Security continues to be a top priority for governments and organisations in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. According to IDC, spending on security hardware, services and software in APAC is expected to increase by 16.7 percent […]

Security continues to be a top priority for governments and organisations in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. According to IDC, spending on security hardware, services and software in APAC is expected to increase by 16.7 percent […]
The Petronoas FutureTech 3.0 accelerator programme is expanding beyond Malaysia to the Asia-Pacific region, Co-organised by Petronas Ventures and Singapore-based StartupX, the platform aims to uncover innovations and game-changing technologies, and to accelerate these ideas […]
Sovereign Cloud Australia (AUCloud) and Arqit Quantum have announced general availability of the Asia Pacific region’s first Quantum Safe Symmetric Key Agreement Software (SKAS). Powered by Arqit’s QuantumCloud, the service is available now from AUCloud as […]
5G adoption is gaining momentum in the consumer market as countries open up to a post-pandemic world. In the enterprise space, IDC is predicting strong growth from US$106 million in 2021 to US$8 billion in […]
As IT security is a major concern for organisations, demand for cybersecurity professionals is high. (ISC)² aims to help increase the pool of such professionals with the launch of its entry-level certification pilot programme in […]
Milestone Systems has appointed Malou Toft as Vice President for Asia Pacific (APAC). He will be responsible for the company’s long-term growth strategy in APAC through business expansion, strategic partnerships and customer acquisition. Pandemic nothwithstanding, […]
VIS Global and Uniphore have formed a multi-country strategic partnership to provide a comprehensive communication and customer experience (CX) management portfolio with conversations automation offerings in Asia Pacific. This partnership will deliver to enterprises benefits […]
SambaNova Systems and ScaleWorX are partnering to drive AI adoption in the Asia-Pacific region. Under the partnership, ScaleWorX will offer innovative and best-in-class AI solutions from SambaNova to its end users. It will implement SambaNova’s […]
Informatica has launched its Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) platform on Microsoft Azure to expand its footprint in the Asia-Pacific region. The move follows Informatica and Azure’s collaboration which grew 109 percent year-on-year in 2020. […]
Huawei has announced new flagship products for the Asia-Pacific region. Most of these have already been introduced earlier in China. Huawei nova 8i smartphone: Targeted at a younger audience, it is slim with curved design, […]
Application development platform Vantiq is expanding into the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region and on the lookout for partners in Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. The US-headquartered company’s platform lets customers […]
Digital identity solution provider ForgeRock has appointed David Hope as Senior Vice President for Asia-Pacific and Japan.
5G is expected to boost smartphone sale, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, in 2020. Greater China and emerging Asia-Pacific will retain the top two positions globally with respective sales of 432.3 million and 376.8 million smartphones this year, according to Gartner.
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.
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.
Dell EMC turned in a stellar performance in Q1 by growing 51.4 percent in server revenue, enabling it to widen the gap with second-place Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) which nevertheless grew an impressive 21.5 percent.
The downward trend continues for worldwide PC shipment with a 1.4 percent drop in Q1, making it the 14th consecutive quarter of decline, according to Gartner.
Spurred by growing interest in artificial intelligence (AI), the Asia-Pacific (APAC) robotics market is expected to growth to US$162 billion in 2021, accounting for 70 percent of the world’s total robotics market in 2021, according to […]
Motorola Solutions has unveiled highly advanced technology solutions to enhance the capabilities of nation-wide public safety networks at Critical Communications World 2017 in Hong Kong. These include mission-critical radio technologies, specialised software, mission critical broadband, command […]
Governments in Asia Pacific are notably vested in the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies because it enables a broad new range of citizen services, according to IDC’s 2016 Global IoT Decision Maker Survey.
Based on the survey, 40 percent of Asia-Pacific government organisations are investing on IoT solutions in the next 12 months while 50 percent of them are investing in an IoT solution in next 12 to 24 months.
“Improving productivity, improving time to market for products/services and improving energy efficiency reducing costs are the top benefits of an IoT solution. IoT enables access to new and granular data sources, empowered by swift connectivity and quick data gathering capability giving access to a wider range of information that enhances the quality of government services at a scale, which previously has been thought to be unattainable,” said Shreyashi Pal, Market Analyst, IDC Asia/Pacific Government and Education Insights.
Worldwide PC shipment shed 9.6 percent to 64.8 million in Q1, according to Gartner. This was the sixth consecutive quarter of PC shipment declines, and the first time since 2007 that shipment volume fell below 65 million units.
In the Asia-Pacific, PC shipment dropped 5.1 percent to 23.3 million units. The ongoing fragile Chinese economy and weak global demand continued to dampen consumer sentiment in the region.
With high PC penetration in the major cities, it was a challenge to invoke PC replacements on the appeal of new technology. The PC life cycle is lengthening as many consumers are waiting until their PC breaks down before purchasing a new one.
IBM and MasterCard are partnering to offer smaller merchants real-time, analytics-based market insights on revenue, market share, customer demographics and competitors in a particular location and across multiple locations.
The solution integrates IBM Watson Analytics with insights based on aggregated and anonymised MasterCard transaction data through MasterCard Advisors Local Market Intelligence (LMI).
According to MasterCard’s latest research, more than seven out of 10 smaller businesses in Asia-Pacific expect higher business costs in 2016. With this enhanced analytical platform powered by MasterCard Advisors and IBM, merchants will hence be better equipped to make informed decisions that lower costs based on a deeper knowledge of their business’ financial strengths and pitfalls.
The economic gloom has hit the global enterprise client device market comprising thin and terminal clients. The market was down 6.8 percent in Q4, bringing 2015 decline to 6.9 percent, according to IDC.
This was due to project cutback or delay in the face of a faltering economic outlook and reduced public budgets.
The Asia-Pacific region (excluding Japan) provided the only bright spark in the downturn, growing just over 10 percent in 2015.
While voice interaction remains the primary communication channel in contact centres, the concept of an omni-channel is gaining popularity in Asia-Pacific, according to Frost & Sullivan.
With smartphone penetration and social media usage on the rise, an increasing number of organisations are working closely with system integrators and independent software vendors to implement the omni-channel platform. Their objective is to overcome the existing silo nature of communication channels and provide a consistent and seamless customer experience across voice, email, SMS, Web-chat, social media and real-time video interactions. In response, contact centers are transforming into ‘customer engagement centers’ with multi-channel strategies that are tightly integrated with mobile applications and self-service capabilities.
According to Frost & Sullivan, the market earned revenues of US$699.5 million in 2014 and is estimated to reach US$952.9 million in 2021 with a compound annual growth rate of 4.5 percent. The study covers automatic call distributors, outbound systems, computer telephony integration, interactive voice response, workforce management, call monitoring, speech technology and multimedia systems. Workforce optimisation and analytics are expected to lead revenue growth across these segments, driven by the continuous focus on contact centre operation performance management.
Shipment of devices (PCs, tablets, ultramobiles, and mobile phones) in Asia Pacific are expected to hit 1.2 billion units in 2015, an increase of 3.2 percent over 2014, according to Gartner.
“Device penetration is very high in Asia Pacific – at or beyond saturation point in mature markets and major cities in the emerging markets. Market saturation, along with consumers extending the lifetime of their tablets, has caused a re-calibration in the growth trajectory in the market. From 2016, we expect the tablet market to resume growth from a stabilised base,” said Lillian Tay, Principal Analyst of Gartner.
The computing devices market is forecast to drop 1.9 percent this year, affected by weak demand for tablets. The PC market overall will continue to grow slightly, as shipment in the premium ultramobile category compensate for a decline in sales of traditional desk-based and notebook PCs.
Lenovo maintained its pole position in the PC market, holding off HP and Dell. However, the gap between Lenovo and HP narrowed as HP garnered 18.8 percent of the market in Q4, relative to Lenovo’s 19.4 percent, according to Gartner. Dell remained third with 12.7 percent market share.
Overall, worldwide PC shipment totalled 83.7 million units in Q4, a one-percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2013. These results indicate a slow, but consistent improvement following more than two years of decline.
“The PC market is quietly stabilising after the installed base reduction driven by users diversifying their device portfolios. Installed base PC displacement by tablets peaked in 2013 and the first half of 2014. Now that tablets have mostly penetrated some key markets, consumer spending is slowly shifting back to PCs,” said Mikako Kitagawa, Principal Analyst of Gartner.
Rising demand for broadband will spur economies in the Asia-Pacific region (APAC).
According to a new GSMA report, increased broadband connections in APAC will generate US$1.2 trillion of GDP growth and create up to 35 million new jobs by 2020.
However, this opportunity can only be realised if governments act now to fully release existing harmonised mobile spectrum bands and allocate more spectrum for mobile to meet rising consumer demand and support the development of new mobile services in the longer term.
Adrian Jones is Symantec’s new Senior Vice President for Asia Pacific and Japan. He will be responsible for growing the company’s presence and market position across the region, in addition to leading business operations and business […]
Global PC shipment dipped 1.7 percent to 76.6 million units Q1, compared to the same period last year, according to apreliminary results by Gartner.
“The end of XP support by Microsoft on April 8 has played a role in the easing decline of PC shipments,” said Mikako Kitagawa, Principal Analyst of Gartner. “All regions indicated a positive effect since the end of XP support stimulated the PC refresh of XP systems. Professional desktops, in particular, showed strength in the quarter. Among key countries, Japan was greatly affected by the end of XP support, registering a 35 percent year-over-year increase in PC shipments. The growth was also boosted by sales tax change. We expect the impact of XP migration worldwide to continue throughout 2014.”
“While the PC market remains weak, it is showing signs of improvement compared to last year. The PC professional market generally improved in regions such as EMEA. The US saw the gradual recovery of PC spending as the impact of tablets faded.” said Kitagawa.
The server market continued to decline for the third consecutive quarter. According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, factory revenue in the worldwide server market decreased 3.7 percent year over year to $12.1 billion in Q3.
Server market demand remained soft ahead of a forthcoming refresh cycle, which is expected to emerge in early 2014. After increasing modestly in Q2, server unit shipments were flat year over year in Q3 with 2.3 million units shipped worldwide.
On a year-over-year basis, volume systems experienced 3.5 percent revenue growth. At the same time, demand for midrange and high-end systems experienced year-over-year revenue declines of 17.8 percent and 22.5 percent respectively in Q3. The midrange and high-end segments were impacted by difficult year-over-year compares and continued weakness in Unix demand while volume demand was helped by solid x86 server demand.