Asia's tech news, weekly: March 28th 2023
AWS in New Zealand, Huawei's domestic sourcing, Western Union in Vietnam, metaverse building in Malaysia, Indonesian startup boost, Amazon vs StarLink...
• India's Tech Mahindra IT services giant partners Indonesia's Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison to run the telco's tech ops, serving over 102M mobile subscribers
• New Zealand: MOU inked between AWS and NZ gov't aiming for long-term collaboration 'in areas of cloud adoption, innovation, advanced digital skills, sustainability, and cyber security'
• China: Huawei CEO reveals firm redesigned 4K circuit boards, sourcing 13K components domestically, in response to sanctions, boosting use of HarmonyOS and other systems
"China’s integrated circuit output dropped 17% in the first two months of 2023, as the country’s semiconductor industry grappled with economic headwinds and escalating US trade sanctions.."
• Vietnam: MoMo digital payments firm gains Western Union collaboration deal to facilitate money transfers via the MoMo app
• Philippines: A video overview of the country's developing startup ecosystem, from Digital Pilipinas Convenor Amor Maclang
• Nvidia chipmaker unveils DGX Cloud, providing enterprize users with supercomputing power via web browsers, remotely running workloads on Nvidia chips
• Uncomfortable questions for Baidu's Ernie Bot: "One influencer posted several AI-generated images, asking if Baidu simply translated the Chinese into English and used foreign image generators..."
• New Zealand: "...55% of 213 surveyed businesses were subject to a cyber-attack in the past year, with phishing accounting for 37% of the attacks reported..."
• Malaysia: Virtualtech Frontier, metaverse development startup backed by 500 Global, launches Mitoworld, a no-code browser-based metaverse-building platform
‘GPT-4 Has Been Out For 1 Day. These New Projects Show Just How Much More Powerful It Is'
• Philippines: Block Dojo launches to train, educate, upskill and cross-skill blockchain-focused companies and professionals, utilizing parent firm nChain's advisor and mentor networks
• Malaysia: $40M Future Malaysia Programme launches to boost the country's startup ecosystem, operated by government Khazanah sovereign wealth fund
• Amazon steps into direct competition with StarLink following approval for launch of Kuiper satellites, potentially tapping a market of hundreds of millions of internet users
• Philippines: Cohort 10 of the IdeaSpace Accelerator Program unveils 10 next-gen startups, working in earned-wage access, insurance-tech, real estate VR services and more
• China: BYD automaker moves to diversify globally via technological capabilities with investment in Kunlunxin, previously Baidu's Smart Chip and Architecture Department
• Indonesia: Antler early-stage VC firm to invest in more than 30 Indonesian startups this year, alongside launching a 10-week Jakarta-based founders residency programme
"...new robot installations in the Chinese automotive industry almost doubled to 61,598 units in 2021- accounting for 52% of the total 119,405 units installed in factories around the world."
• China: Huawei claims breakthroughs in electronic design automation tools for chips at and above 14-nanometre levels as part of localization efforts
• Philippines: Archipelago Labs accelerator launches first edition of ALAB incubation program in April, a 12-week program for tech startups and entrepreneurs
• New Zealand: Everlasting, estate-planning lawtech startup, launches to prevent millions lost in crypto & digital assets when owners pass away or lose passwords
• Australia: Government flags option to shift cyber risk and liability from community to "...software and cyber security service providers, telecommunications firms and technology developers”
• China-affiliated hacking groups found to be targeting 'net-facing security tools including those from VMware and Citrix, targeting products before network propagation
• Download: New Zealand Business Cyber Security Report 2023, from Kordia (Google Drive link)
"Beware the 'sensible' crypto crowd - they're worse than the fanatics. The strait-laced, earnest types threaten to legitimise a high-risk, opaque and ill-understood industry..."
• Digital assets - good for households, bad for banks: "Digital assets can reduce the difference between interest rates that banks charge for loans and the interest they pay to depositors..."
• TikTok: "...the Chinese government views TikTok's technology as sensitive and has taken steps since 2020 to ensure it can veto any sale by its Beijing-based owner, ByteDance."
• "Hong Kong's campaign to become a regional crypto hub has attracted a steady stream of business executives from China looking to explore opportunities in the sector despite Beijing's crackdown...."
And in other news…
» An intro to 10 European space-tech startups, working in space traffic management, space debris tracking, satellite-driven agri-tech and more
» Runway AI Inc startup unveils Gen-2, artificial intelligence model that can generate brief video clips based on text prompts
» Nasdaq stock market index to debut cryptocurrency custody services by end of Q2 2023, with safekeeping services for Bitcoin and Ether the first step to broader services
"...80% of the US workforce could have at least 10% of their tasks affected by the introduction of GPTs...around 19% of workers will see at least 50% of their tasks impacted..."
» OpenAI releases ChatGPT plugins for web browsing, alongside allowing developers to deploy their own registered versions, enabling real-time querying of online sources
» "Dark Forest shows how advanced cryptography can be used in a game—and how blockchains might host decentralized digital worlds..."
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