Tech

After Apple, India’s smartphone manufacturing boom enters new phase with Vivo JV

Published

5 hours ago

July 10, 2026

India on Thursday approved a manufacturing joint venture between China’s Vivo and local manufacturer Dixon Technologies, a move that could mark the next phase of the country’s smartphone manufacturing boom after Apple helped turn India into a global smartphone production hub.

The approval allows Vivo to proceed with a long-delayed manufacturing partnership first announced in December 2024, after New Delhi cleared the investment under investment rules introduced in 2020 that require extra government scrutiny of investment from countries sharing a land border with India — a category that includes China. The joint venture will acquire certain manufacturing assets from Vivo, manufacture part of the company’s smartphone orders in India, and can also produce electronic products for other brands, according to a stock exchange filing by Noida-based Dixon.

The 51/49 venture — majority-owned by Dixon, with Vivo holding the remaining stake — reflects a broader shift in how Chinese smartphone brands are expanding manufacturing in India through local partnerships. For an industry watching how governments referee the relationship between Chinese capital and domestic manufacturing, the structure, analysts believe, could become a template for similar arrangements across the industry, helping broaden India’s smartphone manufacturing story beyond Apple.

Over the past few years, India has emerged as a major global smartphone manufacturing hub as Apple and its suppliers expanded iPhone production in the country while diversifying supply chains beyond China. Government incentives have also helped attract global electronics manufacturers, boosting the country’s role in global smartphone production.

Apple spent years building its manufacturing footprint in India and today accounts for 57% of the country’s smartphone exports by volume, according to Counterpoint Research’s data shared with TechCrunch. Chinese brands, on the other hand, dominate India’s smartphone market sales with 72% of the market, but contribute less than 10% of exports, a gap that shows how much upside is still on the table if they start exporting from India the way Apple does.

Apple’s India manufacturing expansion has largely been driven by suppliers such as Foxconn and Tata. Chinese smartphone brands, meanwhile, are increasingly exploring partnerships with Indian companies after New Delhi tightened investment rules for neighboring countries following the 2020 border clashes with China. Several of those companies, including Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi, have also faced tax and regulatory investigations in India in recent years, which helps explain why ceding majority control to an Indian partner is now looking like the more sustainable path forward.

Local partnerships such as the Dixon-Vivo venture offer Chinese brands a more stable operating model, while aligning with India’s push for greater local participation in electronics manufacturing, said Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint Research.

“The approval of this joint venture creates a win-win for both players,” Pathak told TechCrunch. He added that the majority-Indian-owned structure provides Vivo with greater policy alignment while giving Dixon the scale to deepen local value addition and pursue exports.

Vivo has manufactured and exported smartphones from India for years, but the approved venture marks a shift toward a majority Indian-owned manufacturing structure as the market leader deepens its footprint in the world’s second-largest smartphone market. The Chinese smartphone vendor retained the top spot in India’s smartphone market with a 23% shipment share in Q1, per Counterpoint.

For Dixon, India’s largest electronics manufacturing services company, the venture could add annualized manufacturing volumes of about 20 million to 22 million smartphones, based on Vivo’s current sales, according to comments by Managing Director Atul Lall during the company’s May earnings call. That’s a meaningful volume bump for a public company whose growth increasingly hinges on winning exactly these kinds of manufacturing contracts.

Dixon already manufactures smartphones for Xiaomi, suggesting the Vivo venture builds on an expanding role as a manufacturing partner for both global and Chinese smartphone brands in India, and reinforces its position as one of the more reliable bets in India’s electronics build-out.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Tech

Don’t want to invest in Elon Musk? Two new ETFs explicitly exclude him

Published

9 hours ago

July 10, 2026

qasimgillani

In the lead up to the SpaceX IPO, there were dozens of stories about early employees and investors who stood to make millions of dollars for betting on, or working for, Elon Musk.

But thanks to Musk’s work with DOGE, his public comments on X, and the infamous gesture he made at Donald Trump’s inauguration that looked a lot like a Nazi salute, someone realized there was money to be made by avoiding him.

An exchanged-traded fund creator with the appropo name of Subversive Capital has found a way to tap into that negative sentiment with two new anti-Elon exchanged-traded funds.

The ETFs, which are similar to mutual funds, except they are traded like regular stocks, are legally registered by Tidal Trust I and attached to a brand called Subversive Markets Lab LLC. (Bloomberg was the first to spot the filing.)

Avoiding the world’s richest person can be tricky for the average investor, who likely puts their money into mutual funds tied to indices like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100. SpaceX, which is in the FTSE Russell and MSCI indexes, was recently added to the Nasdaq 100. That means it’s included in funds that track those indexes. Musk’s other publicly traded company, Tesla, is a longtime favorite of mutual funds, especially the large cap and growth varieties.

The two newly registered ETFs, named Nasdaq-100 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF and S&P 500 Ex-Elon Enterprises ETF, are designed to block these companies. As of the date of the prospectus, the excluded enterprises are Tesla (TSLA) and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SPCX), the filing states. Musk’s other companies, including Neuralink and The Boring Company are not publicly traded.

It is possible that the Ex-Elon funds may exclude other companies that become closely associated with the near-trillionaire, too. The Ex-Elon funds seek “to provide capital appreciation through exposure to a broad universe of large-capitalization U.S. equity securities, while excluding the equity securities of companies that are founded, controlled, or led by Elon Musk, or with which Mr. Musk is otherwise primarily associated,” so the document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reads.

While these are legit funds that investors will soon be able to trade, there’s also more than a bit of tongue and cheek going on. Prior to the Ex-Elon funds, Subversive earned headlines for its other ETFs that promise to let regular folks “invest like the oligarchy.” One of those funds holds stocks known to be traded by Democratic members of Congress and their spouses, and the other mirrors those held by the Republican side of the aisle.

It’s too early to say if investors will pile into these Ex-Elon ETFs, which have the tickers QQNE and SPNE, or if they will perform better than funds that include Musk’s companies. But they do reflect a growing appetite for ways to avoid Musk, and, given his famed hostility to traders who shorted Tesla, perhaps even annoy him a little.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Tech

OpenAI says GPT 5.6 is the ‘preferred model’ for Microsoft Copilot amid breakup chatter

Published

9 hours ago

July 10, 2026

qasimgillani

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft was replacing some of OpenAI’s software with its own in-house models in an effort to cut costs. Those in-house models, known as MAI, were increasingly being used to power apps like Word and Excel, the outlet noted.

The story raised an increasingly common question about the two companies, which were once seemingly inseparable, and have recently sent mixed signals about the status of their situationship: Were the two companies drifting apart?

Now, OpenAI is attempting to put any insinuations of such a break to rest. During OpenAI’s launch of GPT 5.6 on Thursday, the company announced that it would become the “preferred model” powering Microsoft’s 365 Copilot.

OpenAI noted in a blog post published Thursday that GPT 5.6 would support Microsoft users across the company’s suite of productivity apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Cowork.

“Our partnership with Microsoft has always been about bringing the benefits of advanced AI to more individuals and organizations, and we’re excited to continue building on that shared commitment,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post.

What being a “preferred model” actually means isn’t entirely clear, other than that OpenAI’s software will continue to power Microsoft’s apps.

That said, it was never reported that ChatGPT’s software would stop powering Microsoft’s apps — merely that Microsoft was relying increasingly on its own software in an effort to reduce costs. The new “preferred model” disclosure doesn’t appear to negate that previous reporting.