Real-time web outage tracker Downdetector reported that hundreds of people lodged Zoom reports earlier in the day, and the site’s outage heat map indicating that major cities including London, Manchester, and Birmingham were among the worst affected by the issues, with 579 people lodging individual reports just shy of 9 am.

We are aware of a subset of customers experiencing errors while joining a live meeting. We are currently investigating and will provide updates as we have them.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

Follow updates at: https://t.co/b0YP6nLSp0

— Zoom (@Zoom) August 23, 2021

Concrete reasons for the outage are still hazy at this time, but of those who reported, 57% said they were having issues joining conferences, while a third of complaints (33%) reported that they were struggling to even start their conference calls. A further 10% was claiming server connection issues, with numerous users reporting individual issues such as audio drops or video freezes.

Downdetector also lists some of the past issues faced by Zoom, with issues being listed as ‘Resolved’ on June 24, June 29, and July 7 of this year. Zoom outage issues appear to be ramping up, though, with another incident earlier this month in Australia. On August 9, amidst ongoing heavy lockdowns in major cities Sydney and Melbourne, thousands of users reported being unable to connect to meetings and online lessons.

1,721 users reported being faced with messages including ‘error’ and ‘502 Bad Gateway’ when trying to log into video calls onto Zoom, but the Daily Mail says far more were affected as only a fraction reported the outage. Office workers and students had that day’s lessons and virtual meetings being mostly unable to connect in Australia, although the issue was eventually fixed on the same day and a Zoom spokesperson apologized “for any inconvenience” to its Australian users.

Most of the reported technical issues experienced in both the UK and Australia had to do with connecting with meetings – the bread-and-butter solution that put Zoom on the map in 2013, with 400,000 people signing up within the first month, and amassing 200 million meeting minutes recorded by the end of its first year of operations.

While healthy, Zoom was a smaller web conferencing platform in comparison with its gargantuan competition like Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, until the COVID-19 pandemic began taking firm root globally in Q1 2020. Zoom quickly reached the milestone of 300 million daily meeting participants by just April 2020, as end-users, students, and remotely distributed workers all turned to the video collaboration platform to stay connected.

Since then, the platform has gone on to register in excess of 3.3 trillion meeting minutes per year, indicative of massive growth since that first year of operations. The pandemic was undoubtedly the biggest contributor to the lofty success of Zoom and other video collaboration solutions in the past year, but are the recent outage events the result of overworked servers and communications infrastructure?

Another possibility is a cyberattack, but the performance problems and relatively quick recovery times appear to indicate internal concerns instead. Perhaps more strangely, the drops in reliable performance are coming at a time when fewer users are making use of the platform.

J.P. Morgan analyst Sterling Auty mentioned in a research note how Zoom’s daily average user count was down nearly a third to 44.3 million, down from 49.3 million in Q1 2021 and a high of 67.7 million daily average users in the quarter ending July 2020. The researcher also pointed out that enterprise collaboration platform Microsoft Teams also lost ground in Q2 of this year, with its monthly active users down from 17% the previous quarter to 15.4%.

Much like how ‘Zoom fatigue’ was an oft-repeated factor in the early days of mass adoption as users acclimatized themselves with conducting meetings wholly online (along with all the resultant connectivity issues and unintentional gaffes), could ‘videoconferencing fatigue’ be setting in for the millions of users who have had to rely on this software for so long?

Furthermore, as offices slowly reopen, and countries with a high rate of vaccination begin encouraging economic activities instead of spending time online in virtual meetings, and students take time off the software to enjoy their summer holidays – is the need for Zoom and its fellow collaboration platforms not as pressing as it was a year ago, when there was no other alternative?

J.P. Morgan’s Auty noted in his paper that while Zoom still retains a healthy slice of the videoconferencing app market, at 38.4% total downloads this year, that is still down nearly a whole quarter (24.9%) from total Zoom downloads in 2020.

Has video collaboration software reached the pinnacle of its growth curve already, as the world slowly transitions to a post-pandemic ‘new normal’ – one with perhaps greatly reduced need for virtual meetings? Or are these creeping Zoom outage issues a sign of bigger troubles brewing?

The post Did overuse cause Zoom to go down across the world? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

And accompanying the escalating violence has been the mounting use of technological means to stamp out protest voices and to silence dissidents who were sending out reports on the Myanmar coup via social media and other online channels. Residents in the cities like Naypyitaw, Yangon and Mandalay have faced repeated internet blackouts in the past two months since the election results were tossed out, and now human rights groups are igniting more concerns on a looming ‘digital dictatorship’ as the military government relies on some advanced tech to fuel their control over their population.

In the cities, where hundreds of CCTV cameras had been installed as part of a project to improve governance and curb crime known as Safe City, humanitarian groups like Human Rights Watch have raised concerns that these cameras might be installed with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities with facial recognition biometrics and computer vision for scanning and identifying faces and vehicle license plates, including to alert authorities if a face or vehicles on a watch list comes up.

Most of the infrastructure for the Safe City initiative was supplied by Chinese technology firm Huawei, who have been embroiled in their own allegations of espionage and unsolicited data-mining by the US and others. Huawei insists that it has only ever supplied standard information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure equipment, and that the facial recognition and license plate-reading tech was installed by others, as reported in Myanmar Now.

In both the Naypyidaw and Mandalay projects, there is little transparency regarding how facial images, vehicle license plate information, and other personal data will be collected, stored, and used. Nor is it clear which officials will be given access to that data and under what circumstances. The replacement of the civilian-elected government by a military junta heightens rights concerns, Human Rights Watch said.

Mass surveillance technology in the hands of the orchestrators of the Myanmar coup is bad enough, but misinformation campaigns in this era of data-led opinion-making can be just as dangerous. A video aired on state-run media last week, that purported to be of Yangon’s Chief Minister Phyo Min Thein ‘confessing’ to bribing ousted Aung San Suu Kyi with silk, dollars. and gold bars.

Outcry on social media illustrated that many Myanmar natives believed the “poorly edited” video with voices and lip movements that were out of sync with the video timing, to be a “deepfake” manipulated by the military coup leaders to discredit the previous administration.

“This video is obviously fake with bad editing skills and it is not U Phyo Min Thein’s voice,” @Khant_htoon tweeted. “This is absolutely lips syncing and his movement is repeating. The Military Terrorists want to spread fake news in technical era but fails.”

HOW THE PANDEMIC MADE FINTECH MATTER AGAIN IN MYANMAR

Joe Devanesan | 6 October, 2020

The video has been shared widely on social media, where some went so far as to run it past tools such as deepware.ai and sensity.ai, which are trained to detect digital deception. But digital rights experts are claiming that while the minister is unnaturally stiff in the recording, it is more likely that is a result of a forced ‘confession’ rather than a deepfake.

The tricky part about this is that it casts doubt on the authenticity of other possible recordings, and this doubt can be harnessed by authorities or other figures who intend to sow uncertainty among the population, undermining their ability to discern the truth.

“Be skeptical of a video that obviously could have been faked or coerced – like this one – but don’t assume that everything is fake since that plays into the hands of people with real coercive, physical power. They’ll start to use it to claim that citizen videos showing their abuses, or videos showing officers admitting war crimes, are fake too,” Sam Gregory, the director at digital human rights nonprofit Witness, told Coconuts.

With so much gray area on what to believe, when so much of the widely-available media is controlled by the military junta that carried out the Myanmar coup in the first place, protestors have even turned to ethical hacktivists like “donk_enby,” an influential figure in the current global hacktivism surge. Donk identified numerous military contractors and leaked sizable quantities of data on the internet, prompting Google to yank access to email accounts and its blogging platform that was associated with leaders of the Myanmar coup.

The post Info cyberwars – The dark side of tech in the Myanmar coup appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Facebook told Nikkei Asia that Vietnam, along with neighboring Thailand, are the surprise world leaders when it comes to the use of chat as a means to connect for online commerce, citing data measured by the volume of messages swapped between businesses and customers.

Chat-based digital commerce has been gaining ground in the Southeast Asian (SEA) region for the past several years, mirroring a trend of ‘social commerce’ that has become commonplace in more developed economies around SEA and elsewhere.

Unlike social commerce, where an e-seller livestreams broadcasts of their wares over popular social platforms like Instagram Live or dedicated platforms like Lazada’s LazLive to an audience of potentially thousands, emerging rural economies in SEA have become accustomed to corresponding with e-commerce sellers via chat services such as WhatsApp and WeChat.

Along with Thailand and Indonesia, Vietnam is one of the most important markets for Facebook. Nearly all of Facebook revenue is derived from online advertising, with Vietnam its biggest revenue driver in SEA. And although 62 million out of the country’s 98 million population reside in the countryside, according to the General Statistics Office, online spending is expected to grow more quickly among this segment than their urban neighbors – with spiking smartphone penetration and especially heavy use of video and chat capabilities.

Khoi Le, the head of Vietnam operations for Facebook, told Nikkei Asia that there used to be a misconception that rural users “don’t really use internet well”, but that Facebook’s own survey of 4,500 Vietnamese uncovered that an overwhelming 92% of rural households already use smartphones for playing games, online shopping, and to watch video. Last year, video streaming surpassed television as the predominant form of media in the country, with internet penetration topping television by 91% to 86%.

“It’s also very eye-opening for a lot of our colleagues in the U.S.,” said Le of the burgeoning digital trends in the country. “We actually build a lot of things to be scaled to the global audience. If you’re coming from the U.S. and you see things like this in Vietnam, it’s quite fascinating.”

ALIBABA AND SHOPEE HEADING FOR E-COMMERCE FACEOFF IN VIETNAM

Joe Devanesan | 1 February, 2021

Acutely aware of the evolving consumption habits of its biggest regional market, Facebook will prioritize a variety of video formats to engage users in Vietnam, including livestreaming, TV shows on Facebook Watch, video clips in news feeds, reposts from Facebook-owned Instagram, and disappearing ‘Stories’ short clips.

Facebook’s Le says these video options will live alongside the social giant’s chat functionality to complement e-commerce offerings, whether it be text comments to a live e-tailer during a Facebook livestream, or making inquiries over Facebook Messenger to either a live seller or AI-driven chat bots.

Facebook is still Vietnam’s most popular platform, but for the first time it is seeing serious competition from rivals. Bytedance-owned TikTok has been gaining a foothold in Vietnam, and with its own e-commerce offerings, would like to challenge Facebook dominance with its upstart short videos.

In the first quarter of 2021, Facebook surrendered three percentage points of market share, a first, while TikTok more than doubled its share.

The post What Facebook learned from rural Vietnam about chat-based e-commerce appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

UPS already has an existing partnership in Malaysia with third-party fulfillment services provider Mail Boxes Etc (MBE), which has over 90 outlets in the country. But the sharp rise in not only online shopping behavior, but also in last-mile parcel delivery and logistics management, has seen the American firm raise its fulfillment profile locally with a move to leverage ParcelHub’s 200 outlets nationwide.

A survey on COVID-19 found that 57% of Malaysians have been purchasing goods and services online in droves, far more than they ever did prior to the pandemic. This new behavior is not expected to abate even in the future, as the contactless benefits and convenience of e-commerce will likely become a mainstay of consumer shopping attitudes from this point on – contributing towards a local e-commerce boom.

UPS President for South Asia Matt Parkey believes that the robust e-commerce growth coupled with the shifting supply chains in and around Malaysia, will favor logistics specialist UPS in the long run. “Notwithstanding the near-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic resurgence, Malaysia has strong long-term growth fundamentals, and these fundamentals bode well for many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that support industries along the value chain,” Parkey told local news agency Bernama.

He also pointed out that SMEs are the cornerstone of the local economy, making up 98.5% of businesses in Malaysia. “UPS’s focus right now is on improving the resiliency of SMEs and their access to global markets.

“The pandemic has exposed vulnerabilities in supply chains and SMEs have been one of the worst-hit. Throughout the past year, we helped many traditional businesses pivot online to reach new audiences amid tightening domestic demand and physical store closures,” Parkey said.

Seizing new opportunities in this changing landscape will be key to SME survival, and these include digitized solutions that can help accelerate growth, or help a small business pivot towards a different, lucrative vertical.

“On our part, we have implemented customized solutions for businesses of any size,” Partkey commented. “For example, to boost Malaysia’s electronics manufacturing, we’ve developed capabilities to move expensive semiconductor shipments halfway around the world with almost zero sorting to move quickly and eliminate any damages.”

MALAYSIA GIVES A BOOST TO RURAL SMES WITH E-COMMERCE HUBS

Adlina AR | 2 March, 2020

The UPS President for South Asia went on to highlight how Malaysia had been making in-roads to boost its value-added manufacturing capabilities, to capitalize on changing supply chain needs in the country. Parkey noted how electrical and electronics products remained the country’s top export earner last year, this includes investments from over 50 semiconductor companies including Intel and AMD.

And despite the global semiconductor shortage, US semiconductor processing equipment designer Lam Research recently added manufacturing hub Penang to its list of global production locations, which include the US, South Korea and Austria.

The post UPS extends footprint in Malaysia on back of e-commerce, logistics boom appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Announced in July 2020, the new 100% electric model was initially supposed to go on sale in Japan from mid-2021, before arriving in Europe, North America, and China by the end of the year. But in a press release on 4 June, Nissan said customers in Japan could now order the limited-edition Ariya B6 model for “this winter,” with no set date for those in other markets.

A Nissan spokeswoman confirmed that the semiconductor shortage affecting carmakers around the world was hampering the Ariya rollout. “We have been facing various industry challenges, including semiconductor shortage, and our priority is to ensure that we deliver the highly advanced all-new model[…] to customers with the highest level of quality and care,” she told AFP. “And to make sure that those things are done, we have delayed the sales in our area.”

Adoption and sales of electric vehicles have been growing steadily in recent years, with China in particular seeing a significant upward trajectory in take-up of the clean energy vehicles, which observers hope will help push towards sustainability and zero-emission targets for both the country and the consumer transport sector. Market leader Tesla is competing in a competitive marketplace on the mainland, with a slew of local electric vehicle competitors also eating up market share.

The Ariya model is particularly important for Nissan, which sees it as key to opening a “new chapter” for the firm, according to its director general Makoto Uchida. Ariya will be the troubled automaker’s first 100% electric vehicle targeting the general car market since the Leaf debuted a decade ago.

Nissan was struggling even before the pandemic, and was rocked by the arrest and subsequent escape of its former chief Carlos Ghosn, currently a fugitive in Lebanon. But the coronavirus crisis only deepened its woes, pushing it deeper into the red.

Last month the Japanese carmaker trimmed its annual net loss, but warned its outlook remained clouded by the chip shortage. Nissan has been a pioneer in electric vehicles since its Leaf model was released over a decade ago. But the struggling firm – still trying to recover from the devastating reputational damage caused by the sudden departure of now fugitive tycoon Ghosn – desperately needs a new hit.

Semiconductors are in short supply, thanks in part to increased demand due to a surge in home electronics purchases during the pandemic. The industry has also been hit by several production setbacks, including a fire at a producer in Japan.

JAPAN TO CO-DEVELOP CUTTING-EDGE CHIP TECH WITH TAIWAN’S TSMC

Joe Devanesan | 4 June, 2021

A chip shortage, also referred to as semiconductor shortage or chip famine, is a phenomenon in the integrated circuit industry, when demand for silicon chips outstrips supply. The origin of this particular shortage has its roots in the global pandemic. The lockdowns ushered in to combat the Covid-19 outbreak caused disruptions in supply chains and logistics systems chip suppliers depended upon to maintain production, while at the same time, as people began spending much more time at home, there was a boom in demand for consumer electronics.

© Agence France-Presse

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Announced in July 2020, the new 100% electric model was initially supposed to go on sale in Japan from mid-2021, before arriving in Europe, North America, and China by the end of the year. But in a press release on 4 June, Nissan said customers in Japan could now order the limited-edition Ariya B6 model for “this winter,” with no set date for those in other markets.

A Nissan spokeswoman confirmed that the semiconductor shortage affecting carmakers around the world was hampering the Ariya rollout. “We have been facing various industry challenges, including semiconductor shortage, and our priority is to ensure that we deliver the highly advanced all-new model[…] to customers with the highest level of quality and care,” she told AFP. “And to make sure that those things are done, we have delayed the sales in our area.”

Adoption and sales of electric vehicles have been growing steadily in recent years, with China in particular seeing a significant upward trajectory in take-up of the clean energy vehicles, which observers hope will help push towards sustainability and zero-emission targets for both the country and the consumer transport sector. Market leader Tesla is competing in a competitive marketplace on the mainland, with a slew of local electric vehicle competitors also eating up market share.

The Ariya model is particularly important for Nissan, which sees it as key to opening a “new chapter” for the firm, according to its director general Makoto Uchida. Ariya will be the troubled automaker’s first 100% electric vehicle targeting the general car market since the Leaf debuted a decade ago.

Nissan was struggling even before the pandemic, and was rocked by the arrest and subsequent escape of its former chief Carlos Ghosn, currently a fugitive in Lebanon. But the coronavirus crisis only deepened its woes, pushing it deeper into the red.

Last month the Japanese carmaker trimmed its annual net loss, but warned its outlook remained clouded by the chip shortage. Nissan has been a pioneer in electric vehicles since its Leaf model was released over a decade ago. But the struggling firm – still trying to recover from the devastating reputational damage caused by the sudden departure of now fugitive tycoon Ghosn – desperately needs a new hit.

Semiconductors are in short supply, thanks in part to increased demand due to a surge in home electronics purchases during the pandemic. The industry has also been hit by several production setbacks, including a fire at a producer in Japan.

JAPAN TO CO-DEVELOP CUTTING-EDGE CHIP TECH WITH TAIWAN’S TSMC

Joe Devanesan | 4 June, 2021

A chip shortage, also referred to as semiconductor shortage or chip famine, is a phenomenon in the integrated circuit industry, when demand for silicon chips outstrips supply. The origin of this particular shortage has its roots in the global pandemic. The lockdowns ushered in to combat the Covid-19 outbreak caused disruptions in supply chains and logistics systems chip suppliers depended upon to maintain production, while at the same time, as people began spending much more time at home, there was a boom in demand for consumer electronics.

© Agence France-Presse

The post Global chip shortage dents Nissan’s electric vehicle dreams appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The move comes as global industry grapples with a global semiconductor shortage that has hampered the manufacturing of numerous products, particularly autos. A forecast by the automotive and industrial practiceAlixPartners said the ongoing semiconductor shortage will cost the global automotive industry US$110 billion in lost revenues this year, up more than 80% from the consultancy’s late-January estimate of US$61 billion. The group also estimated that the production of 3.9 million vehicles will be lost in 2021 as a result of the shortage.

Around 20 Japanese companies will work with TSMC in the project worth 37 billion yen (approx. US$337 million), with the government paying just over half of that, an official from Tokyo’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry told AFP on Tuesday. The research will focus in particular on tech for 3D chip assembly, allowing the creation of components that are more dense but still small.

A pandemic-fuelled surge in demand for home electronics that use semiconductors has throttled chip supplies – a crisis deepened by a US cold snap, a drought in Taiwan, and a fire at Japan’s Renesas manufacturer. Semiconductors are an essential part of modern tech from smartphones to games consoles and new cars, with the auto industry one of the hardest hit by the shortage.

Construction will begin this summer on research facilities at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, near Tokyo, the official said, with the project due to kick off in 2022. The Nikkei newspaper reports that among the Japanese companies that will be involved are chemicals firms Asahi Kasei, Mitsui Chemicals and Sumitomo Chemical, as well as electronic component maker Ibiden Co.

TSMC accounts for more than half of the world’s semiconductor foundry market in 2020 and this year, a variety of industries are scrambling for the company to resolve the semiconductor chip shortage in the global auto market, in consumer electronics, smartphones, and many others. The foundry had previously revealed that it has record levels of capital expenditure of up to US$28 billion this year as its factories work beyond capacity to meet heightened demand.

HOW TAIWAN’S TSMC WILL COUNTER THE GLOBAL CHIP SHORTAGE

Joe Devanesan | 15 April, 2021

TSMC supplies almost all of the world’s major chip developers worldwide including Apple, Qualcomm, and Nvidia. TSMC and other chipmakers from Taiwan including United Microelectronics and Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. play a central role in the global semiconductor supply chain.

© Agence France-Presse

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In his self-effacing May 20 memo, Zhang confesses to limitations as head of Bytedance – the Beijing-based parent of video-sharing app TikTok – and warned of the risks of the “CEO becoming overly central” and cluttering the vision of what is coming next.

However, his hurried departure comes as rumors of a mega-listing swirl around his firm, the world’s most valuable tech startup which soaks up advertisers from its hundreds of millions of users of Douyin – the Chinese version of TikTok.

He joins a growing list of billionaire tech chiefs who have suddenly left – at least in public – well before their prime. In March, the 40-year-old chairman of e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, Colin Huang, unexpectedly vacated his post to focus on philanthropy.

More famously Jack Ma, 56, the billionaire founder of online behemoth Alibaba, has gone virtually silent since last year when he chided China’s regulators for smothering innovation. It was a costly move.

Soon after his comments Alibaba affiliate Ant Group’s world-record Hong Kong-and-Shanghai IPO was summarily yanked days before launch, Ma vanished from public and his company was fined an unprecedented $2.8 billion for “monopolistic” practices.

Zhang Yiming, the billionaire CEO of TikTok makers Bytedance, said he will leave the role because he lacks managerial skills and preferred “reading and daydreaming” to running the tech giant. (Photo by STR / AFP) / China OUT

Communist Party’s fear

Having for years been hailed as the apex of the country’s all-conquering entrepreneurial spirit, China’s tech leaders have begun to feel the hand of the ruling Communist Party as it grows more concerned about their increasing power and audacity to step out of line.

“The crackdown is not driven as much by concerns about the growing charisma and popularity of individual CEOs,” explains Xin Sun, senior lecturer on Chinese and East Asian business at King’s College London. But more so “by the Communist Party’s fear of losing its grip on these resourceful, data-rich tech giants that have grown into powerful actors not only in the economy but also, at least potentially, in politics”.

Ma’s name – once proudly paraded across the world as a champion of Chinese tech brilliance – is now being airbrushed out. On Monday the Financial Times reported that he is set to step down as president of the business school he founded, days after a Weibo video showed the Hupan University sign in Hangzhou being painted over.

HOW CHINA’S TECH COMPANIES WENT FROM FOLLOWERS TO TRENDSETTERS

Tech Wire Asia | 15 July, 2019

Zhang’s company has also faced headwinds. TikTok was harangued by former US President Donald Trump as a security risk to the data of American users of the hugely popular app. Inside China, Bytedance is among dozens of tech firms warned to “self-rectify” issues including over privacy and market dominance before the state chops them down. Zhang found himself having to walk a fine line between his domestic and global roles.

Tech CEOs must “be sensitive at all times to the political climate in the country, where the senior political leadership is on a particular sector or issue, and many prefer to keep a low profile because of this”, says Paul Triolo of Eurasia group. But “being seen as too close to Beijing may be a liability for companies with international ambitions”, he added.

China Big Tech conundrum

Taking tech to task in China is also more than a simple authoritarian reflex, says Rui Ma, tech investor and host of the TechBuzz China podcast. “I don’t think this is ‘putting them in their place’,” she added. “This is an effort to update regulations so that they are up to global standards” in markets that have been loosely marshaled by the state yet command the attention of hundreds of millions of consumers.

While Facebook and Amazon brush away criticism of monopoly, tax avoidance, and overextended influence in America’s open market, China wants to curate a different model. Pruning monopolies now should also allow small, innovative firms to sprout up, added Ma. The conundrum for China’s tech bosses is that ballooning growth, and the data and financial power it incubates, moves onto government territory.

Their scale brings “not yet entirely predictable economic, social and political consequences, which inevitably unnerves political elites”, says Xin Sun. “Many (tech CEOs) have chosen early retirement and more importantly diluting the ownership and control rights they hold over the companies to avoid being personally targeted by the regime.”

For Bytedance’s Zhang, who hands over the reins to college roommate and co-founder Liang Rubo, the message for the public was that a step back now means a strategic foothold in the future. “Progress requires us to break through the inertia, and to keep exploring,” he said.

© Agence France-Presse

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Prior to this, customers might have been able to order custom-fitted clothing from physical stores, 3D printed to their body sizes. In its first virtual show, the Shanghai Fashion Week tapped the potential of live-streaming, 5G technology, and the digital marketplace to bring the show to a larger audience than ever before. Even the apparel supply chain has become more transparent with the use of blockchain tech.

When it comes to fashion, AI has been successfully empowering both online and offline channels. During China’s Singles Day weekend, for example, Alibaba’s FashionAI deep learning kiosk gives suggestions on what else customers should buy from the retail outlet. And AI-powered augmented reality applications allow online shoppers to virtually ‘try on’ clothing from an ecommerce portal.

When did AI get so popular in fashion? “The technology is starting to become good, and easy to use for both the fashion retailers and the end-users,” says Gijs Verheijke, the founder and CEO of highend streetwear e-store OX Street. “In fact, people already use more AI than they think.”

But in light of recent world events, the lines that traditionally defined what is in-store shopping and what is online shopping have become fuzzy. And AI is playing an active role in blurring the boundaries between the physical and the digital. “It’s most easy to imagine recommended products when you think of AI, but I think the real revolution is happening when the products coming out are entirely built around AI. What does the TikTok of fashion look like?” wonders Verheijke.

“There is so much opportunity now to marry media, social, gaming, and shopping. The whole categorization of companies between retail, marketplace, and media is going to get upended, and a lot of the parts of that disruption machine are powered by AI.”

And as with distributed blockchain tech, AI will increase convenience by increasing efficiency across the entire value chain, continues Verheijke. “You can think of sourcing products, design, warehousing and logistics, quality control, authentication and inventory management.”

AI also has its role to play in the biggest unsolved problem in fashion ecommerce – product returns because of sizing issues. It’s estimated that between 30% and 50% of all purchases are returned. This cuts heavily into the retailer’s margins.

“AI, in combination with Augmented Reality certainly has a key role to play in solving this problem,” asserts Verheijke. “Lowering returns will indeed lower costs and environmental impact. It is also possible that better predictions about what people will buy could lead to lower waste.”

Sustainability advantages aside, AI is by no means perfect, relying on the input to form decisions which just like humans, might not always be the right ones. “There are certain issues that come from having AI and traditional computing work side-by-side, similar to the issues that come up around mixing self-driving and human-driven cars on the same roads.

“AI is much, much better under the right conditions, but lacks the capability for judgement,” Verheijke says. “It relies entirely on what you feed it, and like with any model, garbage in = garbage out.”

3 KINDS OF TALENT THAT RETAILERS NEED TO THRIVE IN THE DIGITAL ERA

Tech Wire Asia | 15 July, 2019

One of the major plusses of AI in fashion ecommerce is personalization – the more data it has on you, the better it can search and recommend garments suited to your tastes. But as good as it can be, over-optimizing can be a challenge. “I have enjoyed various kinds of ‘crate-digging’ activities in my life: Discovering underrated sneakers, new and under-rated clothing brands, or great lesser known music,” muses Verheijke. “I have yet to find an AI powered discovery experience that successfully facilitates crate-digging and keeps the discovery experience fresh and enjoyable.”

Like browsing the aisles in a brick-and-mortar store, the discovery experience is vital for helping an online store keep its audience engaged and coming back to purchase more. Are there other parts of the fashion shopping experience that AI can further revolutionize? “There are two that come to mind: the first is the breakdown of relational databases, and the other is design,” notes Ox Street’s Verheijke.

How an AI product database works for an ecommerce platform like Ox Street is through a relational database where product attributes like an SKU, brand, color, high or low cut, are recorded. “Those attributes are still human-defined. What AI is uniquely able to do, is find attributes that are a lot more important, but that doesn’t have to make any sense to a human,” he elaborates. “So instead of setting up the database relations yourself, you dump all your data into one big ‘data lake’ and let the AI take it from there.”

When it comes to design, Verheijke predicts that affordable, ‘fast’ fashion houses will begin to replace their designers with AI. “They rely on identifying new fashion trends quickly, copying the designs almost but not quite, and bringing them to market super quickly. AI will be able to excel at those tasks soon,” nods Verheijke.

But the real surprise comes later, he says, when AI ceases to merely copy designs and instead has assimilated enough information to step into actual couture. “Later, we will also see AI entering the ‘real’ fashion design space, and becoming a real force in determining the direction of designs.”

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For those who did not shift to a cloud environment, it was clear that they were at a disadvantage as physical foot traffic decreased significantly due to travel restrictions. A study by Deloitte in the US showed how, in the first few months of the outbreak, restaurants and retail shops experienced a reduction of up to 42% in foot traffic. Closer to home, during the first Movement Control Order (MCO) in the country, the Malaysian Digital Association recorded an 11% increase for beauty and wellness businesses via online services.

This means several things. The first is that all businesses, large and small, will benefit from having an online presence in this new age of digital disruption. Of course, merely being available on the Web means little unless you can build connections. This is where an omnichannel approach to customer service is important; if you have invested in cloud solutions to automate for the new norm, then you’re on the right track.

Virtual Connections Surge

The virtual connections landscape pushes beyond boundaries of physical restrictions, allowing your brand to interact with customers at any given time. With an abundance of communications channels to choose from, social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, are now the default go-to for the retail sector and customer support. The popularity of e-commerce also soared as more users moved online to shop during the pandemic. According to Forbes, due to its ultra-convenience, e-commerce will very likely remain as a high-growth sector in the post-pandemic era.

Question: Who is readily available on a 24/7/365 basis? That’s why building virtual connections are integral to maintaining customer relationships, even when all humans are offline.

In a recent Infobip report – “A Year of Disruption: Managing Increasing Complexities in Customer Service” – 2,760 survey respondents across Asia Pacific shared that they lacked digital technology support and the right skills training to effectively deliver digital customer support. This critical concern became a huge pain-point in the new norm. Businesses unfamiliar with cloud technology faced more difficulty in dealing with the surge of customer inquiries; as a result, they are now seeking out more support across various communications platforms.

Among these platforms include SMS, email, call centers, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp for Business, Instagram direct messaging, WeChat, and Telegram. It is very clear that many users prefer to use social media when communicating with businesses. Research that DataReportal carried out had reported on how there were 28 million social media users in Malaysia as of January 2021. Beyond being a 2% year-on-year increase, it also comprises 86% of the country’s population. This tells us that social networks have grown to be the most influential platform for customers to communicate, not only with each other, but with businesses as well.

The advent of social networks as a primary form of communication had led to an interesting evolution, where information is readily available and can be accessed on-demand. This next-gen trend comes with the growing expectations for meaningful interactions via the preferred social media channels of customers. This is why we believe it is critical for businesses to automate customer support processes as it enables businesses to utilize resources effectively and ensure all inquiries are responded to within a timely manner.

The key here is to build familiarity – it’s simple but often overlooked. Customers are more likely to engage with a brand when they are more familiar with them. When consumers do not know the brand, it can be difficult for them to be trusting and loyal. As such, it is important to ensure these touchpoints have personalized interactions to foster familiarity.

Delivering Great Customer Experiences Virtually

E-commerce had certainly inspired and employed new standards of conveniences, including the ability to engage brands at any time through any chosen touchpoint, all from the comfort and safety of home. While the multiple customer touchpoints add convenience, it does not diminish the expectation for businesses to deliver an excellent customer experience.

Beyond prices and products that businesses are offering to the masses, the customer experience journey, when done right, can spark powerful emotions that will help shape purchasing habits and foster brand loyalty. As is, a simple and efficient customer interaction no longer makes the cut to create a satisfactory customer experience. When customers come to you, there is the need to prove that you can be helpful and have the means to address their needs.

The next thing – having the ability to leverage technologies that can help provide a superior customer experience journey. With virtual connectivity, the concept of using a Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) will enable businesses to enrich their customer experience with real-time communications in various forms, such as voice, video, and messaging channels.

As the digital-ready culture continues to expand, it is clear that the best way to meet customer demands and create revenue is to digitize your operations and offerings at scale. This must be done quickly. Customizable AI chatbots, such as Infobip Answers, are a popular solution that can manage high volumes of customer inquiries while still delivering personalized interactions.

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Businesses can also create a seamless omnichannel experience via integrated hybrid infrastructure, that consistently deliver engaging customer experiences. The key is to shift the primary focus from being product-centric to becoming customer-oriented. On many levels, artificial intelligence can help automate and deliver a hyper-personalized customer experience via curated and tailored interactions. Based on purchase history and style preference, these next-gen solutions have the capacity to offer recommendations and even answer simple questions in real-time. As you build your brand to be customer-centric, you also build familiarity and further extend your outreach through word-of-mouth and brand loyalty.

The best practice for your business to build virtual connections is to prioritize knowing your customers and personalizing each interaction. As the virtual landscape expands, brands now have more real-time data to analyze and better understand their customers. They can then satisfy customers’ needs better. It’s crucial to make your virtual customer touchpoints thoughtfully tailored to each customer and 2021 is an opportune time to start this as we step into an era of connectedness.

Article contributed by CS Gill, Country Manager, Infobip 

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