Industry News

Google has opened new Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore, housing 1000 staff. Announcing the move on a Google blog, Caesar Sengupta, VP of Google's Next Billion User team, said: 'We need room for 1,000 googlers working on new products and projects across Asia for our users, customers and partners. And we also want more room for the community around us '” the kind of place that's useful for gatherings of developers, students, founders, and kids to connect with googlers and, sometimes, even prime ministers and ministers of trade.

A new report from the GSMA, The Mobile Economy: India 2016 says India has surpassed the USA to become the world's second-largest smartphone market with an installed base of 275 million devices and that, at the end of June 2016, it had 616 million unique users. The report is tipping India to have one billion unique mobile subscribers by 2020.

Gartner has put a damper on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's plan to create 100 smart cities: Gartner estimates that, by 2020, fewer than 10 percent of India's smart city projects will be of a large-scale, city-wide nature.

IDC has released its latest Asia/Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker saying it shows OPPO has become the leading smartphone vendor in the Chinese market, shipping 20.1 million units and gaining a market share of 17.5 percent in Q3 of 2016.

Gathered in Bangkok, Thailand, public and private sectors across the ICT industry attended ITU Telecom World 2016. Chinese vendor Huawei showcased its latest ideas and experience in cloud, national broadband networks, ultra-fast wireless communications, and smart devices at its pavilion. The company's president of its Carrier Business Group said Huawei is committed to building a better connected world.

Gartner has issued its 2016 Hype Cycle for ICT in India saying it shows the technology lag between India and other major technology markets to be narrowing as more local vendors enter both emerging and mature technology segments in India, including areas such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and software as a service (SaaS).

Cisco and Chinese IT company, Inspur Group, have launched their Chinese joint venture, Inspur - Cisco Networking Technology Co. Ltd, 51 percent owned by Inspur.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and Ernst & Young (EY) China have released the results of a joint survey into the adoption of cloud computing by the financial services industry in China, saying adoption has reached a tipping point within the industry.

Telcotech, which is building the Malaysia-Cambodia-Thailand (MCT) submarine cable announced in June 2013, says the able is now expected to be operational by the first quarter of 2017. Meanwhile Singapore-based Super Sea Cable Networks (SEAX), which is building a cable to connect the Eastern seaboard of Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, has announced plans to expand it in two phases to Guam, and NTT Com has opened for service the Asia Pacific Gateway cable.

Huawei has formed a strategic alliance with I-City that, it says, aims to accelerate the development of the next generation of IoT intelligent homes where appliances, HVAC, lights and other home safety and security devices can be monitored, tracked and managed.