Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) agreed to acquire AutoNavi Holdings Ltd (高德地圖) in a deal that values the Chinese company at US$1.5 billion, bolstering its Internet mapping tools ahead of a possible initial public offering (IPO).
AutoNavi shareholders will receive US$21 in cash for each American depositary receipt, the companies said on Friday in a statement, the same terms that Alibaba originally offered in February.
The bid is a 27 percent premium to AutoNavi’s closing price on Feb. 7, before the offer was first disclosed.
AutoNavi will give Alibaba control of China’s most popular mobile mapping service as the nation’s largest e-commerce company prepares for an IPO in New York as soon as this month.
Alibaba is trying to win a big portion of China’s 618 million Internet users with more services, and AutoNavi lets it compete directly with Baidu Inc’s (百度) Baidu Maps and with Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) for taxi and restaurant recommendation services.
With its looming IPO, Alibaba is moving rapidly to bolster its reach with investments in China and abroad.
Earlier this month, the company was part of a US$250 million funding round for ride-sharing application Lyft Inc and last month Alibaba said it would invest almost US$700 million in Intime Retail Group Co (銀泰集團), owner of department stores and supermarkets.
Beijing-based AutoNavi, which is already 28 percent owned by Alibaba, has digital-map databases covering about 3.6 million kilometers of roads and more than 20 million “points of interest” across China. The deal is expected to be completed in the third quarter.
AutoNavi shareholders still need to vote on the takeover.
Mapping is becoming a vital battleground for the largest technology providers in the world with companies such as Google Inc and Apple Inc stepping up investments. Last year, Google acquired Waze, which help users navigate traffic with smartphones, for almost US$1 billion.
Apple, a newer player to the market, has made several acquisitions to improve its services, including deals for Locationary, HopStop and Embark.
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