China sneezes and Apple catches a cold as tech giant loses $200 billion in one day…..

CC™ Business 

Apple has lost around $200 billion in market capitalization over several days as tensions between the U.S. and China rise, with several media outlets reporting this week that the iPhone maker is being singled out by Beijing.

Apple shares fell 3% Thursday and are down more than 5% for the week on reports of an iPhone ban for Chinese state employees that is being dictated by Beijing. 

The ban was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed sources saying China is ordering officials at central government agencies not to use iPhones or other foreign branded phones. The Financial Times cited six unnamed sources at government institutions and state-owned companies, including a nuclear technology company and a hospital, saying they’ve been told to stop using Apple phones. The ban widens earlier restrictions on using iPhones for work, the outlets said.

“Beijing is looking to reduce its dependence on U.S. technology, but this (ban) acts as a significant headwind to Apple as China is its largest international market and accounts for about 20% of its revenues,” said Victoria Scholar, head of investment at interactive investor, a U.K. investment platform.

Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

When asked about the ban at a daily briefing in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning didn’t comment directly, saying only that “products and services from any country are welcome to enter the Chinese market as long as they comply with Chinese laws and regulations.”

Tensions between the U.S. and China have been rising and early last month, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to impose blocks and regulations on U.S. high-tech investment in China, reflecting the intensifying competition between the world’s two largest economies.

White House officials said Biden, who departed Thursday evening for New Delhi, will use the annual G20 summit as an opportunity for the U.S. to highlight a proposition for developing and middle-income countries that would increase the lending power of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund by some $200 billion.

Biden seeks to drive home that the United States and its like-minded allies are better economic and security partners than China. 

The reported ban on the iPhone comes at a bad time for Apple, which is gearing up for its latest product launch next Tuesday Sept. 12, when it’s expected to unveil its latest smartphone, the iPhone 15. 

A teaser of the livestream for the event, dubbed “Wonderlust,” has been posted on YouTube, revealing no details. Reports are swirling that big changes are in store for the iPhone, including a switch from Apple’s Lightning connector to the USB-C plug that rivals are starting to adopt, partly in response to a European Union mandate. 

Apple also faces a threat from Chinese tech giant Huawei, which recently launched its latest flagship smartphone, the Mate 60 Pro. 

The phone reportedly has enough power and speed to rival the iPhone and has been selling briskly in China. Huawei has been low key about the device, but its capabilities have raised concerns that China has been able to circumvent U.S. curbs on Huawei that stop it from acquiring high tech components like advanced processor chips that had effectively crippled its smartphone business.

AP NEWS

Steve Jobs died over a decade ago but his ideas about the future endure

CC™ ViewPoint

By Nick Kolakowski

Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs died over a decade ago. With over 10 years of hindsight, we have an even greater sense of how deeply he impacted the tech industry—but also how the tech industry is beginning to move beyond some of the paradigms he established and the battles he fought.

Unlike many other tech CEOs who rose to prominence in the early part of the 21st century and subsequently faded away, Jobs continues to hold the public’s attention. He’s elevated as an icon of creativity, the rare executive who could not only run a business, but also predict what consumers really wanted. Apple’s track record during his tenure—from the iMac to the iPod and the iPhone—certainly bears this out. 

“As thoughts grew into ideas, however tentative, however fragile, he recognized that this was hallowed ground. He had such a deep understanding and reverence for the creative process,” Jony Ive, the former head of Apple’s design and a close friend of Jobs, wrote in a new piece in The Wall Street Journal. “He understood creating should be afforded rare respect—not only when the ideas were good or the circumstances convenient.”

Ive added: “Ideas are fragile. If they were resolved, they would not be ideas, they would be products. It takes determined effort not to be consumed by the problems of a new idea. Problems are easy to articulate and understand, and they take the oxygen. Steve focused on the actual ideas, however partial and unlikely.”

Jobs’s focus on high quality and aesthetics helped transform Apple into a multi-trillion-dollar company. Whether Apple continues its stratospheric growth for yet another decade may hinge on whether it can successfully evolve into a provider of cloud services in addition to hardware—a shift that Jobs dimly saw before his death. In an October 2010 email, he suggested that the tech industry was on the verge of a “post-PC era,” and that 2011 would not only be “Year of the Cloud” but also see the continuation of Apple’s “Holy War with Google.” Unless Apple moved beyond an “old paradigm,” it would eventually fall behind its rivals.

While Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android still compete for their respective slices of the mobile OS market, Apple’s opponents have multiplied over the past decade. For example, Apple’s dedication to user data privacy under current CEO Tim Cook has put it in direct conflict with Facebook, whose business model hinges on vacuuming up as much data as possible from users. Apple has also been locked in a fierce legal battle with Epic Games, creator of the ultra-popular “Fortnite” game, over the size of Apple’s App Store commission. 

In addition, Apple must ensure that it can continue to compete with its rivals in cutting-edge technologies including (but certainly not limited to) artificial intelligence (A.I.), machine learning, and the cloud. Although Apple was one of the first companies into the digital-assistant game when it rolled out Siri in October 2011, it has since lost ground to Amazon’s ultra-popular Alexa and Google’s voice-activated assistant. While most of the company’s hardware devices remain society-redefining hits, if there’s one thing that Jobs understood, it’s that the tech industry can shift very quickly under your feet.

DICE