China - page 2

Days after reports of Foxconn employees hopping fences and fleeing from their jobs, a report late Wednesday from Taiwan News says Apple’s biggest iPhone factory is now on “total lockdown.” These new restrictions may have a big impact on Apple’s sales during the crucial holiday period.

Foxconn, whom Apple contracts to manufacture the lion’s share of iPhones, Macs and other Apple products, has had employees stay in on-site dormitories in a “closed-loop system” to prevent COVID outbreaks. Employees have been complaining about the “increasingly unsafe and inhumane working conditions” of the dorms.

Apple has reportedly given up its plan to use RAM chips made by Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. in the iPhone 14 series. It apparently ran into too much resistance from U.S. politicians, including suggestions the chips would somehow be used to surveil Americans.

To be clear, the chips would not have been used in iPhones sold outside of China.

Apple will reportedly use RAM chips made by Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. in the iPhone 14 series. This set off a firestorm of complaints from U.S. politicians, including suggestions the chips will somehow be used to surveil Americans.

YMTC is partially owned by the Chinese government and has ties to the Chinese military. There have been calls for it to be added to the U.S. Entity List of companies that face import restrictions.

It’s hot in China. Hot enough that the government is ordering industries in parts of the country to temporarily halt electrical consumption so there’s enough left for air conditioning. An Apple analyst warns that iPad assembly could be affected.

Apple is expected to launch a redesigned budget iPad and an updated iPad Pro this autumn, and production problems could limit their availability.

In a rare move, Apple will run a four-day promotion in China and offer hefty discounts of up to RMB 600 ($90). The discount will be applicable for iPhone 13, iPhone 12, iPhone SE, Apple Watch SE and AirPods.

The promotion will run from July 29 through August 1.

The lockdown in Shanghai and nearby regions, and China’s strict zero-COVID policy, have forced Apple to move some iPad production out of the country and to Vietnam for the first time.

The company already expects to take an $8 billion revenue hit in the ongoing quarter due to supply chain disruptions caused by the Chinese lockdowns.

Haitong International Securities analyst Jeffy Pu has provided more insight into the iPhone 14’s production delay and revealed that the production of the 6.7-inch iPhone 14 Max has been the worse affected by the lockdown in China.

A supply chain report from earlier in the week claimed that iPhone 14’s production was running behind schedule.

Apple is reportedly looking to expand the production of its devices outside China due to its strict anti-Covid policy.

The Chinese government’s uncompromising zero-covid policy has affected the manufacturing of Apple devices, with shipping times slipping to July for some products.

Apple will increase the number of countries where it does an important phase in developing products, according to a industry analyst. Currently, its R&D-oriented New Product Introduction (NPI) sites are in China, but the company plans to build NPI offices in other places as well.

Recent COVID shutdowns — which have disrupted several recent products — are supposedly the reason for the change.

Analysts note that new COVID-19 lockdowns in China are hitting Apple’s supply chain hard. And the pain will likely worsen, with production falling behind by up to 10 million iPhones.

And this is not just about iPhones. Authorities have halted production at three key suppliers for iPhone, iPad and Mac assembly. Meanwhile, Apple is negotiating to reopen production lines, though success could be hard to come by, according to one analyst Friday.

This follows recent news of assembly and shipping delays on built-to-order MacBook Pro models.

Foxconn, Apple’s largest manufacturing partner, was this weekend forced to close one its biggest plants due to a citywide lockdown. Another COVID-19 outbreak has put all of Shenzhen, China, out of action until March 20 at the earliest.

The city, home to 17.5 million people, houses the Longhua Science & Technology Park — sometimes dubbed “Foxconn City” — which features 15 factories, worker dormitories, grocery stores, restaurants, and more.

Xiaomi is in “a war of life and death” with iPhone, according to the company’s CEO, and the only way it’s going to regain its position as the top smartphone-maker in China is by matching Apple’s “product and experience.”

The Chinese company was once famous for taking a little too much inspiration from Apple and rolling out copycat products. It has (mostly) moved away from that in recent years, and it hasn’t helped its market share.

Apple CEO Tim Cook “secretly” struck a deal with China in which he agreed to invest around $275 billion of Apple’s money to boost the country’s economy and “technological prowess,” according to a new report.

The five-year agreement was allegedly made during a series of visits Cook made to China in 2016 amid growing regulatory hostilities toward Cupertino. Since then, Apple has become China’s biggest smartphone brand.

We’re still weeks away from Apple Watch Series 7’s official debut, but that hasn’t stopped Chinese manufacturers from churning out their clones. The knockoffs feature flatter designs that could closely match the real thing.

Apple’s plan to start assembling more products in Vietnam is reportedly on hold due to COVID-19 disruptions and limited engineering resources.

It is believed the company’s third-generation AirPods, expected to arrive later this year, will be mass-produced in China instead.

Apple has thwarted an attempt by multiple Chinese tech companies to get around its App Tracking Transparency feature, the Financial Times reports Monday.

The group of tech companies includes Baidu, Tencent, and TikTok parent company ByteDance. They supposedly worked with a couple of Beijing companies to find a new way to get around Apple’s new privacy measures.

However, Apple blocked updates to several apps that included the workaround, called the Chinese Advertising ID (CAID). In doing so, it enforced its rules in a way that may have surprised the companies in question.

The app for Didi Chuxing, the popular Chinese ride-hailing service, has been removed from the App Store in China, citing privacy concerns.

This is no usual case of Apple booting an app from the App Store for failing to measure up to its standards, though. In fact, Apple CEO Tim Cook sits on Didi’s board of directors, and Apple previously invested $1 billion in the Chinese Uber rival. Instead, the ban was ordered by China’s Cyberspace Administration of China regulators — citing “serious violations [regarding] collection and usage of personal information.”

Apple this week launched its App Store search advertising business in mainland China, five years after it arrived in the United States. Called Apple Search Ads, the targeted ads feature works similar to Google ads by letting developers bid to get advertising space for certain keywords.

Debuting Apple Search Ads in one of Apple’s biggest markets comes at the same time that Apple is cracking down on targeted advertising from other companies. Features like iOS 14’s App Transparency Tracker lets users opt out of personalized tracking from other companies. But while they’re struggling, Apple’s seemingly making the move to expand its own ad empire.

The U.S. Senate passed a bill Tuesday that could see the United States invest $52 billion in growing its own chip manufacturing technologies. The $52 billion is part of a broader bipartisan bill. In total, it aims to invest close to $250 billion in U.S. manufacturing and technology.

The bill passed Tuesday with a 68-32 vote. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer described it as likely to “go down as one of the most important things this chamber has done in a very long time.”

It is an attempt to wrestle back control of some of the world’s tech manufacturing from China.

Seven Apple suppliers in China are accused of using forced Uyghur labor, a report for The Information reveals.

The companies in question include Advanced-Connectek, AcBel Polytech, Avary Holding, CN Innovations, Luxshare Precision Industry, Shenzhen Deren Electronic Co., and Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing Co.

All participated in what are referred to by the Chinese government as “poverty alleviation programs.” However, these may not be exactly how they sound.

It’s not just U.S. tech giants that fear iOS 14.5’s new App Tracking Transparency feature. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, with a market cap of $646.84 billion, is supposedly very worried, just like Facebook.

A report from The Information says Alibaba invited half a dozen marketing execs to its Hangzhou headquarters to discuss how to react to the new feature, which stops apps from tracking users across websites and third-party apps.

Venture capitalist, early Facebook investor and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel criticized Apple for being too close to China.

At a virtual event held Tuesday by California nonprofit Richard Nixon Foundation, Thiel said the United States should put a “lot of pressure” on Apple because of its links to the Asian country.

End-to-end-encrypted messaging app Signal is secure. So secure, in fact, that it’s the European Union’s encrypted messaging app of choice.

Unfortunately, it’s also secure enough that it’s gotten on the wrong side of the Chinese government. China has reportedly banned the app in mainland China as of March 16, TechCrunch reports. This is one day after its website was blocked in the country.

China’s state-backed China Advertising Association is already looking for ways to get around Apple’s upcoming App Tracking Transparency feature, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.

The organization’s approach reportedly involves something called a “CAID.” This can supposedly act as an alternative means of tracking users to the iPhone’s ad identifier, or IDFA. TikTok parent company ByteDance issued a guide for app developers that describes how marketers “can use CAID as a substitute if the user’s IDFA is unavailable.”

For years, China has been Apple’s biggest manufacturing hub for building its devices. But that’s now changing, with a report Wednesday claiming that Apple is “ramping up” production of iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other products in other parts of the world.

This is an attempt by Apple to diversify manufacturing beyond China, following trade tensions between the U.S. and China in recent years.