Alphabet Inc’s Google is scouting for suppliers in India to assemble its Pixel smartphones as it borrows from Apple Inc’s playbook of diversifying beyond China.
Google has initiated early conversations with companies including homegrown Lava International Ltd and Dixon Technologies India Ltd, as well as Foxconn Technology Group’s (富士康科技集團) Indian unit Bharat FIH, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named as the matter is private.
Google would be the latest global technology player to move production to India. The potential partners it is talking to have won Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s production-linked financial incentives.
Photo: AP
Apple has used the program to widen its supplier base in India and tripled iPhone output to more than US$7 billion in the fiscal year through March.
Modi has been pitching India as an alternative manufacturing hub, as more companies are becoming wary of the risks of depending on China after its harsh COVID-19 lockdowns and amid its trade dispute with Washington. Modi is scheduled to visit the US this week where his delegation is expected to hold talks on topics including a removal of tech trade barriers between the two countries.
Last month, Indian Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw met with Google CEO Sundar Pichai at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, for a conversation that revolved around Modi’s local manufacturing drive and India’s state-backed technology push.
Key Google executives who visited India this month for the partnership talks included Ana Corrales, operating chief of its consumer hardware arm, and Maggie Wei, a senior director of global sustaining product operations, the people said.
Representatives for Lava, Dixon, Google and Foxconn did not respond to requests for comment.
Google built about 9 million Pixel smartphones last year, Counterpoint Research said, and the discussions in India underscore its plans to move production beyond China and Vietnam.
The Pixel is among the most sophisticated smartphones, and Google uses its flagship hardware product to showcase what its Android operating system and apps are capable of when optimized.
India is a key growth market for Google’s services, but the company has largely watched from the sidelines as cheaper Chinese phones have dominated the region.
Local assembly could help drive up Pixel sales, and if the phone effort is successful, Google could also move production of other hardware such as speakers to India, the people said.
However, there is no certainty that Google’s talks would result in a deal, the people said.
Vincent Wei led fellow Singaporean farmers around an empty Malaysian plot, laying out plans for a greenhouse and rows of leafy vegetables. What he pitched was not just space for crops, but a lifeline for growers struggling to make ends meet in a city-state with high prices and little vacant land. The future agriculture hub is part of a joint special economic zone launched last year by the two neighbors, expected to cost US$123 million and produce 10,000 tonnes of fresh produce annually. It is attracting Singaporean farmers with promises of cheaper land, labor and energy just over the border.
US actor Matthew McConaughey has filed recordings of his image and voice with US patent authorities to protect them from unauthorized usage by artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, a representative said earlier this week. Several video clips and audio recordings were registered by the commercial arm of the Just Keep Livin’ Foundation, a non-profit created by the Oscar-winning actor and his wife, Camila, according to the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Many artists are increasingly concerned about the uncontrolled use of their image via generative AI since the rollout of ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools. Several US states have adopted
A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while California Governor Gavin Newsom of the Democratic Party maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears would lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other US state — a few hundred, by some estimates. About half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly US$350 billion budget, comes from the top 1 percent of earners. A large healthcare union is attempting to place a proposal before
KEEPING UP: The acquisition of a cleanroom in Taiwan would enable Micron to increase production in a market where demand continues to outpace supply, a Micron official said Micron Technology Inc has signed a letter of intent to buy a fabrication site in Taiwan from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion to expand its production of memory chips. Micron would take control of the P5 site in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼) and plans to ramp up DRAM production in phases after the transaction closes in the second quarter, the company said in a statement on Saturday. The acquisition includes an existing 12 inch fab cleanroom of 27,871m2 and would further position Micron to address growing global demand for memory solutions, the company said. Micron expects the transaction to
RSS