In the past, TV and print media advertisements have always been the first choice of businesses for brand building. However, with the rapid development of the Internet, which has become an integral part of most consumers' lives, there is a trend of shifting marketing budgets to online media. At present, word-of-mouth marketing has moved from early collaboration with bloggers to collaborating with social media influencers. According to statistics, the global market for word-of-mouth marketing will reach US$13.8 billion by 2021, a growth of more than 50% from 2020. In view of this huge business opportunity, Influenxio has selected Instagram with its open format to establish a one-stop micro-influencer matching platform.
In 2011, the World Economic Forum (WEF) pointed out in its Global Risk Report that data was going to become the most valuable resource of the 21st century. According to a report from the International Data Corporation (IDC), global data volume is projected to grow to 163ZB in 2025, showing a tenfold increase from the 16.1ZB in 2016. The massive amount of data in combination with the rise of big data and data surveying tools mean that uncovering business opportunities from enormous data has already become an essential task for businesses looking to increase their competitiveness. Consequently, this has drawn great focus to data platforms, otherwise known as data management platforms.
Digital multimedia software developer CyberLink saw second-quarter revenues from the B2B business, which is mainly consisted of bundled software such as PowerDVD for new PCs that come with an ODD, slip 11% on year and expects the corresponding revenue proportion to keep decreasing as global PC demand has started decelerating and ODD's penetration in PCs is dropping, according to company chairman and CEO Jau Huang at a July 27 investor conference.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19 at the end of 2019, the global economy and people's lives have been greatly affected. Going to banks, hospitals, shopping at supermarkets, religious activities, and other daily activities, for example, all came under restrictions. In addition, onsite exhibitions that used to have large crowds have now almost all turned to the online format, including major international exhibitions such as CES and COMPUTEX. Although there are many online exhibition solutions on the market, they all focus on product exhibits and lack a platform for follow-up business opportunities and communication, relying only on traditional email, text customer service, telephone customer service, and video conferencing. These traditional communication modes lack scheduling design and are unable to provide appointment communication services and interactive functions, which in turn weakens the effectiveness of the online exhibition.
Taiwanese software startup Kdan Mobile raised US$16 million in Series B round from investors from South Korea and Japan, looking to take its cloud-based remote signing solutions DottedSign to South Korea by the end of 2021.
Fighting COVID-19 has become the top priority of governments around the world as the virus ravages the world. COVID-19 is highly contagious and has forced the healthcare and high tech industries to join forces in designing contactless care systems in hopes of controlling the pandemic as early as possible. The Ted-ICU AI Platform and KIOSK that were recently released by Radica Health not only reduce contact between healthcare workers and patients, but also improve work efficiency through cutting-edge technologies.
Delta Electronics (Thailand), the subsidiary of Taiwan-based Delta Electronics, has become the regional business headquarters and manufacturing center in India and Southeast Asia for its parent company.
The first panel talk at Asia Venturing online forum, held on July 16, 2021 by DIGITIMES and Anchor Taiwan, featured the vice pesident and general manager of Business Solutions Group at Qisda Corporation Michael Lee; partner of Japan's MS&AD Ventures Tiffine Wang; and Kickstart Ventures president Minette Navarrette and Kickstart Ventures VP for investments Joan Yao. They spoke about investing in foreign startups, discovering opportunities for the parent company and pumping momentum for young companies to grow and innovate.
With work- and study-at-home becoming new normal for people amid the COVID-19 pandemic, enterprises worldwide are now facing increasing threat of data breach and ransomware.
With software defined vehicles emerging as a new trend for the auto industry, automotive operating systems and software programs will become a new field of competition in the market, prompting related players to step up the development of relevant solutions, according to Digitimes Research.
India has seen local EMS providers step up investment in constructing production capacity for making notebooks and other IT harware, while the funds that local startups raised in first-half 2021 exceed the total for 2020.
Taiwan's Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) plans to invest NT$80.7 billion (US$2.9 billion) into digital transformation of airports and seaports, using AI, IoT, big data and other innovative technologies over the next five years.
Banks in Vietnam are pushing to digitalize their services with releases of smartphone apps amid the lingering coronavirus pandemic, according to a report by Vietnamnet.
Although digital signature of remote documents is no longer a problem, how to distinguish the authenticity of signature documents and how to verify that the signature is made by the countersigner in person is a pain point. Hungarian start-up Birosign, which was selected by the Epoch Foundation Garage+ Accelerator in early June as one of the 46 must-see start-ups at Computex 2021's virtual exhibition, provides a solution to this problem by using sensor technology and machine learning.
China's software industry consisting of 39,837 companies generated total sales of CNY3,389.275 billion (US$524.6 billion) for January-May 2021, increasing 22.6% on year, according to Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
Blockchain technology is based on programmed computation and cryptography, and its transactions are both immutable and irrevocable. The technology also makes use of peer-to-peer network (P2P) protocols to ensure that the functionality of the entire network remains highly stable even when any individual node is damaged or lost. When applied to innovative business models such as charging stations in the electric vehicle (EV) market, blockchain technology provides a stable, secure, and large-scale management system for different consumers such as vehicle manufacturers, government regulators, energy providers, banks, and the general public.
Vietnam is looking to cooperate with India to promote ICT development, with both sides having held an online meeting recently over the matter, according to a report by VnEconomy.
Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Asian Development Bank (ADB) at the end of June to form a partnership for the development of digital government, digital economy and digital society, according to a report by Vietnam Finance.
South Korea's SparkLabs Korea, Daewoo E&C Vina, and Bespin Global have signed a strategic partnership to construct a smart city platform in Vietnam, according to SparkLabs Group.
The Philippines' Globe Telecom created revenue growth of more than 60% of revenue in seven years, with its almost 9% in average annual growth higher than the average of 6.53% for 16 telecom firms that NYU Stern School of Business tracks around the world. Through its 100%-owned subsidiary Kickstart Ventures, Globe Telecom has successfully built a digital ecosystem that offers a variety of value-added services to generate substantial revenue.
Social media sites in India are seeing shifts in use behaviors. A high court in India has ruled that Twitter has to take legal responsibility of its users' speeches, while the South Asian country's ban on TikTok has opened up opportunities for local video startups.
The Vietnamese government has instructed State Bank of Vietnam to study the feasibility of developing its own cryptocurrency, with the study to be conducted in 2021-2023, according to a report by VnEconomy.
Cheng Wu, a general patner at Taiwania Capital Management, has founded several high profile companies with total market value of NT$180 billion (US$64 billion). Wu has been embracing a different approach to investing in startups.
As a top player in the car supply chain, Huawei has established partnerships with many Chinese carmakers. However, one of the biggest carmakers in China, SAIC Motor, has said it has no intention to work with Huawei on building "soulless" automobiles.
