Apple will move some production of its Mac Mini desktop computer to the US from Asia, with a new manufacturing effort set to begin later this year at a Foxconn facility in north Houston, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, February 23.

The plan marks the iPhone maker’s most recent US investment, following its commitment announced last August to invest $600bn in the US over the next four years.

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In May, US President Donald Trump had threatened Apple with a 25 per cent tariff on products manufactured overseas, a sharp reversal from earlier policy when his administration had exempted smartphones, computers and other electronics from rounds of tariffs on Chinese imports.=

The production for Mac Mini will continue in Asia, its chief operating officer Sabih Khan told WSJ, adding that the facility will meet local demand as the US assembly line ramps up.

It was not immediately clear whether Apple plans to scale down production in its Asia facilities. Apple did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The company feels more confident projecting long-term demand for the Mac Mini, which is more popular than the Mac Pro, Khan added.

It is also expanding the Houston facility to include a new training center for advanced manufacturing, according to the report.

Apple has a mixed track record when it comes to following through on investment promises.

In 2019, for instance, Cook toured a Texas factory with Trump that was promoted as a new manufacturing site. However, the facility had been producing Apple computers since 2013 and Apple has since moved that production to Thailand.

Apple continues to manufacture most of its products, including iPhones and iPads, in Asia, primarily in China, although it has shifted some production to Vietnam, Thailand and India in recent years.

New car sales in Europe fell year-on-year in January for the first time since June, weighed by declines in major markets including Germany, France, Belgium and Poland, data from the European auto lobby ACEA showed on Tuesday.

The downturn was sharpest in Norway, where new car registrations, a proxy for sales, fell about 76 per cent compared to the same month in 2025.

Europe’s car industry is in the midst of a major transformation, with traditional car makers struggling to compete with cheaper Chinese models and with a now-delayed push towards decarbonisation.

They are also navigating an even more uncertain trade environment after most US tariffs were ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court of the United States on Friday.

Sales in the European Union, Britain, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland fell 3.5 per cent to 961,382 cars in January, ACEA’s data showed.

Petrol car registrations fell about 26 per cent compared to the previous January, shrinking dramatically in France, by 49 per cent, and in Germany, by 30 per cent.

They went from accounting for almost a third of the market share in Europe to just over a fifth in the period.

In turn, battery-electric, plug-in hybrid and hybrid- electric cars were up about 14 per cent, 32 per cent and 6 per cent, and collectively accounted for 69 per cent of new registrations, up from 59 per cent in January 2025.

Registrations of Volkswagen, BMW, Renault and Toyota fell 3.8 per cent, 5.7 per cent, 15 per cent and 13.4 per cent, respectively, while those of BYD surged 165 per cent.

Stellantis and Mercedes recorded gains of 6.7 per cent and 2.8 per cent, respectively.

US automaker Tesla continued its downward trend with a 17 per cent year-on-year decline, the thirteenth month in a row in which sales have shrunk, according to ACEA’s data.

The Ministry of Finance (MoF) in UAE has announced the issuance of the official Electronic Invoicing Guidelines (the eInvoicing guide), marking a significant step toward the rollout of the country’s new electronic invoicing system.

The comprehensive reference document is designed to help businesses prepare for the transition to a unified digital invoicing framework.

According to a report by Emirates News Agency (WAM), the guide outlines the scope and objectives of the system while providing a detailed overview of the national electronic invoicing framework.

Officials said the document also explains the policy rationale behind the new requirements, giving businesses greater clarity on compliance obligations and operational expectations.

Clear compliance roadmap

The eInvoicing guide defines key terms and concepts essential to understanding the electronic invoicing system. It highlights the benefits of adopting a unified digital platform, including improved operational efficiency, enhanced transparency, and stronger compliance standards.

The framework also aligns national practices with international best practices in digital taxation and trade, reinforcing the UAE’s broader digital transformation strategy.

Importantly, the guide clarifies the scope of the new operational framework. It specifies the types of transactions and entities that fall within the system, as well as those that are excluded. It also details the phased implementation approach, providing businesses with greater visibility on the rollout timeline and enabling structured preparation for the transition.

Practical guidance and penalties

To support implementation, the guide offers practical instructions on system readiness, process alignment, and governance requirements. It categorises different types of e-invoices, addresses specific business scenarios, and explains the application of tax codes to ensure consistent treatment across transaction types.

The document also outlines applicable penalties for non-compliance and includes illustrative electronic invoice templates to help businesses understand formatting and data submission requirements.

Additional appendices provide operational guidance, including a comprehensive readiness framework, a practical checklist, and a clearly defined outline of roles and responsibilities for all stakeholders within the electronic invoicing system.

The UAE Electronic Invoicing Guidelines are expected to accelerate the country’s digital transformation efforts, modernising tax administration and streamlining commercial processes. Businesses and stakeholders are encouraged to review the guide and begin preparations ahead of the phased implementation timeline.

For much of the past five years, the artificial intelligence narrative has been dominated by model breakthroughs, parameter counts, and venture capital flows. But according to Natalie Hwang, founding managing partner of Apeira Capital, the centre of gravity has shifted.

The constraint is no longer model capability or capital availability. It is the economics of running intelligence at scale.

“What changed is that AI moved from experimentation into production,” Hwang says. “When models are in research mode, capability dominates the conversation. Once they are deployed at scale, the economics take over.”

That transition marks what she describes as a structural maturation of the industry rather than a slowdown. “The conversation is shifting from ‘what can models do?’ to ‘what can systems sustain?’ That is a structural maturation, not a slowdown.”

In the early phase of AI’s commercial expansion, training large models consumed attention and capital. Today, inference — the continuous process of running models in real-world environments — is emerging as the dominant cost centre.

“Inference is continuous and operational,” Hwang explains. “Unlike training, which is episodic, inference must run reliably, efficiently, and at scale.”

That shift is reshaping competitive dynamics. The focus is moving toward performance per watt, cost per token, and deployment efficiency. Companies that can scale under infrastructure constraints, she argues, will outperform those relying solely on marginal model improvements.

“The competitive landscape is becoming more about economic durability than technical spectacle.”

AI as industrial system

This transition is reframing AI as an infrastructure story as much as a technology one.

“AI remains a technology story, but it is increasingly governed by infrastructure realities,” Hwang says. As adoption broadens across industries, physical systems such as grids, data centres, cooling, and energy economics, define what is viable.

“We are moving into an industrial phase of AI, where physical systems determine scalability. That doesn’t diminish innovation; it anchors it in real-world constraints.”

In this phase, compute capacity, grid resilience, and cooling efficiency become strategic assets. The question is not just how intelligent a model is, but whether the system supporting it can sustain demand.

As power becomes a binding constraint, geography is re-entering the AI equation.

“Regions with abundant, reliable energy and the ability to build large-scale data infrastructure are becoming increasingly important,” Hwang says.

The global AI map, she argues, is shifting away from where ideas originate toward where intelligence can be hosted sustainably.

“Power availability and infrastructure density are emerging as structural advantages.”

That recalibration creates opportunities for regions traditionally viewed as capital providers rather than technology hosts.

The Middle East’s structural position

From a market-structure perspective, Hwang views the Middle East as a credible long-term host for compute-intensive AI systems.

“The region combines energy resources, sovereign-scale capital, and long investment horizons. Those factors are well aligned with the needs of compute-intensive AI systems.”

However, credibility depends on execution. “The question is less about capital and more about disciplined execution, ecosystem depth, and long-term infrastructure planning.”

In a world where inference economics determine scalability, energy resilience and infrastructure density become strategic differentiators; not just supportive factors.

The maturation of AI is also changing how capital is deployed. Rather than abandoning frontier model development, investment flows are widening.

“We are seeing capital broaden, not abandon,” Hwang explains. “Model development remains important, but incremental capital is increasingly directed toward infrastructure that can sustain deployment.”

As AI systems move from speculative promise to operational reality, investor priorities shift accordingly.

“As AI systems mature, the risk profile shifts from speculative model breakthroughs to operational performance. That changes how investors think about durability and returns.”

In this new phase, defensibility is defined less by novelty and more by structural alignment.

“Durability comes from alignment with structural constraints,” Hwang says. Systems that improve cost efficiency, energy utilisation, and deployment reliability will hold longer-lived advantages.

“In this phase, defensibility is tied less to novelty and more to whether a solution meaningfully lowers the cost of running intelligence at scale.”

That framing reframes AI from a breakthrough narrative to an industrial optimisation story, where economics, not hype, determine winners.

Avoiding strategic overreaction

For policymakers and investors, the temptation to chase headlines remains strong. Hwang urges restraint and systems thinking.

“Strategic advantage comes from building infrastructure with long-term utility, not from reacting to headlines.”

She emphasises three priorities: energy resilience, compute efficiency, and interoperability. AI, in her view, should be treated as an industrial system, not a speculative wave.

“The regions and institutions that treat it as such, rather than as a speculative wave, will be better positioned over time.”

As AI transitions from experimentation to deployment, the industry’s constraints are becoming more physical than theoretical. Megawatts, not models, increasingly define scalability.

The frontier is no longer just algorithmic sophistication. It is economic sustainability.

In that environment, competitive advantage will accrue not simply to those who build the most powerful models, but to those who can run intelligence efficiently, reliably, and durably — at scale.

Air Arabia has launched a Ramadan promotional campaign offering customers savings of up to 40 per cent on selected routes across the Middle East, Europe, Asia and Africa, as the airline looks to stimulate advance bookings ahead of the peak Eid and early summer travel period.

The Sharjah-based low-cost carrier said the offer is available for bookings made via its website and mobile app using the promo code RAMADAN. Tickets must be booked by February 25, 2026, for travel between March 25 and June 15, 2026.

The campaign covers a broad network spanning key regional markets including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, alongside European destinations such as Greece, Italy, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland and Germany.

The promotion also extends to leisure and emerging tourism markets including Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Türkiye, Kenya, Thailand (Krabi) and the Maldives, as well as South Asian and African routes including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Tiered discount structure

The airline has structured the offer around its fare families, with capped discounts applied per passenger, per flight direction.

For European, CIS and select African and Asian destinations, the maximum discount is set at:

• Dhs80 for Basic fares

• Dhs100 for Value fares

• Dhs150 for Ultimate fares

For GCC, Middle East and selected South Asian routes, the maximum discount is:

• Dhs50 for Basic fares

• Dhs70 for Value fares

• Dhs100 for Ultimate fares

A maximum discount limit applies per route and is automatically applied during the booking process once the promo code is entered.

Driving early Ramadan and Eid demand

The sale aligns with a traditionally high-demand travel window driven by Ramadan and Eid-related VFR (visiting friends and relatives) traffic, as well as short-haul leisure travel across the GCC and broader region. By incentivising early bookings through a time-bound campaign and digital-only access, Air Arabia is reinforcing its direct distribution strategy while optimising load factors across its network.

The airline noted that promotional fares are subject to limited seat allocation and may sell out before the campaign ends. Blackout dates and peak travel restrictions may apply, and the promotion cannot be combined with other offers unless otherwise stated. All fares remain subject to the airline’s standard fare rules and conditions of carriage.

The move comes amid continued pricing competition among regional low-cost carriers as they balance capacity growth with yield management in the run-up to the summer 2026 travel season.

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