Planet Business

Image of the week: Flying carpets

Call it a side-effect of watching the The Night Manager, but on first sight, this circle of red seeping out from a private jet seemed to resemble a pool of blood, thereby prompting a vision of a henchman-ringed Hugh Laurie reclining on a cream leather seat in deceptively casual clothes and a luxury watch. Then it looked like an oversized version of a rug that you can pick up for next to nothing in Ikea. Sadly, it’s simply the case that even the privacy-cherishing rich fancy a walk on a red carpet every now and again, and if they have to cross one to reach the steps of the Gulfstream G650ER aircraft they have their eye on at Shanghai’s Asian Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition, then so be it. Photograph: Reuters/Aly Song.

In Numbers: Music ‘value gap’

900 million Number of people who watched music video clips or listened to music on advertising-supported services such as YouTube and SoundCloud last year, making it the largest single audience for music.

4 Percentage of the music industry's revenue that this audience generates, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which calls it a "value gap" or a "gross mismatch" between consumption and revenue.

10.5 Percentage decline in the value of digital download sales in 2015, according to the IFPI. However, digital music revenue increased 10.2 per cent overall, as more people paid for streaming subscriptions to Spotify and its ilk.

The lexicon: Nearables

“Nearables”, like “wearables”, are a thing. (You know wearables. Wearable technology devices. Apple Watch?) Nearables are similar to wearables in the sense that they’re connected. But, unlike snazzy wearables, they don’t move in tandem with the human body, being merely stationary objects rendered “smart” by the attachment of a wireless device that works as both an electronic sensor and a transmitter. It’s usually a Bluetooth affair. Something to do with the Internet of Things, most likely. They’re predicted to be huge, absolutely huge, just like wearables, hearables and, our personal favourite that we might have just made up, fearables.

Getting to know: Osman Kibar

A profile on Osman Kibar in Forbes begins like this: "If you Google Osman Kibar's name, you'll find pictures of him playing poker." (This is true, you will.) But it is the magazine's May cover, of which Kibar is the star, that properly intrigues: "Can this man reverse ageing?" It sounds like a classic media QTWTAIN (question to which the answer is "no"), but Kibar has developed drugs that will allegedly cure baldness, erase wrinkles and heal arthritis (only one of which actually impedes function, but never mind), and that's why his San Diego biotechnology start-up Samumed has a valuation of $12 billion. The Turkish- born engineering PhD has no need of a big casino windfall, however, as he owns a third of the company. He might be closing in on a "god pill", he might not, but he's a paper billionaire either way and we wish him the best of luck.

The list: Yahoo chasers

Yahoo, aka the first internet search engine ever used by people of a certain generation, is up for grabs, either as a whole or in pieces, with interested parties having until April 18th to submit their offers. There hasn’t been this much attention trained on the web portal since, well, the 1990s. So who is said to be in the mix?

1 Daily Mail The Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) is reportedly lining up a bid that would create an unholy alliance between MailOnline and Yahoo-owned Tumblr.

2 Microsoft The owner of search also-ran Bing made a $45 billion offer in 2008, which Yahoo declined. It's likely chasing just a piece of Yahoo this time.

3 Verizon The telecoms giant and owner of AOL is terribly keen to get its claws on Yahoo as it competes for a bigger slice of digital advertising revenue.

4 CBS Corporation The owner of one of the “big three” US television networks is also giving Yahoo the once-over.

5 Time Inc Reuters has reported that the magazine publisher wants to lessen its reliance on print revenue by snapping up Yahoo. Time has also just bought what is left of MySpace.