H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (21 December 2018) – Koh Young Technology Highlights AI Inspection at IPC APEX EXPO 2019

H.E.R.O.’s Journey in Tech (21 December 2018) – Koh Young Technology Highlights AI Inspection at IPC APEX EXPO 2019

Companies

• Mercari subsidiary Sojo ends “mertrip” service in January (Techcrunch)
• Japan’s LINE acquires Thai e-commerce platform Sellsuki and partners with KBank (KRA)
• Bilibili and Taobao partner on e-commerce (Technode)
• Dawn of Tri-Camera Phones May Reverse $15 Billion Sunny Optical Wipeout (Bloomberg)
• Koh Young Technology Highlights AI Inspection at IPC APEX EXPO 2019 (iconnect)

BATTSS – Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, TSMC, Samsung, Softbank

• Tencent keeps trying to build hardware, but nobody’s buying (TIA)
• Tencent shares jump after reports of gaming approvals (Reuters)
• SoftBank Leads $385 Million Bet on Fair, a Subscription-Car Startup; The car-subscription service buys used vehicles from dealerships and rents them via an app for a monthly fee (WSJ)
• Recharge: LG and Samsung take heart as China flags more open car battery market (Reuters)
• Taiwanese chip maker TSMC to build the world’s first 3nm chip factory (Technode)

FAANNMG – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia, Netflix, Microsoft, Google

• Is It Really Five Stars? How to Spot Fake Amazon Reviews (WSJ); The Amazon ($AMZN) Marketplace is like the lord of the flies for small businesses. (Verge)
• Alexa gets access to Wolfram Alpha’s knowledge engine (Techcrunch); People still aren’t into buying things through their smart speakers (qz); Amazon introduced transfer learning to Alexa; The benefits of the machine learning improvements manifest themselves across all aspects of Alexa and the system has seen a 25 percent reduction in its error rate over the last year (Wired); Amazon error allowed Alexa user to eavesdrop on another home (Reuters)
• Amazon Flexes Its Well-Defined Muscle on Its Own Labels; Its approach is both potentially great for shoppers and an opportunity to grab even more power for itself. (Bloomberg)
• Hey, Apple-Here’s a Pitch for More Data About Your ‘Ecosystem’ (Barron’s)
• Instagram is reshaping the $10B business of interior design (FastCo)
• How NVIDIA Built A Record-Breaking AI Supercomputer In Under 3 Weeks (Forbes)

Asia Tech & Innovation Trends

• How China’s Bike-Sharing Startup Ofo Went From Tech Darling To Near Bankruptcy (Forbes)
• China looks to private capital, open source technology for global tech game advantage (Technode)
• Hujiang: Leading tech innovation in China’s edtech sector (Technode)
• Home-grown digital insurer Bowtie receives Hong Kong’s first virtual insurance licence (SCMP)
• Panasonic and LG give a jolt to China’s EV battery market; Beijing’s loosening rules prompt fresh investment from foreign players (Nikkei)
• Real-time video analytics startup Gorilla raises $15m (TIA)
• Global Investors Scramble for Slices of Food-Delivery Startups in India, Korea (WSJ); Swiggy raises $1 billion as Naspers, Tencent pour more money; Indian online food delivery company is valued at more than $3 billion (Nikkei); Indian food delivery startup Swiggy raises US$1B investment led by Naspers; Swiggy’s latest fundraising round is the single largest in India’s food technology sector to date (e27)
• Mukesh Ambani Warns of ‘Data Colonization’ in Amazon’s Hottest Market (Bloomberg)
• Grab is messing up the world’s largest mapping community’s data in Southeast Asia; Remote teams incorrectly overwrote data developed by volunteer mappers in Thailand (Techcrunch)

Global Tech & Innovation Trends

• Researchers developed an AI robot that can assist with childbirth (TNW)
• The AI boom is happening all over the world, and it’s accelerating quickly (Verge); AI leads list of tech trends to watch in 2019: FleishmanHillard (Edge)
• Neil Young Launches Subscription Streaming Service: The rocker behind hits such as ‘Heart of Gold’ is offering a subscription service for his music at a higher sound quality (WSJ)
• BlackBerry’s bet on connected cars pays off (CNN)
• Why Autodesk Just Spent $1.15 Billion On Two Construction Tech Startups (Forbes)
• Twitter Inc: Falls on short-seller Citron Research’s report (Reuters)
• In the age of Amazon and Alibaba, logistics automation is the key to competing with giants (RG)
• Why billboards and outdoor ads are booming in a smartphone age; Bigger, smarter outdoor ads mean more relevant advertising that makes us look up from our phones (Curbed)
• Zynga Strikes $560 Million Deal for Mobile Gamemaker Small Giant (Bloomberg)

Life

• How To Find Your Calling, According to Psychology (BPS)
• Short-Seller Targets China Stocks ‘Where There Is Nothing Worth Saving’ (Bloomberg)