Slashdot Mirror
Apple Invests $1 Billion In Uber's Chinese Rival Didi (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple Inc. invested $1 billion in Chinese ride-sharing service Didi, making one of its biggest bets on software and services and dealing a blow to Uber Technologies Inc.'s ambitions in the country. The iPhone maker will help Uber's largest rival build up a ride-sharing platform that handles more than 11 million rides a day and serves about 300 million users across China, Didi said in a statement on Friday. Executive Officer Tim Cook has highlighted higher-margin services as a growth area and suggested he would use some of its $200 billion-plus cash hoard for investments. The investment in one of China's largest online companies will allow Apple to forge alliances in its single largest market outside of the United States. Didi, incorporated as Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc., is in the process of raising more than $2 billion at a valuation of about $25 billion, people familiar with the matter have said. It operates in 400 Chinese cities and works with more than 14 million Chinese car owners. The company is Uber's most potent rival and has formed an international coalition with Lyft Inc. in the U.S., India's Ola and Southeast Asia's Grab to fight the globally expanding San Francisco firm. Apple is hoping to reinvigorate lackluster iPhone sales in China with its $1 billion investment in Didi. The last big investment the company made was when it acquired Beats for $3 billion in 2014.
I'm not posting this to troll. I'm a long time reader from the late 1990s. The site has changed tremendously and not for the better. The stories are far different than they were in the early days of Slashdot.
There was always a Your Rights Online section, which focused on intellectual property, surveillance, and other issues of the law and technology. Now, it seems like every second or third story is about the FBI or someone else fighting about encryption, some egregious intellectual property rights abuse, or police engaging in as surveillance.
There's also the Science section, which always existed. It always included also reticles about biotech, astronomy, physics, and cosmology. That's also taken over this site.
And then there are the tech business stories like this one about the business activities of Apple, Microsoft, Uber, Tesla, and similar companies. Those have always been here, but they've greatly expanded in volume.
What's lost is all the stories about creative open source projects and nerds doing cool things. Slashdot has become a mix of the Wall Street Journal, reason.com (a libertarian magazine and website), and a science journal. None of those are bad things, but they're all things that are aggregated elsewhere. The core of the community here was software development and IT work, which was reflected in the stories posted. There aren't nearly as many of those stories now. The content really has changed.
The articles that directly appealed to the core audience of Slashdot are largely gone. In the past, I could always come to Slashdot and find stories on the front page about cool open source projects in development and interesting stuff nerds were doing, whether useful or otherwise. I appreciate the creative spark from reading this website and the lively discussions that followed.
Contrary to what some people say, I don't think sites like Reddit have killed Slashdot. It's Slashdot that's killing Slashdot, by cutting back stories of interest to its core audience. That's why the good commenters have left and why the quality of the discussions are in the toilet. Slashdot was a site that catered to the stereotypical nerds portrayed on The Big Bang Theory. There are a lot of nerds like that, and Slashdot uniquely aggregated content for that particular audience. When the stories no longer interested that audience, they left. It brought in a new audience of trolls and low brow commenters. A few people from the old crew are still around but not many. It's a shame, but Slashdot pretty much sucks now.
Mod me down if you must; my post is offtopic. But it's sincere.
to the Chinese to buy his products. Sadly, he is wrong and has wasted his company's money.
Chances are the investment will all be gone in a year.
On the plus side, Uber suffer. Theres something really melly wbout that company.
What would Apple do if another U.S. company invested $1 billion in a Chinese company that most likely infringed on one or more of their patents? I'm not saying I agree with patents on business models or methodologies, but since they exist, this is a legitimate question.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
Sorry thats *smelly* uber-smelly
I guess not. Thanks Apple.
They can afford it I guess.
Now to see whether this is the beginning of tossing around a lot more cash as a means of getting cozier with China again.
China is gonna use you and then discard you. There's no even playing field. All you have done the last 40 years is give away everyone's job and thinking outsourcing won't ever affect you. It's not like IP can ever be stolen? Right, guys? LOL.
Well news flash, ebay has been offering direct from China goods for a while now, shipping costs nothing (which our dumb USPS even signs deals to make cheaper, who knows why?) while our shipping containers to China go empty.
We killed the environment because they have no regulation, all so we can have our dollar stores kept on going way past when inflation said it should no longer be feasible. Manufacturing went to shit. And all that is left is service jobs.
So when companies like Apple sweat when they see cheap ass knockoff phones, I laugh. You reap what you sowed, motherfuckers. You let the forces of the world eat you from the bottom up because you didn't care about the bottom. All that is left is for cars to be seriously targeted and exported by our eastern competition. That, they are still working out the kinks, but have improved tremendously.
And guess what will happen? How many go to the 3rd world Africa cheap with no emissions to even begin with? At least our used junk mobiles have emissions, not CA standard probably, but better than nothing. But wanna imagine 100 million cars in Africa in a decade, no emissions ever built in?
Fun.
China won. You hurt bro?
I am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GirenbIeq_k
I wonder how much of this is about attempting to 'break into the Chinese market' and how much of it is simply the fact that the time to get in 'on the ground floor' with Uber is long past, so Apple couldn't realistically expect nearly as much growth or control-over-future-direction-of-the-company if they'd made an equivalent purchase in Uber or Lyft? Either of those two might(or might not, I don't know and it isn't terribly relevant to this post) still be a perfectly viable buy if one is merely looking to make an adequate return on investment; but presumably Apple wants either some sort of strategic gain or the possibility of substantial return on investment if the bet pays off if they are actively buying a large stake in a specific company.
After all, Apple's "cash" assets aren't really just sitting in a Scrooge McDuck money vault somewhere, at that size "cash" means "reasonably conservative and liquid investments that can be cashed out as needed", so Apple's default investment strategy for their spare cash is, already, 'aim for reasonable returns', so 'aim for reasonable returns; but with a massive decrease in portfolio diversity!' would be an idiotic plan.
Sadly, he is wrong and has wasted his company's money.
Sure, that's true... but so what?
He's failed to learn from the past. China engages in economic warfare. I happen to think that's OK: they are playing to win, not playing to be nice guys. And it works: entire industries that used to be exclusive domains of the west have up and moved to China. Tim Cook has failed to learn from the experiences of other companies in the past. That's fine too. He'll get to learn on his own, since he was not a student of history.
I don't see any problem here. He'll end up out a few billion dollars, and possibly wiser. Apple isn't going to miss a few billion.
Sounds like a taxi service to me. What will those Chinese think of next?
Really WTF!?!?!?!
Who would invest 1 BILLION DOLLARS in a company with a ride sharing app? It doesn't cost 1 Billion dollars to create your own ride sharing app, in fact if you spent more than a several million developing your own app, you must be doing something VERY VERY WRONG during app development.
This is just companies looking for somewhere to park spare cash....
He's figuring America is starting to over live its usefulness. Getting ready to jump ship and head for the next up and comer.
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
Are you melly?
Since when is Uber a ride-sharing service? Do they stop along the way to pick up people sharing your ride?
Uber (except Uber Pool) is a cab service, not a ride-sharing service.
The companies want to have a piece of the large and still developing market. It's the Gold Rush of this century, not just a result of aggressive policies. Chinese don't want the 19th century to repeat so they take precautions this time. For that they can't be blamed.
This is why I grind my teeth anytime someone says we can't tax the corporations or else they'll go somewhere else. They took their jobs to China. Now they take their investment dollars there too. Tax the shit out of them I say.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
I don't think they are trying to bribe "the chinese" they are probably trying to bribe a particular chniese person(s). Presumably those people buy didi stock at apple's "suggestion". Apple announces the investment. stock rises and they sell. They also get to tell their minions this tip as well.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I wonder if they are going to beta test self driving cars in a country that can instantly change/implement self-driving laws that suit them.
I have an idea. How about release a phone that the Chinese actually want and can afford? I mean in China last year I saw scores and scores of Chinese smartphones. Most ran Android, and most of those running Android you'd barely recognise the platform as such. Huawei's alternatives cost a fraction of the price and offer a far more native interface (something the Chinese feel familiar with, not something that a western company introduces).
I don't understand how Apple could magical assume that people all over the world must want the exact same device. Surely they'd have some level of local knowledge and can't be blind to the cultural differences.
I keep imagining a short, ginger Apple engineer mumbling to himself; "... as long as she stays out of my laboratory...."