A few days ago, Polestar officially released the latest research results. The results show that 34% of consumers are in favor of stopping the sale of fuel vehicles in 2030.
Polestar: Survey shows that 1/3 of consumers support stopping the sale of gasoline vehicles by 2030
Nearly half of Australians (44%) plan to buy an electric vehicle within 10 years, with a quarter planning to buy within five years, the survey showed. Nearly half (48%) of respondents want to ban the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles from 2035. More than a third (34%) of consumers want to ban the sale of petrol vehicles from 2030.
The survey, conducted by GlobeScan and funded by Polestar, surveyed 18,000 ordinary people in 19 countries in Australia, Europe, North America and Asia, and the sample was designed to be nationally representative across all demographics. As a publicly traded EV brand, from Polestar’s perspective, the findings clearly benefit the brand.
It is worth mentioning that in the Polestar survey, consumers from China ranked 8th among 19 countries in their support for stopping the sale of fuel vehicles, while the penetration rate of new energy vehicles has exceeded 70% of Norwegian consumers. , the support rate for stopping the sale of google play downloads fuel vehicles ranked second from the bottom of the 19 countries.
Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath believes a global ban on petrol vehicles must come soon: “With only 1.5% of vehicles on the road today being electric, it’s clear that we’re living in an electric vehicle bubble, not Electric vehicle boom time. More importantly, automakers must act now, not wait for policy changes.”
IT Home has learned that Polestar currently produces two electric vehicles – Polestar 1 and Polestar 2. From 2022, Polestar will launch a new pure electric product every year, Polestar 3, Polestar 4 and Polestar 2. Star 5 is already planned.
A string of share buybacks by Tencent Holdings Ltd. failed to revive investor confidence in the online gaming giant, whose shares are approaching 2018 lows.
Tencent
Tencent, China’s most valuable company by market value, spent nearly $1 billion buying back shares in the past month, bringing this year’s total to $2.3 billion (16.2 billion yuan), the data showed. Tencent’s share repurchase pace began to pick up after major shareholder Prosus NV said at the end of June that it would gradually reduce its stake in Tencent.
According to foreign media calculations, although Tencent bought the company’s stock every day this month, its stock price has fallen by more than 60% from its peak in January 2021, and its market value has decreased by about 580 billion US dollars (about 4.1 trillion yuan), becoming the largest market in the world. The stock that has evaporated the most from global market capitalization since then. Factors such as macroeconomics have become the main obstacles facing Tencent.
Tencent’s buyback is difficult to reviews apps prevent the stock price from falling
“Tencent is under pressure from major shareholders to sell shares, and buybacks have worked, but not enough support,” said Banny Lam, head of research at CEB International Investment Corp. “It still needs some policy support from the government to be able to turn things around.”
Tencent’s second-quarter revenue suffered its first-ever decline as the company grappled with macroeconomic conditions affecting its main business. Despite the approval of the new game, investors remain skeptical about the company’s growth prospects and the sell-off of Prosus. Prosus said on September 8 that it had sold 1.1 million shares of Tencent, reducing its stake to 27.99%. A previous filing also showed that Prosus sold more than 3.9 million Tencent shares in the first half.
There are rumors that Tencent is considering divesting more of its sprawling portfolio in an attempt to fund a series of share buybacks and refocus its growth strategy. In this regard, Tencent responded that there is currently no plan or timetable for reducing its shareholding.
Recently, Germany has opened the era of “hydrogen trains”, and a batch of Coradia iLint hydrogen fuel cell trains have entered passenger service along the 100% hydrogen route in Lower Saxony.
Following successful operational trials, a fleet of 14 Coradia iLint hydrogen fuel-cell trains will enter passenger service in Lower Saxony, Germany, by the end of 2022
The passenger service trial started in September 2018 and lasted almost two years with just two trains. Now officially in public service and expanded to 14 trains, the project was designed by Alstom engineers at the regional train facility in Salzgitter, Germany, and the Traction Systems Centre in Tarbes, France. They are purchased by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Transport and are owned by the state-run Landesnahverkehrsgesellschaft Niedersachsen mbH (LNVG) railway bureau, which in 2012 started looking for alternatives to diesel locomotives and has committed to buying only non-diesel (hydrogen fuel cells or batteries) from now on electric) trains.
The world’s first hydrogen-powered train line starts operation in Germany: only discharges steam and condensed water, with a maximum speed of 140km / h
The hydrogen-powered train is produced by French company Alstom, which has been developing hydrogen-powered battery trains since 2013. The train is equipped with hydrogen fuel tanks and batteries. The way it works is that the hydrogen emitted from the tank on the roof reacts directly with the oxygen in the air to generate electricity, which is then stored in the battery and used as power for the train.
Officials say that 1 kilogram of hydrogen fuel for this car can get the power equivalent to 4.5 kilograms of diesel fuel. As long as the fuel tank is filled with hydrogen once, it can travel up to 1,000 kilometers, with a top speed of 140 kilometers per hour and a normal speed of 80-120 kilometers per hour. Moreover, the train is not only relatively quiet, but also has no exhaust gas, and only emits steam and condensed water.
The trains will be refilled daily at Linde’s hydrogen filling station in Bremervörde, which has 64 high-pressure (500 Bar) gas tanks, 6 compressors and 2 fuel pumps. In the future, hydrogen is planned to be produced on-site through “electrolysis and regenerative power generation”.
Five Coradia iLints are currently in operation, with the remainder expected to join the fleet by the end of 2022, replacing the 15 diesel trains running on the network, saving an estimated 1.6 million litres of diesel and 4,400 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.
IT House understands that Alstom’s hydrogen-powered train plan does not stop in Lower Saxony, the company has also contracted to provide 27 Coradia iLint hydrogen fuel cell trains for the Frankfurt metropolitan area and 6 Coradia for the Lombardy region of Italy Stream hydrogen trains and supply more than a dozen Coradia Polyvant hydrogen trains to different regions of France. The company has also carried out operational trials in Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Austria.
Twitter Inc formally sued Elon Musk on Tuesday, accusing him of violating an agreement to buy the company for $44 billion, and asking a Delaware court to order Malaysia SK completed the merger agreement at an agreed price of $54.20 per share.
Twitter formally sues Musk
▲ Twitter formally sued Musk
“Musk clearly believes that, unlike all other parties bound by Delaware contract law, he is free to change his mind, disrupt the company, disrupt its operations, damage shareholder value, and then leave.”
Twitter listed Musk’s “long list” of violations of the merger agreement, which it said “cast a shadow over Twitter and its business.” Twitter shares fell to $34.06 a share on Tuesday, well below the $54.20 offer Musk made in April.
The lawsuit, which promises to be one of the largest legal battles in Wall Street history involving one of the most charismatic entrepreneurs in business, will hinge on rigid contract language. On Friday, Musk said he would terminate the deal because Twitter violated its agreement by not responding to information about fake or spam accounts on the platform, which is critical to its business performance.
According to reports, shoppers ready to buy “bargains” may find Amazon’s Prime Day sale unimpressive this year, as many sellers are trying to minimize discounts at a time when costs are soaring.
This year’s Prime Day sale kicks off on Tuesday and Wednesday, a summer clearance sale designed to make room for new items during the Christmas shopping season. This year, Amazon is doing its best to keep consumers interested.
Amazon said it will offer “millions of great deals” this year, including the lowest prices ever on its iconic products. For example, an Alexa-based Echo Dot smart speaker costs just $17.99, and a 50-inch Amazon Fire TV costs $99.99.
“Amazon is well aware that it needs to ramp up discounts on its iconic products to grab attention,” said Kristin McGrath, a shopping expert at deal-tracking site BlackFriday.com.
Amazon launched its Prime Day sale in 2015 to attract interest from Prime members who paid $139 a year. The number of Amazon Prime members stagnated at about 172 million as of June 30 this year, unchanged from six months ago, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. This suggests that Amazon’s $20 price hike for Prime subscriptions announced in February has put consumers off.
This year is also a merchant on Amazon.com, being very stingy when it comes to discounts for the second year in a row. Prime Day is primarily seen as an opportunity to clear aging inventory, said Tim Seward, principal at e-commerce consultancy ROI Revolution. About 60% of Seward’s 160 customers will be offering deals, but the discounts aren’t huge.
“Many brands are discounting less than they were in 2021 due to higher costs,” Seward said. “However, it’s still a good opportunity to clear inventory.”
Shoppers will still spend on Prime Day. Research firm eMarketer expects U.S. consumers and global consumers to spend $7.76 billion and $12.52 billion, respectively, on Amazon during the two-day sale, an increase of about 17 percent from a year earlier.
Analyst Andrew Lipsman said consumers were flocking to Amazon for deals on some household staples, despite the impact of higher gasoline prices and inflation. “Consumers still have money and are looking for deals, which should give Prime Day some boost,” Lipsman said.
At the same time, Amazon has to contend with stiff competition from rivals such as Walmart and Target. On Prime Day, shoppers are used to hopping from site to site in search of the best deals, and Amazon’s previous top spot has faded.
Some brands, which once tripled their usual Prime Day sales this year, are expected to drop to about double their usual levels this year, according to Chris Bauserman, chief marketing officer (CMO) at e-commerce software company CommerceIQ. .
Still, Bowserman said: “It’s still a can’t-miss event. It’s just slowing down.”
Chad Rubin, founder and CEO of ProFasee, which sells pricing software, said many Amazon merchants opted out of the Prime Day sale to protect their profits. They thought it would be too costly to offer deep discounts on this cluttered site and then pay higher advertising fees.
“A lot of our customers aren’t participating. They want to protect profits,” Rubin said.
According to reports, the US Internet fitness platform, sports equipment manufacturer Peloton announced today that it will stop the production of bicycles and treadmills, and turn the production task to partners to simplify operations and reduce costs.
“We believe this and other initiatives will allow us to continue to reduce the cash burden on our business and increase our flexibility,” said Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy.
Peloton was once the darling of the epidemic, but as the epidemic improved and the government eased related restrictions, Peloton’s inventory began to swell, and many users canceled subscriptions, causing Peloton’s business to plummet.
In premarket trading today, Peloton shares fell as much as 1.8%, but then bucked the trend and rose 1.4%. The reason is that Peloton announced that it will extend its partnership with Taiwan’s Rexon Industrial (Lishan Industrial Co., Ltd.), which will become the main manufacturer of Peloton hardware products.
Earlier this year, under pressure from an activist investor, Peloton changed its CEO and announced price cuts and massive layoffs. Peloton CEO McCarthy warned in May that the company’s lack of capital, rising inventories and rising costs could lead to huge losses in the quarter ended June.
Meanwhile, Peloton also said today that it will suspend operations at Tonic fitness facilities until the end of the year. Peloton acquired Tonic in October 2019.
McCarthy said in February that Peloton would focus on content. The magic of the Peloton, he says, is its digital screen, not a connected bike or treadmill. Expanding the digital community and enhancing content could make Peloton “a very fast-growing, very high-margin business.”
McCarthy also emphasized that Peloton is “a connected fitness company, not a bicycle company.”
When the first iPhone sales ban went into effect in Colombia, the Apple-Ericsson patent battle took to a new level. Now, Apple appears to be preparing to apply for an injunction against the import and sale of Ericsson products.
The move would mean a new legal move for Apple, aided by its $1 billion acquisition of Intel’s modem business in 2019…
Colombia’s iPhone 12/13 5G mobile phones were banned from sales, Apple first filed a lawsuit against Ericsson for SEP infringement claims
background Ericsson has accused Apple of infringing its patents on the 5G chips used in the current iPhone 13. Apple has paid royalties for the use of patented technology in the past, but failed to renew the license when it expired. It is reported that Apple hopes to negotiate a better deal on 5G licenses after earlier agreements on 2G, 3G and 4G patented technologies.
The situation heated up last December when Apple sued Ericsson, claiming the Swedish company had violated FRAND terms. International law requires standard-essential patents (SEPs: technology without which smartphones could not be made) to be conditional on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. In other words, Apple is claiming that Ericsson is overcharging for licensed patent licenses.
Ericsson, in turn, accused Apple of wasting court resources by forcing unnecessary litigation on two fronts. Apple has fought back against Ericsson with additional patent infringement claims.
Apple refused to pay to put pressure on Ericsson, which wanted to reciprocate Apple by banning the import and sale of iPhones in several countries. The Swedish company achieved its first iPhone ban in Colombia.
Apple files first SEP infringement lawsuit against Ericsson Apple has filed several patent infringement counterclaims against Ericsson before, but never filed a patent infringement lawsuit against standard-essential patents (SEPs), probably because Apple’s previous R&D work did not involve them.
But after acquiring Intel’s modem business in 2019, Apple owns some standard-essential patents, and Foss Patents reports that Apple has filed a patent infringement claim on standard-essential patents for the first time.
“More and more ‘firsts’ in Ericsson v. Apple 5G patent dispute. Colombia’s first-ever Standard Essential Patent (SEP) judgment (Ericsson is enforcing a 5G ban that Apple is trying to block); First-ever ’emergency motion’ for an anti-litigation damages order; now Apple’s first SEP lawsuit. Apple has been a recipient of SEP lawsuits before.”
The patent in question applies to 4G/LTE technology.
Florian Mueller said that while it’s unclear whether Apple is seeking to ban the import and sale of Ericsson’s 4G/LTE products, the court of Apple’s choice offers a huge clue.
Well-known foreign media The Information recently answered these questions with a long and in-depth report titled “Apple’s Eight Years of Efforts to Build Self-Driving Cars”.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Screenshot of The Information report
Since it was exposed in 2014, Apple’s car-building project code-named “Titan” has been attracting the attention of the global technology and automotive industries.
As one of the few technology giants with the highest market value, the strongest R&D capabilities, and the strongest revenue capabilities in the world, the outside world’s expectations for Apple’s cars are not lower than Tesla’s – after all, it has created a lot of technology in the era of PCs and mobile phones. A disruptive product…
But it is quite ironic that Apple has been involved in the car project for eight years. Although there are various news, there has been no official announcement or announcement, or even a sign. And Wei Xiaoli, who started later than it, is already well-known in the global smart electric vehicle field.
In the past 8 years, has Apple been concentrating on research and development to save big moves, and it can’t do it when it encounters difficulties, or has it abandoned the car-building project as rumored?
After interviewing more than 20 people who have participated in the Titan project, The Information partially restored the various attempts and efforts made by Apple’s car-building project in the past 8 years, as well as the setbacks it faced, with a large amount of first-hand information and real stories. with difficulty. There are examples of Cook’s attitude and real participation in automotive projects at the top, as well as the difficulties and internal biases faced by lower-level employees. It is very worth reading.
The following is a compilation of the full text of the report, with slight deletions on the basis of not changing the original meaning.
Autopilot is mainly based on Demo. Cook read it and said yes In August last year, several of Apple’s self-driving cars drove about 40 miles (64.4 kilometers) in Montana. Apple used a drone to film a self-driving car from Bozeman (a city in Montana) to the ski resort town of Big Sky to show Apple CEO Tim Cook the progress of their project Titan.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Apple’s self-driving test car
Apple executives hailed the demo as a success, arguing that the vehicles showed Apple’s self-driving cars could drive without relying on high-definition maps, which are required for most rival self-driving cars.
However, the good vibes after Bozeman’s presentation didn’t last long. Project Titan participants revealed that Apple’s test vehicle, a modified Lexus SUV, had difficulty navigating the streets near Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters without a map, sometimes crashing into curbs and sometimes having difficulty crossing intersections. Implement lane keeping.
It’s worth noting that earlier this year, one of Apple’s test cars nearly hit a jogger who was crossing the road and had the right of way.
These issues reflect the challenges facing Apple’s car project, which has wobbled over the past eight years as goals and leadership have changed.
Foreign media The Information’s report, based on interviews with 20 participants in the Titan project, also revealed how software problems became a key factor affecting the project. And when to release to the public is also an important reason for the team’s repeated swings.
The demo at Bozeman and its aftermath also highlighted a repeated mistake by Apple and most self-driving car companies: Engineers waste precious time choreographing demos on specific routes, programs that only work there but are of little use elsewhere , this kind of program is called “presentation software”.
Arun Venkatadri, who worked on self-driving cars at Uber, said, “If you have enough money, you can use self-driving software to plan a fixed route to work, but it’s not certain that this self-driving software can expand other functions to ensure that users can Driving in other non-fixed areas.”
Insufficient experience in autonomous driving, commercialization is far away Unlike deep-pocketed companies like Alphabet’s (Google parent)’s Waymo, GM’s Cruise and Amazon’s Zoox, Apple wants to run its own Uber-like Robotaxi (self-driving taxi) with the goal of selling its eventual vehicle to the public .
That means Apple faces a bigger challenge than its rivals, as it has to wait until its own self-driving technology is in use before launching its own self-driving cars.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ One of the Apple car concept images circulating on the Internet
The Information estimates, based on public documents and interviews with self-driving car developers, that these and other companies have burned through more than $30 billion developing self-driving cars with little to no revenue. billion) in cash.
And self-driving technology is far from ready to operate at scale, and companies like Apple don’t seem to know how long it will take to get there.
Nor do they know what technological breakthroughs they would need for vehicles to reliably predict how other cars, bicycles, and pedestrians will move around them—a key obstacle for autonomous vehicles to be able to drive like humans, let alone more than humans. All right.
What’s more, Tesla and other traditional automakers already generate billions of dollars in revenue each year by developing and selling semi-autonomous features like adaptive cruise control, lane-keep assist and automatic steering.
That raises the question of whether Apple is making a major business mistake by betting on fully autonomous driving.
The team was neglected by Cook and the leadership changed frequently But Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, said the bet made sense for Apple. Because, aside from Apple’s VR headset, Project Titan is one of Apple’s biggest efforts to break into a new category since the death of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs in 2011.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering
Today, about 1,000 people are working on Project Titan, an initiative led by Apple head John Giannandrea and AI chief John Giannandrea.
However, the problems encountered by Project Titan are similar to those faced by the development of Apple’s VR headset.
It is understood that Cook is a very different CEO from Jobs. Jobs was closely involved in product design and often inspired product design, guiding the company in a particular direction. According to multiple people who have worked on the Titan project, Cook is more distant from the project, and he rarely visits the Titan project office near Kifer Road in California’s Silicon Valley.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Titan Project Office (Source: Google Street View)
Some former Apple employees say this hurts the project because it lacks a leader who clearly defines and articulates what the product should be. Constant changes in strategy have exhausted employees, and Cook has also been reluctant to commit to mass-producing cars, which has frustrated some of the program’s executives.
In addition, Apple’s executive team’s support for the project, which is internally code-named T172, is uneven.
Notably, Craig Federighi, a key Apple executive overseeing software development, was not involved in the T172 project. He has been skeptical of the project for years, according to two people who have heard him talk about it privately.
It’s unclear whether Craig Federighi’s criticism has affected Cook, and in other parts of Apple, Project Titan has become the object of ridicule because of its frequent leadership changes, which in turn lead to changes in strategic goals and layoffs.
Several former Apple employees said some managers proactively warned employees not to participate in the program.
In addition, the financial cost of the Titan project is also high, costing more than 1 billion US dollars (about 6.73 billion yuan) per year in recent years. But this is a drop in the bucket for Apple, which spends more than $22 billion (about 148 billion yuan) on research and development every year.
You know, Apple also spent 430 billion US dollars (about 2892.70 billion yuan) to repurchase its own stock. However, an Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
It’s worth mentioning that Project Titan has also gone through four leadership changes over the past eight years, each with different ambitions and ambitions.
In 2014, when Apple was about to release the Apple Watch, Cook agreed to explore electric vehicles, eager to grow Apple’s business and push the company into new product categories. At the time, Tesla’s electric cars had been on sale for six years, and Google’s self-driving cars had been in testing for five years.
To Cook and other executives, developing the car seemed like an obvious goal because of the company’s strengths in engineering and design, two of the people said.
So four senior Apple employees formed the core of Project Titan, also known internally as the “Four Kings”, namely Steve Zadesky, Benjamin Lyon, John Wright and DJ Novotney, who told Dan, then Apple’s head of hardware engineering, to Reporting to Riccio, Dan Riccio is also a major proponent of Project Titan on Apple’s executive team.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Apple chief designer Jonathan Ive (left) and senior vice president of hardware engineering Dan Riccio
While Riccio is in charge of the technology, he still doesn’t get involved too much, because the actual leader of Project Titan is Zadesky, Apple’s vice president of product design for the car project.
Zadesky started his career as a mechanical engineer at Ford, and given his automotive background, he was a good fit for the project. Under Zadesky’s leadership, Apple set out to build a conventional electric car that would outpace Tesla on the highway with more advanced driver-assist features.
Still, some of Zadesky’s counterparts on Project Titan have pushed for more ambitious goals, including fully autonomous driving, which has created tension and infighting.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Early Titan project leaders Steve Zadesky (left) and Bob Mansfield
Early cooperation with Magna, hoping to come up with new tricks At the time, Apple teamed up with upscale automaker Magna Steyer to create an initial version of the car, designed to resemble a minivan. During this period, Project Titan was more concerned with the passenger experience than autonomous driving.
For example, the project team has envisioned how a car could detect a driver’s heart attack, take them to the hospital, or provide surround sound and noise cancellation technology so that each passenger in the same car could listen to different music.
Within two years, the project expanded in multiple directions. At the time, employees thought the project was a “technical investigation,” but they were told Apple hoped to sell a car as soon as 2019. At that time, Zadesky also hired auto industry experts to design doors, lighting and car interiors, and began to list auto parts suppliers.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Foreign media renderings based on Apple’s car patent design
Project Titan also drew on development ideas from some employees in Apple’s consumer electronics division, but Apple’s industrial design team came up with some radical ideas. For example, because the car is safe enough, it is hoped that the car can be made mostly of glass. One project member had to warn the industrial designer (don’t overthink it) because other cars might hit the Apple car.
The main challenge, however, came from Apple’s decision to develop its own car engineering knowledge rather than leverage decades of experience with existing car companies.
But engineers think reinventing basic automotive engineering concepts is a waste of time, and managers won’t accept that without seeing the bad results firsthand.
By the end of 2015, Cook was hesitant to continue building cars and take on a new set of tasks, the Titan project was stalled, and Apple was required to take on a huge new set of costs and security risks. At this time, Zadesky also left the Titan project for personal reasons.
Spend a lot of money on autonomous driving and also buy a test field After about six months of searching, Riccio, one of the “Big Four,” persuaded a retired former Apple executive, Bob Mansfield, to restart the project.
Under Mansfield’s leadership, Project Titan paused development of the car to focus on fully self-driving software that would enable future Apple cars to drive without a driver.
One reason for this shift was the strong influence of Jonathan Ive, Apple’s head of industrial design at the time, who was adamantly opposed to building conventional electric cars.
Jonathan Ive believes that self-driving will do to cars what multi-touch gestures (tapping, scrolling and zooming with your fingers) did to iPhones, and that future Apple cars will have to be like iPhones in the smartphone industry .
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ Apple chief designer Jonathan Ive (left) and senior vice president of hardware engineering Dan Riccio
In 2016, after Mansfield ended its partnership with Magna, Apple’s industrial design team has repurposed the Apple Car into a compact sedan that looks similar to the BMW i3.
Eight years of Apple’s car making: change, chaos and difficult birth
▲ BMW i3
No one knew when Apple’s self-driving software would be ready, and many of Project Titan’s employees were reassigned to work on the self-driving test vehicle, code-named Baja, to work on batteries, motors and drivetrains.
In 2017, Mansfield believed the company’s self-driving system wasn’t fully finished, and was trying to set a more realistic goal of rolling out self-driving features in stages, according to multiple people involved in the plan. The team then worked with Volkswagen to develop a self-driving shuttle that could transport Apple employees from Palo Alto, California to Apple’s Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino, California.
Facebook’s parent company Meta canceled a back-office contract at its Silicon Valley headquarters, which will cost hundreds of workers at the outsourcing company their jobs.
It is reported that the logistics services of Meta’s Silicon Valley headquarters are outsourced to the American “ABM Industrial Company”. And in mid-June, Meta informed the company that the partnership would be canceled. The layoffs resulting from the cancellation will take effect July 25, according to a regulatory report the outsourcing company submitted to the California Department of Labor Development.
ABM, which filed a report on July 1, said the layoffs will affect 368 ABM employees working at Meta’s headquarters (1 Hacker Drive, Menlo Park, Calif.), the company’s human resources manager said.
The logistical service jobs that have been cut include kitchen cleaners, night cleaners, park bicycle organizers, cafe waiters, etc. The layoffs also include 10 directors and seven managers.
ABM company sources said that the logistics outsourcing companies Meta will recruit in the future may retain some positions and continue to hire the affected workers, but the specific recruitment plans of the new outsourcing companies are not yet clear.
The downsizing this time comes at a time when Meta’s business development is facing many uncertainties. Worsening U.S. inflation and Apple’s new privacy policy for iOS have caused Meta’s revenue growth to slow down and even face a year-over-year decline.
In May, Meta said that it would suspend the social recruitment plan. When it announced its first-quarter financial report, Meta also said that there may be a year-on-year decline in operating income in the second quarter.
In the above-mentioned regulatory report, ABM did not address the specific reasons for Meta’s termination of the cooperation agreement. A Meta spokesman said the company plans to switch to a back-office outsourcer, but did not elaborate on how many existing jobs would be retained under the new partnership.
ABM is a publicly traded facility management and logistics service company in the United States with a total workforce of 100,000 people. When it released its fourth-quarter earnings report last year, the company disclosed that the list of customers for logistics outsourcing included technology companies such as Meta, Google and Adobe. ABM also mentioned that, among all clients, these tech companies are expanding the size of their offices for outsourcing logistics services.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Meta’s office park has begun to quiet down, with the company adopting a work-from-home model for its employees. Today, Meta is preparing to bring employees back to the office, though the company is also giving employees the option to work from home permanently. In May, Meta opened some office buildings in California’s Bay Area, bringing some employees back to the office.
Last week, Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said that this year’s planned hiring of engineers would be cut by at least 30 percent. On Monday, US media reported that Meta’s management encouraged employees to report poor performers around them to their superiors, saying “these people are dragging down our company.”
An internal memo sent by Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday said the company will “slow down the pace of hiring for the rest of the year.” In the face of economic uncertainty, Pichai asked employees to “be more entrepreneurial.”
Pichai said the uncertain global economic outlook has been his top concern. Like all companies, Google is not immune to economic headwinds. However, Google has never seen these types of challenges as obstacles, but as opportunities to deepen the company’s focus and long-term investment.
In this economic climate, Pichai asks employees to demonstrate greater entrepreneurship, greater urgency, sharper focus and greater hunger than in good times. In some cases, Google needs to consolidate where investments overlap and simplify the process. In other cases, this means pausing development and redeploying resources to higher priority areas.
He also said that Google isn’t freezing hiring outright, but that the company will be slowing hiring for the rest of the year given its hiring progress so far this year. For the rest of 2022 and into 2023, Google will focus its hiring on engineering, technology and other key roles, and ensure the company is hiring the best talent that aligns with long-term priorities.
