Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1599
Amazon rushes into the AI market, releasing a series of commercial services
Amazon has joined the artificial intelligence race with Microsoft, Google, and Meta with large models, cloud services, and hardware platforms optimized for generative AI. On April 13, Amazon released a series of services, including:
- Large model Titan, allowing customers to use their own data to customize the Titan model, but these data will never be used to train the Titan model. Amazon says this is to ensure other customers don’t end up benefiting from the data.
- Bedrock, a cloud service that allows users to use the underlying models provided by Amazon and other startups, including Anthropic, which Amazon rival Google invested in.
- CodeWhisperer, a generative AI code development service, is officially launched to help developers write, debug, optimize and deploy code.
- Low-cost, high-performance generative AI instance EC2 Inf2 instance is officially launched, which is a cloud instance using Amazon’s own Inferentia2 chip, which can provide high-performance and relatively low-cost AI reasoning.
Amazon, which has the best technical reserves and the largest customer base in the industry, is not limited to providing application layer services, but continues to provide low-level technical tools. They do not force users to use Amazon’s large model, but give them full freedom. In the past two months, Amazon has successively released entrepreneurial accelerator projects and announced a partnership with Hugging Face to lower the threshold and cost of generative AI access.
The former head of AWS and current Amazon CEO Andy Jassy (Andy Jassy) published a letter to shareholders on the same day, mentioning that in the current macro environment, AWS will encounter short-term growth challenges, but Amazon will continue to ensure long-term investment, especially Invest heavily in large models and generative AI. But in fact, Amazon still achieved a high growth rate of 29% under the ultra-large scale of AWS’s annualized revenue of US$85 billion, ten times that of its Chinese counterparts.
He also introduced Amazon’s technical reserves and progress, including Amazon’s general-purpose CPU has been continuously updated to the third generation (CPU Graviton), and the first low-cost AI training processor (Trainium) was also delivered last year.
Amazon has been one of the more leading companies in AI applications. Alexa is the first language assistant to drive hardware sales, following Echo speakers into tens of millions of American homes. Amazon GO is also the only unmanned supermarket in the world that does not scan codes or NFC chips for a long time, but only uses cameras to determine what consumers buy and automatically deducts money. Amazon has been using machine learning extensively for 25 years, which is longer than most Internet companies.
In May 2020, Nvidia released the high-end server chip A100. Six months later, Amazon launched the EC2 Instance based on this chip to provide customers with AI computing capabilities. At the beginning of the launch, a single customer was allowed to use a maximum of 4,000 A100 GPUs. This was at the time Promoted by Amazon as having supercomputer-level performance. In March of this year, Amazon purchased tens of thousands of Nvidia’s more advanced H100 chips for the first time.
“I could write a whole letter about large models and generative AI. I believe they will bring about a huge transformation, but that can be saved for later. Now, let’s put it this way, large models and generative AI will have a huge impact on our customers, Our shareholders and Amazon are a big deal,” Jassy said in the shareholder letter. (Gong Fangyi)
Taobao DAU finally overtakes Pinduoduo
According to data from Questmobile, a third-party data service provider, in March this year, an average of 377.9 million people used mobile phones to browse Taobao every day, 26.3 million more than those who used Pinduoduo. This is the first time since February 2022 that the monthly average daily active users (DAU) of Mobile Taobao has surpassed that of Pinduoduo.
Pinduoduo’s DAU fell 9% month-on-month in March, which led to the overtaking of Mobile Taobao. In the latter month, DAU increased slightly by 2.4% month-on-month. Over time, Mobile Taobao has once again become the most popular e-commerce platform for Chinese people.
All this happened amid rumors of JD.com’s disruption and Pinduoduo’s own security issues. JD.com, dissatisfied with losing the “low price” mentality of the user end, tested the tens of billions of subsidies at the end of February, claiming to compare prices on the entire network, and to achieve the lowest price of some products on the entire network.
According to the “ spot check “ of 72 products conducted by the Orient Securities Research Institute at the beginning of the activity, at that time, only 14 products had an advantage in the subsidy price of tens of billions of JD.
JD.com’s limited efforts have been exchanged for short-term user growth. According to Questmobile statistics, the number of monthly active users (MAU) of JD.com’s client in March increased by 42.24 million from the previous month, which is comparable to the loss of Pinduoduo’s MAU (-39.07 million). On the DAU of “loyalty”, JD.com only added 10.32 million people.
However, Pinduoduo’s DAU still stalled, with a decrease of 34.76 million from the previous quarter. The Google App Store removed the Pinduoduo main website app last month on the grounds that malware was found in the non-Play version of the Pinduoduo app, which was forced to be removed for security reasons. If users install through other channels, they will also be prompted by the Google Play protection mechanism.
In this regard, Pinduoduo told the media via email, “Google Play notified us this morning that the Pinduoduo app has been removed because the existing version does not comply with Google’s policies, but did not disclose more details.” However, Pinduoduo did not respond to media inquiries. Its main station application was found to have reports of key security risks.
On February 12 and February 13, 2021, Pinduoduo’s DAU surpassed that of Taobao for the first time . This is the result of several years of preparation from product to operation.
Before that, Pinduoduo has made it clear that DAU is a more important indicator for itself than GMV. Based on the gamified method of group buying and sufficiently cheap products, plus the algorithm-based recommendation logic of “finding people for goods”, Stimulate users to shop on Pinduoduo from various dimensions.
At that time, Ali still regarded GMV as one of the most important goals of Taobao e-commerce, so resources were tilted to Tmall, which diluted the overall user experience of Taobao.
In February 2022, Pinduoduo’s DAU reached 355.1 million, 5 million more than Mobile Taobao, and remained ahead in the following 12 months.
During the period, Ali stopped the e-commerce development model with GMV as the growth target, and the new person in charge Dai Shan asked Taobao Tmall to recreate the consumer experience, clearly pointing out that compared to GMV growth, the more important indicator is DAU growth.
But to promote organizational change, we need to overcome a lot of resistance and inertia, especially for a giant like Ali. Pinduoduo, on the other hand, has grown inertially, and with the catalysis of the public health incident in 2022, accelerated when its opponents hesitated-until they encountered strong resistance recently. (Gong Fangyi)
Didi unveils self-driving concept car
On April 13th, Didi Autopilot held an open day event, releasing a number of innovative products and services related to autonomous driving, including two core hardware for autonomous driving – the lidar “Beiya Beta” and the fusion computing platform “Orca Killer Whale”, 24-hour self-driving operation and maintenance center “Huiju Port”, self-driving freight business KargoBot, etc.
One of the protagonists of the event is a self-driving concept car called DiDi Neuron. It has a white body and looks somewhat similar to the square, on-call unmanned taxi in the American drama “Westworld”. The difference is that Neuron’s front face and rear are equipped with multiple large color screens to remind the outside world that it is turning, waiting for pedestrians or parking at the station.
According to Meng Xing, COO of Didi Autopilot, due to the cancellation of the driving seat, the Neuron has 50% more interior space and 86% more leg space than ordinary online car-hailing cars on the premise that the overall length of the vehicle remains the same. Lie down. In addition, Neuron is equipped with 21 cameras, 8 lidars and 14 sensor radars in the whole car as its “eyes” and “ears” to perceive the surrounding environment.
A computing platform is usually placed at the rear of an unmanned vehicle, which takes up space and is noisy. But in the Neuron’s trunk, it is replaced by a robotic arm that can carry luggage and pass water for passengers. Neuron’s door opening method is also very unique. In addition to the sliding doors, the “roof” of the car will also open synchronously when passengers get on and off the car. Meng Xing demonstrated at the scene that he can walk directly on car. He said that these details reflect that Didi also pays attention to user services and experience on the basis of autonomous driving safety.
Like most concept cars, Neuron will not be mass-produced in the short term. It more represents Didi’s vision, design direction and technology demonstration for the future of self-driving online car-hailing.
Some overseas manufacturers have also made similar attempts. For example, at CES 2018, Toyota released a rectangular unmanned electric vehicle e-Palette, which can accommodate 20 passengers. After the seats are folded, it can be used as a mobile store or mobile Office, two years later, Toyota said it saw user demand and planned to commercialize it.
Meituan launches KeeTa Rider application for food delivery riders in Hong Kong, China
Meituan China’s Hong Kong food delivery brand is getting closer to launch.
Starting this month, Meituan will hold the first round of 6 briefing sessions for delivery staff in Hong Kong, China, on the 4th, 6th, 12th, 13th, 14th, and 19th, with 60-100 people in each session. According to local media reports, the event site was full, and the remaining sessions were fully booked. Some users said on social media that they did not sign up and asked about the content of the meeting.
According to Hong Kong media speculation, Meituan’s Hong Kong food delivery brand may be named “KeeTa”. At the introduction meeting, they demonstrated the use process of the “KeeTa Rider” application for delivery staff, and displayed the delivery boxes with the “KeeTa” logo, as well as a series of posters with KeeTa and other materials. Among them, the delivery driver application KeeTa Rider is being tested internally.
A user posted on social media, saying that KeeTa Rider is currently only open to users who have successfully applied for delivery staff. He has ordered two McDonald’s orders in KeeTa, and praised its intelligence, “you can receive orders in the wrong place”, and said “The silly bear (foodpanda) and the kangaroo (Deliveroo) meet strong opponents”.
Left: Users inquired about the content of Meituan’s briefing on social media. Right: Photos of on-site materials released by Hong Kong media
Foodpanda and Deliveroo are the two major food delivery platforms in Hong Kong, China, with a market share of 50-50. However, there is no lack of complaints about it on social media. Some users complained that they were not delivered by foodpanda and were warned, but in fact, the route of the system was inaccurate, and they had to take a detour to reach their destination.
“LatePost” mentioned in October last year that Meituan is preparing for overseas business, and Hong Kong, China is the first pilot station. At the Meituan financial report conference at the end of last month, the management also confirmed the news.
The market generally believes that, unlike the mainland, Hong Kong, China has high labor costs and high delivery fees. In addition to the service fees paid to merchants, a pork chop rice with a dine-in price of around HK$50 can be sold for hundreds of Hong Kong dollars. Coupled with the dense restaurants, it is very convenient to go downstairs to eat, and users have not yet formed the habit of taking out food.
The strategy to open the market is similar – subsidies. On February 21 this year, Meituan publicly recruited couriers in Hong Kong, China. Although the launch date was far from confirmed at the time, Meituan reminded users to always pay attention, because 14 days before the launch, each order will have additional rewards:
- An extra HK$5 will be given for each of the first 19 orders;
- The 20th-59th order will give an extra HK$6;
- The 60th-99th order will give an extra HKD 8;
- For the 100th order and every subsequent order, an extra HK$10 will be given.
According to estimates, if 500 orders are delivered every month and rewards are received, the monthly income of foot soldiers (walking food delivery) and drivers (driving food delivery) can reach HK$20,000 and HK$35,000 respectively. It is much higher than the average salary of the service industry in Hong Kong, China.
Meituan’s rich experience in food delivery operations may help accelerate the opening of the situation. According to the experience of the mainland, relying on better algorithms, more aggressive order dispatching, etc., combined with the ever-expanding scale effect, Meituan’s food delivery business has been able to make profits. In Hong Kong, China, buildings and restaurants are densely populated, and the larger the scale, the better the algorithm can improve the delivery efficiency, and functions such as order matching can also help reduce delivery fees.
On the business side, the official website of Meituan Recruitment has updated a number of positions in Hong Kong, China since the end of last month, covering (brand) business development, product development around business needs, compliance and other functions. According to local media reports, both merchants and delivery workers are happy to see the success of Meituan Food Delivery, because with more competition, merchant commissions on the platform will be reduced, and the income of delivery workers will also increase. (Lin Guangying)
Boeing outpaces Airbus in quarterly deliveries as fallout from 737 MAX crash fades
In the first quarter of 2023, Boeing delivered 130 passenger aircraft, which was difficult for Indonesian Lion Air in 2018, and the quarterly delivery volume surpassed Airbus for the first time. The latter delivered 3 less than Boeing due to a shortage of parts.
For Boeing, the full resumption of the 737 MAX production line is particularly important. In October 2018 and March 2019, two 737 MAX 8s crashed successively, killing 346 people. Blame it all on Boeing’s corporate culture that values profits and valuations.
After the crash, Boeing stopped deliveries of the newly produced 737 MAX and will stop production from 2020. This allows Airbus, which is doing its best to make products, to easily regain market share. Meanwhile, geopolitics has added to the complexity of this rivalry.
By the end of 2022, Airbus will occupy 54% of China’s civil aircraft market. In July last year, China’s three major airlines jointly announced that they would purchase 292 Airbus aircraft. During French President Macron’s visit to China this month, China signed another big Airbus order.
Boeing is working hard to regain the trust of the Chinese government and the market. In August 2021, Boeing brought the 737 MAX to China to participate in the most stringent flight certification exam . In December of the same year, China lifted the 737 MAX flight ban . In January, two 737 MAXs operated by China Southern Airlines took off from Guangzhou, their first flight in China since 2019.
As global travel demand recovers, new competition has begun. Airbus will build a second production line in Tianjin, China, hoping to achieve a global monthly production target of 75 A320 family aircraft. Boeing plans to increase the production of 737MAX, and produce 50 per month as soon as 2025. Its current monthly output is 31. (Intern Chang Junfei)
CHART OF THE DAY | How China’s March Exports Beat Expectations
According to data from the General Administration of Customs, China’s exports in March increased by 14.8% year-on-year, significantly exceeding the market’s previous expectations of 5%-10%.
The low base and the backward shift in export demand in the fourth quarter of last year may be the main reason why this period’s data exceeded expectations. In the first quarter, the total export of electric vehicles, photovoltaic products, lithium batteries and other products increased by 66.9%, which also increased the export growth rate by 2 percentage points.
In terms of export destinations, the year-on-year growth rate of exports to developed countries rebounded sharply in March, except for the export value to the US, which was still 4.4% lower than the same period last year.
According to the US February wholesale inventory-to-sales ratio data, destocking of home appliances, apparel and other categories has not been smooth. Among them, the surplus of wholesale clothing and accessories is the most serious. In February, the inventory was 3.04 times of sales (last year’s peak was 3.26 times. It was nearly half higher than the same period in 2019.
During the same period, the export value to ASEAN increased by 35.4% year-on-year, continuing the high growth rate in February. It reflects the deepening industrial dependence between China and ASEAN (export of industrial intermediate products). In addition, domestic enterprises have recently invested in Southeast Asia to set up factories, which has also stimulated the export of raw materials, machinery and equipment.
The export value to Russia also increased by 136.4% year-on-year. In the first week of April, four of the top five selling car brands in Russia came from China. (Lin Guangying)
OTHER NEWS
Michelle Ice City purchased 3,000 tons of Yunnan coffee beans and 42,000 tons of lemons last year.
According to the 2022 social responsibility report of Michelle Ice City, it will purchase more than 3,000 tons of Yunnan coffee beans during the 2021-2022 coffee bean production season (usually refers to the coffee bean production season from November 2021 to March 2022). According to “Wandian Finance”, Michelle Bingcheng purchased nearly 10,000 tons of Yunnan coffee beans in this year’s coffee bean production season, equivalent to one-tenth of Yunnan’s total output. In addition to coffee beans, Michelle is also purchasing more than 42,000 tons of lemons in 2022. According to our previous estimation through prospectus data, Michelle Ice City may consume 8,500 tons of tea and 51,000 tons of fruit in 2021.
Softbank sold another US$7.2 billion worth of Ali stocks, reducing its holdings by more than 80% in three years.
According to the latest regulatory filings, since December last year, SoftBank has sold Ali shares worth about US$7.2 billion, reducing its shareholding to 3.8%. SoftBank said the sale was mainly in response to an uncertain business environment, and they were raising cash to increase liquidity on hand. Softbank once held as high as 34% of Ali’s shares, and began to reduce its holdings in 2016. At the end of 2019, its shareholding dropped to 25.2%, and in mid-2020 it dropped to 24.9%.
Analysts expect Apple to mass produce Apple Glasses as soon as 2026.
TF International analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who is familiar with Apple’s industry chain, recently published his latest comments on Apple’s lens module technology iteration on his personal social media, pointing out that Apple will produce Metalens next year. Based on the advantages of small size, light weight, and easy integration, it is estimated that Apple may produce Apple Glasses as soon as 2026 to 2027.
According to the information learned from the industry chain by Wandian Finance, if Apple Glasses (non-MR, AR helmets) want to achieve the comfort of daily wear for 8 hours without obvious discomfort, with the existing technology, there may only be thinner optical lens imaging systems and There are two paths to sensor miniaturization.
The Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued the “Interim Regulations on Script Entertainment Management (Draft for Comment)”.
The Ministry of Culture and Tourism issued the “Interim Regulations on Script Entertainment Management (Draft for Comment)” on April 13, requiring the filing of scripts and venues. The main body of script creation and production needs to go through the script filing procedures with the local county-level cultural and tourism department. The script needs to be reviewed and signed by experts, or obtain a publication number. Business premises engaged in scripted entertainment activities are required to go through record filing procedures. Last year, Shanghai took the lead in filing and managing entertainment activities such as script killings and escape rooms.
Sinopec will take a stake in the world’s largest liquefied natural gas project.
Sinopec bought a 1.25% stake in the world’s largest LNG project for US$375 million. The project is located in the east of Qatar’s North Gas Field and is led by Qatar Energy. It plans to increase LNG production by 43% to 111 million tons in 2027. Sinopec is the only Asian shareholder, and other shareholders include Shell, Total Energy, ExxonMobil, etc. Last year, Sinopec signed a US$60 billion contract with Qatar Energy, which will purchase 4 million tons of LNG per year for 27 consecutive years from 2026.
Zhihu’s large-scale model “Zhihaitu AI” has started internal testing.
Zhihu announced on April 13 that the Chinese large-scale model “Zhihaitu AI” has officially started internal testing. Zhihu and the artificial intelligence start-up company Face Wall jointly trained this large model, and applied “Zhihaitu AI” to Zhihu’s hot list. According to Fianbi Intelligence, “Zhihaitu AI” sorts out the answers to Zhihu hot list questions and presents the answers to Zhihu users. The founding team of Facewall Intelligence is mainly from the Computer Department of Tsinghua University, and has completed the seed round of financing.
Due to the significant recovery of the Chinese market, Uniqlo raised its profit forecast.
In the fiscal quarter ended in February this year, the operating profit of UNIQLO parent company Fast Retailing Group increased by 48% year-on-year to 102 billion yen (approximately 765 million U.S. dollars), significantly exceeding analysts’ average expectations (90 billion yen). The company said that as the impact of the epidemic weakens, the Greater China region is recovering rapidly. In particular, sales in the first two months of this year hit a record high, far exceeding expectations. Based on the recovery of the Chinese market and the strong growth of the European and American markets, Uniqlo raised its net profit forecast for the entire fiscal year by 10 billion yen (about 75 million US dollars).
Consumption may not rebound, but luxury consumption must have rebounded.
The world’s largest luxury goods company LVMH’s sales in the first quarter of 2023 rose 17% year-on-year, twice analysts’ expectations. Its CFO said that the growth was mainly due to the sharp rebound in the Chinese market after the optimization of the new crown epidemic prevention and control measures, and it is expected that this trend will continue.
Intel may launch a special version of GPU for China.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger visited China for the first time since taking office. The company said it will launch the GPU Max 1450 series of data center image processing chips “suitable for different market needs” later this year. Last year, after the United States restricted the export of high-computing chips, Nvidia took similar measures to provide Chinese customers with a reduced version of the GPU chip A800.
Salia expects net profit to decrease by 26% in the new fiscal year because it does not plan to pass on raw material costs.
The Japanese restaurant chain Sarria’s net profit is expected to decrease by 26% from September 2022 to August 2023 because it insists on not raising prices in Japan. Salia earned approximately $46.7 million between September 2022 and February 2023. Although the number of customers and the unit price of Japanese stores are increasing, and Chinese consumers are no longer affected by the new crown epidemic, the rise in the price of Japanese food raw materials has caused Saria to lower her expectations. Previously, she expected an operating profit of 387 million yuan. 315 million yuan.
Musk said that Twitter’s financial balance is basically balanced.
Twitter CEO Musk said on April 11 that Twitter’s financial balance is basically balanced, and advertisers are returning to Twitter. Musk has cut staff on a large scale to cut costs, and the number of Twitter employees has been reduced from more than 7,000 to about 1,500. Advertising revenue once accounted for 90% of Twitter’s total revenue, but advertisers left in large numbers after Musk entered Twitter, and it remains to be seen whether they will return. As of February, more than 500 advertisers stopped advertising on Twitter, four of the top 10 advertisers stopped running, and the number of users visiting Twitter’s advertising portal fell 18% year-over-year.
Microsoft open-sourced DeepSpeed Chat, further lowering the threshold for training artificial intelligence.
Microsoft announced on April 12 that it will open source DeepSpeed Chat, which will reduce the time and cost for developers to train ChatGPT-like large models. The training speed of DeepSpeed Chat is more than 15 times faster than that of existing open source systems. Developers can train a ChatGPT-like model with 13 billion parameters, which can be completed in as little as 75 minutes at a cost of only about 2,200 yuan.
Amazon has sued 5 service providers in China for suspected brushing orders.
Amazon is prosecuting service providers involved in “scrubbing and speculating” in many places around the world. After suing related service providers and related individuals in the United States and Europe last year, on April 13, Amazon announced that it would sue five more companies in China for allegedly providing “scrubbing” services. The service provider and related individuals of “Single Speculation Letter” filed a civil lawsuit. Amazon stated in the newsletter that the suspected illegal activities of relevant service providers include: inflating product sales for sellers in the form of false transactions or manipulating Amazon buyer accounts, inducing consumers to submit false positive reviews on Amazon, and maliciously increasing product searches. result ranking etc.
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