Consumers in South East Asia (SEA) have significantly increased in-app purchases in 2021 compared to 2020. On average, the six SEA markets examined (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) have seen a 240% increase in spending, with the Philippines experiencing a massive 371% increase, the highest growth in purchases in the region.
Let’s boldly go with more AI news: no-code analytics platform SparkBeyond just launched a tool that promises, or threatens, to auto-generate hypotheses and then checks whether they’re correct. Hypothesis generation is apparently the sort of thing that data scientists feel they can do better than machines because it involves human insight. SparkBeyond goes with brute force, testing millions of hypotheses in minutes.
While Singaporeans have lived through fluctuating restrictions – like Circuit Breaker and heightened alerts – one thing that has remained constant over the last 18 months is the lifeline to normality that applications and digital services have provided. Whether it’s staying connected to loved ones, ordering food and groceries, work, study, or rest, the role that apps play in our lives has never been more prominent.
The U.S. Senate has passed a bill that could potentially ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, does not sell its holdings within a year. The bill now goes to the President Biden, who has said he will sign it. Court challenges are likely to follow.