Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) is planning to build China’s version of Netflix Inc and HBO via a new service called Tmall Box Office, as it tries to serve 600 million families craving entertainment.
Tmall Box Office is to launch in about two months through Alibaba’s set-top box and smart televisions using its operating system, including those manufactured by Haier Group Corp (海爾), Alibaba digital entertainment president Liu Chunning (劉春寧) said at a news conference in Shanghai yesterday.
IN-HOUSE PRODUCTIONS
Some of the video content is to be produced by the company and some purchased from overseas, Liu said.
Alibaba is on a buying spree as it tries to compete with Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊控股) for China’s US$5.9 billion online video market.
Alibaba Pictures Group Ltd (阿里巴巴影業集團) completed a HK$12.2 billion (US$1.57 billion) stake sale in Hong Kong to help finance potential acquisitions this month.
Billionaire chairman Jack Ma (馬雲) visited Hollywood in October last year to acquire more content.
‘LIKE NETFLIX AND HBO’
“We want to create a whole new family entertainment experience,” Liu said. “Our goal is to become like Netflix and HBO in the US.”
China’s online video market is expected to almost triple in value to 90 billion yuan (US$14.5 billion) by 2018, Shanghai-based Internet consultant IResearch said.
Wasu Media Holding Co (華數傳媒控股), a Chinese media company backed by Ma, has also held talks with Netflix Inc, as the broadcaster of House of Cards hopes to expand in China, the company said last month.
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],”
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
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