The Wrap | 20 – 26 Dec 2025
Asia Tech Lens’ weekly digest of the signals, shifts, and stories shaping Asia’s tech future
Editor’s Note: Season’s greetings, and welcome to our last wrap of 2025. It has been an interesting year for Asian tech: less about shiny demos, more about who gets to set the defaults and the rules.
ByteDance offered a fitting year-end snapshot: it is pushing Doubao closer to users via AI smartphone preinstalls, even as major apps tighten access over security and economic concerns. Across the region, the theme was control layers and resilience, from Taiwan’s AI regulation and hardened undersea cables to DingTalk’s agent OS, China’s robot leasing push, and Japan’s “lag-free” 5G focus on reliability over speed. Meanwhile, American policy changes keep drawing the lines, with the U.S. blocking new DJI-style drone approvals.
If 2025 taught us anything, it is that the winners are increasingly the ones building the control layers: distribution, permissions, resilience, and compliance, not just the app people tap.
Podcast Spotlight | A Look Back: The Most Useful Insights From 2025
This episode is rewind of the moments that stayed with us, from pivots and fundraising realities to the hard decisions behind scaling across markets and time zones.
You will hear standout takeaways on AI learning and product validation, personalized education at scale, and what it takes to build trust in safety-critical sectors like eye health. We also unpack fintech execution on the ground in Southeast Asia, from business lending to payments infrastructure and stablecoin rails built for everyday merchants, plus how automotive platforms scale beyond classifieds when financing and insurance become real growth levers. Across it all, the theme is leadership under pressure: the toughest calls, the emotional cost, and how teams reset, rebuild, and keep going.
Watch on YouTube | Listen on Spotify · Apple Podcasts
AI | Taiwan
Taiwan Passes New AI Regulation
Taiwan’s legislature has passed the Artificial Intelligence Basic Act, setting out high-level principles for how AI should be governed and naming the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) as the central authority.
TThe Act outlines seven guiding principles, including privacy and data governance, cybersecurity and safety, transparency and explainability, fairness and non-discrimination, and accountability. The framework is broad, and critics note it does not yet spell out detailed enforcement mechanisms.
Bottom Line: Taiwan is putting a governance “skeleton” in place first. The real market impact will depend on the follow-on rules that define what counts as high risk, and how compliance is enforced.
AI | China
Alibaba’s DingTalk Launches World’s First AI-Native OS For Work
DingTalk has launched Agent OS, positioning it as an AI-native operating system designed to build, run, and manage AI agents for workplace collaboration. CEO Chen Hang said DingTalk’s future agents will be built and operated on Agent OS, with a focus on multi-agent coordination and a unified, secure framework for execution in enterprise environments.
At the launch event, DingTalk also showcased agent-style use cases across functions including agents that can turn order images into production schedules and flag risks, and AI Travel Assistant which can generate full travel plans in under one minute while cutting costs by up to 15%.
Bottom Line: DingTalk is betting that agents, not chat, become the main interface for work, and it wants to be the control layer where those agents are deployed, secured, and governed.
AI & Consumer Tech | China
ByteDance Pushes AI Smartphone Tie-Ups With Vivo, Lenovo
ByteDance is moving ahead with partnerships with hardware makers including Vivo, and Lenovo, to develop AI smartphones, aiming to preinstall AIGC plug-ins on devices and secure a default user entry point for its AI assistant and services. Reports say ByteDance is proposing a model where it waives custom development fees and shares revenue from AI token usage, allowing phone makers to earn from traffic distribution, subscriptions, and downstream usage.
The push builds on ByteDance’s recent collaboration with ZTE on the Nubia M153 prototype, which integrates a preview version of Doubao and showcases agent-like capabilities across apps, even as access restrictions and verification hurdles from major apps have surfaced.
Bottom Line: ByteDance is pushing ahead despite security pushback from major apps. The open question is whether it can strike workable access rules with Tencent and Alibaba, or if their restrictions keep Doubao’s “agent” promises in check.
5G | Japan
Ericsson and SoftBank Claim a Big Step Toward Lag-Free 5G
Ericsson, SoftBank and Qualcomm say they have completed a real-world field trial on SoftBank’s commercial 5G Standalone network in Tokyo, reporting an approximately 90% reduction in wireless link latency compared with scenarios that did not use advanced 5G and 5G-Advanced capabilities such as Low Latency, Low Loss, Scalable Throughput (L4S). The test use case was XR content streaming, selected because even small communication delays can significantly impact the user experience.
Bottom Line: The headline is not faster 5G, it is more predictable 5G. If operators can reliably deliver low-latency slices, XR and other real-time apps move from demos into sellable service tiers.
Robotics | China
China launches First Robot Rental Platform
China’s first open robot leasing platform, known in Chinese as “擎天租” and reported in English as BotShare/BOTSHARE, launched in Shanghai on Dec 22, 2025. Jiang Qingsong, a partner at Zhiyuan AGIBOT and chairman of BOTSHARE, said the platform is designed to connect robot makers, leasing and service partners, and creators into a single rental marketplace that supports Robotics as a Service (RaaS). The platform currently covers 50 core cities across China, backed by a network of 600+ service providers and 1,000+ robotic devices.
Bottom Line: This is a demand-creation bet: leasing can turn high-cost humanoids into an operating expense, widening trial and speeding iteration.
Drone Tech | U.S.-China
U.S. Bans New DJI, Other Foreign-Made Drones
The U.S. FCC has expanded its “Covered List” to include all foreign-made drones and key components. That means new models from companies such as DJI and Autel can no longer get FCC equipment authorization, which effectively blocks new imports and sales in the U.S. The change does not affect drones people already own, or models that were approved previously.
DJI said it is disappointed by the decision and questioned the lack of transparency, noting that the Executive Branch has not released details on what information drove the determination.
Bottom Line: The impact will be felt on both sides: drone makers lose access to a major market, while U.S. buyers, including commercial operators and public-safety users, face fewer choices and potentially higher costs as alternatives scale up.
Digital Infrastructure | Taiwan
Taiwan Plans Five Undersea Cables To Boost Communication
Taiwan plans to add five new undersea communications cables – two international and three domestic – as part of a broader push to strengthen communications resilience, according to Digital Affairs Minister Lin Yi-jing. The cables will be “hardened” with an armor-like protective layer to reduce the risk of damage, and are framed as critical to keeping the island connected during typhoons, earthquakes, and other emergencies. The ministry has not yet provided a timeline for when the new cables will be completed.
Bottom Line: Taiwan is treating connectivity as national resilience, adding hardened cable capacity to reduce outage risk from disasters and suspected interference.
EV | India
Delhi Looks to EVs to Help Manage Pollution Crisis
Delhi has finalized the framework for a new electric vehicle policy, with rollout expected in the next financial year. The plan is built around three pillars: financial incentives, expanding charging infrastructure, and phasing out highly polluting vehicles. It also includes a scrappage-linked incentive, offering extra benefits for owners who scrap old petrol or diesel vehicles and then buy an EV.
On infrastructure, the government says charging points will extend beyond prominent public locations to areas near residences, with provisions for battery swapping and scientific disposal of used batteries, although the exact incentive levels and implementation details have not yet been released.
Bottom Line: If incentives and charging rollout move fast enough, Delhi could start bending its pollution curve by retiring older, dirtier vehicles. Whether commuters switch quickly is the open question.
Signals to Watch
Taiwan Passes New AI Regulation
Watch how fast Taiwan moves from principles to enforceable rules, especially definitions of “high risk,” audit and reporting requirements, and penalties. Also watch whether the Act becomes a compliance bridge to EU-style regimes for Taiwanese exporters.China: ByteDance AI Smartphone Tie-Ups
Watch if ByteDance can turn preinstalls into sustained daily use, not novelty demos. The bigger risk is platform pushback: whether Tencent and Alibaba allow stable agent access, or tighten restrictions that limit Doubao’s execution value.China: BOTSHARE Robot Rental Platform
Watch whether leasing creates repeatable demand beyond events and pilots, and what utilization looks like over time. Also watch how service networks standardize maintenance, training, and safety compliance across cities.U.S. Bans New DJI and Other Foreign Drones
Watch for knock-on impacts in U.S. procurement and public safety, including waiver pathways and transition timelines. Also watch whether restrictions expand to components and software stacks, accelerating a forced “U.S.-aligned” drone supply chain.Five Undersea Cables
Watch timelines, routing diversity, and how much capacity is truly incremental versus replacement. Also watch escalation dynamics: whether enforcement and surveillance around cable zones increase, and how Taiwan integrates satellite redundancy for failover.
The Takeaway
This week underscored a recurring shift: advantage is accruing to the control layers. Taiwan is hardening the plumbing, with undersea cable expansion and a principles-first AI law aimed at setting the rules of trust and continuity. In China, the race is about distribution and execution, from DingTalk’s agent operating system to ByteDance’s push for preinstalled AI entry points and BOTSHARE’s attempt to make robots accessible via leasing. Japan’s 5G milestone is less about peak speed and more about consistent latency, the kind that turns real-time services into products with defensible SLAs. Meanwhile, policy is drawing the market boundaries: the U.S. is constricting drone supply at the authorization layer, and Delhi is using EV adoption as an air-quality strategy. Across the board, resilience, permissions, and enforceability are becoming the real differentiators.
Sources
Taiwan News: Taiwan passes AI Basic Act
Pandaily: DingTalk Launches Agent OS, the World’s First AI-Native Operating
System for Work
TechNode: ByteDance moves forward with AI smartphone partnerships, including Vivo, Lenovo, and Transsion
Yahoo Finance: Ericsson Ties Up With Industry Giants to Showcase Ultra-Low-Latency 5G
TechNode: China launches first open robot leasing platform BOTSHARE in Shanghai
Bloomberg: No New Foreign Drones to Be Allowed in US Under FCC Rules
Focus Taiwan: 5 undersea cables planned to boost communications resilience: Minister
Hindustan Times: Delhi’s New EV Policy To Be Rolled Out In 2026 As City Chokes On Record Air Pollution
It's interesting how you zeroed in on the 'control layers'. So true, the real power is in distribution and the underlying infrastructura, not just apps.