When it comes to mobile satellite communication, Inmarsat tops the list. The British satellite company has now launched its first Inmarsat-6 satellite, I-6 F1, by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) from the JAXA Tanegashima Space Center in Japan.

What makes the Inmarsat-6s (I-6) interesting is that it delivers an enhanced platform for those looking to embrace the next wave of world-changing technologies that ELERA enables, including the rapidly growing Industrial IoT satellite connectivity (IIOT) market segment, by providing dramatically increased network capacity and resilience.

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According to Verified Market Research, the global satellite communication market size was valued at US$65.68 Billion in 2020 and is projected to reach US$131.68 Billion by 2028. Some companies are already building their own satellites with the hopes of providing better communication and connectivity for their services.

For Industrial IoT services like applications involving remote assets, regular reporting to headquarters is key. The new satellite enables everything from shipping containers to smart bulldozers to make regular reports back to their base of operational status.

Compared to previous satellites, this is the first-ever hybrid L- and Ka-band satellites, incorporating increased capacity and new technological advances for ELERA’s transformational L-band services alongside additional Global Xpress (GX) high-speed broadband capacity.

The new satellite adds to an existing global fleet of 14 geostationary satellites to extend Inmarsat’s commitment to mission-critical services while enabling a new generation of pioneering technologies to connect and sustain the world.

The launch is the first of seven planned for Inmarsat by 2024 in the company’s fully funded technology roadmap. The most sophisticated commercial communications satellite ever launched, I-6 F1 is comparable in size to a London double-decker bus, with a deployed solar arrays ‘wingspan’ similar to a Boeing 767 and a 9-meter-wide L-band reflector that will be deployed over the coming days.

The satellite will then be raised to geostationary orbit (GEO) approximately 36,000km above the Earth via its all-electric propulsion system and then undergo a thorough and extensive testing program. I-6 F1 will enter service in 2023. Ground stations in Western Australia will support I-6 F1.

Inmarsat: Perfecting data and IIOT

According to Rajeev Suri, CEO of Inmarsat, the launch marks Inmarsat’s newest technological leap forward as they maintain its strong commercial momentum and sector leadership. The satellite extends Inmarsat’s world-leading mobile satellite communications services for customers and partners, especially in the Indo-Pacific region.

The I-6 satellites demonstrate Inmarsat’s ongoing investment and commitment to its global leadership in L-band satellite services to 2040 and beyond for the benefit of mobility customers worldwide.

These new capabilities from the I-6s mean greater capacity and coverage, greater speeds, and a greater portfolio of innovative connectivity solutions for ELERA and Global Xpress (GX) networks. The I-6 satellites, like all Inmarsat ELERA and GX spacecraft, are backward-compatible with existing terminals, ensuring that current and future customers will continue to benefit from new advances.

The I-6s also substantially increase the effective capacity of the network available to ELERA customers with double the beams, 50% more spectrum per beam, and double the power of the I-4s, matching customer demand as and where it is needed. They also add further depth in Inmarsat’s global coverage for even greater assurance to customers of the redundancy and resilience of Inmarsat’s world-leading L-band network.

The GX6 payloads hosted on the I-6s add targeted high capacity to Inmarsat’s high-speed GX network, ensuring it continues to support the growing need of commercial and government customers for data, particularly in congested regions or hotspots where it is needed most.

The launch of the I-6s is further evidence of the momentum underpinning Inmarsat’s business and technology leadership in global mobility communications. I-6 plays an integral role in the reliable GEO infrastructure that underpins Inmarsat ORCHESTRA – the world’s first network that will combine GEO, highly elliptical orbit (HEO), low Earth orbit (LEO), and terrestrial 5G into one harmonious solution.

It is also important to note that Inmarsat is in the process of being acquired by the US Viasat company. The leader of home broadband delivery in the American market also provides WiFi on planes, a service that overlaps neatly with Inmarsat’s interests.

BBC reported that the British government has yet to give approval for a purchase that would see the country’s most significant space player transferred fully into foreign ownership. But whatever the outcome, Inmarsat will be pressing ahead with ambitious development plans.

The post Inmarsat launches world’s most sophisticated commercial comms sat appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

This potential is so great, Bain, Google, and Temasek predicted the GMV of ASEAN’s digital economy would hit US$1 trillion by 2030 — a mere eight years away. 

A new report by Mambu’s Findexable called the Asia Pacific Fintech Rankings: Bridging Divides has moved its two more ASEAN nations — Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) and Indonesia (Jakarta) — into the list of top 20 fintech hubs. 

Top 20 Fintech Hubs in Asia (IMG/Findexable)

This is quite a feat, given how both countries jumped double digits to join their existing ASEAN peers Singapore and Manila, in the top 20. 

Findexable also published the annual Global Fintech Rankings for the past two years, analyzing and comparing 264 cities in over 80 countries, with a total of 11,000+ fintechs. 

For its first regional fintech hub report, the company tracked fintech startups in 16 countries across the Asia Pacific, (except India and China) in order to establish the world’s leading, scaling, and emerging fintech cities and countries. 

Asia Pacific Fintech Nation rankings (IMG/Findexable)

Findexable also sought to understand how fintechs in their respective regions are solving local problems and responding to specific market structures. 

Southeast Asia’s impressive fintech market growth

ASEAN is now a digital powerhouse; a behemoth that won’t stop growing. Underlying a large part of that growth is the presence of fintech in the region. 

Last year alone, foreign investors invested US$1.6 billion in ASEAN fintech startups — an eightfold increase from US$0.2 billion in 2015. Fintech is also the largest venture capital investment category for startups in the region.

With strong market demand for fintech services, the fintech boom is clearly not showing any signs of slowing down — in fact, it’s only going to keep growing. 

And with this growth, we’re seeing surprising results emerge, despite the exceedingly tough times the region has had to deal with. 

Think the pandemic, natural disasters, and tourism-dependent economies crippled by global lockdowns.

Yet, the region has not just survived but thrived. 

Further supporting this growth is the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP); a proposed agreement between ASEAN nations and its free trade agreement (FTA) partners. 

Six ASEAN nations have ratified the agreement to better integrate the Asia Pacific through the RCEP, namely, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Non-ASEAN signatory countries include Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.

But most interestingly, all the three ASEAN countries in the top 20 except for Singapore, namely Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, have not ratified the RCEP, 

The RCEP, which will come into force on January 1, 2022, should serve as a key engine of trade and economic recovery for the entire region, opines Dr. Sithanonxay Suvannaphakdy, a researcher with the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, in The Diplomat.

The dance of the fintech ecosystem in ASEAN 

The Findexable report shared some pertinent observations viz how seven countries in the Asia Pacific would interact. There is a dynamic in place that appears promising — could it encourage further investment and growth in the regional fintech ecosystem? 

Or could it develop into something strong and unique, such as a cross-border fintech ecosystem? 

Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand present challenges viz a lack of a universal banking infrastructure — and as such, fostering financial inclusion is an opportunity for fintechs to resolve.

Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) — rich, well-developed, and with strong banking sectors come with fintechs that are capable of taking on markets in the US and Europe. 

And the bridge between these two distant worlds? It’s Singapore, according to Findexable — rich and well developed, but also patently aware and capable of helping solve issues its neighbors face.

Emerging business opportunities for fintechs

Fintechs and their solutions differ from country to country. Fintechs in developed countries tends to impact users incrementally. Conversely, in developing countries, fintech can “transform lives and unlock the economic growth potential of a nation”. 

This is true in countries with massive amounts of the underbanked and unbanked, such as the Philippines and Indonesia — fintech solutions such as digital payments, buy now pay later (BNPL), and microloans, among others, unlock opportunities for financial inclusion.

And payments — it is the core driver of the fintech ecosystem at large. In advanced nations, BNPL can serve as mere “consumer financing play”, whereas, in developing countries, it offers underbanked individuals and mSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) access to the working capital they would traditionally not be able to access. 

Digital payments are another area that may seem humdrum to the average Australian, but which are transforming the lives of the average citizen in a developing economy. E-Wallets allow users to transfer money via a smartphone without the need for a bank account — ultimately improving financial inclusion for the great unbanked.

Another observation is that cross-border barriers are increasingly being taken down, and this will especially be a highly watched space once the RCEP takes flight next month. 

Southeast Asia is heavily involved in cross-border trade due to the proximity of countries to each other. Similar cultures, environments, cuisines, and complementary resources also make cross-border trade all the more lucrative.

Lastly, localization is key. BNPL, for example, is much easier to implement for consumers in the west who need a little extra cash for that sweet new iPhone. 

But in Indonesia, where mSME merchants are increasing, it’s going to be a unique challenge to cover up-front food purchases for, say, a door-to-door fruit seller. 

This would be something that would-be fintechs need to pay attention to when it comes to scaling up because different ASEAN economies would differ greatly when it comes to achieving economies of scale.  

The post Fintech business opportunities in ASEAN appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Alibaba, one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies, have lately been doing all it takes to navigate a new regulatory environment amid Beijing’s crackdown on the country’s tech sector. It started with a recent biggest reshuffle and now the company is looking at accelerating its overseas expansion, targeting a long-term goal of quintupling gross merchandise value (GMV).

During the Alibaba Investor Day conference call last week, the company’s CEO Zhang Yong shared that the e-commerce giant is targeting a long-term goal of quintupling GMV, the sum of transactions across Lazada’s platforms, to US$100 billion. Alibaba is eyeing for Lazada to serve more than 300 million users eventually, according to a slideshow posted on its website.

Zhang also said that the company’s three strategies including domestic demand, globalization and advanced technology have progressed. To recall, based on the earnings report released by the company on November 18, Alibaba’s global business volume grew 41%, with extensive coverage in approximately 200 countries and regions around the world. 

To recall, Alibaba took over Singapore-based Lazada in 2016 and have ever since been the Chinese corporation’s main e-commerce business in the booming Southeast Asian market. Based on a Bloomberg report, Lazada has grown its GMV to about US$21 billion over the past 12 months, after enlarging its active consumer base by 1.8 times to 130 million from March 2020 through September this year.

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Lazada’s Zhang is optimistic and sees a “huge potential in the international markets” going forwards. “In Southeast Asia, ecommerce penetration is only 11%, and Lazada’s annual consumers have reached only 34% of regional Internet users. There’s tremendous potential in both the overall market size and our penetration,” he added.

Lazada, however, has been losing out to Sea Ltd. ‘s Shopee, which also operates in Southeast Asia and Taiwan over the last few years. For context, Shopee reported more than US$56 billion of transactions over the four quarters to the end of September. 

Alibaba’s incoming chief financial officer Toby Xu said during the presentation last week that its China commerce segment has faced “near-term challenges of a slowing macro-environment and a heightened level of competition.” That, he said, has resulted in slower GMV and the revenue growth in the most recent quarter, Xu said. “But we also see opportunities to tap into new addressable markets to grow new users that will position us well for the long term.”

The post Alibaba targets US$100 billion SEA e-commerce business appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

In fact, just Southeast Asia alone is predicted to reach a US$1 trillion digital economy by 2030, according to Google, Temasek, and Bain.

It might even overtake the West’s digital economy, and this is quickly showing potential with just how cross-border trade is flourishing in the region.  

According to a new report by Deloitte published yesterday, the ‘Technology-empowered Digital Trade in Asia Pacific’, the firm predicts that digital trade will further accelerate, and leapfrog the region into the golden age of digital trade in the next three years.

The report accounts for this dramatic shift through increased dynamic cross-border e-Commerce activities, strengthened regional cooperation through the RCEP, increased digitalized lifestyles, and ongoing development of digital infrastructures.

According to Taylor Lam, Vice-Chair and Technology, Media & Telecommunications Industry Leader at Deloitte China, the combination of the Covid-19 pandemic together with these other factors will see new development opportunities in digital trade.

“Digital technologies enable global sellers to participate in global trade without any entry barriers,” said Gary Wu, Deloitte Global Lead Client Service Partner.” 

Wu also added that the continuous improvement of digital infrastructure will effectively resolve the two major constraints affecting cross-border trade: logistics and payments, with blockchain technology also “creating a new space of imagination for digital trade.”

Digitalization, mMNEs will drive cross border trade

The report highlighted some key insights for the Asia Pacific, with the first revolving around key technologies and the important role they play. 

According to Deloitte, data factors will feature prominently alongside how other critical infrastructure such as 5G, which will help build data distribution platforms and new network architectures and facilitate the Internet of Everything (IoE). Unsurprisingly, AI will continue working alongside big data to bring deeper insights for better decision making. 

Secondly, the report identified and analyzed various APAC markets for the development and maturity of digital trade across two dimensions: cross-border e-Commerce (60%) and digitalization (40%).

Deloitte classifies the markets as follows: 

• Mature markets: China, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan;
• Developing markets: Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines;
• Early-stage markets: Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Brunei.

Comparison of the three market types in terms of development (IMG/Deloitte)

Thirdly, there is a substantial rise of micro-multinational enterprises (mMNEs) in the region, which has been identified as the main driver of the transformation of digital trade across the Asia Pacific.

With the help of digital platforms, entrepreneurs and small businesses have become mMNEs as they are engaged in cross-border e-commerce across global markets.

mMNEs provide diversified “locally-made products” and light customization services for global buyers while contributing to over 85% of Asia Pacific’s cross-border e-commerce activities.

Here are the main characteristics of an mMNE:

• More adept at leveraging digital platforms
• Small in scale, typically with fewer than 100 employees
• Globalized operations with an average of 3.56 overseas outlets

Regional cross border business opportunities 

Invariably, the degree of digitalization differs across markets, depending on their maturity stage. As digitalization is a yardstick by which market maturity can be measured, it is crucial to track the development of digitalization across developing and early-stage markets.

Matured markets generally fared better in terms of sales, payments, and logistics, whereas developing markets tended to lead in production and trading. 

Understandably, early-stage markets are still in their nascent stages of digitalization across all facets of cross-border e-Commerce. 

Vietnam, as expected, leads digitalization in terms of production, whereas Indonesia leads in trading. Singapore, a mature market, leads in digital payments as well as logistics digitalization. 

However, this isn’t always linear. 

Degree of digitalization in cross border e-Commerce verticals (IMG/Deloitte)

Interestingly, the report found that Malaysia, classified as a developing market, leads the APAC region in e-Commerce market size at US$6.3 billion. This is a whopping 61.4% of the total e-Commerce market size in China. 

The Southeast Asian nation of 32 million also has the highest penetration rate for sales digitalization for cross-border e-Commerce, at 65.7%. However, Malaysia suffers from bottlenecks such as logistics and production (20.2%). 

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At present, cross-border consumption only accounts for 42% of the market size of the internet economy in Malaysia, which is much lower than mature markets.

Although Indonesia leads digitalization in trading, they are still lagging far behind in production, sales, payments, and logistics. Indonesia has been pointed out by experts to lead the Southeast Asian region in terms of the digital economy. 

Vietnam seems to be steadily rising and doing decently in digitalization across most other facets of e-Commerce, whilst also leading digitalization in production. 

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For these developing markets to move towards maturity, these areas, especially logistics, would need to see more work in terms of development and sophistication.

But at the same time, this presents huge opportunities for private players to come in and develop these industries in these countries.

The state of e-Commerce: Opportunities and analyses

Deloitte expects that the e-Commerce consumer market in APAC will continue increasing in line with continuous digitalization penetration. Here are other key takeaways:

• Singapore: Within Asia Pacific, Singapore continues to act as a central hub for many cross-border e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia, with companies such as Shopee, Lazada, Amazon, and Zalora setting up their headquarters there. The e-commerce market in Singapore is predicted to double in size in 2025 compared with 2020, with gross merchandise volume (GMV) amounting to US$8 billion.
• Indonesia: Demographic dividend, internet penetration rate, and consumer habits create great potential for developing e-commerce and cross-border e-commerce in Indonesia. Social e-commerce is thriving, and consumers are fond of trading on social media. Indonesian consumers like buying in-expensive products, and the average transaction is low at US$36, much lower than Malaysia (US$54) and Singapore (US$91). Users also prefer e-commerce platforms in their local language, which greatly affects their shopping experience.
• The Philippines: E-commerce has huge growth potential but is constrained by a low internet penetration rate and an undeveloped e-payment industry – the penetration rate of e-commerce users only accounts for 39% of the total population.
• Thailand: The penetration rate of cross-border e-commerce in Thailand is relatively high and has a certain digitalization foundation, but their degree of development is limited. However, quality improvements of internet infrastructure will raise the efficiency of information exchanges and unleash the vitality of e-commerce platforms.
• Vietnam: Although high logistics costs are almost the biggest challenge in cross-border e-commerce in the APAC, 61.8% of the surveyed enterprises in Vietnam believe that the largest challenge is the difficulty in customs clearance inspections, with more than 60% of businesses focusing on green development goals.
• Brunei: Brunei takes the lead in internet penetration rate in Asia even though early-stage markets have a relatively low overall level of digitalization, and generally have no sophisticated infrastructure and platforms in place to develop the digital industry.

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According to Structure Research, the colocation market for the Asia Pacific will grow at an expected compound annual growth rate of 12.2% from 2018-2024. Much of the demand comes from global cloud providers, social media platforms, media content, and video streaming, e-commerce platforms, and banking.

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With that many data centers, the demand for a skilled workforce would be high and competitive as well. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has spurred employees to rethink their careers, work conditions, and long-term goals. This has led to a phenomenon known as the Great Resignation and in Singapore, this movement is being led by millennial workers.

According to Employment Hero’s report on Employee Movement and Retention which surveyed 1,000 workers around Singapore to discuss their plans for job movement, more than half of Singaporean workers (59%) are planning to look for a new job within the next 12 months, and it is younger workers who are leading the employee exodus, with 71% of millennial employees aged 25-34 signaling they will be looking for a new role in the coming year.

As such, an increasing number of APAC data centers will be migrating to the cloud or relying more heavily on managed services by 2025, as a shortage of skilled workers impacts the sector’s ability to build new on-premises capacity to meet post-pandemic demand.

Research carried out by ABB Electrification in partnership with Data Center Dynamics (DCD), reveals that the current 50/50 split between data center equipment housed on-premises versus co-location or cloud-based solutions is set for a shakeup over the next four years, with more than two-thirds of senior industry experts indicating that this will shift to just 25% on-premises and 75% to the cloud model in the near future.

For Kent Chow, ABB’s Data Center Segment Leader for the Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa Region, “Our research shows that the data center industry in the APAC region is trying to expand and respond to growing data demand but being held back by a shortage of suitably skilled people. This is an issue the industry has been facing for many years and it can have big consequences for operators, from extra costs to delays in project delivery times.”

An industry shift for APAC data centers

(Source – ABB Electrification)

Interestingly, 42% of data center operators believe there’s not enough skilled labor to deliver increased capacity requirements across the APAC region. And it is not surprising why they feel that way.

With tech adoption accelerating in APAC, skilled tech professionals are always on the move, looking for better options. Several big tech companies like Google, Dell, AWS, IBM, etc have already invested and pledged to work with local education institutes and governments to train and produce more skilled workers.

However, most of these workers would often move out of Asia or look for better opportunities outside their country. Also, three out of four respondents agreed that business transformation in APAC needed hyperscale to progress, but the research revealed that these growth plans are being hampered by several issues which have been created, or made worse, by the pandemic.

The skills shortage issue in the Asia Pacific region mirrors trends in Europe, where 42% of data center operators believe there’s not enough skilled labor to deliver increased capacity requirements across the continent. Over 80% of European companies say they have been affected by labor gaps and more than seven out of ten believe the pandemic has made the industry’s skills shortages worse.

“The continued high demand for data centers combined with the lack of specialist sub-contractors and trades is driving many data center operators to increase their offsite construction. To support data center operators ABB has developed several solutions that limit site work – both commissioning and construction – which can significantly improve speed to deployment,” added Kent.

These include plug-and-play prefabricated or packaged solutions that can reduce deployment time by up to 50% as they are quicker and easier to place and commission on site. eHouses for example are prefabricated and pretested before being transported to the site. As these solutions are fully integrated and debugged before shipment, fewer workers are required on-site, and installation and commissioning time are reduced significantly.

While these solutions may help address some problems in data centers, the reality is, there is a global shortage of skilled workers and it does not seem to be solved anytime soon as well. With the new year approaching, many skilled workers may continue to look for new job opportunities. The only hope now is they consider remaining in the data center industry and more skilled workers be produced in the near future to meet the growing demand.

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Due to increasing cyber risks from remote working over the past year, most organizations have taken additional cybersecurity measures to protect their employees and infrastructures. Cybersecurity spending has indeed increased in the last 12 months as well with organizations looking towards securing remote worker devices and protecting the network.

However, the reality is, cybercriminals are still able to wreak havoc on organizations. Employees are still the weakest link today, just as they were before the pandemic saw a shift to remote work. Cybercriminals are also getting smarter in bypassing security protocols to target their victims.

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According to findings from Trend Micro’s Biannual Cyber Risk Index report, the risks of cyber attacks have increased in the past year and will only continue to increase in the future. The report surveyed more than 3,600 businesses of all sizes and industries across Asia-Pacific, North America, Europe, and Latin America.

For Dr. Larry Ponemon, CEO of the Ponemon Institute, “Businesses globally can use this resource to prioritize their security strategy and focus their resources to best manage their cyber risk. This type of resource is increasingly useful as harmful security incidents continue to be a challenge for businesses of all sizes and industries.”

Cyber risks still at all-time high

North American companies saw the highest increase in cyber risk with the Asia Pacific being the next highest. More worrying was that 86% of the respondents believed that their organizations may be breached in the next 12 months, with 25% experiencing 7 or more successful attacks in the past 12 months as well. This indicated a critical gap in breach detection capabilities.

In the Asia Pacific, the top five cyber threats highlighted included ransomware, watering hole attacks, advanced persistent threats, malicious insiders, and fileless attacks. For infrastructures, malicious and negligent insiders as well as cloud computing infrastructure providers and organizational misalignment were the top cyber risks.

(Photo by ROSLAN RAHMAN / AFP)

APAC organizations also ranked the top three negative consequences of an attack. Be it disruption or damages to critical infrastructure, lost intellectual property, or cost of outside consultants and experts, all these consequences will not only require huge recovery costs but can also damage business reputation.

In Malaysia, the report showed also that 58% of Malaysian organizations believe that it was somewhat too very likely that they’d suffer serious cyberattacks in the next 12 months. To make matters more concerning, 30% suffered more than seven cyberattacks that infiltrated networks/systems and 14% had more than seven data breaches of information assets. 21% of organizations also suffered more than seven breaches of customer data over the past year.

Is a shortage of skilled security leaders a reason?

For most organizations, the biggest challenge is cybersecurity preparedness as there is still a shortage of security leaders and skilled workforce in ensuring the best practices of cybersecurity. Organizations are also struggling to enable security technologies that are sufficient to protect their data assets and IT infrastructure.

“To lower cyber risks, organizations must be better prepared by going back to basics, identifying the critical data most at risk, focusing on the threats that matter most to their business, and delivering multi-layered protection from comprehensive, connected platforms,” said Goh Chee Hoh, Managing Director for Trend Micro Malaysia and Nascent Countries.

According to McKinsey, over 90% of executives across the world are facing digital skills gaps in their workforces. This is a particular blight of the APAC region, where a majority of workforces are employed by SMEs. These SMEs have tended to put off digitalization efforts in past years, perhaps due to a misconception that such a shift would entail high costs.

From security engineers to CISOs to even IT technicians, the shortage is one of the reasons why companies feel they are vulnerable to cyber-attacks. While there are managed service providers that can help with some security, businesses still feel it’s insufficient for them to fully protect their company.

The post Cyber risks in APAC remain high; more data breaches expected over next 12 months appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Joining the half-a-dozen 5G-capable smartphones on the market this year was Apple’s iPhone 12 range. All four phones — including the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 Pro’s most significant addition — is its support for 5G.

That also means arguably the biggest feature on the iPhone 12 will be largely out of Apple’s control and firmly in the hands of the mobile service providers. Depending on your carrier and where you live, your 5G experience on an iPhone 12 could vary greatly.

It is also applicable to every single 5G-enabled Android phone that has been released thus far.

This is because the current state of 5G globally is pretty nascent, with only 24 markets globally is live with the fifth generation of wireless communication standards, according to GSMA’s annual state of the global mobile economy report.

The full 5G network roll-out is likely to take another five to seven years. By 2025, 5G will account for 20% of global connections, with take-up particularly strong across developed Asia.

Even the US’s 5G adoption, coverage, and speeds remain abysmal compared to other countries like South Korea and China. In fact, 5G speeds on offer from major US wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon are actually slower than speeds on existing 4G LTE networks, according to PCMag.

Hence, iPhone 12 buyers, especially in the Asia Pacific except for China and South Korea, could face a challenge since 5G is still in the process of being rolled out and services using the network’s faster speeds remain relatively limited.

Simply put, iPhone 12 buyers may not experience massive differences compared to their old 4G phones, at least not right away.

What is 5G and where’s Asia in the league?

5G is the fifth generation of wireless communication standards that has faster and greater bandwidth than existing 4G LTE networks. This would eventually mean rapid video downloads and improved experiences with services like augmented reality and live gaming, among other consumer perks.

For now, the list of consumer services and capabilities enabled by 5G remains relatively short.

Despite this immature 5G market, Opensignal’s data now shows that users in five countries enjoy an active 5G connection for more than one-fifth of the time. The US’s 5G users connect 21.4% of the time to 5G, placing it in fifth place for 5G availability, only just behind South Korea and ahead of six European countries.

Meanwhile in the Asia Pacific, the pandemic has had a more tangible impact on 5G in APAC as the region features some of the most advanced 5G network deployments in the world, with South Korea, China, and Australia among the countries with nationwide 5G deployments in progress. 

Most recently, Singapore has finally deployed its first 5G standalone (SA) trial network at its testing facility this past week, allowing early its 5G standalone network access to local enterprises first. This is so that they can get a head start on developing and testing out 5G-based solutions.

Malaysia on the other hand, which was expected to be the earlier adopters of 5G in the region, has pushed its 5G launch to 2022.

What’s in it for Asian buyers?

Market experts would caution against buying Apple’s latest model of iPhones just because it has 5G, given the compatibility issues and other problems that arise with new technology. Any buyer not located in any of the 27 markets that have 5G mobile connectivity ready won’t be enjoying any kind of 5G connectivity.

Hence, for most consumers, the experience on 5G might just feel a lot like 4G. Of course, one is not limited from using 4G networks with the iPhone 12. 

Another way to look at it is, buying a 5G phone as an insurance against the future more than it is an immediate benefit today. Still, the inclusion of 5G, while expected, isn’t much of a selling point just yet, at least for the Asia Pacific region.

The post So you’re buying an iPhone 12? Here’s when you can use 5G appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The transition to working from home was quick for a lot of organizations, many of which some six months later are figuring out that working remotely is the future of work — pandemic or not.

Dozen of companies, including Shopify, Mastercard, Microsoft, and Facebook have extended work-from-home policies, with some even deciding to allow employees to work from home indefinitely.

Dual CEO of both Twitter and Square Jack Dorsey informed his employees at both companies that they can continue working from home “forever.” Facebook, on the other hand, said it will transition tens of thousands of jobs out of the office over the next decade. E-commerce giant Shopify— which employs 5,000 workers — said it will allow employees to continue working remotely after its offices reopen in 2021. CEO Tobi Lutke said the organization is “digital by default,” and believes office-centricity is reaching its end. 

Meanwhile, Google extended its work-from-home policy by an entire year on July 27 — employees won’t have to return to the company’s San Francisco Bay Area campus until June 2021. Uber also made a similar commitment.

Outdoor retailer REI just announced a plan to work remotely for good— and sell the company’s new, unused 8-acre campus. 

Worldwide transaction, payment-processing, and consulting company Mastercard allows its employees to work from home until the Covid-19 fears subside, and people feel comfortable coming into offices.

Yahoo!’s CEO Marissa Mayer stood apart from the crowd by terminating the Internet giant’s work-from-home program, stating, “some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussion, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.”

But with some of the world’s biggest tech leaders laying down the gauntlet, others are questioning the implications. One point of debate is whether salaries should reflect that of the employee’s place of residence, not that of their company. Others have questioned whether businesses should begin subsidizing rent or mortgage costs for employees who work remotely.

“People will need a dedicated workspace at home and it seems fair that employers would cover that additional cost, as well as that of work-level internet access and other work-related needs that were previously part of the office environment,” said Attention Span Media CEO, Josh McHugh, via LinkedIn. 

AWS senior operations program manager Joe Alustiza said that positive impacts of a widespread move to remote working could include a positive impact on “traffic patterns, real-estate prices, carbon dioxide emissions, highway safety” but added that the real impact would be on work-life balance: “Removing my commute would give me back 520 hours a year. That’s 21 days a year of additional productivity. Imagine the improvements that we could make to both our personal and professional lives. Although I would miss the face-to-face workplace interaction, I imagine that the technology around virtual communication and collaboration would drastically improve very quickly.”

Is Asia ready to work from home?

Job postings across key APAC markets show an uptick in remote job postings and applications. Singapore turns out to be the country with the largest growth in the share of applications for remote-working positions.

This is followed by India, Australia, China, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Philipines.

Morgan Stanley had predicted that office tenants across Asia will permanently give up between 3% and 9% of their existing office space, which would result in a rent decline of between 10% and 15% over the next three years.

The investment bank estimated that big tenants from the financial and IT industries, which have well-established business continuity plans or work-from-home infrastructure, could give up even more office space — at 10% over the next three years. The report projected rental impact between June 2020 to December 2022, and Singapore is expected to experience the largest decline at -10%, followed by Tokyo -9%, Hong Kong: -7%, and Sydney: -5%.

Morgan Stanley also noted that across Asia, desk space per person has been declining for some time, the firm also expects that to remain flat or grow if social distancing requirements are adhered to for longer.

The post Tech giants make remote working permanent — is Asia ready to follow? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Zoom Video Communications has had a stellar year so far, owed to the Covid-19 pandemic that has forced companies around the globe to transition to remote work. If it felt like everyone was suddenly using the video conferencing tool, it’s because they were. In April, Zoom peaked at over 300 million daily meeting participants – up from ten million in December 2019. 

Its measurement of “annualized meeting minutes” jumped 20-fold, from 100 billion at the end of January to over two trillion in April. For the quarter ending April 30, 2020, Zoom reported total revenue of $328.2 million, a 169% increase from the same period last year.

Now, the videoconferencing service provider is looking at growth opportunities beyond the crisis, with further expansion specifically in Asia-Pacific (APAC).

In August this year, Zoom opened its first Southeast Asian facility, a data center in Singapore. But just months before, the video-conferencing tool had been subject to a ban for use in home-based education by Singapore’s Ministry of Education, after hackers were able to access private sessions and begin posting obscene images.

Fortunately, and thanks to the company’s quick security response and conversations with the ministry, the ban was short-lived. In a recent interview with Tech Wire Asia, Magnus Falk, Zoom’s CIO Advisor said Zoom “fully engaged with the government” in “intense” conversations, explaining how the tool could be tailored according to specific needs of education. 

“That was one of a series of fantastic opportunities Zoom had with a forward-thinking ministry that didn’t just ban and go away,” Falk said. “And by actually then learning what we could do, and how they could ensure that Singapore-based teachers could operate securely, we put in place the controls that they needed, and then it was made available again for teachers.”

More than 400 Singaporean schools and 45,000 educators have since made use of the videoconferencing tool to keep classes running remotely. 

“This sort of thing was so important to engage and get it right in Singapore,” Falk said.

Indeed, Zoom’s relations and interests in the regions have proven highly lucrative. Abe Smith, Zoom’s head of international told ZDNet recently that regionally, Asia-Pacific — including China, Australia, and Japan — registered similar growth rates to those in the US and Europe. Smith said for the second quarter, revenue from the region increased 572% year-on-year to some US$81 million, or about 12.2% of the company’s total revenue.

In Singapore, in particular, Zoom clocked a 65-fold increase in the number of free accounts — where meeting sessions are capped at 40 minutes — in April compared to January while paying customers with at least 10 employees grew three-fold. 

In recent years, Singapore has emerged as a leading hub for data center operations and management services. Like other markets, this market has seen growth owed to the rise of hyper-scale cloud computing vendors who have huge data center leasing capacities, and the evolution of cloud-native businesses.

The island has recently attracted new interest from Chinese tech giants Tencent and Bytedance. These types of businesses are basing themselves in Singapore for its status as one of the most connected cities in the world, and stable, pro-business government, as well as other economic incentives for the enterprise.

The post Why Zoom had to ‘get it right’ in Singapore appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

For many organizations in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region, a swift deployment towards remote working arrangements became a reality earlier this year as the global COVID-19 pandemic made working from fixed premises like the office an untenable proposition.

At the same time, threat assessment reports from around the region found APAC to be highly exposed when it comes to cybersecurity readiness, especially in a remote working environment where cybersecurity measures might not be as potent as in the office’s secured intranet.

A report from Deloitte and VMware even found that some organizations in Asia Pacific were intentionally delaying digital transformation efforts in light of recent global circumstances, as a means of preventing exposure to more cyberattacks.

But that is not changing the reality of the threat landscape, and a good many business leaders are aware of the need for both cybersecurity preparedness and protection; the IDC reported that a mere 2% of CFOs plan to cut budgets for cybersecurity – this despite 67% of finance heads planning to cut or delay investments in other planned projects.

Now a new report conducted by YouGov finds that around 62% of remote working employees across four Asia Pacific markets (Singapore, India, Japan, and Australia) have been relying on personal devices such as personal laptops and mobile devices to perform work tasks, while 86% were using a combination of work-issued and personal devices.

This is in spite of more than half (54%) of polled employees stating that they believe their companies were more likely to be vulnerable to a serious cyberattack now compared to the pre-COVID-19 work environment, according to CrowdStrike’s 2020 Work Security Index. 

The poll reached out to thousands of senior officials at global organizations, with 1,780 from the Asia Pacific territory: Singapore (252 senior respondents), India (526), Japan (502), and Australia (500). The majority of those surveyed believe that the devices they were using for remote working purposes were not fully secured against advanced cyber threats.

65% of respondents from Japan, 54% of Australian execs, and 56% of Singaporeans described their work-from-home devices, including personal devices, as “somewhat secure” against advanced cyberattacks. Interestingly, in India more than half (58%) of those surveyed claimed their devices to be “very secure” in stark contrast to the other three APAC markets.

The poll’s findings as they relate to Singapore, Japan, and Australia tally with Deloitte’s Cyber Smart Index 2020, which found these three countries along with South Korea and New Zealand to be the most-prepared to face cyber threats as concerns related to remote working cybersecurity mounted at the time. These nations sport a high degree of research and development (R&D) investment when it comes to cybersecurity preparation, with strong regulatory oversight on online issues.

The latest poll highlights once again the frailties of many hurried work-from-home arrangements in APAC, as evidenced in many places where the security awareness and legislation might not be as airtight as others, such as in Malaysia which saw an 82.5% increase in online threat incidents within a one-month period.

HOW CAN APAC BUSINESSES IMPROVE THEIR CYBERSECURITY POSTURE IN 2020?

Soumik Roy | 6 March, 2020

As noted before, fortunately many CIOs and IT specialists are aware of the enhanced threat landscape in recent months, and have made cybersecurity a focus of what little IT spending will be carried out in 2020.

The post Why remote workers across APAC say they’re vulnerable to cyber threats appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.