US technology behemoth Apple has suffered a setback in its effort to lead the global movement towards a future of autonomous driving during testing of its self-driving program in California.

An Australian business delegation has announced its interest in investing and exploring potential opportunities that may arise from India's nationwide 'smart cities' program. The business consortium is made up of 35 members - and they flew in India this week to meet with those tasked with the responsibility of leading the smart cities initiative.

Government representatives at both a national and local level are collaborating with entrepreneurs and the University of Adelaide as part of a collective effort to transform Adelaide into a 'smart city'. The initiative is part of an overall program launched by the new Australian Smart Cities Consortium.

BMW Group has announced that it has officially obtained the Shanghai Intelligent Connected Autonomous Driving Test License.

Chinese search engine colossus Baidu and the BMW Group has formally announced they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), under which the BMW Group will join Apollo, the open autonomous driving platform by Baidu, as a board member.

The Brazilian government is continuing to aggressively pursue its ambitions to digitize the country after announcing a new initiative aimed at discovering and subsequently integrating new Internet of Things solutions into its cities.

The Californian cities of Berkeley and Palm Springs have announced that it will take its first steps towards implementing its 'smart city' infrastructures after reaching an agreement with 5 Bars Communities, which is a dba of XG Communities.

The Canadian government has once again reiterated its commitment to the smart city movement by officially launching a new $50m 'Smart City Challenge'. The innovative project has been specifically designed to encourage communities nationwide in the country to leverage new technology.

China has unveiled what many are predicting to be the future of urban transport – following the launch of a track-less train which runs on virtual rails. The project has been specifically designed to alleviate the issue of urban congestion - and is being tipped to be the long-term solution required to speed up public transportation in major cities across the world.

The global smart city movement continues to gather momentum and new revolutionary technologies will only serve to accelerate the process.

A consortium of businesses led by Ericsson have been tasked with the responsibility of leading an innovative 5G CAR project - with the primary aim to develop an overall 5G system architecture that provides optimized end-to-end vehicle-to-everything (V2X) network connectivity for highly reliable and low-latency V2X services.

Executives from some of Europe’s largest companies and prominent technology thought-leaders have gathered for the inaugural meeting of the European’s Commission’s AI4EU project, which aims to drive the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) across a wide range of industries.

The French government has announced that it will invest around 1.5 billion dollars in order to help accelerate the development of a number of projects that are set to commence in India as part of the country's ambitious 'Smart Cities Mission' program.

Bahrain's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along with Batelco and Avaya, has transformed the ministry's communications and collaboration capabilities, with a strategic ICT implementation to connect all ministry employees around the world. The ministry worked closely with Avaya to transform its citizen services by integrating and digitalizing its communications and collaboration capabilities through a two-phased project.

US search engine giant Google has formally announced its plans to launch its innovative free public Wi-Fi initiative in Indonesia following the success of the program in India. Google's Wi-Fi project is entitled Google Station and it has been heralded as a brilliant success in India, since debuting in the region eighteen months ago.

Google's self-driving firm Waymo has announced that it is expanding its operations by adding 62,000 Fiat Chrysler minivans to its autonomous fleet in a collaboration agreement jointly announced by the two companies.

The Transportation Department in Hong Kong has deployed a new 'smart device' on a trial basis in an effort to help elderly citizens and those with disabilities to cross its busy urbanized streets.

Hong Kong has released its smart city blueprint following months of consultations and recommendations as part of its efforts to become a world-class smart city. It has been announced that a dedicated Smart City Office will be established in the Innovation and Technology Bureau which will oversee, manage and coordinate the progress and effectiveness of smart city projects initiated by the department in Hong Kong.

A number of China's leading technology firms have partnered on a pioneering new smart city initiative that has been created to ensure the smooth integration of emerging technologies designed to transform major cities.

China Telecom and Huawei have collaborated to deliver a detailed report entitled '5G Network Slicing Enabling Smart Grid' which provides the results of the detailed analysis from a 5G network slicing project they duo embarked upon.