“Apple will celebrate the iPhone’s 10th anniversary next year, but in chief executive Tim Cook’s view, the technology is anything but mature,” Waichi Sekiguchi reports for Nikkei. “The Nikkei Asian Review caught up with Cook aboard a bullet train last week and asked him about artificial intelligence, his plans for Asia, and the experience of succeeding Steve Jobs.”
“Cook, who was visiting Japan for the first time as CEO, said Apple will open a research and development base in Yokohama, near Tokyo, later this year. The facility — the first of its kind outside the U.S. — will develop AI and other technologies. Cook described it as a center for ‘deep engineering’ and said it will be ‘very different’ from the R&D base Apple plans to build in China,” Sekiguchi reports. “‘I cannot tell you the specifics,’ he said. ‘The specific work is very different.'”
“Beyond that, Cook suggested his company wants to use Apple Pay, the iPhone and the Apple Watch to promote a cashless society. ‘We would like to be a catalyst for taking cash out of the system,’ he said. ‘We don’t think the consumer particularly likes cash,’ Sekiguchi reports. “Smartphones are 9 years old, he noted. ‘We are not even teenagers yet. We just got going.’ Given the promise of AI and other new technologies, Cook said, ‘I think there is an incredible future ahead.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Having identified our Apple Pay merchants and, therefore, patronizing them to the exclusion of non-Apple Pay merchants, it’s rare that we use cash anymore.
SEE ALSO:
Apple CEO Cook meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – October 14, 2016
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Apple to launch iPhone for Japan with FeliCa tap-to-pay capability – August 26, 2016
Apple Pay coming to over 200,000 websites, not just in-store or in-app – September 14, 2016
