Apple is offering discounts on its top-end iPhones and other products in China for the upcoming Chinese New Year, because the U.S. tech giant faces increased competition in one among its key markets.

The Cupertino giant is giving customers 500 Chinese yuan ($68.50) off the iPhone 16 Pro or iPhone 16 Pro Max and 400 yuan off the iPhone 16 or iPhone 16 Plus. The deals also include discounts on the iPhone 14 and iPhone 15.

Apple has long resisted offering discounts through its own retail channels. Instead, third-party sellers would offer special offers at certain times of the 12 months. However, as competition increases, Apple has develop into more inclined to release seasonal offers over the past 12 months.

Apple offered the same Chinese New Year deal last 12 months, and in May the corporate offered 618 deep discounts as a part of the Chinese shopping festival.

The company's latest challenge got here from resurgent Huawei and other domestic brands. According to Canalys, Apple smartphone shipments fell 6% year-on-year in mainland China within the third quarter of 2024. The company's market share also fell to 14% from 16% last 12 months.

Data from Canalys shows Huawei grew shipments 24% year-on-year, while the corporate's market share rose to 16% from 13% a 12 months ago.

Huawei, which was once the world's leading smartphone vendor before U.S. sanctions crippled its cell phone business, has been aggressively releasing latest devices for the reason that second half of 2023. These devices contain chips that many had assumed could be difficult to fabricate as a result of U.S. restrictions on Huawei.

Last 12 months, the Chinese tech company launched a novel tri-foldable phone to showcase its technological prowess.

Happy Friday! Buried on this week's election news was recent data from drugmakers racing to get into the booming weight-loss drug market.

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca and biotech corporations Viking Therapeutics were amongst the businesses presenting encouraging data on their obesity pills and other treatments on the ObesityWeek conference in San Antonio, Texas, in recent days.

Wall Street expects the brand new wave of obesity growth to be driven by pills that might offer more convenience and potentially fewer unwanted side effects, which may lead patients to take the drugs for longer. Analysts expect the marketplace for weight reduction drugs to be value greater than $100 billion by the tip of the last decade as more treatments come to market and help meet demand created by existing ones Injections occur Novo Nordisk And Eli Lilly still struggling to maintain up.

Here's what a few of the data on the pills looked like.

People who took the very best dose of the every day Viking pill lost a median of 6.8% of their body weight after 28 days in comparison with those that received a placebo, in line with results of an early study in 92 people.

That beat investors' expectations of a 5% to six% weight reduction compared with a placebo, William Blair analyst Andy Hsieh said in a note Monday. That bar was set by an experimental pill from Novo Nordisk that showed a 5% weight reduction in 4 weeks, he noted.

Hsieh also said Viking's pill had an “extremely benign tolerability profile,” referring to how well patients tolerated the drug. Six of nine participants who took the very best dose of the drug experienced mild nausea, while just one experienced vomiting.

This could potentially be a bonus over existing anti-obesity injections, which may cause gastrointestinal unwanted side effects so unpleasant that they prompt some patients to stop treatment.

Still, some analysts questioned whether Viking could capture a big share of the competitive weight-loss drug market, particularly raising concerns about its ability to supply enough drugs as a small company.

“We're not saying manufacturing is impossible for Viking, but we think it will be costly because the capital needs and expertise go beyond what Lilly and Novo currently have,” said James Shin, an analyst on the Deutsche Bank said in an announcement on Monday.

But Hsieh said he believes Viking offers “a unique set of attractive properties from the perspective of big pharma.” There has already been speculation in regards to the possibility that Viking could possibly be acquired by a serious pharmaceutical company.

In addition to the pill, Viking can be developing a weight reduction injection and other treatments.

Meanwhile, AstraZeneca said its experimental obesity pill was well tolerated in patients with type 2 diabetes in an early trial, presenting data from multiple trials on three recent treatments in the course of the conference.

After AstraZeneca announced last 12 months that it will license Chinese drugmaker Eccogene's once-daily pill, it said it believed the pill could cause fewer unwanted side effects than injectable treatments from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly.

Patients with diabetes lost 5.8% of their body weight inside 4 weeks of treatment with the AstraZeneca pill.

Some analysts said it was difficult to match the information with other weight-loss drugs because AstraZeneca's trial was small and tested on diabetics relatively than those with obesity. Still, AstraZeneca believes its pill is different from other therapies in development and in the marketplace, especially given how well it’s tolerated by patients.

You can send suggestions, suggestions, story ideas and data to Annika at annikakim.constantino@nbcuni.com.

This is how Americans voted on abortion access

Americans in 10 states voted this week on whether to enshrine or expand access to abortion, greater than two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the US Supreme Court.

Abortion access was a hot topic during this 12 months's presidential campaign, particularly amongst female voters. President-elect Donald Trump recently said he believes the difficulty ought to be left to the states, but has previously expressed support for various proposals for a nationwide ban.

Ballots are still being counted across the country, but here's how Americans voted on abortion, in line with NBC News forecasts:

Arizona: Passed

Arizona voters passed Proposition 139, which establishes a right to abortion within the state before the fetus becomes viable at about 24 weeks.

According to NBC News, the measure passed with 61.2% of the vote, while 38.8% of Arizonans voted against it. So far, about 74% of the expected votes have been counted.

Colorado: Passed

Colorado voters passed Amendment 79, which enshrines the best to abortion within the state structure. It also lifted a ban that prevented public funds from getting used to finance abortions, meaning more Coloradans can get insurance coverage for the procedure.

According to NBC News, Amendment 79 passed with 61.9% of the vote. About 86% of the expected votes have been received.

Florida: Failed

Florida voters rejected Amendment 4, which might have provided a constitutional right to abortion before fetal viability or if the procedure was crucial to guard the patient's health. Abortions are currently banned within the state after the sixth week of pregnancy.

According to NBC News, greater than 57% of Floridians voted for the change. It needed to exceed 60% to pass. About 96% of the expected votes were counted.

Maryland: Passed

Maryland voters enshrined abortion access within the state's structure by passing a right to reproductive freedom, which incorporates “the ability to make and implement decisions to prevent, continue, or terminate one's pregnancy.”

According to NBC News, the measure passed with 74.7% of the vote. About 83% of the expected votes have been received.

Missouri: Passed

Missouri voters passed Amendment 3, enshrining a right to reproductive freedom within the state structure. The amendment gives residents “the right to make and carry out decisions on all matters related to reproductive health care,” including abortion.

According to NBC News, Amendment 3 passed with 51.7% of the vote, while 48.3% of individuals within the state voted against it. Around 99% of the expected votes were received.

Montana: Passed

Montana voters enshrined abortion access of their state's structure, establishing the best to “make and implement decisions about one's pregnancy.”

According to NBC News, the measure passed with 57.6% of the vote, while 42.4% of voters voted against it. About 96% of the expected votes were counted.

Nebraska: Mixed

Nebraska voters didn’t pass an amendment that might have expanded access to abortions until the fetus is viable at about 24 weeks, but they did pass a measure that codified existing abortion restrictions within the state structure. Nebraska bans abortions after 12 weeks unless there’s a medical emergency or the pregnancy is the results of sexual assault or incest.

According to NBC News, nearly 49% of Nebraska voters voted in favor of expanding access to abortion, while 51.4% voted against it. The amendment banning abortions after the primary trimester passed with 55.3% of the vote. About 94% of the expected votes have been received.

Nevada: Passed

Nevada voters passed an amendment banning abortions after the primary trimester unless medically crucial. The amendment also provides exceptions if the pregnancy is the results of incest or sexual assault.

According to NBC News, the amendment passed with 64% of the vote. So far, around 92% of the expected votes have been counted.

New York: Passed

New York voters passed Proposition 1, which protects access to abortion within the state structure. The proposal states that folks mustn’t be denied rights based on their gender, including “sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcome, and reproductive health care and autonomy.”

According to NBC News, nearly 62% of New York voters voted in favor of the proposal, while 38.1% voted against it. About 88% of the expected votes have been received.

South Dakota: Failed

South Dakota voters didn’t approve Amendment G, which might have enshrined a right to abortion within the state structure. All abortions are banned within the state unless they’re medically crucial to save lots of the patient's life.

According to NBC News, greater than 41% of voters within the state voted in favor of the change, while 58.6% of individuals voted against it. Around 99% of the expected votes were counted.

Feel free to send suggestions, suggestions, story ideas and data to Ashley at ashley.caroot@nbcuni.com.

As Wall Street focuses on cloud computing this week, Google outperformed its competitors in growth, a very important sign to investors that the Internet company is gaining traction in the synthetic intelligence space.

Googles The cloud business, which incorporates each infrastructure and software subscriptions, grew 35% year-over-year to $11.35 billion within the third quarter, an acceleration from 29% within the prior period.

Amazon Web Services, the still market leader, grew 19% to $27.45 billion, meaning the corporate is greater than twice the dimensions of Google Cloud but growing only about half as fast. Runner-up Microsoft said revenue from Azure and other cloud services rose 33% year-over-year.

Five of the six trillion-dollar technology firms reported results this week, including the AI ​​chip maker Nvidia as an outlier. Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft all the time report around the identical time, giving investors an outline of how the cloud wars are evolving.

“While Alphabet has often been criticized as Johnny-One-Note for its reliance on digital advertising, Google Cloud's rapid growth has begun to diversify the company's revenues,” analysts at Argus Research, who recommend buying the stock, wrote in an article report from Oct. 31.

The cloud has long been a money sink for Google, but that's now not the case.

Google reported a cloud operating margin of 17% within the third quarter, after turning a profit for the primary time last 12 months. It “significantly exceeded expectations,” Melissa Otto, head of technology, media and telecommunications sector research at Visible Alpha, said on CNBC this week. She said she wasn't sure the corporate could maintain that level of profitability.

The opposite is true at Amazon, where nearly all of its overall profits have long been based on AWS.

AWS' third-quarter operating margin was 38%, which analysts at Bernstein called a “whopping” number. Executives have been cautious about hiring and have dropped less popular AWS services. Additionally, in early 2024, Amazon prolonged the useful lifetime of its servers from five to 6 years, a change that increased its operating margin by 200 basis points, or 2 percentage points.

Microsoft This week the corporate began providing investors with more detailed details about its Azure public cloud. In the past, when the corporate reported Azure revenue growth, that number also included sales of mobility and security services in addition to data analytics software Power BI. Microsoft, the lead investor in ChatGPT developer OpenAI, is getting an enormous boost from AI services.

“Demand continues to exceed our available capacity,” Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said on the corporate’s earnings call.

While Azure growth will moderate somewhat in the present quarter, Hood said, it should pick up in the primary half of 2025 “as our capital investments result in an increase in available AI capacity to meet more of the growing demand.” .”

Amazon is experiencing an identical dynamic.

“I think pretty much everyone has less capacity than they demand these days, and it's really chips in particular that are the area where companies could use more supply,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on his company's earnings call .

In order to cut back the load, Amazon sometimes uses its own processors along with Nvidia's graphics processors (GPUs). Jassy said customers are showing interest in Trainium 2, the corporate's second-generation chip for training models.

“We reached out to our production partners several times to produce much more than we originally planned,” he said.

Google is now within the sixth generation of its own custom tensor processing units for AI. CEO Sundar Pichai told analysts that he frolicked with the TPU team.

“I'm really excited about the forward-looking roadmap, but all of this allows us to both plan for the future and really drive an optimized architecture for it,” he said.

Microsoft introduced its own AI chip within the cloud, Maia, a 12 months ago. The company has began using Maia chips to power its own services, but has not yet made them available for rental to customers, a spokesman said.

Analysts at DA Davidson said in a note this week that they don't see this as a battle Microsoft can win in its battle against Amazon and Google. You have a neutral rating at Microsoft.

oraclewhich is usually ranked fourth amongst U.S. cloud infrastructure firms, is anticipated to report quarterly leads to December. In his last report oracle Cloud infrastructure revenue rose 45% to $2.2 billion, compared with 42% growth within the previous quarter.

Oracle recently partnered with its three larger cloud competitors to make its databases available on their services. This move, which Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison said in recent earnings calls, “will accelerate the growth of our database business in the coming years.”

REGARD: Otto: The scale of Alphabet's cloud business and spending on AI infrastructure can be critical