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.

Comments

Here's an idea, invest in your own goddam company.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see...

iTunes is a bloated pile of steaming shit. The iTunes Music Store and App Store are rapidly becoming indecipherable piles of garbage that are nearly impossible to sort through unless you're looking for something in one of the top 25 lists. The hardware almost all universally sucks right now (especially the Desktop side of things), due to "thinner" and "lighter" systems that can't keep up with the thermal load of modern day technology. Mac OS X is literally rotting away from the inside out, HFS hasn't been touched in decades and every year all we get are new half baked features that fuck up your workflow and then promptly get forgotten about for the next release. iOS has slowly been getting more and more convoluted now that we don't have things like graphically obvious buttons and it's apparently OK to hide useful things behind three layers of menu stuffed behind a burger icon somewhere on the screen.

But don't worry, because Apple is investing in a taxi company that operates in China!