Daily Briefing: Are shopping malls dying?; StarHub's PayTV continues to lose subscribers

And smart tech offers many perks for HDB estates.

From Dollars And Sense via Yahoo!: In recent years, there have been plenty of discussion surrounding the topic about whether shopping malls in Singapore will undergo a gradual, permanent decline, given the increasing popularity of e-commerce. Rows of vacant shops at once popular malls seem to reinforce the notion that malls are dying. But is that really the case? Unbeknownst to most shoppers, many of the large shopping malls in Singapore are actually owned by real estate investment trusts (REITs) or property developers. These include mega malls such as VivoCity and Ion Orchard, which are owned and managed by MapleTree Commercial Trust and CapitaLand Mall respectively. In contrast, some of the smaller and older malls such as People’s Park Complex and Beauty World Centre are Strata-Titled, which means they are owned individually by multiple landlords.

From the Motley Fool Singapore: Local telco StarHub Ltd lost 11,000 Pay TV subscribers in the first quarter of 2017 when compared to the fourth quarter of 2016. In the third quarter of 2016, StarHub’s Pay-TV segment also recorded a sequential loss of 11,000 subscribers. In the last quarter of 2016, the subscriber-loss had narrowed to 9,000. However, as we’ve just seen, the latest quarter saw those losses widen again to 11,000 subscribers.

From PropertyGuru: Adopting smart technologies in HDB estates has many benefits, revealed the Housing Board’s CEO Cheong Koon Hean. For example, families can reduce their power usage for lights by 60 percent and slash potable water use by 66 percent, while the government could cut manpower needs by 70 percent. But as Singapore builds more smart towns and becomes more technologically advanced, it’s vital to create standards for developing such communities. Even if technologies change, if these protocols have been established, household devices can be conveniently incorporated into the system, she explained.