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Huawei's 5G licensing deal; Baidu's Ctrip stake sale; Gojek's streaming service

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Huawei's 5G licensing deal; Baidu's Ctrip stake sale; Gojek's streaming service

TOP NEWS

* Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. CEO Ren Zhengfei said the Chinese telecom equipment company is willing to license 5G technologies to a U.S. company exclusively, rather than to companies based in Europe, Japan or South Korea. "Since the U.S. has no such company [like Huawei] that produces a full 5G technology stack, we would like to license the technology to a U.S. company to be fair in the 5G race," Ren said during a panel discussion in Shenzhen on Sept. 26.

* Ctrip.com International Ltd. said it commenced an offering of 31.3 million American depositary shares held by Baidu Inc. Underwriters will have a 30-day option to purchase up to an aggregate of 4.7 million additional ADSs from the selling shareholder to cover over-allotment. According to Bloomberg News, the transaction represents around 30% of Baidu's stake in Ctrip and is equivalent to around US$1 billion based on Ctrip's latest share price.

* As expected, Indonesian ride-hailing app Gojek launched a video streaming service called GoPlay that features original movies and TV shows. According to Reuters, subscriptions to GoPlay's mobile-only streaming platform starts at 89,000 rupiah per month. While focused on Indonesian content, GoPlay also inked deals with international production companies for partial access to their libraries, including with South Korean entertainment giant CJ ENM CO. Ltd. for TV shows.

* Facebook Inc. intends to partner with Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s cloud unit, Alibaba Cloud Computing Co., to develop its open-source machine learning platform PyTorch. Speaking at the Alibaba Apsara Conference 2019 in China, Facebook's vice president of infrastructure Bill Jia said it wants to launch PyTorch on Alibaba Cloud, allowing greater access for developers.

PAN-ASIAN

* KKR & Co. is planning to raise US$300 million for an Asia-focused fund that would invest in the technology, media and telecommunications space, Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

* Orange SA-owned media solutions provider GlobeCast France SAS elevated Shakunt Malhotra to managing director of Asia. Prior to his promotion, Shakunt was vice president of Asia operations.

JAPAN

* SoftBank Group Corp. is in discussions with WeWork Cos. Inc. to potentially add US$1 billion or more to the US$1.5 billion investment it intends to inject into the coworking giant in 2020, Los Angeles Times reported, citing people briefed on the matter. As part of the deal, SoftBank will acquire WeWork's stock at a reduced per-share price.

* Harvest Tech Investment Management is backing out from a financial bailout scheme for Japan Display Inc., Nikkei Asian Review reported, citing sources. The Chinese investment firm earlier pledged to contribute ¥63.3 billion in a plan to acquire majority control in the Apple Inc. supplier.

SOUTH KOREA

* South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT gave a temporary permission to the mobile drivers' license service that SK Telecom Co. Ltd., KT Corp. and LG U+ plan to launch, Digital Times reported.

* SK Telecom is collaborating with short video app TikTok to provide its 5G users with higher resolution video content on the platform, ZDNet Korea reported. Under the tie-up, TikTok will make 720p high definition resolution video, instead of the 480p standard resolution, available for the telco's 5G users.

* KT's satellite unit KT SAT plans to develop marine and aviation solutions, and provide internet of things and 5G services to vessels, ET News reported.

GREATER CHINA (MAINLAND CHINA, HONG KONG AND TAIWAN MARKETS)

* Beijing ByteDance Technology Co. Ltd. is in talks to sell TopBuzz, the company's news and entertainment app for overseas markets, The Information reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Potential buyers include some U.S. media companies, though it is unclear whether discussions will result in a deal.

* Several Chinese chipmakers are accelerating their timelines to list on Shanghai's new trading board STAR Market, in response to Beijing's push for complete self-reliance in semiconductors. According to Nikkei Asian Review, some of the companies planning to list include autonomous driving-focused AI chipmaker Horizon Robotics, audio wireless chip startup Bestechnic and Beijing-backed semiconductor material provider National Silicon Industry Group.

* Alibaba said SAP SE's cloud solutions, SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Cloud Platform, are now available on Alibaba Cloud. Alibaba and SAP also announced that they will jointly design local solutions and co-innovate in the areas of internet of things, artificial intelligence and enterprise-level big data applications.

* Alibaba Cloud Computing and Ubitus Inc. launched a cloud gaming service based on public cloud architecture. The new offering will allow the gaming industry to onboard their titles through a game development kit cloud service and to launch to the Alibaba Cloud platform quickly.

* Baidu began a robotaxi pilot service in Changsha, the capital city of central Hunan province, and is offering free rides to local residents, TechNode reported.

INDIA AND SOUTH ASIA

* Facebook inked a four-year deal with the International Cricket Council to secure exclusive digital content rights until 2023 for global ICC events in the Indian subcontinent. Under the deal, the social media giant will show post-match recaps and in-play key moments and other feature content of the matches in the region.

* Gautam Anand resigned as Bharti Airtel Ltd.'s chief people officer for India and South Asia, effective immediately. According to sources cited by The Economic Times (India), human resource functions will report to CEO Gopal Vittal until a successor to Anand is appointed. An Airtel spokesperson confirmed the exit and said that Anand was leaving due to personal reasons.

SOUTHEAST ASIA

* Facebook will begin enforcing its advertisement transparency policies in Singapore to "hold advertisers accountable for the ads they run on Facebook and Instagram LLC." Individuals in Singapore who are looking to publish advertisements about elections and politics on Facebook will be required to confirm their identity and location, and to disclose the person or organization behind the ad.

* Thailand-based industrial estate developer Nava Nakorn PCL will purchase a 51% stake in Thai Thanan Co. Ltd. from ALT Telecom PCL, Hoon Smart reported. This deal will make Thai Thanan a joint venture of Nava Nakorn and ALT.

* Telekom Malaysia appointed Razidan Ghazalli as CFO, effective Nov. 1, The Star reported, citing a stock exchange filing. Ghazalli replaces Nor Fadhillah Mohd Ali, who is leaving the company October-end to pursue other opportunities.

* True Corp. will still participate in the upcoming reauction process for Bangkok's underground cabling project, Prachachat reported. The telco came under fire after it won the project as a sole bidder, which led to the relaunch of the bidding process.

* Thailand's Provincial Electricity Authority announced a nationwide effort to declutter telecom cables on electricity poles, Khaosod reported. A memorandum of understanding on this project was signed on Sept. 25.

AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

* New Zealand's Commerce Commission released the findings of its study into the country's mobile services market. With three independent network operators – Spark New Zealand Ltd., Vodafone NZ and 2degrees Ltd. – and a growing number of virtual operators such as Vocus Group Ltd., Warehouse Mobile and Kogan.com Ltd., the regulator's final review concluded that mobile services are in good shape and no regulation of wholesale access is needed at this time.

FEATURED NEWS

The Program Guide: HBO bags 34 Emmy awards; BET+ streaming service launches in US: HBO won 34 awards at the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards, with Game of Thrones winning 12 marks, while BET Networks and Tyler Perry Studios' new subscription video-on-demand service is now live in the U.S.

FEATURED RESEARCH

Global Multichannel: Asia Pacific pay TV growth slows as cable and DTH lose subs: A regional market summary for the multichannel industry in Asia Pacific.

Nozomi Ibayashi, Myungran Ha, Emily Lai, Kevin Osmond and Wil Hathaway contributed to this report. The Daily Dose has an editorial deadline of 7 a.m. Hong Kong time. Some external links may require a subscription. Links are current as of publication time, and we are not responsible if those links are unavailable later.