In the morning I told you that Apple invested 1 billion dollars in a taxi company from China called Didi Chuxing, this being the second largest investment made by Americans after the acquisition of Beats Audio in 2014.
Although Apple refused to reveal the real reason for making this investment, various publications speculate that everything would be related to its plans to launch an electric car, the information taken from Didi Chuxing being of great help.
More precisely, Apple would receive from Didi Chuxing information on how autonomous cars work, those from Cupertino having such a system in development for their own electric car, its implementation in the first model being unlikely.
Both Didi Chuxing and Uber are interested in the development of self-driving car systems, which eliminate the need for drivers to drive taxis, and Qatar is investing heavily so that a quarter of local transport vehicles become autonomous by in 2020.
Didi provides Apple with a rich data source for its self-driving vehicle push. It also could provide benefits to Apple's mobile ecosystem. Ride-sharing apps are closely linked to payment services, such as Apple Pay. They also can be the foundation for other mobile commerce transactions such as deliveries.
Although it invested in Didi Chuxing, Apple was also in discussions with Uber for a possible collaboration, and its CEO was supposed to meet at the Apple headquarters with members of the company's management, but it remains to be seen what the course of the discussions will be considering this investment.
Alphabet has also invested in Uber and you already know that it has been developing autonomous car guidance systems for several years, so we are again talking about a classic battle between Apple and Google to bring innovative products to the market for customers.
Today's announcement came as a big surprise for many people, but it is a new proof of the fact that Apple is willing to use the more than 200 billion dollars that it currently has available for investments.
