Apple won’t be placing a giant booth at the big CES tech trade show starting Sunday in Las Vegas, but its recent sales warning, and the country it blamed for the shortfall, will undoubtedly be the talk of the show.
Typically, Apple casts a shadow over CES due to anticipation for the iPhone maker’s next product, competitors racing to beat them to the market and hundreds of accessory makers looking to make a buck on the iPhone maker’s platform. This year, Apple’s reduced revenue forecast and whether the flagging Chinese economy will hamper other big electronics companies will vie for attendees’ attention.
The consumer electronics trade show is partly known for being divorced from the real world. It’s a place where companies show off early prototypes that may never turn into commercial products. While some attend CES to see game-changing advances like the original Xbox in 2001, the Palm Pre phone in 2009, and 3-D and 4K TVs in more recent years, the real noise is made in backroom meetings among major companies and suppliers of the potentially next big thing.
Many key suppliers are based in China and may have a harder time securing deals this year, as trade tensions flare and companies in the US seek to avoid tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration or do business with partners viewed as a national security threat.
“The health of the Chinese economy and the US economy is an overhang for the show,” said Gary Shapiro, the president and chief executive officer of the Consumer Technology Association, which produces the annual trade show. Still, he said, “there will be discussions with Chinese companies on the buyer-and-seller relationship behind closed doors.” Some of the CTA’s members with business in China have already adjusted and moved manufacturing and sourcing out of the country, Shapiro added.
The CTA has organised a panel dedicated to tariffs and the show floor will have a booth for US attendees to contact the US Trade Representative and the White House and explain how tariffs have affected their businesses.
Apple on Wednesday cut its revenue outlook for the first time in almost two decades, citing weaker demand in China because of the country’s slowing economy and rising trade tensions with the US. A big question is how much of Apple’s problems can be blamed on China’s economy versus Chinese consumers’ preference for home-grown brands. The falloff in demand for iPhones is at least partly explained by its high price and the rise of cheaper, more comparable rival devices in the world’s largest market. The iPhone XS Max, the current top of the iPhone range, starts at 9,599 yuan ($1,400) in China. Flagship phones from Huawei Technologies Co. and Oppo cost from 4,000 to 5,000 yuan, around half that of an iPhone.
“It’s going to be the elephant in the room at CES,” said Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. “This has been dark days for Apple and for the tech industry. I think there’s a lot of questions in regards to the smartphone industry going forward, especially with what Apple said about with demand in China.”
Huawei supplanted Apple as the world’s second most popular smartphone brand in 2018 and remains the market leader in China, comprising 25 percent of smartphone shipments in the third quarter of 2018, according to data from research firm Canalys. Chinese smartphone makers Vivo, Oppo, and Xiaomi Corp. were right behind Huawei, with Apple in fifth place for share of shipments.
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Huawei in particular has become flashpoint in the US trade dispute. The US has said the company poses a national security threat due to its close ties to the Chinese government and that Huawei violated a trade embargo against Iran. Canadian officials, acting at the behest of the US, arrested Huawei’s CFO last month.
The arrest contributed to Apple’s brand damage in China, with some Chinese companies reportedly subsidising employees to buy Huawei devices. Huawei recently demoted and cut the pay of two employees for tweeting from the company’s official account with an iPhone.
“As Trump has locked horns with China, there are social media campaigns on WeChat and Weibo asking people to boycott Apple’s products,” said Loup Ventures Managing Director Gene Munster. “They can be powerful.”
At last year’s show, Huawei was set to reveal that it would bring a flagship smartphone to US carriers including AT&T, but the deal never happened. At the urging of the US government, the carriers cut ties with Huawei due to national security concerns, hurting the phone maker’s ability to grow its business in the country.
Richard Yu, chief executive officer of Huawei’s consumer products division, gave a keynote address at last year’s CES. He used some of his speech to lambaste US carriers for deciding not to sell Huawei’s latest phones. This year, Huawei is an exhibitor at the conference and will be showcasing its new tablet and laptop for the US market.
Apple will just send employees to monitor upstarts and potential future suppliers. Its main domestic rivals, Alphabet’s Google and Amazon will be present at CES, however, with plenty of accessory makers integrating their respective voice assistants. Microsoft will also be on hand to discuss how hardware makers can implement their latest software.
Chinese companies will attend the gathering in force. The CTA said it has seen growth in the presence of large Chinese companies and the exhibit area for Chinese companies represents a similar amount of square footage space as last year, around 13 to 14 percent. There are more than 1,200 Chinese companies exhibiting at the show.
How green is the expo nursery?
Some 400,000 shrubs and 13,000 trees in the on-site nursery
An additional 450,000 shrubs and 4,000 trees to be delivered in the months leading up to the expo
Ghaf, date palm, acacia arabica, acacia tortilis, vitex or sage, techoma and the salvadora are just some heat tolerant native plants in the nursery
Approximately 340 species of shrubs and trees selected for diverse landscape
The nursery team works exclusively with organic fertilisers and pesticides
All shrubs and trees supplied by Dubai Municipality
Most sourced from farms, nurseries across the country
Plants and trees are re-potted when they arrive at nursery to give them room to grow
Some mature trees are in open areas or planted within the expo site
Green waste is recycled as compost
Treated sewage effluent supplied by Dubai Municipality is used to meet the majority of the nursery’s irrigation needs
Construction workforce peaked at 40,000 workers
About 65,000 people have signed up to volunteer
Main themes of expo is ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’ and three subthemes of opportunity, mobility and sustainability.
Expo 2020 Dubai to open in October 2020 and run for six months
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
Three ways to limit your social media use
Clinical psychologist, Dr Saliha Afridi at The Lighthouse Arabia suggests three easy things you can do every day to cut back on the time you spend online.
1. Put the social media app in a folder on the second or third screen of your phone so it has to remain a conscious decision to open, rather than something your fingers gravitate towards without consideration.
2. Schedule a time to use social media instead of consistently throughout the day. I recommend setting aside certain times of the day or week when you upload pictures or share information.
3. Take a mental snapshot rather than a photo on your phone. Instead of sharing it with your social world, try to absorb the moment, connect with your feeling, experience the moment with all five of your senses. You will have a memory of that moment more vividly and for far longer than if you take a picture of it.
The%20specs
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VEZEETA PROFILE
Date started: 2012
Founder: Amir Barsoum
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: HealthTech / MedTech
Size: 300 employees
Funding: $22.6 million (as of September 2018)
Investors: Technology Development Fund, Silicon Badia, Beco Capital, Vostok New Ventures, Endeavour Catalyst, Crescent Enterprises’ CE-Ventures, Saudi Technology Ventures and IFC
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
At a glance
Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year
Welfare: Universal credit health element cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants, building on cuts to the disability and incapacity bill set out earlier this month
Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30
Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse
Defence: New high-tech weaponry, upgrading HM Naval Base in Portsmouth
Housing: Housebuilding to reach its highest in 40 years, with planning reforms helping generate an extra £3.4bn for public finances
Emergency
Director: Kangana Ranaut
Stars: Kangana Ranaut, Anupam Kher, Shreyas Talpade, Milind Soman, Mahima Chaudhry
Rating: 2/5
MATCH INFO
CAF Champions League semi-finals first-leg fixtures
Tuesday:
Primeiro Agosto (ANG) v Esperance (TUN) (8pm UAE)
Al Ahly (EGY) v Entente Setif (ALG) (11PM)
Second legs:
October 23
What is graphene?
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.
It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world's first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.
But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties.
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-finals, first leg
Liverpool v Roma
When: April 24, 10.45pm kick-off (UAE)
Where: Anfield, Liverpool
Live: BeIN Sports HD
Second leg: May 2, Stadio Olimpico, Rome
