Huawei achieves strong domestic performanceDespite the challenges of US sanctions, Huawei has steamrolled ahead and narrowed the gap with Samsung for global smartphone supremacy in Q3.
Singapore hotels pilot face recognition check in
Grand Park City Hall is one of three hotels taking part in the pilot.Three Singapore hotels — Ascott Orchard, Grand Park City Hall and Swissotel The Stamford — are piloting a system that uses face recognition technology to expedite the check-in process.
NVIDIA unveils Jetson Xavier NX for AI supercomputing at the edge
NVIDIA has introduced the Jetson Xavier NX, which it dubbed as “the world’s smallest, most powerful AI supercomputer for robotic and embedded computing devices at the edge”.
IBM rolls out first financial services-ready public cloud
IBM has developed the world’s first financial services-ready public cloud with Bank of America (BoA) as its first collaborator. Under the arrangement, the bank will host key applications and workloads to support the requirements and privacy and safety expectations of its 66 million banking customers.
Smartisan reveals flagship Jianguo Pro 3 smartphone
Smartisan may not ring a bell to those in the region but what about TikTok? Smartisan and TikTok are both owned by ByteDance. The China-based technology company has launched the Jianguo Pro 3, its flagship smartphone that’s packed with leading features, including dual-video.
NTU scientists develop 1000x smaller quantum chip
The tiny chip uses quantum communication algorithms for better security than existing industry standards.
Scientists at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have developed a quantum communication chip that is an incredible 1,000 times smaller than current quantum setups yet offers equally superior security quantum technology is known for.
Google acquires Fitbit for US$2.1b
The Fitbit Versa 2 was launched in Septermber.The rumours have come true. After days of speculation, Google has confirmed that its is acquiring Fitbit for US$2.1 billion.
Computer and machine vision market to hit US$26b in 2024
Expanding range of applications and more powerful hardware are expected to drive growth in the computer vision and machine vision market in the next five years, according to BCC Research.
China steps up to 5G
The Huawei Mate X is one of the devices that’s ready for 5G.5G mobile phone services will be available across China from tomorrow (November 1, 2019). China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom have announced on their 5G plans which from 128 yuans a month.
Snow Software enhances Risk Monitor to strengthen cybersecurity and compliance programs
Snow Software has enhanced its Risk Monitor product to help organisations strengthen cybersecurity and compliance programs with insight across their technology landscape.
AI certification initiative launched in Singapore
AI Singapore (AISG) has announced the AISG AI Certification, a structure learning pathway to enable Singaporeans to reskill, upskill and deep skill in artifical intelligence (AI).
NVIDIA touts 2 new Shield models
NVIDIA has rolled out the Shield TV and Shield TV Pro media streamers to deliver new visual and sound experiences to the gogglebox.
Qualcomm to invest US$200m in 5G ecosystem
Qualcomm has launched the Qualcomm Ventures 5G Ecosystem Fund, which will invest up to US$200 million in building the 5G ecosystem.
Infineon inks 3 MOUs to accelerate innovations in Singapore
SM Tharman: Keep pushing the frontiers of innovationInventing the future together was the theme of this year’s OktoberTech Asia Pacific conference in Singapore organised by Infineon Technologies. And the semiconductor giant certainly walks its talk. At the opening of the event, it inked three memorandums of understanding (MOUs) to help accelerate innovations in Singapore.
Infineon Co-Innovation Space takes flight as startups depart with commercially-ready solutions
A year after its launch, the Infineon Co-Innovation Space has borne fruit with two of its inaugural batch of startups coming up with their commercially-ready solutions built with Infineon’s microelectronics.
SENEC launches new-generation hybrid solar battery
The Home V3 Hybrid can be used to charge electric vehicles.SENEC has launched in Australia SENEC.Home V3 Hybrid, a hybrid solar battery that provides households with up to 90 percent solar power self-sufficiency. This translates to massive savings as home owners may only need to draw 10 percent of their power usage from the grid.
Simon IoT launches management platform for IoT data market
Vast amounts of data are vital for Internet of Things (IoT). At Mobile World Congress Los Angeles, Simon IoT has launched an innovative IoT management platform and pricing model that offers “fairly priced, reliable IoT data” to companies ranging from start-ups to large enterprises.
NVIDIA announces EGX edge supercomputing platform for AI, IoT and 5G
NVIDIA has announced the NVIDIA EGX Edge Supercomputing Platform which lets organisations deliver next-generation AI, IoT and 5G-based services at scale and with low latency. Along with annoucing this at his keynote address at the opening of Mobile World Congress in Los Angeles, NVIDIA Founder and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang declared that we have entered a new era, where billions of always-on IoT sensors will be connected by 5G and processed by AI.
Gojek founder to join Indonesia cabinet
Source: World Economic ForumFrom founding a startup to being part of the Indonesia cabinet, 35-year-old Nadiem Makarim has certainly come a long way. The Founder and CEO of ride-hailing and e-payment giant Gojek has announced his resignation from the company his started to join newly re-elected President Joko Widodo’s team.
Singapore Polytechnic first to offer AI diploma course
It’s a case of preparing them early as Singapore Polytechnic (SP) became the first polytechnic in the country to offer a full-time diploma in applied artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics from April next year.
SAP opens data centre in Singapore in e-commerce push
SAP has expanded its presence in Asia-Pacific (APAC) with the opening of a new data centre in Singapore to support SAP Commerce Cloud deployment.
Slack releases new app for Salesforce
Slack has strengthened its partnership with Salesforce with the release of a new Salesforce for Slack app that provides a significant update to Sales Cloud integration and integration with Service Cloud.
Singapore eyes up to 4 5G networks
5G is about to become a reality for the masses in Singapore. With 20 times faster surfing speed than 4G, the next generation mobile technology is expected to drive the nation’s digital economy.
TerraMaster releases entry-level NAS for SOHO and home users
TerraMaster has unveiled the F2-210 , an entry level network attached storage (NAS) solution for home and small office home office users.
Google Pixel 4 loses key edge
By Edward Lim
The much awaited Google Pixel 4 and Google Pixel 4 XL smartphones were announced at Google 19 yesterday. Interestingly, Google chose to talk more about the software capabilities rather than the hardware specifications, avoiding direct comparison with other flagship smartphones.
Qualcomm announces IP e-learning platform for India startups and MSMEs
Help is at hand for India startups and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to get quickly from mind to market, following the launch of the L2Pro India IP e-learning Platform.
Samsung, China Mobile and Alibaba among world’s top 10 tech companies
Samsung, China Mobile and Alibaba have made it to the top 10 of Forbes 2019 top 100 digital companies. The Korea giant came in third behind Apple and Microsoft, but edged out Google and Intel.
Dyson switches from electric car to battery
High-end vacuum maker Dyson has shelved plans to build an electric car. Instead, the British technology company will concentrate on making a revolutionary battery.
India’s Stellapps Technologies wins Rabobank’s SustainableAg Asia Challenge
Umesh Parjapat of Stellapps Technologies (second from left) with (from left) Albert Boogard of Rabo Foundation, Diane Boogard of Rabobank Asia and Harjan Kuiper of Rabobank Singapore.Stellapps Technologies put on a stellar presentation to win over the judges and take home the top prize of US$10,000 at Rabobank’s SustainableAg Asia Challenge. Fending off 13 other shortlisted competitors from China, India, Indonesia, and Singapore in a field of 138, it impressed with its SmartMoo internet of things (IoT) platform, which improves yield per animal, traceability and quality of milk in emerging countries.
Zendesk launches Gather and Sunshine Conversations
Zendesk has launched Gather, which lets companies provide trusted and transparent support to customers through online community forums. They can engage with each other and company experts to offer guidance and insight beyond what a single customer support agent might be able to handle.
Maxis goes with Huawei for 5G
Malaysia’s second largest mobile network operator Maxis has inked a deal with Huawei to roll out 5G in Malaysia next year.
Avast survey: 1 in 5 smartphone photo is terrible or a duplicate
The average person stores 952 photos on their smartphone, of which 22 percent are of bad quality, blurred, dark, or duplicates, according to an Avast survey.
NVIDIA RTX takes live TV up another notch
While ray tracing has been adopted to make gaming more real, the technology took live broadcasting to another level at the opening of The League of Legends Pro League regional finals in Shanghai. The live show host interacted with an augmented reality gaming character in a real-time mixed reality broadcast.
Singapore: Most ready for AI
As a city, Singapore is the world’s most ready for the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, according to research firm Oliver Wyman Forum. London, New York, San Francisco, and Paris made up the rest of the top five with Sydney slotting in at 10th.
AWS avails NVIDIA T4-powered Amazon EC2 G4 instances
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced general availability of G4 instances, a new NVIDIA T4 GPU-powered Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance designed to help accelerate machine learning inference and graphics-intensive workloads.
India server market dips in Q2
The server market in India dropped one percent year on year, driven primarily by a dip in x86 server sales.
Rabobank shortlists 15 startups for SustainableAg Asia Challenge
India and China startups and innovators dominate the list of 15 shortlisted finalists for Rabobank’s SustainableAg Asia Challenge. The other challengers come from Indonesia and Singapore.
Watch your bin — the rubbish version!
Your rubbish bin could be a treasure trove for thieves. What you deem as garbage may contain a repository of sensitive information that could come back to haunt you.
IBM keeps betting on mainframes with z15 launch
The mainframe computer is not quite going the way of the dinosaur. Even in today’s age of Intel-based servers, there’s still room and relevance for the mainframe. This explains why IBM has launched the z15, its 15th generation of the mainframe.
Qualcomm and Ericsson ready for next phase 5G commercialisation
Qualcomm Technologies and Ericsson have completed a 5G New Radio (NR) data connection compliant with global 3GPP 5G NR Release 15 specifications in Standalone (SA) mode of operation.
Datacenters.com launches Colocation Marketplace
Datacenters.com has launched Colocation Marketplace, claimed to be the “first platform to offer transparent co-location pricing from numerous providers to all visitors in an e-commerce platform”.
China and Brazil buck trend as smartphone sales slump in Q2
The signs are not good for smartphone sales as Gartner reports a 1.7 percent decline in Q2. Bucking the trend among the top five markets are China and Brazil. China clocked up 101 million smartphone sales, up 0.5 percent year on year in Q2, to maintain its top position.
VMware makes double acquisition
Ahead of the VMWorld in San Francisco next week, VMware has announced two major acquisitions — Pivotal for US$2.7 billion and Carbon Black for US$1.9 billion.
New Ambi Climate feature balances multiple users’ needs to keep everyone cool and cosy
Keeping cool in an air-conditioned room can raise the temperature if multiple users cannot agree on the correct setting. Hong Kong-based IoT startup Ambi Labs has come up with a new feature for its Ambi Climate controller that aims to keep everyone cool and cosy.
Microsoft buys jClarity to improve Azure
Microsoft has acquired AdoptOpenJDK project contributor jClarity to drive increased performance for Java workloads on Azure.
Samsung Galaxy Note comes of age
By Edward Lim
When it was first introduced in 2011, the Samsung Galaxy Note received brickbats for its 5.3-inch screen size with critics wondering if this was a wrong move for the Korean smartphone maker. History has proven that Samsung had made the right bet as others followed suit with larger screen sizes as well.
Salesforce bags ClickSoftware
Just two months after it’s acquisition of data visualisation firm Tableau, Salesforce has gone shopping again. This time, it has bagged ClickSoftware for US$1.35 billion.
Japan to lead APAC in smartphone decline in 2019
It’s not going to be a good year for smartphones. The global market is expected to dip 2.5 percent year on year, with Japan leading with a 6.5 percent drop.
Qualcomm and Tencent Games ink MOU
Qualcomm and Tencent Games have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) for a strategic cooperation on digital entertainment. This includes joint efforts to optimise future projects such as Qualcomm Snapdragon-based mobile gaming devices, game content and performance optimisations, Snapdragon Elite Gaming enhancements, cloud gaming, AR/VR, 5G gaming use case developments and additional relevant technologies.
APAC GPUaaS market poised for 40 CAGR by 2025
The global GPU as a Service (GPUaaS) market is expected to jump tenfold from around US$700 million in 2018 to US$7 billion by 2025, according to Global Market Insights. The Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is expected to lead this charge with a compounded annual growth rate of more than 40 percent between 2019 and 2025.
IBM seals Red Hat deal
IBM has acquired Red Hat for US$34 billion, one of the biggest technology deals of all time — bettered only by Dell’s purchase of EMC for US$65 billion and Avago’s buyout of Broadcom for US$37 billion, both in 2015.
Private equity firm acquires Corel
Hands up if you’ve not heard of Corel before. Does the company sound vaguely familiar? Founded in the 1980s, this is a company that is well past its glory days. Corel used to be a well-known brand in the PC era with products such as Corel Draw and WinZip.
The future of database is in the cloud
Unsurprisingly, a Gartner report is predicting that three quarters of all databases will reside in the cloud by 2022. Only five percent of migration will remain on premises.
Robots to replace 20m jobs by 2030
Nearly one in 10 jobs will be replaced by robots by 2030, according to a paper released by Oxford Economics. Entitled How Robots Change the World, it highlights that up to 8.5% of the global manufacturing workforce could be displaced by industrial robots just 11 years down the road.
Explosion-proof VoIP phone, anyone?
An explosion can cause injuries to people and damage to the surroundings. Getting help is critical but what if the telecommunications equipment is also destroyed?
Malaysian teams top first Infineon-LG Hackathon
Malaysia scored big at the first Infineon LG </> Make Hackathon on breakthrough Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in Singapore on June 17.
NVIDIA empowers Arm with AI and HPC software
Giving customers choices and enabling innovation in the high performance computing (HPC) space are the key reasons why NVIDIA is providing support for Arm CPUs.
Goodbye and good riddance, iTunes!
By Edward Lim
Apple’s announcement that it is killing of iTunes is music to my ears. It’s about time!
Infineon to acquire Cypress for €9b
Semiconductor giant Infineon Technologies will be acquiring embedded solutions provider Cypress for €9.0 billion.
Taiwan’s fastest supercomputer goes online
Taiwan’s new and fastest supercomputer, Taiwania 2 is also the world’s 20th fastest and 10th most energy efficient. Made in Taiwan, it will be used by the academic and research communities at the Taiwan Computing Cloud.
Entelechy Asia 