Asia in brief Microsoft has informed its channel that it will revise enterprise licensing and service pricing in Japan and South Korea.
The software giant revealed the reviews on a page it uses to announce news to its partners.
A brief statement – “Microsoft will revise all pricing for enterprise licenses and services” – is the only information offered. No possible outcome is mentioned.
This page only contains reviews for South Korea and Japan – reviews are not listed for any other countries. The page also does not explain why Microsoft decided to take this action.
The register last Thursday asked Microsoft’s Asian headquarters, Microsoft Japan and Microsoft South Korea, to explain the purpose of the revisions.
None responded. We’ll ask them again and let readers know if we get a substantial response.
–Simon Sharwood
Chinese giants Tencent and Unicom form forward-thinking CDN JV
Two of China’s tech titans – web and gaming giant Tencent and mega-operator China Unicom – have formed a joint venture to promote edge computing and content delivery networks.
After the Chinese press spotted a regulatory filing on the team, China Unicom told the world in a filing [PDF] on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
This document indicates that the companies plan to create a joint company “which mainly deals with the content delivery network (CDN) and edge computing businesses. [and] will develop a comprehensive CDN / Multi-Access Edge Computing platform capability, operating capability and product innovation capability. »
Neither has said whether the joint venture will operate outside of China – a matter of some interest as the United States won’t let Chinese carriers touch its networks.
The Chinese government has made advanced resource development a policy priority, so the joint venture will likely find fertile ground.
–Simon Sharwood
Facebook India boss bails out
India’s Facebook leader has quit and joined rival social media service Snap.
In a post on LinkedIn, Ajit Mohan wrote, “After almost 4 years leading Meta (Facebook) India, I am stepping down. I am grateful to the company for the incredible opportunity to lead its efforts in the one of its most important countries. and I’m absolutely proud of the work the team and I have done to create impact for people, creators and businesses across the country.”
“When I took on this role, my goal was to build a team and a business that would be a valuable ally for India and play a useful role in fueling its economic and social transformation. That is exactly what we have achieved. to do in the last four years.”
Facebook has certainly found itself in fewer fights with the government than other social media groups in recent years, but has also struggled with Indian laws requiring online platforms to moderate more content and has been criticized for its privacy practices.
Mohan wrote that he was “delighted to share that I will lead the Asia Pacific region for Snap and be part of the company’s leadership team.”
–Simon Sharwood
US concerned about Chinese rocket launch
China’s third and final space station module, Mengtian, was successfully launched and docked with the Taingong space station last week.
But China again failed to let the world know where the Long March booster would land, sparking wayward tweets from US Space Command.
#USSPACECOM can confirm a second atmospheric re-entry correlated to the #PRCLong March 5B #CZ5B upon leaving the #USSPACECOM Area of responsibility over the northeast Pacific Ocean region at 4:06 a.m. MDT/10:06 a.m. UTC November 4. https://t.co/keJdc1tmxi
— US Space Command (@US_SpaceCom) November 4, 2022
China often launches payloads without indicating where the upper stages will land. Tracking such material is not trivial, and the objects are large enough to cause significant damage, making not informing trajectories rude in the extreme and also unusual among spacefaring nations.
Asian buyers offered exclusive access to Black Panther hard drives
Now is a good time to need external storage, be a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and live in the APAC region. Seagate announced a “FireCuda King of Wakanda Special Edition external hard drive” featuring “a unique design of T’Challa proudly gazing at his kingdom, along with magenta RGB LED lighting that drive owners can customize.”
The player is “exclusive to Australia, New Zealand and select countries in the Asia-Pacific region”.
Unfortunately, there is no indication that Black Panther drives use vibranium to improve performance. Vibranium improves everything, after all.
Seagate Black Panther External Hard Drive – Click to Enlarge
The player rubs shoulders with other Black Panther-themed discs and Seagate’s line of Spider-Man and Star Wars-branded discs.
–Simon Sharwood
In other news…
Our regional coverage last week included coverage of Singapore’s FinTech Festival, where the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced a cross-border CBDC trial called Ubin+, even though its fintech boss predicted that stablecoins will take over for facilitate faster cross-border transactions before CBDCs are ready.
Also speaking at the Festival was Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who gave his thoughts on a Musk-owned Twitter, Bitcoin, regulation and environmental effects of Ethereum’s merger with a proof process of attendance.
Finally, the Festival included an announcement from Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong that the city-state would phase out the use of checks, starting with company checks by 2025.
Also in Singapore, Do Kwon and Terraform Labs were taken to court over a $57 million claim from investors in the company’s crypto products.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong has held its own dueling FinTech festival as it pushes its vision to develop a local hub of the virtual asset industry – with licensing regimes for asset providers, regulatory regimes for cryptocurrencies, pilot programs and the opening of retail investments.
At Hong Kong FinTech Week, People’s Bank of China Governor Yi Gang outlined plans for controllable anonymity for China’s retail digital currency.
In India, Google stopped enforcing Play Store payment rules after the country’s Competition Commission fined The Chocolate Factory $276 million for monopolistic practices.
Also in India, the Home Ministry launched a crackdown on predatory loan apps after several people committed suicide in response to harassment, blackmail and associated harsh clawback methods.
Lenovo finally recorded a full year of profits from its infrastructure solutions group to the tune of $17 million – a number less than 1% of the company’s total profits but at least greater than zero.
Alibaba Cloud has kicked off its annual Apsara conference with plans to convert more of its SaaS products to serverless operations – a change it says will make it “comutility” (a portmanteau of cloud computing and utility).
Alibaba Cloud also plans to power a fifth of its operations with its home-brewed Arm processors by 2025.
Analyst firm Gartner has released its annual Magic Quadrant evaluating the world’s leading providers of cloud platform infrastructure and services, revealing positive news for Oracle and Huawei.
Unfortunately for Huawei, however, the Irish government amended its Communications Regulation Bill 2022 to include language that would allow network equipment vendors to be blacklisted on national security grounds.
The Chinese government has released a plan for the country’s virtual reality industry, including a virtual smell suggestion. Mmmmm… new computer smell.
China’s State Council has outlined a plan to create an integrated national government affairs big data system that is expected to make millions of government data sets available in one place by 2025.
China wants the world to know that it has plenty of rare earth materials that everyone needs to make electronics, just in case someone forgot about it while formulating sanctions.
As China continues to resist COVID, an outbreak at a Foxconn factory has caused tension between factory workers who want to go home and the company, which prefers they stay.
Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has unveiled an absolutely bonkers concept device that attaches a high-end Leica lens to its slim 12S Ultra smartphone to convert it into a pro-grade camera. ®
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