Asian Tech Roundup: Hey parents, that’s enough screen time, say Indian kids

Plus: Chinese scientists in the US should return to China, says famous mathematician

Welcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at how 80% of Indian children surveyed say their parents spend too much time on their smartphones.

Australia

• The Australian government has unveiled an initiative to address the power imbalance between tech giants and local media companies. Source
• Australia has fined crypto exchange Kraken A$8 million for unlawfully issuing credit lines to customers. Source

China

• Chinese scientists working in the US feel discriminated against and should return to China, say ex-Harvard mathematician Yau Shing-Tung. Source
• The US government is likely to vote through a bill that includes $3 billion to remove and replace equipment made by Huawei and ZTE from the country’s telecoms infrastructure. Source
• China has launched an anti-monopoly investigation into Nvidia over the US chipmaker’s 2020 acquisition of Israeli firm Mellanox Technologies. Source
• Nvidia has denied reports that it plans to reduce supplies to China . Source
• US officials say Chinese hackers in the Salt Typhoon incident still have a presence in America’s largest telecom and internet providers despite having been discovered weeks ago. Source
• Hong Kong has started operations at its Artificial Intelligence Supercomputing Centre (AISC) which aims to be delivering 3,000 petaflops of compute power next year. Source
• Researchers have discovered Chinese spyware targeting Android devices. Source
• Temu is now the most downloaded app in Nigeria. Source

India

• 8 out of 10 Indian children favour controls to regulate their parents’ smartphone habits, according to a study. Indian parents on average spend five hours a day on their phones. Source
• Importers of laptops, tablets and small-form computers will require fresh import authorisation for the coming financial year. Source
• The Linux Foundation is to launch an Indian division to promote open source software in the country. Source
• The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), a project by the Indian government to enhance competition in ecommerce, is to start levying a transaction fee of Rs1.5 on transactions above Rs250 from January. The fee will be paid by sellers on the platform. Source.
• UK cloud services provider Civo has launched a new cloud region in Mumbai. Source
• Samsung which is being investigated by the Competition Commission of India has accused the authorities of illegally detaining staff and accessing data. Source
• The Indian government appears to be moving towards a more prescriptive regulatory approach to AI. Source

Japan

• Japan is to introduce a new law to regulate technology forms with 40 million users per month or more. It covers app stores, operating systems, browsers and search engines, and will prohibit the blocking new entrants and giving favouring the companies' own services. Source
• Paytm Singapore, a subsidiary of the Indian online payments and services company Paytm, is to sell its stock in Japanese payments firm PayPay to SoftBank for 41.9 billion yen ($270 million). Source
• Publisher Kadokawa has apparently paid $2.98 million to Russian hackers after a cyberattack in June. Source
• Sony has upped its forecast revenues thanks to a strong performance by its gaming and music divisions. Source

South Korea

• Amazon has partnered with Hyundai dealerships to allow US customers people to buy the Korean automaker’s vehicles directly from the ecommerce giant through its new Amazon Auto service. Deals with other car manufacturers are expected to follow. Source
• Rivals Samsung and SK Hynix are coming together to standardise processing-in-memory (PIM) for AI processing. Source

Taiwan

• Taiwan’s TSMC and SMIC took foundry market share from South Korea’s Samsung thanks to the launch of new flagship smartphones using their 3nm technology. Source
• TSMC’s sales for the year to the end of November were NT$2,616.14 billion ($80.40 billion) up 31.8% year-on-year. Source

Vietnam

• Vietnam and Singapore are discussing plans for new undersea fibre-optic cables to boost the region's datacentre industry, Reuters reports. Source
• Tired of waiting for the government to roll out EV charging infrastructure, some entrepreneurs and small investors are doing it themselves. Source

Other Asia

• Indonesia: Telecoms operator XL Axiatais to merge with rival Smartfrento create a new entity called XLSmart Telecom Sejahtera. Source
• Singapore: A tech failure in an automated border control system caused chaos at the border between Malaysia and Singapore. Source
• Thailand: A subsidiary of Taiwanese tech supplier Foxconn is to produce equipment for the chip sector in two new factories in Thailand. Source
• Malaysia has launched a national AI office to provide strategic planning, R&D and regulatory oversight. Initial plans include a code of ethics, a regulatory framework and a five-year AI technology action plan. Source