YouTube is beefing up its roster of movies for “rent” online in the US to woo viewers away from television and take on booming Internet service Netflix.
“You’re spending just 15 minutes a day on YouTube, and spending five hours a day watching TV,” YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar said on Monday in a post at the Google-owned video-sharing Web site. “As the lines between online and offline continue to blur, we think that’s going to change.”
In addition to expanding its online movie roster, YouTube was increasing support for “partners” who create amateur clips that are attracting “TV-sized” audiences at the Web site, according to Kamangar.
Approximately 2 billion video views are logged daily at YouTube, which is available on 350 million devices, he said.
“Whether it’s short movie trailers, funny movie parodies or full-length blockbuster films, we encourage you to sit back and settle in to the YouTube movies experience,” Kamangar said.
Movies available for streaming as online rentals at YouTube had been mostly older titles, but the Google-owned technology firm has been collaborating with Hollywood studios to find ways to make fresh films available.
YouTube said that it is broadening its rental service at youtube.com/movies with new films from Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, Universal, Lionsgate Films and “many great independent studios.”
“It is a natural progression for YouTube,” analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley said.
“Google recognizes that this is becoming a content war,” he said. “Netflix right now is the company to beat with regard to online video.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained