPad screen.
The magazine bundle is part of a collection of new services Apple is rolling out as it seeks to boost revenue from sources other than the iPhone.


 The magazine service is based on an application called Texture, which Apple acquired about a year ago. Texture had agreements with more than 200 magazines...Read More

Apple launches TV app, video gaming service and credit card

International News

Apple on Monday launched streaming and videogame services, looking to tap into 1.4 billion users of its gadgets to counter slowing demand for its iPhones. At a special event held at the Steve Jobs Theater at its Cupertino, California headquarters, the company also unveiled News Plus subscription service and a credit card.
Apple Card
Credit card to be approved in minutes and to be used with Apple Pay
No international fee, no penalties and no sign-up fee
Goldman Sachs to be issuing bank for the card and MasterCard to manage payment processing
Apple Pay to be available in more than 40 countries by end of the year
Apple Arcade
Television

• Apple unveils 'all New' TV app

• App to include streaming services Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and PlayStation Vue
• Will feature shows from HBO, Showtime and Starz in Apple TV channels
• Users can buy or rent movies on Apple TV
• Apple TV app will be available as a software update in May, including Apple TV channels
• Apple TV app will be available on Macs as well as televisions from Sony, LG, and Vizio, and devices from Roku and Amazon FireTV
• Apple TV app to be available in more than 100 countries

Gaming
Launches Apple Arcade service with game developers
Apple Arcade to work on mobile devices, desktop computers, and televisions

 Apple working with Walt Disney, SEGA Games and Annapurna Interactive on new games.

iPhones are improving every year, thanks to an obscure Japanese company

International News

After two decades in development, chipmakers are making a costly bet on a technology that will cram even more transistors onto silicon. Their success may hinge on a little-known company in the suburbs of Tokyo.

Lasertec Corp. is the world’s sole maker of equipment that tests glass squares slightly bigger than a CD case that act as a stencil for chip designs. By shining light through the squares, circuits smaller than the width of a few strands of DNA are imprinted onto silicon wafers in a process called lithography. These templates have to be perfect: even a tiny defect can make every single chip in the batch unusable.

Consumers take it for granted that gadgets will keep getting slimmer, more powerful and cheaper, but the chip companies are running out of ways to etch ever smaller circuit patterns onto silicon. After years of setbacks, the industry has settled on extreme ultraviolet lithography, which uses plasma as the light source to draw lines smaller than 7 nanometers. That’s the size seen in Apple Inc.’s A12 Bionic chip, featured in the iPhone XS and XR.

In 2017, Yokohama, Japan-based Lasertec solved the final piece of the puzzle when it created a machine that can test blank EUV masks for internal flaws, giving it a monopoly. The company’s stock has tripled since then.


 Lasertec has already received orders for 4 billion yen ($36 million) machines that test EUV blanks, according to Lasertec President Osamu Okabayashi. The company may see additional sales as soon as this summer, depending on how quickly Samsung Electronics Co. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. ramp up mass production, he said. Lasertec shares climbed as much as 6 percent in Tokyo on Tuesday, the biggest intraday gain in 10 days...Read More