Editor, Writer, Researcher
More than half of those 27 million-plus smartphone owners in Myanmar are regular data users, who check into Facebook daily and the Viber messaging and VOIP app almost as frequently. How can so many people afford phones when the average wage is $3 a day?
Besides Phandeeyar, the eBay founder's "philanthropic investment firm" has given grants to the Open Myanmar Initiative for election monitoring activities, Yangon Journalism Institute and Myitmaklia News Agency. It also supported a Global Witness report on labour conditions in Myanmar jade mines.
GrabTaxi may have won the first rounds. At the end of 2014 Easy Taxi pulled out of Indonesia and was laying off staff in Malaysia, while GrabTaxi Holdings had raised almost $340 million in venture capital and loans; Japan’s SoftBank is its biggest investor.
It difficult to know whether there actually have been more charges or prosecutions this year relating to lèse majesté – that is, insulting the king or immediate members of the royal family. The previous elected government, led by Yingluck Shinawatra, also oversaw long trials ...
The company is also about to release the Nexy Keyboard, the country’s first iOS 8 keyboard in Myanmar that allows typists to use Roman fonts (“Burglish”) to produce words in Myanmar (Burmese) script.
Susan J Cunningham 