Shares in Apple closed Thursday's session 4% in the red after data from technology market analyst firm Canalys lost its top spot as the smartphone maker with the biggest market share in mainland China.
The iPhone maker fell to third place behind Vivo and Huawei, holding a 15% market share.
The research showed that mainland China's smartphone market shipped 285 million units in 2024, which was up 4% year-on-year and marked a recovery after two years of declines.
In the fourth quarter, the market grew by 5% year-on-year, with shipments reaching 77.4 million units. Canalys said this was driven by the high-end peak season, government subsidies and year-end promotions.
"Apple shipped 13.1 million units in its traditional peak season in the quarter, retaining the top spot, Canalys said. "However, due to intensified competition from domestic brands, its shipments dropped by 25% year on year."
Meanwhile, reports said that Apple is temporarily pulling an AI feature that summarises news notifications, after it faced backlash over errors in headlines. CNN reported that Apple deployed a beta software update to developers on Thursday that disabled the AI function for news and entertainment headlines.
A spokesperson for Apple said: "With the latest beta software releases of iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3, and macOS Sequoia 15.3, notification summaries for the news and entertainment category will be temporarily unavailable. We are working on improvements and will make them available in a future software update."
The Biden Administration finalised $6.57bn (£5.38bn) of funding for electric vehicle (EV) maker Rivian to finance its manufacturing facility in Georgia.
This comes just days before US president-elect Donald Trump's inauguration, with concerns about what will happen to the Department of Energy loan programme once he returns to power.
The department announced on Thursday that it had closed the multi-billion dollar loan to support the construction of a nine million square foot facility to manufacture up to 400,000 electric SUVs and crossover vehicles a year.
Rivian said in a separate statement that construction on the facility is expected to begin in 2026, with production of customer vehicles due to take place in 2028.
RJ Scaringe, founder and CEO of Rivian, said: "This loan will help us accelerate the launch of our Georgia plant for R2 and R3, providing thousands of jobs in the state."
"People are incredibly excited to get behind the wheel of our new models, and this additional capacity for our mass market products is key to U.S. leadership in the electric vehicle industry."
Shares in Rivian rose nearly 4% in Thursday's session and were up nearly 5% in pre-market trading.
Shares in Indian technology company Infosys slid nearly 6% on Friday, on the back of its third-quarter earnings release.
Infosys reported revenue of $4.9bn in the third quarter, which was up 6% year-on-year, while the company's operating margin came in at 21.3%, which was increase of just 0.2% sequentially.
Salil Parekh, CEO of Infosys, highlighted the company's "strong revenue growth sequentially in a seasonally weak quarter."
"We continue to strengthen our enterprise AI capabilities, particularly focusing on generative AI, which is witnessing increasing client traction," he said. "This has led to another quarter of strong large deal wins and improved deal pipeline giving us greater confidence as we look ahead."
However, Reuters reported that analysts had raised concerns about the "quality" of the earnings report.
Morgan Stanley analysts reportedly said in a note that the company's revenue growth was fuelled by a higher component of "third-party items" in Infosys' deal pipeline, "which drove concerns around the quality of the beat and raise".
Shares in language-learning app Duolingo jumped nearly 7% in Thursday's session, after it said that US-based Mandarin Chinese learners had more than tripled ahead of the incoming TikTok ban.
Duolingo said in a post on social media platform X that its data between 1 December and 13 January showed that new Mandarin learners in the US had surged 216% year-on-year.
This jump comes as the looming TikTok ban in the US has prompted many users to migrate over to a similar Chinese app translated as "Red Note". The app is meant for Chinese users and doesn't have translations for English speakers.
Dan Coatsworth, investment analyst at AJ Bell, said: "The prospect of Glencore merging with Rio Tinto is like trying to force a square through a circle-shaped hole. Fundamentally it wouldn’t fit, and the only solution would be to trim off the sides such as getting rid of Glencore’s coal assets.
"Even then, it would be like picking up two magnets and putting the like poles together, instantly repelling each other. This would not be a marriage made in heaven."
