For many years, when it comes to e-commerce, there has been one undisputed leader — Amazon. However, as consumers began changing their buying behaviour, newer brands began to pop up to upend the online shopping juggernaut. Take Shein for instance, the Chinese company that only recently took the world by a storm for its ultra fast fashion approach has overthrown Amazon, topping the chart as one of the most downloaded shopping apps in the world in 2021.

In fact, Shein is not the only one. According to the newest data from Apptopia, two other e-commerce companies leapfrogged Amazon in the global rankings: Shopee, based in Singapore, which serves Southeast Asia and Latin America; and Meesho, based in India, which specializes in social e-commerce for categories including fashion and home products.

All data is iOS + Google Play combined, except for data from China which is iOS only. Source: Apptopia

The US e-commerce giant came in fourth place overall in global shopping app installation last year. Just the year before, Amazon had the most app installs worldwide. It is fair to note though that Amazon is still first in Apptopia’s US rankings for shopping app installs in 2021. This is given considering data from Statista that shows the Seattle-based company holds 41% of the US e-commerce market in 2021.

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Singapore-based Shopee came in first with a total 203 million downloads while China-based Shein came in second with 190 million downloads and the company has been a growing force in the fast fashion market. India-based Meesho took the third spot with 153 million downloads.

Amazon, Shein, Shopee vs social commerce

At this point, online is growing at a torrid pace. New data from fintech and payments research specialists Kaleido Intelligence has found that B2B and B2C e-commerce spend on physical goods and digital services will reach US$6 trillion this year, up from US$4.8 trillion in 2020. 

But it is shopping on social media platforms that will top the chart as it is currently growing three times faster than traditional e-commerce platforms. In fact, it is on pace to reach US$1.2 trillion globally by 2025, according to a study by Accenture. Most of that growth (62%) will be driven by Gen Z and millennial shoppers.

“The social commerce opportunity will nearly triple by 2025. Growing at a CAGR of 26%, the social commerce opportunity will reach $1.2 trillion by 2025. This accounts for 16.7% of the US$7 trillion e-commerce total spend,” Accenture said in a separate report.

The report also believes that China will remain the most advanced market both in size and maturity, yet the highest growth will be seen in developing markets such as India and Brazil. As for the US, social commerce is expected to more than double, reaching US$99 billion by 2025.

The post Shein, Shopee and Meesho overtake Amazon in 2021 appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Leading smartphone maker in China, Oppo, is officially the latest major mobile phone manufacturer to walk down the self-sufficiency path, as it plans to develop its own high-end chips for flagship mobile phones. The move complements that of Google, when it released the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, its first phones with a custom system-on-a-chip (SoC) called Tensor. 

Other smartphone giants namely Apple and Samsung are also designing their own smartphone chips, as did Huawei before US sanctions decimated its mobile business. The move by Oppo, according to Nikkei Asia, is to mainly reduce the company’s reliance on foreign semiconductor suppliers, such as Qualcomm and MediaTek.

What makes Oppo’s venture more interesting is that it plans to partner with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), the world’s largest semiconductor maker, to use the latter’s advanced 3nm process technology for the chips. To top it off, Oppo would be part of TSMC’s second batch of customers using this cutting-edge technology, after Apple and Intel.

Oppo may influence other smartphones in China

Oppo is the fourth-largest smartphone maker in the world by shipments, according to IDC, and it is also China’s biggest Android smartphone vendor, holding a 10% share of global smartphone shipments in Q3 2021. To top it off, Oppo ranks fifth worldwide, according to data from research firm Canalys.

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Given that the phone maker shares a supply chain and ownership with Vivo, Realme and OnePlus, Oppo-developed chips could quickly find their way into phones from multiple brands.  The two people with knowledge of the development also told Nikkei Asia that Oppo plans to use its own mobile SoC in phones that will make its debut in 2023 at the earliest. 

Besides the smartphone SoC, Oppo is reportedly also developing its own Image Signal Processor (ISP) for its smartphone cameras. Brands such as Xiaomi and Vivo have launched their own ISP chips given how more users now prioritize camera capabilities in their selection process for new smartphones.

However, Nikkei also said, Xiaomi, one of the first Chinese smartphone makers to set up a semiconductor design team, back in 2014, currently does not use any in-house processors for its smartphones. In fact, most Xiaomi flagship smartphones and current Oppo phones use Qualcomm’s high-end Snapdragon chipsets.

The post As China struggles with a chip shortage, Oppo develops its own appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

With a population of 1.36 billion people, India is estimated to have over 760 million smartphone users in 2021. While iOS (Apple operating system) devices are available in the subcontinent, Android OS dominates the industry, making up 95.79% of the users. The affordability of Android mobile phones, especially through locally made Indian phone models makes it easier for anyone in the country to own a smartphone today.

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Vietnam has one of the fastest-growing economies in the ASEAN region. With fast growth, increased tech usage has also seen more mobile devices enter the market. There are 61.3 million smartphones in Vietnam, making the country among the top 10 users of smartphones after China, India, Indonesia, and Japan.

As such, the increased penetration of mobile devices also leads to increasing cybersecurity concerns. Mobile devices are vulnerable to cyberattacks and continue to be targeted by cybercriminals, and can be easily affected by malware via apps, emails, and even text messages.

Trojan Android malware invites financial ruin

Android/FakeAdBlocker is an extremely stealthy trojan. Masquerading as an ad blocker for Android mobile devices, it installs adware and possibly other malware when users looking for a legitimate adblocker install them from third-party sites or app stores.

The malware usually hides its launcher icon after the initial launch. Not only does it deliver unwanted scareware or adult-content advertisements, but it also creates spam events for upcoming months in iOS and Android calendars. These ads often cost victims money by sending premium-rate SMS messages, subscribing to unnecessary services, or downloading Android banking trojans, SMS Trojans, and malicious applications. The malware also uses URL shortener services to create links to ads, which in some cases monetize their clicks.

“Based on our telemetry, it appears that many users tend to download Android apps from outside the Google Play store, which might lead them to download malicious apps delivered through aggressive advertising practices that are used to generate revenue for their authors,” explains ESET researcher Lukáš Štefanko, who analyzed Android/FakeAdBlocker.

Commenting on the monetization of the shortened URL links, Lukáš adds, “When someone clicks on such a link, an advertisement will be displayed that will generate revenue for the person who generated the shortened URL. The problem is that some of these link shortener services use aggressive advertising techniques such as scareware ads informing users their devices are infected with dangerous malware.”

The concern is greater for users of Android devices. Scam websites may provide malicious apps to download from outside the Google Play store. For example, the website requests to download an application called “AdBlock,” which has nothing to do with the legitimate application and indeed does the opposite of blocking ads. Instead, a scareware advertisement, or the Android/FakeAdBlocker trojan, is delivered via a URL shortener service.

Top 10 countries with Android/FakeAdBlocker detections (January 1, 2021 – June 1, 2021) Source: ESET Research

Cybercriminals target vulnerable communities

According to McAfee Advanced Threats Research’s Mobile Threat Report 2021, hackers are also using fake apps and hiding malware and malicious links inside fake covid-19 vaccination appointments and registration display ads.

When victims click on these links and ads, they end up having malware downloaded onto their devices. The malware may activate accessibility features to give the hackers full device control, which can allow them to steal banking details and credentials.

In India, McAfee researchers also found evidence of an SMS worm targeting Indian consumers. This is believed to be one of the earliest organized vaccine fraud cyberattack campaigns, where both SMS and Whatsapp messages encouraged users to download a vaccine app. Once downloaded, the malware in the app will continue to display unwanted and fraudulent ads to users and send itself to everyone in the victim’s contact list.

In a large country like India, where access to vaccination is an issue, many are desperate to get appointments, making them particularly susceptible to cyberattacks.

In 2020, Vietnam recorded a US$400 million increase in investments, proving well that the nation could rival Indonesia as Southeast Asia’s growth market for tech investments. As such, cybersecurity is also becoming more important in the country with more businesses increasing their security investment.

While malware like Android/FakeAdBlocker continues to be a growing concern in both these countries, businesses and users can take the necessary steps in securing their devices. Common security practices should be enforced including downloading software from reliable sources only and not simply clicking on links.

The post India and Vietnam most hit by Android malware appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Embattled Chinese tech giant Huawei is on its long journey to increased self-reliance, will only roll out its homegrown mobile operating system, HarmonyOS, within the Asian region – with no immediate plans for global implementation anytime soon, as the telecommunications giant fights for survival in the smartphone hardware market after US’ sanctions blocked it from using Android OS in its devices.

The ban had eviscerated the core functionality of Huawei’s once-thriving smartphone business, as well as other connected gadgets as they could no longer obtain Google’s license to run Android. The Shenzhen-based Huawei, the world’s largest telecom equipment maker and formerly China’s biggest smartphone vendor, said that it expected 300 million devices to run Harmony by year’s end – and would pile on resource investments to boost its user base to 1.2 billion by 2024. 

When a beta version was released earlier this year, only about 300,000 Huawei smartphone users signed up. By this week, the new HarmonyOS 2.0 – launched a year after the inaugural HarmonyOS debuted – passed 10 million users, as it gathers traction within China, according to a report by GSMArena. The update to HarmonyOS 2 is available for the Mate 40 series, P40 series, Mate 30 series, and MatePad Pro devices in China, while the Huawei P30 series along with Honor 30 and V30 series will get closed betas this month and public beta trials in July 2021.

HarmonyOS 2.0 is billed as the world’s first operating system dedicated to the era of the Internet of Things. Without the use of smartphone-native apps, it is claimed that the operating system is able to function across a wide array of devices and household items. HarmonyOS 2.0 is expected to run on up to 300 million devices by the end of this year, including 200 million Huawei smartphones.

At the virtual launch of HarmonyOS 2.0 recently, the company announced partnerships with several domestic and international firms to run its mobile operating system on their smart devices, including Chinese home appliances giant Midea Group, drone maker SZ DJI Technology Co, and Swiss watch producer Tissot.

HarmonyOS 2.0 differentiates itself from Android and Apple’s iOS because it was designed to work on a wide range of IoT devices as well as smartphones, according to the president of the Huawei consumer business group’s software unit Wang Chenglu. These devices include smartwatches, smart televisions, smart home appliances, and other sensor-equipped gadgets that are connected to the internet and interact with mobile applications.

The stakes are high for Huawei and other major technology companies in the Asia-Pacific, as regional spending on IoT is expected to reach US$288.6 billion this year, IDC claimed. It is fair to note, however, overhauling its competition would be a mammoth task for Huawei; Google has about 86% and Apple the remaining 14% of the smartphone operating system market, according to the research firm IDC. Several competitors have unsuccessfully tried to take a share, among them Microsoft and Samsung, which is the world’s smartphone leader with about 22% of sales.

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HarmonyOS users have slowly become an important community in China, as there aren’t any Google Mobile Services anyway and there is a reasonably large population. The data Huawei has already shared is impressive. HarmonyOS already has the world’s third-largest app ecosystem, the company boasted back in March. “As of today, there are more than 300 application and service providers, over 1,000 hardware manufacturers, and at least 500,000 developers in the HarmonyOS ecosystem,” said Huawei’s spokesperson. 

What may stifle adoption outside of China is that, without access to Google, YouTube, Facebook, and many other popular apps and services, the OS may have an issue taking off outside China. Many of these popular global services are already blocked in the country, though, so it could fare better there.

The post Huawei’s homegrown smartphone OS designed for the era of IoT appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

In Asia, news of women being harassed, assaulted, or raped has, unfortunately, become common. While this topic needs the attention of leaders and authorities, there has yet to be a finite solution on the ground level. In fact, the increasing number of crimes against women has planted concern in the minds of many people. To date, safety apps have been some of the few answers to help decrease female apprehension and help them go out with confidence. 

Take India’s grim reality of aggravated sexual crimes against women as an example. A survey by Thomas Reuters Foundation in 2018 ranked India as the most dangerous country for women. And an NCRB report found a total of 405,861 cases of crime against women were registered during 2019, showing an increase of 7.3% over 2018 (378,236 cases).

Overall, based on a United Nations report last year, globally at least 7% of women have experienced sexual violence by a non-partner since age 15. On top of that, most detected survivors of trafficking are female and in Southeast Asia, more underage girls are detected than women. Violence against women in the Asia-Pacific region is also perpetrated through sexual and street harassment, menstruation stigmatization and a lack of access to hygiene products, dowry-related violence, forced marriage, digital harassment and cyber violence, marital rape, and lack of access to justice- and survivor-centered support systems.

It is almost like living in a permanent subconscious state of trepidation, to protect themselves from street harassment and violence has become second nature for women. Until we live in a world that makes women feel safe being out alone, these are the personal safety apps providing digital solutions to help women feel more secure when they are out and about.

Safecity in India

Created by the founder of the Red Dot Foundation, Elsa Marie D’Silva, after hearing about the tragic death of Jyoti Singh in New Delhi, the app is an open-source project that maps out incidents of gender violence and sexual harassment in the metropolis. The Safecity app basically encourages people to anonymously report their personal stories of sexual harassment in public places.

In terms of helping to keep women safe, users have access to information on the frequency of street harassment incidents in any given area, visualized by red pins on the map. From there, they are able to better plan their routes to avoid places with a high density of red pins. The app can also help locate the nearest police stations and hospitals, in case of emergencies.

Riding Pink in Malaysia

Riding Pink is Malaysia’s first women-only transportation platform and was founded in 2016 by Denise Tan after someone close to her was robbed at knifepoint by a taxi driver. The app has a big focus on safety—with strict registration requirements for all users and SOS options to send the rider’s messages and location to emergency contacts with a click of the button.  A service by women for women within Klang Valley, Malaysia, Riding Pink offers an alternative for those who are tired of unwanted advances and uncomfortable conversations with male taxi drivers. 

Digi Police App in Japan

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For women visiting or living in Japan and plan to take the train, they can install the Digi Police mobile app to be more at ease, as it is geared towards victims of groping on Japan’s busy rush-hour trains. As women are often silenced due to fear, all they need to do is activate it and it will play “Stop It” at an ear-piercing volume. There is also an option that brings up a message on the phone screen saying “There is a molester. Please help.” Since it was released, this app has been downloaded more than 237,000 times.

Didi Chuxing in China

The largest ride-hailing firm in China has rolled out additional safety measures after a female customer was raped and murdered by a driver on its Hitch service. The company has now included random biometric ID testing for its drivers, as well as an SOS button on the driver and passenger app that connects directly to the police. This is meant to streamline the critical response process.

The post What are the best personal safety apps for women? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

TikTok, also known as Douyin domestically in China, always has its eyes set on global social media domination. The video-sharing app has been installed on devices over 2.6 billion times worldwide. It passed the 1 billion-milestone in February 2019 and the 2 billion-figure in April 2020. It reached 2.6 billion by December 2020 and is undoubtedly well on the way to 3 billion now. Amidst such growth, Facebook is trying its very best to catch up.

Despite losing India, its biggest overseas market, the ByteDance-owned app continues to be the top-grossing non-game app in the world as of last year. Sensor Tower’s monthly report shows that TikTok hit US$102.5 million in revenue within the first half of 2020 — an 8.6x increase in revenue over the same time in 2019.

Both TikTok and Douyin amassed over 2 billion downloads and penetrated one-third of all social media users on this planet in less than four short years. For the former, a tempting 500 million users had signed up last year alone, and that’s half of all Instagram users. TikTok is particularly big among teenagers, with nearly 60% of all TikTok users are of that age group – the video-sharing app already beats Facebook’s own social service as well as Facebook-owned Instagram in popularity among America’s youngest and largest generation. Such rapid traction has of course caught the attention of the Facebook social empire.

A tale of two social media formats

TikTok is the Chinese short-video social app where people create parodies and otherwise frivolous short mobile videos that involve either dancing, lip-syncing, or acting out trending scenes, jokes, or songs.  There is less focus on privacy and friends, but rather on attention-grabbing and even educational short video content. Especially since the pandemic, TikTok is known for its remixing of culture: taking the audio from someone else’s clip and reimagining the gag in a new context by layering it atop a video you record.

This is a whole new social media format that has taken the attention of almost everyone who has heard of the concept. As Facebook has done in the past, if the social pioneer couldn’t acquire its competition, it would try to replicate its most popular feature. That’s how Snapchat’s disappearing photo/video feature eventually appeared on Facebook’s and Instagram’s home screens (Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp introduced a virtually identical feature not long after).

Mark Zuckerberg has been trying to clone TikTok or taking it over, but all attempts had been resisted by TikTok’s Chinese owner Bytedance. Perhaps, that makes TikTok distinct enough that it will be very difficult to shoehorn into the current versions of Instagram or Facebook, even if they add the remixing functionality. Most videos on those apps or features owned by Facebook aren’t designed to be templates for memes, like TikTok’s are.

Instead, Insta and Facebook’s social graphs are rooted in personal connections and are supported by a well-established ecosystem – but don’t encompass the new wave of Gen-Z amateur performers that TikTok elevates. If Zuckerberg and Co. were to boil down the user experience of TikTok into just its main feature, Facebook will miss out on owning the social entertainment feed.

Facebook’s reign as social media king in jeopardy

To recall, Facebook made its first attempt to kill TikTok in 2018, after it hit 650 million users. Then, America’s social media giant launched a copycat app called Lasso, but it didn’t draw much interest and Facebook shut it down. For context, Lasso has been installed a total of 425,000 times since it launched, while TikTok has 640 million installs in the same period outside of China.

It was the same for Snapchat — with the launch of its disappearing stories, it started to blow up with US teens. Facebook’s attempts to clone it in standalone apps like Poke and Slingshot never gained traction. In fact, none of Facebook’s standalone apps have succeeded unless they splintered off an already popular piece of Facebook-like chat and users were forced to download them like Messenger. 

It wasn’t until Zuckerberg stuck his clone of Stories front-and-center atop Instagram and Facebook that Snapchat’s user count went from growing 18% per quarter to shrinking. There, Facebook used the same strategy laid out in Zuckerberg’s comments on TikTok — push its good-enough clone in countries where the original isn’t popular yet. 

Then in November 2020, Facebook’s Instagram launched a feature called Reels, available only in certain countries, including for India’s 1.3 billion people after TikTok was banned in that country. In a post on its corporate blog, Facebook said Reels lets users record and edit 15-second multi-clip videos with audio, effects, and creative tools.

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Zuckerberg has even gone out of his way to say that TikTok deserves more scrutiny. “While our services, like WhatsApp, are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these protests are censored, even in the U.S.,” Zuckerberg said during a speech at Georgetown University last year. “Is that the internet we want?” All said and done, TikTok is definitely an existential threat to Facebook, which as the reigning top dog is under constant pressure to maintain user growth across its services.

Business takeaway

Despite being one of the newest social media platforms, TikTok’s user base is growing rapidly and it’s quickly becoming a great opportunity for businesses to reach new, larger audiences. The volume of users and the rate at which it’s growing means that it can provide access to a huge audience and it seems to be easier than on other channels to create video content that goes viral and reaches hundreds or thousands of people.

Also, given that TikTok is used in over 150 different countries, viral videos on the platform can reach all over the world. If a business is looking at reaching international markets, then TikTok is an effective platform for connecting with new audiences in other countries.

While the trend for video marketing isn’t going away anytime soon, TikTok is a good way to expand the reach of video content. If a business is not already using video then it provides a fairly accessible way to incorporate video into an existing marketing strategy.

The post Can TikTok beat Facebook to social media dominance appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The automotive ecosystem has been evolving aggressively over the last decade with increasingly connected vehicles and collaborations with tech giants like Google and Apple. No doubt, we are in an intense era of collaboration among carmakers, technology giants, software start-ups, research institutions, and even telecom providers. 

Numerous partnerships have sprouted up in the past year, with the most recent being between Ford and Google which are entering a six-year deal that will make the tech giant responsible for much of the automaker’s growing in-vehicle connectivity. Google will also provide cloud computing and other technology services.

Ford announced the partnership this week ahead of plans to streamline its operations and accelerate an ongoing US$11 billion restructuring plan, marking a major shift for the automaker, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars annually in recent years to develop and maintain such systems.

What’s the collaboration about?

The agreement would see Ford and Lincoln vehicles sporting Android base operating system along with Google Assistant, Google Maps, and Google Play beginning 2023. Google’s cloud will also enable other types of services. For instance, Google said Ford is looking to use the tech giant’s cloud to enable a system for sending customers messages about maintenance or trade-in opportunities.

Millions of Ford vehicles will run with Google’s Android OS by 2023. Source: Ford

Google will also assist Ford with its artificial intelligence expertise in areas such as supply chain logistics and manufacturing, the companies said. The vehicles will be available across the globe — except in China, where Google products are banned. 

Ford and Google will also be creating a new group, comprised of employees from both companies, called Team Upshift that will be tasked with finding other areas of innovation.

Ford’s VP of strategy and partnerships David McClelland said in a Medium post, “We’re going to leverage the talent and assets of both companies to push the boundaries of Ford’s transformation, unlock personalized consumer experiences, and drive disruptive data-driven opportunities. This may include projects ranging from modernizing our plants through vision AI, developing new retail experiences when buying a vehicle, creating new ownership offers based on connected vehicle data, and more.”

More collabs between carmakers and tech leaders?

A report by CNBC quoting industry groups such as J.D. Power stated that despite automakers like Ford spending significant capital to develop such systems, consumers have moved toward using Google’s Android Auto or Apple’s CarPlay programs while driving.

General Motors, Ford’s largest crosstown rival, announced a deal in 2019 to integrate Google’s voice assistant and app ecosystem into its vehicles beginning this year. For Google, it’s major attainment with the number of automakers being added to its stable of customers that usees Android in its vehicles. Ford also joins Volvo, General Motors, and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance in striking a deal with Google to use its software to power its vehicle infotainment services.

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Counterpoint Research IoT Tracker stated that the globally connected car market is forecast to increase by a staggering 270% by 2022, with 125 million cars with embedded connectivity to be shipped between now and then.

These initiatives will actually open up lucrative new revenue streams for automotive makers, partners, and new market entrants, resulting in a rich data source.  

The post Millions of Ford vehicles to run with Google’s Android OS soon appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The technical landscape between China and the US has never been more complex. It has been over a year since Huawei was blacklisted by the US government, and while others have tried and failed to challenge Google and Apple’s dominance, Huawei is loaded for bear.

Huawei’s severance from Google’s products forced it to fashion its own Play Store alternative, and that’s sent Chinese tech giant down an Apple-like path — a leading device manufacturer with its own app ecosystem, mobile services framework, and an operating system (OS).

But Huawei’s chairman Guo Ping is optimistic about building “a new open system” for the world; “And since Huawei helped Android to succeed, why not make our own system successful. It’s plausible to have two systems in a world. And Huawei will be able to survive and take the lead even in an extremely hostile environment.” 

To date, Google has been pretty ambivalent – the US has restricted Huawei’s access to premium chipsets, which signals a sharp decline in Huawei smartphones over the next year. But that’s not set to remain the case in the long run.

HarmonyOS — Huawei’s self-developed OS

This year has been a period of survival, so says Huawei (more often than not with tongue-in-cheek). Ironically, the company is too well-monied and successful in its home market — with the backing of Beijing — to suffer any material shock. Starting next year, Huawei will officially drop Android for its in-house HarmonyOS software. 

The self-developed operating system, HarmonyOS has been in development for three years. Huawei has also confirmed that its OS will be available as an open-source operating system used by other Chinese OEMs to build bridges between China and the West.

As tough as replacing Google is — and many analysts suggest it is near impossible — the chipset issue is a much greater concern. However, Huawei looks intent on playing a long-game, with the balance sheet to do so. As reported by China’s state-controlled Global Times, Guo “compared cultivating HMS as a protracted war that Huawei is destined to win in the end.”

On the other hand, China now has two of the top three smartphone manufacturers, a stated intent to push domestic capabilities at the expense of imports, and Huawei fast building an ecosystem that it says will compete with Android and iOS, to create a third global OS for the industry.

Regardless, it’s now almost inevitable that the world’s mobile ecosystems have changed irreversibly. The Android/iOS dominance that looked unshakable when Trump announced his blacklist in May last year is now being shaken hard. 

More tech giants to abandon Google OS?

In fact, Huawei isn’t the only tech giant that looks set to shun a Google-made operating system. Rumors are circulating that OnePlus could skip the Google-made OS on an upcoming device — its upcoming OnePlus Watch. 

Perhaps, Huawei’s move and probably OnePlus’ would set a trend of more tech giants abandoning Google OS. On the surface, little has changed in recent months: Google is still missing from Huawei’s new devices; US officials still lobby hard for other governments to exclude Huawei from their 5G plans; the Commerce Department is expected to extend the temporary license for maintaining legacy products — again, and the tech giant keeps tightening the lock on its domestic market to keep revenues on track.

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Meanwhile, Huawei is doing two things. First, it’s piling time and resources into a new alternative to Google and its software and services. Since the earliest days of the blacklist, the company’s management has admitted that developing a viable alternative to Google will take years. That work is underway. It may or may not succeed — realistically its biggest challenge is Xiaomi, which is seeking to replicate the cut-price quality reputation Huawei used to build its overseas brand.

Inevitably though, 2020 has been a year of reinvention and the irony is that the pandemic is changing companies and industries at an unprecedented rate and scale. Huawei’s shift to new territories will be simply one among many.

The post Bye, bye Android — Huawei’s HarmonyOS gets ready to play appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The rise of PWAs

Over the past year or so, PWAs have been getting the attention they deserve. The technology made headlines when Twitter Lite launched as a PWA last year.

As a result, the social media platform achieved a 65 percent increase in pages per session, a 75 percent increase in Tweets sent, and a 20 percent decrease in bounce rates.

A Google case study quoted Nicolas Gallagher, the Engineering Lead for Twitter Lite: “Twitter Lite is now the fastest, least expensive, and most reliable way to use Twitter. The web app rivals the performance of our native apps but requires less than 3 percent of the device storage space compared to Twitter for Android.”

Twitter Lite sees 75% increase in tweets with new PWA and reduces Data usage. Read all about it ? https://t.co/ihi3N0cIAN

— Chrome Developers (@ChromiumDev) May 17, 2017

Since then, PWAs have come a long way – and in 2018, PWAs are all set to take over the world. But what is a PWA? It’s a mobile app that works from a browser and doesn’t need to be installed.

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Not only that, PWAs provide a full screen experience. They look and feel just like native or regular mobile apps – with an icon neatly sitting on your home screen and push-notification capabilities.

Thanks to help from ‘service workers’, PWAs work even if users are offline or on low-quality networks.

Given their rising popularity and growing demand, browsers such as Apple Safari and Firefox Mozilla have announced support for PWAs (which is important since these apps run via browsers).

The more the web can do, the better off we’ll be.

PWAs are coming to Firefox for Android! ?? https://t.co/7rnri3qgMH

— Firefox ? (@firefox) January 30, 2018

Service workers and the magic of connectivity

Service workers are what make PWAs magical | Source: Pexels

A service worker is a snippet of code, a script that runs in the background and helps a PWA function. It’s one of its critical building blocks. Service workers help PWAs do things like send notifications to users and stay up-to-date;

Service workers help provide an engaging experience while offline and ensures your application loads quickly.

So, do you need one? And why?

Well, the Internet is of the opinion that you need PWAs to make life easier for customers. The Google case study on Twitter Lite showed extraordinary results, and while those might not be replicated easily, you’re sure to provide a better experience if your business offers a PWA.

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PWAs are usually inexpensive to build and in many cases, existing websites can be upgraded to a PWA. In India, for example, Book My Show, a popular ticketing website, revamped itself to become a PWA.

An article in the Economic Times reported that BookMyShow had witnessed an 80 percent increase in its conversion rates, and the revenue contribution of mobile web to the company’s topline has increased dramatically since it launched its PWA.

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Make My Trip, an Indian travel booking site, found that their PWA helped them get 3X improvement in conversion rates, 38 percent improvement in page load times, and 160 percent increase in shopper sessions, according to another case study by Google.

So, the short answer to the first question is, yes, you need a PWA, especially if you deal with your customers on the Internet. Why? Because you want to win a share of your customer’s heart and not just their wallet – and to do that, you need to provide a great user experience, irrespective of the network conditions.

The post Progressive Web Apps: What they are and why you should care appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Available to download on Android, the app is aimed at small businesses who want a seamless way to connect to their digitally-savvy customers. And with 1.3 billion users, the app is the perfect platform for consumers to chat with businesses who matter to them.

IS THE FUTURE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE FULLY AUTOMATED?

Tech Wire Asia | 19 January, 2018

Small businesses can set up a WhatsApp Business profile by filling out information such as its business description, company email, address and website.

Users will know they’re talking with a business account as these will be listed as “Business accounts”, which will then become “Confirmed Accounts” once WhatsApp verifies it.

After being established on the network, businesses are free to use a variety of tools provided on the app, including smart messaging tools.

Using these tools, businesses are able to send quick replies to consumers to commonly asked questions, greeting messages that welcome and introduce customers to your business, as well as the ability to alert your customers with ‘away messages’ if you’re busy.

MOVING BEYOND CRM TO THE FULL DIGITAL CUSTOMER INTERACTIONS PLATFORM: DIMELO

Dimelo | 9 January, 2018

Users will also have access to messaging statistics, including simple metrics such as the number of messages read. This will come in handy for businesses who want to see what messaging content seems to engage customers most successfully.

Users of the app are also able to send and receive messages from the desktop via WhatsApp Web.

Though businesses must download the new app to communicate with customers, the everyday WhatsApp user can continue using the general version.

But will this result in businesses spamming users with endless promotions?

Luckily for them, the everyday user can control this by reporting any experience of spam and will be able to block numbers and businesses.

FACEBOOK’S WHATSAPP FEATURE WILL HELP LURE MORE ADVERTISERS

Tech Wire Asia | 1 January, 2018

Furthermore, businesses will only be able to connect with consumers who have provided their phone number and agreed to receive messages from the business.

Though WhatsApp Business seems to be initially aimed at smaller businesses, according to Tech Crunch, the app will in the future be joined by larger businesses – such as e-commerce sites and banks – with a global customer base.

This business move from the company is not surprising considering the masses of people who use the platform today. According to research by Morning Consult, over 80 percent of small businesses in India and Brazil reported the usefulness of WhatsApp in communicating with customers and growing their businesses.

Though not mentioned in the company’s announcement of the rollout, the digital communication giant has previously said it would charge for these enterprise tools. It is assumed these tools will be added to the current WhatsApp for Business product.

Though the company has prioritized Android after finding this is where businesses use WhatsApp more prominently, it plans to support other platforms such as iOS in the future.

The post WhatsApp Business finally launches in select markets – and it’s free for now appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.