APAC in Brief Google and Apple last week started to allow developers of mobile applications to distribute their wares through third-party app stores and accept payments from alternative payment providers.
The tech giants made their changes in response to Japan’s Mobile Software Competition Act (MSCA).
Neither seems particularly happy about it.
Apple warned the law’s requirements “open new avenues for malware, fraud and scams, and privacy and security risks.”
Cupertino has complied anyway, and said it introduced “Notarization for iOS apps, an authorization process for app marketplaces, and requirements that help protect children from inappropriate content and scams.”
Apple also dropped its App Store commissions to 10 percent “for the vast majority of developers.”
Google called for “constructive regulatory engagement and careful enforcement to avoid any unintended consequences as these new rules are rolled out.”
The company now offers Japanese users screens that let them choose a browser and search provider, and allows in-app purchases to be made using payment services other than the company’s Play payment scheme.
The Chocolate Factory also now lets developers “offer a side-by-side choice of making a purchase with Google Play Billing or completing the purchase on the developer’s website.”
AMD to ‘deepen investment in China’
AMD CEO Lisa Su last week visited China and, according to the nation’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said the US chip design firm “will continue to deepen its investment in China, further strengthen cooperation with China, and jointly promote industrial innovation and development.”
AMD hasn’t detailed those commitments.
Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Lecheng said China continues to promote a new wave of industrialization and hopes AMD will participate in the opportunities that effort creates.
The Minister said he hopes AMD “will continue to deepen its presence in the Chinese market, innovating and growing together with upstream and downstream enterprises in the Chinese industrial chain to achieve mutually beneficial development.”
Asahi President says hack was a management failure
The President of Japanese brewer Asahi, which suffered a cyberattack and data leak in October, has said the incident was a management failure.
“We didn’t pay enough attention to security measures, especially at the management level,” company president Atsushi Katsuki told Japanese outlet Nikkei. “There were governance issues about information security, which is something we’re reflecting on.”
Katsuki said Asahi used NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework and had engaged third-party experts to simulate attacks. “Even so, we still had blind spots. If we had established a zero-trust communications environment earlier, we may have prevented it,” he admitted.
Debian supports China’s Loongson CPUs
Linux distro Debian on Saturday announced its upcoming version 14, aka “Forky”, will support loong64 as an official architecture.
Loong64, aka LoongArch 64-bit, is a proprietary instruction set architecture developed by Chinese company Loongson. It blends MIPS and RISC- tech and is on the list of locally-developed chip tech Beijing encourages Chinese buyers to acquire.
Some of the Linux distros China promotes as an alternative to Windows are based on Debian.
Weird share spike sees Infosys suspended
The New York Stock Exchange last Friday twice suspended trading of Indian tech giant Infosys’s American Depositary Receipt shares, after the price jumped almost 50 percent.
Infosys issued a statement [PDF] in which the company said it is not aware of any material events that caused the sudden share price jumps.
The Indian company also announced [PDF] it had settled a class action related to the 2024 cybersecurity incident and data theft at its US operation Infosys McCamish Systems.
McCamish agreed to pay $17.5 million into a fund, to settle the matter.
Hong Kong’s Christmas Karaoke copyright crackdown
Hong Kong’s Customs authority last week revealed it has conducted a territory-wide enforcement operation targeting pirate karaoke venues.
The sweep saw two men arrested for suspected breaches of Hong Kong’s Copyright Ordinance.
“With the Christmas and New Year holidays approaching, Customs will continue to step up inspection and enforcement to resolutely combat different kinds of infringing activities to safeguard the rights of copyright owners,” Hong Kong Customs warned. ®