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Apple CEO Tim Cook holds a new iPhone 15 Pro during the Wonderlust project launch event at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, Sept. 12, 2023.

Loren Elliott | Reuters

Shipments of iPhones are likely to take a hit this year due largely to the growing popularity of foldable phones and Huawei’s resurgence in the Chinese market, says top Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of TF International Securities.

Apple, which became the top smartphone vendor in China last year for the first time, trimmed shipments of “key upstream semiconductor components” to around 200 million units, translating to a 15% year-over-year drop in iPhone shipments, according to Kuo’s blog post on Tuesday about his latest supply chain survey.

Kuo wrote that Apple’s weekly shipments in China have dropped by 30% to 40% from a year earlier in recent weeks, “and this downward trend is expected to continue.”

“Apple may have the most significant decline among the major global mobile phone brands in 2024,” Kuo wrote.

Huawei’s comeback as a leading smartphone maker coupled with the “increasing preference for foldable phones among high-end users as their first choice” in the Chinese market are key reasons for the iPhone’s potential decline, Kuo wrote. New phone designs integrating generative artificial intelligence are also altering the market.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Samsung has upped shipments of its new Galaxy S24 series this year by 5% to 10% as it sees “higher-than-expected” demand thanks to its AI-powered features, Kuo wrote. Apple, meanwhile, has lowered its shipment forecast for the iPhone 15 in the first half of 2024, he added.

With no major changes to the iPhone’s designs expected until 2025 “at the earliest,” Kuo wrote, Apple’s “shipment momentum and ecosystem growth” are poised to diminish in the meantime.

Apple is scheduled to report quarterly results on Thursday. Analysts are expecting to see revenue growth of just 0.6% from a year earlier to $117.91 billion, according to LSEG, formerly Refinitiv. And average projections show Apple recording single-digit growth for the rest of the calendar year.

Apple shares fell 1.7% on Tuesday to $188.45.

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Alibaba says smart car spinoff Banma plans to list shares in Hong Kong

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Alibaba says smart car spinoff Banma plans to list shares in Hong Kong

Alibaba’s global headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, on May 9, 2024.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Alibaba-backed Banma, a provider of technology for smart cars, is planning to list shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, according to a filing.

In a filing dated Aug. 21, Alibaba said it currently owns about 45% of Banma and will continue to control over 30% of the company’s stock after the listing. Banma said in a filing that the announcement does not guarantee a listing will take place.

Banma, founded in 2015 and based in Shanghai, is “principally engaged in the development of smart cockpit solutions,” Alibaba’s filing says. In March, Alibaba announced that it was deepening its partnership with BMW in China, building an artificial intelligence engine for cars with a solution built by Banma, “Alibaba’s intelligent cockpit solution provider.”

In addition to Alibaba, Banma is backed by investors including China’s SAIC Motor, SDIC Investment Management and Yunfeng Capital, a Chinese investment firm started by Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma.

Alibaba in the past referred to Banma as a joint venture “between us and SAIC Motor.”

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These little robots are changing the way solar farms are built, saving time and money

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These little robots are changing the way solar farms are built, saving time and money

Clean energy gets a robot boost

Private renewable energy projects are still moving forward despite a pullback in government support, and new technology is making that construction more efficient.

Solar farms, for example, take meticulous planning and surveying, involve long hours and require significant labor. Now, robots are taking on the job.

CivDot is a four-wheeled robot that can mark up to 3,000 layout points per day and is accurate within 8 millimeters. The machine can ride over rugged terrain and work through rough weather.

It is the brainchild of California-based Civ Robotics.

“Our secret sauce and our core technology is actually in the navigation and the geospatial — being able to literally mark coordinates within less than a quarter inch, which is very, very difficult in an uneven terrain, outdoor surfaces, and out in the desert,” said Tom Yeshurun, CEO of Civ Robotics.

The data for manual surveying is uploaded into the Civ software, then the operator chooses the area they want to mark and presses go. The robot does the rest, saving both time and money.

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“The manual surveying equipment, if you use that in the field and you have three crews, they will need three land surveying handheld receivers. That alone is already equal to how much we lease our machines in the field, and all the labor savings is just another benefit,” Yeshurun said.

Civ Robotics has more than 100 of these robots in the field that are primarily being used by renewable energy companies, but they are also used in oil and gas. It is currently working with Bechtel Corporation on several solar projects.

“These were usually pretty highly paid field engineers that we would send out there, and they might be able to do 250 or 350 pile marks a day. With the CivDot robot, we’re able to do about 1250 a day,” said Kelley Brown, vice president at Bechtel.

Brown said the company has used the robot in thick and muddy terrain in Texas and out in the deserts of Nevada.

“And so you have to think about things like the tires, or you may have to think about clearance. Are you trying to get over existing brush and such, across the solar field? So that’s one thing that we contemplate. I think the other is, you know, this runs on batteries, so you’ve got to contemplate battery swaps,” she added.

Civ Robotics is backed by Alleycorp, FF Venture Capital, Bobcat Company, Newfund Capital, Trimble Ventures, and Converge. Total VC funding to date is $12.5 million.

There are other robotics solutions for markings, but the competition is mostly doing work on highways and soccer fields. Yeshurun said those rivals can’t handle the terrains that the solar industry faces as it expands into new territories.

 CNBC producer Lisa Rizzolo contributed to this piece.

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Sony raises PlayStation 5 prices in U.S. as tariffs start to hit

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Sony raises PlayStation 5 prices in U.S. as tariffs start to hit

The PlayStation DualSense controller and PlayStation 5 console.

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

PlayStation 5 game consoles will cost $50 more in the U.S. starting this week, Sony announced on Wednesday.

The price for an entry-level PlayStation 5 Digital Edition will increase from $450 to $500, and a PlayStation 5 with a disc drive is going up to $550 from $500. Sony’s high-end PlayStation 5 Pro will cost $750, up from $700. The PlayStation 5 was first released in 2020.

President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plan announced in April went into effect earlier this month on most countries. The U.S. currently has a 30% tariff on imports from China, and higher tariffs on goods from the world’s second-largest economy are currently “paused,” according to the administration. Sony’s home country of Japan was hit with a 15% tariff.

While Sony didn’t attribute the increase to Trump’s tariffs, consumer companies have been warning for months that higher prices are on the way.

“Similar to many global businesses, we continue to navigate a challenging economic environment,” Sony said in its blog post.

The company said that retail prices for console accessories such as controllers haven’t changed.

Earlier this month, Sony officials said the company was working on supply chain diversification to combat U.S. tariffs, and said that the console hardware it sells in the U.S. is produced outside of China.

“It is difficult to speak to our hardware pricing strategy as that has implications for our future competitive strategy,” ” Sony officials said, according to a translated transcript of a call with financial analysts posted on its website. “But we intend to take a flexible approach to such decision-making by monitoring consumer price sensitivity as we think about total full-year segment profits, lifetime value, manufacturing, units sold in, and our content sales potential.”

In May, Microsoft raised the price of its Xbox video game consoles. Nintendo delayed pre-orders of its Switch 2 by a few weeks in April, attributing the delay to tariffs. Although Nintendo did not raise the price of its new consoles, it hiked the price of the original Switch earlier this month.

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