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NO K I A (NOKIA HE) and Kyndryl (KD N) have extended their partnership for three years after clocking up more than 100 customers for automating factories using 5G wireless networks, following their first tie-up a year earlier

Big technology firms have been partnering with telecom gear makers such as Nokia to sell private 5G networks to customers, mostly in the manufacturing business but only a few companies have been able to get any traction in the business that is expected to grow by billions of dollars every year

“We grew the business significantly last year with the number of customers and number of networks,” Chris Johnson, head of Nokia’s enterprise business, told Reuters The companies said some customers were now coming back to put private networks into more of their factories after the initial one

I n D o w C h e m i c a l ’s p e t r o c h e m i c a l p r o c e s s i n g p l a n t i n Te x a s , t h e p r i v a t e w i r e l e s s n e t w o r k i n c r e a s e d w o r k e r s a f e t y, e n a b l e d r e m o t e a u d i o a n d v i d e o c o l l a b o r a t i o n , p e r s o n n e l t r a c k - i n g , a n d v e h i c l e t e l e m a t i c s , t h e c o mp a n i e s s a i d Dow is now planning to expand the same coverage to dozens of its factories, said Paul Savill, Kyndryl’s global prac-

Apple’s effor ts to diversify manufac turing in India face stumbling blocks, repor ts FT

ing iPhones, according to a person familiar with the matter This 50 per cent “yield” fares badly compared with Apple s goal for zero defects

The report highlights that operations in India are not running at the pace seen in China where suppliers and government officials took a “whatever it takes” approach to win iPhone orders Apple engineers have also been housed at city-centre hotels in Chennai two hours away from the factories where they are working, requiring four hours of daily commuting with occasionally poor Wi-Fi connections along the route

Pr Ofit Report

Apple’s efforts to reduce its reliance on China by increasing production in India have hit a roadblock, according to a report published in the Financial Times The report highlights the challenges faced by the tech giant in its efforts to establish its supply chain in the country Apple has been sending engineers and product designers from California and China to factories in southern India to train locals and help establish production This is in line with the company s efforts to diversify its supply chain strategy, following months of Covid-19 disruption that led to a decline in quarterly revenues

While Apple has been producing lower-end iPhones in India since 2017, last September was significant with Indian suppliers building flagship models within weeks of their launch in China However, its experience in recent months has demonstrated the scale of the work to be done in the country The report states that at a casings factory in Hosur run by Indian conglomerate Tata, just about one out of every two components coming off the production line is in good enough shape to eventually be sent to Foxconn Apple’s assembly partner for build-

Beijing to suppor t key firms in building ChatGPT-like AI models

pr ofit report tice leader

“Our pipeline has been growing fundamentally faster than it has been in the last 12 months,” he said “We now have over 100 customers that we re working with in the private wireless space in around 24 different countries ”

After getting spun off from IBM (IBM N) in 2021, Kyndryl has focused on building its wireless network business and has signed several agreements with cloud providers

The size of the global private 5G network market is expected to reach $41 02 billion by 2030 from 1 38 billion in 2021 according to a study by Grand View Research

The companies have also developed automated industrial drones that can monitor a site with different kinds of sensors such as identifying chemicals and video recognition as part of surveillance

While drones have not yet been deployed commercially yet customers are showing interest in rugged, industrialized non-stop automated drone surveillance, Johnson said

China s capital Beijing will support leading enterprises in building large artificial intelligence (AI) models that can challenge ChatGPT, the city s economy and information technology bureau said on Monday

The city will support key firms to invest in building an open source framework and accelerate the supply of basic data, it said in a statement The bureau also said that 1 048 core AI companies, or 29% of the country’s total, were located in Beijing as of October last year, and that it would look into ways to cultivate talent and conduct research in areas such as ethical governance Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s hit chatbot ChatGPT has become the fastestgrowing consumer application in history and is rapidly raising awareness in China about how advanced U S AI is While residents in the country are unable to create OpenAI accounts to access the artificial intelligence-powered (AI) chatbot, firms are rushing to integrate the technology into their products and Chinese tech giants such as Baidu (9888 HK) and Alibaba Group (9988 HK) are gearing up to launch rival services Chinese regulators have not commented on ChatGPT so far, though state media has warned about stock market risks amid a frenzy over local ChatGPT-concept stocks

Despite these challenges, analysts say India’s potential for Apple is huge The report quotes a consultant at Bain, who estimates that manufacturing exports from India could more than double from $418bn in 2022 to more than $1tn in 2028 driven by policy support and low costs It estimates that electronics exports alone will grow at an annual rate of up to 40 per cent Vivek Wadhwa, a Silicon Valley-based entrepreneur and academic who last month met with government officials including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said the central government is encouraging businesses to take advantage of Apple s need to diversify from China

Recent job ads from Apple make clear it has major ambitions in the country One ad tells prospective employees they will grow nascent operations in India to service all product lines of business at Apple while simultaneously building the factory of the future” “India” was also mentioned 15 times in Apple’s earnings call earlier this month, with CEO Tim Cook calling the market “hugely exciting and a major focus and confirming plans to open the first Apple Stores in the country soon

According to the FT report Apple declined to comment