This is in conjunction with the launch of LG’s LH50, LH70 and LH35 Full HD TVs. Viewers only need log in here to watch the documentaries and cast their vote by 9 August 2009.

South-east Asian viewers can now vote for their fave HD documentaries from National Geographic Channel in a collaboration with LG Electronics.

Among SingTel’s eight markets, its Indian associate, Bharti, of which SingTel owns a 30.4% stake, posted the biggest customer jump at 52% year-on-year.

CORP TALK: Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel) has released a report announcing the company’s increased and combined regional mobile customer base, which has totalled 249 million as of 31 March 2009.

From a base covering eight countries - Australia (Optus), Bangladesh (PBTL), India (Bharti), Indonesia (Telkomsel), Pakistan (Warid), the Philippines (Globe), Singapore (SingTel) and Thailand (AIS), the company’s regional customer base has grown 7.3%, or 17 million on a sequential quarterly basis. Click here to see a breakdown of the stakes SingTel currently has in the various companies across the six other markets besides Singapore and Australia.

Besides India, SingTel also reported that Telkomsel grew its mobile customer base by 41% or 20.8 million year-on-year. The past quarter alone, ending 31 March 2009, saw the Indonesian operator adding 6.8 million customers to its base, with a market share increase of 3% to 49%. (more…)

While Indonesia continues to top the list among the 5 countries HWM is in, software piracy in South-east Asia has generally gone down or remained the same.

Want to know which top 10 countries have the highest software piracy rates in the world? Click on the image.

T&A: The Business Software Alliance (BSA) held a press conference yesterday and unveiled its Sixth Annual BSA-IDC Global Software Piracy Study to the media. According to the study, PC software piracy rate in 2008 dropped in slightly more than half (57 countries) among the 110 countries studied worldwide, but remained the same in nearly one third (36) and rose in just 16.

This also means that worldwide piracy rate went up from 38% in 2007 to 41% in 2008. BSA attributed this rise to fast-growing PC shipments in high-piracy rate countries.

For the Asia Pacific alone, the average PC software piracy rate increased from 2007’s 59% to 2008’s 61%. According to Jeffrey Hardee, BSA’s VP and Regional Director, APAC, losses from this reached over US$15 billion. Hardee explained that this increase is the result of the mathematical outcome of more rapid growth of PC markets in APAC economies with higher piracy rates. (more…)

Singapore's StarHub had a public launch of their HTC Touch Diamond2 offering on 9 May with these two 'raider girls'.

SHOWCASE: Smartphone manufacturer HTC, announced the Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2 to the media in countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand during the mid- and end-April period but the availability of the Touch Diamond2 is only made public today (in Singapore at least), while the QWERTY-based Touch Pro2 is expected to hit stores a few weeks later.

Ever since the Touch Diamond was first launched in June 2008 (in Singapore), the strength behind its abstract looks and TouchFLO 3D interface was further echoed when the Touch Pro was later introduced. Both the Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2 are follow-ups to those two successful models respectively. For a detailed spec list of these two models in one glance, check it out here.

If you want a quick overview of what exactly the Touch Diamond2 (and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5 really is all about), here’s a video produced by the HardwareZone Singapore team for you:

(more…)