Apple Gives Up Board Seat at Chinese Ride-Hailing Company Didi
Apple has given up its board seat at Didi Global as the Chinese ride-hailing company struggles to return to growth following crushing fines and restrictions imposed by Beijing's cyberspace regulator, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
Apple CEO Tim Cook with Didi Chuxing president Jean Liu in 2016 Adrian Perica, Apple's vice president of corporate development, resigned from the board earlier this month, according to a
notice posted on Didi's website.
Perica, who heads Apple's mergers and acquisitions strategy, joined Didi's board in 2016 after Apple made a $1 billion investment in the the ride hailing app. The move was described by CEO Tim Cook at the time as a "strategic investment" that would help Apple better understand the Chinese market.
The problems started for Didi last year, when Apple was informed by China's internet regulator that it must remove the Didi Chuxing ride hailing app from the Chinese App Store, after Beijing raised concerns about the Uber rival's possible misuse of personal data.
Didi's removal from China's mobile app stores effectively hamstrung the company and the action erased more than 80% of its market value. Then last month, following a year-long investigation, Didi was fined $1.2 billion by the Chinese government for infractions that Beijing said compromised national security.
The decision followed broader moves by Beijing to curb the influence of China's largest internet corporations and tighten the ownership of the personal data of hundreds of millions of users held by the likes of Alibaba, Tencent, and others.
Apple's investments and acquisitions have dramatically slowed over the past two years, with the tech giant being more selective in the face of a shaky economy and heightened government scrutiny.
Popular Stories
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories, according to the Apple leaker and prototype collector known as "Kosutami." In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Kosutami explained that Apple has stopped production of FineWoven accessories due to its poor durability. The company may move to another non-leather material for its premium accessories in the future. Kosutami has revealed...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
The lead developer of the multi-emulator app Provenance has told iMore that his team is working towards releasing the app on the App Store, but he did not provide a timeframe. Provenance is a frontend for many existing emulators, and it would allow iPhone and Apple TV users to emulate games released for a wide variety of classic game consoles, including the original PlayStation, SEGA Genesis,...
Top Rated Comments
Retail investors deep in the red with big losses. VCs and founders ran off with the money already.
These type of businesses are parasite businesses. They just feast on the blood of the masses while adding costs everywhere.
Your rent is higher because of Airbnb property speculators.
Your pollution is higher because ride sharing clogs the streets and people get tempted to use that instead of public transport.
Zero sum game and zero benefit for the masses. Only a small number of rich people gain.