Kevin Liu

Donald Tsang, the chief executive of Hong Kong, believes that it is crucial to increase the investment in academic research in tertiary Hong Kong institutions to compete in the intense global scenario.

To be able to compete at the global level, he proposed to inject US$643 million (5 billion HK dollars) into the Research Endowment Fund. Tsang also announced that 3 billion HK dollars would be injected into the development of self-financing tertiary institutions, on a competitive basis.

The initiation of Thai businesses and entrepreneurs into the nuances of web-based business processes has begun with Google and its partners’ campaign – ‘Thai Business Go Online’. It has also introduced several self-help programs for businesses to learn the ropes of creating an online presence (web site creation) and monetization (advertising) with its Google GuRu and Blogger programs.

Just like other countries in the world today, China is faced with issues related to the environment and climate change as well as growing concerns on energy security more than ever before. Energy production is dominated by the use of large quantities of coal and fossil fuels which are polluting, non-renewable, and facing imminent depletion.

In a recent report from the Association of American Publishers (AAP), eBooks have surpassed traditional printed paperbacks as the most preferred book reading format in the United States. This was evidenced by the bigger sales garnered by eBooks over printed media, earning revenues of up to US$90.3 million dollars in February of 2011 alone – a 202 percent increase from the same period last year.

When Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao pledged his country’s commitment to save energy and clean up the environment, he not only expressed China’s commitment to respond actively to impacts caused by climate change but the whole AsiaPacific region’s commitment as well.

Spearheaded by China’s goal to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent by the year 2020, most developing countries in the region have also expressed their role in saving energy and reducing harmful emissions.

2010 proved to be better than expected as global economies slowly rose from the onslaughts of the recent global financial crisis.

This trend holds true even for the global IT industry, which registered an 8% year-to-year growth and with enterprise spending reaching levels of up to $1.5 trillion worldwide - the fastest growth rate registered since 2007.

In a report from Gartner’s senior vice president and global head of research Peter Sondergaard, this global scenario applies to the Asia-Pacific Enterprise IT spending arena, which rebounded from a 1.3% decline in 2009 and is expected to increase by 7.6% in 2011, with forecasts valued at $312.3 billion. Sondergaard presented this latest outlook at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Sydney which was attended by more than 1,500 global IT leaders.

Appearing to go hand in hand with the resilient popularity of the devices that use them in Asia, web and mobile apps appear to be on the verge of even greater success in the future.

WiMAX — short for ‘Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access’ — and a telecommunications protocol that has been bruited about as a true next-generation fixed and mobile Internet-access technology has, since its inception, been viewed by many providers and countries alike as a key component of a rapid, high-performance communications system.

But has this favorable view actually translated to high adoption rates in the Asian region?

While technology sectors in Asia and Europe were hit hard by the global recession, lower costs and increasingly high quality of products and services offered by the Asian technology sector have enabled it to be competitive vis-à-vis its European competition.

In addition, the fact that China and India have been growing, combined with the increasing competitiveness of the Asian sectors, have led to increased demand in those markets for technology products and services from local firms.