Asian Tech Roundup: Microsoft hikes prices

Plus, Australia builds 'secret' cloud

Australia is building a "top secret" cloud to host intelligence data and share it with the US and UK. Andrew Shearer, director-general of national intelligence, announced the news at an event in Washington. Source

China is making censorship fun, publishing a quiz for citizens testing them on the Middle Kingdom's internet laws and regulations. Source
Chinese marketplace Temu is suing domestic rival Shein in the USA over anticompetitive practices. Source

Apple is pushing back against the decision to mandate the USB-C charging standard in all new smartphones, lobbying for an exemption or delayed enforcement. Source
The Indian space agency, ISRO, has successfully returned Chandrayaan-3's propulsion module into a high orbit around Earth. Source
Foxconn and Pegatron have paused iPhone production at their factories near Chennai, due to heavy rains. Source
Vaishali Kasture, whom Amazon appointed as the interim head of AWS India and South Asia, has left the firm after seven months in post. Source
OpenAI is apparently seeking to establish a local presence in India. The company has also been working with former Twitter India head Rishi Jaitly in taks with the government about AI policy. Source

X (formerly Twitter) CEO Linda Yaccarino has said the company plans to launch an app development team in Japan and will start hiring engineers next year. Source
Nvidia plans to open an R&D centre in Japan dedicated to AI, CEO Jensen Huang has said. Source
JAXA, the Japanese space agency, has scheduled its Smart Lander to land on the moon on 20th January 2024. The Lander was launched on 7th September. Source
Japan has inaugurated its joint fusion reactor project with the EU, JT-60SA, in Naka, creating around 140m³ of plasma in 10 seconds. Source
Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will work together on cybersecurity and AI systems. Source
Fujitsu is to sell its chip packaging unit, Shinko Electric Industries, to a consortium led by Japan Investment Corp in a ¥700 billion (£3.9 billion) deal. Source

Microsoft has hiked prices for its cloud services across Asia, in line with its policy of keeping parity with US dollar prices. Price rises will vary from 6% in India to 20% in Japan. Source
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called Southeast Asia a potentially strong market for AI and chips, at a meeting in Malaysia. Source
Apple is apparently considering moving resources for iPad product development to Vietnam, as an alternative manufacturing hub to China. Source
Cambodia is to roll out a draft data protection law, although the proposal is mired in controversy and fears of spying. Source
South Korea: ASML and Samsung have signed a memorandum of understanding to invest KRW1 trillion (£609.8 million) to build a research centre in Seoul, to develop next-generation memory chip equipment using extreme ultraviolet lithography technologies. Source