Latest news with #Cissy
Nikkei Asia
3 days ago
- Business
- Nikkei Asia
TikTok Shop in Japan and Danang's hub dreams
Hello everyone, this is Cissy in Hong Kong, your #techAsia host this week. In recent months, China's live commerce industry has continued to gain ground, starkly contrasting with global markets. In the first six months of the year, China's online retail sales exceeded 7.4 trillion yuan ($1.03 trillion), up 8.5%, partially fueled by live commerce and instant retail. A recent Cyberspace Administration report even highlighted live commerce as a "vital driver of consumption and export." Overseas, even foreign streamers are benefiting from China's robust and efficient supply chain, with many products shipped directly from China. For instance, Southeast Asian customers ordering via a TikTok live stream can receive their purchases in just five or six days. In China, cross-border e-commerce is booming, with 5,080 new companies registered in the segment in early 2025, almost doubling from the same time in 2024. Since the start of the year, TikTok Shop has expanded into Mexico, Brazil and Japan, leveraging its "short video plus live streaming" model to blend entertainment and shopping to lure global consumers. In contrast, the U.S. and Europe have been laggards in adopting live commerce. Japan also appears less than keen to jump on the bandwagon. Launched in Japan in late June, TikTok Shop described its performance there as "very impressive." But the company didn't disclose its first-month gross merchandise value (GMV), and other signs point to a less rosy picture. TikTok trepidation TikTok's live commerce feature launched in Japan a month ago amid high expectations that it would challenge e-commerce giants. But the foray appears to be faltering as many companies are reluctant to try a marketing medium that remains relatively untested in the country, writes Nikkei's Ryo Sato. Although TikTok users in Japan spend an average of 44 minutes a day on the app, double the figure for Instagram, that hasn't translated into sales. Early adopters included Unilever Japan, Ya-Man, Lacoste Japan and Nissin Foods, but while the service got off to a brisk start, the number of companies joining has since fallen off. The slow uptake stems from three key hurdles. First, companies doubt live commerce will catch on in Japan's cautious market. Second, hesitation persists due to TikTok's Chinese ownership, raising concerns about buyer trust. Third, the need for specialized talent and facilities to run live streams poses logistical challenges for businesses. Cost of doing business Donald Trump said he may allow Nvidia to sell a more advanced artificial intelligence chip in China, after confirming he had "negotiated a little deal" to give the U.S. a share of the chipmaker's revenues from the country, write the Financial Times' Demetri Sevastopulo and Michael Acton. The unprecedented deal the president struck with Nvidia's chief executive Jensen Huang, revealed by the FT, involves the U.S. taking 15% of Chinese sales of its H20 chip, which it introduced in 2023 to comply with Biden-era export controls. The performance of the H20 chips sold to China is restricted compared with those available to U.S. customers. Trump on Monday said that he planned to discuss a new deal with Huang to allow Nvidia to sell chips to China based on its latest, and most advanced, Blackwell platform. Approval would unlock billions of dollars in sales for Nvidia after lobbying by Huang for access to the Chinese market, despite security concerns in Washington. Race for the stars Rocket Lab, a New Zealand-founded, California-based aerospace company, is making waves in Asia, competing head-on with Japanese launch providers, as Japan's satellite operators increasingly rely on Rocket Lab's services to boost its regional presence, writes Nikkei Asia's Mitsuru Obe. Japanese players like Canon's Space One, Toyota-backed Interstellar Technologies and a Honda research unit, which tested vertical takeoff and landing in June, are emerging but lag in terms of global outreach as they traditionally focused on domestic needs. Rocket Lab's focus on cost and speed positions it to capture more of Asia's expanding space market. In 2024, Rocket Lab's primary launch site in New Zealand made it the world's fourth most-active launch market, surpassing Japan, which ranked fifth. The company's agility in seizing opportunities - building satellites, selling components, and launching low-cost missions to Mars and Venus - sets it apart. Its 18-meter Electron rocket, capable of carrying 300 kilograms, has become the second most-used launch vehicle globally after SpaceX's Falcon 9, with over 56 orbital launches since 2017. Thinking big Danang, renowned for its soft sand, clear waters, and iconic Golden Bridge, is looking to transform itself into Vietnam's finance, technology and trade hub. In an exclusive interview with Nikkei Asia's Yuji Nitta and Mai Nguyen, Luong Nguyen Minh Triet, chairman of the Danang People's Committee, outlined plans for an International Financial Center (IFC) to drive the city's growth and support Vietnam's goal of double-digit GDP expansion from 2026. The IFC, approved by Vietnam's top leaders alongside one in Ho Chi Minh City, will specialize in green finance, fintech, digital assets, and financial innovation. It will be headquartered in a 22-story building at Danang Software Park 2, with additional infrastructure planned on the Son Tra peninsula. To bolster the IFC, Danang is exploring artificial islands in Danang Bay to expand its financial ecosystem. This ambitious shift aims to attract global capital, positioning the city as a key player in Southeast Asia's economic landscape. China hits the gas on automotive chips Welcome to the Tech Latest podcast. Hosted by our tech coverage veterans, Katey Creel and Shotaro Tani, every Tuesday we deliver the hottest trends and news from the sector. In this episode, our host Katey speaks with Hong Kong correspondent Cissy Zhou about how Chinese automakers are ramping up their push to live without Nvidia chips. Find us on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Voicy | YouTube | YouTube Music Suggested reads 1. Tencent says it has ample chips for AI training amid reported purchase halt (Nikkei Asia) 2. Beijing puts pressure on Chinese tech giants over purchases of Nvidia's H20 chips (FT) 3. Applied Materials sued by China rival over alleged trade secrets theft (Nikkei Asia) 4. South Korea's Upstage enters global AI race (FT) 5. SMIC says more Chinese chip players 'perfectly' replacing foreign rivals (Nikkei Asia) 6. Indosat opens AI center in Papua in symbol of 'digital awakening' (Nikkei Asia) 7. Manus and Benchmark: the AI deal that upset China and the US (FT) 8. Synopsys says new era dawning in chip design due to AI, robotics demand (Nikkei Asia) 9. India's IT services groups race to reinvent themselves for AI age (FT) 10. China wants US to relax export controls on chips as part of trade deal (FT)
Nikkei Asia
10-07-2025
- Automotive
- Nikkei Asia
Foxconn eyes Japan-made EVs and China's AI evolves
Hello everyone, this is Cissy from Hong Kong. Monday was a big day for BYD, as it marked the first anniversary of the Chinese EV champion's Thailand factory. It delivered its 90,000th vehicle in Thailand, a D9 MPV from its premium sub-brand Denza, after officially entering the Southeast Asian nation in 2022. BYD is also set to begin assembling electric vehicles at its new factory in Brazil, its largest overseas market, as early as this month. The company aims to produce 50,000 vehicles there this year, a move designed to reduce reliance on imports as tariffs increase. BYD has set a total sales target of 5.5 million vehicles for this year. In the first half of this year, the company sold approximately 2.146 million vehicles, achieving nearly 40% of its annual goal. For overseas markets, BYD aims to sell more than 800,000 vehicles in 2025. The company said its overseas sales for the first six months of this year had exceeded 470,000 vehicles. While BYD is making rapid progress in overseas markets, its Japanese counterpart Nissan has been struggling. It is attempting a comprehensive overhaul while facing persistent challenges that include mounting financial losses and falling sales, particularly in the U.S. and China. The automaker has been cutting jobs and shutting down some factories, as well as shifting its strategy to prioritize profitability over sheer sales numbers. Just-in-time cooperation? Amid a sweeping global restructuring that would reduce its final assembly plants from 17 to 10, Nissan Motor appears to have found a potential savior in Foxconn, who is in talks with Nissan to begin producing its own electric vehicles at Nissan's Oppama plant in Yokosuka, one of the automaker's key facilities, write Nikkei's staff writers. This collaboration could allow Nissan to improve utilization rates at the Oppama site by allocating surplus production lines to Foxconn. It would also help protect jobs, as shutting down the Oppama facility would be costly for the company and its workforce. Foxconn has been aggressively expanding into electric vehicle manufacturing through a series of joint ventures around the world. In 2024, the company acquired a 50% stake in a chassis subsidiary of German auto parts giant ZF. A joint venture with Nissan is also being considered for the use of the Oppama plant. Painful spikes The chief executive of Hitachi Energy has warned that Big Tech's spiking electricity use as it trains artificial intelligence must be reined in by governments in order to maintain stable supplies, writes the Financial Times' Harry Dempsey. Andreas Schierenbeck, who heads up the world's largest transformer maker, said that no other industry would be allowed as volatile a use of power as the AI sector. Huge surges in power demand at data centers training AI models, along with a bumpy renewable energy supply, meant "volatility on top of volatility" was making it challenging to keep the lights on, Schierenbeck told the FT. "AI data centers are very, very different from these office data centers because they really spike up," he said. "If you start your AI algorithm to learn and give them data to digest, they're peaking in seconds and going up to 10 times what they have normally used. "No user from an industry point of view would be allowed to have this kind of behavior -- if you want to start a smelter, you have to call the utility ahead," Schierenbeck added, while advocating for data centers to have similar rules applied to them by governments. AI's next generation The "DeepSeek moment" has revived investors' appetite for Chinese tech stocks, which had languished since Beijing's crackdown on the once-glittering sector. But some of the latest AI darlings, such as Manus, look to distance themselves from China in a bid to expand overseas, writes Nikkei Asia's Cissy Zhou. Since its sudden rise to fame, Manus has quietly moved its headquarters to Singapore and has started to aggressively recruit local talent this month, while at the same time laying off more than half of its employees in China, except some key AI engineers, according to people familiar with the matter. The move comes as the startup seeks international investment in the face of U.S. restrictions on funding Chinese AI companies. More broadly, China's appetite for AI-driven capital expenditure remains robust, despite Washington's restrictions on shipments of Nvidia's H20 chips, according to research by Jefferies. The investment bank said China has built up sufficient chip inventories to sustain data center growth at least through the first half of 2026. Supercharged ambitions V-GREEN, the company that runs charging stations for VinFast's electric cars and bikes, aims to expand its network in its home market of Vietnam more than sixfold to 1 million ports in three years, write Nikkei's Yuji Nitta and Mai Nguyen. The target highlights automaker VinFast's ambitious targets for its home country, where government officials are slowly rolling out policies to support electric vehicle adoption. The automaker sold nearly 90,000 vehicles in Vietnam last year and aims to at least double that figure this year. V-GREEN has also recently expanded to the Philippines and Indonesia, though the company says it is facing challenges in terms of technical standards, regulatory frameworks and legal procedures in overseas markets. Japan reboots its robot vision as humanoid era fails to deliver Welcome to the Tech Latest podcast. Hosted by our tech coverage veterans, Katey Creel and Akito Tanaka, every Tuesday we deliver the hottest trends and news from the sector. In this episode, Akito speaks with Tokyo correspondent Ryohtaroh Satoh about how Japan's labor shortages and lagging productivity have led the country's robotics industry to favor practical service robots over flashy humanoid models. Find us on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Voicy | YouTube | YouTube Music Suggested reads 1. Indonesia's growing exodus of skilled talent worries local industries (Nikkei Asia) 2. Why carmakers need to bring back buttons (FT) 3. Samsung profits take big hit from US chip controls and AI memory shortfalls (FT) 4. Singapore's DayOne Data Centers eyes Japan, Thailand for growth (Nikkei Asia) 5. Toray unit debuts advanced chip analysis services in US (Nikkei Asia) 6. OpenAI clamps down on security after foreign spying threats (FT) 7. Japan, UK firms seek to build 'world's first' floating data center (Nikkei Asia) 8. Shein files for Hong Kong IPO to pressure UK to save London listing (FT) 9. Apple supplier Lens Tech opens 4% up on first Hong Kong trading day (Nikkei Asia) 10. Chip software makers say US restrictions on sales to China lifted (FT)
Nikkei Asia
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Nikkei Asia
TSMC's rosy outlook and Huawei's investment web
Hello everyone, this is Cissy from Hong Kong. This week, the Hong Kong police are on high alert again as Wednesday marked the 36th anniversary of Beijing's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in and around Tiananmen Square in the Chinese capital. Although public mourning over the tragedy has diminished since the implementation of the National Security Law in 2020, some pro-democracy individuals still have been trying in their own ways to commemorate those who were killed. For example, one shop was selling white candles -- like those traditionally used for candlelight vigils to mark the anniversary -- for 6.40 Hong Kong dollars each. Some individuals stopped by Victoria Park, where people had gathered to commemorate the victims of the crackdown for 30 years, with white flowers, but they were soon escorted away by the police. In Causeway Bay, the usual starting point for most protests over the past 30 years, a performance artist chewing gum with her hands in pockets was searched by police and then escorted to a subway station. Even more upsetting is the case of the owner of a white Porsche with the license plate "US 8964." The driver was pulled over and detained by police on June 4 in both 2023 and 2024, and he told local media this week that he has shipped the car outside Hong Kong after his family was harassed and intimidated by unknown individuals over the past year. From its population structure to daily consumption patterns, Hong Kong has changed a lot in the past five years. As I was casually watching the street on Wednesday, I briefly counted the car brands passing me at an intersection in the central business district. In the space of about 5 minutes, the majority of cars that passed by were Tesla, Toyota or Mercedes-Benz. I also saw five Maxus, a brand under the state-owned SAIC, one BYD, one Xpeng and one Zeekr, as EV brands from mainland China are increasingly seen in Hong Kong's streets, while they are caught up in an increasingly ugly war at home as their pricing and inventory tactics draw scrutiny from regulators. Expecting a record Despite geopolitical tensions, tariffs and volatile exchange rates looming over the semiconductor market, the world's largest chip foundry is confident that it will log a record profit this year as AI demand remains strong, writes Nikkei Asia's Cheng Ting-Fang. TSMC Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said during the company's annual general meeting on Tuesday that tariffs would drive up prices and potentially suppress demand, and that the only thing he fears is a global economic slowdown. Still, he noted that AI chip demand continues to exceed supply, and his recent discussions with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have centered on quickly boosting production capacity to address this shortfall. Wei also talked about his company's fresh $100 billion investment in the U.S., saying he announced the total all at once because a smaller figure "wouldn't even make Trump open his eyes." And while he did try to explain to the president how challenging it would be to achieve that five-year plan, Trump -- who Wei described as "warm" -- simply replied, "Do your best!" In the crosshairs Electronics giant Xiaomi is among the Chinese tech groups hit hardest by Donald Trump's latest crackdown on the semiconductor supply chain, write the Financial Times' Zijing Wu and Eleanor Olcott. The U.S. president announced a directive last month instructing electronic design automation (EDA) groups to stop supplying their technology to China. That move will hit a number of Chinese groups that use the American-made software to design their own advanced chips before manufacturing the processors in Taiwan. And Xiaomi is first in line to be affected, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The company unveiled a breakthrough self-designed mobile processor in May. Its chip is on a leading-edge 3-nanometer node of miniaturization and is made in Taiwan with a mix of licenses and tools from now-restricted U.S. EDA companies. Other Chinese groups also using American EDA tools and TSMC's contract manufacturing for their self-designed chips include the world's biggest computer maker Lenovo and bitcoin mining specialist Bitmain, according to industry insiders. Huawei's investment strategy Since Huawei was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2019, the Chinese tech giant has invested in more than 60 chip companies in China to foster its own supply chain, Nikkei's Itsuro Fujino reports. Huawei has been ramping up its investments through Hubble, a wholly owned investment arm established in 2019. Since its inception, Hubble has backed companies spanning chip design, materials, manufacturing and testing. In the majority of these deals, Hubble holds a stake of less than 10%. In addition to its investments through Hubble, Huawei maintains close ties with chip equipment maker SiCarrier. The Shenzhen-headquartered company develops and produces equipment primarily for the front-end process of creating fine circuits on wafers. The company reportedly spun off from Huawei following U.S. sanctions and now operates under the umbrella of the Shenzhen city government. Half the power, just as strong SoftBank and Intel are partnering to develop an advanced AI-specific memory chip that promises a substantial reduction in power usage. The plan involves creating a novel stacked DRAM chip that is distinct from current high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and is expected to halve power consumption, according to Nikkei's staff writers. The project is spearheaded by Saimemory, a newly formed company, leveraging Intel's technology alongside patented innovations from Japanese institutions, including the University of Tokyo. The goal is to complete a prototype within two years, after which a decision will be made on mass production. Targeting commercialization within the 2020s, the project is estimated to cost about $70 million. Welcome to the Tech Latest podcast. Hosted by our tech coverage veterans, Katey Creel and Akito Tanaka, every Tuesday we deliver the hottest trends and news from the sector. In this episode, our host Katey speaks with Seoul correspondent Kim Jaewon about how tech and AI startups are transforming legal services in South Korea -- and the friction this sometimes creates with long-standing industry practices. Suggested reads 2. Indian tech fund sees domestic opportunity akin to 1990s Silicon Valley (FT) 3. Myanmar startup looks to bring 'affordable housing' to Bhutan, India (Nikkei Asia) 4. Cooking robots from Japan to serve US restaurants short on labor (Nikkei Asia) 6. Can the Gulf really become an AI superpower? (FT) 8. The West fears AI's threat to jobs. In Japan, it might save them (Nikkei Asia) 10. The VC industry needs a geopolitical reboot (FT)
