However, the company is now shifting from a messenger tool to an all-in-one app that provides various services ranging from e-commerce to content. This not only corresponds to the increasing demand by customers who want to do everything in one app, but also mobile companies’ efforts to increase the time spent on their apps.

To increase time spent on Line platform, which is now an average 63 minutes a day or one-third of the total time spent on a smartphone in Thailand, the company has been betting big on the hyper-localisation of its services and operations.

This is why unlike other global internet companies that have a presence in Thailand, Line has hired several hundred local employees and created various services. Those services range from content that including that of Line TV and Line Today to an online-to-offline service such as delivery service Line MAN in order to appease local demand and tastes.

Time to scale up

Another way of localising the messenger platforms is to play a significant role in boosting Thailand’s startup ecosystem, which is lagging behind other Asean nations.

“In the last two years, more and more startups have successfully finished accelerator or incubating programmes, which is a positive change,” Jayden Kang, executive director of Line ScaleUp, told |The Korea Herald in a recent |interview.

Nevertheless, Thailand’s startup scene is still nascent with deal value in 2018 totalling only about US$61 million (Bt1.94 billion) for 35 deals, according to a report by Techsauce, a Bangkok-based tech media. And 75 per cent of those deals were either seed or series A funding from 2017 to 2018.

There were only three merger and acquisitions, two of which were bought by Line. “We identified three pain points that Thailand startups are facing, and how to build a global mobile platform that can help address them,” Kang said.

He said the three main challenges are how to secure additional funding post-accelerator phase, how to scale up and how to expand globally.

Kang, who oversees Line’s business in Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia, launched Line ScaleUp last year to help solve these issues.

Line ScaleUp offers Thai startups access to Line messenger platform’s API for free for a year and funding opportunities from Line Ventures, the company’s venture capital arm. Line ScaleUp and Line Ventures will invest up to $20 million in Line ScaleUp winners once the programme this year finishes in November.

In return, Line eyes long-term benefits from ScaleUp as it can cooperate with startups with innovative ideas that could create positive synergy.

And also it would give the company an opportunity for handsome financial gain by discovering promising startups.

Much needed unicorns

Kang hopes that together with the Thai government, Line can help bring a much-needed success story to the Thai startup scene and help the country be better prepared to build a healthy ecosystem, which has become an important economic pillar for many countries, as well as get ready for a race with its neighbours. Other Asean nations, particularly Indonesia and Singapore, have eight unicorns together and have become global startup hubs.

Kang, who has observed the Thai market for several years as a consultant before joining Line, attributed Thailand’s underdeveloped startup scene to the very low unemployment rate – standing at 0.9 per cent in 2018, according to the Bank of Thailand -– a lack of role models or success stories, and the belated government policy transition to digitalisation. “Amid low unemployment, big companies such as banks and telecommunication companies absorbed good talent while the lack of a success story did little to encourage skilled people to join startups,” Kang said. “But if you don’t see a unicorn in three to five years, it’s possible that the country’s startup ecosystem would lose a chance to mature.”

The executive is determined to make that happen under his helm.

“I don’t want to predict when Thailand is likely to see a unicorn, because it would take too long if you simply sit and wait. Rather, I want to help make it happen.”

The rocket, which blasted off on May 4, was developed by Interstellar Technologies Inc, based in Taiki, Hokkaido.

“We demonstrated from a technical aspect that it is possible to produce low-priced rockets,” chief executive officer Takahiro Inagawa said at a press conference after the launch.

The firm, established in 2013, launched MOMO-1 in 2017, but the rocket suffered damage in flight.

The launch of MOMO-2 also ended in failure in 2018 when it failed just after liftoff, and burst into flames. At long last, the 10-metre-tall MOMO-3 became the nation’s first space rocket developed single-handedly by the private sector that could reach outer space.

The development of the nation’s leading rockets, such as H2A, with a total height of 53 metres, has been led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and other organisations. In recent years, however, private companies have entered the field.

Four companies, including Canon Electronics Inc and Shimizu Corp, jointly established Space One Co in Tokyo in 2018 with the aim of developing its own 18-metre-high rocket and launching it in fiscal 2021. More than 100 companies around the world are said to have embarked on the development of small rockets. US startup Rocket Lab succeeded in making a commercial launch last November.

Companies’ moves to develop small rockets come amid an increasing demand for the launch of microsatellites, which weigh 100 kilograms or less. Early satellites, laden with custom-made equipment, were large in size with high production costs. However, it has become possible in recent years to manufacture smaller satellites at a lower cost. A US research company estimates that 2,000 to 2,800 microsatellites weighing from 1 kilogram to 50 kilograms are waiting to be launched in the next five years.

University of Tokyo Professor Shinichi Nakasuka, who specialises in satellite engineering, said, “If a large rocket like the H2A launches a microsatellite, it will have to piggyback other satellites as well, and thus there will be no freedom in choosing the time of the launch. Expectations for small, flexible rockets are high.”

Boeing acknowledged on Saturday that it had to correct flaws in its 737 MAX flight simulator software used to train pilots, after two deadly crashes involving the aircraft that killed 346 people.

“Boeing has made corrections to the 737 MAX simulator software and has provided additional information to device operators to ensure that the simulator experience is representative across different flight conditions,” it said in a statement.

The company did not indicate when it first became aware of the problem, and whether it had informed regulators.

Its statement marked the first time Boeing had acknowledged there was a design flaw in software linked to the 737 MAX, whose MCAS antistall software has been blamed in large part for the Ethiopian Airlines tragedy.

According to Boeing, the flight simulator software was incapable of reproducing certain flight conditions similar to those at the time of the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March or the Lion Air crash in October.

The company said the latest “changes will improve the simulation of force loads on the manual trim wheel”, a rarely used manual wheel to control the plane’s angle.

“Boeing is working closely with the device manufacturers and regulators on these changes and improvements, and to ensure that customer training is not disrupted,” it added. – AFP-Jiji

Kia launches Korea’s first EV service centre

Korea’s second-largest automaker Kia Motors has established a service centre dedicated to electric vehicles for the first time in the country, the firm said on Sunday.

The automaker has set up an EV Workbay at six service centres nationwide, operated by Auto Q. It hopes to enhance the efficiency of EV customers’ vehicle inspection and mechanics’ work convenience.

The launch comes in line with the imminent launch of its new EV lineup – including Niro EV and Soul Booster EV.

While setting up five more EV Workbay centres by the year-end, including one on Jeju Island, the company will also make it mandatory for new service centres to equip themselves with the facility.

“Customers have been expressing concerns over the lack of EV facilities, despite the growing number of EV users here. Kia will put more effort to expanding the infrastructure and help customers have easy access to services,” said an official.

As of May, Kia has installed 21 high-speed battery chargers for EVs at its service centers. The company has been operating an emergency service for EV customers with low battery charge to tow their cars free of charge to destinations within 80 kilometres, four times a year. – The Korea Herald/ ANN

China accelerates construction of IoT, cloud computing infrastructure

China is continuing to build infrastructure for cloud computing and the internet of things (IoT) as the country’s informatisation entered an intellectual stage featuring data mining.

In 2018, China had over 700 million IoT connections with a market scale surpassing 1 trillion yuan (Bt4.6 trillion), said Wang Qinmin, an official with e-government affairs.

In terms of cloud computing, the private cloud market scale reached 52.46 billion yuan and the public cloud market scaled at 38.25 billion yuan, according to Wang.

Cloud computing and the IoT are not confined to the internet industry, and they are penetrating into traditional industries, including manufacturing, finance, communication and medicare, Zhang Feng, chief engineer with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology noted.

Last year, the overall scale of the cloud industry in China reached around 330 billion yuan, while that of the IoT industry exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, according to Zhang.

Microsoft opens largest AI, IoT lab in Shanghai

Microsoft Corporation has established an artificial intelligence and internet of things (IoT) insider lab in Shanghai to aid digital transformation across industries.

Located in a 2,800-square-metre building in the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park of the Pudong New Area, the lab, which began operation on Wednesday, is established in partnership with the state-run Zhangjiang Group. It is the fourth and also the largest such lab run by Microsoft around the world.

Microsoft said the lab provides “all-around support” for enterprises inside and taps into the IoT and AI technologies to fuel the digital transformation taking place across industries, including manufacturing, retail, healthcare, finance and urban construction.

Thirty Chinese and foreign businesses have been selected out of some 300 applicants as the first batch of “enterprises of empowerment” in the lab. They include both startups, among which 21 are based in Shanghai, and multinational corporations, such as ABB Engineering (Shanghai) Ltd and Pan Asia Technical Automotive Centre Co Ltd.

The lab will provide support for the enterprises in the next three to six months, offering hardware and software resources, cloud service and access to the Microsoft ecosystem, according to Microsoft.

“The combination and application of AI and Internet of Things technologies are becoming the latest trends leading global digital transformation,” Alain Crozier, Microsoft corporate vice-president, chairman and CEO of Greater China Region, said at a launch ceremony on Wednesday.

The three other Microsoft AI and IoT insider labs are located in Redmond, Washington, Shenzhen, China, and Munich, Germany. – China Daily/ANN

A facial recognition app developed by the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding with researchers from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and Sichuan Normal University will make identifying the bears easier.

Wan Yongqing, a Beijing photographer, visits Sichuan province every second year to take photos of pandas. He has watched them for more than a decade at the Chengdu facility and other sites associated with the China Conservation and Research Centre for the Giant Panda in Sichuan.

“Friends call me a die-hard panda fan. It is a shame I find all pandas look the same, with black eyes and white fur. It does not matter as all the bears are cute to me,” he said.

But discerning one bear from another does matter to researchers, according to Zhang Zhihe, chief of the Chengdu base. Identifying individual bears is important for their conservation management and research.

For captive pandas, it is key to their daily feeding schedules, genealogy and archival management. For wild pandas, it helps researchers study their population structure and provides scientific support for their protection and management, he said.

China has carried out four scientific surveys on wild pandas, obtaining a large volume of valuable data about the animals. The number of wild pandas in China has been basically ascertained. However, it is still difficult to clarify their population distribution, age, gender, health and other information. The wild panda population structure focuses on overall population density, age, sex ratio, birthrate and mortality, Zhang said.

It is difficult to track and monitor the structure because of wild pandas’ solitary living habits in deep mountains and their vast geographical habitat, Zhang added.

In 2017, the Chengdu base together with its two partner facilities began researching individual panda identification technology by analysing images. Over the past two years, they have built a database of more than 120,000 images and over 10,000 video clips, and completed cataloguing of nearly 10,000 images. Using the databank, researchers have launched a facial recognition app that can accurately recognise captive pandas by analysing and comparing the unique features of panda faces with database analysis.

Panda researchers hope algorithms and AI technology will help them analyse data for both captive and wild pandas.

China’s fourth panda census is the latest. Its results were released in 2015 and showed 1,864 wild pandas and 375 captive pandas worldwide as of the end of 2013. That compares with 1,596 wild pandas and 164 captive pandas worldwide in the third census carried out from 2000 to 2002.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China signed cooperation agreements with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and telecommunications giant Huawei last week.

Through such collaboration, researchers at the CAS will help the CAAC seek integration into the aviation sector of advanced information technology such as artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing, and provide comprehensive analysis of key information, Gao Hongjun, deputy secretary-general of the academy, said on May 16.

The agreement was signed on May 14.

Huawei, a leading Chinese manufacturer of telecom equipment, struck a cooperation deal with the CAAC the following day, which covers a wide range of services and infrastructure projects, from security maintenance and management of airlines, to drone applications and internet access during flight.

“Such innovative tools are expected to lift the safety level of the aviation industry to a record high,” Feng Zhenglin, head of the CAAC, said during the 2019 China Civil Aviation Development Forum held in Beijing, which concluded last Friday.

Feng said the global rate of fatal incidents has peaked at around 0.3 to 0.5 per million flights in recent years.

“The number of flights is set to rise further. If no substantial progress in ensuring safe air travel can be achieved, risks associated with flying will continue to climb,” Feng said.

He said emerging technologies that excel in precision, forecasting and coordination will equip civil aviation workers with sharper capability to make predictions on flight operations and allow round-the-clock monitoring and management of aircraft.

Safety is the core principle of transportation, according to Guo Ping, rotating chairman of Huawei. He said artificial intelligence, and facial recognition in particular, is capable of offering maximum convenience for flight passengers while securing the safety of a passenger’s journey from check-in to boarding.

“By setting up facial recognition devices at the airport, travellers will go though rounds of security screening with minimal, if any, noticeable disruption,” he said.

“It is estimated that about 50 per cent of all airports in China will use facial recognition at all points of contact by 2021.”

As of August, about 70 airports out of a total of 218 in China had rolled out facial recognition systems at more than 600 security checkpoints. The system was developed by Chongqing Institute of Green and Intelligent Technology of the CAS, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Guo also noted that 5G wireless technology, embraced worldwide for its ultrahigh bandwidth and rapid data transfer, will play a key role in improving administration of the surging volumes of equipment, assets and vehicles – driverless cars included – at airlines hubs, Guo said.

For instance, he said, by implementing an artificial intelligence model that optimises gate assignments at the Shenzhen International Airport, an average 4 million passengers each year are spared the hassle of riding a shuttle bus to get aboard.