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Apple aims to make most of its iPhones sold in the United States at factories in India by the end of 2026, and is speeding up those plans to navigate potentially higher tariffs in China, its main manufacturing base, a source told Reuters. Apple is holding urgent talks with contract manufacturers Foxconn and Tata to achieve that goal, said the person, who declined to be named as the planning process is confidential. Apple, Tata and Foxconn did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Apple sells over 60 million iPhones in the U.S. annually with roughly 80% of them made in China. The tech giant is now looking to move the majority of that production to India, the source said. Apple has already stepped up production in India to beat U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, shipping some 600 tons of iPhones worth $2 billion to the United States in March. The shipments from India marked a record for both its contractors Tata and Foxconn, with the latter alone accounting for smartphones worth $1.3 billion, Reuters reported last week. In April, the U.S. administration imposed 26% duties on imports from India, much lower than the more than 100% China was facing at the time. Washington has since paused most duties for three months, except for China. Trump’s administration has since signalled openness to de-escalating the trade war between the world’s two largest economies that has raised fears of recession. The Financial Times first reported about Apple’s plan on Friday. As Apple diversifies its manufacturing beyond China, it has positioned India for a critical role. Foxconn and Tata, its two main suppliers there, have three factories in all, with two more being built. Munsif Vengattil, Akash Sriram, and Disha Mishra, Reuters
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E-Commerce
A new report has uncovered a community of Roblox players who digitally re-create and play through real-life school shootings. Known as Active Shooter Studios, or A.S.S., the group has attracted hundreds of fans on Roblox with detailed recreations of horrific mass shootings, including Columbine, Uvalde, and Parkland, according to a report published this week by the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism. The disturbing games are created by anonymous users using Robloxs in-game tools and browser. In one game viewed by Bloomberg, more than 60 players surrounded a school holding pitchforks, chanting the white supremacist phrase You will not replace us. The game has since been removed. One of A.S.S.s most popular maps re-creates the 1999 Columbine shooting, allowing players to take on the roles of mass murderers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Players can maim and dismember otherssomething nominally prohibited by Robloxs community standardsfighting to the death or eventually committing suicide when police arrive in the game. The A.S.S. is part of a darker corner of the internet known as the True Crime Community (TCC), an online subculture where followers idolize serial killers and mass murderers. The Columbine shooting is among the events most romanticized by TCC members. A Roblox spokesperson told Fast Company, Roblox is committed to safety and civility, and our Community Standards explicitly prohibit any content or behavior that depicts, supports, glorifies, or promotes terrorist or extremist organizations in any way. They confirmed that steps are taken to remove material and accounts that violate these standards. We have a dedicated team focused on proactively identifying and swiftly removing such content, as well as banning the individuals who create it, and we will continue to diligently enforce our policies, they added. This is not the first time such re-creations have been found on the platform. The ADL previously discovered re-creations of the 2019 mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand. Despite Robloxs efforts, removing these maps often becomes a game of whack-a-mole. According to the report, A.S.S. members have started hosting games on paid Roblox private servers to evade detection. With over 80 million active users logging onto Roblox dailymany of them children or teensgames that glorify mass violence risk desensitizing players and may serve as a gateway to other extremist content. However, Roblox insisted the vast majority of users on its platform do not seek out A.S.S. content and that it is not easily searchable. Because of the swift, proactive safety measures we have in place, it is very unlikely users would be exposed to such content on our platform, the spokesperson said. Combatting content that supports extremist views is an internet-wide challenge, as these individuals constantly try to evade detection, they continued. We work closely with other platforms and in close collaboration with law enforcement to keep content that violates our policies off our platform.
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E-Commerce
Yesterday was an eventful day for shareholders and employees of Intel Corp. The American chipmaker reported its Q1 2025 results while its new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, confirmed earlier reports that Intel would be laying off employees. Heres what you need to know about those layoffs and the latest movement in Intels stock price. New Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan confirms job cuts The most devastating news to come out of Intel yesterday was that earlier reports were correct and the company would be laying off employees. On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Intel was preparing to lay off up to 20% of its current workforce. Given that Intel reported having 108,900 employees at the end of 2024, that 20% cut would equate to roughly just under 22,000 people being laid off. The 22,000 layoff figure, if accurate, would be larger than Intels last round of mass layoffs in August 2024, when then-Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger announced 15,000 job cuts. Intels CEO confirmed the new job cuts in an email he sent to employees on April 24, which Intel then later published on its website. In the email, Tan laid out his desire for Intel to once again become an engineering-focused company so it can better compete in the chip marketplace and begin innovating again. But in order to refocus the company to one that is engineering-first, Tan said Intel will need to find ways to reduce its existing costs. Some of that cost reduction will come from layoffs. In a poorly subtitled section of his email called Flattening the Organization, Tan said he was a big believer in the philosophy that the best leaders get the most done with the fewest people. In order to refocus the company on engineering, Tan said, Intel would need to remove its organizational complexity and unnecessary bureaucracy. To this end, Tan said there was no way around the fact that these critical changes will reduce the size of our workforce. However, Tan didnt state the size of this workforce reductionneither in terms of the number of employees that will lose their jobs, nor in the percentage of Intels workforce that would be let go. That means it is currently unknown if Bloombergs 20% figure was correct. Fast Company has reached out to Intel for comment on the number of upcoming layoffs. What Tan did confirm is that the layoffs would happen in Q2which is Intels current quarter. He also said that the company will move as quickly as possible [with the layoffs] over the next several months. Intel stock price sinks after Q1 earnings results But Intel employees werent the only ones who got bad news yesterday. Investors did, too. After Intel released its Q1 2025 numbers yesterday, the companys stock (Nasdaq: INTC) is currently down a significant amount in premarket trading this morning. As of the time of this writing, INTC shares are currently down around 6.7% to just above $20 per share. INTC shares had gained 4.3% yesterday to close at $21.49 before the company revealed its Q1 performance. Unfortunately, investors usually see layoffs as a good thing for a company because when a company lets go of workers, it can save a lot of money. Fewer employees mean fewer associated costs. Yet still, INTC shares are down after the companys Q1 results and layoffs confirmation. But why? Intel announced that its Q1 revenue was $12.7 billionessentially flat year-over-year. It also reported a loss equal to 19 cents a share. But those disappointing numbers didnt seem to bother investors as much as Intels quarterly forecast for its current Q2. Intel issued revenue guidance for its Q2 of $11.2 billion to $12.4 billion. But as Reuters notes, the analysts’ average estimate was $12.82 billion. Many investors thus saw the guidance as an admission from Intel that its turnaround effort will take time. The company is largely seen to have fumbled the opportunity to take advantage of the AI boom in the early years of this decade, and thus seeded AI chip dominance to Nvidia. Intels Tan is now hoping to make Intel into an AI chip juggernaut, but the companys guidance suggests thats not going to happen overnightand certainly not in the next quarter. Until yesterday, Intel was one of the few major tech companies in America whose shares were up for the year. INTC closed yesterday at $21.49, up 7.18% for the year. But with its nearly 7% premarket decline this morning, INTC shares are now essentially flat for the year to date. Looking out to a longer timeline, INTC shares have performed much more poorly. As of yesterdays close, INTC shares had fallen nearly 38% over the past 12 months. Over the past five years, INTC shares were down nearly 64% as of yesterdays close.
Category:
E-Commerce
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