SSPAI Morning Brief: Google IPv6 Traffic Surpasses 50% Milestone, Claude Opus 4.7 Token Costs Rise Significantly

Morning Brief

China’s low-altitude authority responds to drone “takeoff difficulties”
Seven e-commerce platforms fined RMB 3.597 billion over ghost kitchens
Kindle for PC to shut down, fewer options for DRM removal
Claude Opus 4.7 shows significantly higher token usage
Google’s IPv6 traffic share surpasses 50% for the first time
Digital and smart products become key drivers in trade-in consumption
News Worth a Quick Look

China’s low-altitude authority responds to drone “takeoff difficulties”

According to Caixin, at a State Council Information Office press conference on April 17, Zheng Jian, Director of the Low-Altitude Economy Development Department under the National Development and Reform Commission, responded that in light of difficulties in obtaining approvals for drone flights, the department is working with relevant agencies to promote effective local practices such as “scan-to-fly,” aiming to improve the efficiency of flight plan approvals. This marks the first official response to widespread user complaints since tighter drone regulations were introduced.

Under current regulations, drones must be registered with real-name identification on either the Civil Aviation Administration’s Unmanned Aircraft Management Platform (UOM) or the Public Security Drone Management Platform. Each flight must then be submitted for prior approval, and only after authorization can the drone be operated—otherwise, users may face fines or detention from public security authorities. In practice, these rules have proven difficult for many drone users to adapt to.

The “scan-to-fly” approach mentioned in the response originates from Sichuan Province, where local authorities have experimented with easing flight demand. After completing an online filing via a mini program, users can fly within designated permissible airspace without having to visit local police stations in person. In addition to Sichuan, Shanghai introduced a similar service module in early February via its “Suishenban” government app, designating three drone flight experience zones within controlled urban airspace.

Industry insiders note that China’s low-altitude airspace is primarily divided between military and civil aviation authorities, with the military holding final authority over approvals. As a result, local governments have limited involvement. A representative from a domestic drone company pointed out that while flight application volumes are large, approval capacity remains constrained, and suggested that granting local governments more control over suitable and partially restricted airspace, along with improving automation in approvals, could be a solution.

Previously, on November 8, 2023, the Civil Aviation Administration released a draft of the Airspace Management Regulations, proposing the establishment of hierarchical air traffic management coordination bodies responsible for airspace governance. Industry experts believe the legislation could be finalized by 2026.

Seven e-commerce platforms fined RMB 3.597 billion over ghost kitchens

According to Caixin, on April 17, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) announced administrative penalties against seven e-commerce platforms—including Pinduoduo, Meituan, JD.com, Ele.me (now Taobao Flash Delivery), Douyin, Taobao, and Tmall—for violations related to “ghost kitchen” operations. The platforms were ordered to rectify illegal practices, suspend the onboarding of new bakery merchants for periods ranging from three to nine months, and pay combined fines and confiscations totaling RMB 3.597 billion. Additionally, legal representatives and food safety directors of the seven companies were fined a total of RMB 19.6874 million. Pinduoduo faced the largest penalty at RMB 1.522 billion, followed by Meituan, JD.com, and Ele.me at RMB 746 million, RMB 635 million, and RMB 558 million respectively; Douyin, Taobao, and Tmall were fined RMB 56.89 million, RMB 46.97 million, and RMB 31.74 million.

“Ghost kitchens” refer to vendors that lack physical dining spaces or have already ceased operations but continue to operate on delivery platforms. Order-routing platforms allow merchants to transfer orders to other food businesses for fulfillment.

According to SAMR, the platforms failed to properly verify the licenses of food vendors, neglected their legal obligations for qualification review, and entered into agreements with order-routing platforms while knowing—or having reason to know—that such practices infringed on consumer rights, yet failed to take necessary measures. Legal representatives and food safety directors also failed to fully perform their responsibilities.

Additionally, SAMR’s administrative penalty document against Shanghai Xunmeng Information Technology Co., Ltd. (Pinduoduo’s operating entity) revealed that during the investigation, the company repeatedly refused to provide materials without justification, submitted false information, and even obstructed enforcement through confrontational tactics. Previous reports indicated that on December 3, multiple Pinduoduo employees clashed with regulators during the investigation, leading to the dismissal of several staff in its government relations department and triggering public labor disputes.

Earlier, in November 2025, SAMR guided eight major online food trading platforms—including JD.com, Meituan, Pinduoduo, Douyin e-commerce, Xiaohongshu, Taobao, WeChat Shops, and Kuaishou e-commerce—to jointly sign a self-regulatory agreement on food safety management. On February 26, 2026, SAMR announced that new regulations on food safety responsibilities for online catering service operators will take effect on June 1, requiring delivery platforms to implement real-name registration for vendors and conduct on-site verification to ensure license information matches actual conditions.

Kindle for PC to shut down, fewer options for DRM removal

According to Good e-Reader, Amazon recently notified users via pop-up that the current Kindle for PC desktop client will be discontinued on June 30. After that date, the software will no longer function. Amazon confirmed it is developing a new Kindle app for PC, compatible only with Windows 11 and available exclusively through the Microsoft Store.

The original Kindle for PC client was launched in 2009 and has long been used by users to download e-books locally and remove DRM (digital rights management) protections. In recent years, Amazon has repeatedly urged users to upgrade the client and restricted access for older versions in order to patch vulnerabilities and combat piracy. In 2023, Amazon had already discontinued the older Kindle for Mac, replacing it with a version distributed solely via the Mac App Store.

Compared to standalone installers, app store–distributed versions are generally harder to bypass technically. By shifting its PC client entirely to the Microsoft Store, Amazon aims to further tighten control over Kindle and meet publishers’ requirements for preventing e-book piracy.

Claude Opus 4.7 shows significantly higher token usage

According to the official migration guide for Claude Opus 4.7, the model adopts a new tokenizer, which can increase token usage by up to 35% compared to previous versions.

However, user testing suggests this may be a conservative estimate. In one test, TypeScript code saw token usage increase by 1.36×, while English technical documentation rose by 1.47×. In a debugging session involving 80 conversational turns, costs increased from approximately $6.65 to nearly $8.80. Another dataset of over 500 samples showed an average token usage increase of 38.6%. In contrast, token consumption for non-Latin scripts such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) remained largely unchanged.

The new tokenizer breaks English text and code into smaller segments, reducing the number of characters per token. Anthropic claims this improves task accuracy, but many users have already complained that usage limits are now depleted even faster.

Google’s IPv6 traffic share surpasses 50% for the first time

According to data released by Google, on March 28, 2026, global user traffic accessing its services via IPv6 reached 50.1%, up from 46.33% during the same period last year—marking the first time the metric has exceeded the halfway point.

However, data from other internet infrastructure organizations suggests that IPv6 has not yet fully taken the lead. Monitoring by Cloudflare indicates that IPv6 currently accounts for only 40.1% of global HTTP request sources; data from the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) shows that the proportion of networks with IPv6 capability stands at around 43.13%.

IPv6 was introduced to address the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses. IPv4 can provide only about 4.3 billion IP addresses, while IPv6, using 128-bit addressing, offers an almost limitless address space. However, because the new protocol did not bring many disruptive new features, and due to the widespread use of Network Address Translation (NAT)—which allows a large number of devices to share a single public IPv4 address—many organizations have relied on NAT to mitigate address shortages. As a result, the global adoption of IPv6 has long lagged behind expectations.

The pace of IPv6 adoption also varies significantly across regions. Due to relatively lenient allocation mechanisms in the early days of the internet, Europe and the United States secured large amounts of IPv4 resources. In contrast, populous countries such as China and India received far fewer IPv4 addresses, prompting earlier and more aggressive deployment of IPv6. According to APNIC data, 29 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including China, surpassed the 50% IPv6 adoption threshold in 2025.

Digital and smart products become key drivers in trade-in consumption

According to Xinhua News Agency, based on data from the Ministry of Commerce’s national system for home appliance trade-ins and digital and smart product purchases, as of April 16, purchases of digital and smart products reached 42.433 million units, up 31.7% year-on-year, with total sales of RMB 126.153 billion, up 36.4%. Among these, mobile phone sales accounted for more than 80%.

Since the beginning of this year, subsidies for new purchases of digital products—such as smartphones—have been expanded and upgraded to cover a broader range of digital and smart products, with smart glasses included for the first time. This has driven rapid growth in retail sales of communication equipment. By mid-April, 16 domestic smart glasses brands had participated in the subsidy program, boosting sales volume and revenue of key enterprises by 42.4% and 46.8% year-on-year, respectively.

It is reported that under the combined effect of home appliance trade-in programs and digital product subsidies, retail sales of communication equipment above the designated size reached RMB 284 billion from January to March, up 20.8% year-on-year—18.4 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate of total retail sales of consumer goods, ranking first among 16 product categories.

News Worth a Quick Look

According to Nikkei, the three major DRAM suppliers—Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology—can currently meet only about 60% of total market demand. By mid-2026, the share of memory costs in low-end smartphone manufacturing is expected to double from 20% to nearly 40%.
Recently, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated on the Dwarkesh Podcast that he opposes stricter U.S. export controls on chip equipment to China, arguing that China’s abundant energy resources and manufacturing capabilities could allow it to achieve large-scale computing power through system scaling. He warned that strict export controls could inadvertently push China to build a strong, independent technology stack, potentially causing the U.S. to lose access to the world’s second-largest market and weakening the global influence of U.S. technology standards.
According to Microsoft’s release notes, in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26300.8170, the FAT32 partition size limit has been increased from 32GB to 2TB, although the change is currently only accessible via command-line operations. The 32GB limit had long been an artificial restriction imposed by Microsoft and remained unchanged for decades.
According to MacWorld, this year’s iPhone 18 Pro is expected to feature “Dark Cherry” as its signature color, while the foldable iPhone is rumored to measure just 4.7 mm thick when unfolded, with currently tested color options including silver-white and indigo.

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