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Report: Apple's India iPhone Output Hits $14 Bln

FILE PHOTO: Employee buses enter the Pegatron facility near Chennai, India, March 7, 2023. REUTERS/Praveen Paramasivam/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Employee buses enter the Pegatron facility near Chennai, India, March 7, 2023. REUTERS/Praveen Paramasivam/File Photo
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Report: Apple's India iPhone Output Hits $14 Bln

FILE PHOTO: Employee buses enter the Pegatron facility near Chennai, India, March 7, 2023. REUTERS/Praveen Paramasivam/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Employee buses enter the Pegatron facility near Chennai, India, March 7, 2023. REUTERS/Praveen Paramasivam/File Photo

Apple Inc has assembled $14 billion worth of iPhones in India in fiscal 2024, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.
Apple now makes as much as 14% or about 1 in 7 of its marquee devices from India, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Foxconn assembled nearly 67% while Pegatron Corp made about 17% of the India-made iPhones, the Bloomberg report added. Wistron Corp's plant in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, which the Tata Group took over last year, made the remaining.
Apple did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Apple is increasingly looking to diversify its supply chain beyond China amid geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington, even as China remains the largest iPhone-making hub in the world.
Reuters reported on Monday that Pegatron is in advanced talks to hand over control of its only iPhone manufacturing facility, located near Chennai in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, to the Tata Group.
The Indian consumer goods conglomerate is also building another plant in Hosur in Tamil Nadu, with Pegatron likely to emerge as its joint venture partner.

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Microsoft Revamps AI Copilot with New Voice, Reasoning Capabilities

Copilot logo is seen in this illustration taken May 20, 2024. (Reuters)
Copilot logo is seen in this illustration taken May 20, 2024. (Reuters)
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Microsoft Revamps AI Copilot with New Voice, Reasoning Capabilities

Copilot logo is seen in this illustration taken May 20, 2024. (Reuters)
Copilot logo is seen in this illustration taken May 20, 2024. (Reuters)

Microsoft has given its consumer Copilot, an artificial intelligence assistant, a more amiable voice in its latest update, with the chatbot also capable of analyzing web pages for interested users as they browse.

The US software maker now has "an entire army" of creative directors - among them psychologists, novelists and comedians - finessing the tone and style of Copilot to distinguish it, Mustafa Suleyman, chief executive of Microsoft AI, told Reuters in an interview.

In one demonstration of the updated Copilot, a consumer asked what housewarming gift to buy at a grocery store for a friend who did not drink wine. After some back-and-forth, Copilot said aloud: "Italian (olive) oils are the hot stuff right now. Tuscan's my go-to. Super peppery."

The feature rollout, starting Tuesday, is one of the first that Suleyman has overseen since Microsoft created his division in March to focus on consumer products and technology research.

Long identified with business software, Microsoft has had a much harder road in the consumer realm. Its Bing search engine, for instance, is still dwarfed by Google.

Suleyman is hoping for a bigger splash with Copilot, which launched last year in a crowded field of AI chatbots, including OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.

Copilot's newly fashioned voice capabilities make it seem much more of an active listener, giving verbal cues like "cool" and "huh," Suleyman said.

Underlying the product are Microsoft AI, or "MAI," models, plus a technology suite from partner OpenAI, Suleyman said.

Suleyman added that consumers who spend $20 monthly for Copilot Pro can start testing a "Think Deeper" feature that reasons through choices, like whether to move to one city or another.

He said an additional test feature for paying subscribers, Copilot Vision, amounts to "digital pointing" - the ability for users to talk to AI about what they see in a Microsoft Edge browser. Consumers have to opt in, and the content they view will not be saved or used to train AI, Microsoft said.

These updates represent "glimmers" of AI that can be an "ever-present confidant, in your corner," Suleyman said. It's a vision he articulated as CEO of Inflection AI, whose top talent Microsoft poached in a closely watched deal this year.

Suleyman said that eventually, Copilot will learn context from consumers' Word documents, Windows desktops, even their gaming consoles if they grant permission.

Asked what Bill Gates, Microsoft's co-founder, thinks of the company's AI efforts, Suleyman said Gates was excited.

"He's always asking me about when Copilot can read and parse his emails. It's one of his favorite ones," Suleyman said. "We're on the case."