Apple Supplier Foxconn Posts Surprise Rise in Quarterly Profit 

The Foxconn logo is seen in this illustration taken, May 2, 2023. (Reuters)
The Foxconn logo is seen in this illustration taken, May 2, 2023. (Reuters)
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Apple Supplier Foxconn Posts Surprise Rise in Quarterly Profit 

The Foxconn logo is seen in this illustration taken, May 2, 2023. (Reuters)
The Foxconn logo is seen in this illustration taken, May 2, 2023. (Reuters)

Apple Inc supplier Foxconn reported on Tuesday a surprise 11% increase in third-quarter profit, boosted by strong demand for smart consumer electronics ahead of the year-end holiday shopping season in Western markets.

The Taiwanese company, the world's largest contract electronics maker, said net profit for the July-September quarter rose to T$43.1 billion ($1.3 billion) from T$38.8 billion in the same period the previous year.

The profit beat a T$34.5 billion LSEG SmartEstimate, which gives greater weight to forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate.

Foxconn said revenue for the fourth quarter would slightly decline year on year, but did not give a reason and maintained its outlook for full-year revenue to also slightly decline.

The world's biggest assembler of iPhones said it expects revenue for its smart consumer electronics division, which includes smartphones, to also fall slightly in the fourth quarter. The division makes up about half of Foxconn's total revenue.



Alphabet to Roll out Image Generation of People on Gemini after Pause

A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
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Alphabet to Roll out Image Generation of People on Gemini after Pause

A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)
A large Google logo is seen at Google's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California on August 13, 2024. (AFP)

Alphabet's Google said on Wednesday it has updated Gemini's AI image-creation model and would roll out the generation of visuals of people in the coming days, after months-long pause of the capability.

In February, Google had paused its AI tool that creates images of people, following inaccuracies in some historical depictions generated by the model.

The issues, where the AI model returned historical images which were sometimes inaccurate, drew flak from users.

The company said it has worked to improve the product, adhere to "product principles" and simulated situations to find weaknesses.

The feature will be made available first to paid users of the Gemini AI chatbot, starting in English and later roll out the model to bring more users and languages.

Google said it has improved the Imagen 3 model to create better images of people, but it would not generate images of specific people, children or graphic content.

OpenAI's Dall-E, Microsoft's CoPilot and recently xAI's Grok are among other AI chatbots that can now generate images.

The search engine giant also said over the coming days, subscribers to Gemini Advanced, Business and Enterprise would have access to chatting with "Gems" or chatbots customized for specific purposes.

Users can write specific instructions for particular purposes and create a Gem, saving them time from rewriting prompts for repetitive use cases.