ATR News Feed

Chinese e-commerce vendors are struggling for survival as sales growth slows, price pressure rises and shopping platforms compete with ever-more aggressive policies to attract increasingly cost-conscious customers. link

China’s Transsion, the world’s fourth-largest smartphone maker, is being sued by Qualcomm and Philips for alleged intellectual property violations. link

Partior, a Singapore-based blockchain payment network backed by banking giants JPMorgan, DBS and Standard Chartered, has raised $60 million in Series B funding. The investment was led by Peak XV Partners with contributions from Valor Capital Group and Jump Trading Group. link

TikTok is set to jump into Southeast Asia’s local services sector, initially enabling users in Indonesia and Thailand to obtain vouchers for restaurants, flights and hotels via links on their feeds. Restaurants owners and merchants in the two countries are being encouraged to join the social media platform’s “TikTok Local Services”. TikTok also plans to make a foray into leisure categories, allowing users to obtain coupons for flights and hotels provided by third-party service providers. link

An investigation by India's antitrust body has found that Apple exploited its dominant position in the market for app stores on its iOS operating system, engaging "in abusive conduct and practices". link

China’s CATL, the world’s biggest electric vehicle battery maker, has held talks with overseas sovereign wealth funds and the private offices of the super-rich about raising a $1.5bn fund to build out its global supply chain. The offshore fund would enable Fujian-based CATL, a supplier to Tesla, Volkswagen and Ford, to finance an ecosystem of companies needed to help it expand production in Europe and other foreign markets. link

Donald Tang, a master of reinvention whose rise on Wall Street won him fame in his native China, has been brought in as the public face of Shein, where he faces the tough task of leading the fashion group as it plans its London IPO. link • Tang’s latest role as executive chair of Shein has propelled him on to the global stage as he helps lead its rapid expansion overseas and prepares it for a blockbuster London listing. • With the company’s co-founder Sky Xu shying away from the limelight — Shein employees joke that they would not recognise him if they were in the same lift — Tang is “the face and the most visible leader of the company”, according to one person who works with him.

SoftBank acquires UK AI chipmaker Graphcore link

Apple warns Indian iPhone users of possible ‘mercenary spyware’ attack link

Republican lawmakers have called for a formal intelligence probe of a budding partnership between Microsoft and Abu Dhabi AI firm G42, with a focus on the Emirati company’s ties to China. link