25/05/2017 Asia Business Report

Now on BBC News, all the latest business news live from Singapore.

The world's biggest personal computer seller is about to release

its latest earnings. Wheel it stemmed two years of profit falls?

-- will it stem. And one in five women in India get paid work. Good

morning, Asia. Hello, world. It's a Thursday. Welcome to today's edition

of Asia Business Report. I'm Rico Hizon. We start off with Lenovo. The

Chinese technology company reports its latest earnings and a few hours'

time. Together with HP and Dell, they account for 50% of the PC

market. Given that sales have fallen for two years, she did diversify

more? I was told the man challenges of Lenovo. They have seen falling

sales. When the market stabilises, it has to streamline its workforce.

At the same time, it has to look at its portfolio. It has lost with the

integration with Motorola. The purchase of IBM as well. Are they

looking at bad bets in the medium term? We cannot say they are bad

bets because Lenovo are still doing steps to ensure that the integration

of Motorola is good. At the same time, the data centre business is

pretty new and the sector is nascent for them. When will these two

purchases bring in the cash for Lenovo? In the short to medium term,

it is difficult and they may fall victim to consolidation. But it has

to do a lot to grow its sale channel and work with customers and clients

to ensure it is successful. They are being taken over by Huawei etc. What

about the PC market? Is Lenovo going to get overtaken? In the first

quarter, HP actually overtook Lenovo in the traditional laptop and

notebook sectors. This is an interesting development because

after HP's spin-off into two separate organisations, they have

been very dynamic with integration and product design and aggressive

marketing and have been able to catch up with Lenovo. And it is

worrying for Lenovo because they have to improve in many aspects. For

example, marketing, for example, in design, and most importantly,

channel marketing has been weak. The US Federal Reserve has signalled it

is close to raising interest rates once again. Fed policymakers meeting

at the start of the month said another hike would soon be needed if

the US economy stays on track. Minutes of the meeting showed they

are also planning to reduce the 4.5 trillion dollars of US debt from the

financial crisis. China's Radoslaw has been downgraded for the first

time in three decades at the Beijing says its economic difficulties have

been over exaggerated. There are concerns about the rising debt and

slowing economic growth of China. A group of hackers say they have

managed to trick the eye tech of Samsung using a contact lens. It is

a security measure in venue smartphone. They say they are aware

of the issue and it was to give them a fresh start after the faulty

smartphones. Security is not just an issue for smartphone users, but

content providers as well. New research shows they are said to be

the largest piracy survey ever conducted from Columbia, Mexico,

Ukraine, Indonesia, and Argentina. Latin America currently dominates.

Numbers in Asia are expected to go, accounting for 70% of global

Internet users. We have a tech security firm's opinion on how the

problem will be tackled. In every country you need three things.

Communication. Consumers need to know what is legal and what is not.

We have people that don't know it is illegal. Then there is organised

crime and everything in the middle. The second is a legal framework in

the jurisdiction. The third is what we call a 360 degrees appreciation

of technology. How high can the value of Bitcoin go? It has set a

record high and is hovering under $200,500. It is seven years since

the first transaction in the digital world. I asked why they are doing so

well. Look at the global market for purchasing Bitcoin. Japan has

recently recognised it as legal payment. Australia with the removal

of VAT from transactions. There is positive sentiment for the world as

far as acceptance of Bitcoin. It is gaining a lot of attention right

now. But it is not the only digital currency. There are many crypto

assets out there. Bitcoin has a market of $32 billion. The total

market cap is somewhere around $50 billion for all of them. We still

have a long way to go as far as traditional asset size is. Gold is

trillions of dollars in volume in the market, for example. We still

have a long way to go with crypto assets. With the markets seemingly

at this point moving sideways, are many investors moving there assets

into these digital currencies or crypto currencies? -- there. We are

seeing movement into these assets. The early movers in the industry

have been looking at Bitcoin and others for a couple of years and

recommending it to their clients as well. Yeah. I think you will see

more and more movement into the cryptocurrency world and crypto acid

world. We will see more funding in it. The price is over $2000. What is

the probability that it will crash? I don't think it would ever crashed

20. There is always the possibility it will correct. -- crash to zero.

They are a small market caps. It is volatile. I would not recommend it

for anyone not comfortable taking on a high risk investment. A Bitcoin

expert. One of the largest populations of working people in the

world is India. A reports as fewer women are entering the workforce.

Today, one in five women in urban areas are in paid employment. The

gap in the market will have serious ramifications for the economic

growth of India according to new reports. What is stopping them from

working? I did not want to do a nine to five job. I wanted to pursue my

dreams. I do not work any more because I want to look after my

child, and that is more important to me. If you want something, you have

to give up on something, right? My child is the first priority. Like I

said, I want him to understand my love. I don't want to miss out on

the fun things he does at home. I don't want to miss out on any of the

things he says. Hats off to the women who manage to work. Raising a

child is a lot of work. It is draining, emotionally and

physically. We are trying to build our future and the future of our

child on a road. There is a certain standard of living in Mumbai.

Quitting my job would obviously have an impact on that. We like to go on

holidays and we like to go out and party and dining. Everything is very

expensive in Mumbai. I know a lot of families, I have seen many fathers,

they don't help out supreme as soon as you have a child, they say take a

break for a couple of years and let the child grow up a bit and when

that child grows up, they say have another child. Women are expected to

sort of look after children and the house and keep everything in order.

I love my job. But I used to hate it a lot. It used to take me about two

hours every day to get there, it was of changing buses and trains. We

have to make sure that the females who are planning to quit, or who

actually quit after having a baby, come back to work. And before we go,

we will take a quick look at the markets. A lacklustre start for the

regional stocks despite US equities finishing higher for a fifth

consecutive session. Thank you so much for investing your time with

us. I am Rico Hizon. Coming up next on the BBC is Sport Today. Let us

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