Five things worth knowing in Indian tech this week: Apple’s most unusual iPhone launch in years, a fresh set of 5G speed numbers, a quiet UPI change that could loosen PhonePe and Google Pay’s grip on your subscriptions, a reality check on AI salaries, and a bold prediction about the end of apps.
Apple’s September 9 event: no standard iPhone 18, and a new CEO in the chair
Apple has confirmed a special event for Wednesday, September 9, 2026, at 10 a.m. Pacific — 10:30 p.m. IST. Invites went out on August 26, following Apple’s usual two-week lead.
What Apple has not confirmed is anything about the products. No names, no specifications, no prices. Everything circulating right now is supply-chain reporting and analyst estimates, and it should be read that way.
The big structural change. Multiple reports point to Apple splitting its iPhone launch for the first time. September is expected to cover only the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max and Apple’s first foldable iPhone. The standard iPhone 18, the next iPhone 18e and a second-generation iPhone Air are reported for spring 2027. Apple supplier Pegatron indirectly pointed to the same split on its June 2026 earnings call.
If you have been waiting for a regular, non-Pro iPhone 18, Wednesday is not your event.
On prices. Nothing is official. The Wall Street Journal has estimated a $1,299 starting price for the iPhone 18 Pro and $1,399 for the Pro Max. Indian estimates put the Pro at roughly ₹1.35–1.40 lakh — against ₹1,34,900 for the iPhone 17 Pro today — and the Pro Max at ₹1.55 lakh and above, varying by storage. The foldable is estimated in the ₹1.9–2.1 lakh range, with top storage variants reported above ₹2.3 lakh. In the US, the foldable has been reported as potentially reaching or exceeding $2,000. Component and memory costs are the reason analysts expect an increase; GST and import duties mean Indian pricing rarely tracks the dollar figure cleanly.
The India timeline. Apple has not announced pre-order dates. Going by last year’s pattern — the iPhone 17 Pro was unveiled on September 9, 2025, with Indian pre-orders opening September 12 at 5:30 p.m. IST and deliveries from September 19, with India among 63 first-wave regions — a similar mid-September window is the reasonable expectation. Reports currently point to September 12 for pre-orders and deliveries roughly a week later.
The subplot. This is the first iPhone launch under a new chief executive. John Ternus took over as Apple CEO on September 1, 2026, with Tim Cook moving to executive chairman of the board. Apple announced the transition in April, describing it as the outcome of a long-term succession process approved unanimously by the board. Ternus joined Apple’s product design team in 2001, became vice president of hardware engineering in 2013, and joined the executive team in 2021. Cook, who led the company for around 15 years, stays on to handle certain areas, including engagement with policymakers globally. Arthur Levinson moves from non-executive chairman to lead independent director.
An engineer running the company, presenting a foldable phone and a restructured launch calendar, is a reasonable amount of signal for one Wednesday night.
Jio’s 5G is around 11 times faster than its own 4G, per Opensignal
An Opensignal report based on data collected between September 1 and November 30, 2025 found Jio users recording average 5G download speeds of close to 200 Mbps — roughly 11 times faster than Jio’s own 4G network.
The comparison is Jio-versus-Jio, not Jio-versus-everyone. Other operators posted their own multiples: Airtel’s 5G came in around seven times faster than its 4G, and Vodafone Idea’s roughly six times.
The report also flagged a structural difference. Airtel showed strong 5G signal availability, but its users spent a noticeably smaller share of time actually on 5G — linked to its non-standalone network design, where 5G still leans on a 4G layer for some functions. Vodafone Idea recorded lower availability and usage, consistent with an earlier-stage rollout.
Beyond raw speed, the report noted that 5G users across all operators experienced fewer interruptions and less variation in performance than 4G users. That consistency, arguably, matters more day to day than a peak number.
A more recent read. A SpeedGeo report covering Q1 2026 put Jio’s 5G speeds at 195.6 Mbps and Airtel’s at 169.4 Mbps, with India’s overall average mobile internet speed at 89.4 Mbps, up about 4% on the previous period.
What this means for you: if you already own a 5G handset on a Jio plan, this is not a new service to activate or pay extra for. It is a description of what the network is already delivering on average — and averages are not guarantees. Speeds in a crowded metro cell at 9 p.m. will not look like a report’s headline figure.
UPI hits a record 24.51 billion transactions — and AutoPay is about to become portable
The number. UPI processed a record 24.51 billion transactions worth ₹29.82 lakh crore in August 2026, according to NPCI data — its highest-ever monthly volume. That is up 3.6% from July’s 23.66 billion, though transaction value slipped 0.2% from ₹29.88 lakh crore. Year on year, volume rose 22% and value 20%.
Broken down, that is roughly 791 million transactions a day, averaging about ₹96,205 crore in daily value. NPCI credited festive activity, including Raksha Bandhan, for part of August’s lift.
For scale: in August 2022, UPI handled about 6.58 billion monthly transactions worth around ₹10.73 lakh crore. Volumes have nearly quadrupled in four years. Annual volumes went from 1.78 crore transactions in FY17 to more than 24,162 crore in FY26.
One pattern is worth noting: value has essentially plateaued in a narrow band just under ₹30 lakh crore since May, while volume keeps climbing. That points to smaller, more frequent payments rather than bigger ones — UPI going deeper into everyday spending rather than up-market.
Separately, IMPS handled 360 million transactions worth ₹7.04 lakh crore in August. UPI merchant payments are now live in ten international markets including the Maldives, Singapore, UAE, France, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Qatar, Cambodia and Bhutan.
The change that actually affects you. NPCI is reported to be preparing interoperability for UPI AutoPay mandates — the standing instructions behind recurring payments. Mint, citing four people aware of the development, reports that users will be able to move eligible mandates from one UPI app to another without cancelling and recreating them, and to view active mandates across apps.
In practice, that covers OTT subscriptions, insurance premiums, SIPs, EMIs, loan repayments and utility payments. Today, if all your recurring payments were set up in one app, switching apps means starting over — which is exactly why people don’t switch. Portability removes that friction, and with it a meaningful chunk of the lock-in that benefits the largest apps.
Merchants get a version of the same. Businesses would be able to move existing AutoPay mandates between payment service providers when changing gateways, without asking customers to re-register.
The underlying framework is not new — NPCI’s AutoPay enhancement framework, issued in 2025, already provided for mandate interoperability, user-side portability, merchant-side migration and standardised merchant identifier codes. What is new is the implementation, expected to be highlighted at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai, running September 8–11 at the Jio World Centre.
The timing tracks with growth in the category. The top ten banks processed close to 1.8 billion UPI e-mandate transactions in July 2026, more than triple the roughly 585 million recorded in July 2025. A separate regulatory change — raising the additional factor of authentication exemption from ₹15,000 to ₹1 lakh per transaction for specified recurring categories such as mutual funds, insurance premiums and credit card bills — has widened what can run through the e-mandate rails.
NPCI is also reported to be working on common infrastructure for UPI soundboxes, so merchants could receive payment confirmations on a single device regardless of which UPI app a customer uses. Currently, soundboxes largely operate within individual fintech ecosystems, pushing some merchants to keep separate devices from Paytm, PhonePe, and Google Pay.
Caveat: NPCI has not confirmed which apps will support mandate portability, or when it goes live. Treat this as reported, not shipped.
AI jobs in India: strong demand, and salary numbers that need a reality check
There is a version of this story circulating that has freshers walking into ₹15–35 lakh packages. The data does not support it as a general claim.
What freshers actually earn. Most entry-level AI engineering roles in India start in the ₹5–9 LPA band, with IT services roles at the lower end and product companies or GenAI-specialised roles higher. Some estimates place the floor closer to ₹4 LPA and the practical ceiling for a strong fresher portfolio around ₹12–15 LPA. Graduates from IITs and NITs with specialised AI skills are reported in the ₹12–25 LPA range — a genuine outlier band, not the norm.
Generative AI and LLM roles carry the sharpest premium. Freshers with relevant project experience in that specific area are reported starting at ₹8–20 LPA, which is where the higher headline numbers come from.
Mid-career and senior. Mid-level professionals are broadly in the ₹12–30 LPA range, with senior engineers at product companies reported between ₹30–60 LPA and specialists going higher. Global capability centres and large product companies consistently pay above IT services.
The skills premium. GenAI and MLOps specialisations are reported to command roughly 20–40% above generalist AI engineer salaries. Agentic AI — building and orchestrating AI agents — is currently cited at the top of that range. A flat “40% for AI skills” is a simplification; the premium depends heavily on which AI skills.
Where the jobs are. Bengaluru leads on both volume and pay, reported at 20–40% above the national average, driven by global R&D centres, product companies and GCCs. Hyderabad follows, and is often cited as the better salary-to-cost-of-living trade. Pune and Delhi NCR round out the top tier.
Demand signals. Industry trackers put active AI job listings in India in the four lakh-plus range as of mid-2026, aggregated across LinkedIn, Naukri and Indeed. A NASSCOM–Deloitte projection has AI talent demand exceeding 1.25 million by 2027. Grand View Research values the Indian AI market at around $34 billion in 2026, growing at a 38.1% CAGR.
Read the numbers carefully. A lot of salary data in this space comes from edtech and recruitment companies with an interest in the numbers looking large. Ranges are wide, self-reported and not always comparable. Demand is real. The ₹35 lakh fresher is not typical.
AI agents will replace apps by 2027,’ says Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma
Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said in a post on X that autonomous AI agents will replace smartphone apps by 2027, arguing that OS-level access will let personal agents execute multi-step tasks on a user’s behalf. He also predicted that 2026 would be the year machines take a decisive lead in code generation.
The claim, stripped down: instead of opening an app, tapping through screens and confirming, you state an intent and an agent handles the sequence — across services, with permissions granted at the operating-system layer rather than app by app.
It is a real direction of travel, and also a founder making a directional bet in public. Worth registering the counterweights: agents need deep, trusted access to payments, identity and personal data to be useful, and India’s regulatory posture on exactly those things is still forming. App companies also have little incentive to make themselves into invisible backends. A 2027 deadline on a shift this large is aggressive.
Still, if you build for mobile or work in payments, the direction is worth taking seriously even if the timeline isn’t.
One correction worth making
A story doing the rounds claims CBSE has just banned ChatGPT in exams. This is not new. CBSE prohibited ChatGPT in Class 10 and 12 board exams in February 2023, on the straightforward basis that electronic devices are not permitted inside exam centres and using one to access an AI tool counts as unfair means. The board has restated it ahead of each exam cycle since.
The 2026 board exams began on February 17, 2026, and concluded in the spring. The next cycle is in early 2027. The rule stands — students found using unfair means can be debarred from further board exams, with academic consequences lasting one to two years — but it is a standing rule, not a fresh announcement.
Figures on UPI are from NPCI. Speed data is from Opensignal (Sept–Nov 2025 collection) and SpeedGeo (Q1 2026). Apple product details, other than the confirmed September 9 event date are from analyst and supply-chain reporting, not company statements. Salary ranges are compiled from industry and recruitment sources and vary widely by employer and role.