TECHNOLOGY
Tencent weighing bid
Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) is weighing a bid for part of Temasek Holdings Pte’s stake in global retailer A.S. Watson Group, people with knowledge of the matter said. The Singapore state investment company is considering selling about a 10 percent stake in A.S. Watson for about US$3 billion, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. That is just under half of its 25 percent holding.
INTERNET
Instagram allows shopping
Facebook Inc-owned Instagram on Tuesday made a move into potentially lucrative e-commerce by adding an option to buy products shown off in posts by selected brands. A new “checkout” button for instant purchasing launched in a beta version of the app in the US with a limited number of businesses, according to the popular image-centric messaging service. Tapping the checkout button is to allow shoppers to select options, such as size or color, and then pay for items without leaving the Instagram app. Previously, people inspired to buy products featured in Instagram posts had to follow links to outside online shopping sites. Brands taking part in the checkout feature included Adidas, Burberry, Dior, H&M, Nike, Oscar de la Renta, Prada, and glasses retailer Warby Parker.
ZIMBABWE
Tobacco harvest to decline
The country’s tobacco crop, one of its main generators of foreign exchange, is expected to decline as much as 13 percent this year, the industry marketing board said. Output might be 220 million to 240 million kilograms in the marketing season that began yesterday and ends in September, an official at the Tobacco Industry & Marketing Board said in the capital, Harare. Production last year was 252 million kilograms. The harvest would be reduced by drought and damage caused by Cyclone Idai to barns used to store the crop, the official said.
TECHNOLOGY
Doctolib valued over US$1bn
Doctor appointment booking app Doctolib has been valued at more than US$1 billion after raising new funding, adding to the surge of interest in healthcare start-ups. Founded in 2013, Doctolib operates a doctor’s appointment booking app and related management software, and has been growing services of video-based consultations and digital prescriptions. Doctolib’s 150 million euro (US$170 million) round announced yesterday was led by US-based growth equity investor General Atlantic, the start-up said in a statement. Doctolib is the latest unicorn technology start-up in a club that includes cloud storage supplier OVH Groupe SAS, vehicle-sharing app Blablacar and music streaming service Deezer SA.
SEMICONDUCTORS
Google boosts AMD stock
The biggest move in Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc shares in seven weeks led to some head-scratching on Wall Street. The stock on Tuesday rallied 12 percent as Alphabet Inc’s Google unveiled its videogame streaming service that would use AMD processors, even though analysts said the chipmaker’s involvement was already known. AMD chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿豐) said during a presentation at the CES trade show in January that its graphics processors would be used as part of Google’s gaming project. “We are surprised by the stock price move as we believed this was a well-known win,” RBC’s Mitch Steves wrote in a research note.
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