Apple Inc and Volkswagen AG (VW) late last year struck a deal that let the technology giant equip VW vans with self-driving technology to transport Apple employees between offices, a person familiar with the matter said.
The agreement is part of an internal Apple program called Project Titan that started in 2015 as an ambitious effort to build an electric vehicle.
After facing development and management problems, Apple shifted its focus to autonomous technologies that control vehicles, Bloomberg News reported in 2016.
The New York Times reported on the deal with Volkswagen earlier on Wednesday. Representatives for Apple and Volkswagen declined to comment.
Apple tests dozens of Lexus SUVs on public roads in California with its self-driving technology, but has also applied the technology to a shuttle service it is developing to transport staff between office buildings at its Cupertino, California, headquarters.
Apple is using fewer than two dozen of VW’s T6 Transporter vans, which are being customized by the technology giant, the person said.
Apple originally had hundreds of hardware and software engineers, designers and car battery experts on staff to build a car to take on Tesla Inc and Detroit, but has since slimmed the Titan teams down to people working on self-driving camera sensors and underlying software.
QUALCOMM
Separately, Qualcomm Inc is to unveil a dedicated chipset to power standalone virtual-reality and augmented-reality headsets as it seeks to break into new businesses beyond smartphones, people familiar with the matter said.
The announcement could happen as early as next week at the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, California, said the people, who refused to be named.
The chip, to be called Snapdragon XR1, would be a system-on-a-chip with a main processing unit, a graphics processor, security functions and components to handle artificial intelligence tasks.
The chip will also tackle voice control and head-tracking interaction with headsets.
The product is designed to make it easier for hardware manufacturers to build headsets that are cheap, powerful and energy-efficient.
Over the past few months, the virtual-reality headset industry has moved toward standalone devices rather than expensive models that must be tethered to high-powered personal computers.
Facebook Inc launched the Oculus Go with a Qualcomm smartphone chip, while Google has also partnered on standalone headsets that use a Qualcomm phone processor.
The largest maker of mobile-phone chips is seeking new sources of revenue as growth in smartphones dries up and competition intensifies.
The San Diego-based chipmaker is to team up with a number of existing headset makers that plan to include the chip, including HTC Corp (宏達電) for its Vive headset and Vuzix Corp, which makes augmented-reality headsets, the people said.
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
Taiwanese manufacturers have a chance to play a key role in the humanoid robot supply chain, Tongtai Machine and Tool Co (東台精機) chairman Yen Jui-hsiung (嚴瑞雄) said yesterday. That is because Taiwanese companies are capable of making key parts needed for humanoid robots to move, such as harmonic drives and planetary gearboxes, Yen said. This ability to produce these key elements could help Taiwanese manufacturers “become part of the US supply chain,” he added. Yen made the remarks a day after Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) are jointly
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) expects its addressable market to grow by a low single-digit percentage this year, lower than the overall foundry industry’s 15 percent expansion and the global semiconductor industry’s 10 percent growth, the contract chipmaker said yesterday after reporting the worst profit in four-and-a-half years in the fourth quarter of last year. Growth would be fueled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, a moderate recovery in consumer electronics and an increase in semiconductor content, UMC said. “UMC’s goal is to outgrow our addressable market while maintaining our structural profitability,” UMC copresident Jason Wang (王石) told an online earnings
MARKET SHIFTS: Exports to the US soared more than 120 percent to almost one quarter, while ASEAN has steadily increased to 18.5 percent on rising tech sales The proportion of Taiwan’s exports directed to China, including Hong Kong, declined by more than 12 percentage points last year compared with its peak in 2020, the Ministry of Finance said on Thursday last week. The decrease reflects the ongoing restructuring of global supply chains, driven by escalating trade tensions between Beijing and Washington. Data compiled by the ministry showed China and Hong Kong accounted for 31.7 percent of Taiwan’s total outbound sales last year, a drop of 12.2 percentage points from a high of 43.9 percent in 2020. In addition to increasing trade conflicts between China and the US, the ministry said
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