SoftBank plans to invest in the IoT and AI
Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank aims to invest 5 trillion won ($4.5 billion) in South Korea’s information technology sector, including areas such as “internet of things” and artificial intelligence, as well as mobile and smart robotics, over the next decade, Korean press reported.
The announcement was made by SoftBank’s chairman, Masayoshi Son, during a meeting with Korean President Park Geun-hye.
The reports said the Japanese telco is looking for business opportunities to work together with Korean partners in the IoT area after its acquisition of U.K.-based chip design firm ARM for $32 billion. The British firm designs the cores inside most of the processors built by Qualcomm, Samsung and other makers of smartphone chipsets.
SoftBank’s chairman also met with Samsung Electronics’ vice chairman, Lee Jae-yong, to discuss cooperation on IoT and semiconductor applications.
In July, SoftBank and U.S.-based IoT firm Aeris agreed to form a joint venture in Japan to provide IoT and telematics services globally using the Aeris IoT solutions platform.
Through this partnership, Aeris will be in a position to expand its business in Japan and other markets including India, Europe and the United States. The JV offers a variety of services ranging from an IoT connectivity platform to IoT application middleware to complete IoT solutions for market segments including telematics in the automotive industry.
Microsoft invests $3 billion in European cloud business
In related news, U.S. software giant Microsoft said it has already invested $3 billion in the cloud business across European markets.
“We continue to invest heavily in cloud infrastructure to meet the growing demand from European customers and partners,” Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella said.
Microsoft announced plans to offer Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 from multiple datacenter locations in France starting in 2017. The software firm already offers Microsoft Cloud services from datacenters in the United Kingdom and Germany.
The collective investments include datacenter hubs in the Netherlands and Ireland, together with investments in Austria and Finland.
