In brief: It appears that what could have been one of the largest and most disruptive tech acquisitions in history is not going to happen any time soon, if at all. A new report claims that Qualcomm's interest in acquiring struggling Intel has cooled, partly due to the complexities of such a deal.
A hot potato: Tech leaders such as Tim Cook spent years telling people that if they wanted a lucrative career in the industry, they needed to learn to code. But the advent of generative AI now means that coding isn't the guarantee of a good job that it once was. The number of active job postings for software developers has dropped 56%, and the number of placements on coding boot camp courses is dwindling.
As the world's largest company, Apple also leads in R&D spending
The big picture: The competitive strength of hardware makers is often gauged by their research and development expenditure. However, an analysis of recent financial reports from various tech giants reveals that higher R&D spending does not always guarantee success. Intel's recent struggles and Nvidia's astronomical growth driven by the AI boom have broken conventional assumptions.