{"id":292897,"date":"2026-02-20T05:27:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T05:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/292897\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T05:27:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T05:27:10","slug":"washington-offers-us200-million-to-boost-american-smartphone-industry-in-indo-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/292897\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington offers US$200 million to boost American smartphone industry in Indo-Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US State Department will subsidise companies to roll out cheap smartphones running American software in the Indo-Pacific region, part of its \u201cPax Silica\u201d<\/a> initiative that seeks to shore up the resilience of the US artificial intelligence supply chain and win the AI race with China.The US has launched the Edge AI Package, which provides up to US$200 million of funding for mobile network operators and smartphone vendors to deploy \u201clow-cost, high-performance\u201d handsets in some partner nations in the Indo-Pacific<\/a>, the Department of State said on Thursday.These smartphones should run on \u201ctrusted\u201d American mobile operating systems (OS), such as Android and iOS, and fully support the US software and AI ecosystem, the State Department<\/a> said.<\/p>\n

Companies interested in joining the programme should use US funding to lower the retail price of their handsets in Indo-Pacific countries \u201cto a competitive level with untrusted market incumbents\u201d, it said.<\/p>\n

The initiative would \u201censure that the digital infrastructure of our partners remains secure, autonomous, and free from coercion\u201d, according to the State Department.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

05:04<\/p>\n

China creates analogue AI chip said to be 1,000 times faster than Nvidia GPU<\/p>\n

China creates analogue AI chip said to be 1,000 times faster than Nvidia GPU<\/p>\n

\u201cThis programme is going to make millions of smartphones more competitive vis-a-vis subsidised, low-cost competitors,\u201d Jacob Helberg<\/a>, the State Department\u2019s Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, said in a CNBC interview on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US State Department will subsidise companies to roll out cheap smartphones running American software in the Indo-Pacific…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[365,771,162096,85,607,62057,162097,2487,1311,2344,162094,772,162093,342,111,139,69,20374,162095,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-292897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-android","10":"tag-asia-society-policy-institute","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-cnbc","14":"tag-edge-ai-package","15":"tag-european-union","16":"tag-huawei","17":"tag-india","18":"tag-indo-pacific","19":"tag-ios","20":"tag-jacob-helberg","21":"tag-mobile","22":"tag-new-zealand","23":"tag-newzealand","24":"tag-nz","25":"tag-oppo","26":"tag-pax-silica","27":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}