TechTouch Asia

By Surabhi Pandey, Communications Specialist, 1XBet Retention has become the most misunderstood metric in digital product strategy. Many consumer apps still treat it as a discount problem. When engagement dips, they reach for vouchers, push promotions or limited-time offers. Growth becomes a cycle of paid reacquisition. Loyalty becomes transactional. The user stays for the deal, not the product.  Image generated by Google Gemini based on content in this opinion piece. Gaming, sports and other high-engagement digital platforms operate differently. They retain users not because they are cheaper, but because they are structurally engaging. Their design principles are built around progression, feedback, real-time interaction and clear reasons to return. The best platforms do not trap attention. They earn it. For consumer apps facing rising acquisition costs and shrinking attention spans, the gaming and sports platform playbook offers lessons worth studying, provided they understand t...

- Agnes AI delivers globally-ranked agentic and image AI performance - Offers cost-efficient AI access for emerging markets - Supports national push to upskill tech professionals Agnes AI, a Singapore-headquartered AI model company that has built and trained its own multimodal foundation models entirely in-house, is now a top-10 lead across three independent AI benchmark rankings.  The company said its proprietary models have entered the global top 10 AI labs ranks. The latest rankings on Claw-Eval and Artificial Analysis follow a top-10 AI labs placement on PinchBench , a globally-recognised agentic model evaluation benchmark. According to the company, it is the first Singapore-born AI model company to enter the global top 10 across these international AI lab rankings. Agnes AI noted the benchmark results also provide independent validation that a Singapore-born AI lab can compete on the same global leaderboards as the world’s most-recognised AI companies. “Singapore’s ...

As AI adoption accelerates, digital sovereignty has become a critical requirement, extending beyond data residency to include control over infrastructure, operations, and AI systems, IBM said. Organisations must balance maintaining necessary authority with the pace of innovation, while facing increasing scrutiny from regulators, auditors, and boards. Yet most platforms can struggle to provide consistent, auditable answers to these requirements — creating a gap between policy and operational reality. At Think 2026, IBM announced its solution to the challenge with the general availability of IBM Sovereign Core, a software platform designed to give enterprises and governments an end-to-end approach to digital sovereignty. IBM Sovereign Core is designed for organisations that require greater control, flexibility, and compliance across sensitive workloads. Enterprises can run regulated applications and AI workloads within controlled environments. Governments and public sector organisatio...

- HPE announced HPE Compute Scale-up Server 3250, a large, in-memory database server for critical and complex business workloads - The new server is a follow-on to the Intel-based HPE Scale-up Server 3200, a system available for RISE with SAP - HPE is recognised as a leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SAP HANA Certified Servers Appliances 2026 Vendor Assessment HPE has announced the availability of HPE Compute Scale-up Server 3250, a purpose-built server for in-memory databases. The server is engineered to deliver scalability, resilience, performance, and security for critical business transactional and analytics workloads. Powered by Intel Xeon 6 processors, HPE Compute Scale-up Server 3250 delivers the highest memory available as the first scale-up server validated by the SAP BW Edition HANA benchmark* with at least 48 TB of memory. “HPE Compute Scale-up Server 3250 raises the bar for business-critical infrastructure,” said Krista Satterthwaite, Senior VP and GM, C...

- New updates to IBM Enterprise Advantage fast-track enterprise AI transformation across hybrid and regulated environments - Expanded AWS and SAP collaborations boost multi‑agent interoperability and deployment flexibility     IBM has introduced two new updates to IBM Enterprise Advantage , an asset-based consulting service that helps clients build and operate their own hybrid-AI platforms. Both updates combine consulting expertise with software-based delivery to help enterprises embed AI into daily processes with business context.  Context Studio, now available, allows enterprises to create AI agents grounded in the structure of their organisation's data and processes. This capability is designed to drive enhanced accuracy, relevance, and performance at scale while also supporting digital sovereignty by helping organizations keep control over their data, models, and decisions across environments. Process Studio, coming soon, is expected to help enterprises convert legacy...

Source: Lark. Olivier Adam, Head of Commercial, Lark (left) and Malik Murad Ali Mydin, Director of Mydin Mohamed Holdings (right). MYDIN, Malaysia's largest halal homegrown retail chain, has adopted the Lark all-in-one productivity platform to digitise, unify, and continue delivering accessible, high-quality, and affordable products and services to communities nationwide.  The collaboration marks a significant milestone in MYDIN's digital evolution, streamlining communication across its headquarters, logistics hubs, and 77 retail outlets, enabling thousands of employees to collaborate more effectively and respond quickly to customer and market needs.  By digitising and unifying its daily operations, MYDIN is strengthening its organisational efficiency, empowering team productivity, and building the digital backbone required to support its long-term business ambitions.  Lark will become MYDIN's go-to platform for streamlining communications, speeding up workf...