TechTouch Asia

by April Tayson, Regional VP, INSEA, Adjust Source: Adjust. Tayson. As we stayed home during the pandemic in 2020, the way consumers utilise their mobile phones has unlocked endless potential for businesses. Unsurprisingly, March 2020 was the month when the lockdown went into full force, and also the period that saw mobile app sessions in many countries skyrocket.  Confined to their homes, users needed no convincing to download and play hyper-casual games as well as shop using mobile apps. Adjust found that mobile usage increased across different industries during the lockdown period. For example, Adjust’s Fintech Report found that there was a 49% increase in the number of sessions executed in payment apps as users adhere to social distancing measures during the pandemic. As we come out of the pandemic situation, let’s see what the expectations for the industry in 2021. OTT is a channel marketers can no longer afford to ignore With revenue in the video streaming segment...

M1 , Continental Automotive Singapore (Continental) and JTC have announced a collaboration to conduct 5G standalone (SA) trials for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) operations. This trial is supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), which is focused on supporting and nurturing the growth of 5G use cases in Singapore. Source: Continental. The Corriere LM last-mile delivery robot. The joint partnership will explore the operations of 5G-enabled AMRs in a live environment based on newly-developed network and infrastructure solutions for consumers, as well as enhance construction safety using analytics. The three organisations will create the infrastructure and deep-dive into the operations of AMRs for last-mile delivery of goods and food to support the burgeoning growth of e-commerce and drive Singapore’s progress as a global innovation hub for connected mobility. M1 will take on project management to implement the 5G SA network infrastructure for AMR operations. Th...

D’Crypt, a Temasek-owned security engineering company, has begun a pilot project with Shell Singapore to deploy specially-modified devices for COVID-19 contact tracing for its employees, contractor workers and other visitors at Pulau Bukom. As current versions of the contact tracing device are not certified intrinsically safe for use in environments where flammable gases may be present, this is the first time that a modified version will be tested in a live process plant environment. If successful, this pilot could pave the way for the modified devices’ use across the process industry in Singapore and abroad. Four thousand modified wearable contact tracing devices, named BluePass, will be distributed for this pilot which is expected to run until March. There are 60,300 workers involved in the petroleum, chemical and pharmaceutical products sector in Singapore as of Q320, according to the Singapore Ministry of Manpower’s labour market report. ...

by Daniel Sim, Senior Director for Channel Business, Vertiv in Asia With rapid changes in technology and business landscape, uncertainty has become everyone's reality. This uncertainty has become more palpable with the COVID-19 crisis upending almost every sector and industry across the globe. In Southeast Asia, the pandemic has accelerated the consumers' move online. In a study conducted by Bain and Facebook, 30% of the respondents have made more online purchases in the last six months. With the shift away from offline purchases, 83% of the respondents confirm that they will likely continue shopping online even after the restrictions are lifted. As consumers move most of their purchase activities and transactions online and organisations revisit their e-commerce strategies, the capabilities offered by edge computing can help retailers boost operational efficiency and improve the customer's digital experience. Amidst government-imposed social distancing measures, such...

By Andrew Seow, Regional GM for Southeast Asia and Greater China, Rimini Street Hybrid IT environments have become the norm today as CIOs make strategic investments that move many applications, infrastructure, and systems to the cloud while retaining others on-premise. IDC predicted that over 90% of Asia Pacific enterprises will have a hybrid IT infrastructure by 2021. This environment can provide a strong foundation for driving desirable business outcomes by enabling companies to extract more value from existing assets. Operating and maintaining a hybrid IT environment successfully can be impacted by how well IT departments manage the adoption of additional IT vendors. As enterprises adopt new technologies from multiple vendors, the IT architecture can become more complicated and vulnerable to security issues - despite being designed for interoperability. Each additional vendor complicates that environment further and increases the potential for conflict from variations in testi...

Lumen Technologies has partnered J-Stream to deliver secure, scalable and high-performing content delivery network (CDN) services to customers in Japan. The collaboration allows both companies to better meet the requirements of major corporations, broadcasters, as well as video game and over-the-top (OTT) operators in the country that require large-scale, global distribution of content. The Asia Pacific CDN market is seeing the number of Internet subscribers increase rapidly and consumption of content over smartphones and other portable devices. The CDN market in Asia Pacific and Japan is projected to record the highest growth rate in 2020, increasing 31.7% year over year, according to IDC*. To support this demand, Lumen recently doubled its CDN footprint in key APAC markets, strengthening its capacity in 11 major cities across the region. In Japan, local points of presence in Osaka and Tokyo promote high-performance delivery of video and web applications, while an in-country netwo...

Tata Communications, a global digital ecosystem enabler, has acquired a majority equity stake of 58.1% in Oasis Smart SIM Europe (Oasis), a France-headquartered embedded-SIM (eSIM) technology provider. Oasis develops and provides advanced technologies and personalised services to enable the deployment of eSIM and SIM technologies. ESIM solutions offer SIM card capabilities already embedded into devices, so that a separate SIM card does not need to be inserted. Forecasts predict that there will be 2 billion eSIM-enabled devices shipped by 2025. The eSIMs facilitate secure, reliable, and cost-efficient cellular connectivity for Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. They enable significant ease of use for remote provisioning and the ability to connect with multiple mobile network operators, making subscription management easier for the end-users, with an added layer of security. Embedding mobile connectivity into a wide range of devices creates a significa...