Education on technology

China's Huawei Technologies is plotting a return to the 5G smartphone industry by the end of this year, according to research firms, signalling a comeback after a US ban on equipment sales decimated its consumer electronics business. Huawei should be able to procure 5G chips domestically using its own advances in semiconductor design tools along with chipmaking from Semiconductor Manufacturing International Company (SMIC), three third-party technology research firms covering China's smartphone sector told Reuters. The firms, citing industry sources including Huawei suppliers, spoke on condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements with clients. Huawei declined to comment. SMIC did not respond to a request for comment. A return to the 5G phone market would mark a victory for the company that for almost three years said it was in "survival" mode. Huawei's consumer business revenue peaked at CNY 483 billion (roughly Rs. 5,51,479 crore) in 2020, b...

Apple is reportedly gearing up to unveil a foldable MacBook in about two to three years. The displays for the upcoming laptop could be sourced from the display divisions of Samsung and LG. A report claims a vague timeline for the launch and sale of Apple's first foldable laptop in 2026. Companies including Asus and Lenovo are currently offering laptops with foldable displays. Meanwhile, Apple is expected to launch its foldable smartphone around 2025. The Cupertino-based tech giant is also said to be in talks to release a foldable iPad next year widening the company's product portfolio. As per a report by BusinessKorea, Apple could launch a foldable laptop as soon as 2026. The report, citing industry sources, claims that Apple is in talks with suppliers like Samsung and LG to unveil new foldable MacBook models. The first MacBook model with a foldable display could be unveiled in 2025 and could go on sale later in 2026. Apple's entry into the foldable display laptop ma...

Tata Group , India's largest conglomerate, is close to an agreement to acquire an Apple supplier's factory as soon as August, marking the first time a local company would move into the assembly of iPhones, according to people familiar with the matter. A takeover of the Wistron factory in southern Karnataka state, potentially valued at more than $600 million (roughly Rs. 4,900 crore), would cap about a year of negotiations, said the people, asking not to be named as the matter is private. The facility employs more than 10,000 workers, who assemble the latest iPhone 14 model. Wistron has committed to shipping iPhones worth at least $1.8 billion (roughly Rs. 14,800 crore) from the factory in the fiscal year through March 2024 to win state-backed financial incentives, the people said. It also planned to triple the plant's workforce by next year. Tata is set to honour those commitments as Wistron exits the iPhone business in India. Spokespersons for Tata, Wistron and Apple...

India, home to a rapidly growing crypto and Web3 market, is witnessing a wave of experiments being undertaken by members of the crypto community. Over-the-counter (OTC) crypto trading is one such process that seems to have gained steam in recent times in India. OTC trading creates a trading market where two parties — the buyer and the seller — negotiate conditions of the trade without any exchange. OTC trading usually interests large investors because the trades are settled outside the ecosystem of the exchanges. In OTC crypto trades , agencies or individuals carry out transactions on behalf of the traders, off the books of the exchanges. The concept has been emerging as a topic of interest on social media in India as traders can use it to move around cryptocurrencies without any paper trail. Some can even use it to evade the taxes that India levies on crypto incomes and transactions. As part of traditional financial practices, OTC trading of regular assets have been facilitated by b...

Taiwan's Foxconn has withdrawn from a semiconductor joint venture with mining baron Anil Agarwal's Vedanta  as the venture struggled to get a technology partner to make chips that are used in mobile phones to refrigerators and cars.  In a statement, Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, said it "has determined it will not move forward on the joint venture with Vedanta." Agarwal's metals-to-oil conglomerate responded saying it was "fully committed to its semiconductor fab project and we have lined up other partners to set up India's first foundry." It however did not give details of the new partners. Foxconn, best known for assembling iPhones and other Apple products, and Vedanta last year signed a pact to set up semiconductor and display production plants in Gujarat. European chipmaker STMicroelectronics was being roped in as a technology partner for the venture but talks were deadlocked. Most of the world's chips a...

Chandrayaan-3 , scheduled to be launched from Sriharikota this week, will make " India the fourth country to land its spacecraft on the surface of the Moon ", said Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology, Jitendra Singh, on Sunday. He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent US visit was marked by significant space -related agreements indicating that the countries which had started their space journey long before India are today looking up to the country as an equal collaborator. After such a quantum rise in our space expertise under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's regime, "India can no longer wait to be left behind in its march to the Moon," the minister said. Singh said Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission of  Chandrayaan-2 and is aimed at demonstrating India's capability in soft landing and roving on the surface of the Moon or the lunar surface. The complex mission profile, he said, required for the spacecraft t...

Twitter's move on July 1, 2023, to limit the number of tweets users can see in a day was the latest in a series of decisions that has spurred millions of users to sign up with alternative microblogging platforms since Elon Musk acquired Twitter last year. In addition to a surge in numbers on Mastodon , the acquisition and subsequent changes boosted small existing platforms like Hive Social and has spawned brand new upstarts like Spoutible and Spill. Most recently the microblogging platform backed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey , Bluesky , saw a surge of sign-ups in the days following Twitter's rate limit, and Meta launched its microblogging platform Threads on July 5. Threads claimed 30 million users on its first day. Even very different forms of social media such as TikTok are benefiting from what many see as Twitter's imminent demise. As an information scientist who studies online communities, this feels like something I've seen before. Social media platforms t...