Korean operators to launch interconnected VoLTE
South Korea’s mobile operators – SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus – announced they will introduce the world’s first commercial interconnected VoLTE service this month.

The service, officially unveiled by Minister Yang Hee Choi last week, will deliver higher quality calls and seamless switching between voice and video, as well as faster connection speeds to subscribers of all three networks.

Currently, VoLTE services are only available to subscribers of the same network.

Qualcomm leads $6M investment in MangoPlate
A group of investors led by US chipmaker Qualcomm has invested KRW6.7 billion ($6 million) in Seoul-based restaurant recommendation app MangoPlate.

The group, headed by Qualcomm’s investment arm Qualcomm Ventures, also includes SoftBank Ventures Korea and YJ Capital, the venture investment unit of Yahoo Japan, the Korea Herald reported.

MangoPlate, which has raised more than KRW8 billion, was set up in 2013 and crowdsources recommendations on must-visit restaurants in South Korea.

Australians top for accessing news via smartphones
Australians had the highest rate of accessing news via their smartphones in a survey of 12 countries around the world.

The survey, which covered only Australia and Japan in Asia, found 59 per cent of Australians use smartphones for accessing news compared to just 33 per cent in Japan. Both countries have a similar internet penetration rate.

The study was conducted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford.

Despite a high percentage of Australians sharing news via email or social media (32 per cent vs 14 per cent of Japanese), 54 per cent preferred to talk about news face-to-face compared to 24 per cent of Japanese.

The report noted that low online participation reflects Japanese’s overall reluctance to speak about politics and social issues publicly, and they prefer anonymity online, with research showing 75 per cent of respondents have a Twitter account without their real name.

Japan ranked 12th out of 12 in the report’s overall participation index.

Taiwan’s tablet market drops 36%
The total value of Taiwan’s computing market fell 19 per cent in the first four months of the year compared with the same period last year. But falling overall prices meant that sales volume was down just 8 per cent, according to GfK.

Tablet sales fell 36 per cent, while the desktop computer market dropped 25 per cent.

The one bright spot was laptops, which saw shipments increase 3 per cent and accounted for 42 per cent of the segment during the four-month period – up from 37 per cent from a year ago due to steep falls in the tablet and desktop segments.

ZTE to build SEATEL’s 4G network in Cambodia
Cambodia’s South East Asia Telecom (SEATEL) has contracted Chinese equipment vendor ZTE to build out its nationwide FDD-LTE network.

The end-to-end contract covers the evolved packet core (EPC), microwave and internet protocol radio access networks as well as an online charging system. The deal also includes ZTE’s Cloud UniCore and Cloud Radio platforms.

ZTE said it has been awarded a total of 185 LTE/EPC commercial contracts worldwide.