The days are over when Google Translate could only provide spoken translations with an American accent. The latest iOS version adds regional accents from the former British Empire.
And it goes beyond English. French translations can be said in a Canadian accent, for example.
There’s more bad news for Apple’s fortunes in India. According to a new report, the iPhone XS and XS Max have seen lower sales in the Indian market than previous devices after the first weekend.
What’s more, they could be about to face new government-imposed challenges, too.
Apple is supposedly cooling its plans to bring Apple Pay to India, despite having discussions with leading banks and the National Payments Corporation of India.
Eddy Cue previously said that Apple hoped to bring Apple Pay to India sooner rather than later. “It is great that all of these payment mechanisms are coming out in India because it empowers people to be able to pay,” Cue said last year. “What Apple Pay does is make that process easy, integrated and safe. We absolutely want to bring Apple Pay to the market here.”
Apple has so far created 3,500 jobs at its offices in Hyderabad, India — and it plans to hire 1,500 more people, bringing the total to 5,000. That’s in excess of the 4,000 jobs Apple initially promised it would create in India.
The news was shared by Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary of IT and Industries in the Telangana government, located in the southern part of the country.
It’s going to be years before Apple India can hope to open flagship retail stores. So the company is allowing local franchisees to open huge Apple stores in major cities to take their place.
India puts stringent requirements on companies who want to open retail stores, and so far Apple hasn’t met them.
Apple may have “won” its standoff with the FBI over privacy, but it’s unlikely to be able to repeat the same feat in a clash with the Indian government on the same topic.
A new article published by Reuters runs down the various obstacles Apple faces in its battle with India’s telecom regulator over an anti-spam app, which Apple believes infringes on user privacy. And while nothing is settled yet, this looks like one fight Apple won’t be winning!
Apple may be kicking all kinds of butt on the global stage, but it’s struggling in India, where the iPhone currently ranks 11th in the overall list of smartphones. To put that in perspective, Apple accounts for just 1 percent of India’s iPhone sales, with fewer than 1 million handsets sold in the first half of this year.
But it’s got a plan (well, several) to change all that.
Faced with the threat of having the iPhone out of India altogether, Apple has supposedly agreed to implement a government-sanctioned Do Not Disturb app on its platform.
Apple had previously refused to carry the app, which it claimed violates user privacy by allowing the Indian government to access customers’ call and text message logs. Last week, we reported how this standoff could have resulted in the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India requiring mobile operators in the country to stop supporting the iPhone as a result.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India could require mobile operators in the country to stop supporting the iPhone if Apple doesn’t allow a mobile app that lets users report unwanted calls and messages.
Apple has been going back and forth with officials in India over the government-approved anti-spam mobile app, which Apple has suggested violates user privacy.
Apple’s biggest competitor in China could soon supplant it as the second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world in terms of units shipped.
Huawei says it’s on track to ship 200 million phones by the end of 2018 after setting a blistering pace of 100 million units shipped as of July 18. That won’t be quite enough to top the number of iPhones Apple sold last year, but 2019 could be Huawei’s biggest year ever.
