Asia's tech news, weekly: April 11th 2023
Japan's semicon goals, China's EV challenges, Twitter in India, Vietnam e-car buybacks, digital assets in Indonesia, edge computing in Australia, food-tech in Thailand...
• Taiwan: Foxconn's billionaire founder announces intention to seek presidential nomination with Kuomintang, running in opposition to current president Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party
• China: "New research...found that public charging posts in China are used on average about once a day. Some connectors along highway routes...average utilisation rate of 1%..."
• Japan: An intro to Farmship, agri-tech startup using AI to assess growth and potential of - for now - spinach seedlings, aiming to boost yields and efficiency by weeding out poor growers
"Twitter agreed to block more than 120 accounts, including Canadian politician Jagmeet Singh, Canadian poet Rupi Kaur...journalists and an Indian MP...also blocked the handle of the BBC’s Punjabi bureau."
• China opens new front in US-China tech confrontation with cybersec review of imports from Micron, America's largest memory-chip maker
• Vietnam: VinFast announces owners of their e-cars in Vietnam will be able to sell vehicles back to the firm after 5 years for 53-66% of purchase price
• Australia: Spiral Blue hits world-first milestone with space-based edge computing, allowing for faster processing of large amounts of data
• India: An intro to Metastable, building Lithium-focused battery recycling operations, and already processing near 6% of the country's recycling demand for Li-ion batteries
• South Korea: CellQua gains seed funding with seafood-focused cell-cultured meats, currently producing 6 types including eel, squid and loach
• Indonesia: Mobee launches digital asset exchange for qualified investors, family offices, and institutional-grade clients, following regulator licensing
"For Australia and its partners, the skill shortage is particularly evident in advanced technology sectors, including areas of priority for AUKUS Pillar 2..."
• Japan: Mizuho Financial Group and Line message app abandon digibank plans for smartphone-based Line Bank, beaten to market by competitors
• Indonesia: Swap Energy raises $7.2M pre-A with battery-swap solutions for 2-wheeled EVs, aiming to build on 800 swap-charge stations in 14 provinces
• Vietnam joins list of countries scrutinizing TikTok, with communications ministry to inspect the firm's approach to harmful content
• Australia: Amazon Web Services to invest $13BN in expanding cloud computing data centers in Sydney and Melbourne, with projected creation of 11000 jobs
• Indonesia drops VAT on battery-based electric vehicle sales to 1% from 11% in bid to boost EV adoption and attract investment into domestic production
• Japan sets goal of trebling semiconductor sales to $112BN by 2030, alongside subsidies to semicon firms to build plants or expand existing facilities in Japan
"Thailand, Vietnam, India and Cambodia have emerged as early winners this year as semiconductor production begins to move away from traditional centers such as Taiwan and China."
• China: Pinduoduo e-shopping app found to bypass user cell phone security to monitor activities in other apps, check notifications, read private messages and change settings without approval
• Thailand: An intro to Batch 4 of SPACE-F food-tech incubator and accelerator, working on solutions in aquaculture and alt-seafoods
• ‘Asian gov't agencies bet on Thai startup ecosystem to boost investment and growth' via DealStreetAsia
• Australia: SmartSat Cooperative Research Centre announces over $1M support for new space-tech developments, with testing as payloads on Waratah Seed satellite craft
• Agreements inked between Vietnam and Laos on tech transfer between research institutes, universities and businesses at Tech-Innovation Vietnam-Laos 2023 forum
• India: Applications for National Startup Awards 2023 are now open, with submissions deadline set for May 31st
"If the yield rate of high-end mobile phones produced in India and Vietnam is now about 50 or 60 per cent, it has to be increased by 200 per cent to approach the current yield rate of Chinese factories..."
• Japan to restrict exports of 23 types of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, aligning with US advanced chip controls
• Australia: An overview of Woolworths-backed Seedlab Australia, the country's first FMCG-only business incubator
• New Zealand: Creative HQ 2023 Impact Accelerator unveils 15 startups selected, working on for-good and social impact solutions
• US lawmakers reportedly discussed possibility of bringing Starlink satellite system to Taiwan in countering move to China's surveillance, and vulnerabilities of subsea cables
• Japan: OpenAI considering Japan office following talks, with gov't evaluating possibilities of AI use in reducing government worker workloads
• Australian Securities & Investments Commission cancels Binance license for derivatives business in targeted review, seeing issues in classification of retail and wholesale clients
"...companies that have a massive presence in China are going have to deal with the fact that some form of selective economic decoupling is inevitable..."
• Australia: LuminaX unveils 2023 HealthTech Accelerator cohort, with startups working on technologies including 3D printing, artificial intelligence, child development and more
• Japan: Gov't Web3 project team publishes white paper laying out recommendations to boost the country's crypto industry, proposing tax reforms, clearer accounting standards and a DAO law
• Taiwan: MSI hardware maker confirms cyberattack, with ransomware group claiming to have stolen source code, firmware, frameworks and more
And in other news…
» 91,300 Parisians voted to ban rental e-scooters in the city, nearly 90% of the 103K who voted, due to recklessness of riders, injuries caused, costs and more
» Amazon Web Services announces 10-week AWS Generative AI Accelerator
"Blue Check’ Twitter Accounts are Flooding the Platform with False Claims - Under new owner Elon Musk, Twitter is granting legitimacy to some of the platform’s influential misinformers"
More of Asia’s tech news headlines:
• App / Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn / Connect / Web / Insta