FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

DEPA aims to create innovation hub

DEPA aims to create innovation hub

State agency plans to develop a digital workforce in support of five s-curve sectors.

The Digital Economy Promotion Agency (DEPA) aims to drive innovative and technology trends to support the Thailand 4.0 vision. The agency has also joined hand with international business partners to set up a digital innovaฌtion centre in Thailand.
DEPA senior executive vice presฌident Passakorn Prathombuts said the agency aims to build up Thailand as a hub of new innovation and technologies for artificial reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), robotics and mechatronics to support the Thailand 4.0 scheme, Digital Park Thailand and IOT Institute so that the country can develop its digital workforce to cater to the needs of the market. It will also develop the digital workforce to support five new scurve business sectors in the country: robotics, aviation and logistics, biofuels and biochemical, digital and medical hub.
The agency has invited international innovation and technology agencies to invest and set up their laboratories in Thailand.
The agency will work together with Unity Technologies Singapore to set up the Centre of Digital Innovation Growth in AR/VR/XR in order to develop immersive technology (IMT) and develop digital human resources for IMT in the country. 
The centre will officially open in the second half of this year.
The threeyear collaboration will help develop the digital human workforce in various areas such as  2D, 3D and virtual reality to support gaming, automotive, movie and the architecture sectors.
He said the agency would supฌport and promote startups with co-investment so that the startups are able to smoothly run their business and develop their new products and services to support the market demand.
“DEPA will try to support and promote digital literacy to leverage the digital skills of the Thai digital workforce so that they can smoothly transfer and transition from traditional to digital in the near future. The focus in particular will be on the combination of digital content from real work and artificial or IMT, which have high potential demand in the market. It will transform research from laboratory to reality,” said Passakorn.
Joyce Law, the head of Business Development of Unity Technologies, Singapore, said the firm plans to set up a branch office in Thailand in the near future. 
The firm will provide and transfer knowledge from other countries to local human resource in order to leverage new technologies and innovation with Thai people, starting from students to the workforce. It will provide outsourcing opportunities for Thailand as Thais are creative and have the imagination to develop digital content and digital services.
However, IDC reported that the spending of Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) on augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) will reach US$7.1 billion in 2019, an increase of 75.2 per cent from the previous year.
 IDC expects the spending of consumers and enterprise/commercial segments spending on AR/VR products and services to grow at a fiveyear compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 70.7 per cent over the forecast period (201722).
“As the lines between digital and physical continue to blur, several progressive organisations across Asia Pacific are experimenting or deploying AR/VR technologies to prepare for the future of work. 
“Use cases of AR/VR are emerging across sectors that include delivering more personalised customer experience, accelerated product designing and go to market, AR guided workflows and maintenance, as well as VR training for better learning outcomes and improved health and safety for employees,” said Avinav Trigunait, research director for Future of Work at IDC Asia/Pacific.
As the technology continues to evolve, several content developments and designing software vendors such as Adobe and Autodesk are including AR/VR features in their solutions to make it easier to develop both AR/VR content and applications. 
Also, with many new AR/VR software and hardware products being launched in 2019, enterprises are expected to continue exploring the use of AR/VR technologies for a variety of newuse cases. 
IDC forecasts the commercial segment spending in Asia Pacific to surpass consumer spending in 2019, added Trigunait.
Hardware will account for nearฌly half of all AR/VR spending throughout the forecast period followed by software and services. 
The largest category of hardware spending will be host devices, but AR viewers will have the highest growth rate over the forecast period with  CAGR of more than 150 per cent. 
Software contributes around 39.3 per cent of overall spending, of which AR software spending is leading in terms of growth with 108.2 per cent CAGR (201722). 
Likewise, services spending is likely to proliferate by CAGRs of AR Systems Integration by 143 per cent. Thereby, the robust growth in AR hardware, software and services spending will drive overall AR spending quite ahead of VR spending by 2022.
The China market will represent the largest AR/VR spending in the APEJ region with 83 per cent share in 2018 and the spending is projected to take off at a fiveyear CAGR of 76.2 per cent during the forecast period (201722). 
While, AR/VR technology in Asean countries of Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) are slowly gaining trend and experimenting on how AR/VR can improve the industry experience.
 

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