#techAsia

January 12, 2023

Hello everyone, this is Akito from Singapore.

Sony Group announced its bold entry into the automotive industry three years ago. President Kenichiro Yoshida unveiled the Japanese electronics company's EV prototype at the CES tech trade show in Las Vegas in front of crowds of visitors. Just months later, COVID-19 spread around the world, shutting down events like CES.

I had the opportunity to interview Yoshida on stage right after the announcement. The silver sports car, he said, was "just a prototype" intended to show Sony's tech capabilities in the auto space.

His strategy appears to be bearing fruit. Two years after the unveiling, Sony and Honda Motor announced they would establish Sony Honda Mobility, a fifty-fifty joint venture to develop next-generation EVs.

The alliance came about after Honda approached the electronics giant. Showing off Sony's potential with a concept car had paid off, just as Yoshida had intended.

As the future of cars becomes more electric and software-based, cross-industry coalitions like this could be key to unlocking the next generation of innovation in the auto industry.

A PlayStation on wheels

Sony and Honda announced their new EV brand, the Afeela, at this year's CES, and Nikkei Asia's Natsumi Kawasaki was able to get behind the wheel.

The concept sedan is equipped with automatic doors operated by a smartphone app, a semicircular steering wheel that looks like something out of a racing car game, and countless cameras and sensors.

Emphasizing the car's focus on entertainment are the multiple displays, including one that wraps across the area in front of the driver and passenger side seats. Sony announced it will partner with U.S. chip company Qualcomm for autonomous vehicle capability -- Level 3, or self-driving under certain conditions -- and video game maker Epic Games to collaborate on in-vehicle entertainment. One particular gamer-friendly feature is the ability to pause a PlayStation game at home and to continue playing it in the car.

Customers still have a few years to wait before they can give the Afeela a spin. Sony Honda Mobility plans to makes its first deliveries in 2026.

When the Afeela does hit the market, it will be up against existing EV players like Tesla, European premium makers including BMW -- another CES exhibitor -- and possibly self-driving cars from Apple, which has long been rumored to be planning its own auto foray.

Apple heads to India

Apple has started the New Year by hiring retail store workers in India as it gets ready to open its first flagship locations in the country as soon as this quarter, writes the Financial Times' Patrick McGee.

The iPhone maker has posted a dozen different retail job roles for "various locations within India." A typical Apple store has at least 100 employees and flagship locations can have ten times as many, implying the company is ready to hire hundreds of roles.

The job ads suggest several retail stores are in the works beyond the widely reported 22,000 sq. foot location set to open in Mumbai as early as March.

Apple has not confirmed plans to open its first stores in the country, but some new hires in Mumbai and New Delhi have recently announced their jobs on LinkedIn, and Apple's lead recruiter in the country "celebrated" several of them.

With Apple growing its nascent manufacturing operations in India, too, the country looks to be increasingly important for the iPhone maker as it attempts to diversify manufacturing from China.

Powering up

As the race to decarbonize puts more attention on hydrogen power as a green energy source, China and South Korea are looking to catch up with the leaders in the field, writes Nikkei Asia's Sayumi Take. From 2011 to 2020, the two counties have ramped up their patent filings in this area, growing 12% and 15% respectively, according to a joint study by the European Patent Office and the International Energy Agency.

South Korea showed a strong focus on emerging end-use applications of hydrogen, particularly in the automotive sector -- fuel cell vehicles are the most widely recognized end use of hydrogen technologies. China meanwhile has been investing heavily in hydrogen manufacturing capacity, key to the commercial deployment of the technology.

While the European Union and Japan remain the clear leaders in hydrogen-related patents, the sudden surge from two of Asia's key economies underscores the growing interest in this potential tool in combatting climate change.

Battle of the platforms

Tencent Holdings will ramp up its focus on its short video platform Channels to challenge the dominance of rivals like TikTok owner ByteDance, writes Nikkei Asia's Cissy Zhou.

Tencent's sales have been slowing since 2021 amid China's worsening economic growth outlook and regulatory uncertainties surrounding the country's leading tech companies.

On the other hand, the WeChat operator said Channels posted substantial growth in 2022, with the total number of views expanding over 200% on the year. Channels' gross merchandise value (GMV), a measure revenue in the e-commerce sector, grew 800%, it added.

Tencent did not give any specific figures for views or GMV, however, and there are suggestions that the latter is well below that of Douyin, the version of TikTok designed for mainland China.

Still, Tencent is confident that Channels has "strategic value" and has vowed to speed up its commercialization push, including introducing incentive programs to encourage brands to open shops on the platform.

Pressure on its mainstay gaming business is only adding to the pressure on Tencent to turn its challenger into a champion.