Indonesian Imam Januar has built and grown various YouTube channels such as RB Official which currently has over 10 million subscribers.
Now, he’s teaching content creation and monetisation classes to aspiring YouTubers and even building a ‘creator house’ in the village of Tapen Bondowoso in East Java.
What are the unspoken rules of first dates? Which green flags should we look out for when considering long-term relationships? How do we navigate difficult conversations like money?
Actor Munah Bagharib, entrepreneur Dew Francis and Money FM 89.3’s Zia-ul Raushan share their takes with Sue-Ann.
Warren Buffett-backed BYD dethroned Tesla in the fourth quarter of 2023 as the world’s top EV maker, selling more battery-powered vehicles than its U.S. rival. BYD was founded by Wang Chuanfu and started making batteries for mobile phones in the 1990s. By 2003, it pivoted to autos and now has become the top car brand in China, as well as a major producer of batteries for electric vehicles. It’s now aggressively expanding globally, exporting over 240,000 cars across 70 countries last year. Elon Musk said in Tesla's Q4 earnings call that Chinese automakers will "demolish most other car companies in the world" unless regulators step in. With sights set on North America, BYD could try entering the U.S., but faces government opposition. CNBC explores whether BYD can sustain its relentless growth and what's next for this EV juggernaut.
The video game industry cannot quit microtransactions.
In fact, two of the largest video game companies in the United States — Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive — now make the overwhelming majority of their money from live-service games, subscriptions and in-game purchases, according to their recent earnings reports.
Microtransactions are purchases that users make inside a game using real money. They show up as subscriptions, virtual currencies, and character customization options, among other examples.
Popular live-service titles such as Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone, and Clash Royale were built around this revenue model. Game publishers must provide updates throughout certain game life cycles to retain player attention, which is where the term "live service" comes from. Gamers pay for those updates through season passes or subscriptions.Gamer backlash from the early attempts at in-game purchases caused the video game industry to shift its approach to these subscriptions and bundling purchasable content.
"The industry is really moved to more of a what they call a battle pass system, or some kind of packaging of seasonal content," said Mat Piscatella, executive director of video games at Circana. "Those systems have found much warmer response because I think people are finding that they're getting more value, and more reliable value for their money."
In-game spending has become a high-stakes issue in addition to a lucrative business. Electronic Arts' live-services operations made the company $5.6 billion in its most recent quarter, according to the company's latest earnings report. Epic Games, which created the popular Fortnite franchise, took Apple to court over an in-game payment system that the developer released inside Fortnite in order to bypass Apple's App Store fees. In Europe, app stores and so-called loot boxes are a major focus of tech regulators.
Watch the video above to learn more about microtransactions, the backlash involved, and where the industry goes from here.
For more than 40 years, ESPN has reigned supreme as the king of sports media. Growing its business by consistently raising the price of its fee to cable TV providers, ESPN now generates more than $16 billion in annual revenue. But the business of media is changing rapidly. In the past decade, about 40 million U.S. households have cut the cord on traditional cable TV. ESPN must adjust to find customers that aren’t subscribing to the cable bundle as new competitors including YouTube TV, Apple, Amazon, Peacock and perhaps Netflix bid on packages of live sports. This CNBC documentary examines ESPN’s strategy to fend off larger streamers and questions its sustainability in a digital-first world.
Norway has had massive success with EV adoption, with 82% of new cars sold in the country last year being electric. This high adoption rate can be attributed to the generous subsidies that Norway has offered to electric vehicle owners as well as the country’s investment in charging infrastructure. Tesla’s sales in Norway represent only a sliver of the 1.8 million vehicles the company delivered last year, but Norway’s importance to Tesla goes beyond cold hard cash. Tesla’s early foothold in the country has made Norway the perfect proving ground for the company and acted as a poster child for the EV transition as a whole. As a result, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk has taken a number of trips to the small Nordic country and has often praised Norway’s support of electric vehicles. Norwegians were the first European customers to receive deliveries of the Model S in 2013 and it quickly became the country’s best-selling car. Today, that title has been transferred over to Tesla’s Model Y. But with competition from other EV cars from automakers including Toyota, Skoda, Volkswagan and BYD heating up, it remains to be seen if Norwegians will continue to choose Tesla in the future. To learn more about Norway’s success with electric vehicle adoption, check out CNBC’s documentary:
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