 | Apr 25, 2025 | | | | | | Thank goodness it's Friday! Apple aims to assemble all U.S.-sold iPhones from India by 2026. Alphabet maintains steady revenue growth in the first quarter. China quietly rolled back 125% retaliatory tariff on some U.S. semiconductors.
| | | | Apple plans to assemble all the iPhones sold in the U.S. from India as soon as next year, as U.S.-China trade tensions force the company to pivot away from China, the Financial Times reported on Friday, citing two people familiar with the matter. The shift aims to cushion the impact of increased U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports, with a goal of producing the totality of over 60 million iPhones sold in the U.S. each year from India by the end of 2026. To achieve this production target, Apple needs to double the iPhone's output in India, following nearly two decades of heavy investments in and reliance on Chinese manufacturing. Apple was facing a possible 125% U.S. tariff on products made in China, before President Donald Trump offered a temporary exemption on smartphones earlier this month. Still, made-in-China iPhones are subject to a separate 20% levy applied to all imports from China. By comparison, imports from India only face a 10% rate until at least July, as the U.S. and India negotiate a trade deal. Apple has been trying to reduce its reliance on Chinese suppliers in the last five years, driven mainly by rising tensions between the U.S. and China and strict Covid lockdowns in China that affected Apple's factories in the country. The company is expanding its manufacturing in India by partnering with Tata Electronics and Foxconn. However, those efforts have met with challenges due to geopolitical tensions between China and India, The Information reported previously. | | | | Alphabet's revenue grew 12% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2025, equal to its growth in the previous quarter, as growth in Google's Search and Cloud businesses slowed slightly from the fourth quarter. Revenue from Google's Cloud unit grew 28% year-over-year to $12.3 billion, lower than the 30% the company reported in the fourth quarter of last year. Operating income growth from the cloud unit was in line with the previous quarter, however, at just above 140%, a sign that the cloud unit is becoming a more meaningful contributor to Google's profits. Google's year-over-year Search revenue growth also dropped to 9.8% from 12.5% in the fourth quarter, although in the earnings press release, CEO Sundar Pichai touted the company's growth in Search engagement from products like the AI-generated answers feature AI Overviews. A Google executive testified Wednesday that Google hasn't yet seen "cannibalization" of Search usage from OpenAI in commercial queries, but that OpenAI has drawn away from Search queries in homework and math queries. Alphabet's capital expenditures jumped 43% in the first quarter to $17 billion. Pichai has said that the company expects to spend $75 billion this year as it invests in AI infrastructure like data centers. | | | | China this week quietly dropped its retaliatory 125% tariffs on certain semiconductors imported from the U.S., signaling an effort to alleviate the impact of an ongoing trade conflict in the crucial sector, according to CNN's interview with import agencies in the country. The exemptions—communicated to import service agencies but not yet officially announced—pertain solely to logic chips, which are essential for processing and controlling data flow, an area predominantly dominated by U.S. companies but difficult for China to quickly find alternative sources. The reduction came just weeks after China imposed reciprocal tariffs at the same 125% rate on U.S. products earlier this month in response to U.S. levies on Chinese imports. China's move underscored that the country's reliance on U.S. technology remained significant, despite putting on a facade of resilience against President Donald Trump's trade adversity. Last year, China imported $11.7 billion worth of semiconductors from the U.S, according to American customs data. | | | | Tesla registrations fell 45% in the European Union in the first quarter compared to last year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association. The slump came despite an uptick in overall electric vehicle adoption and a surge in hybrid vehicles which are now the dominant vehicle across EU nations. Tesla reported a 20% drop in first quarter automotive revenue this week as CEO Elon Musk confronts brand damage from his work in Washington. Musk told investors Tuesday he would scale back his role in government and devote more time to Tesla, which is also grappling with the impact of President Donald Trump's tariffs. EV adoption in Europe was initially hampered by a limited electric vehicle charging network but those links are now mostly established, said Jos Dings, who led Tesla's policy work in Europe until late last year. The beneficiaries include Volkswagen, which reportedly doubled its EV output in the first quarter, selling well enough to beat out Tesla as the European market leader. | | | | AI startup Perplexity announced a partnership with Motorola to install Perplexity's app on the electronics company's phones, a move aimed at boosting Perplexity's audience. The deal also gives new owners of Motorola phones three months of Perplexity's Pro subscription free. In striking the deal, Perplexity is following in the footsteps of Google, which for years has used agreements to pre-install its apps on phones as a way to improve distribution of its apps. Google has negotiated a similar deal, a Google executive testified this week at a trial in Washington aimed at deciding how the tech giant's operations will be overhauled to fix its illegal search. The Justice Department, which sued Google on antitrust grounds, wants to stop Google using these deals to lock up distribution. CNBC reported today that Motorola is also partnering with Microsoft Copilot and Meta Platforms for AI services, to handle certain queries. | | | | Comcast reported a 13% drop in net income and marginally lower revenue for the first quarter, as its cable TV and broadband businesses both suffered customer losses. Comcast's NBCUniversal entertainment operations reported 0.8% higher revenue, although NBCU's Peacock streaming service lifted revenue 16% to $1.2 billion on 20% higher subscribers compared to a year earlier. Peacock is still losing money, Comcast reported, but at a vastly reduced rate. The streaming service lost $215 million in the quarter compared with $639 million a year earlier. NBCUniversal's cash machine, its portfolio of TV networks, suffered a 7% drop in domestic ad revenue, which CFO Jason Armstrong attributed to the timing of sports events and a dip from last year's political ad boom. Armstrong said the company's ad business had not yet seen any impact from the "current macroeconomic uncertainty," although he noted it was the most exposed to the economy in Comcast's operations. Comcast also owns theme parks which typically suffer in an economic downturn but company president Michael Cavanagh said the results at its Florida theme parks were stable. | | | | Benchmark, the U.S. venture capital firm known for early investments in Uber and Snap, has led a funding round for the Chinese startup that operates Manus, an artificial intelligence agent that went viral on social media last month, according to a person with knowledge of the deal. The deal valued the startup, Butterfly Effect, at about $500 million, the person said. The Information reported last month that the company was in talks with multiple Silicon Valley VC firms to raise money. Bloomberg reported Benchmark's participation in the round earlier on Friday. Manus, a computer-using AI agent that browses many websites to execute tasks like travel booking and stock analysis, attracted attention among tech executives and AI developers just days after its beta launch in early March. The hype around Manus stemmed in part from growing U.S. interest in Chinese-made AI products thanks to the huge success of DeepSeek earlier this year. While the U.S. is the main target market for Manus, the new funding could enable the team to expand its operations in other parts of the world. The Information last month reported that the startup was planning to open an office in Tokyo, its first office outside China. | | | | Volkswagen said that it will start supplying robotaxi rides for Uber in multiple U.S. cities starting in Los Angeles next year. The German car maker said it will use the autonomous, electric version of its 1960s-era microbus for the rides. Human operators will be in the cars during the initial commercial launch, the company said. Volkswagen is not approved for driverless rides in California, according to the most recent California Department of Motor Vehicle data available. The company has tested autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas, since 2023, according to a company press release. It's also tested its autonomous driving technology in Germany and Norway. The deal shows that Uber is entering partnerships with multiple autonomous driving companies in the same market. Uber in November launched an autonomous ride-hailing service with Waymo in Los Angeles in November. | | | | Intel shares dipped 7% in after-hours trading after Lip-Bu Tan, a former Intel board member who took over as CEO in March, said on an earnings call that the chip firm expects revenue and gross margin to decline in its current quarter due to an uncertain macroeconomic environment. Tan, in a letter to shareholders, outlined his plan to get Intel back on track after several years of declining revenue growth and strategic missteps under former CEO Pat Gelsinger, who was ousted by its board in December. Tan revealed that Intel plans to lay off some staff starting this quarter, and announced other initiatives like giving engineers a more prominent role in the company's strategic direction. Another big part of Tan's plan is reducing the number of internal meetings as well as the number of employees attending them. "Too much valuable time is being wasted," he said in the letter. For the three months to March 31, Intel reported $12.67 billion in revenue, flat compared to last year, and gross margin of 36.9%, down from 41% from last year's quarter. For its current quarter, Intel is expecting revenue of between $11.2 and $12.4 billion and gross margin of 34.3%. | | | | The $53.2 billion Harvard University endowment is working with Jefferies on a roughly $1 billion sale of private-equity fund stakes, Bloomberg reported. Universities are raising cash as the Trump administration pulls public funding and threatens to strip their tax-exempt status. Harvard sold $750 million in bonds earlier this month for what the university called "general corporate purposes." Yale University's endowment is working with Evercore to sell a portfolio of PE fund interests, a spokeswoman said this week, adding that the process has been "in the works for many months." Harvard and Jefferies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the potential PE sale. | | | Popular articles
By Kevin McLaughlin and Stephanie Palazzolo
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