A former Softbank Corp employee has been arrested in Japan on suspicion of illegally bringing 5G trade secrets to his new employer, Rakuten Mobile Inc, as it was preparing to launch its own mobile network.
The suspect, a 45-year-old male, used his personal computer to access Softbank’s cloud servers and e-mail confidential files to himself, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department said.
Softbank said in a statement that 4G and 5G networking plans and technology were among the information compromised, although no client data was exposed.
Rakuten Mobile confirmed that the person is an employee, but said that an internal investigation found no evidence that information from his prior employer had been used.
Rakuten Mobile parent company Rakuten Inc yesterday was down 1.4 percent in Tokyo trading, while Softbank Corp rose 1.36 percent.
The incident underscores intensifying competition in one of the world’s most lucrative telecom arenas.
Rakuten has been the big disruptor in the space, launching the fourth major network in the country last year and pushing unlimited mobile data allowances. Its breakthrough pricing has put pressure on incumbents Softbank Corp, NTT Docomo Inc and KDDI Corp.
That has added to a period of unusual upheaval, with mobile carriers urged by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to make their consumer contracts more flexible and affordable, while also making the transition to 5G.
The new 5G networks and devices are hotly contested ground, promising to open up new applications, business opportunities and, crucially for carriers, supercharge demand for bandwidth.
Softbank has been among the earliest adopters, although its coverage remains patchy, as it is across most of the globe.
Rakuten, whose 5G service launched several months after Softbank’s, aims to undercut the market with a single-price offering that is less than half what its rivals charge and still offers unlimited data.
Separately, Softbank Group Corp’s Vision Fund sold about US$2 billion in Uber Technologies Inc stock after a rally in the ride-hailing giant’s shares, signaling that it might cash in more gains from the sector.
An affiliate of the investment fund called SB Cayman 2 sold 38 million shares on Thursday last week at an average price of US$53.46, a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission showed.
Softbank Group still holds about 184.2 million shares, worth about US$10 billion, the filing showed.
Softbank founder Masayoshi Son was an aggressive investor in the ride-hailing sector, taking major stakes in Uber, China’s Didi Chuxing (滴滴出行), India’s Ola and Southeast Asia’s Grab.
Those wagers looked in jeopardy when Uber stumbled after its 2019 initial public offering (IPO) and the COVID-19 pandemic slammed demand.
However, Uber shares more than tripled from their low in March of last year, as capital markets surged.
Now Didi, the largest investment in Softbank’s portfolio, is also considering an IPO in the second half of this year, Bloomberg has reported.
“SoftBank Vision Fund may pave the way for Didi Chuxing’s IPO after selling Uber shares,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Anthea Lai wrote in a research note. “As it reportedly owns about 20 percent of the Chinese company, paring down exposure to Uber could help relieve concerns by Didi’s prospective investors about Softbank’s heavy influence in the ride-sharing sector and potential conflict of interest.”
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the