For instance, StarHub was offering new and recontracting mobile subscribers a free 50GB of monthly local mobile data for a year. Those who switch from another telco can enjoy an additional S$100 (Bt2,335) discount.

Singtel, meanwhile, banked heavily on HBO’s hit TV series “Game of Thrones” to attract customers. The telco introduced three new mobile plans that come with a HBO Go subscription and at least 10GB of mobile data. Visitors could also experience a virtual battle with the series’ villainous White Walkers in a special booth.

Other telcos were following suit with a variety of offers that lower the cost of mobile data.

Competition among telcos has intensified in recent months, especially for the incumbents. There are now four mobile virtual network operators offering price-competitive mobile plans while fourth telco TPG Telecom has started a free, year-long trial for its mobile service last December.

Fong Lin, 47, picked StarHub after checking out a few telcos at the show because it was the cheapest. “I think StarHub’s 50GB of mobile data is a lot. I currently have 18GB and it is more than enough. No need to worry any more,” she said.

Now in its 18th year, the annual IT Show is organised by Exhibits Inc, a subsidiary of Singapore Press Holdings.

Other visitors were at the show for the gadgets. Spotted outside the convention hall before the show opened at noon was Anthony Anandam, 65. “This is my first time at the IT Show. I am looking for a laptop to edit my videos and the show is timely,” he said.

Also in the queue was Andrew Chua, 33 who planned to check out the deals for the latest mirrorless cameras. “It has been a while since I last visited the IT Show, probably two to three years. It just happened that I am thinking of upgrading my old camera,” he said.

Mirrorless camera

For camera enthusiasts, a big attraction at the IT Show is probably Canon’s latest full-frame mirrorless camera, the EOS RP. Canon ambassador and Olympic swimming champion Joseph Schooling was at the IT Show on March 9 for the launch of the EOS RP. Visitors had the opportunity to get their photos taken with him as well as chances to win limited edition Canon gifts.

Marcus Wee, founder of local PC builder Aftershock PC, said the IT Show was “definitely the biggest show of the year” in terms of foot traffic.

“The timing of the show is also perfect, as it is the season for manufacturers to update their products,” he said. Among the latest consumer tech products at the IT Show was Samsung’s latest Galaxy S10 smartphone. The South Korean firm took up a sizeable booth in the middle of Suntec Singapore’s Hall 4 to showcase its new phone, which was officially put on sale on March 8.

Other newly-released products included routers from Asus and TP-Link that support the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard and gaming notebooks sporting new graphics chips.

Meanwhile, older products, such as large flat-screen television sets had had their prices slashed by almost 50 per cent for some models.

Like previous shows, visitors could trade in their old gadgets, such as video game consoles, laptops and smartphones in exchange for cash vouchers.

There was also be a lucky draw with prizes such as a Samsung television set for every S$100 spent.

In their race against each other to become the first “super app” in Indonesia, Go-Jek and Grab are increasingly similar in terms of their features but still noticeably different in their approach to the super-app status.

Go-Jek focuses on pushing financial technology (fintech) with its Go-Pay e-wallet, while Grab concentrates on its GrabFood delivery service.

Go-Jek’s emphasis on fintech first became apparent when founder Nadiem Makarim confirmed in late 2017 that Go-Pay would become a spin-off the following year.

“The plan is very clear. Go-Pay has an e-money licence [from Bank Indonesia]. So our plan is to bring Go-Pay outside of the Go-Jek app,” he said.

Nadiem stuck to his word as Go-Pay partnered with nearly 400,000 merchants by December last year with the value of the e-wallet’s transactions hitting US$6.3 billion (Bt199.96 billion).

Highest share

Go-Pay currently holds the highest share of Indonesia’s e-wallet market, which is predicted would be worth $25 billion (Bt792 billion) by 2023, according to a recent RedSeer report.

However, Go-Pay precariously maintains its market share by burning through millions of dollars in nationwide cashback schemes to push market penetration beyond Indonesia’s banked population.

Go-Jek was able to raise $920 million in its latest Series F round to fuel its penetration plans.

“If you take Indonesia’s population, deduct those who are too old to use e-payment, then deduct those who are too young, then you’d have about 120 million people who should be banked. They are our target,” said Go-Jek head of merchants Ryu Suliawan.

Go-Pay has yet to reveal its current number of active e-wallet customers, but the latest Telkom-Mandiri report estimated the figure at 10 million users in 2017. Given the target, it was unsurprising when Go-Jek co-founder Kevin Aluwi said last year that Go-Pay’s other purpose was to gather data on consumers’ spending, which could then be used to expand his company’s financial services.

For this reason, Go-Jek acquired three Indonesian fintech startups (Midtrans, KartuKu and Mapan) in 2017 and then acquired the Philippine start-up Coins.ph this year.

Meanwhile, Grab has been crystal clear about its plan to become the country’s – and the region’s – leading on-demand food delivery service by the end of this year.

Internal company estimates say the value of Southeast Asia’s food delivery market would quadruple from $3 billion this year to $13 billion by 2022.

GrabFood itself rapidly expanded operations last year by entering Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam after setting up in Indonesia and Thailand.

Grab Indonesia president director Ridzki Kramadibrata told reporters in Jakarta as early as December last year that the company planned to leverage its 64 per cent market share of Indonesia’s ride-hailing industry to conquer food delivery.

This year alone, the company announced partnerships with five food and beverage chains, including Maxx Coffee, Wendy’s Indonesia and Baskin Robbins, which expands Grab’s network to “hundreds of thousands” of merchants.

These franchises create either exclusive deals or menus to help Grab attract customers in exchange for consumer behaviour insights in the 222 Indonesian cities where GrabFood operates.

However, Grab also burns through money in nationwide promotions, fuelled by its latest $2.5 billion Series G fundraising round, to increase market penetration.

The spearhead of Grab’s food ambitions is its “Kitchen by GrabFood” programme that allows top-selling GrabFood merchants to open franchises closer to high-demand neighbourhoods.

GrabFood regional head Tomaso Rodriguez said the programme, which opened its flagship outlet in West Jakarta last year, reduced delivery times by up to 20 per cent from an average of 29 minutes to 23.2 minutes within the neighbourhood.

As of March 10, both human and AI prognosticators were calling for the flowers to appear earlier than in an average year nationwide.

But in some locations, the expectations differ by a few days.

The results of the competition will be announced on April 5 on the company’s Otenki Japan weather forecast website.

In the company, human weather forecasters had predicted the blooming dates until 2017, but in 2018 AI replaced them for the first time. However, its 2018 predictions came within two days of the actual blooming dates for only 31 per cent of 45 locations in the country.

The hit rate of the AI predictions is lower than that of predictions by Hisashi Kataoka.

Kataoka, 41, is the company’s group leader and has worked |as a weather forecaster for 17 |years.

His average hit rate was 37 per cent from 2010 to 2017.

So, the company gave its AI additional information about cherry blossoms’ cycle of being dormant in autumn and winter and developing flower buds in early spring, and about changing weather patterns, such as temperature data.

As a result, the rate improved to 60 per cent in a simulation based on last year’s blossoming dates.

Kataoka said: “I held a 63 per cent hit record in the past. I’m looking forward to the results.”

According to Sanjay Chakrabarty, deputy general manager of Orient Commercial Bank (OCB), with blockchain, financial transactions and investment decisions were becoming easier, faster and more convenient.

The banking and finance industry’s readiness in approaching new technologies was very high, he said, adding that the potential of blockchain to the economy was enormous. However, it was not easy to create a business ecosystem on a nationwide scale based on this platform, he warned.

The banking and finance industry itself was pioneering the application of information technology, said Ngo Tan Vu Khanh, director of Kaspersky Vietnam. However, the wide application of blockchain technologies, such as insurtech in insurance and fintech in finance, tended to go beyond the control of management agencies and the current legal framework.

Robert Trong Tran, PwC Vietnam’s director of cybersecurity and privacy services, said that technologies based on blockchain, such as virtual currencies, contained risks. He noted that a significant percentage of cyptocurrency transactions were linked to crime.

Duong Nhu Hund from HCM City University of Technology, said that no countries would want to give up control of their domestic currency as well as cash circulation in the economy.

“Imagine what would happen if bitcoin is allowed to be used widely. It will be very difficult to implement monetary policies effectively, resulting in a loss of control over macro-economic balance,” he said.

Experts said caution was needed in the application of technologies based on blockchain. In addition, it was necessary to develop a proper legal framework to manage development.

According to PwC, the banks that will succeed in the future are those that can best employ digital and data technologies to elevate customer experience, automate business processes and improve regulatory compliance.

Technologies are disrupting the banking industry more than ever; however, not all technologies are allowed by management agencies.

Thus, PwC urged banks to actively cooperate with management agencies to develop a legal framework, which could stimulate innovation and ensure consumer trust.

Starting from the banking and finance industry with controversial bitcoin, technology based on blockchain is spreading to other sectors such as logistics and origin tracing.

Ha Anh Tuan from IBM Vietnam, said blockchain-based shipping platform Tradelens developed by IBM and global logistics company Mearsk, for example, could help save US$27 billion (Bt857 billion) from cutting paper, procedures and overlaps.

In addition, the platform would help improve customs clearance and prevent trade fraud.

Tuan still said that $27 billion in the total trade circulation value of $14 trillion was modest, but when blockchain-based technologies were combined with AI, IoT, Big Data and Cloud Computing, the benefits would increase.

Dao Ha Trung, who created food origin tracing app TE-Food, said that blockchain was shortening the supply chain but was still able to provide accurate and updated information to relevant parties involved in the chain, especially management agencies.

According to Hung, the application of blockchain technology in origin tracing would only be a matter of time.

The 46 billion won (Bt1.29 billion) project was built on 300,000 square metres of land in Ishikawa Prefecture of Honshu. LSIS won the project in 2017. Its office in Japan will also run operation and maintenance of the plant for the next 20 years.

The plant in Ishikawa is the third large-scale solar plant built by LSIS in Japan. “Since entering the solar power market in Japan in 2009 as the first South Korean company, [LSIS] has expanded its market share by building trust and business references,” an official said.

“With the completion of [another] large-scale project, we will continue to target the mega solar market in Japan and expand our business as solution provider for transmission and transformation of electric power generated from renewable energy.”

Over 47 per cent of the CEOs in China that participated in a survey said there are some forms of AI initiatives currently in place in their organisation, compared with 42 per cent globally. In addition, 39 per cent of the Chinese executives indicated that they have plans to start introducing AI initiatives in their organisation in the next three years, four percentage points higher than their global counterparts.

Only 14 per cent of the Chinese executives said they have no plans to pursue any AI initiatives at the moment, much lower than the global average of 23 per cent, according to the report.

The report covered responses from 176 executives based on the Chinese mainland and in Hong Kong between September and October 2018.

Zhou Xing, PwC North China and Beijing office lead partner, said AI adoption in Chinese companies has benefited from the rapid growth in R&D expenditure. PwC’s 2018 Global Innovation 1000 study showed that Chinese companies’ R&D spending increased by 34.4 per cent year-on-year to US$60.08 billion (Bt1.9 trillion) last year, marking the largest growth globally.

“Over the last decade, China has made remarkable progress to become the world’s artificial intelligence powerhouse. Advances in data collection and algorithms, and the prevalence of mobile devices, coupled with aggressive R&D spending, have helped the country achieve major breakthroughs in the AI realm,” the report said.

The market value of China’s AI industry reached 23.7 billion yuan (Bt112.36 billion) in 2017, up 67 per cent year-on-year, and it was expected to grow by 75 per cent in 2018. The top three segments of the market were computer vision, voice and natural language processing, said a report on AI development issued by the China Institute for Science and Technology Policy at Tsinghua University.

As of June 2018, the Chinese mainland ranked second in the world in terms of the number of AI enterprises (1,011), although still far behind the United States (2,028), according to the institute.

PwC found that the businesses in China are believers in AI, with 84 per cent of the Chinese executives surveyed agreeing that the technology is likely to have a larger impact on the world than the internet revolution.

Most Chinese executives expect the government to play a critical and integral role in AI development. More than 90 per cent of them said governments should incentivise organisations to retrain workers whose jobs are automated by AI. Other expectations for the government include providing a safety net to people displaced by AI (82 per cent) and introducing incentives to accelerate the development and use of AI (84 per cent).

Chinese business leaders are also hoping for regulatory relaxation.