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☆ Supreme Court Denies Petitions on Apple, Epic Appeals
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-16 | by ( Sarah E. Needleman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The high court’s rejection has the potential to eat into Apple’s lucrative App Store business. Photo: MIKE SEGAR/REUTERSThe U.S. Supreme Court has turned down Apple ’s attempt to appeal a decision in an antitrust case over its App Store, a rejection that could create new options for companies such as Netflix and Spotify to sign up customers. Apple and “Fortnite” developer Epic Games last year separately asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on their legal dispute. The court denied the petitions of both companies Tuesday. A federal judge in 2021 had largely ruled against Epic, even as she ruled that Apple must allow third-party software makers to steer customers to payment options within their own apps.

Persons: MIKE SEGAR Organizations: REUTERS, U.S, Supreme, Apple, Netflix, Spotify, Epic

☆ Former Apple Exec Lists Aspen Home for $45 Million
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-30 | by ( E.B. Solomont | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

As Apple ’s vice president of real estate, design, and construction for 13 years, Bob Bridger helped design the tech giant’s glassy, expansive stores. When he built a home in Aspen, Colo., after leaving Apple in 2015, he brought some of that sensibility to the contemporary estate, which has floor-to-ceiling windows and a “clubhouse” building with a glass garage door. Through Bridger’s relationships with vendors from his time at Apple, he connected with the owners of a quarry in Marble, Colo., and was able to handpick the stone in the house. After several years of construction, the property was completed in 2022, and Bridger is now putting it on the market for $45 million.

Persons: Apple ’, Bob Bridger, Bridger Organizations: Apple Locations: Aspen, Colo, Marble

☆ Apple Had Better Watch Its Back in China
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-20 | by ( Jacky Wong | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Xiaomi is making a renewed push in the premium segment. Photo: Cfoto/Zuma PressSignals are finally getting stronger for the global smartphone market. Chinese handset makers like Huawei, which had been locked out of the race by U.S. sanctions, are dialing back in. That adds up to a tricky outlook for Apple in China, its second-largest revenue region after North America. Huawei’s Chinese rival Xiaomi , which reported third-quarter results Monday, is also making a renewed push in the premium segment— Apple ’s bread and butter.

Organizations: Zuma Press Signals, Huawei, Apple Locations: China, North America

☆ In an iPhone World, Android Users Can Now Fit In
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-28 | by ( Dalvin Brown | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

It is hard being the green-bubble guy. Timofey Galyukov has often felt digital exclusion since he got his first smartphone in 2016—an Android-powered Google Pixel. His close-knit group of iPhone-wielding friends plan their basketball games and weekend outings using Apple ’s iMessage. They would leave Galyukov out because they didn’t want his Android phone turning their chat bubbles green.

Persons: Galyukov Organizations: Apple

☆ Goodbye Green Bubbles: The Android User’s Survival Guide in an Apple World
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-28 | by ( Dalvin Brown | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Persons: Galyukov Organizations: Apple

☆ The App Store—But For Cars—May Not Be Far Off
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-26 | by ( Isabelle Bousquette | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Taking a cue from Apple’s approach to third party applications, GM released a set of open source APIs. Photo: General MotorsGeneral Motors is rethinking traditional software development processes to target more innovation and better software, faster. Taking a cue from Apple ’s approach to third party applications, GM earlier this month released a set of open source APIs, or application programming interfaces, designed to let developers build apps that can integrate with connected vehicle hardware such as windows, headlights, and infotainment systems. APIs are the critical connective tissue of software development, allowing pieces of code from one application to connect with another. Opening APIs to the broad community of software developers is a crucial step in getting to a more Apple-like ecosystem of apps and innovation.

Organizations: GM, General Motors General Motors, Apple

☆ Apple Supplier Foxconn Faces Chinese Investigations
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-22 | by ( Yang Jie | Joyu Wang | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Foxconn has a significant presence in China, with operations focused on making consumer electronics and more. Photo: VCG/Getty ImagesFoxconn Technology Group, one of Apple ’s biggest suppliers, said it is cooperating with Chinese authorities after Chinese state media said the Taiwan-based contract electronics maker, whose founder is seeking the Taiwan presidency, is subject to tax and land-use investigations across China. China’s state-backed Global Times reported on Sunday that Chinese tax authorities are scrutinizing Foxconn’s facilities in southern Guangdong province and eastern Jiangsu, while natural-resources authorities are conducting on-site investigations into the company’s land use in Henan and Hubei provinces.

Persons: Foxconn Organizations: Foxconn Technology, Apple, Global Times Locations: China, Taiwan, China’s, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Henan, Hubei

☆ Eric Adams and the Self-Imposed Crisis of a Sanctuary City
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-14 | by ( Allysia Finley | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Wonder Land: The United States is often described as a 'nation of immigrants,' but with Biden’s open river or another Trump wall, the clock on American pre-eminence could stop, as illegal immigration taints the legal path to citizenship. Images: AFP/Getty Images/Zuma Press Composite: Mark KellyNew York politicians often believe the rest of the country cares about their problems. But the only time most people give a thought to the Empire State’s largely self-inflicted woes is when they relish the schadenfreude of seeing progressives pay for misguided policies. The Big Apple ’s migrant mess is a case in point.

Persons: Mark Kelly Organizations: Getty, Mark Kelly New, Apple Locations: United States, Mark Kelly New York

☆ In Contrast to China, Japan at G-7 Basks in Newfound Appeal to Companies
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( Peter Landers | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Japan’s central bank forecasts that output will grow 1.4% in the fiscal year ending next March, surpassing the prepandemic peak. Photo: kimimasa mayama/ShutterstockTOKYO—You would think this was the capital of a fast-growing Asian tiger economy the way American CEOs are flocking here these days. Apple ’s Tim Cook , Google’s Sundar Pichai , OpenAI’s Sam Altman , Intel’s Patrick Gelsinger and Warren Buffett are among the bosses to show up in recent months. Better reserve in advance if you want the hotel’s executive suite.

☆ For Apple, India Is the Next China
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( Megha Mandavia | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Apple ’s playbook in India is evolving, from testing the country as a counterweight to China’s supply-chain dominance to viewing it as an emerging growth hub for demand. Both of these strategies are working off each other.

☆ The Problem With Your Dying AirPods and Other Bluetooth Earbuds
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

AirPods are a daily fixture in my life. I’ve recommended nearly every model of the wireless, portable and easy-pairing earbuds from their start. But Apple ’s market-leading earbuds, along with most other competing Bluetooth buds, have a big problem: tiny, irreplaceable batteries. I have the first-generation AirPods Pro and, after about three years of constant calls, music and podcast playing, I can use them for less than an hour before the “womp womp” low-battery sound plays.

☆ Apple Supplier Foxconn Plans to Rely Less on China for Revenue
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Joyu Wang | Yoko Kubota | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Foxconn has been diversifying its production sites as well as the products it makes. TAIPEI— Foxconn Technology Group, one of Apple ’s biggest suppliers, said it would rely less on China as a source of revenue as it diversifies production sites to strengthen supply-chain resilience. About 70% of Foxconn’s revenue comes from China, said Young Liu , the company’s chairman. Going forward, the proportion coming from markets outside of China will continue to grow, he said in an earnings call Wednesday. Foxconn’s revenue in 2022 was 6.6 trillion New Taiwan dollars, equivalent to around $215 billion.

☆ Qualcomm’s Longer Life With Apple Comes at a Cost
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-03 | by ( Dan Gallagher | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The company Wednesday became the latest chip maker to see its numbers hit by a rapidly weakening smartphone market. Qualcomm will be keeping Apple ’s lucrative iPhone business a while longer—for better and for worse. Qualcomm told investors during its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call late Wednesday that it expects its modem chip to have the “vast majority” of Apple’s iPhone business for the next crop of devices expected to launch in the fall of 2023. That is a shift from the company’s previously stated assumption of 20% share, but the news wasn’t a big surprise. An influential Apple supply-chain analyst reported back in June that Apple’s efforts to develop its own modem had hit a snag and were unlikely to be ready for the 2023 iPhones.

☆ Jony Ive on Life After Apple
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Elisa Lipsky-Karasz | Photography Alasdair Mclellan For Wsj. Magazine | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

I can always write an awful lot that I can’t draw,” Jony Ive , the mastermind behind Apple ’s most revolutionary products, says as he holds up a Space Age–style coffee cup. “If I draw this, it only captures certain attributes.”Ive is sitting in the garden of a Pacific Heights carriage house high in the San Francisco hills, a building he converted into a private studio and occasional crash pad for friends. Apart from the cup—devised by Ive’s business partner and fellow designer, Marc Newson, and made by the Japanese brand Noritake—Ive designed nearly every indoor and outdoor element of this deceptively simple space, down to the gray marble bathroom sink and the garden’s round, rough-hewn stepping stones.

☆ Subscriptions Could Be Key to Social-Media Companies’ Futures
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-30 | by ( Laura Forman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Consumers are spending a record number of hours on social media, but the platforms have had difficulties profiting off of your time lately. Long booming online ads businesses, historically the predominant way social-media companies made money, have cratered this year thanks to a weakening economy and Apple ’s ad tracking changes that have made it more difficult for platforms to demonstrate return on advertisers’ investments. Snapchat parent Snap Inc.’s growth fell off a similar cliff, down over 60 percentage points over the same period. Shares of major social-media companies, including Facebook owner Meta Platforms, Snapchat and Pinterest , are down an average of 60% this year as investors have broadly lost faith in their first act. Suddenly, subscriptions have gone from a theoretical call option on a secondary revenue stream to a must have.

☆ Exxon, Chevron Investors Risk Altitude Sickness
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Jinjoo Lee | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Exxon and Chevron’s stock prices are at or near record highs even as Wall Street is forecasting that peak profit and free cash flow are already behind them. After a fast and furious ascent, Exxon Mobil and Chevron ’s shares are reaching the part of the climb where investors might start feeling a bit queasy. Wall Street was expecting a decline in both from the second quarter, not another increase. Its peer Chevron also posted profits that were a fifth higher than Wall Street expectations. Combined, Exxon and Chevron reported nearly $31 billion in profits.

☆ The Hottest App Right Now? One Where Teens Have to Say Nice Things About Each Other
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Ann-Marie Alcántara | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

TBH was hot. Five years ago, the app, which prompted teens to compliment one another, topped Apple ’s App Store charts and quickly amassed millions of users in the coveted high-school demographic. Facebook snapped it up less than three months after launch—and soon shut it down. Now one of TBH’s co-creators is back with Gas, a nearly identical iPhone app. Gas asks teens multiple-choice questions about people in their school, letting them choose yearbook-style superlatives such as “the most beautiful person you have ever met” or the classmate who is “never afraid of getting in trouble.”

☆ The Year of the Voice Message: A Modern Guide to Phone Etiquette
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-28 | by ( Magdalene J. Taylor | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

NATHAN HEINRICH, 41 years old, feels totally disconnected from his younger sister. In fact, the writer and designer from West Nyack, N.Y, says they’re in touch plenty. The problem: This year, she suddenly started communicating exclusively through recorded voice messages, colloquially called voice notes or voice memos, a feature that’s been available on Apple ’s iMessage since June 2014. His sister, Hilary Heinrich, a busy 32-year-old teacher in San Luis Obispo, Calif., says the technology nicely combines aspects of both phone calls and texts. Mr. Heinrich, however, finds that having to respond to her voice notes in kind makes him feel like a trucker on a CB radio.

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