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The latest news, analysis and opinion on Apps. In-depth analysis, industry insights and expert opinion.
The rise of AI health apps in China comes as the country navigates a rapidly ageing demographic. Photo: Handout
Ant Group

Ant’s AQ health app tops 100 million users amid holiday surge

Growth comes as China’s ageing population fuels demand for AI-assisted health monitoring tools.

Social media

Are you addicted to social media, is it a problem and what can you do about it?

Germany

Germany’s ruling party seeks social media ban for children aged below 14

United States

Meta’s Zuckerberg grilled in landmark social media addiction trial

The 41-year-old Meta CEO admits regret over slow youth safety progress in a high-stakes California lawsuit.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives for a trial in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Photo: AP
Style Edit

Style Edit: Lane Crawford’s beauty rewards are gifts you’ll actually want

Elevate your self-care with Lane Crawford’s HK$8.8M Beauty Rewards Programme and redeem products from brands like Skit and Tom Ford Beauty.

Artificial intelligence

ByteDance ‘strengthening safeguards’ after Seedance AI video controversy

Pledge comes after Hollywood, governments speak out against tool amid deluge of video clips featuring celebrities, copyrighted characters.

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Meituan

Meituan warns of US$3.5 billion loss amid intense food delivery price war

Food delivery giant expects losses to continue into at least the first quarter of 2026 ‘due to ongoing competition’.

A Meituan drone for food delivery takes off from a drone delivery camp near Shenzhen Bay Park. Photo: VCG/VCG via Getty Images
Artificial intelligence

Alibaba’s Qwen tops 120 million orders in 6 days amid China’s AI shopping battle

Campaign has sparked a behavioural shift towards AI-powered shopping, which Alibaba says is becoming a more popular lifestyle choice.

ByteDance

ByteDance joins Chinese rivals offering freebies in bid to acquire AI app users

TikTok parent plans to give more than 100,000 tech products as gifts, as well as red packets through lucky draws on the Doubao app.

United States

California court begins social media trial amid mental health concerns

The case ‌will determine whether Instagram and YouTube harmed a woman’s mental health through addictive app design, testing Big Tech’s liability.

Parents who lost children to social media-related harms hold a vigil ahead of a social media addiction trial, in Los Angeles, California, US on Thursday. Photo: Reuters
Artificial intelligence

ByteDance’s new model sparks stock rally as China’s AI video battle escalates

Seedance 2.0 thrills early adopters with cinematic realism and fuels debate over AI’s role in filmmaking and content creation.

A Seedance 2.0 video capture. Seedance 2.0 delivers enhanced lifelike generations that blur the boundary between AI content and reality, according to early adopters. Photo: Handout
Sex and relationships

Why dating in Hong Kong is so hard and how people spend thousands on agencies

Hong Kong matchmakers share how they’re helping people find love in a city where everyone is both extremely busy and wants a younger partner.

Artificial intelligence

Sweet surge: Qwen overtakes Yuanbao after Alibaba’s bubble tea campaign

More than 10 million free orders put Alibaba’s AI app in the spotlight amid a high-stakes battle for Spring Festival attention.

Artificial intelligence

Red packet rumble: will Tencent’s cash giveaway work again in crowded AI market?

Analysts say strong competition from ByteDance, DeepSeek, Ant Group and Alibaba may prevent Tencent’s Yuanbao from repeating WeChat glory.

Tencent’s Yuanbao has launched a campaign that gives out cash through digital red packets. Photo: Shutterstock
Artificial intelligence

Alibaba’s Qwen ramps up AI app race with Spring Festival giveaway blitz

Alibaba unveils US$432 million campaign to push mass-market adoption of its AI as rivalry with Tencent, Baidu and ByteDance intensifies.

Alibaba’s Spring Festival campaign will be launched across its ecosystem that includes shopping platform Taobao and on-demand retail and food-delivery service Shangou. Photo: Simon Song
Hong Kong society

Calls for stricter rules after bot bookers detected on Hong Kong sports app

Authorities say they found accounts using computer programs or other automated tools for bookings just a week after new anti-touting policy began.

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E-commerce

China slaps US$3.7 million fine on Kuaishou for live-streaming e-commerce breach

The penalty reflects a broader regulatory crackdown on content and operations deemed undesirable or harmful on Chinese online platforms.

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Hong Kong

2016 trends from Pokemon Go to poke bowls amid viral internet nostalgia

Looking back at 2016 is viral online, but what was hot back then? We look at food, travel, health and pop culture trends from a decade ago.

People play Pokemon Go in Hong Kong on July 25, 2016, the day it was released in the city. The online game was one of the hottest trends in the city 10 years ago. Photo: Nora Tam
Banking & finance

HSBC suffers temporary system shutdown, stopping services in Hong Kong

The bank’s mobile app and in-person services at several branches were unavailable for up to several hours for some customers during the outage.

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Artificial intelligence

China’s cloud giants race to support Moltbot, the ‘AI that actually does things’

Hyperscalers embrace the AI agent, which can execute tasks without step-by-step instructions, but privacy concerns loom large.

US-China relations

TikTok cites glitch as California probes alleged Trump-critical censorship

Governor Gavin Newsom launches state review after reports of blocked posts, as TikTok blames a data-centre outage days after its US deal.

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The ‌TikTok deal provides for American and ‌global investors to hold 80.1 per cent of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9 per cent. Photo: AP
Artificial intelligence

DeepSeek taps Alibaba open-source AI technology to boost OCR performance

The Chinese AI start-up says its latest OCR model delivers stronger performance after adopting an Alibaba-developed open-source model.

The update underscores the growing role of China’s open-source ecosystem in advancing domestic AI development. Photo: Shutterstock
Artificial intelligence

China’s Baidu merges key app businesses to drive consumer AI push

Merger of Wenku and Wangpan into a new AI unit comes as tech firms race to turn their services and apps into the next ‘super app’.

South Korea

Google’s Gemini surges in South Korea, challenging ChatGPT, after latest launch

South Korea generated about US$21 million, or 11.4 per cent of Gemini’s cumulative revenue on Apple’s app store – second only to the US.

US-China relations

Who are the owners of the new TikTok US entity?

Private equity firms, tech giants and existing ByteDance backers make up the investor group behind the newly created US venture.

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A new investor-backed US entity will operate TikTok’s American business following years of political and legal uncertainty. Photo: Kyodo
US-China relations

TikTok confirms deal to create new US venture, averting shutdown by a few hours

Beijing has not officially confirmed the agreement to secure the platform’s future for 170 million Americans.

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Half of TikTok US’s investors under the deal will be new entrants. Photo: Reuters
Canada

Canada court overturns government order to shut down TikTok’s operations

The decision comes as Mark Carney seeks closer ties to China to offset the effect of Trump’s tariffs.

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Low-altitude economy

Shanghai to open ‘free-to-fly’ zones covering 46% of city for consumer drones

From February 1, consumer drones will be allowed to fly in designated airspace under new rules to boost the city’s low-altitude economy.

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