TRANSPORTATION
UberX planned for Berlin
Ride-hailing service Uber Technologies Inc aims to launch its UberX service, which uses licensed professional drivers, next month in Berlin, after failing to find enough drivers in some of Germany’s other cities, Uber’s Germany chief Christian Freese told weekly Welt am Sonntag in an interview published yesterday. A German court last year banned San Francisco-based Uber from running services using unlicensed cab drivers and set stiff fines for any violations of local transport laws by the online taxi firm. The company has since limited itself in Germany to drivers that hold a passenger transport license, among other legal requirements, through its UberX and UberBlack smartphone apps. It currently operates UberX only in Munich. In the long run, Freese said he also wanted to bring UberPool to Germany, a service in which several customers share one vehicle to cut down on their share of the fare.
STEEL
Chinese exports drop
Steel exports from China fell last month after local prices and demand surged, curbing the incentive for mills in the top producer to seek overseas sales and easing the challenge for suppliers in Europe and the US. Shipments dropped to 9.08 million tonnes from 9.98 million tonnes in March, according to data released yesterday by the Chinese General Administration of Customs. Last month’s figure took exports over the first four months of the year to 36.9 million tonnes, 7.6 percent more than a year earlier. Iron ore imports totaled 83.92 million tonnes from 85.77 million in March, according to customs figures. Over the first four months of the year, purchases of ore were 325 million tonnes, about 6.1 percent more than in the same period of last year.
MINING
Rio Tinto talks Mongolia
Rio Tinto Group’s US$5.3 billion underground expansion of Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia will increase its output in about four years time when the copper market is in deficit, according to deputy chief executive officer Jean-Sebastien Jacques. The investment to expand the copper and gold mine required courage due to the “challenging economic climate,” Jacques said on Saturday in Mongolia. “The long-term need for copper remains strong and production from Oyu Tolgoi underground will commence when copper markets will be in deficit.” Jacques is set to replace Sam Walsh as chief executive in July. Work on the project will begin from the middle of this year and first production from the underground mine is expected in 2020, London-based Rio said last week.
ENTERTAINMENT
Streaming boosts Warner
In a further sign that the download era is waning, Warner Music Group said on Friday it made more money from streaming platforms than any other single source of recorded music revenue in the latest quarter. Warner said it is the first of the three majors to hit the milestone. However, the others are sure to follow. Last month, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said streaming revenue globally grew 45 percent last year, while the number of subscribers who paid for services like Spotify and Apple Music leapt 66 percent to 68 million. Meanwhile, the federation said download revenue dropped 10.5 percent. For Warner, streaming revenue grew 59 percent in the quarter through March, helping boost overall revenue by 10 percent to US$745 million.
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