US technology giant Apple is reportedly developing a dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) chip, called the Apple Neural Engine, that would power AI-related tasks on mobile devices.
“The chip would be used to offload tasks that require sophisticated algorithms related to facial and speech recognition and augmented reality tasks that rely heavily on computer vision,” technology website theverge.com reported on Saturday.
The chip is also said to improve battery life and the overall performance of Apple devices.
With the new chip, Apple seeks to separate the computationally intensive tasks from the iPhone’s processor and graphics chip.
The company is experimenting with wireless charging technologies that could see users charge their iPhones with a Wi-Fi router.
“Apple’s patent application for ‘Wireless Charging and Communications Systems With Dual-Frequency Patch Antennas’ is a method for transferring power to electronic devices over frequencies normally dedicated to data communications,” appleinsider.com reported earlier.
The patch antennas may be used for wireless power transfer at microwave frequencies or other frequencies and may be used to support millimetre wave communications.
Market research agency Gartner on Tuesday said sale of iPhones was flat in Q1 2017, leading to a drop in market share for Apple. Similar to Samsung, Apple is increasingly facing fierce competition from Chinese brands such as Oppo and Vivo, among others, and its performance in China is under attack.
While Chinese smartphone brand Huawei edged closer to Apple with smartphone sales amounting to 34 million units in the first quarter of 2017, Oppo is continuing to catch up with Huawei.
Chinese smartphone manufacturers performed well as 380 million mobile units were sold globally in the first quarter of 2017 — a 9.1 percent increase over the first quarter of 2016.
Gartner said top three Chinese smartphone manufacturers — Huawei, Oppo and Vivo –are driving sales with their competitively priced, high quality smartphones equipped with innovative features. Their combined market share in the first quarter of 2017 accounted for 24 percent, up seven percentage points year-on-year.
IANS
