Apple Inc, with US$76.2 billion in cash and securities on its books, is considering making a bid for the Hulu online video service, two people with knowledge of the auction said.
Apple, the second-most valuable company in the world, is in early talks that may lead to an offer for Hulu, said the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Hulu would give Apple a new subscription service and represent a possible challenge to Netflix Inc. Hulu’s media-company owners, Walt Disney Co, News Corp and Comcast Corp’s NBC Universal, are offering suitors a five-year extension of program rights, including two years of exclusive access, people familiar with the matter said earlier this week.
“Part of the ecosystem of Apple’s future is to include more video,” said Scott Sutherland, a Wedbush Securities Inc analyst who recommends buying the stock. “It’s something they are focused on.”
Meredith Kendall, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles-based Hulu, and Tom Neumayr, a spokesman for Apple, declined to comment.
Hulu’s price tag could exceed US$2 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and SNL Kagan.
Instead of a subscription, Apple’s iTunes media store offers TV shows and movies for rental or purchase. Current-season shows can be rented for US$0.99 and high--definition films rent for US$4.99. Hulu, which inserts ads into programs, offers limited free episodes and more expansive access with Hulu Plus for US$7.99 a month.
“Hulu would add a new element to their arsenal from a streaming and subscription standpoint,” said Brian Marshall, an analyst at Gleacher & Co in San Francisco.
Hulu Plus is available on Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It is also accessible through Microsoft Corp’s XBox video-game console, Sony Corp’s PlayStation 3 and on mobile phones using Google Inc’s Android operating system.
Morgan Stanley and Guggenheim Partners, bankers for Hulu, have elicited interest from Google, Yahoo Inc, AT&T Inc and others, people said. Microsoft dropped out of the bidding, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
Yahoo would pay up to US$2 billion for Hulu with four or five years of exclusive access to current TV shows and older movies, the Business Insider Web site reported, citing a person it did not identify.
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
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy