Retail News CRM

Author: Mei Ling Tan

  • SK Telecom streams AR dragon in Korean stadium

    SK Telecom streams AR dragon in Korean stadium

    SK Telecom has announced it has used augmented reality to simulate a fire-breathing dragon at a sports stadium as part of its ongoing development of new 5G-powered services.

    Using augmented reality technology, the large fire-breathing wyvern was streamed flying around the SK Happy Dream Park during the opening day of the Korea Baseball Organization.

    The dragon was streamed both to the LED baseball scoreboard installed at the stadium and via sports broadcasting channels for fans watching the game on TV and smartphones.

    To achieve large scale augmented reality streaming, SK Telecom used its self-developed augmented and virtual reality technologies including the eSpace and T real Platform solutions.

    The demonstration arose from SK Telecom’s focus on the development of 5G-based services to support its commercial network, which launched in December last year. Augmented and virtual reality are a key area of focus for the company.

  • EU-wide security approach planned for 5G

    EU-wide security approach planned for 5G

    The European Commission (EC) has outlined plans to establish a common European Union approach to the security of 5G networks.

    The EC has recommended a series of operational steps and measures aimed at ensuring a high level of security of 5G networks across the EU.

    The recommendations for EU member states include legislative and policy measures designed to protect the nations’ economies, societies and democratic systems.

    As part of the program, the EC has recommended that each member state complete a national risk assessment of 5G network infrastructures by the end of June.

    Member states have also been urged to update their respective security requirements for network providers and include conditions for ensuring the security of public networks, especially when granting 5G spectrum licenses.

    At the EU level, the Commission and the European Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) has been tasked with completing a coordinated risk assessment by the start of October, which will be used to help member states agree to a set of mitigating measures that can be used at a national level.

    “Protecting 5G networks aims at protecting the infrastructure that will support vital societal and economic functions – such as energy, transport, banking, and health, as well as the much more automated factories of the future,” commented European Commissioner in charge of the digital economy and society Mariya Gabriel.

    “It also means protecting our democratic processes, such as elections, against interference and the spread of disinformation.”

  • Xiaomi’s Black Shark 2 gaming smartphone goes on sale

    Xiaomi’s Black Shark 2 gaming smartphone goes on sale

    Great news for mobile gaming fans looking to buy one of the most powerful gaming smartphones available on the market, as Xiaomi has just announced their new product, Black Shark 2 is now up for grabs in Europe.

    Initially introduced in China on March 18, Xiaomi Black Shark 2 can be purchased from Europe beginning March 28, at 6.00 PM CET. You’ll be able to buy the phone from every European country where Xiaomi officially sells its phone, and here is how much you’ll have to pay.

    The Black Shark 2 with 8GB RAM and 128GB internal memory will be available for purchase for €549, while the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage will cost €649. For customers in the UK, the smartphone will be available for £479 and £559, respectively.

    If you take away its gaming-related features, the Black Shark 2 remains a very powerful flagship smartphone, so even if you’re not a gamer, it can be a great alternative to Samsung, LG and Huawei’s flagships.

    Speaking of gaming features, Xiaomi explains that the Black Shark 2 embeds the only direct touch liquid cooling system in the work. Also, the phone’s display benefits from the world’s lowest latency touch.

    As far as US availability goes, we doubt this will come in the United States at all since Xiaomi hasn’t yet officially entered the market, although it repeatedly said it will eventually happen.

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  • DiSa unveils integrated mobile warranty program

    DiSa unveils integrated mobile warranty program

    Singapore-based digital security company DiSa Limited aims to pioneer a new integrated mobile phone warranty program, and has signed up M1 as the first operator to offer the program to its mobile users.

    The new insurance offering, developed to tackle the rising global trend of e-wallet theft, will allow victims of theft of their e-wallets to make a claim for an amount up to the retail cot of the phone.

    Every phone covered under the warranty program will be tagged with DiSa’s encrypted 3S smart barcode, which is designed to prevent invalid returns.

    “DiSa is delighted to provide this unique Cyber Theft Warranty to M1 customers. With the proliferation of mobile payments, more and more phone users are finding themselves exposed to cybercrimes, some at very sophisticated levels,” DiSa group executive Eddie Chng said.

    He noted that the proliferation of e-wallets, the rising tide of mobile fraud and the  growing use of smartphones for two-factor identification exposers smartphone owners to significant risks if their device is stolen.

    “DiSa is confident that our solution will give peace of mind to smartphone users and add value to M1’s services.”

    Worldpay estimates that payment by e-wallets makes up 10% of e-commerce spending in Singapore.

    But research from the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore found that a wide majority of consumers are concerned about the risk of having their financial and personal information exposed through malware infected mobile devices.

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  • Singapore, Australia to collaborate on FinTech development

    Singapore, Australia to collaborate on FinTech development

    Singapore FinTech Association (SFA) and FinTech Australia (FA) have agreed to further strengthen opportunities for FinTech firms across both countries.

    An MoU between the two parties aims to contribute to the development of the FinTech industry in general across ASEAN and Australia. They will collaborate from time to time on particular initiatives relating to the FinTech industry.

    The two bodies have also arranged to seek input and opinions from each other, in respect of matters relating to the FinTech industry and invite each other to participate in relevant events and support each other in interfacing regulators and other bodies.

    According to the EY FinTech Australia Census 2018, Singapore is among the top four markets that Australian FinTechs are looking to expand into.

    “Australia and Singapore have long enjoyed a strong and vibrant relationship, it is now timely to extend that cooperative relationship to the FinTech industry.”

    “The shared capabilities and high levels of collaboration between Melbourne and Singapore will pave the way for continued two-way knowledge sharing and long term success for FinTech businesses in both markets,” SFA president Chia Hock Lai said.

    FA general manager Rebecca Schot-Guppy added that, “FA is proud to be building the network for our members by signing an MoU with the SFA. Singapore is seen by Australian FinTechs as a top four region for expansion and by signing this agreement we hope it fosters opportunities for our members. We look forward to working with the SFA.”

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  • Unitel introduces eSIMs to Laos market

    Unitel introduces eSIMs to Laos market

    Vietnamese military-owned operator Viettel has announced that its subsidiary in Laos Unitel has become the first mobile operator in the market to launch eSIM technology.

    The Unitel eSIM service was introduced at the beginning of March, and Unitel is aiming to encourage at least 10,000 customers to exchange their physical SIMs for eSIMs by the end of 2020.

    With the launch, Laos became the seventh of the 10 ASEAN member states to introduce eSIM technology.

    It is also the fourth market in Southeast Asia that Viettel has introduced eSIMs to. The company and its subsidiaries were the first mobile operators to offer the technology in Myanmar, Vietnam and Cambodia.

    Meanwhile another Viettel mobile brand in Laos, Metfone, has become the first operator in the market to launch mobile credit top ups using QR code scanning rather than scratch cards.

    Viettel deputy general director Tao Duc Thang said the introduction of eSIM technology marks the beginning stages of Viettel’s goal of digitally transforming the global telecommunications landscape, and becoming a pioneer in IoT technologies.

    “Viettel has well-prepared platforms and infrastructure and has made digital transformations in its fields such as telecommunications and information technology,” he said.

    “This includes application of the latest technologies in the world for a more convenient life.”

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  • ZTE swings back to black in Q1

    ZTE swings back to black in Q1

    ZTE expects to have swung back to profit in the first quarter, after reporting an annual loss in 2018 as a result of the temporary ban on its import of components from US vendors.

    The Chinese vendor estimates a net profit for the first quarter of 800 million yuan ($118.9 million) to 1.2 billion yuan, which compares to a profit of 1.69 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2018.

    The first quarter results are nevertheless an improvement on the 6.98 billion yuan ($1.04 billion) loss the company recorded for the full year 2018.

    ZTE blamed its performance on the impact of the ban on the import of components from US companies imposed by the US government due to ZTE allegedly violating US sanctions on Iran by conspiring to sell equipment with US components in the market, as well as the $1 billion settlement agreement ZTE reached to have this ban overturned.

    Revenue for the year  meanwhile fell 21.4% to 85.51 billion yuan despite signs of recovery in ZTE’s major businesses of wireless networks, wireline networks and mobile devices.

    ZET has meanwhile announced it has been intensifying its investment in 5G research and development.

    The company has so far submitted more than 7,000 5G standard proposals and 3,000 5G patent applications to international organizations, and has declared over 1,200 standards of 5G standard-essential patents to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).

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  • Thailand delays 700-MHz auction

    Thailand delays 700-MHz auction

    Thai telecom regulator NBTC has postponed plans to hold a 700-MHz auction for at least three months due to delays establishing details of the auction terms.

    The regulator no longer expects to be able to hold the 700-MHz auction in May as originally planned, citing comments from the NBTC’s secretary-general.

    Instead the earliest timeline for the auction date may be August or September, as related conditions of the auction, including the reserve price, will not be concluded until May.

    Other terms which still need to be established including the process for recalling 700-MHz spectrum to be auctioned and the compensation regime for companies affected by the recall. The regulator needs at least three months to complete related procedures.

    According to the report, the delay is also aimed at giving operators more time to arrange bank guarantees.

    The NBTC plans to push on with the auction regardless of the official outcome 2019 Thai general elections –  Thailand’s first general election since the 2014 coup – which was held on Sunday.

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  • McDonald’s buys tech firm

    McDonald’s buys tech firm

    McDonald’s is set to purchase US/Israeli personalisation vendor Dynamic Yield in an attempt to boost drive-thru sales.

    The deal, reportedly worth more than US$300 million, will help the fast food vendor personalise outdoor digital drive-thru menu displays. The tech will analyse a range of variables in order to determine the most persuasive additional items to suggest to customers placing orders.

    “With this acquisition, we’re expanding both our ability to increase the role technology and data will play in our future and the speed with which we’ll be able to implement our vision of creating more personalised experiences for our customers,” said McDonald’s president and CEO Steve Easterbrook.

    Dynamic Yield has served multiple online retailers, including LVMH-owned cosmetics retailer Sephora and furniture giant Ikea. It has more than 300 clients worldwide.

    The technology will be rolled out in drive thrus at US restaurants this year before expanding to other leading international markets.

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  • Twitter for iOS just gained a black “Lights Out” mode

    Twitter for iOS just gained a black “Lights Out” mode

    Twitter has offered a native Dark Mode option for quite some time now, but today the popular feature is getting one highly-requested upgrade which could help improve your smartphone’s battery life.

    After previously teasing the feature, today Twitter announced that it’s rolling out a new “Lights Out” mode which ditches the blue color used by the standard Dark Mode and replaces it with a pure black background.

    To many, this means that the app’s built-in Dark Mode will now be much more aesthetically pleasing. It also means that OLED displays will directly turn off pixels, thus providing true-black tones and saving a bit of battery in the process which is always a good thing.

    In order to access it, users simply need to head to the ‘Display and sound’ menu within Settings, activate Dark Mode, and then select “Lights Out.” The original Blue theme, now called “Dim,” is still available for those who prefer it.

    The new Lights Out option is rolling out today to iPhone and iPad users. A timeline for Android is yet to be announced.

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  • The Razer Phone 3 delayed because of 5G

    The Razer Phone 3 delayed because of 5G

    Most of Razer’s mobile division staff were either relocated or laid off last month, sparking speculation that the brand’s next smartphone may have been canceled. Last week, though, a report claimed that Razer had simply delayed its next-gen device and now the reason for this may have been revealed.

    In a recent interview with Engadget, Razer CEO Min-Liang Tim suggested that buying a gaming smartphone right now may not be the best idea. He believes that gamers looking to purchase a device this year will “want to buy a 5G phone,” but purchasing one now means that there’s “no network to use it on.”

    In the eyes of Razer, this essentially makes the higher price that 5G smartphones command unjustifiable at the moment. It also means that there’s less demand for 4G-ready gaming smartphones because consumers are waiting for 5G alternatives to become widely available.

    Like its predecessors, the Razer Phone 3 wasn’t expected to arrive until mid-October or early November. But considering Razer’s current view on 5G networks, the smartphone now probably won’t make its debut until early 2020. By then, 5G networks should be up and running across the globe and there should be sufficient demand for such a device.

  • YouTube Music update brings option to download music to your phone

    YouTube Music update brings option to download music to your phone

    YouTube Music can’t compete with music players with complex, yet easy-to-access, library management when it comes to local playback, but it’s always nice to know that you have more options.

    Up until recently, you wouldn’t have that choice with YouTube Music, Google’s music streaming service. However, Google released several updates that at some point added a new feature that would allow users to play music files from their phones.

    You’ll be able to play just about any type of file that Google Play Music supported, including MP3, Ogg, WAV, M4A, and FLAC. Using YouTube Music to play music files directly from your smartphone is quite easy. Simply use a file manager to get to where your music is stored and choose YouTube Music as the default music player, or opt to open the file with this app “Just once.”

    It’s unclear whether this is the real deal or just a test since the changes don’t appear in any of the app’s change logs in the Google Play Store, but feel free to check it out. Also, don’t forget to give YouTube Music permission to access photos, media, and files on your device when asked.

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  • How to open links in external browser with Facebook Messenger

    How to open links in external browser with Facebook Messenger

    For a while now, both the Facebook and Messenger app have been opening links in their own, internal browser — a simple webview window, which doesn’t support multiple tabs and is there to allow you to quickly interact with something on the web, and even allow said item to communicate back to your Facebook app instantly.

    That said, a lot of people find the internal browser annoying. Why? Well, sometimes you just tap on a YouTube video only to be greeted by a webview window, which opens a desktop version of the YouTube site that you are not even logged into. Lame. Sometimes, you want to open a web page in your Chrome or Safari browser so that it can stay there as an open tab. Other times, you get so into the information you are reading about that you want to quickly open a few more tabs on it and do a deeper research… oops, you can’t — you are not in your browser of choice, you are in Facebook’s webview.

    Needless to say, many users out there would prefer it if their links simply open in a default app of choice — if it’s a YouTube link, just have it open the video in the YouTube app; if it’s a web link, just launch it in Chrome or Safari.

    Well, there’s a solution for that problem… if you are on Android. That’s right, for some odd reason, Facebook does not allow iPhone users to opt out of using its internal browser. If you are on iOS, you are forced to manually swap apps, though it’s not as slow or painful as it may sound.

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  • Instagram is preparing to implement a new feature

    Instagram is preparing to implement a new feature

    Instagram is an already hugely popular photo and video-sharing social networking service, with over 1 billion monthly active users as of last year, but believe it or not, there’s still plenty of room for growth, mostly due to the many security and privacy scandals surrounding its parent company’s core platform. At the same time, it’s pretty crazy to think Instagram has reached this insane level of mainstream success without ever offering some basic features.

    Case in point, a fast-forward option for those 15-second clips you can add to your stories or the up to 60-second videos allowed to be uploaded to one’s Instagram profile. Incredibly enough, that’s not yet a thing, even though the video social component has enriched Instagram’s focus and functionality years ago. But according to a Twitter userknown for her very reliable work discovering unreleased features for apps like Facebook and Instagram, the long-awaited video seek bar is currently being tested internally.

    Jane Manchun Wong has the GIF to prove that claim, and indeed, the feature works as expected, with no unnecessary bells and whistles. Unfortunately, we can’t be sure this will roll out to the masses anytime soon, although given its simplicity and potential popularity, we don’t see what could possibly hold off its wide-scale rollout. Once that happens, you’ll presumably be able to both go forward and back in time in any given Instagram video instead of waiting for the whole thing to unfold, then play it back from the beginning if only a small part of it caught your attention.

    Interestingly, this seems to be only one of several Instagram add-ons in the pipeline, alongside a delay and warning for posting comments identified as potentially offensive, a new “Trusted Devices” section in the app’s two-factor authentication settings, and a couple of changes targeting Creator Accounts, aka high-profile influencers. It remains to be seen how many of these features will go public and when.

  • Sony Mobile insists the end is not near after it closes a smartphone plant

    Sony Mobile insists the end is not near after it closes a smartphone plant

    While Sony’s fall from grace in the global mobile industry hasn’t been as dramatic as those suffered by Nokia, BlackBerry, and even HTC, it’s more than obvious the Japan-based tech and entertainment behemoth needs to do something about its smartphone division. Unfortunately, as the company’s various attempts at revising and transforming the Xperia portfolio over the last few years have failed to turn a profit, the time has come for more drastic austerity measures.

    After laying off 200 employees in Europe to cut costs across a number of mobile business areas, Sony has confirmed long-rumored plans to close an entire factory in China earlier today. The Beijing plant will reportedly cease all smartphone manufacturing activities in “the next few days”, although Sony does intend to “shift production” to a different factory in Thailand in a move expected to greatly contribute to reducing expenses by around 50 percent.

    The ultimate goal is to make the smartphone division profitable again as early as 2020 after years and years of bleeding serious money, but it remains to be seen how much of a mobile business Sony will be left with when that happens. According to the latest official estimates, yearly Xperia shipments are down to as little as 6.5 million units. To put that number into perspective, Samsung’s Galaxy S10 lineup was projected to hit 10 million global unit sales in just its first month of availability.

    Of course, Sony has repeatedly claimed in the past year or so it has no intention to abandon the smartphone market on the eve of a 5G revolution. Once again, the company is highlighting its strategic measures are simply meant to strengthen the business rather than killing it piece by piece. And while it’s definitely not unprecedented to see a major smartphone vendor cut its Chinese costs, it remains unclear exactly how much of Sony’s Bejing operations will “shift” to Thailand.

    Either way, this probably won’t impact the Xperia 1 launch or even the rumored Xperia 2. What comes next, however, is anyone’s guess.