What happened: Apple’s iPhones made up 24% of smartphones sold in China during the last three quarters of 2022, Counterpoint Research recorded. That was enough to make Apple China’s No. 2-selling smartphone brand for the year. It also buoyed Apple’s revenue in China, which has bounced back from 2020 lows. Why it matters: Apple CEO Tim Cook, along with Disney CEO Bob Iger and leaders from Alphabet, Palantir, and Microsoft, are expected to meet with a bipartisan group of lawmakers traveling to California to discuss China. Cook has recently been working to address supply chain issues in China, which have resulted in increased wait time for recent iPhone models. While U.S. government officials have in recent months taken a hard stance against China, restricting semiconductor production equipment exports, threatening to ban TikTok, and considering new meetings with Taiwanese officials. Where to see the impact: Cook faces a difficult position of dependency on China for existing production needs and revenue for Apple. Though many U.S. tech firms have limited exposure to China due to the country's internet restrictions, Apple and Disney are two notable outliers, thanks to the popularity of iPhones and Disney’s parks and movies in the country. The weight of that importance will likely be heard in these upcoming meetings, whether lawmakers are sympathetic or not. We're testing new content formats in Inside.com newsletters. Do you want to see more coverage like this? Respond to this email and let us know.
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Apple is laying off a small number of employees in its corporate retail division, marking its first round of reported job cuts since widespread tech layoffs began last year. The number of affected employees hasn't been disclosed. According to Business Insider, Apple has informed staff in the division that they must apply for other jobs at the company or be let go. More: - The jobs cuts are “likely very small" and will impact Apple’s retail development and preservation unit, which handles the upkeep and construction of Apple retail stores, Bloomberg reports.
- The employees are based in the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions. Those who are let go will receive up to four months of severance pay.
- Internally, Apple has painted the layoffs as a measure to improve operations rather than cut costs.
Zoom Out: - It's Apple's first reported round of job cuts affecting full-time employees since the tech layoffs began.
- Last month, Apple cut ties with hundreds of contractors employed by outside agencies but contracted to work on projects for the company.
- As of September, Apple had about 164,000 employees worldwide.
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The cryptocurrency dogecoin (DOGE) rose by more than 30% after Twitter updated its logo with a Shiba Inu dog, the digital coin’s symbol. Dogecoin, the eighth most valuable cryptocurrency, saw its market value skyrocket to $13.4B, up from around $10B before the change. More: - As of Tuesday, Twitter’s bird symbol has been replaced by the Shiba Inu image.
- Twitter CEO/owner Elon Musk tweeted that the change was made "as promised" after a user last year urged him to switch the bird logo to a "doge."
- The move comes shortly after Musk requested the dismissal of a $258B dogecoin lawsuit that alleges he conducted a Ponzi scheme to support the popular cryptocurrency.
- Musk's lawyers said the case is based on the CEO's harmless and often silly tweets about dogecoin.
- The digital coin, inspired by the "doge meme" of the Japanese Shiba Inu dog, was created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palme as a parody of bitcoin in 2013.
Zoom Out: - Tesla began accepting dogecoin as payment for some merchandise last year, the same as Musk's other ventures, SpaceX and The Boring Company.
- Musk once called it the "people's crypto" and has said he would support DOGE whenever possible.
TECHCRUNCH
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Google is cutting back on some employee perks, equipment, and services as it seeks to rein in costs. According to multiple reports, Google is making cuts in areas like laptop replacements, fitness classes, and snack bars. More: - Google finance chief Ruth Porat described the spending cuts in a memo to staff on Friday.
- Just like Google did in 2008, the company will crunch data to "identify other areas of spending that aren’t as effective as they should be, or that don’t scale at our size,” she wrote.
- This includes eliminating some “microkitchens" or snack bars and closing cafeterias on certain days.
- It's also reducing spending on some equipment and supplies, such as staplers and tape.
- Employees who aren't in engineering and require a new laptop will receive a Chromebook rather than having a choice.
- It's altering how frequently equipment is replaced, including pausing some replacement laptops, desktop PCs, and monitors for office employees.
Zoom Out: - Google parent Alphabet began eliminating 12,000 jobs across the company earlier this year, the largest round of layoffs in its 25-year history.
- At the time, CEO Sundar Pichai said Alphabet expanded rapidly as a result of the dramatic growth that occurred during the pandemic.
- Pichai emphasized artificial intelligence as an important area for the company moving forward.
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TikTok was fined £12.7M ($15.9M) by the U.K.'s privacy regulator over allegedly misusing children’s personal data and other violations. The country's Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) estimates that TikTok permitted up to 1.4 million U.K. children under 13 to use the app in 2020, despite having rules barring children that age from creating accounts. More: - According to the ICO, TikTok failed to gain consent from parents to process the data of younger children, which is a requirement under local data protection laws.
- The agency accused TikTok of failing to do more to remove the accounts of underage children from its platform.
- The fine covers violations that occurred from May 2018 to July 2020.
- “TikTok should have known better," U.K. Information Commissioner John Edwards said. "TikTok should have done better.”
- TikTok said it disagreed with the fine, adding that it invests "heavily" to prevent children under 13 from using its platform.
THE GUARDIAN
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OpenAI announced support for ChatGPT plugins, or tools for businesses to plug the AI model into their systems to complete specific tasks, such as booking flights or recommending products. The first plugins, introduced last week, are compatible with Instacart, Slack, Expedia, Wolfram, and other platforms and brands. More: - Developers can create ChatGPT plugins to interact with other internet services and offer more features beyond the basic chatbot.
- Users will be able to access the plugins from a ChatGPT plugin interface or "store," allowing them to select and install the plugins.
- Klarna Bank AB's plugin uses ChatGPT to make product recommendations for purchases.
- Expedia created a plugin for trip planning, and Instacart will offer one for grocery orders.
- A waitlist to access ChatGPT plugins is available online. OpenAI said it's prioritizing access to a small number of developers and users who have a ChatGPT Plus subscription.
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- Apple was working to fix an outage of its Weather app after some features stopped working for many users around midnight ET today.
- Following a backlash, Google Drive is scrapping a recently-introduced file creation limit of five million items, which only affected a small percentage of total users.
- Spotify said it's sunsetting Spotify Live, its live-audio mobile app comparable to Clubhouse. While it still wants to support "live fan-creator interactions in its ecosystem," the company said it "no longer makes sense as a standalone app."
- Bloomberg announced its own large language model trained on financial data to support natural language processing tasks within the industry. The model, BloombergGPT, is specific to the financial domain.
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 |  | Beth is a writer and editor at Inside.com covering artificial intelligence and daily technology news. She has written the Inside AI newsletter since 2019. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@inside.com. |   | | Editor | Eduardo Garcia is a writer and editor based in New York. He is the author of "Things You Can Do," an illustrated book about climate action. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
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