Issue #31 | TikTok Shop's US launch, Arm commits to China, Gotion's new German plant, Qualcomm & Baidu partner on XR, and supercomputer power ranking.

Welcome to Serica’s weekly tech brief, where we bring you the latest news from one of the world's most dynamic and rapidly evolving tech scenes.

??TikTok launches e-commerce operation in the US despite political challenges

TikTok has finally launched its e-commerce product, TikTok Shop, in the US — where it has more than 150 million users. As part of the rollout, the company is bringing features such as a dedicated shop tab on the home screen, live video shopping, shoppable ads, and affiliate programs for creators. The company has reported that they already have 200,000 sellers registered and over 100,000 content creators signed up to their affiliate program. Insider Intelligence has projected that over 33 million US consumers will make a purchase on TikTok this year.

TikTok is confident of being able to capture a significant share of the USA’s $69B social commerce market from leader Meta as well as traditional e-commerce players Amazon and new Chinese entrants Shein and Temu. This is another example of the bold internationalization activities of major Chinese companies despite increasingly complex geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges.

SOURCE: ABC News

?? ARM CEO commits to the Chinese market

British chip designer Arm remains committed to China and to working closely with its mainland-based partner following its $4.87B IPO. CEO Rene Haas told Chinese media last Monday that “we are very, very committed to the China market through our partner, Arm China, the IPO doesn’t really change anything in terms of China for us and it doesn’t really change how we work with Arm in China.”

Despite trade sanctions from the US and significant conflict with Arm China in 2021, which was temporarily wrestled away from them by “rogue” China CEO Allen Wu. The size and importance of the Chinese market to the chip maker, much like their US counterparts Nvidia and Intel, remains paramount. As global economic headwinds worsen expect more companies to make similar low-key announcements in the next couple of years.

SOURCE: Caixing Global

??Gotion opens new EV battery plant in Germany, with new plants being built in the US states of Michigan and Illinois

VW-backed Gotion, China’s fourth largest EV battery maker, has started operations at its first overseas plant, putting it on course to achieve its global ambitions. The factory in Gottingen, in central Germany, is expected to reach a production capacity of 5 gigawatt-hours (GWh) by mid-2024 and 20GWh eventually when the facilities are fully operational.

The inauguration of the plant is another sign of Chinese EV battery producers continuing to dominate the global markets (six of them have a combined global market share of 63%) by internationalizing to overcome geopolitical tensions and protectionist measures. Gotion is also establishing two manufacturing plants in the US states of Michigan and Illinois, one in Morocco, as well as making a series of strategic investments across the EU including acquiring a 25% stake in Slovakia-based battery start-up InoBat. Its biggest rival CATL is teaming up with Ford to build a $3.5B plant in Michigan and with Tesla to build a $2B gigafactory in Berlin. Expect more bold expansion moves from other Chinese advanced manufacturers in the coming years.

SOURCE: China Daily

?? Qualcomm and Baidu team up to develop XR technology

Qualcomm announces that they have partnered with AI and search engine giant Baidu to jointly develop extended reality (XR) technology. The technology will initially focus on tourism and education but will expand to other industries according to Qualcomm's statement.

In 2021, Baidu launched its XiRang platform to support the development of the metaverse. Through the partnership with Qualcomm, Baidu is aiming to enhance the metaverse user experience by integrating Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces? XR developer platform and its cutting-edge XR technologies into the XiRang platform. This news comes just over a year after Qualcomm announced a similar partnership with TikTok owner Bytedance to develop XR technology so it would not be surprising to see similar partnerships with the likes of Tencent, Alibaba, Huawei, or Xiaomi in the near future.

SOURCE: Qualcomm (in Chinese)

??? China's supercomputer power exceeds all countries, says US supercomputer guru Jack Dongarra

Jack Dongarra, professor, Turing laureate, and co-founder of the TOP500 supercomputer list, says three next-generation supercomputers may already be up and running in China, a greater number than any other country, but that the world knows little about them because of US sanctions. “The Chinese exascale computers, like their United States counterpart at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, are expected to perform at least one quintillion – or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 – calculations per second and they may have a higher peak performance.”

As of June 2022, China has 173 of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers, a third more than the US but still lagged a little behind their closest competitor whose Frontier supercomputer topped the charts. Further advancements or leapfrogs may cause further conflict, he speculates that having the world’s number one computer may “cause the US to take actions against China that would further restrict technologies from flowing into China”.

SOURCE: SCMP

Thanks for joining us this week! Please comment, share, and subscribe to help shed greater light on this fascinating world of technology and innovation.