KPBS anchor Ebone Monet and SDSU marketing lecturer Miro Copic discuss some of the week’s top business stories.
Q: How significant would it be for San Diego to have Live Nation events?
A: San Diego has Live Nation events. Live Nation is the biggest concert promoter in the country. Live Nation is starting to buy actual small to mid-sized theaters like the Observatory here in San Diego. They also bought the Santa Ana Observatory at the same time. They're about a 1,000 seat theater. And what this allows Live Nation to do is really bring in acts before they come up to L.A.
But this is really important for San Diego and San Diego music lovers. You're gonna get a lot of up-and-coming bands. You're gonna get a lot of well-known celebrities who like intimate shows, like Morrissey and Marilyn Manson. When Tom Petty was alive, he would do it with his band called Mudcrutch, and they'd find these 1,500 seat venues to do these shows. Because Live Nation gets the best acts, we're gonna get a lot better music scene here in San Diego.
Q: The ride-hailing service, Lyft, has announced a new app feature that's supposed to make it easier for people at the San Diego Airport. What does this mean for its competitors like the taxis and Uber?
A: They're doing, in essence, a high-tech taxi line. Right now, if you're gonna hail a Lyft or an Uber at the airport, you have an area on the island in the middle of the airport. You have to go out and you have to find your car as it comes in, and you're dodging traffic, you're dodging other passengers. But here, they're basically setting up a taxi line. When you order a Lyft, you get a four digit code. You just go in line and it's going to be much faster than waiting five, seven, eight, or 10 minutes for your ride to arrive. You match the code with the driver and off you go. And from a winning perspective, consumers are the winners at the end of the day. Lyft is a huge winner because it's something innovative. San Diego is the first city they're doing this and they're doing it in Terminal 2.
The downside is for the taxi companies. This is their last big bastion. If you needed a ride right away, there's a taxi line, you got in a cab and you went. Now you could do that with Uber in exactly the same way. It's going to really hurt the taxi companies. And it's going to hurt Uber.
Q: Qualcomm and Apple have settled their ongoing patent dispute. What does this mean for San Diego based Qualcomm?
A: This was a huge win and a big week for Qualcomm. You know, as one of our two Fortune 500 companies they settle a two-year patent war with Apple both agreeing to cease and desist all litigation. They were suing each other all over the world, and they signed a six-year agreement with Apple to supply them with 5G chips. So huge implications from the settlement this week. Their stock price has been up over 35 percent adding nearly $30 billion in market capitalization value. This is big news and good news for Qualcomm.
