It's still used in new Apple products including all iPhones, non-pro iPads, the Apple TV remote, Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, and the charging cases for all AirPods.
I've seen companies outsource to places with cheaper than US cost-of-living with less of a time zone difference. For example, Mexico City is in Central Time and has a somewhat similar cost of living to Mumbai.
Thanks for the correction. I don't have the iPad version myself, so I was going off of comments made by other users. It sounds like people who did pay for Pro when they did offer it in the iPad version are upset, then.
Here's the current status of ads, as I understand it:
On iPhone, you only see sponsored posts if you have not purchased Pro. When they rolled out ads initially to iPhone, Pro users saw them and complained, Reddit said it was a bug, and fixed something on the backend to prevent them from being shown to Pro users.
On iPad, you see sponsored posts even if you have Pro. As far as anyone can tell, this is intentional.
From the first 10 posts on /r/AlienBlue:
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How to: Refund Alien Blue after Sponsored Ads Decision
I paid for no ads!
Has anyone else gone back to the old app?
Why are they monetizing the app before it even works properly? They have to know what the userbase thinks of this...