Asian Tech Roundup: Meet China’s OpenAI rival

Plus: Samsung’s latest flagship S25 smartphones

Welcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at DeepSeek-R1, the open source Chinese LLM that it’s makers claim is the equal of OpenAI o1, and also Samsung’s latest smartphones.

China's DeepSeek claims its DeepSeek-R1 model rivals OpenAI’s o1 frontier LLM in tasks including maths, coding and reasoning. Plus it’s open source, free to download, and claims to be 90-95% less expensive to run than the US company’s effort, marking a significant disruption to the GenAI landscape.

Plus, Samsung released its latest S25 smartphone range to a mixed reception. Sure the AI features are better than before, but what about the hardware? There are faster chipsets but no major updates to the camera or design. Is it worth the price of upgrading?

China

• China’s DeepSeek has released an open source reasoning LLM called DeepSeek-R1 that it claims is the equal of OpenAI’s o1 in maths, coding and reasoning tasks, as well as being massively cheaper. Source
• Chinese retailers are reportedly cutting the price of iPhones and other premium smartphones to make them eligible for a government subsidy for consumers. Source
• China plans to build a solar power plant in space, with components carried into geostationary orbit using large rockets. Source
• The superior quality of China's software engineers and startups is behind the country's advantage EV production, according to Pan Jian, co-chairman of CATL, the world's largest battery maker. Source
• Alibaba's Kubernetes-based Cloud Container Compute Service (ACS) is now available outside China. Source
• ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is reportedly gearing up for an ambitious push into AI infrastructure, planning to invest over $12 billion globally in 2025. Source

India

• India has become the fourth country to dock two spacecraft in Earth orbit. Source
• India’s solar generating capacity grew by 24.5 GW last year, its highest growth yet. The country also added 3.4 GW of wind capacity, an increase of more than 20%. Source
• OpenAI has told a high court in India that it has no case to answer in a copyright suit brought by publisher ANI since OpenAI had no presence in the country. It said that removing ANI content from training data, as the publisher is seeking, would violate US law. Source
• Google is to buy 200,000 tons of carbon removal credits by 2030 from two Indian biochar firms, Varaha and Charm Industrial . Source
• An Indian court has suspended a ruling against Meta's sharing of WhatsApp data with its other apps. Last week Meta had said it might have to pause or roll back some features for India if the ban goes ahead. Source
• Telecom firm Reliance Jio saw a 22% leap in data traffic in the last quarter. It grew year-over-year from 38.1 billion GB a year ago to 45.5 billion GB in the latest quarter, thanks mainly to new 5G subscribers. Source
• Reliance Jio's CEO played down the fact that India's decision to auction spectrum for satellite services could see it lose out to Starlink. Source
• Tata has acquired a 60% stake in the Indian arm of Taiwanese Apple manufacturer Pegatron as it expands its iPhone manufacturing capacity in India. Source
• Software services provider Tech Mahindra reported lower-than-expected revenues for the latest quarter, blaming slow uptake by the telecom sector. Source
• But Wipro’s revenues beat analysts’ estimates thanks mainly to its banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) division in the Americas. Source
• Fintech firm Paytm posted a loss of Rs 2.04 billion for the quarter ending in December, halving its losses from the previous quarter. The company, which has had run-ins over compliance with the Reserve Bank of India, expects to be profitable this year. Source
• The Samsung Health app now enables users to access their digital health records directly, allowing “data sharing with doctors and caretakers in a secure manner anytime”. However, some are concerned about privacy since health data will be shared between three entities: the Samsung Health app, integrator Eka Care and the ABDM digital health platform. Source
• The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has accused officials of failing to properly investigate Taiwanese Apple supplier Foxconn over hiring practices in India that have excluded married women. Source

Indonesia

• Indonesia plans to follow the lead of Australia and ban young people from creating social media accounts. Source
• Indonesia’s antitrust authority has fined Google 202 billion rupiah ($12.37 million) for requiring app developers to use Google Pay Billing rather than other cheaper payment systems. Source

Japan

• A 58-year-old man was arrested for selling modified Nintendo Switch consoles. He is accused of modifying second-hand Switch circuit boards and selling them with pirated games pre-installed. Source
• SoftBank is to commit $19 billion to Stargate, a joint venture to develop AI datacentres in the US. Source

North Korea

• The FBI has warned that North Korean IT workers who have tricked their way into US companies are stealing code and extorting their employees. Source
• Meanwhile the US DOJ announced indictments against five men for fraudulently obtaining remote credentials to work with American companies. Source

South Korea

• Samsung has released its latest S25 series smartphones, which include the base S25, S25+, and the S25 Ultra. Source
• Samsung and LG are reportedly considering moving some manufacturing processes from their Mexico plants to the US after Trump threatened sanctions. Source
• SK Hynix shares fell, despite an upbeat forecast for sales of high-end semiconductors, after the company warned of declining demand for commodity memory chips. Source

Taiwan

• Staff had to be evacuated by TSMC, the world's largest chipmaker, after an earthquake. Damage to critical equipment is reported to be minimal, but production schedules are likely to see delays. Source
• HTC is to sell part of its business producing extended reality (XR) headsets and glasses to Google, with some staff moving to the US. Source

Other Asia

• Pakistan has launched its first home-built observation satellite. Source
• Wall Street bank Citi expects a 10% increase in fundraising volumes in the technology, media and telecom sector in Asia in 2025, driven by AI and activity in in India and Taiwan. Source
• ByteDance is asking Chinese staff at its Singapore headquarters to pay tax in China or risk losing their ability to cash out stock options. Source