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Mass Layoffs At Twitter, Dip In Smartphone Shipments In India And More

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By CNBCTV18.com IST (Updated)

Twitter CEO Musk, who recently took over the social media platform, justified his restructuring decision, saying “there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day

Social media giant Twitter, which was recently taken over by billionaire Elon Musk, laid off half of its workforce globally on Friday to cut costs as advertisers curtailed spending amid concerns about content moderation. Tweets from employees showed that those laid off were from teams responsible for content curation, communications, machine learning ethics, human rights and product and engineering. Twitter CEO Musk took to social media to justify his restructuring decision, saying “there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day.”

“Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required,” he wrote on Twitter.

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Here is a look at some of the other highlights in the tech sector this week.

Apple move

Taiwan’s Pegatron Corp has become the second Apple supplier in India after Foxconn to start assembling the latest iPhone 14 model in the country. The Foxconn Group started making the iPhone 14 in India in September. The move comes after Apple’s key iPhone Pro manufacturing hub in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, which was operated by Foxconn Technology Group, was shut down abruptly by the authorities following a surge in Covid-19 infections.

Twitter down

On November 4, Twitter users faced trouble accessing feeds on the microblogging site, while some found it difficult to log in. According to Downdetector, a platform that tracks the status of various websites and services and provides real-time information, 6 percent of the people faced issues with the app, while 94 percent reported problems with the website.

WhatsApp communities feature

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg has said WhatsApp will globally roll out the feature called Communities to users and it will be available to everyone over the next few months. The feature allows users to organize various chat groups in larger structures. Using the Communities feature, the administrator can send alerts to a community of thousands. The feature could be used by workplaces or schools.

Smartphone shipments

India has reported an 11 percent decline year-on-year in smartphone shipments at just over 45 million units in the third quarter of 2022-23 (July-September), research by Counterpoint’s Market Monitor service has revealed. The report attributed the decline to the high base last year following pent-up demand during the third quarter of 2021-22 and lower consumer demand in the entry tier.

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