By
Chimamanda U. Martha
May 10th, 2024
Despite the latest disruption in its supply chain and operations due to the coronavirus pandemic, Apple continues its investments in new-age start-ups and acquired AI start-up Voysis. AAPL stock is slightly down.
Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) has been one of the most affected companies since the coronavirus outbreak across the globe. With Apple’s major manufacturing coming out of China, the company’s operations suffered critically in the last two months.
Amidst the global market correction, the AAPL stock corrected nearly 30% thereby eroding $400 billion from its market cap. However, on Monday, April 6, the AAPL stock made a surprise surge of 8% in its biggest single-day rally in the last two weeks. With this, the Apple share price jumped from $240 to $262 giving a ray of hope to its investors. But on Tuesday, the situation changed. AAPL lost 1.16% to trade at $259.43. Today, in the pre-market, it is slightly falling by 0.24%.
However, it is not only about China’s production slash for Apple. With the coronavirus pandemic getting dominant in the U.S. and all across Europe, Apple had to shut its stores in these regions. Reportedly, the company has also delayed the launch of its iPhone SE2 scheduled earlier in March 2020. Apple has specifically curated the affordable iPhone SE2 for India and other developing nations. Besides, the phone’s manufacturing will happen in Apple’s India manufacturing unit. However, with India in lockdown since the last week of March, the plans have been delayed for an indefinite period.
On the other hand, the good thing is that China has reported major control over the COVID-19 spread. Thus, the Asian economic giant has resumed work at many of its manufacturing units. This is likely to get the ball rolling again for the Apple products.
If we go as er Apple’s routine yearly announcements, we can also expect a 5G enabled iPhone this September.
Apple Acquires AI Start-Up Voysis
While Apple is currently facing some tough times with its business operations, this has not stopped the Cupertino-based giant to explore new horizons and invest further in emerging companies. Recently, Apple acquired an artificial intelligence startup Voysis that builds systems for providing better responses to voice commands.
Reportedly, Apple will tap the start-up’s abilities to improve his voice assistant Siri. Apple is known for buying smaller companies from time to time without disclosing its plans in the market.
Voysis, a Dublin-based company, specializes in enhancing digital assistants to understand the everyday language. Earlier, Voysis used to market its services wanting to develop to improve their voice-powered apps. Their work particularly focused on apps in the retail and shopping sector.
Moreover, the biggest plus point of Voysis’ technology is its compact size. Reportedly, the Voysis solution fits just in 25MB memory, capable of running on the edges or any local smartphone without needing an internet connection.
It looks like Apple could further capitalize on these solutions in its upcoming products or services.