Under the memorandum, the tech titan will supply smartphone and tablet PCs for Grab drivers, which are equipped with Knox, the company’s mobile security solution to ensure information security of Grab’s devices by reducing downtime and maintenance costs.

Grab cars with Samsung tablet PCs installed will be able to provide customers the chance to view infotainment content, such as information about sightseeing, restaurants and videos.

Grab is the largest ride-hailing platform business in Southeast Asia, operating in 186 cities in eight countries including Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar and Cambodia.

Registered Grab drivers are around 2.3 million across the region, while the Grab application is being used on more than 77 million mobile devices.

The ride-hailing industry is one of the fastest growing Internet services sectors and is expected to be a US$25 billion market by 2022 in this region.

The latest partnership seems to be just the beginning of Samsung‘s US$300 million bet on the business of future autonomous driving. As unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, Samsung is preparing with its subsidiary Harman to commercialise vehicle infotainment technologies powered by artificial intelligence and Internet of Things.

Samsung and Grab will work together to provide improved income opportunities by offering micro-financing schemes through Samsung smartphones, better customer booking and in-car experiences and other new mobility solutions.

The micro-financing programme, part of Grab’s better 365 program, will reduce the cost of purchasing a smartphone and also lower ongoing maintenance costs with superior software and security features.

This programme was piloted in Myanmar, where only 30 per cent of adults have access to formal financial services, in the fourth quarter of last year. Currently, around 1,400 drivers in Myanmar who sign up with Grab can purchase and own Samsung devices and get a micro-loan from CB Bank, one of Myanmar’s largest banks and Grab’s local banking partner, to finance the device.

The two companies will further work together to expand into Southeast Asia’s fragmented mobile payments ecosystem and provide a mobile payments solution that will serve the needs of consumers in Southeast Asia, Samsung said.

“Southeast Asia is home to the world’s fastest growing emerging markets, yet many in the smaller towns and cities do not have easy access to the growing digital economy,” said Grab CEO and co-founder Anthony Tan.

“Samsung is one of the world’s most innovative technology companies, and we’re thrilled to partner with them to empower more people in Southeast Asia to improve their livelihoods and provide more digital services for everyone on the Grab platform.”

Grab will introduce more GrabKiosks and GrabBooths in busy consumer hubs such as shopping malls, hotels and airports, in partnership with Samsung. The facilities will feature Samsung devices with the Grab enterprise app pre-installed, allowing individuals and concierge services to book a Grab ride for themselves or others, even when they do not have data connectivity.

The Samsung devices at GrabKiosks and GrabBooths in Indonesia and Myanmar have been installed with Samsung’s Knox mobile security software.

The kiosks and booths will be rolled out in Vietnam and Singapore within the first quarter of this year, and other countries in Southeast Asia later in the year.

“We believe in the Internet of Things; the various benefits a more digitally connected world brings, and we are excited to be partnering with Grab to provide consumers within the region an enhanced array of digital solutions for their everyday needs,” said Lee Sang-chul, president and CEO of Samsung Electronics Southeast Asia and Oceania.

“Through this collaboration, we hope to explore how we can work together to tap into the massive growth opportunity of Southeast Asia’s digital economy.”

Blockchain is the secure ledger system behind the bitcoin cryptocurrency and it is the technology that has been credited with the power to reinvent the property sector.

Blockchain technology is notoriously complicated. In simplest terms, it is a shared record of transactions. Anyone can hold a copy of the ledger and anyone can read it. Changes ripple through all versions of the blockchain held worldwide. A locking method is employed to prevent any tampering by one party — making it secure.

Troy Griffiths, deputy managing director, Savills Vietnam, believes “blockchain has the capacity to revolutionise land transfers”.

If the technology were to be implemented for land-registry purposes, it would have several possible benefits. The automatic processing of contracts would mean that costs are reduced. There would be increased security as identity records are tamperproof and deal times are reduced, as a deal can be an entirely digital experience.

Blockchain puts real estate on a new footing. If it has the potential to increase liquidity and reduce costs, some significant barriers for investors are removed. If unitisation of direct property holdings can be achieved and/or if income streams derived from direct property holding can be split, it also decreases the “lumpiness” of real-estate investment; the barriers between real-world holdings and synthetic derivatives start to break down, making investment liquid, transparent and instantly tradeable. However, it may be some time before this can be achieved, as further safeguards would need to be in place.

Griffiths noted in his Vietnam Quarterly Market Report for the fourth quarter of 2017 that “blockchain is coming, but there is yet to be any major breakthrough”.

Griffiths is also optimistic about blockchain application, particularly in Vietnam. “So far, Vietnam has been slow on the uptake of this new technology but that will change very quickly. We have a large population of dynamic, aggressive and smart young people and a big start-up culture. I think we are in a wonderful position to take advantage of the new digital age.”

Land registries around the world are interested in it because they suspect that blockchain could enable the “almost instant” transfer of property ownership in a secure way.

One of the world’s oldest land registries, Her Majesty’s Land Registry in the United Kingdom, called it a “highly ambitious objective” that would require the most “far-reaching transformation in their 150-year history”. Earlier this year, HM Land Registry announced plans to create a virtual “digital street” to test the new technology.

The technology uses computer image recognition to analyze retail and consumer goods data, turning photographs of retail product shelves into insights. The results can be used to improve in-store sales strategies.

Headquartered in Singapore, Trax has opened offices in Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, North America and South America, and set up an Engineering and Computer Vision Centre of Excellence in Tel Aviv, Israel. The company was established in 2011, and has already provided services for more than 175 clients and brands, including Coca Cola, AB InBev, Nestle, Henkel and PepsiCo, in more than 50 countries.

“Trax is the only company in the world that has a fully automated, real-time platform for stock-keeping-unit level recognition that can work offline or online,” said Joel Bar El, one of the co-founders and the CEO of Trax. “Using data and analysis generated by our image recognition technology, our clients see their out-of-stock rates reduced by 10-15 percent, and overall category sales increased by 3-5 percent on average.”

Consider Coca Cola, which is not only sold in supermarkets such as Carrefour, but in individually owned shops in smalls cities or counties, where it was difficult for the Coca Cola company to collect sales data such as stock-keeping unit, a type of merchandise number.

With Trax’s platform, the work can be done directly by shop owners, by taking photographs of retail product shelves with an inexpensive camera provided by Trax for free, and uploading those pictures to the platform. The data are collected by the platform, which is much more complex than what had previously been used by Coca Cola, and can help improve their in-store execution strategies.

In June 2017, Trax got $64 million during financing led by Warburg Pincus, a United States private equity firm. With the strong support of its investors, Trax has grown quickly in the past 18 months, especially in the US, and established offices in San Francisco, New York and Atlanta. In January, the company finished its acquisition of Quri, a US supermarket cloud data firm.

“China is a fast-growing major global economy with a burgeoning retail sector, due to the size of its population,” said Nancy Wang, managing director of Trax in China. “Retail is transforming rapidly in two specific areas: the shopping experience and technology adoption.”

“Trax is ready to lead that transformation by helping retailers reshape their in-store execution and store-level shelf interaction using leading-edge technology, ” he added.

“Customs duty on import of mobile phone parts will be increased to 20 per cent from the existing 15 per cent. This will boost jobs in the smartphone sector in India,” Jaitley said during his union budget speech.

“While the intention behind increasing the customs duties on some products such as mobile phones is to incentivise domestic manufacturing, this will lead to an increase in the prices for these products denting the middle-class consumers wallets,” MS Mani, Partner, Deloitte India, said in a statement.

Domestic smartphones welcomed the government’s move.

“We welcome the announcement on custom duty increase in mobile phones. This will help make India a global hub for mobile phone manufacturing. Local manufacturing will create more job opportunities, benefitting the youth and contributing towards the overall growth of the economy,” said Sanjeev Agarwal, Chief Manufacturing Officer, Lava International.

Rajeev Jain, Director and CFO, Intex Technologies, said the move will prove to be the big boost for localisation and setting up of a domestic component ecosystem.

Big thumbs-up

“This is a big thumbs-up to domestic players like Intex, which have been developing domestic capacities since long in electronics manufacturing,” he said.

Chinese smartphone vendors, however, were critical of the government’s move.

“The increase in customs duty will definitely hamper the cost to customer, especially when it comes to getting repairs for the high-end devices,” said Syed Tajuddin, CEO, Coolpad India.

“While increase in customs duty on handsets will compel brands to manufacture or assemble more in India, still there is not great support for local ecosystem for manufacturing spare parts,” he added.

According to industry experts, the customs duty hike will push foreign players towards manufacturing and sourcing components more within the country.

“This move will push almost all players to increase the assembling of mobile phones in India. From Apple’s point of view, it will certainly impact in the near term, possibly increase the prices of its flagships since most of them are being imported to |India,” Navkendar Singh, Senior Research Manager, IDC India, told IANS.

“In the long term, this will push Apple to start manufacturing of the entire range of devices in India to enjoy these incentives and remain competitive in a market like India, which it cannot afford to ignore,” Singh added.

“Almost 3/5th of total handsets out of 300 million sold last year were assembled in India. The increase in duty will further increase the local assembling share as brands will ramp up their current output from local Maintenance and Engineering Services (EMS) facilities since capacity is already there,” Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint, told IANS.

According to Faisal Kawoosa, Principal Analyst, Telecoms, CyberMedia Research (CMR), the move is in line with expectations to further give impetus to manufacture the handsets domestically.

“This will also push new entrants, which typically make beeline every year to India for local manufacturing who otherwise first procure CBUs from their parent companies and then gradually start manufacturing in India,” Kawoosa said.

“Now, to be competitive, such new entrants shall also have to look for a domestic manufacturer from the beginning,” he added.

In December, the government had increased customs duty on various items, including mobile phones, to 15 per cent from 10 per cent.

After the government hike, Apple became the first manufacturer to raise prices (on MRP) across iPhone models, except iPhone SE that the company assembles in the country.

An event held recently at the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications outlined the basic concept of what the country’s digital signature platform would look like once completed.

“Now, while there is no digital signature in place in Cambodia, [the origin of] all documents are difficult to verify,” said Ou Phannarith, director of the department of ICT security at the ministry.

Phannarith noted that while the government increasingly had online platforms, such as for taxation services and business registration, those processes still needed an in-person signature to verify the identity of the registrant.

That need would be eliminated by the use of verified digital signatures, he said.

Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Tram Iv Tek said that as Cambodia continued to move online, |the country needed to take steps to prevent fraud and cyberattacks.

“Now, we have seen an increase in transactions of e-payment, e-government, e-commerce, so there is a need for having a protected system,” he said.