ITC Infotech ties up with Camouflage Software

BANGALORE: ITC Infotech, the IT services and solutions arm of ITC, today announced its tie-up with Canada-based Camouflage Software.

With this partnership, ITC Infotech and Camouflage will jointly promote, market and implement the Camouflage data masking solution, a company statement said.

To address the enormous opportunities for data masking across the globe, ITC Infotech and Camouflage will initially focus on financial services and healthcare sectors, it said.

"With this partnership, ITC Infotech will now address data masking in these environments through robust products complemented by a mature data masking implementation framework," it said.

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HCL Tech, TCS waiting to pounce on HP deals

BANGALORE: In the wild, it is a common strategy for the predator to single out the weakest prey and chase it down for a kill. In the cut-throat market for outsourcing deals, too, it works much the same way, and a wounded Hewlett-Packard is fair game for Indian software companies desperate to win new contracts.

"Indian outsourcing companies are aggressively attacking HP, which is a very vulnerable target right now," said Peter Bendor-Samuel, founder and CEO at Everest Group, a Texas-based outsourcing advisory and market research firm. HP, sitting on plum contracts with the likes of American Express and Bank of America, is vulnerable as these deals worth billions of dollars are coming up for renewal.

About $100 billion (Rs 5.4 lakh crore) worth of IT outsourcing deals will expire in 2013, the Everest Group estimates, with 15% of it being with HP. PC maker HP entered IT services with its 2008 buy of EDS for $14 billion, but successive leadership changes in 2010-11, took a toll on investor confidence.

Dissatisfied clients easy prey
HP, whose shares have fallen 60% since early 2010, recently wrote down about $8 billion in the value of its services business and is cutting about 29,000 jobs, raising a red flag for clients. Bangalore-based MphasiS, earlier an EDS company, is now part of HP.

While every outsourcer in the top tier is competing hard for HP's clients, the most aggressive and successful ones are HCL Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services, observers said. So while the success rate for Indian companies in the renewal market is around 30%, TCS and HCL Technologies are winning 60% of the renewals involving HP clients.

While the companies declined to comment for this story, those familiar with their functioning said the sales teams are systematically chasing and winning clients from HP. "Large clients working with HP for last the 5-7 years are seeing relationship fatigue and are ready to work with new vendors," said a senior industry executive, requesting anonymity.
"What we are promising instead is more value with lower price, transparency in delivery and flexibility." The fate of HP, which Chief Executive Meg Whitman is looking to rebuild, is neither new nor unique. In 2009, after India's then fourth-largest software exporter Satyam Computer was hobbled by an accounting fraud, rivals quickly tried to win over the Hyderabad-based company's most lucrative customers.

Among the deals won by the HPEDS combine, a large proportion relates to IT infrastructure, bread-and-butter areas for HCL Technologies and TCS. A concern for HP is that increasingly, clients are seeking flexible engagement models with elements of computing offered as a service, lower costs, and higher value.

These are increasingly hard to offer for traditional players that haven't changed with the new market realities . This is creating frustration among clients, making them look for alternative service providers , analysts said. Using client dissatisfaction to get a foot in the door, Indian players are aggressively pitching newer technology-based solutions to these clients at lower price points.

"Everybody loses clients; that is part of the game. But the key is to be able to win new clients to compensate for the ones that you lose, and that is the more worrying sign for HP. We have hardly heard of any large new deals involving HP," said the India head of a large multinational outsourcer.

Some analysts also see signs of HP making a concerted effort to protect its turf. "Quite frankly, it will be a challenging period, but I think HP is taking some right steps to make sure that its existing clients feel secure and comfortable," said Frederic Giron, vice-president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.

"Time will tell." What may work in HP's favour is the fact that transitioning from one service provider to another, especially after several years of engagement, is very difficult. Rachael Stormonth, senior vice-president at US-based outsourcing advisory Nelson Hall, said HP's enterprise services unit has for years suffered from under-investment in corporate functions and in portfolio development.

"The lack of investment in the portfolio has been evident. But HP enterprise services is arguably better positioned in 2013 than it has been in the last few years to contest such deals," she argued.

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Indian PC market grew 3.5% in 2012: IDC

NEW DELHI: Domestic computer market grew 3.5 per cent to 11 million units in 2012 compared to previous year, driven by projects like ELCOT and spurt in consumer demand for notebooks.

The growth in consumer PC market was driven by growing shift in end-user demand towards portable PCs, which grew at 20.2 per cent in 2012 over 2011, IDC said in a statement.

"In the face of ongoing challenges from a slowing economy and high inflation, the rise in consumer optimism is a welcome sign for the India PC market," IDC Research Manager Kiran Kumar said.

This is reflected in the improved retail footfalls, particularly among large format retailers (LFRs), which continue to act as a catalyst in driving consumer demand, Kumar added.

On the other hand, commercial PC business outside special projects like ELCOT, witnessed continued instability as the commercial desktops crumbled to a three-year low in the second half of 2012.

The overall confidence of enterprises took a backseat as they were trying to cope with adverse business conditions and rupee volatility, Kumar said.

Lenovo claimed the top spot with a 15.9 per cent market share in 2012, supported by Tamil Nadu's ELCOT project.

The state-run Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) had issued a tender seeking rate contract for over nine lakh laptops to be supplied.

HP gained the second spot with a shipment share of 15.2 per cent, followed by Acer and Dell at at 13.2 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively.

"Outside ELCOT, HP registered a significant growth, driven by their continued focus on product mix, price positioning and strong partner engagement," IDC Market Analyst Manish Yadav said.

Similarly, Lenovo recorded a substantial growth in the consumer PC market, driven by sustained investments on marketing and expanding channel presence, Yadav added.

"Driven by demand from portable PCs, we expect the India PC market to register a double digit growth in 2013 despite downward pressures driven by longer refresh cycles seen in the recent periods," IDC Research Director Venu Reddy said.

This trend of longer refresh cycles could be due to lower levels of usage of laptops as some of the activities are accomplished using tablets, Reddy added.

"We also anticipate the execution of special projects in the states of Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh to beef up the overall PC market in 2013," Reddy said adding that such special projects could be repeated in few of the larger states with forthcoming elections in 10 states.

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Your car is the next big smartphone accessory

BARCELONA: Automobile giants at the world's biggest mobile fair are showing off a new technology that turns a car into a smartphone accessory, allowing a driver to use cutting-edge apps without veering off the road.

Called MirrorLink, and adopted by 85 big manufacturers from Ford to General Motors, Chrysler, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, BMW, VW, Fiat or Renault, it connects a smartphone and car entertainment system with a two-way audio, video and data link.

"People are using their smartphone applications and services 80 percent of the time. The other 20 percent when they are not using them is when they are in the car," said Jorg Brakensiek, technical coordinator for the Car Connectivity Forum.

"For the driver there is no really safe mechanism for the driver to do that," he told AFP at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

MirrorLink requires a compliant car entertainment system and a smartphone with the software, which can be downloaded.

Drivers then can access their favourite apps.

The apps must meet legal requirements for screens that face drivers, for example the text must be a certain size and some functions such as typing must be disabled while the car is moving.

"The basic assumption is that the phone comes with the application," said Brakensiek.

"You use the car as an accessory."

Eventually, the MirrorLink technology will feed other data from the car to the smartphone, such as speed, location and even weather. That information can be used to develop new applications or improve other services, such as traffic news.

The Car Conectivity Forum, which groups nearly all car manufacturers, was set up to develop the technology two years ago.

The first MirrorLink compliant car entertainment systems have been released by the likes of Sony and JVC, for installation into existing vehicles.

The next step will be for manufacturers to build them into cars before sale.

The new technology avoids problems posed by the "smart car" in which manufacturers weld a SIM card into a vehicle so as to offer driver services such as navigation, SOS response and door unlocking, as well as paid-for entertainment.

One challenge is that the SIM card built into the car ties the owner to one operator for the car's life -- up to 15 years. To overcome this, car makers are trying to agree on a standard way to program the sim card by remote.

"From out point of view, remote SIM management becomes a key enabler, it becomes a game changer," BMW's project manager for telematic control units, Markus Kaindl, told a symposium at the mobile congress.

But there are other drawbacks, too.

Much of the hardware built into a car cannot keep up with the mobile industry's fast-pace developments, the car owner must pay for the SIM contract, and each manufacturer has its own platform for applications, making it difficult to attract developers.

Yet the "smartcar" services may live on alongside the MirrorLink technology, industry analysts said, especially in high-end cars.

General Motors, one of the leaders in the field with its OnStar service offering navigation and help for drivers, announced before the show it will embed 4G connectivity in all 2015 model cars in North America.

At the mobile show this week, it showed off an impressive concept car, a Cadillac, with all the latest connected gadgets.

It has streaming movies, dedicated apps, and a system that alerts an absent car owner that something has hit his car, and even lets him view the surrounding area on his smartphone via on-board surveillance cameras.

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Alcatel-Lucent wins Telenor India's outsourcing contract

KOLKATA: Norway's Telenor on Thursday inked a five-year outsourcing deal with France's Alcatel-Lucent for managing three GSM technology networks in western and southern India.

Under the terms of the deal, the Paris-based telecom networks vendor will deliver end-to-end managed services to Telenor's wholly-owned Indian unit, Telewings Communications, in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

The Scandinavian GSM carrier, which retails mobile services in India under the Uninor brand, had lost all its 22 permits last year after the apex court quashed the licences dished out by ex-telecoms minister, A Raja.

In the last November auction, it only retained spectrum in six circles, and was compelled to switch off its networks in Mumbai, Kolkata and West Bengal circles. Bell Labs, the research organisation within Alcatel-Lucent, will provide expertise on network and business modelling to achieve Telewing's objectives.

The latest networks management deal win for Alcatel-Lucent comes on the heels of the $1 billion outsourcing deal that it bagged from Reliance Communications last month.

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Review: BlackBerry Z10 - Good, but pricey proposition

NEW DELHI: BlackBerry has launched its first BB10-powered smartphone Z10 in India at a hefty price of Rs 43,490. It offers a refreshing new look at the smartphone interface, powerful integration between hardware and software and BlackBerry's famed corporate, data encryption and security features. BlackBerry Z10 is more than just another smartphone - it is widely deemed to be the manufacturer's last-ditch effort at salvaging its lost market share and reputation in recent years.

But does BlackBerry Z10 hold its own against top-notch rivals like Apple iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy Note II, Nokia Lumia 920, HTC Butterfly and Sony Xperia Z and deserve such a high price tag? We played around with the handset and tried to find out. Read on.

Hardware
BlackBerry Z10 is the company's flagship smartphone and certainly looks the part. In terms of appearance, it looks quite similar to Apple iPhone 5 from the side and HTC One, what with its rounded edges and thin profile. We tried the elegant-looking black coloured model (the device is also available in white).

Z10 has a 4.2-inch touchscreen that has the requisite sensors and the 2MP secondary camera on top and the BlackBerry logo at the bottom. The front has a big bezel on top as well as bottom of the touchscreen, which adds to its height a bit. Hardware keys in the phone include Power/Lock on top and volume rocker and the voice control on the right side and are extremely easy to access while holding the phone which fits the palm easily.

The back cover has matte finish and feels good to the touch. The back is bare, except for the 8MP primary camera with LED flash and the company's logo, while the speaker grille is located at the bottom. The earphone jack is placed on top and microUSB and miniHDMI ports are on the left side.

Under the hood
BlackBerry Z10 packs a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, coupled with 2GB RAM, while the graphics are handled by the Adreno 225 GPU. Its screen has 1280x768p resolution and 356ppi pixel density, which is disappointing and way behind Android-powered competitors like Sony Xperia Z, HTC Butterfly and the number of phablets about to hit the market.

Connectivity options in BlackBerry Z10 are Wi-Fi, 2G, 3G, 4G, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0 and microUSB 2.0. Powered by a 1,800mAh battery, the phone comes with 16GB onboard storage and supports microSD cards up to 64GB.

Software
We were truly excited about the software running on BlackBerry Z10 - and it did not disappoint us. The new OS brings a new twist to a tried-and-tested interface of BlackBerry phones and does a good job as there is only a small learning curve to acclimatise the user. So, instead of pressing the back button, like you would do on an Android or Windows Phone device, you put your finger on the glass below the screen and swipe upwards to do various tasks, such as turning on the screen, or going to the home screen.

In BlackBerry 10, you get a home screen that doubles up as the app menu, task switcher and the all-new Hub. The OS is very responsive and has a few preloaded apps that are commonly used everyday such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, BBM, Camera, Maps, Box and Adobe Reader. Other apps bundled in Z10 are Compass, Calculator, Voice Control, NewsStand, Story Maker, Doc To Go and Remember, among others.

We were a bit surprised that even though there is no native YouTube app for the platform, it was shown in the menu. When we tried it out, it just opened the mobile version of the website in the browser, which worked well but was still not quite like having the app there. The tight integration of the hardware and software ensured that the smartphone worked well and there was no lag at all in our day-to-day usage.

BlackBerry Z10 is more than a piece of hardware - it has an operating system that offers various services that add value to the overall user experience. Some of the cool Z10 features by BlackBerry are Story Maker, Remember, Balance, Hub and voice control and we would like to take a moment to discuss them as they add to the overall experience tremendously.

The Hub acts as the single point for you to check all your updates, like new Facebook notifications, tweets, emails, LinkedIn messages, SMSs etc. If you want to open it, you just have to keep swiping towards the left of the screen till you cross the first menu page and task switcher. It is very easy to navigate and gives you options like posting new messages, emails and social network updates, depending on the service you are working on in the Hub.

BlackBerry Balance is a feature aimed at corporate users who want to keep their work and personal lives separate - on their phone. It allows users to store apps and data on two distinct profiles - Work and Personal. Users can easily switch between the two profiles and users who bring their device to office can easily format the Work profile when they switch jobs without having to change any setting in the personal one.

Remember is a content aggregation app that can come in handy if you want to keep photos, videos and audio recording of any event sorted. For example, all the images and videos clicked at any particular concert can be put in a single folder. The folder can be tagged as well, so all the folders with a tag like 'Birthday' or 'Party' will come up when you search for it.

Story Maker can be a fun app for users who take a lot of photos and want to make them special by converting them into a single video. You just select the photos you want to include and pick the audio clip you want to go with it and the app will automatically create a video with effects like cascading images etc.

Voice control in BlackBerry Z10 is quite refined and performs quite well, though it cannot match the intuitiveness that Google Now or Apple Siri bring to the table. We didn't get to play much with it, but going by what we experienced, it should stand its ground well against others. It is quite adept at recognising the Indian accent and finding the requisite app or data over a reliable network. However, like its rivals, its performance also suffers when used in places with ambient noise.

The browser in BlackBerry Z10 is quite fast and responsive and supports Abode Flash natively, so the whole world wide web in its true form is at your fingertips. The Maps app in BB Z10 needs to be improved, since we could not get the lock on specific places like monuments or generic sites like New Delhi or India.

BlackBerry has spoken quite a bit about the innovations it has added in its keyboard, and it shows. The on-screen Qwerty keyboard is well laid out, with sufficient spaces between letters and has all the all functionalities of the native keyboard of Android, iOS and Windows Phone platforms.

The best part about the keyboard is its word suggestion capability, which is very useful while sending text messages and emails. However, it was oddly absent while searching for Maps and sending Facebook messages. Nevertheless, we liked what we saw, especially the part when you just flick at a letter to select it.

Multimedia
The 8MP camera of BlackBerry Z10 was a big letdown for us and did worse than that of even mid-range smartphones available nowadays, and we are not even taking Nokia's Lumia series, iPhone 5 or Sony Xperia Z into consideration. The images in lowlight conditions were grainy and even in daylight, its photo quality could not measure up to that of rivals. The camera app in itself is quite basic and does not offer much to the user and video quality is also below par for a device priced as high as Rs 43,490.

The video and music player apps of Z10 are also free of any bells and whistles and do the job, but just so. So you do not have too many functionalities like pulling lyrics for songs off the internet or changing the aspect ratio of the video. We were, however, quite happy with the audio output of the smartphone and were happy to listen to some peppy music on it, though songs with heavy bass did not play so well.

Overall performance
​The all-new BlackBerry Z10 did quite well in our review, barring a few glitches like camera and Maps (which are actually quite important in today's smartphone race). The device performed without any lag and using the keyboard was a treat. The learning curve for the new operating system was very small and even new users are likely to become adept at it within a short period. The new interface is refreshing and brings subtle changes to the table, something that pleased us quite a lot, instead of posing a problem. Call quality was decent and transferring data was smooth and fast.

Now the big question! Does it measure up to the rivals?

Yes, in its own way, BlackBerry Z10 does give competition to rivals but in doing so, it caters to only a small category of buyers. The lack of apps on BB10 platform is an obvious gaping hole for the OS and even with 75,000 native apps (and over 9,000 made especially for India), it is likely to lose out to the large scale consumer market due to absence of popular apps like Instagram or the entire suite of Google services.

BBM which had been losing its charm to cross-platform apps like WhatsApp and Viber has got bolstered with new features like BBM-to-BBM video calling which do bring something extra to the table. WhatsApp and Viber will be launched on the platform within the next few months, so buyers will not have the luxury of choice on the platform immediately.

With Z10, the manufacturer will continue to win hearts in the corporate sector with its strong security suite as well as BlackBerry Balance. The Contacts app is also something for users to look forward to as it merges various profiles of your Facebook, LinkedIn, email and phonebook contacts intuitively. Moreover, it does not have the boring UI of Android and iOS or the much-too-flashy interface of WP8 platform, which may please many a buyers.

Despite the advancements on the software front, Z10 does fall short of rivals when it comes to hardware. Its display quality is nowhere near the standards set by Apple's Retina or the full HD-capable Android devices. It has a strong connectivity suite, but shortage of apps will certainly irk buyers, something that the manufacturer knows very well too, and we hope is working on it.

However, the OS does give provision for developers to port their Android apps to BB10 with ease. This creates the opportunity for the platform to get the requisite number of apps to get off the ground in the consumer market, though we can never be sure of how the user experience will be for such ported apps. The company has already said that 40% of the apps available on BB10 platform are Android ports, such as Skype, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Angry Birds, among others.

Other popular apps available on the platform are Jetpack Joyride, LinkedIn, Gaana, AccuWeather, Paper Camera, Zomato etc. However, some users may be discouraged from buying the phone rightaway due to the absence of the popular apps like WhatsApp, Instagram and Viber from the platform, at least for now.

Is the sky-high price tag justified?
Well, BlackBerry Z10 is likely to gain ground in the enterprise sector and may go on to become the favourite of BlackBerry fans and corporate users. However, for a regular consumer in a budget conscious market like India, Z10 is unlikely to hold much charm. While the men may buy it, the BlackBerry boys are likely to stay away given the hole it will burn in their pockets.

Even with the revamped UI and tight integration of software and hardware, we find that the device is just too pricey. It could have been a better buy at a price band of Rs 35,000 to Rs 38,000, but does not seem to be the best device to go for at a price of Rs 43,490, especially when the poor camera quality is taken into account.

We would certainly wait for a mid-range BB10-powered smartphone to hit the markets because the beauty truly lies in the software in this case, rather than the hardware.

What's hot	What's not
Revamped interface	High price tag
Perfect harmony between hardware and software	Lack of apps for BB10 platform
Strong enterprise suite	Poor camera quality
New features like Hub, Story Maker, Balance etc	Industrial looks

Key specs

Display: 4.2-inch capacitive touchscreen with resolution of 768 x 1280 pixels

Dimensions: 5.12 x 2.58 x 0.35 inch, weighs 137.5 gm

Operating system: Company's latest BlackBerry 10 OS

Processor: Dual-core 1.5 GHz processor

Camera: 8MP rear camera with auto-focus, LED flash and geo-tagging. Boasts of 2MP front-facing camera

Connectivity: Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n, dual band) and Bluetooth (v4.0 with A2DP, LE) technology

Colour options: Is available in two colours in India: Black and White

Battery: 1,800 mAh

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BlackBerry Z10 review: Good, but pricey proposition

NEW DELHI: BlackBerry has launched its first BB10-powered smartphone Z10 in India at a hefty price of Rs 43,490. It offers a refreshing new look at the smartphone interface, powerful integration between hardware and software and BlackBerry's famed corporate, data encryption and security features. BlackBerry Z10 is more than just another smartphone - it is widely deemed to be the manufacturer's last-ditch effort at salvaging its lost market share and reputation in recent years.

But does BlackBerry Z10 hold its own against top-notch rivals like Apple iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy Note II, Nokia Lumia 920, HTC Butterfly and Sony Xperia Z and deserve such a high price tag? We played around with the handset and tried to find out. Read on.

Hardware
BlackBerry Z10 is the company's flagship smartphone and certainly looks the part. In terms of appearance, it looks quite similar to Apple iPhone 5 from the side and HTC One, what with its rounded edges and thin profile. We tried the elegant-looking black coloured model (the device is also available in white).

Z10 has a 4.2-inch touchscreen that has the requisite sensors and the 2MP secondary camera on top and the BlackBerry logo at the bottom. The front has a big bezel on top as well as bottom of the touchscreen, which adds to its height a bit. Hardware keys in the phone include Power/Lock on top and volume rocker and the voice control on the right side and are extremely easy to access while holding the phone which fits the palm easily.

The back cover has matte finish and feels good to the touch. The back is bare, except for the 8MP primary camera with LED flash and the company's logo, while the speaker grille is located at the bottom. The earphone jack is placed on top and microUSB and miniHDMI ports are on the left side.

Under the hood
BlackBerry Z10 packs a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, coupled with 2GB RAM, while the graphics are handled by the Adreno 225 GPU. Its screen has 1280x768p resolution and 356ppi pixel density, which is disappointing and way behind Android-powered competitors like Sony Xperia Z, HTC Butterfly and the number of phablets about to hit the market.

Connectivity options in BlackBerry Z10 are Wi-Fi, 2G, 3G, 4G, NFC, Bluetooth 4.0 and microUSB 2.0. Powered by a 1,800mAh battery, the phone comes with 16GB onboard storage and supports microSD cards up to 64GB.

Software
We were truly excited about the software running on BlackBerry Z10 - and it did not disappoint us. The new OS brings a new twist to a tried-and-tested interface of BlackBerry phones and does a good job as there is only a small learning curve to acclimatise the user. So, instead of pressing the back button, like you would do on an Android or Windows Phone device, you put your finger on the glass below the screen and swipe upwards to do various tasks, such as turning on the screen, or going to the home screen.

In BlackBerry 10, you get a home screen that doubles up as the app menu, task switcher and the all-new Hub. The OS is very responsive and has a few preloaded apps that are commonly used everyday such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, BBM, Camera, Maps, Box and Adobe Reader. Other apps bundled in Z10 are Compass, Calculator, Voice Control, NewsStand, Story Maker, Doc To Go and Remember, among others.

We were a bit surprised that even though there is no native YouTube app for the platform, it was shown in the menu. When we tried it out, it just opened the mobile version of the website in the browser, which worked well but was still not quite like having the app there. The tight integration of the hardware and software ensured that the smartphone worked well and there was no lag at all in our day-to-day usage.

BlackBerry Z10 is more than a piece of hardware - it has an operating system that offers various services that add value to the overall user experience. Some of the cool Z10 features by BlackBerry are Story Maker, Remember, Balance, Hub and voice control and we would like to take a moment to discuss them as they add to the overall experience tremendously.

The Hub acts as the single point for you to check all your updates, like new Facebook notifications, tweets, emails, LinkedIn messages, SMSs etc. If you want to open it, you just have to keep swiping towards the left of the screen till you cross the first menu page and task switcher. It is very easy to navigate and gives you options like posting new messages, emails and social network updates, depending on the service you are working on in the Hub.

BlackBerry Balance is a feature aimed at corporate users who want to keep their work and personal lives separate - on their phone. It allows users to store apps and data on two distinct profiles - Work and Personal. Users can easily switch between the two profiles and users who bring their device to office can easily format the Work profile when they switch jobs without having to change any setting in the personal one.

Remember is a content aggregation app that can come in handy if you want to keep photos, videos and audio recording of any event sorted. For example, all the images and videos clicked at any particular concert can be put in a single folder. The folder can be tagged as well, so all the folders with a tag like 'Birthday' or 'Party' will come up when you search for it.

Story Maker can be a fun app for users who take a lot of photos and want to make them special by converting them into a single video. You just select the photos you want to include and pick the audio clip you want to go with it and the app will automatically create a video with effects like cascading images etc.

Voice control in BlackBerry Z10 is quite refined and performs quite well, though it cannot match the intuitiveness that Google Now or Apple Siri bring to the table. We didn't get to play much with it, but going by what we experienced, it should stand its ground well against others. It is quite adept at recognising the Indian accent and finding the requisite app or data over a reliable network. However, like its rivals, its performance also suffers when used in places with ambient noise.

The browser in BlackBerry Z10 is quite fast and responsive and supports Abode Flash natively, so the whole world wide web in its true form is at your fingertips. The Maps app in BB Z10 needs to be improved, since we could not get the lock on specific places like monuments or generic sites like New Delhi or India.

BlackBerry has spoken quite a bit about the innovations it has added in its keyboard, and it shows. The on-screen Qwerty keyboard is well laid out, with sufficient spaces between letters and has all the all functionalities of the native keyboard of Android, iOS and Windows Phone platforms.

The best part about the keyboard is its word suggestion capability, which is very useful while sending text messages and emails. However, it was oddly absent while searching for Maps and sending Facebook messages. Nevertheless, we liked what we saw, especially the part when you just flick at a letter to select it.

Multimedia
The 8MP camera of BlackBerry Z10 was a big letdown for us and did worse than that of even mid-range smartphones available nowadays, and we are not even taking Nokia's Lumia series, iPhone 5 or Sony Xperia Z into consideration. The images in lowlight conditions were grainy and even in daylight, its photo quality could not measure up to that of rivals. The camera app in itself is quite basic and does not offer much to the user and video quality is also below par for a device priced as high as Rs 43,490.

The video and music player apps of Z10 are also free of any bells and whistles and do the job, but just so. So you do not have too many functionalities like pulling lyrics for songs off the internet or changing the aspect ratio of the video. We were, however, quite happy with the audio output of the smartphone and were happy to listen to some peppy music on it, though songs with heavy bass did not play so well.

Overall performance
​The all-new BlackBerry Z10 did quite well in our review, barring a few glitches like camera and Maps (which are actually quite important in today's smartphone race). The device performed without any lag and using the keyboard was a treat. The learning curve for the new operating system was very small and even new users are likely to become adept at it within a short period. The new interface is refreshing and brings subtle changes to the table, something that pleased us quite a lot, instead of posing a problem. Call quality was decent and transferring data was smooth and fast.

Now the big question! Does it measure up to the rivals?

Yes, in its own way, BlackBerry Z10 does give competition to rivals but in doing so, it caters to only a small category of buyers. The lack of apps on BB10 platform is an obvious gaping hole for the OS and even with 75,000 native apps (and over 9,000 made especially for India), it is likely to lose out to the large scale consumer market due to absence of popular apps like Instagram or the entire suite of Google services.

BBM which had been losing its charm to cross-platform apps like WhatsApp and Viber has got bolstered with new features like BBM-to-BBM video calling which do bring something extra to the table. WhatsApp and Viber will be launched on the platform within the next few months, so buyers will not have the luxury of choice on the platform immediately.

With Z10, the manufacturer will continue to win hearts in the corporate sector with its strong security suite as well as BlackBerry Balance. The Contacts app is also something for users to look forward to as it merges various profiles of your Facebook, LinkedIn, email and phonebook contacts intuitively. Moreover, it does not have the boring UI of Android and iOS or the much-too-flashy interface of WP8 platform, which may please many a buyers.

Despite the advancements on the software front, Z10 does fall short of rivals when it comes to hardware. Its display quality is nowhere near the standards set by Apple's Retina or the full HD-capable Android devices. It has a strong connectivity suite, but shortage of apps will certainly irk buyers, something that the manufacturer knows very well too, and we hope is working on it.

However, the OS does give provision for developers to port their Android apps to BB10 with ease. This creates the opportunity for the platform to get the requisite number of apps to get off the ground in the consumer market, though we can never be sure of how the user experience will be for such ported apps. The company has already said that 40% of the apps available on BB10 platform are Android ports, such as Skype, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Angry Birds, among others.

Other popular apps available on the platform are Jetpack Joyride, LinkedIn, Gaana, AccuWeather, Paper Camera, Zomato etc. However, some users may be discouraged from buying the phone rightaway due to the absence of the popular apps like WhatsApp, Instagram and Viber from the platform, at least for now.

Is the sky-high price tag justified?
Well, BlackBerry Z10 is likely to gain ground in the enterprise sector and may go on to become the favourite of BlackBerry fans and corporate users. However, for a regular consumer in a budget conscious market like India, Z10 is unlikely to hold much charm. While the men may buy it, the BlackBerry boys are likely to stay away given the hole it will burn in their pockets.

Even with the revamped UI and tight integration of software and hardware, we find that the device is just too pricey. It could have been a better buy at a price band of Rs 35,000 to Rs 38,000, but does not seem to be the best device to go for at a price of Rs 43,490, especially when the poor camera quality is taken into account.

We would certainly wait for a mid-range BB10-powered smartphone to hit the markets because the beauty truly lies in the software in this case, rather than the hardware.

What's hot	What's not
Revamped interface	High price tag
Perfect harmony between hardware and software	Lack of apps for BB10 platform
Strong enterprise suite	Poor camera quality
New features like Hub, Story Maker, Balance etc	Industrial looks

Key specs

Display: 4.2-inch capacitive touchscreen with resolution of 768 x 1280 pixels

Dimensions: 5.12 x 2.58 x 0.35 inch, weighs 137.5 gm

Operating system: Company's latest BlackBerry 10 OS

Processor: Dual-core 1.5 GHz processor

Camera: 8MP rear camera with auto-focus, LED flash and geo-tagging. Boasts of 2MP front-facing camera

Connectivity: Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n, dual band) and Bluetooth (v4.0 with A2DP, LE) technology

Colour options: Is available in two colours in India: Black and White

Battery: 1,800 mAh

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Smart homes create buzz at mobile fair

BARCELONA: Networks, whether superfast mobile broadband, wifi or a combination of both, are helping add pizzazz to new mobile products as the rapid evolution in smartphone and tablet design slows to a trickle.

The world's fastest smartphone, new "phablets" - sized between a phone and tablet - and small tablets optimised to watch video and run multiple applications on 4G mobile networks were making the biggest splash at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Networks are also enabling millions of other devices, from coffee makers to bicycles and cars to homes, to become "smart".

Chipmaker Qualcomm Inc for instance demonstrated a connected home in which a smartphone can be used to start a coffer maker and speakers burst into sound when you enter the room, thanks to the handset in your pocket.

Such innovations are made possible by AllJoyn, an open-source software framework compatible with mobile operating systems Android, Windows and iOs, that allows devices to speak to each other directly without needing a separate server.

"We are making the Internet of everything a seamless blend of the physical and the digital world," said Brian Spencer, engineer at Qualcomm Innovation Center.

US network operator AT&T Inc, meanwhile, is adding your home and your car to your smartphone contacts.

Its Digital Life product allows a user to automate and monitor his or her home remotely, and it has replaced Verizon Communications Inc as mobile partner for General Motors Co's OnStar connected car service.

Glenn Lurie, AT&T president of emerging enterprises, said the next step would be joining the two products together, creating a smart ecosystem dedicated to an individual.

"When my wife drives into the house and flips the garage door open, the house will know she's home and unlock the door and turns the thermostat up; that's the future," Lurie said.

Next big thing
Meanwhile wearable devices are the next big thing to be connected, industry watchers say. Google Inc revealed on YouTube last week some of the features of Google Glass, a pair of glasses that allows users to see information and record video.

Apple Inc, meanwhile, is experimenting with the design of a smart device similar to a wristwatch made with curved glass, according to a New York Times report.

In Barcelona, many of the wearables were designed to keep tabs on health problems.

A blood sugar monitor was being used by cyclists, with real-time data sent to a Sony Corp Xperia smartphone on the handlebars. Readings can then be sent to doctors using a secure mobile connection.

It will be used by a team of diabetics riding between Brussels and Barcelona next month, said trip organiser Adam Denton.

Most new smartphones and tablets unveiled at the show, however, displayed no departure from the touch-screen format popularised by Apple and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

Device maker Huawei set itself apart by emphasizing the connection speed of its flagship smartphone, the Ascend P2, while Japan's NEC Corp took a fresh approach to smartphone form with a device offering screens back and front that can be unfolded to make a 5.6 inch-sized tablet.

Olaf Swantee, chief executive of British network operator EE, said faster networks were changing how people use their devices and how manufacturers were designing kit.

"Miniaturisation was the big thing a few years ago, but now, with customers able to do more on their screens than ever before, we're seeing device manufacturers maximise screen space, not minimise it," he said at the show.

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Cyber education is the best tool against cybercrime?

NEW DELHI: A group of students hacked into a school's computer system and sent an email to all the parents a few years ago. The email asked the parents to gather at the school on a particular day with Rs 200 worth of sweets. The school authorities were in for a shock when these parents descended on the premises with boxes of barfi and ladoos.

This was an innocuous trick, but it can get dangerous sometimes, according to Supreme Court advocate and cyber law specialist Pavan Duggal. He was addressing teachers at the India International Centre for the 40th National Progressive Schools' Conference.

Duggal recounted another such incident when students slipped a bug into a teacher's bag and gained access to her private conversations. The question that suggested itself was whether teachers were actually aware of what was being written or talked about them. While few teachers answered in the affirmative, the question opened the floodgates for many niggling doubts. Teachers wondered how they could deal with caricatures and insulting comments in circulation, and what could prevent misuse of school networks by students. With a vast amount of content as well as technology becoming easily accessible, educational institutions and parents are confronted with serious issues related to cyber crimes and mischief.

These children have been born in the information age and take to new technologies. Their ability to access content, even objectionable, with relative ease, results in misuse. "Nine out of 10 children and most adults don't know that their actions are punishable under the law," said Duggal.

"It is imperative that children be counselled and informed about the legal ramifications of such actions. Cyber bullying, unwarranted comments, messages and electronic messages which are defamatory in nature — something as simple as calling somebody a fool — can land you in court," Duggal added. While explaining the law involving e-content to teachers, he said it was important to sensitize students to tools of cyber space.

This thought was echoed by Rajiv Chandran, national information officer of the United Nations, India and Bhutan, who said the biggest challenge today was managing hate speech. "The internet is the biggest propagator of hate messages and children and users are recipients of it," he added. Instead of misusing these tools, children need to taught how to use them properly. Chandran felt this was only possible by not "mentoring them" but by "engaging with them".

Finally, Chandran emphasized the need for helping children unlearn their prejudices as much as enabling them to learn new ideas."We all have biases when it comes to community, religion, food, smell, thoughts, ideas, etc. It is time you teach children to unlearn those biases," said Chandran. "As a teacher you are the first person to be aware of such groupism and community biases. You can break those biases... And this cannot be done by sitting on a high mountain of mentoring, but by listening and engaging with them," said Chandran.

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BSNL cash reserves plunge 96% in 2 years

NEW DELHI: State-owned telecom major BSNL's cash reserves declined by a whopping 96 per cent to Rs 1,214.44 crore in 2011-12 from Rs 29,355.5 crore 2009-10.

The company had a cash reserve of Rs 29,355.5 crore in 2009-10 fiscal, which declined to Rs 1,733.35 crore in 2010-11 and further slipped to Rs 1,214.44 crore in 2011-12, Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology K Kruparani said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

The loss-making company has drawn a blueprint to monetise its vast real estate as well has hiving off its tower arm over the next five years to increase revenues.

The proposals include utilisation of its real estate, monetising of towers assets, utilisation of its factories for revenue generation, providing broadband connectivity to schools and leasing out its CDMA network.

Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal has asked BSNL to submit plans that will help the company turn profitable.

BSNL's losses have more than tripled to Rs 5,997 crore crore during 2010-11. The company had registered a net loss of Rs 1,823 crore during 2009-10.

In real estate, BSNL has about 4,400 hectare of total land bank. It also has seven telecom factories, where it plans to set up manufacturing facilities of electronic equipment in partnership with other manufacturers.

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TCS settles lawsuit with former employees

NEW DELHI: Country's largest software firm TCS said it has agreed to settle a suit filed by two former employees alleging violation of the rights of its non-US citizen workers in the US.

However, details of the settlement were not disclosed. Highlighting that the US Court has found no wrongdoing by the company, TCS said it "believes that it always acted appropriately notwithstanding the allegations in this case."

"The company has admitted no wrongdoing and none has been found by the court. It agreed to settle this matter to eliminate any on-going distraction to its associates and management," a TCS spokesperson said.

The lawsuit was filed in 2006 by two of TCS' former employees, Gopi Vedachalam and Kangana Beri.

The lawsuit alleged that the company unjustly enriched itself by requiring all of its non-US citizen employees to endorse and sign over their federal and state tax refund checks, among others.

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Airtel to offer flexible prepaid data plans

BARCELONA: Bharti Airtel, India's largest mobile operator, said it had deployed a technology platform from Ericsson that will enable it to offer flexible data plans to prepaid subscribers across multiple domains - 2G, 3G, 4G/LTE and Wi-Fi.

The solution has been deployed in all 23 regions in India. Over 95 per cent of the 900 million mobile connections in India are the pre-paid platform.

"Ericsson and Bharti Airtel planned and executed the systems integration of the solution that will allow Bharti Airtel to enhance the prepaid customer experience by offering a wider and more attractive range of prepaid services, flexible bundling and real-time control of chargeable services," the companies said in a statement.

Both companies did not reveal the deal size. Ericsson manages and maintains the networks of Bharti Airtel in about half the country.

The Swedish vendor has been focusing on services and software to prop by revenues and this segment now contributes to about 67 per cent of the company's sales. Broadband Charging is a flexible online charging system that provides prepaid charging for data, content, messaging, voice, multimedia and VoIP.

Jagbir Singh, CTO & Director - Network Services Group- Bharti Airtel said, "With the ever changing customer demands, prepaid customers also demand flexibility in service packages. Bharti Airtel has the world's largest prepaid base, therefore it was imperative to deploy a solution that supports us in meeting the requirements of our prepaid customers. Ericsson's MBC suite has the capability to control complex tariff plans and service bundles."

According to Fredrik Jejdling, Ericsson's Head of Region India, data consumption is more complex than voice and this solution would 'help Bharti offer enhanced data services to increase flexibility, control and enrich their customer experience."

(The correspondent is attending the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on the invitation of Ericsson)

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Budget 2013: IT-BPO sector's expectations

NEW DELHI: The $100 billion IT-BPO sector is struggling with increasing costs and global uncertainty. Given its exponential growth as well as potential and bearing in mind the significant contribution of 7.5% of India's GDP, it is imperative that the government duly considers and makes announcements which helps in future growth of the IT/BPO sector and equips it to deal better in tough global economic conditions, says PricewaterhouseCoopers ( PwC) in a release.

Below are IT/BPO sector budget expectations from PwC:

Transfer pricing
Although one applauds the advent of Advance Pricing Mechanisms in India, however it would be helpful if there is some certainty around the marks ups being proposed for IT-ITeS companies. In lieu of the sector enlarging in emerging areas like KPO, R&D, Cloud etc. certainty through safe harbour formulation will aid the sector in creating a stable environment in adherence to the arm's length criteria. Also, Domestic Transfer Pricing provisions should not be applied to tax neutral transactions which merely add to the administrative compliance.

Indirect taxes
Non-issuance of service tax refunds continue to pose the biggest challenge for the sector. Additionally, the issuance of the recent Notification mandating collection of demands despite pendency of appeals and stay petitions adds to the blockage of funds and unwarranted court action. It would also help if final clarity on treatment of domestic delivery of software which is considered as goods and is subject to VAT as well as Service Tax could be brought up.

SEZs
Removal of the minimal contiguous land requirement of 25 acres for SEZ eligibility. Also the withdrawal of the levy of MAT which casts a huge burden on SEZ units who have otherwise been promised tax holiday is a clear need in keeping with policy and intent of the Government as spelt out when the same was introduced.

Software taxation
Retroactive amendments coupled with conflicting jurisprudence on the subject mandates a need for rationalisation of treatment of software as "Royalty" which is subject to tax in India. Roll back of taxation of the same is clearly the ask of the industry as the non-compliance implications are dual - one in the form of interest levy and penal consequences and the other in the form of disallowance of the same as expenditure whilst computing the taxable income of the payer. The retrospective amendment exposes companies to punitive action for non-deduction of withholding taxes for the past period, which should be condoned.

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Samsung, Visa team up over mobile payments

BARCELONA: US credit card giant Visa announced a global alliance with Samsung to let shoppers make payments by waving their smartphones near a special reader.

The deal could significantly boost the long-touted use of smartphones to pay for goods worldwide without any physical contact, and without the need either for credit cards or cash, it said.

The system could be used by owners of Samsung smart phones equipped with a technology known as Near Field Communication, or NFC, which lets a phone transmit information to a nearby reader without touching it.

"A Samsung device equipped with the Visa contactless payment service is a powerful proposition and will allow us to make mobile payments a reality for people around the world," Visa Europe vice president Mariano Dima said in a statement.

The success of the new system agreed between Visa and Samsung, the world's leading smartphone manufacturer, will still depend on whether banks can be persuaded to use it.

Visa said the deal had the potential to "significantly accelerate" the availability of mobile payments globally, noting a forecast by ABI Research that 1.95 billion NFC-enabled devices will ship in 2017.

Visa revealed the agreement on the first day of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which is trying to raise awareness of the advantages of NFC, including by letting participants use "NFC badges" on their mobiles to enter.

Some in the industry are sceptical about NFC's usefulness, however.

"I think NFC is just a technology in search of a problem to fix that does not exist because it is really easy to pay in the store," the president of eBay subsidiary PayPal, David Marcus, told journalists at the congress.

The agreement with Samsung is the first of its kind between a leading manufacturer of NFC-enabled smartphones and a payment network, Visa said.

Under the deal, Samsung will equip the next generation of its mobile devices with Visa payment technology, including by pre-loading Visa's contactless payment system -- Visa payWave -- in its mobiles in a mini-programme known as an applet.

Samsung will let banks send payment account information over the airwaves to a secure microchip embedded in its devices. Banks will use a secure system relying on Visa's so-called Mobile Provisioning Service and Samsung's key management system.

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Telcos predict 4 billion subscribers by 2018

BARCELONA: The $1-trillion global mobile industry on Monday predicted a boom in subscribers to four billion people by 2018 as the world's largest mobile fair opened in Barcelona, Spain.

Already, 3.2 billion people pay for mobile services, nearly half of the world's population, said a study by AT Kearney and GSMA, which represents 750 mobile operators and organises the vast, four-day annual Mobile World Congress.

The report forecast that a further 700 million subscribers would be added by 2017 and the four billion-subscriber mark would be hit in 2018.

Revenues for mobile operators alone amounted $1.0 trillion, or 1.4 per cent of the world's gross domestic product, in 2012, the report said.

Most of the growth was in the Asia Pacific region, where operators were forecast to raise revenue by 4.0 per cent a year up to 2017, adding $80 billion, or 23 per cent, to their revenue of $350 billion, the report said.

But Africa showed the fastest growth, and mobile operators there were predicted to boost revenue by 25 per cent over the 2012 to 2017 period to 70 billion dollars.

Worldwide, the growth in mobile operators' revenues was expected to slow, however, from a 4.0-per cent annual expansion from 2008 to 2012 to an annual pace of 2.3 per cent in the period up to 2017.

"One of the reasons for the slowdown is the decline of revenues in Europe," the report said, blaming "heavy regulation" of mobile prices, and impact of the Eurozone economic crisis for an estimated fall in revenue from $248 billion to $216 billion from 2008 to 2012.

"The mobile operator market in Europe is expected to decrease further by 2.0 per cent a year to 2017 due to competition and regulation. This trend, together with the growth in traffic, show the increasing value to consumers, who are using mobile services more while spending less," it said.

New lightning fast fourth-generation mobile networks, which promise download speeds as quick as the best fixed broadband connections, could boost revenues, it said, pointing to higher prices being commanded for 4G in North America, Scandinavia, South Korea and Japan.

"In Europe it is still too early to judge consumer reaction to the new services but it is certainly true that operators are positioning 4G as a premium service," the report said.

The use of mobile phones was exploding, the GSMA report said.

"At the end of 2012, there were 6.8 billion mobile connections worldwide, a figure expected to grow to 9.7 billion by the end of 2017," the report said.

But the industry urged regulators to use a light touch.

"The mobile communications industry is creating a mobile economy, both directly through network investment, job creation and contributions to public funding, and by transforming adjacent industries such as education, healthcare, payments, transportation and utilities," said GSMA director general Anne Bouverot.

"But to fully realise this future and to enable the mobile industry to maximise its investments, it is essential that we establish a light-touch regulatory environment, based predominantly on competition, and develop new business models that will allow all ecosystem participants to benefit from the mobile economy."

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Airtel to launch 4G in Chandigarh by March-end

BARCELONA: Country's largest private telecom company Bharti Airtel will launch 4G services in Chandigarh by the end of next month, expanding the footprint of its high- speed internet service network.

The only firm offering 4G services in India, covering cities of Kolkata, Bangalore and Pune, the company has roped in Chinese equipment maker ZTE to build and operate the 4G network in Chandigarh.

"We are planning to launch 4G in Chandigarh by end of March and have finalised ZTE for the network," said a company source.

4G mobile Internet technology provides download speeds of around 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) on the move and it can go up to 1 Gigabits per second (Gbps) at a fixed location.

Airtel had won spectrum for high-speed broadband service - Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) - in four telecom services areas of Kolkata, Maharashtra, Punjab and Karnataka in 2010, paying Rs 3,314.36 crore for it.

In the same auction, Reliance Jio Infocomm (then Infotel Broadband Services) won 20 Mhz slot for pan-India BWA spectrum for Rs 12,847.71 crore but the company is yet to announce its plan for rolling out services.

Qualcomm, Tikona, Aircel and Augere had also won BWA spectrum in some circles.

Last May, Bharti Airtel bought 49 per cent stake in Qualcomm's BWA venture for $165 million, aiding the Sunil Bharti Mittal-led group to offer services in 8 circles.

State-owned companies BSNL and MTNL were allocated one slot of BWA spectrum in their respective circles on payment of amount equivalent to the highest bidder in the service area.

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MWC 2013: Battle begins for 'mobile money'

BARCELONA: Global financial groups battled to control the lucrative future of "mobile money", which will enable people to use a smartphone to go shopping instead of cash and credit cards.

MasterCard, Visa and online payments service PayPal struggled for a slice of the industry as the world's biggest mobile fair, Mobile World Congress, opened in Barcelona, Spain.

It is a market with potentially rich rewards.

The mobile money industry is expected to grow from $13.8 billion (10.4 billion euros) in 2013 to $278.9 billion by 2018, according to a study released this month by global research group MarketsandMarkets, which estimates there will be about 5.3 billion mobile phones worldwide this year.

The banking and credit card world had previously been nervous of the mobile money industry, said Magnus Rehle, senior partner at Greenwich Consulting.

"Now I would say that Visa and MasterCard are pushing payment via the mobile but they want to include their existing systems," he added.

"It is more like the credit card is moving into your phone." MasterCard announced Monday a new digital payment system that lets people use a wide variety of devices including smartphones.

The system, known as MasterPass, stores customers' banking and personal information in a "secure cloud" online where it is available for the moment of payment whether in a store on when browsing the Internet, the group said.

Banks and stores will be able to issue their customers with MasterPass-connected "digital wallets", which would accept credit and debit card information, including cards other than MasterCard's, the group said.

Shoppers would be able to use MasterPass on the web without having to key in their bank information and delivery address for each purchase.

But they also could make payments with the new system in other ways, including by waving a smartphone equipped with Near Field Communications, or NFC, technology near a special reader.

MasterPass will be launched in Australia and Canada by the end of March, in the United States in spring and Britain in the summer before expanding to other markets including Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain and Sweden, MasterCard said.

MasterCard's archrival, Visa, was entering the fray with an announcement scheduled later in the day,

In a pre-emptive strike five days before the World Mobile Congress, PayPal invaded MasterCard and Visa's territory.

PayPal said it will be showcasing a new product that lets cash-based businesses accept PIN-number based "smart" debit and credit cards.

Merchants will be able to download a Paypal Here application for their Android or iPhone smartphone and then pair the handset with the new device, which they have to buy. The device can accept secure payments and issue receipts. For each transaction, whether by credit card, debit card or PayPal account, PayPal receives a "small fee".

"For mobile money often the most innovative markets have been emerging markets rather than developed markets," said Ian Fogg, senior mobile analyst at research house IHS.

"What is interesting is the shift where you see people like Visa and MasterCard getting interested and involved," he said.

"They have a role that is cross country, cross bank and one of the challenges of the mobile service is getting that economy of scale, getting all the different parts of the ecosystem together and those guys are able to look across the ecosystem in a way that I think an individual bank finds it harder to do."

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Mobile industry to employ 10 million globally: Report

BARCELONA: The mobile industry will invest $1.1 trillion by 2017 and the ecosystem around it is expected to employ 10 million people globally, said a report released by global industry body GSM Association said.

"For the period through 2017, the mobile industry will invest $$2.6 trillion to public funding. Importantly, in 2017, companies across the ecosystem will employ nearly 10 million people globally," 'The Mobile Economy 2013' report prepared Developed by GSMA and consulting major AT Kearney said.

The report said revenue from total mobile ecosystem revenues reached $1.6 trillion -- around 2.2 per cent of the global Gross Domestic Product ( GDP).

"To fully realise this future and to enable the mobile industry to maximise its investments, it is essential that we establish a light-touch regulatory environment, based predominantly on competition, and develop new business models that will allow all ecosystem participants to benefit from the mobile economy," GSMA Director General Anne Bouverot said.

The report said it expects a further 700 million subscribers will be added by 2017 and the 4 billion-subscriber milestone will be reached in 2018 across the globe.

At the end of 2012, there were 6.8 billion mobile connections worldwide and the study expects it to grow to 9.7 billion by the end of 2017.

High speed internet on mobile phone accounted for 1.6 billion of these connections in 2012, increasing to 5.1 billion in 2017, including 920 million LTE connections, the report said.

Mobile subscriber penetration globally stood at 45 per cent while mobile connection penetration is currently 94 per cent.

As per GSM Association Wireless Intelligence, the variance between the number of mobile subscribers and the number of mobile connections is related to multiple sim ownership as well as inactive sims.

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Twitterati flak for Blackberry Z10's Rs 43,490 tag

NEW DELHI: The much awaited turnaround phone of Blackberry in India literally landed in social media hot soup. Within hours of the Canadian smartphone maker launching Z10, its latest offering based on the new operating system BB10, the company found it was not the handset or company's name, but Z10's retail price that was trending on Twitter.

Priced at a whopping Rs 43,490, the new BlackBerry Z10 has been since been trending prominently in top Indian Twitter trends. The social networking site was flooded with both angry and amusing tweets about Z10 with users venting their ire, frustration and dismay as they perhaps expected a lower price tag.

We collated some of the most interesting and puny tweets targeted at Blackberry Z10's price that make for a funny read indeed.

@makadi: BB 10 launched at "Rs 43,490", the actual cost of the phone is 13,490, remaining is for the 10grams of gold used in the circuit board...

@fakingnews: Lava mobiles showroom costs Rs 43,490

@abdullah_0mar: Flash : UPA is breathing easily when they saw Rs 43,490 is not a scam!

@GappistanRadio: Don't get scared after noticing the twitter trends. Rs 43,490 is the price of new BlackBerry phone and not a new petrol hike..

@coolfunnytshirt: BlackBerry Z10 launched, priced at Rs 43,490. Yaaaaaaaaaay! Let's check out my PF & Gratuity...

@vivekbhandari_: Rs 43, 490 for a phone that doesn't have FM Radio!

@IronMan_Kagzi: Who on earth will buy Blackberry Z10 for Rs. 43,490 when we have a #wannabe #Samsung #GalaxyS3 , #micromax #Canvas2 available for 10K odd rs

@GhantaBabaJiKa: BlackBerry Z10 for Rs 43,490 giving tuff competition to bajaj discover, splendor and passion..... 2 minutes silence for them

@rohit_khare: #blackberry to cost Rs.43,490 I wish they get those many customers as well in India.

@asarode: BlackBerry for Rs 43,490 RGV can make 3 movies in that budget.

@ravibudania: BlackBerry Z10 for Rs 43,490 With tagline "kya aap c*&^%ye hain"

@mustafa__ryan: Rs 43,490 -- i dont wanna live on this planet anymore

@AmusingBong: Phir bhi 'Deal' hai Hindustani ~ BlackBerry Z10 for Rs 43,490

@Ohmmeee: #BB10 phone launched in India at Rs 43,490. It has this remarkable feature where friends laugh at you if you still have a Blackberry. :P"

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Why AMD India sees sales rising manifolds

NEW DELHI: World's second largest computer chipmaker, AMD expects its sales volumes in India to surge significantly in the next few years on the back of demand for high-end graphics experience for gaming and videos.

"As the Indian market is evolving, graphics are becoming critical for a great computing experience and it is here AMD steps in with its high graphic performance chips like our APUs (accelerated processing unit)," AMD India managing director Ravi Swaminathan told PTI.

Swaminathan said AMD has a strong presence in the youth market with its latest graphics capabilities and the launch of Sony PlayStation 4 will further boost its image.

AMD is providing a single-chip custom processor for Sony's brand-new gaming console, PlayStation 4.

"A lot of people are looking at India as the next big gaming destination and with PlayStation 4, AMD will further enhance its presence in this market and boost its image among the youth," Swaminathan said.

The new generation of APUs provide a combination of faster processing speed, multiple compute cores and amazing graphic capabilities, making it an excellent platform for gamers and PC enthusiasts alike, he added.

Unlike a traditional processor, APUs are designed to accelerate one or more types of computations. This may include graphics or similar specialised processing system.

About eight quarters back in 2011, AMD was not a big player in the market, but, now it has a strong presence, he said.

Quoting the latest IDC report, Swaminathan noted that "AMD India's market has grown 12 times as compared to the market growth over the last one year, with a current market share of 20.1 per cent in the Q4 FY12."

AMD India's total client market share grew from 8.8 per cent in first quarter of 2011 to 20.1 per cent in October- December 2012. The company follows January-December fiscal.

"2012 was a year of repositioning for AMD, globally. 2013 will see us finish what we started and build for the future," he said.

In the commercial business segment, AMD India recorded its highest ever market share of 27.1 per cent in Q4 2012, while in the consumer notebook market its share stands at 4.4 per cent in Q4 2012 from a low of 3.1 per cent in Q1 2011.

As per an IAMAI report, gamers constitute over 41 per cent of the total active Internet users in India. Another industry report suggests the Indian gaming sector achieved revenues of Rs 1,300 crore in 2011.

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Yahoo India MD Arun Tadanki resigns

BANGALORE: Arun Tadanki, managing director of Yahoo India & Southeast Asia, will leave Yahoo in July. He had joined Yahoo India as MD in 2009.

Tadanki's exit comes at a time when Yahoo is doing a major makeover under its latest CEO, Marissa Mayer, a Google veteran who took over in July last year.

A statement from Yahoo quoted Tadanki as saying that he had worked for 11 years in CEO roles for Apac/ emerging markets regions at multinational internet companies, and he was looking forward to playing a very different role within the internet ecosystem, beyond this region. No further details were provided about his plans, or who would replace him at Yahoo.

Yahoo's financial results for the December quarter came in a little better than analysts' forecasts and the full year (2012) results represented the first full-year gain in revenue since 2008. The gain was marginal though, and Yahoo still is not keeping pace with the overall growth of the internet ad market. Mayer is Yahoo's fifth permanent or interim CEO since 2008.

A Yahoo spokesperson said about Takanki: "Under Arun's leadership, Yahoo India has seen impressive growth both in terms of users and advertising, outpacing the market. During the last 3 years, Arun also secured strong partnerships that drove 6-fold growth in Yahoo's mobile users in India. He led the formation of the editorial operation, delivering 15-fold traffic growth in Yahoo India's content properties. He played a key role in localizing the Yahoo experience with extensive local content partnerships across categories such as cricket, Bollywood, entertainment & news, in English and six local languages."

In December 2011, Tadanki was elevated to take on additional responsibility to lead Yahoo's South East Asia region covering Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam.

Prior to Yahoo, Tadanki was president of Monster.com's Apac & Middle East operations for seven years. He became part of Monster in April 2002 when it acquired JobsAhead.com, where he was head of sales and marketing. Prior to this, he worked as head of the culinary business at Nestle India, where he spent eight years. He holds an MBA from IIM-Ahmedabad and an engineering degree from IIT-Madras.

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Online educational tools to help students

It's a competitive world and academia is not without its own challenges. With annual exams around the corner, here are a few online educational tools to help students augment and revise their curriculum; help them find the right career path; and even pick the perfect college

Merit Nation

Of all the websites mentioned here, Merit Nation has the most exhaustive collection of online academic content. It caters to all the grades across CBSE/ISC, ICSE and state boards of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Karnataka. Additionally, it also covers junior college for Science, Commerce and Humanities, and even has material for the IIT-JEE and NEET examinations.

Sign up at the site, and you are provided with a fairly large amount of free content. Subjects are listed on the left as icons, each with four sections: Study, Test, Revise and Ask & Answer.

The 'Study' section is formatted like a text book, with lots of text and diagrams; but it should be noted that several lessons also come with an additional video made by a teacher. The Test and Revise sections will let you assess how much you have learnt.

In Ask & Answer, you can pose your queries to be answered by experts or fellow students, as well as browse others' Q&As.

The IIT-JEE and NEET sections are equally well populated with tons of information about both examinations and all the study material you will need to prepare yourself. The free material here is limited though.

Whatever course you are in, you can pay to upgrade to a basic or all-inclusive online course, which gives you everything you'd need. For school and junior college, the discounted price as of writing is 3,800 per grade. IIT-JEE courses range from 5,999 to 15,999, while NEET rates are between 4,999 and 11,999.

www.meritnation.com

iPerform

For those enrolled in a CBSE school, iPerform is a great way to augment classroom learning. Unfortunately, the site doesn't cater to other boards of education.

Sign up for a free account for a few lessons that serve as a preview of the paid site; to unlock the full curriculum for any one grade, it costs 4,000 annually.

The site itself is divided into three parts: Learning Zone, e-Testing Zone and Interactive Zone. The Learning Zone is where all the lessons are imparted. Choose a subject (English, History, Physics, Maths, etc) and the lesson in it that you want to learn. Instead of a standard textbook format, iPerform has turned the chapters into slideshows, annotating each lesson with images. What's more, a box below the slideshow lets a student post queries, which show up in the Interactive Zone where educators can help them out.

The e-Testing Zone offers three modes: revise, exercise or smart assessment. iPerform will analyze the student's performance and track progress, along with other parameters such as the student's focus, learning and present it all in the Performance Report tab.

iperform.classteacher.com

India College Search
Can't decide which college in the nation is right for you? India College Search is the only resource you will need to make up your mind. Fantastically designed, it streamlines the whole process. First, choose the field - engineering, management, medical, law, architecture, computers, hotel management and pharmacy.

Next, pick the course (for example, B Tech/BE or M Tech/ME) and the geographic location, where you can choose from multiple choices between states and cities. Hit 'Search' and you're ready to go. The results are a list of colleges with basic information such as whether it's a public or private institution, course duration, annual fees, and small icons to denote facilities such as hostel, gym, library, laboratory, auditorium, etc.

Once you know what you want, click that college and you will be taken to its landing page, which has photos, location map, overview and description, faculty, events, admission procedure, eligibility, and recent cut-offs. If you like what you see, hit the 'Add to Shortlist' button - a list you can access through your profile. India College Search claims to have over 7,000 colleges listed, of which 1,187 accept applications via the website.

www.indiacollegesearch.com
Mera Career Guide

When you are finally done with your exams, you can turn to MCG to help you decide on your future course of action.

If you already know what career path you are interested in, try searching for it; otherwise, go through the list of 1,374 topics to see something that catches your fancy. You'll be taken to a Q&A forum with questions from other students, and which have been answered by career counsellors, letting you learn a bit more about the subject.

The 'psychometric assessments' will let you measure your aptitude and fine-tune your interests. Choose your current academic level or go in for the all-age 'ideal career test'. Once you are done, Mera Career Guide will show you a preview of the full report that displays the education stream that's least recommended for you.

For the complete report, you will have to pay 500 to access information on the best course for you, supplemented with a graph of your interests and aptitudes, your strengths and weaknesses, etc.

Besides, MCG also has career guides that you can access for a small fee, to better guide you with personalized advice.

www.meracareerguide.com

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATORS:

Coursera: Regarded as the best website for online education, four of Coursera's courses have been deemed worthy of college credit. The material, spanning across subjects such as humanities, medicine, mathematics, social sciences, business, etc, are all designed by world-class professors. Learn at your own pace, test your knowledge and reinforce concepts with exercises.
www.coursera.org

Khan Academy: With almost 4,000 videos that will teach you about any subject you want to learn, the sheer number of topics covered here is Khan Academy's biggest selling point - and hey, it's all free. It has gotten plaudits from education experts across the world. Students are advised to make good use of the dashboard feature that lets them track their academic progress. www.khanacademy.org

TED-Ed I TED: (Technology, Entertainment, Design), the idea sharing platform, has an offshoot dedicated to education that is choc-a-block full of videos to help in learning. TED-Ed is not really academic or adhering to curriculum. The videos are meant to augment what you learn in a classroom. The best part is that each video comes with links to dig deeper into the topic, as well as multiple choice and short answer questions. ed.ted.com

MIT Open CourseWare: The world-renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has put a large amount of its under-graduate and graduate courseware online for anyone in the world to use, from lecture notes to full videos of classes. ocw.mit.edu

YouTube Edu: From Khan Academy to Stanford University, most online academic providers use YouTube as a partner; and the video-sharing service has put them all together under one roof, hosting over 7,00,000 highquality educational videos. YouTube Edu has short lessons from top teachers across the world, full courses, and videos from global thought-leaders. And yup, it's all free. www.youtube.com/education

Teachers go through these websites to support what they teach, but in no way can these replace the teaching that takes place in classrooms. None of these keep up with new teaching methods, especially since the CBSE board introduces many innovative methods regularly. Examples are repetitive and the animation may not be up to the expectations of tech-savvy kids. — Sunita George, vice-principal of R N Podar School, Santacruz; teaching for 17 years.

Students need to understand that such material can only help with revision. Parents need to be more careful before investing in such websites and study material DVDS. Teachers are put through regular training programmes to keep them up-to-date with the syllabus... Still, these websites can definitely act as support material. — Aarti Bhatia, teacher with a South Mumbai school; teaching for 9 years.

Since the state board syllabus has been upgraded to match the standards of centralised education boards, students have been facing a lot of difficulty in coping with the syllabus. This website (meritnation.com) provides students with a lot of study material which is easy to understand. Also, they provide a lot of revision and tests, which is helpful during examinations. — Susan Babu, supervisor at Holy Family High School, Andheri (E); teaching for 27 years.

(with inputs from Shreya Bhandary)

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Review: Microsoft Outlook.com

NEW YORK: Longtime users of Hotmail, MSN and other Microsoft email services will start noticing a big change: When they sign in to check messages, they'll be sent to a new service called Outlook.com.

You might be thinking, isn't Outlook the software Microsoft makes for people to use email at work? Indeed it is, but Microsoft is now adopting that brand for personal, web-based email services as well. It's part of a broad makeover that includes the company's overhaul of the Windows operating system and the Office software suite.

There's little relationship between the two Outlooks apart from the name. That's good. The Outlook web app I use for checking work email at home feels like an adaptation of software meant to be installed on work computers, rather than something designed from the start to play to the web's strengths. The consumer Outlook.com, on the other hand, feels the way web email should. It bears more similarities with consumer-based email services, such as Google's Gmail and Yahoo Mail, than with the corporate Outlook.

People have been able to sign up for Outlook.com email addresses and use the new interface as a "preview" for several months now. Microsoft made Outlook.com official on Tuesday and plans to spend millions of dollars to advertise it. Microsoft is even starting to force people using older Microsoft email services to switch to Outlook.com. If you've already tried Outlook.com on a browser, you might find your other accounts automatically upgraded the next time you sign in. Others will be moved over starting this summer.

One important note: People will be able to keep their existing addresses while using Outlook.com. There's no need to print new business cards replacing Hotmail with a new Outlook.com address. But if you want to change your address, you can get a new one for free. In fact, at least for now, it's still possible to get new Hotmail and Live addresses by signing up through Hotmail.com or Live.com, rather than Outlook.com.

You'll see a lot of improvements when you switch, though nothing feels revolutionary if you've already been using Gmail.

By revolutionary, I mean something along the lines of what Gmail did to email when Google introduced it in 2004.

First, Gmail scrapped the use of folders to organise older messages. Instead, it gives you labels, and you can apply as many as you want to a particular message. So an email among friends to make plans for The Hobbit' movie might be filed away as 'friends', 'movies' and even 'The Hobbit'. With folders, you had to choose one folder to put your message into or create multiple copies of the messages. It's a relic of the offline world, in which a paper document can only go in one folder without a copying machine.

Meanwhile, those 50 emails it might take to coordinate your movie date with friends could have easily cluttered your inbox. Gmail automatically groups those into 'conversations', so you see all 50 messages as a single item in your inbox.

These changes took time to get used to, but that's what happens with revolutions.

Outlook.com adopts conversations, which makes it feel like it's catching up to Gmail, but it still uses folders instead of labels.

The improvements over Gmail are mostly around the edges:

* Outlook integrates with leading social networks such as Facebook and Twitter

Gmail mostly integrates with Google's own services. With Outlook, you can have the service automatically fill your address book with contact information not just from Google but also from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even China's Sina service. You can chat with a Facebook friend directly from the Outlook website.

And if you get an email from a Facebook friend, you might see that person's latest Facebook post to the right, as long as Facebook has that email address registered to the social networking account. Keep in mind that your posts won't start showing up next to correspondences with people you're not friends with, unless you've set them on Facebook to be publicly visible.

* Outlook offers many ways to customise and manage the mailbox

One of the complaints I have about web-based email is the lack of versatility. You're not given as many options as you are with stand-alone email software.

I was pleased to see a number of options with Outlook. For instance, I can have contents of emails automatically appear in a reading pane, rather than just as a list with subject lines. This is the part that feels most like Outlook software for work. You'd need to turn this feature on, though. It's something you might not want if you check messages a lot from public places and don't want messages to automatically appear. But Gmail doesn't even give you that option unless you install a tool that Google says "may change, break or disappear at any time.''

Outlook also lets you create alternate email addresses without signing up for additional accounts - up to five a year, or up to 15 at any one time. So you can create 'UseThisForSpam(at)Outlook.com' for dealings with merchants, whereas Google requires you to set up a new Gmail account to get that second address, which you can then link with your main account.

Outlook matches Gmail in letting you use Outlook.com to manage email from other services, such as Gmail and AOL, though neither works with Yahoo Mail unless you pay $20 a year for a Plus account.

Outlook also has tools for keeping your mailbox clean. You can automatically move or delete messages older than a certain number of days. You can also choose to keep only the latest message from that sender. Be careful, though, as I had inadvertently deleted more than 300 messages in a few seconds that way. A more useful option would have been to move only messages that had been read, or to move rather than delete all but the latest message.

One nice touch: Most services send deleted messages to a trash folder, and once you empty that, the messages are gone forever. As a web-based service, Outlook will try to retrieve messages from its servers if they are still there after you've emptied the trash.

* Outlook creates special filters for viewing certain types of messages

Click 'Shipping Updates', for instance, for quick access to emails with UPS, FedEx and other tracking numbers for products you are expecting from merchants. That's something Microsoft also had with its older email services, but major rivals have yet to adopt. (Yahoo comes close but sends you to an outside service, Slice, for that.)

Another filter offers quick access to messages with photo attachments or photo links, and yet another gives you messages with documents.

All of these filters missed some of the relevant messages though, while one gave me a bunch of messages from scammers with attachments to open.

* Outlook links with Microsoft's online storage service, SkyDrive, to handle large files

No longer do you have to worry about whether your friend or colleague can receive large attachments. Just let Outlook add the file to SkyDrive and create a link to send by email. You get 7 gigabytes of storage for free. Google doesn't integrate its own storage service, Google Drive, with Gmail the same way.

And speaking of storage, Outlook.com offers unlimited space, matching offerings from Yahoo and AOL Inc. Gmail has a 10GB limit on free accounts.

Again, the advances in Outlook.com are mostly neat rather than essential. If you're already using a Microsoft email account, you might as well upgrade as you'll be forced to in a few months anyway. Outlook.com does feel cleaner and smoother than what I had been using for Hotmail.

Microsoft is trying to lure Gmail users by pointing out that Google targets ads based on the contents of email messages. If such targeting is a concern for you, you can switch to Outlook.com while keeping your Gmail address. Your Gmail messages would go to Outlook, and you can send messages from there with your Gmail address in the "from'' line. Setting that up is relatively easy but slow. After more than four days, my new Outlook.com account has managed to grab Gmail messages through only 2009.

That said, Google has been upfront about targeting from the start, and I've gotten used to it. At times, I've actually found the ads on Gmail entertaining and more interesting than the ones I'm now seeing on Outlook.com - ads for pricey products I don't need or want.

Microsoft did a good job refreshing its email service, but that might not be enough for you to switch if you are already happy with your service.

-- Anick Jesdanun

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Review: Crysis 3 is marred by sci-fi cliches

Crysis 3 (Electronic Arts, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, $59.99) is a gorgeous game. Its creator, the German studio Crytek, has lived up to its promises that it will set a new benchmark for computer graphics. On a state-of-the-art PC, it's spectacular.

You probably don't have a state-of-the-art PC, but that's okay. I played 'Crysis 3' on Microsoft's eight-year-old Xbox 360, and it still looks pretty good. If only all that beauty was in the service of something more interesting than another alien bloodbath.

Actually, Crysis 3 throws two types of enemies at you: the alien Ceph and the human employees of Cell, a corporation that has built a giant dome over the ruins of New York City. As a supersoldier nicknamed "Prophet," your job is to get inside the Liberty Dome and figure out what Cell is up to.

Prophet is equipped with a nano-suit, a combination of human and alien tech that has two primary functions, armour and cloaking. If you're the kind of player who likes to plunge right into firefights, you'll keep turning on the armour. If you'd rather avoid attracting attention from the Ceph, you can hit the cloaking switch for temporary invisibility.

The nano-suit's other major feature is a visor that lets you scope out the battlefield before you rush in, pinpointing enemies as well as locating ammunition dumps and fresh weapons. The visor also helps you hack enemy systems, so you can disarm minefields or turn turrets against their builders.

Of course, Prophet has the usual assortment of firearms at hand, from pistols and sniper rifles to assault weapons and missile launchers. You can also pick up Ceph plasma weapons, which are somewhat more effective at obliterating the aliens. The silent-but-deadly Predator bow is a little clunkier, but it does let you remain cloaked even while you're shooting electrified arrows.

All this takes place in a New York City that will be unrecognisable to anyone who lives there now. Familiar neighborhoods like Chinatown and Hell's Kitchen are flooded or overgrown with vegetation, and there are only a few glimpses of landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge. Right in the middle of the whole thing is a hydroelectric dam, which makes one wonder: Why is this set in New York?

It's a shame, too, that the story is so cliched. I don't think I'm giving anything away by revealing that there's a connection between Cell and the Ceph, and other plot twists are so baldly telegraphed that the only surprise is how long it takes the characters to figure them out. And it wraps up with a desperately tedious boss fight that makes some of the best tools in Prophet's arsenal useless.

Fortunately, Crysis 3 comes with a robust assortment of multiplayer games. There are the expected variations on death-match, capture-the-flag and king-of-the-hill, but the real standout is Hunter. It's a clever game of hide-and-seek in which nano-suit-clad hunters pursue less powerful Cell guards; any guard that gets killed joins the hunters. The suspense is excruciating.

For fans of first-person shooters, the solid online action may be enough to make Crysis 3 a worthwhile purchase. If you're a PC gamer who wants to show off your new graphics card, it's probably essential. But if you're looking for a fresh approach to video-game science fiction, you won't find it here. Two stars out of four.
-- Lou Kesten

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Samsung unveils Galaxy Note 8.0 to take on iPad Mini

BARCELONA: Samsung Electronics is beefing up its tablet range with a competitor to Apple's iPad Mini that sports a pen for writing on the screen.

The Korean company announced on Sunday in Barcelona that the Galaxy Note 8.0 will have an 8-inch screen, putting it very close in size to the Apple's tablet, which launched in November with a 7.9-inch screen. It's not the first time Samsung has made a tablet that's in the Mini's size range: it's very first iPad competitor had a 7-inch screen, and it still makes a tablet of that size, but without a pen.

Samsung will start selling the new tablet in the April to June period, at an as yet undetermined price. It made the announcement ahead of Mobile World Congress, the wireless industry's annual trade show, which starts Monday in Barcelona, Spain.

The Note 8.0 fills a gap in Samsung's line-up of pen-equipped devices between the Galaxy Note II smartphone, with its 5.5-inch screen, and the Galaxy Note 10.1, a full-size tablet. Samsung has made the pen, or more properly the stylus, one of the tools it uses to chip away at Apple's dominance in both tablets and high-end smartphones. Apple doesn't make any devices that work with styluses, preferring to optimize its interfaces for fingers, mice and touchpads.

On Samsung's Note line, the pens can be used to write, highlight and draw. The screens also sense when the mouse hovers over the screen, providing an equivalent to the hovering mouse cursor on the PC. However, few third-party applications have been modified to take full advantage of the pens.

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Redington, Cariano fined Rs 32,500 over defective BlackBerry

NEW DELHI: An electronic goods supplier has been directed by a consumer forum here to pay Rs 32,500 to a customer for selling a defective Blackberry phone to him and failing to repair it.

The North District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum held the Blackberry phones' supplier, Redington India, as well as the dealer, Cariano Telecom, guilty of deficiency in service.

"Firstly, opposite parties sold defective Blackberry phone to complainant. Secondly, even if it suffered from the defect, the same was not removed after carrying repair of the phone by the opposite party 1 (Redington), which is authorised service centre. Therefore, there is a deficiency of service on the part of both the opposite parties (Redington and Cariano).

"Since phone is still lying with opposite party one, we are of the view that ends of justice will be met if they are directed to refund the price of mobile handset along with some cost and compensation," the bench presided by Babu Lal said.

The forum directed Redington and Cariano to "jointly and severally" refund Rs 31,000 (price of the Blackberry mobile phone) to Delhi resident Chander Mohan Goel and to pay him an additional compensation of Rs 1,500.

The direction came on Goel's plea alleging that the Blackberry 9900 mobile phone he had been sold for Rs 31,000 was defective and was not repaired by Redington to which the handset was handed over for repair.

He had alleged that the phone, purchased by him in November 2011, was not working properly right from the beginning.

The order was passed ex-parte by the forum which said, "Notices sent to opposite parties were duly served, however, none appeared on behalf of the opposite parties, therefore, they were proceeded with ex-parte."

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BSNL eyes subsidiary for tower infrastructure

NEW DELHI: The government today said state-owned BSNL is considering a separate subsidiary for its tower-related infrastructure and has floated an expression of interest for appointing a consultant on the matter.

"BSNL has floated an expression of interest (EOI) for appointment of consultant to advise and assist it in setting up a separate subsidiary company for tower related infrastructure," Minister of state for communications and IT Killi Kruparani said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.

She said, however, that there is no proposal under consideration of BSNL for setting up of separate subsidiary company for land bank and other real estate.

The government had set up a committee in January 2012 under Sam Pitroda to review the functioning of BSNL.

"The committee recommended to create a separate subsidiary company for tower related infrastructure to aggressively market to other public and private sector customers and unlock the whole potential value through strategic stake sale, M&A or separate IPO," Kruparani said.

The committee also recommended exploring possibilities of monetising other such subsystems.

"To create a separate subsidiary to hold undeveloped land bank and other real estate assets and a large number of unutilised staff quarter etc, the committee further recommended to monetise the value of this subsidiary by collaborating with a reputed and experienced real estate company in a transparent manner," Kruparani added.

In a separate reply, she said BSNL has been witnessing a decline in its revenue for the last three years.

"BSNL's revenue declined to Rs 27,934 crore in 2011-12 from Rs 29,688 crore in 2010-11 and Rs 32,045 crore in 2009-10," she added.

In order to augment its revenue, BSNL has decided to rent out its telecom towers to other service providers and has also signed agreements in this regard with private operators for which a revenue of Rs 132.87 crore has been realised since 2009-10.

"To monetise its land assets, BSNL has taken up a pilot project for the commercial exploitation of 10 parcels of land. For this purpose, a project development consultant has been appointed," she said.

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