Samsung signed a memorandum of understanding with Grab, a leading car sharing and mobile payment operator based in Singapore known as the Southeast Asian version of Uber, to drive digital inclusion in the region, it said.

Under the memorandum, the South Korean 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 $25 billion market by 2022 in this region.

The latest partnership seems to be just the beginning of Samsung‘s $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 commercialize 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 program, 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 program was piloted in Myanmar, where only 30 percent 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 & 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.”

RTB Technology Co, Ltd, a leading company for earphones and lifestyle smartphone gadgets, has moved further with the introduction of its wireless charger innovation under the brand of Energea.

The brand introduces three models – “Wimount, Widock and Widisc – to meet the needs of “Young Gen” consumers for a phone charger with wireless technology meeting the Qi standard with capacity for a wireless 10-watt fast charge.

Dr Banphot Vatanasombut, managing director of RTB Technology Co, Ltd. said, “The company focuses on offering outstanding products to the market based on the belief that product innovation is the key to success, in terms of sales volume and brand awareness, for the company.”

Their past innovation has proved successful as the company’s innovative earphones and lifestyle smartphones products are leaders in the Thai market, Bamphot said.

With the latest introduction, RTB brings to the Thai market the innovative wireless battery charger from Energea brand developed by a well-known accessories company from Hong Kong. The company has already sold over 100,000 premium smartphone charging cables in Thailand.

RTB believes that Energea’s wireless charger will be embraced by consumers of premium smartphone equipment, said Bamphot.

The three models of wireless charger are designed with different purposes.

Energea WIDOCK 2 Coils is a desktop wireless charger enabling a smartphone to be charged either vertically or horizontally, since it comes with two coils. It can be used with a phone case 5-10 millimetres thick. Energea WIDOCK is compatible with Qi-enabled devices and comes with the Fast Charge technology up to 10 watts, so users can experience a faster and more convenient way of charging their phones. With premium and soft material, it provides a good grip and protects the smartphone from scratches when in use. It weighs only 185 grams and has an LED light to show charging status. The price is Bt1,690.

Energea’s WIDISC, the wireless charger for smartphones and smart devices, weighs only 95 grams but offers full charging capacity. The user conveniently places their smartphone on the wireless charger without having to plug a charging cable into the phone. Energea WIDISC is a compatible Qi-enabled device with Fast Charge Technology and a maximum output up to 2 amps for power. It is also compatible with a smartphone case of 5-10 millimetres thickness. The design is luxurious, with black shaped trim with silver colour, together with non-slip grip to keep the phone aligned while charging. Last, it has LED to show charging status. The price is Bt1,490.

The Energea WIMOUNT, the latest premium wireless charger with Qi standard, is perfect for in-car use. The user can place it anywhere in the car to power up the smartphone in a short period of time due to Fast Charge Technology up to 10 watts. The luxurious design with premium graded material helps increase its durability, together with a width-adjustable clip. It weighs only 240 grams. The user puts the smartphone on the charger for immediate charging with LED charging status. A micro USB line is also available for any adjustment to other chargers in the user’s car and home. The price is Bt2,690.

All three products are now available at Studio7, iStudio by SPVi , Jaymart, King Power, Digital lab Siam Discovery, Power Buy, Amcon, Lazada, http://www.gadgetthai.net or http://www.rtbtechnology.com.

The app enhances Airbus’s existing iflyA380.com booking assistant with more choices, features and content and new possibilities to interact with the A380, including taking a sneak peek at the cockpit.

Customers today increasingly expect to design their own experiences, and the app gives them the power to do so, the aircraft-maker said, adding that booking flights and staying updated with real-time notifications is just the beginning.

Travellers will also enjoy a wide range of exclusive innovative services linked to the A380, including the option to explore destinations based on geolocation and personal interests and cabin discovery in virtual reality.

They will also enjoy a connected and immersive in-flight experience based on an augmented-reality feature.

Marc Fontaine, Airbus’s digital transformation officer, said the iflyA380 app was a new step for Airbus towards offering digital services that directly benefited consumers and allowed them to design their own experiences.

With the new app, Airbus is set to make the passengers’ favourite flying experience even more memorable, from travel inspiration to their final destination, he added.

According to around seven in 10 respondents, their media operations are only minimally efficient or not efficient at all.

Notably, 25 per cent of respondents highlighted the need to automate their entire operational value chain.

Bea Alonso, UK-based Ooyala’s business development director for Media Logistics in Asia Pacific and Japan, said: “To keep up with the consumer’s insatiable desire for video content today, broadcasters and media companies need to streamline their processes to balance consumer demand and production efficiencies. It is no longer productive to increase manual resources; we have to leverage technology and make it work for us.”

Additionally, 24 per cent of executives said that an improvement in workflow management was integral in upgrading current operations, while 23 per cent indicated that there was a need for some business functions to integrate with media operations.

Amongst other findings, human error and duplication of activity were cited by 25 per cent of respondents as the culprits for these media operation inefficiencies.

“Human error and duplication of activity is more than often preventable. If we can strike these out, additional resources can be channelled into other creative and value-adding tasks.” Alonso added. “Automation, as identified in our poll, can help media companies optimise operations.”

The poll responses in Thailand are consistent with the global results obtained from more than 600 respondents across similar events in 23 other markets worldwide.

Some 1.85 million items were sold, with a combined value of over Bt100 billion.

Striving to be the best market place for Thais, Kaidee is set to better facilitate the property industry with the best user experience on the platform, and is offering FarmKaidee to enable Thai farmers to connect with buyers and other businesses in the first half of the year.

Tiwa York, chief executive officer/head coach of Kaidee, said: “There are more than 35 million Thai people visiting Kaidee for over 361 million times. On average, Thai people visit Kaidee 30 million times each month. We have had 12 million new listings, of which 1.85 million ads were sold with a value of over Bt100 billion. This means 5,065 items were sold every day at Kaidee.”

“We have also seen growth in application usage. Over 50 per cent of visits were through the Kaidee application. In 2017, Thais downloaded the Kaidee app more than 3.3 million times. In total, we have had approximately 12 million downloads for usage,” the CEO said.

“This year, we will grow progressively and healthily. We will improve our platform to continue to facilitate Thai people in online buying and selling. Everyone and anyone can trade on Kaidee,” Tiwa added.

Information technology powerhouse South Korea is set to show off its latest innovations as it welcomes visitors to what could well be the most high-tech Winter Olympics ever.

From self-driving shuttle buses and 5G broadcasts to artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled robots and virtual reality (VR) headsets offering a taste of winter sports, the host city of Pyeongchang has it all.

“We want to use the Olympics to showcase South Korea’s strengths in IT,” said Mr Kim Yong Chul, spokesman of Gangwon province, where Pyeongchang is located.

The installation of the next generation of 5G wireless network around the Olympic venues, for one, will allow broadcasting to be done at speeds that are 40 to 50 times faster than the current LTE network and, at the same time, offer more vivid and realistic images.

The 5G network can also deliver massive data required for VR and hologram services.

Bobsleighs will be fitted with “sinkview” cameras that allow viewers to follow athletes travelling at 150km per hour in real time, while fans of cross-country skiing can track their favourite athletes through GPS-enabled sensors.

Figure skating fans, meanwhile, will be able to “freeze” a video and get a 360-degree view of their favourite skater’s signature pose.

This is made possible with surround cameras installed around the ice skating rink to capture athletes’ every move.

Unprecedented virtual experiences also await visitors at the 5G Village and an ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Centre, both helmed by telco giant KT Corporation, a main sponsor of the Olympics.

At the ICT Centre, for instance, one can experience how it feels like to ride a bobsleigh while seated in a simulator and wearing VR headsets. One can also “snowboard” the same way.

AI robots provide information on the Olympics in various languages.

KT senior vice-president Park Jong Ho said there are more than 1,000 KT employees directly or indirectly involved in the Olympics, and they will help resolve issues that may crop up as soon as possible. “KT has played major roles in international sporting competitions and we are prepared to serve the Pyeongchang Olympics with our expertise and knowledge,” he said.

“We also hope to introduce new technologies that are different from the previous Olympics.”

The first phase of the project involves improving traffic system with the help of artificial intelligence and cloud computing. This is the first project implemented outside China.Malaysia Digital Economic Corporation (MDEC), city hall and cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group are collaborating on a project named as Malaysia City Brain to improve on the governance of the city.

The first phase of the project is to use Malaysia City Brain to manage traffic and improve improve the speed of vehicles in the city.Based on Alibaba Cloud’s large-scale computing where it gathers traffic data in real-time including analysis of traffic conditions, volumes, lane speeds, optimisation of traffic signals by calculating the time to reach intersections, providing better city services.

The Malaysia City Brain is also capable of co-ordinating multiple systems managed in the city such as emergencies, ambulance service system, traffic navigation system and traffic light control system. By conducting integrating and analysis on data of these systems, vehicles on emergencies are given the fastest route and traffic volume along the route would be managed at the same time for the vehicles to reach destinations with fastest speed.

It is statement in the statement that the Malaysia City Brain is the first project used outside China.The statement also said functions of Malaysia City Brain would continue to expand while corporations, new start-ups, entrepreneurs, universities and research agencies would have opportunities to utilise the artificial intelligence technology of Malaysia City Bran for a series of innovations.

Alibaba Group senior VP and Alibaba Cloud president Simon Hu said cloud computing, artificial intelligence and smart data are part of basic tools for corporations and agencies to function effectively. Alibaba Cloud is extremely happy that Malaysia is the first country outside China to use city brain.“We hope through this collaboration, we can help to upgrade tool efficiencies needed by people in both private and government sectors, implement innovation and assist them to achieve success in digital economy. To Alibaba Cloud, this is the true meaning of generalising technology for the benefit of everyone.

The firm said the funding and a strategic partnership with oBike place SpherePay well to be among the top three payment platforms in Southeast Asia.

It currently serves five million users and has 10,000 merchants in the region.

SpherePay will integrate oBike’s operating system into its app so it can support all services available on oBike’s app, including its geofencing feature and crowdsourcing delivery service, oBike Flash.

“Since our inception last year, we have been making good progress to ensure that SpherePay will be one of the most highly utilised mobile payment apps in the region,” said chief executive Joseph Chen.

“The recent fundraising and partnership with oBike are testament to the commitment and rapid development of SpherePay. This partnership with oBike saw an immediate acquisition of over five million users in Southeast Asia and we are putting together new features that will bring even greater benefits to all our users.”

With the integration to be completed by March, users of oBike and SpherePay will be able to access both services on their preferred app.

Upcoming enhancements of SpherePay will include merchant-deals listings supported by LBS (location-based services). This means users will be notified of a deal available nearby and will also enable merchants to list their products and promotions on the SpherePay app at their convenience. Payment capabilities such as booking of events, courses and classes, paying for bills such as telco and utility bills and booking tickets such as cinema screenings, flights and hotels will be enabled later.

SpherePay announced in December plans to expand into Indonesia and Thailand.

It has now confirmed plans to rapidly expand throughout Southeast Asia, covering those countries and Singapore as well as Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia, by the second quarter of the year.

Blockchain, a new technology to help explore the various forms of crypto-currencies, could open up new attractive environment for all businesses and investors, said Nguyen Duc Cuong, head of consultancy division at Vietstock – a local financial-business media.

Cuong made the statement at the first summit in Vietnam on blockchain technology and digital money, called Vietstock Blockchain Summit. The event was held in HCM City on Sunday by Vietstock and FundYourselfNow – a Singaporean organisation that helps startup businesses to raise funds for their initial coin offering (ICO).

Vietnamese investors have caught up with the world trend and turned blockchain and crytocurrencies into a “hot” investment trend. For example, bitcoin and other cryptocurrency-related key words were among the top search targets on Google in Vietnam last year.

This means that local businesses and investors have a great demand to learn and access the new technology and cryptocurrencies.

The digital ledger, in which transactions made in various types of cryptocurrency are recorded chronologically and publicly, can open up new trends in the different fields of finance, banking, retail and telecommunications, Cuong said.

He added that being considered as the foundation of the industrial revolution 4.0, which was spreading around the world, this was the time for blockchain technology and digital money to provide additional cryptocurrency products.

The prospects of blockchain technology and technology-based digital money had become brighter as the technology could help firms replace traditional legal documents, which were handwritten and compiled on computers, with encryption.

Therefore, blockchain technology could minimise the chance of identity theft and strengthen personal data security. Recently, government agencies in Singapore, Canada, Switzerland and Estonia had started developing national identification systems using blockchain technology.

According to Kennett Tan, chief technology officer of FundYourselfNow, blockchain can remove the need for a centralised server to verify ownership and deals. He said the technology could help financial and banking businesses process their transactions faster without asking for assistance from any intermediary units. This would save time and costs.

In addition, blockchain technology could help businesses retain intellectual property rights and registrations, Tan said.

Liu Yusho, CEO of Vinaex.com, a bitcoin wallet service that assists customers to buy, sell and secure bitcoin, said that the total capitalisation of the cryptocurrency market was only US$2 billion a few years ago with bitcoin accounting for 90 per cent of the market value.

The numbers had increased to $550-600 billion with nearly 1,500 types of crytocurrency. Bitcoin now only dominated 35 per cent of the market value, he said.

Liu said that there were risks for investors when they purchased digital money or assets and they should take careful look at potential risks.

Investors needed to know that as the crytpocurrency market was booming, there would be projects, websites and companies trying to defraud them, he said.

The event was carried out to help investors, businesses and the public understand the nature of blockchain technology, its applications, how cryptocurrencies are managed and the nature of the world’s quickly rising cryptocurrency market.

Despite being a relative latecomer in the world of supercomputing, China has become a powerhouse in the field, overtaking the United States in speed and in numbers.

The country now has the world’s fastest and second fastest supercomputers. It also claims 202 of the top 500 fastest machines in the world, outstripping the US with the highest number of supercomputers in the latest TOP500 survey announced last November.

The US, in second place, has 143 systems on the list. Japan was third with 35 supercomputers and Germany fourth, with 20.

“China’s supercomputers developed very rapidly, especially in the past 10 years,” said Dr Gan Lin, 29, the assistant director of China’s National Supercomputing Centre in Wuxi, eastern China.

It is home to Sunway TaihuLight, the world’s fastest supercomputer. Known in Chinese as “Shenwei, Taihu zhi guang” or “Divine power, the light of Taihu Lake”, the machine has the ability to perform at 100 petaflop, or 100 quadrillion operations in one second.

The supercomputer occupies four floors in the building, with its main processors on the first floor, and an electricity system and a water system in each of the two basement floors below it. On the fifth floor, there is a cooling tower. Researchers and visitors are required to don anti-static suits and put on dust covers for their shoes to enter the 1,000sq m computer room on the first floor.

To put the computer’s power in perspective, Dr Gan explained: “Assuming that everyone on earth is given one calculator each, something that the Sunway TaihuLight takes one minute to compute will take all 7.2 billion people 32 years to compute collectively.”

He told The Straits Times that China started its supercomputing programme in the early 1980s after the country opened its economy.

Under the 863 programme, a government-sponsored national initiative started in 1986 for China to develop its own cutting-edge technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology had stipulated a two-pronged approach to developing its supercomputers.

One was to import advanced computer chips from abroad to build supercomputers, which was the technology behind Tianhe-2, the world’s second fastest computer.

The second was to build a fully home-grown supercomputer using made-in-China computer chips. This approach became the focus after a ban by the US government on the export of advanced computer chips to China in 2015, over concerns of their use in nuclear tests. That helped spur the birth of Sunway TaihuLight, which cost 1.8 billion yuan (S$373 million, US$285 million) and took two years to develop.

“The development of supercomputers was completely in line with our country’s economic development,” said Dr Gan. “In the past 20 years, as China’s economy has taken off in a big way, technology has also advanced rapidly and, along with it, supercomputers.”

The immense resources the government has poured into this area cannot be ignored. In the past decade, it has ramped up investments in research and development at a rate much faster than in the US and the European Union, according to a recent study by Brugel, a Brussels-based economic think tank. Chinese government spending now accounts for about 20 per cent of the world’s total spending in R&D in science and technology, just behind the US and the EU.

Last year, the Chinese government announced detailed plans to become the world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning by 2030, which will create an industry worth 1 trillion yuan.

The country is now also racing against the US, the EU and Japan to develop the world’s first exascale supercomputer, which will be 10 times faster than Sunway TaihuLight.

Supercomputers can be used to foretell the future, and reconstruct the past, said Dr Gan.

“In the skies, we could predict the weather. Below the surface of the earth, we could figure out its structures, which is useful for the exploration of petrol and natural gases.”

Today, supercomputers are used in China for forecasting weather. Their immense computing power can also make complex calculations for developing nuclear weapons, going to outer space, designing cars, ships and planes, predicting earthquakes and more.

But for all its supercomputing prowess in terms of hardware, China still lags behind the US and Japan in terms of software applications, with some experts putting the gap at around 10 years.

Dr Cao Jianwen, a researcher at State Key Laboratory of Computer Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told South China Morning Post that speed is not everything when it comes to supercomputers. “The machines are ultimately made to realise programs designed by humans. Owning the fastest supercomputers lays a good foundation for China to catch up, but it could take another decade to see how China can maximise their use. ”

Dr Gan, whose main job at the centre is to develop applications for the supercomputer, lists the relative weakness in China’s software development as one of two key challenges for the industry.

However, he said in the 1 1/2 years since Sunway TaihuLight’s launch in 2016, his team of around 100 researchers was able to develop more than 100 applications in 13 fields, including climate change, manufacturing and big data.

Two of the applications even clinched the Gordon Bell Prize in 2016 and 2017, a global honour in applying high-performance computing to science, engineering and data analytics problems.

The other key challenge is talent, said Dr Gan.

The state-run China Daily recently reported the country produces more than 600,000 postgraduates and PhDs each year, as well as millions of college graduates, but not enough are opting to enter the field of supercomputing.

“Internet companies are able to pay a lot of money, so a lot of talents are willing to go to the corporate world,” said Dr Gan.

More talent may be attracted through earlier exposure. For instance, the supercomputing centre takes in computer science students from top universities for internships to give them access to the powerful machine.