NexOptic Technology Corp (TSXV: NXO)
You’ll Never See The World The Same Way Again
In a recent survey of 1,000 Americans, Piper Sandler found that only 10% of respondents planned to upgrade to an Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) 5G iPhone this year.
Of those planning to pick up a new 5G model, half were inspired by the 5G feature and the other half simply need a phone upgrade.
Only 10% of current iPhone owners expect to upgrade their device.
Analyst Harsh Kumar says the numbers are lower than expected heading into today’s iPhone launch event.
Nearly a quarter of those surveyed liked the Apple watch 6 but only 8% plan to upgrade or purchase due to budget concerns. Twelve percent of respondents said the lower-cost Apple Watch SE makes them more likely to buy a Watch model.
Piper maintains an Outperform rating and $130 price target on Apple.
Apple’s virtual iPhone event kicks off today starting at 10 AM PDT.
AAPL shares are up 1.4% pre-market to $126.10.
Reuters sources say the China Securities Regulatory Commission is investigating Ant Group (NYSE:BABA) for a potential conflict of interest.
The regulator is looking into the role of Ant’s payment platform Alipay, which was the only third-party route for retail investors to buy into five Chinese funds investing in the IPO.
According to CSRC guidelines effective October 1, mutual funds shouldn’t sell products related to their existing or potential business interests.
Sources say the probe is unlikely to block Ant’s IPO, but it is delaying the process.
In a statement to Bloomberg, Ant Group says it’s making “steady progress” in acquiring regulatory approvals, and that any “speculation on our timeline is unsubstantiated.”
Last month, Bloomberg sources said Ant wants to raise $35B in its dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong at a $250B valuation. The amount would make Ant the world’s largest IPO.
Retired Alibaba chairman Jack Ma holds majority control of Ant Group. Alibaba holds a 32.65% non-controlling stake.
Confirming recent data from research firm Canalys, both Gartner and IDC reported that PC sales recorded their strongest growth in a decade during the third quarter.
The surge was driven by remote work, at-home schooling and studying, as well as entertainment during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It used to be the case that smartphones were king,” said Jitesh Ubrani, IDC’s research manager for Mobile Device Trackers. “At the start of the pandemic, people pulled out their old PCs in many cases and they realized that this PC is really too old to be productive.”
Overall, PC shipments rose 14.6% to 81.3M units, according to IDC, while Gartner pegged the increase at 3.6% to 71.4M units (though its data excluded Chromebooks for the core quarterly report). 16.5M PCs were shipped to the U.S., an 11.4% increase over the same period last year.
The top five companies for global PC shipments (by units): Lenovo (OTCPK:LNVGF) +19.3M; HP (NYSE:HPQ) +18.7M; Dell (NYSE:DELL) +12M; Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) +6.9M; Acer 6M.
Nokia (NYSE:NOK) will provide Taiwanese mobile operator, Chunghwa Telecom (NYSE:CHT) with a range of products from its innovative small cells portfolio to support latter’s initiative to deliver comprehensive 5G coverage.
CHT is the first operator in Taiwan to deploy a 5G non-standalone small cells solution enabling instant 5G coverage. Nokia has already commenced deployment and has installed 140 5G small cells to date.
The company has been a long-term partner of Chunghwa, since the 2G era. The deal will see Nokia supply CHT with its flexible AirScale indoor Radio (ASiR) solution for better indoor coverage and capacity, as well as its AirScale micro RRH for outdoor and urban hot spots. These will be deployed to complement the existing base of over 2,500 sets of 4G small cells.
With enterprise being a key 5G market, CHT is working closely with local small to medium-size enterprises to provide secure 5G coverage to enable industry 4.0 automation.
Synopsys (SNPS +0.2%) collaborates with Intel (INTC -0.1%) to achieve successful system-level interoperability between the Synopsys DesignWare Controller and PHY IP for PCI Express 5.0 and future Intel Xeon Scalable processors.
The DesignWare IP for PCI Express 5.0 delivers industry’s lowest latency and highest throughput with optimized power consumption for short and long channels.
Future Intel Xeon Scalable processors deliver enhanced performance, throughput, and CPU frequencies for AI-infused, analytics, storage & networking workloads
“The growth of high-performance computing applications converged with AI workloads requires innovative data connectivity and processing technologies that deliver low latency and fast speeds,” said Jim Pappas, Director of Technology Initiatives at Intel.
