At the IDC FutureScapes 2019, a forum focusing on trends in China’s ICT market held by IDC China on Monday in Beijing, a series of predictions on China’s ICT market were released.

IDC China Vice President and Chief Research Analyst Wu Lianfeng said the digital economy and digital industry will become the mainstream of the market and that IT-related expenditure will reach $1.3 trillion from 2019 to 2022.

“5G will be the key technology for enterprise to achieve the next phase of digital transformation. By 2024, more than 60 per cent of 5G connections will come from business application scenarios in industries,” Wu said in his speech.

IDC China managing director Kitty Fok said, from a global perspective, all industries will become digital industries and integration and cross-border will become the mainstream in the future.

She said China, characterised by the world’s largest middle class, boasts huge consumption potential and major business opportunities for smart devices and super applications.

“Digital transformation of enterprises is the core support of digital economy’s development. Growth and innovation relying on 11 digital technologies of the third platform, which include cloud computing, big data, mobile, social, artificial intelligence, block chain, Internet of Things, augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR), 3D printing, robots as well as next generation security are the core of digital transformation, “ Fok said.

In addition, Zhong Zhenshan, vice-president of IDC China, said the technologies of artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and security will come in top priorities.

Customer-centred strategy

Compared to traditional companies, digital native enterprises has faster innovation speed, can fully empower employees with customer-centred strategy, embrace risks in a process of continuous learning and adaptation, and create new value for enterprises with technology and data, Thomas Zhou, associate vice president of IDC China, said.

He said digital transformation has changed applications, and changes in applications will change everything. Clouds, data centres and developers will serve as the cornerstones of the rejuvenating of enterprises.

“By 2020, 50 per cent of users from education sector and large enterprises will consider using VR/AR products, large screen whiteboard, tablet and smart wristband to improve working efficiency.

The work, which includes space, culture and employees, supported by various smart devices and technologies will be mainstream in the future,” Antonio Wang, associate vice president of IDC China said.

In the consumer market, trends such as household storage, ageing population, consumption classification, 1.5-tier cities, screen shift and 5G will significantly affect the terminal market, which should be paid great attention from manufacturers, Wang added.

Telecom assets operator China Tower has discussed with China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom the laying and repairing of the 5G network and base stations.

It is aimed for the 5G technology to be in pre-commercial use in 2019, according to Hong Kong Economic Times (HKET). A consensus however is yet to be reached.

The three telecom carriers have been empowered to use low-and medium-band spectrum for the construction of a nationwide 5G trial by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The telecom carriers will build 5G base stations in China’s 25 major cities during the initial development period, said HKET, quoting an industry insider. Subways, entertainment spaces, sports halls and commercial buildings will be covered by the 5G network, the insider said.

CTIA, a US-based industry association of wireless carriers, said that China is best prepared for 5G technology, that major Chinese providers have committed to specific launch dates, and that government has committed to allocate a spectrum for the carriers. Online market intelligence platform IPlytics said telecom equipment providers Huawei and ZET owned standard essential patents on 5G technology, accounting for 7.9 per cent and 4.1 per cent of the global market.

Although Huawei has been banned by some countries such as the US, Japan, and Australia to build the 5G network, this is not a shock to the company’s business, said He Qixiang, director of marketing development at Huawei.

Huawei has secured more than 25 commercial contracts for 5G, the largest in the world, and has shipped more than 10,000 base stations for the fifth generation of mobile communications, Reuters reported on December 19.

The news outlet, quoting Huawei’s rotating chairman Ken Hu, said Huawei expects revenue to exceed $100 billion (Bt 3.2 trillion) this year, up 8.7 per cent from last year.

The comment came shortly after Huawei won a vote of faith in India, which had invited the Shenzhen-based company to conduct local 5G trials.

Analysts said the Indian government invitation and foreign companies’ willingness to use Huawei’s products highlight the trustworthiness of the company and provide a testament to Huawei’s technological prowess.

In an internal statement to employees on Wednesday, Huawei said that in addition to business in Germany and France, the company is also replying to Japanese operators’ 5G bid and actively participating in local 5G trials.

Though the New Zealand government has not approved a 5G proposal submitted by a local operator that is a Huawei partner, the regulatory process has not finished and local customers said they will continue to communicate with the government and hope that their cooperation with Huawei will remain unchanged, Huawei added.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that Huawei’s products and services are widely recognised.

No factual evidence has been given to support security allegations against Huawei, and some countries are politicising normal technological cooperation, Hua added.

The company said it has already secured 25 commercial contracts for 5G and shipped more than 10,000 base stations for the super-fast technology. It also has inked deals with more than 50 partners from around the world, demonstrating the confidence its clients have in the company.

The comments came after some foreign governments voiced security concerns over products made by the world’s largest maker of telecom equipment and the world’s second-largest smartphone vendor.

In the third quarter of 2018, Huawei had a 28 per cent share of the global telecom equipment market and accounted for 14.6 per cent of worldwide smartphone shipments, according to market research companies Dell’Oro Group and International Data Corp.

Wang Yanhui, secretary-general of the Mobile China Alliance, said Huawei is a global pioneer in research and development for 5G telecom equipment.

India wants to have a fast rollout of next-generation technology, so it called Huawei, Wang said. “Participating in 5G trials is an important step to build up trust.”

Bai Ming, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said it is unreasonable for foreign countries to doubt the safety of Huawei’s products just because it is a Chinese company.

Xiang Ligang, founder of the telecom website cctime, said Huawei has established an image as a reliable technology provider in the past three decades. With countries around the world expected to deploy large-scale 5G networks in a year or two, there will be a huge demand for telecom equipment.

Research agency IHS Markit forecast that the global market for 5G telecom equipment will hit $11 billion (Bt358 billion) by 2022.

“Huawei’s cost-effective products and its ability to quickly respond to clients are the keys to keeping prices affordable and to ensuring a timely deployment of 5G around the world,” Xiang said.

The New York Times reported that some 150 companies – including powerful partners Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix and Spotify – were given access to detailed |information about Facebook |users, including data about their friends.

The report marked yet another potential embarrassment for Facebook, which has been roiled by a series of scandals on data protection and privacy and has been scrutinised over the hijacking of user data in the 2016 US election campaign.

Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook’s head of developer platforms and programmes, said in a December 19 blog post that the Times report was about “integration partners” which enabled “social experiences – like seeing recommendations from their Facebook friends – on other popular apps and websites”.

Papamiltiadis added that “none of these partnerships or features gave companies access to information without people’s permission,” and maintained that the deals did not violate a 2012 privacy settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission.

According to documents seen by the Times, Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see names of Facebook users’ friends without consent and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read private messages.

The report said Amazon was able to obtain user names and contact information through their friends, and Yahoo could view streams of friends’ posts.

While some of the deals date back as far as 2010, the Times said they remained active as late as 2017 and some were still in effect this year.

Papamiltiadis said however that “we’ve been public about these features and partnerships over the years because we wanted people to actually use them.

“They were discussed, reviewed, and scrutinised by a wide variety of journalists and privacy advocates,” he said.

But he said most of the features are now gone.

“Still, we recognise that we’ve needed tighter management over how partners and developers can access information,” he added.

Netflix said in a statement the feature was used to make the streaming service “more social” by allowing users to make recommendations to friends, but that it stopped using it in 2015.

“At no time did we access people’s private messages on Facebook or ask for the ability to do so,” Netflix said in an emailed statement.

Spotify offered a similar response, indicating the music service “cannot read users’ private Facebook inbox messages across any of our current integrations”.

The Canadian bank RBC, also cited in the New York Times, said the deal with Facebook “was limited to the development of a service that enabled clients to facilitate payment transactions to their Facebook friends,” and that it was discontinued in 2015.

Called up before lawmakers

Facebook has already been called before lawmakers in the US and elsewhere to defend its data policies since news broke this year on the misuse of personal data in 2016 by Cambridge Analytica, a British consultancy working on Donald Trump’s campaign.

A report prepared for US lawmakers revealed this week showed detailed information on how Russian entities manipulated Facebook and other social networks to support the Trump effort.

Senator Brian Schatz said the latest revelations highlight a need for tougher controls on how tech companies handle user data.

“It has never been more clear,” Schatz tweeted.

“We need a federal privacy law. They are never going to volunteer to do the right thing.”

At first glance, the six-piece group consisting of Hyeonju, Sua, Haesol, Seungji, Sihyeon and Hyerim looks like a typical K-pop idol group.

But with the novel concept of e-sports, the group is already gaining attention, including from gamers, since its debut single with the fitting title “Log In” was released in November.

Aqua has largely stuck to its concept so far, appearing at a gaming event organized by its agency and game developers Actoz Soft and Kakao Games earlier this month.

 Furthermore, the group’s manager is a former professional gamer specializing in “StarCraft II,” whose current job entails overseeing the act’s dance and singing practices as well as game coaching.

In an interview clip uploaded on the group’s official YouTube channel, the bandmates were seen immersed in a first-person shooter game. Another video featured their visit to G-Star 2018, the country’s largest gaming event.

When the group was unveiled in early November, Actoz Soft CEO Guo Habin said professional gamers are now enjoying as much popularity as celebrities and that Aqua marks a “new business direction” that mixes gaming and entertainment.

In the same month, virtual K-pop group K/DA, created by Riot Games, released its debut single “Pop/Stars,” which featured the voices of (G)-IDLE’s bandmates Miyeon and Soyeon, indie-pop singer-songwriter Madison Beer and vocalist Jaira Burns.

The K-pop-tinged tune topped Billboard’s world digital song sales chart soon after its release, and the video for the song has been viewed over 120 million times as of last Thursday.

Both the gaming and K-pop industries contribute to the South Korean economy.

South Korea was the fourth-largest video games market this year, generating over 5.7 billion won (Bt185 million) in revenue, according to data from market intelligence Newzoo.

A recent study published by the Hyundai Research Institute this week estimated that K-pop sensation BTS is worth over $3.6 billion (Bt117 billion) per year to the country’s economy, as it boosts the brand image of South Korean products abroad.

By the end of June, the group had 576 million active consumers on its two major retail marketplaces – Taobao, China’s largest mobile commerce destination, and Tmall, the country’s largest third-party platform for brands and retailers.

With its technology in core commerce, cloud computing, cross-border e-commerce and mobile payments, the group said it is committed to helping domestic and foreign consumers to buy products from all over the world, and to make mobile payments global.

Altogether, brands and consumers from 230 countries and regions participated in this year’s annual Singles Day shopping festival on November 11, which has become the world’s largest online shopping spree. Gross merchandise value hit 213.5 billion yuan (Bt1 trillion) during this year’s festival.

Alibaba, founded in 1999 by Jack Ma, now claims to be the world’s largest retail commerce business in terms of GMV.

The company launched with an international vision from the very beginning, said Zheng Guangming from the group’s public relations department.

One of the reasons that Alibaba gained its name is because it is pronounced the same by people speaking all kinds of different languages, he explained.

Tmall International, a cross-border e-commerce platform initiated five years ago, has imported products from 19,000 brands from 75 countries and regions for Chinese consumers, as a result of consumption upgrading trends, said Wei Chen, deputy general manager of Tmall International.

“A rising number of niche brands have entered the Chinese market through the channel, which is favoured by many overseas brands, as it would bring phenomenal growth if only 1 per cent of Chinese consumers like it,” he said.

Alipay, Alibaba’s financial arm, has established a presence in nine countries and regions in East Asia, Southeast Asia and South Asia, including Thailand, South Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia.

“For example, since its cooperation with an Indian partner in 2015, the number of mobile payment users in the country has reached 250 million now,” Zheng said.

Alibaba is also using its cloud computing technology to improve people’s quality of life.

Its intelligent system monitors and calculates passenger and automobile flow on roads in real-time. .