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Category: General

Retail News Asia is committed to providing both local and global retailers with the latest General Retail news throughout the Asian market. This on a daily base.

  • Google yanks controversial app from the Play Store

    Google yanks controversial app from the Play Store

    Axios revealed last week that Google has removed the Living Hope Ministries app from the Google Play Store. Those who installed the app could listen to recordings of sermons and view texts of devotionals for men, women, parents and their children. However, despite the Ministry’s denial, the app was also known for offering gay conversion therapy. This is a controversial method that some (including Vice President Mike Pence) believe will convert gay and bisexual men and women to a heterosexual orientation. The conversion is done by a brainwashing-like technique that uses psychology and religious belief to pound messages into subjects over and over again. Some say that this technique is harmful, ineffective, and could lead to depression, drug use and suicide.

    Meanwhile, Google’s action came after 142,212 people signed a petition on Change.org that called for the app’s removal. Several LGBTQ organizations also demanded that the app is removed. But Google did not respond immediately; it took months of protesting before the company finally followed the lead of other tech firms that had already removed the app from their storefronts such as Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.

    “It took months of activism by Truth Wins Out and Change.org, and today Human Rights Campaign, to get Google to pull a conversion therapy app. I called Google out in the press about this in January. They took no action. Credit is due for finally acting — but Google now needs a serious internal audit examining why it delayed so long.”-Sen. Brad Hoylman.

    “After consulting with outside advocacy groups, reviewing our policies, and making sure we had a thorough understanding of the app and its relation to conversion therapy, we’ve decided to remove it from the Play Store, consistent with other app stores.”-Google

    Before the Human Rights Campaign fought for the removal of the app, it had given Google a perfect 100% score for its annual Corporate Equality Index. The score was based on Google’s offering of health benefits for same-sex couples, and for providing health care to Transgender employees. However, the organization pulled its support for Google because it would not originally remove the Living Hope Ministries app.

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  • Is Asia the Art Market’s New Frontier?

    Is Asia the Art Market’s New Frontier?

    Despite pre-opening jitters over the state of the Chinese economy, Art Basel Hong Kong has already reported brisk sales at its seventh edition, which opened to the public today.

    With the region’s growing wealth and appetite for art, art fairs like Art Basel Hong Kong, which opened to the public today, are big business, drawing collectors from China and across Asia, as well as farther afield. Of the 80,000 visitors expected at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, 40,000 are coming from abroad, Art Basel said.

    The Art Market, a report jointly published by Art Basel and UBS earlier in March noted that art fairs are highly important in Asia, with between 92–97 percent of HNWI collectors from Hong Kong and Singapore having purchased from an art fair in the past.

    It’s not just China—it’s Singapore, it’s Malaysia, it’s Taipei. It’s not one market, Artnet quoted New York-based dealer Sean Kelly as saying about the fair, which has 242 galleries from 35 countries participating through the weekend.

    Increasingly, the market’s center of gravity does feel as if it is being pulled eastward,» Artnet reported from the exhibition floor, while Artnews reported «high energy» at the fair and quoted a dealer as saying, The quality of this fair is now on par with the great European fairs. It is highly sophisticated.

    Swift Sales

    The Art Newspaper also reported swift sales among the 107 galleries – 75 percent of which are Asian – at the Art Central fair concurrently taking place just around the corner from Art Basel. Here at we’re meeting a lot of Australian and Chinese collectors. Hong Kong is a very good market, a dealer exhibiting from the Philippines was quoted as saying.

    Art Basel reported that sales already concluded include a significant work by Andy Warhol at White Cube for $2.85 million, a work by Alice Neel for $1.7 million at David Zwirner, and a painting by George Condo at Almine Rech Gallery for between $1.2 million to $1.4 million. David Zwirner sold its entire booth, including four new sculptures by Carol Bove for $400,000 to $500,000 each, on Wednesday, the first VIP day.

    China Dominates

    We previously reported that the global art market grew by 6 percent in 2018, reaching total sales of $67.4 billion – its second-highest level in 10 years.

    Asia’s has recorded a growing share of world imports of art and antiques in the past decade, which mirrors the growing regional wealth. In particular, sales in China reached $12.9 billion in 2018. China accounted for 45 percent of all art imports into Asia (compared to 17 percent in 2000), with 95 percent of these imports going into Hong Kong, according to «The Art Market» report.

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  • AirAsia to launch Phuket-Phnom Penh direct flights

    AirAsia to launch Phuket-Phnom Penh direct flights

    Thai AirAsia CEO Santisuk Klongchaiya said the airline has devoted great importance to adding routes to its regional flight bases, looking to build a strong network of destinations that provide the opportunity to add even further routes, providing ever greater convenience to travellers who will no longer need to stop over in Bangkok, said a release today (April 1) announcing the new flights.

    “Phuket is a very important strategic flight base for AirAsia that has grown steadily along with the addition of direct flights to CLMV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam) cities such as Siem Reap.

    “With the positive response we have received from international travellers, we decided to add Phuket-Phnom Penh, connecting the resort town to Cambodia’s capital. The route should well serve tourists as well as members of the business community of both countries,” Mr Santisuk added.

    The flights will operate on Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday.

    Thai AirAsia operates nine international routes out of Phuket: Phuket-Wuhan, Phuket-Kunming, Phuket-Hong Kong, Phuket-Macau, Phuket-Siem Reap, Phuket-Singapore, Phuket-Kuala Lumpur (Code AK), Phuket-Penang (Code AK) and the latest addition Phuket-Phnom Penh starting June 1.

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  • Bamboo Airways inks deal for 26 Airbus aircraft

    Bamboo Airways inks deal for 26 Airbus aircraft

    Private airline Bamboo Airways will buy 26 new narrow-body Airbus aircraft as it expands operations. The value of the deal is $6.3 billion, based on list price, chairman Trinh Van Quyet told. With the previous order of 24 aircraft of the same model last year, the airline has ordered 50 in total.

    Quyet said that the first of the A321Neo planes will be delivered in 2022.

    Bamboo Airways had previously said that it was considering purchasing 25 narrow-body Boeing 737 MAX, which has been grounded internationally after two deadly crashes within a space of five months.

    Last month, Bamboo Airways had inked a deal with Boeing for 10 wide-body 787-9 Dreamliners worth almost $3 billion.

    Starting this year, the airline operates 17 domestic flight routes. It plans to start international flights next month, with Japan, Singapore and South Korea mentioned as possible destinations.

    It also plans to fly to Europe in June and directly to the U.S. by the end of this year or early next year.

    Bamboo Airways is one of five airlines operating in Vietnam. The others are state-owned Vietnam Airlines, budget airline Vietjet, low-cost carrier Jetstar Pacific and Vietnam Air Services Company (VASCO).

    Local airlines served almost 50 million passengers last year, up 10 percent from 2017.

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  • Update to Google’s Duo changes how you use the application

    Update to Google’s Duo changes how you use the application

    The Google Duo app allows users to stream live video, make calls or send video and voice messages to their Duo contacts. A server-side update performed by Google has changed how users select contacts, and whether they are streaming them video or making a voice call to them. In the olden days (like a week or so ago), one would open the Duo app, go to contacts, and tab the video or audio tabs before selecting the recipient.
    After the update, when you open the Duo app, you first select the contact that you want to connect with. Only then do you decide if you are going to stream live video or simply make a phone call to your selected contact. If you want to send a message, as soon as you open Duo, you swipe down on the screen. You then are given the option of creating a voice or video message. Once you create that message, you are given the option of sending it to five contacts simultaneously.
    The Google Duo app is available from both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store for Android and iOS devices, respectively.
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  • Gmail users can now customize swipe actions on iPhone

    Gmail users can now customize swipe actions on iPhone

    Google has just made it official that iPhone users of its ever-growing Gmail email app can now customize a number of swipe actions. The update is clearly meant to enable Gmail users to execute certain actions faster than before, but Google also mentions the addition of the new feature matches the brand new mobile redesign of the app that added many new productivity improvements.

    You’re probably wondering what type of actions you’ll be able to customize in Gmail on iOS, so here is the full list: Archive, Trash, Mark as read/unread, Snooze, and Move to. These actions can now be executed using a single swipe gesture, but you’ll have to configure them first.

    Here is how you can do that: head to Settings / Swipe action, then, choose the swipe options that better fit your usage style. You can choose to swipe left or right on an email to archive it or directly move it to trash, but there are other options available too.

    Besides adding customizable swipe actions, the latest update makes it possible to use the same actions to sort your notifications. Whenever you want to snooze emails, you can now long press on a Gmail iOS notification or use 3D Touch, and then click on “Snooze” directly to pick the date and time when to snooze the email until.
    Keep in mind that while the update has been released on March 28, it will take more than 15 days to arrive on all iPhones out there, so if you don’t see the new feature yet, you’ll have to wait a while.
  • With Apple News+ available, Texture will close on May 28th

    With Apple News+ available, Texture will close on May 28th

    Now that Apple has launched its Apple News+ magazine subscription service, AppleInsider says that the company plans on shutting down the Texture app on May 28th. The app, known as “the Netflix of magazine publishing,” was acquired by Apple last year and immediately rumors started about Apple using the service to launch a premium paid tier of Apple News. Of course, the rumors were true, and earlier this week Apple announced Apple News+. The latter offers over 300 magazines, The Wall Street Journal and the L.A. Times. After a one-month free trial, Apple News+ automatically renews at a price of $9.99 each month.
    Meanwhile, Apple has posted this news on the Texture website, saying “Goodbye Texture. Hello, Apple News+.” A link is included that allows iOS users to sign up for a free one month trial. Right now, in fact, iOS users with a Texture subscription can simply transition over to Apple News+. Android users with a Texture subscription aren’t as lucky since there is no Apple News+ app available for that platform. Android users might want to consider Magzter, available in the Google Play Store. The app is offering one year of unlimited access to over 5,000 magazines for $49.99, a $50 savings off the regular price.
    Apple is aiming to do $50 billion in services revenue by 2020, doubling the $25 billion that the unit grossed in 2016. With over 100 million active iPhone units, this is how Apple tries to combat sluggish iPhone sales in key markets. Consisting of Apple Music, Apple Pay, AppleCare+, the App Store, iTunes and more, the race to hit $50 billion will be helped by the trio of new subscription services that Apple announced last Monday: A
  • February Down for Hong Kong retail spending

    February Down for Hong Kong retail spending

    Hong Kong retail spending shrank in February according to data from Mastercard.

    While the official figures will not be released  by the Census and Statistics Department (C&SD) until next week, Mastercard SpendingPulse, which measures consumer spending across all payment types, including cash, found that retail sales contracted by 3.2 per cent year on year in February.

    However, Hong Kong retail spending data is always affected in January and February by the changing timing of Lunar New Year, which is why C&SD advises both January and February figures should be counted together before comparing with previous years.

    According to Mastercard, which did not amalgamate January and February data for a fair comparison with last year, the drop in February retail sales was seen across the board, with clothing, grocery, health & beauty, jewellery and furniture all experiencing a year-on-year decrease.

    “After an impressive 21-month growth trend, we have seen a decline in retail sales in Hong Kong, particularly around Chinese New Year, due to various reasons ranging from the unusually warm winter to consumer confidence,” said Sasha Krstic, executive VP, services – Asia Pacific at Mastercard.

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  • Bonjour family to jail for Fraud

    Bonjour family to jail for Fraud

    A family of swindlers who stole more than HK$40 million (US$5 million) from cosmetics retailer Bonjour have been imprisoned for their crimes.

    The highest sentence of 11 years behind bars was dealt out to the Bonjour fraud scheme ringleader Kiu Mei-ling, 64, a Bonjour employee in charge of payroll who funnelled company funds into her family’s personal accounts. Her son Ha Ting-pong, who was also an employee of the firm, received a sentence of seven years, while her husband received a 6½-year sentence.

    Kiu used falsely-inflated salaries and fake employee identities to siphon money from the business between 2004 and 2011. She was caught when a company manager noticed an unusually high salary was being paid to a new member of staff. Most of the funds were not recovered, leading lawyers for the retailer to file a claim for the bail money posted by the family, which is pending further judgement.

    Deputy judge Michael Lunn called the scam a “gross breach of trust” that exploited the firm’s weak internal processes.

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  • Google Photos update helps Android users capture receipts and documents

    Google Photos update helps Android users capture receipts and documents

    Google Photos, the popular photo sharing and storage service created by Google, is now getting a small but important update on Android. A lot of users are taking advantage of the app/service combo and capture documents or receipts and store them for later use.

    Up until now, if you wanted your picture to look nice and show just the document or receipt, you needed to crop it yourself. Of course, that could have been done very easily with the tools provided by Google Photos, but it took extra time.

    Starting this week, Google Photos will automatically crop receipts and documents for all Android users. Google has just announced that an update to the Android app is now rolling out to all users as we speak.
    Every time you capture a document or a receipt, you should see suggestions to crop them to remove the background and clean up the edges. Everything is done automatically, so you just need to press the “Crop & adjust” option and your pictures will look the way they should (hopefully).

    Naturally, you can further crop or adjust your pictures if the tool provided by Google doesn’t get it right, so this option is not going away. However, for those who just need to remove and/or rotate an image of a document, this update will save you a lot of time.

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  • Twitter for iOS just gained a black “Lights Out” mode

    Twitter for iOS just gained a black “Lights Out” mode

    Twitter has offered a native Dark Mode option for quite some time now, but today the popular feature is getting one highly-requested upgrade which could help improve your smartphone’s battery life.

    After previously teasing the feature, today Twitter announced that it’s rolling out a new “Lights Out” mode which ditches the blue color used by the standard Dark Mode and replaces it with a pure black background.

    To many, this means that the app’s built-in Dark Mode will now be much more aesthetically pleasing. It also means that OLED displays will directly turn off pixels, thus providing true-black tones and saving a bit of battery in the process which is always a good thing.

    In order to access it, users simply need to head to the ‘Display and sound’ menu within Settings, activate Dark Mode, and then select “Lights Out.” The original Blue theme, now called “Dim,” is still available for those who prefer it.

    The new Lights Out option is rolling out today to iPhone and iPad users. A timeline for Android is yet to be announced.

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  • How to open links in external browser with Facebook Messenger

    How to open links in external browser with Facebook Messenger

    For a while now, both the Facebook and Messenger app have been opening links in their own, internal browser — a simple webview window, which doesn’t support multiple tabs and is there to allow you to quickly interact with something on the web, and even allow said item to communicate back to your Facebook app instantly.

    That said, a lot of people find the internal browser annoying. Why? Well, sometimes you just tap on a YouTube video only to be greeted by a webview window, which opens a desktop version of the YouTube site that you are not even logged into. Lame. Sometimes, you want to open a web page in your Chrome or Safari browser so that it can stay there as an open tab. Other times, you get so into the information you are reading about that you want to quickly open a few more tabs on it and do a deeper research… oops, you can’t — you are not in your browser of choice, you are in Facebook’s webview.

    Needless to say, many users out there would prefer it if their links simply open in a default app of choice — if it’s a YouTube link, just have it open the video in the YouTube app; if it’s a web link, just launch it in Chrome or Safari.

    Well, there’s a solution for that problem… if you are on Android. That’s right, for some odd reason, Facebook does not allow iPhone users to opt out of using its internal browser. If you are on iOS, you are forced to manually swap apps, though it’s not as slow or painful as it may sound.

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  • Instagram is preparing to implement a new feature

    Instagram is preparing to implement a new feature

    Instagram is an already hugely popular photo and video-sharing social networking service, with over 1 billion monthly active users as of last year, but believe it or not, there’s still plenty of room for growth, mostly due to the many security and privacy scandals surrounding its parent company’s core platform. At the same time, it’s pretty crazy to think Instagram has reached this insane level of mainstream success without ever offering some basic features.

    Case in point, a fast-forward option for those 15-second clips you can add to your stories or the up to 60-second videos allowed to be uploaded to one’s Instagram profile. Incredibly enough, that’s not yet a thing, even though the video social component has enriched Instagram’s focus and functionality years ago. But according to a Twitter userknown for her very reliable work discovering unreleased features for apps like Facebook and Instagram, the long-awaited video seek bar is currently being tested internally.

    Jane Manchun Wong has the GIF to prove that claim, and indeed, the feature works as expected, with no unnecessary bells and whistles. Unfortunately, we can’t be sure this will roll out to the masses anytime soon, although given its simplicity and potential popularity, we don’t see what could possibly hold off its wide-scale rollout. Once that happens, you’ll presumably be able to both go forward and back in time in any given Instagram video instead of waiting for the whole thing to unfold, then play it back from the beginning if only a small part of it caught your attention.

    Interestingly, this seems to be only one of several Instagram add-ons in the pipeline, alongside a delay and warning for posting comments identified as potentially offensive, a new “Trusted Devices” section in the app’s two-factor authentication settings, and a couple of changes targeting Creator Accounts, aka high-profile influencers. It remains to be seen how many of these features will go public and when.

  • Ex-Apple developer says its breaking its own AppStore rules

    Ex-Apple developer says its breaking its own AppStore rules

    While the reviews of Apple’s News+ have been somewhat mixed, some people think one thing is clear: Apple has a double standard when it comes to its App Store rules. One ex-Apple developer detailed how he believes that Apple News+ would be rejected by the App Store if it were submitted by anyone other than Apple itself.

    Dave DeLong, who had worked at Apple as an engineer for 7 years, said the Apple News+ app breaks App Store rules surrounding the onboarding process for subscriptions. According to DeLong, Apple’s News+ subscription page should include information on how to cancel as well as a link to the app’s privacy policy. Looking into Apple’s Developer Program License Agreement, there is a long list of items that Apple requires apps to display when a user is confronted with a subscription page (below). The list basically amounts to the fine print that you’ll be presented when being onboarded as a new subscriber, but Apple’s News+ subscription page doesn’t include any fine print, it doesn’t even tell users how long the free trial is for the service meaning there’s also no indication of when the auto-renewing subscription will flip from a free trial to paid.

    These omissions would be grounds for any other app being rejected from the App Store and DeLong says App Store reviewers are “huge sticklers about even having the smallest thing missing.” DeLong even went on to wonder if this clear double-standard could be grounds for a class action lawsuit against Apple, but we’ll have to wait and see on that.

    Of course, this isn’t the first time Apple has been accused of a double standard (and likely won’t be the last.) Previously, Apple has been caught sending users uninvited push notifications regarding Apple Music and Carpool Karaoke. This marks the fourth time in just four months that Apple has been found violating its own policies and the company has yet to comment publicly on the issues.

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  • 180 degree reversal by YouTube

    180 degree reversal by YouTube

    A report published says that YouTube has decided to do a 180 degree turn and is backing away from producing original programming. The Google-owned video streamer has canceled plans to develop some new comedies and dramas that it would have streamed to paid YouTube Premium subscribers. By doing this, YouTube is admitting defeat in a battle with other video streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime to reap profits from original shows.

    Netflix has done quite well by showing its own fare like Orange is the New Black, Fuller House, Stranger Things, House of Cards and more, Amazon Prime has had some big hits including The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The show, about a married Jewish woman living in New York in the late 1950’s who becomes a stand-up comedian after her husband leaves her, won four Emmy Awards last year including Best Comedy Series.

    Anonymous sources say that YouTube has canceled shows like Origin, a science-fiction program, and comedy Overthinking with Kat & June. In addition, YouTube is no longer listening to pitches for scripted shows that require a huge budget. The report comes on the same day that Apple has unveiled its video streaming service that will include original programming that cost the company over $1 billion to produce. And while Google has enough cash to match Apple when it comes to paying for such programming, YouTube generated more than $15 billion in ad sales last year without offering high-priced original shows.

    The change means that YouTube Premium will turn to music-related content with some programming from established YouTube stars. As a result, the original scripted shows left on YouTube will be available for free, including the one big original hit that YouTube has had, Cobra Kai. This show takes the Daniel LaRusso-Johnny Lawrence feud from 1984’s Karate Kid movie and updates it to modern times. The appeal of the show is helped by the fact that the original actors (Ralph Macchio and William Zabka) recreate their roles as Daniel and Johnny, respectively. There have been two seasons of the show and negotiations are underway for a third season.

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