It’s a wrap: News this week (May 27-June 2)

There have been multiple developments on the tech front this week — from AI taking center stage at the annual Computex event to Isro’s navigation satellite launch. This is the list of the most important developments this week for a quick catch-up:

Foxconn to manufacture iPhones in Bangalore

Taiwanese electronics company Foxconn which makes products for Apple will start manufacturing iPhone units by April 2024 at the Devanahalli plant in Bangalore. About 300 acres of land in the Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) industrial area has been earmarked for the project. As per Karnataka heavy and medium industries minister MB Patil, the government will hand over the entire land by July 1.

The company will complete the plant construction in three phases and manufacture 2 crore iPhone units per year. Foxconn has already paid 30% of the land cost (₹90 crore) to the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB).

Isro’s navigation satellite launch

The Indian Space Research Organisation on Monday successfully launched a navigation satellite for Navigation by India Constellation (NavIC). The NavIC series of satellites offer civilian and defence navigation, positioning, and timing services.

The 2,232 kg navigation satellite NVS-01 was aboard the geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle GSLV-F12. NVS-01 is the first of the five satellites to add to India’e regional navigation system.

Further, the space agency is also preparing for a July launch of the Chandrayaan-3 mission. As per The Hindu report this week, the Chandrayaan-3 has reached the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota. The Chandrayaan-2 mission was launched in 2019 to showcase safe landing and roving on the lunar surface but the lander crashed while attempting to land on Moon’s surface.

In more space-related news, Indian space tech company Pixxel secured a $36 million Series B funding, led by Google. This also marked the tech giant's first investment in the country’s space tech startup.

AI grabs spotlight at Computex

The annual computer trade show Computex was held in-person at Taiwan between May 30 and June 2. Many announcements made at the event centered around artificial intelligence as several firms introduced their hardware offerings to support next-generation AI applications.

Most significant announcements include – Nvidia’s new supercomputer, MediaTek-Nvidia partnership for AI car technology, Arm’s chip design for AI applications, and Intel’s VPU-integrated Meteor Lake processor.

Reddit’s API fee for third-party apps

Social media platform Reddit will charge developers for direct access to the company’s data and content. On Wednesday, Christian Selig, the developer of iOS Reddit client Apollo posted on social media that Reddit’s new API pricing may put him out of business.

Reddit made an announcement last month regarding its API rules, mentioning the increasing use of its platform by AI companies for training large language models. “The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Reddit CEO Steve Huffman told The New York Times. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”