04/08/2017 Asia Business Report

that uncertainty over Brexit has hit high-street spending and business

Now, all the latest business in Singapore.

Tour to reverse its earnings. Will profits be next to roll off the

assembly line? And we size up the petition as Amazon dies into the

already crowded Southeast Asian e-commerce market. Good morning,

welcome to Asian business report live from Singapore with me, Marika

Oi. Our top story, Toyota is due to release its earnings this afternoon.

The focus is also on media reports that Toyota and Mazda will announce

a $1.6 billion assembly plant in the US later today according to The Wall

Street Journal. Toyota was the only Japanese carmaker which saw its

sales rise in the most important market, the United States, in the

month of July. Its smaller rivals struggled in the US but Honda posted

strong results next with cheap Japanese yen and solid demand in

Asia. Not as good for Nissan which reported a sharp drop in profit. One

analyst told me why Honda is doing much better than the others. There

are some earnings in the United States which have been very weak

across-the-board soap Honda as well is Nissan did seek a very weak

market sales in the United States. The things which Honda did well is

the motorcycle business and earnings and profitability from motorcycles

did improve quite a bit in this first quarter, partly because they

had serious damage in the first quarter last year as a result of the

earthquake. In the case of Nissan, they do not have any motorcycle

business and their US sales have been so, so. In terms of

profitability, we did see a big dip in the United States in this first

quarter so as far as automobiles are concerned, not so much of a

difference between Honda and Nissan. I want to ask you about Takata which

provides seatbelts and airbags. Takata recently filed for bankruptcy

and it's been making headlines for all the wrong reasons and Japanese

carmakers have been affected by it. Will that continue affecting those

automakers? The worst is over. As far as the losses associated with

this recall, it's was almost reported last you buy this Japanese

car makers so we're not really expecting so much of a continuous

damage from this deal, even though having said that, there still seems

to be class-action cases in the United States going on and there

might be some legal impact out of this class action case. Especially

Honda, Toyota, Nissan. Ridesharing service Uber has apologised to be

using recall Honda vessels in Singapore that had not been

repaired. The Wall Street Journal says Uber was aware of the fact --

the defects and rented them to drivers. Our report has been

monitoring the story. Uber has acknowledged in a statement to the

BBC that it could have done more to avoid this problem and they have

since introduced much more robust protocols. Essentially they bought

more than 1000 defective cars. Some of these had been recalled last year

over a faulty electrical component. And catch fire, the Vezel did. One

driver had his dashboard and interior burst into flame and crack

a big hole in his windshield. This was first reported by The Wall

Street Journal and thankfully the driver is unhurt. This is just the

latest in a long line of scandals that Uber has been facing this year

so it may be a case of Uber expanding too fast, too quickly

without putting proper systems in place. Amazon's entry into

Singapore's tiny market last week has shone a spotlight on the island

nation's driving e-commerce sector. We have been finding out more about

this market. We just found out the location of the first Australian

warehouse. Amazon seems to be investing a lot of money in the

region, putting a lot of pressure on local competitors. This is a

potential market in Southeast Asia of 600 million customers across the

ASEAN area and even though these countries are a different economic

stages, the prize is getting into these big markets, Indonesia,

Thailand, millions of people who are getting on to their mobile phones

and shopping away not nobody's business. I went on a bit of a

shopping trip to find out for myself.

Traditionally this is how most Singaporeans have shopped, adding to

the supermarket to pick up their weekly supplies of fruit, vegetables

and other groceries but the statistics show that this is

changing and it's not just in Singapore. It is a pattern being

observed across the Asia-Pacific region. Increasingly, people are

stepping out of the shops and doing their shopping on line. By some

estimates, e-commerce in Southeast Asia is currently thought to be

worth some $55 billion. By 2025, that will shoot up to more than $80

billion. And these are just conservative figures. Which is why

US on line retail giant Amazon decided to make its Singapore debut

last month with this 100,000 square feet facility. We know that

Singapore consumers are busy, they love convenience and really,

consumers would love the idea of having a range of products available

and make don't want to or can't make a trip, this is where they come. But

Singapore is just an entry point and it's a crowded market. Meet

Rosalita, who was a housewife and get paid to do it for others. She

works for a Singapore e-commerce firm. The reason why South East Asia

is attractive today is because everywhere else is slowing down. The

collection of different Southeast Asian states are accelerating the

growth, be it Indonesia or Thailand or the Philippines. There is a lot

of competition. The biggest player is China's Alibaba, which owns

Lazada. There are dozens of other players vying for space across the

region but they will not all survived. We will expect

consolidation of next year, to compete with a lot of the bigger

players. But for those employed in the Southeast Asian e-commerce

space, time are good, for now at least and for customers, well, a

little competition can be a good thing.

Do you like to go fast because Elon Musk's last transportation system

could be sent a reality. Hyperloop One what in the Nevada desert reach

speeds of up to 650 kilometres an hour. This is the beginning and the

dawn of a new era of transportation, the first new major former trust the

patient in 100 years and it sounds incredible, it's the future, it is

the sound of the future and it's going to basically change the way we

live, where we work and make the world a much smaller place and turn

cities into Metro stops. Let's show you the markets before we

go because all markets you are trading lower. Japan is down under

0.5%, mainly the case of the Japanese yen which has been quite

strong against the US dollar. Overnight in the US, will be -- Wall

Street fell slightly after the blue-chip index hit a new all-time

high on Thursday. That's if this of Asia Business Report. We will be

back next hour. Thank you for watching.