Airtel DTH, WorldSpace join hands to offer radio service

Satellite radio WorldSpace is making a comeback in India with Bharti Airteltying up with Timbre Media, the licensee of the brand, for broadcasting it on its DTH platform.

As part of the partnership, Airtel Digital TV -- the DTH arm of Bharti Airtel -- will offer the radio service on its iMusicSpace application, the company said in a statement.

The service has been launched on the DTH platform in association with Saregama and Timbre Media, who will jointly provide the content for the application, it added.

Commenting on the development, Bharti Airtel CEO-DTH/Media, Shashi Arora said, "This service is yet another step by Airtel towards making TV a wholesome entertainment package for customers and we look forward to our partnership with Timbre Media for the WorldSpace Radio service."

WorldSpace will offer a collection of latest and retro Hindi songs, popular ghazals and regional music channels on the new avatar radio to Airtel Digital TV DTH customers, it said.

Timbre Media was set up in 2010 by a group of erstwhile employees of WorldSpace India and bought the brand licence after the satellite radio service went off air in 2009 in India.

Android apps collect questionable amount of user info: Research

Thousands of smartphone applications available for download from Google's Play Store may be collecting too much data from users, a security firm has said.
According to the security firm Bit9, about one-quarter of over 400,000 apps studied are "suspicious" or "questionable" because of what they do in the background, such as location tracking, accessing contact lists or harvesting the contents of email messages.
Bit9 chief technology officer Harry Sverdlove wrote in an email interview that some of the most aggressive apps are programmes purporting to be affiliated with popular brands, such as Facebook and Zynga.
He said that wile the extra functions don't necessarily make the programmes malicious, they do raise questions about the developers' intentions, The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
"Including a common app or publisher in the title is not a guaranteed sign of suspicious behaviour, but it is certainly a technique that malicious authors use to trick users into installing their apps," Sverdlove wrote.
According to the paper, Android phones warn users when they download applications about what information the programmes will access.
Whether most people actually read those warnings is another matter, it added.

Lenovo eyeing 10% share in Indian smartphone market

Chinese electronics manufacturer Lenovo has targeted a 10% share in the smartphone market of India within two years, a company official said on Friday. The company is the largest player in the personal computer market in India and hopes to replicate the results fast growing smartphone market.

"We plan to corner 10% share of the smartphone pie of the country. As of now we have launched only five phones from our portfolio of 47 in China. We can launch 2-3 phones every month depending upon the choiceof the customers," said SS Bassi, head of MIDH verticle. MIDH stands for mobile, internet, DTH and home.

The company has launched Android-based touchscreen phones ranging from Rs 6,499 to Rs 28,499 in four southern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala as well as Gujarat. These states put together constitute 35% of India's smartphone market pegged at 18 million handsets, which is growing at 60%. Delhi and Mumbai also constitute big chunk.

"Gujarat is a very important market for us in PCs and laptops. The same will be the case in smartphones," said Shanil Madollathil, general manager (sales) for the western region forLenovo India. The company expect smart phones to constitute 50-60% of the cellphone market in India within two years. At present, Samsung is the leader in Indian smart phone market with a market share of over 40% followed by Nokia, which has a market share of over 25%.

Facebook testing new ‘slimmer‘ Timeline layout

Social networking giant Facebook is testing out a new, slimmer Timeline layout featuring a single column of posts, instead of the current double column.
The test layout keeps the boxes that highlight friends and activities on the right side.
According to Inside Facebook, the firm is currently rolling out the test to a small number of users.
"This is a new design Facebook is testing with a small percentage of people to make navigating timeline even easier," CNET quoted a Facebook spokeswoman, as saying.
The right hand column keeps the existing boxes such as "Recent Activity," "Friends," "Photos" and "Likes," as well as any app activity displayed by users.
But with the new design, the boxes are a smaller size than posts, the report said.
Below those boxes, the test design features only whitespace where the current design would display more posts, it added.

Micromax introduces 2 Superfones A110 Canvas 2, Micromax A90S

Mobile handset-maker Micromax has launched two Superfones in India.

Micromax Superfone A110 Canvas 2 sports a 5-inch FWVGA screen with a resolution of 480X854 pixels. The phone is powered by a 1.0 GHz dual core processor and runs on Android4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

The phone boasts of a 2000mAh Li-ion battery promising a talk time up to 5 hours and standby time up to 180 hours. The phone sports an 8-megapixel CMOS camera with dual LED flash and a 0.3-megapixel front camera. The 3G-enabled A110 has 4GB on internal storage which is expandable up to 32GB.

As of connectivity, the phone is 3G, GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled. Micromax A110 Canvas 2 comes in two colors black and white and is available in the market at a price of Rs 9,990.

Micromax A90S is a dual-SIM Android smartphone featuring a 4.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen with HD display and a resolution of 800x480 pixels. The device is powered by a 1.0 GHz dual-core processor and runs on Android 4.0 (Ice-Cream Sandwich), and boasts of 1600mAh battery that promises a talk time up to 5 hours and a standby time up to 174 hours.

The phone sports an 8-megapixel CMOS rear camera with LED flash and multiple camera settings such as night mode, 4X zoom and a 0.3-megapixel front camera. As of connectivity, the phone is 3G enabled. The phone's memory is expandable upto 32GB. Micromax A90S is available in at a price of Rs 12,990 and comes in two colors black and White.

Android powered 75% smartphones shipped in Q3: IDC

Android software powered three out of four smartphones shipped worldwide in the recently ended third quarter as the Google-backed mobile platform dominated the market, industry tracker IDC said on Thursday.
Android smartphones shipments surged to 136 million, topping those in the same three-month period last year by slightly more than 90 percent, according to an IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report.
The Android share of the market climbed to 75 percent from 57.5 percent in a year-over-year comparison. A total of 181.1 million smartphones were shipped in the third quarter of this year, according to IDC.
"Android has been one of the primary growth engines of the smartphone market since it was launched in 2008," said IDC mobile phones research manager Ramon Llamas.
"In every year since then, Android has effectively outpaced the market and taken market share from the competition."
Shipments of iPhones rose nearly 14 percent to 26.9 million in the quarter giving Apple a slightly improved 14.9 percent share of the market as the overall market grew 46.4 percent, according to IDC.
Smartphones powered by Microsoft Windows software also gained ground in the quarter, with their share of the market growing to two percent.
Microsoft this week unveiled innovative new Windows Phone 8 handsets along with a growing library of applications, music, services and more.
BlackBerry and Symbian smartphones meanwhile saw their shares of the market slide.
"The share decline of smartphone operating systems not named iOS since Android's introduction isn't a coincidence," said IDC senior research analyst Kevin Restivo.
"The smartphone operating system isn't an isolated product, it's a crucial part of a larger technology ecosystem," he continued. "Google has a thriving, multi-faceted product portfolio."
The availability of desirable "apps" and digital content such as music, films, and games is considered crucial to the success of smartphones.

Wipro Q2: Revenue from energy rises most, telecom‘s declines

India's third-largest technology services company Wipro said the energy and utilities segment reported the highest growth among all its verticals in the second quarter. The segment grew 8.4% sequentially and 15.5% from last year. It also reported a decline in the percentage of revenue contribution from its telecom vertical. Telecom now makes up 14.4% of the total IT revenue, down from 15.7% a year ago.

Wipro had acquired the energy technology business of Science Applications International Corporation last year for Rs 675 crore. Energy and utilities now contributes 15% to Wipro's revenues.

For Wipro, the media and telecom sectors contribute about $1 billion (about Rs 5,400 crore) of the total $6 billion revenues of its IT services arm. A large part of the business comes from telecom equipment vendors like Nokia Siemens and Ericsson.

The worldwide telecom equipment market is likely to grow slower at 6.9% this year from 7.2% last year, according to technology research firm Gartner.

In India, Wipro's telecom clients include Vodafone and Aircel. Investments in its deal with Uninor have been on a freeze after the Supreme Court cancelled the telecom company's licence.

The financial solutions vertical, which includes banking, financial services and insurance sectors, accounted for 27% of its overall revenues during the second quarter ended September 30. On a sequential basis, financial solutions reported a 4% growth.

While manufacturing reported a 0.5% decline, business from healthcare and life sciences vertical dropped by a 4.4% during the quarter.

Wipro, which reported second-quarter IT services revenues of Rs 8,373 crore, said it won a multi-year transformation deal from one of the large retail departmental store chains in the US during the quarter. Its retail vertical grew 1.4%.

The company added 53 new clients during the quarter. As of September 30, the IT services segment had 140,569 employees.

With several large banks in the US and Europe cutting down on their technology spends, analysts had expected Wipro's financial services vertical to report flat numbers. On a yearly basis, Wipro's financial solutions vertical grew 4.1%.

"We have delivered revenues in line with our guidance and are continuing to see consistent improvement in our engagement with customers and employees," TK Kurien, CEO of Wipro's IT business, said in a statement.