What will be the flight service in the future? I write it in the air!

Now I am in the air from Kuala Lumpur to Tokyo as I have a business trip.  I always use Air Asia because it is convenient and reasonable. Since AirAsia has operated,  it is getting cheaper to flight from Kuala Lumpur to Tokyo. It is very good, especially for younger generations. I would like to welcome them in Japan very much.  Then I am wondering what the flight service will be in the future. Let us consider it with me!

 

1. Service on flight

Low cost carriers, including AirAisa increase the number of customers per flight compared with legacy carriers to reduce the price of the flight. Therefore services for each customer are not the sane as legacy carriers.  I think, however, it will be improved dramatically supported by digital technologies.  At each site, electronic dashboard might be equipped and all information, such as flight schedules,  emergency evacuation methods might be provided.  These are translated into many languages with machine translations so there is no need to worry about language barriers. ( In my flight of AirAsia, English, Japanese and Malay are used in the flight announcement. ) Meals in a fight will be improved, too.  We might order meals on demand through the electronic dashboard whenever you want to eat. These data can be collected customer by customer.  Therefore, preference of each customer might be known in advance.  This technology is called “personalization”. So low cost carriers might predict what kind of meals are needed in the flight based on past experience of  each customer. It enables them to widen the variety of meals served because there is less risk to have a lack of inventories of meals on the flight.  To serve meals to each customer,  robots of cabin attendant assistants might support cabin attendants so that meals are served smoothly. I am excited if I can choose many varieties of meals on demand.

 

2. Immigration

Before getting on the board,  it takes time to pass immigration.  I always think it might be more effective with technologies called “face recognition”.  Computers can identify who you are by comparing to your face image stored on the passport. It is good to take less time to pass immigration for everyone. If it is connected to a database of　INTERPOL,  it can enhance identification of criminals.

 

3.  Maintenance

Airplanes have a massive amount of parts. Therefore, maintenance is critically important to keep flights safe. Especially for low cost carriers, there is less time to maintain airplanes from landing to taking off again.  It can be enhanced by technologies   called “internet of things” and “predictive analytics“.  In internet of things,  each part has sensors and provide data periodically thought the internet.  Data from the sensors are collected and analyzed by “predictive analytics” to predict which parts are likely to fail in  advance.  Maintenance can be  more effective by using the results of  predictive analytics. Data from sensors can be transmitted from airlines to airports, even though they are in the air. Therefore failed parts or potential one can be identified before air plains land.  It enables us to decrease the time of maintenance.

 

Beyond low cost carriers,  the airplane in the air might be connected to other industries such as hotels. For example, the flight might be delayed due to bad weather and customers need reservations of hotels as the flight will land at the midnight. In such case, We can reserve hotels thought digital dashboard of each sheet. It is good to have reservations of the hotel even if we are in the air!

I hope my flights will be more comfortable in the future!  Could you agree?

 

 

 

Note: Toshifumi Kuga’s opinions and analyses are personal views and are intended to be for informational purposes and general interest only and should not be construed as individual investment advice or solicitation to buy, sell or hold any security or to adopt any investment strategy.  The information in this article is rendered as at publication date and may change without notice and it is not intended as a complete analysis of every material fact regarding any country, region market or investment.

Data from third-party sources may have been used in the preparation of this material and I, Author of the article has not independently verified, validated such data. I and TOSHI STATS.SDN.BHD. accept no liability whatsoever for any loss arising from the use of this information and relies upon the comments, opinions and analyses in the material is at the sole discretion of the user. 

Can China keep growing steadily in 10 years from now?

If you are interested in investments in stock markets, you may hear a lot of stories in China this year since it has been rising dramatically and its market capitalization hit 10 trillion USD for the first time. I am not an investment adviser for stocks. However, I am interested in sustainability of Chinese economy in the long run.  Because China is already the biggest economy in the world  in terms of GDP using purchasing power parity (PPP) according to the IMF.  It means that the growth of Chinese economy affects a lot of the other countries’ economies such as Asean countries.

One of the easy way to understand what is going on in China is to compare with Japan.  There is no need for complex economic theories here.  Just compare to find out what are similar and different between them.  I would like to compare Japanese economy in the 1970s, 1980s and the current situation in China.  First, I would like to compare the GDP per capita between Japan and China in order to understand the path of economic growth.

 

1.  China is similar to Japan in 1970s in terms of GDP per capita

In this article by the BBC, it is pointed out that GDP per capita of China based on PPP is 11,868USD.  This number is similar to the number of Japan in 1968 (11,292USD) according to FRED.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Japanese economy managed several crises such as oil crises and Yen appreciations. In these two decades, GDP per capita (PPP based) was getting more than two times bigger.  It means that China has opportunities to grow more in the long run if it can manage obstacles effectively in the future.

 

2. Data technologies play a key role to develop Chinese economy.

One of the biggest differences between Japan in 1980s and Current China is “Data technology”.   Cloud, Mobile devices, Internet, IOT and Big data are available in major countries all over the world now.  There was nothing like that in Japan 1980s. It means that every industry can be developed rapidly, effectively and with less impact to the environment if they can introduce data technologies effectively. China has already suffered from air pollutions in cities such as Beijing. So developments, with less impact against the environment are desperately needed to make economic growth sustainable.

 

3. Capitalism vs Communism

Another big difference is that Japan introduces capitalism and China introduces communism.  Yes, it is a big difference. But China learned and will learn a lot from capitalism and improve its social system. Especially China can learn Japanese failure since 1990, which is called “lost decades“.  As the result of that, entrepreneurs are more active  in China than Japan now. Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi are good examples of that while most of Japanese young guys want to work in traditional big companies, rather than create their startups. So I am sometimes confused which country has which system in reality.

 

No one knows exactly what happens in China in 10 years.  I would like to keep watching what is going on there. Are you an optimist or a pessimist of China?

 

Note: Toshi’s opinions and analyses are personal views and are intended to be for informational purposes and general interest only and should not be construed as individual investment advice or solicitation to buy, sell or hold any security or to adopt any investment strategy.  The information in this article is rendered as at publication date and may change without notice and it is not intended as a complete analysis of every material fact regarding any country, region market or investment.

Data from third party sources may have been used in the preparation of this material and I, Autor of the article  has not independently verified, validated such data. I accept no liability whatsoever for any loss arising from the use of this information and relies upon the comments, opinions and analyses in the material is at the sole discretion of the user. 

Mobile services will be enhanced by machine learning dramatically in 2015, part 2

Happy new year !   At the beginning of 2015,  it is a good time to consider what will happen in the fields of machine learning and mobile services in 2015.  Followed by the blog last week,  we consider recommender systems and internet of things as well as investment technologies. I hope you can enjoy it !

 

3. Recommender systems

Recommender systems are widely used from big companies such as amazon.com and small and medium-sized companies.  Going forward,  as image recognition technology progresses rapidly, consumer generated data such as pictures and videos must be taken to analyze consumers behaviors and construct consumers preferences effectively.  It means that unstructured data can be taken and analyzed by machine learning in order to make recommendations more accurate. This creates a virtuous cycle. More people take pictures by smartphones and send them thorough the internet, more accurate recommendations are.  It is one of the good examples of personalization. In 2015 a lot of mobile services have functions for personalization so that everyone can be satisfied with mobile services.

 

4. Internet of things

This is also one of big theme of the internet.  As sensors are smaller and cheaper,  a lot of devices and equipments from smart phone to automobile have more sensors in it. These sensors are connected to the internet and send data in real-time basis.  It will change the way to maintain equipments completely.  If fuel consumption efficiency of your car is getting worse, it may be caused by failure of engines so maintenance will be needed as soon as possible. By using classification algorithm of machine learning, it must be possible to predict fatal failure of automobiles, trains and even homes.  All notifications will be sent to smartphones in real-time basis. It leads to green society as efficiency are increasing in terms of energy consumption and emission control.

 

5. Investment technology

I have rarely heard that new technologies will be introduced in investment and asset management in 2014 as far as I concerned.  However I imagine that some of fin-tech companies might use reinforcement learning, one of the categories of machine leaning.  Unlike the image recognition and machine translation, right answers are not so clear in the fields of investment and asset management. It might be solved by reinforcement learning  in practice in order to apply machine learning into this field. Of course, the results of analysis must be sent to smart phone in real-time basis to support investment decisions.

 

Mobile services will be enhanced in 2015 dramatically because machine learning technologies are connected to mobile phone of each customer. Mobile service with machine learning will change the landscape of each industries sooner rather than later. Congratulations!