Why Indian animation is still a distant dream

It's sad but true that the $2 billion Indian film industry, touted as one of the largest in the world, still treats animation as an orphaned child.

The Indian animation industry is pegged at $350 million and yet remains in the dark because of the size of our companies and the lack of creative storytellers, market intelligence and writers, feels Rudra Masta, CEO RME, a company, known for making Indian animation television series "Little Pandavas", "Baba" and "Garuda".

"At $350 million, this is a good number to settle with for Indian animation industry. I don't see scope for fancy forecasting of the industry becoming $1 billion in 2014, when the turnover of most successful Indian animation companies with different business models is as low as Rs300 crore (over $55,000,000)," Rudra told IANS.

"The lack of good storytellers like John Lasseter, producers with market intelligence and taste like Walt Disney and writers with good hold over animation storytelling techniques are further making Indian animation a distant dream," he added.

The state of animation films is obvious from the fact that Nikhil Advani's "Delhi Safari" was the only known title from the genre that came out last year.

Rishi Wadhwa, associate director, writer and creative head of Hindi animated film "The Green Chic -Finding Dad", feels apart from improving quality of animated films, filmmakers need to create characters that is loved by the Indian audiences.

"We should make animation films that are as good as films made by Disney or Pixon because Indian kids watch movies like 'My Friend Ganesha' on TV because of its quality, but prefer watching foreign animated film only in cinemas. This is the very reason why we need our own superheroes and characters instead of bringing foreign superheroes to India," Wadhwa told IANS.

According to FICCI Deloitte 2012 report, the Indian VFX and animation industry faces structural challenges such as weak pre-production cycle, shortage of skilled manpower and high resource costs.

Shankar Mohan, director, International Film Festival of India (IFFI), feels there's a need for a platform to showcase and contemplate about animation movies and its future in the country.

"We need a good platform to showcase the best animated films which are based on the emerging trends in the animation industry, and thus we introduced a new segment at the 42nd IFFI on animation and 3D cinema, which aims to promote and appreciate the form of animation as a narrative medium for mature cinematic storytelling and review and celebrate animated films", Shankar said.

Summing it up, Bollywood director Nikhil Advani, pointed out that unless studios and distributors don't have faith in animation, the dream will never be reality.

"Unless big studios and distributors don't believe in animation we'll be stuck in this dream phase. Although we're technologically advanced and have a bevy of very creative art directors and storytellers, but we're still stuck to mythological characters and it's time to move away from mediocre animation", he added.

Quite true. Toonz Animation, Crest Communications, Maya Entertainment and Silvertoon are the Indian companies that have dedicated themselves to the outsourced world of animation.

Do you see the change happening soon?

"Last one year has been really good for Indian cinema in terms of better narrative and presentation of our films. Lately, we've had so many animation festivals in the country and the films that are screened here are very good so hopefully, we can see the change happening soon", said Advani.

Microsoft Surface Pro coming in Feb, price revealed

Microsoft on Tuesday announced that its business-oriented Surface Windows 8 Pro tablet computer will debut in the United States and Canada in February with a lofty starting price of $899.

Microsoft also said that the consumer-focused version of Surface released late last year here will soon be available in 13 new markets around the world.

The Surface Pro will be available on February 9 at Microsoft stores in the United States and Canada, at the online Microsoft store and at Staples and Best Buy and other retailers.

"The response to Surface has been exciting to see," said Microsoft Surface general manager Panos Panay. "We're thrilled to continue growing the Surface family."

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft described Surface Pro as providing "the power and performance of a laptop in a tablet package."

Pro tablets, which Microsoft originally said would be released in January, will be available in 64-gigabyte and 128-gigabyte models.

Microsoft introduced the Surface tablet in the middle of last year and began sales in time for the holiday shopping season.

Although Microsoft has provided no sales data, analysts have said Surface is getting only a small segment of the tablet market led by Apple's iPad, Amazon's Kindle and several others powered by the Google Android system.

The lower-cost version of Surface, with a starting price of $499, is now sold at Microsoft retail stores in the United States and Canada and online in the US, Australia, Britain Canada, China, France and Germany.

Last month, Microsoft said it would begin selling the tablet in third-party retail outlets.

Microsoft Surface Pro coming in Feb, price revealed

Microsoft on Tuesday announced that its business-oriented Surface Windows 8 Pro tablet computer will debut in the United States and Canada in February with a lofty starting price of $899.

Microsoft also said that the consumer-focused version of Surface released late last year here will soon be available in 13 new markets around the world.

The Surface Pro will be available on February 9 at Microsoft stores in the United States and Canada, at the online Microsoft store and at Staples and Best Buy and other retailers.

"The response to Surface has been exciting to see," said Microsoft Surface general manager Panos Panay. "We're thrilled to continue growing the Surface family."

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft described Surface Pro as providing "the power and performance of a laptop in a tablet package."

Pro tablets, which Microsoft originally said would be released in January, will be available in 64-gigabyte and 128-gigabyte models.

Microsoft introduced the Surface tablet in the middle of last year and began sales in time for the holiday shopping season.

Although Microsoft has provided no sales data, analysts have said Surface is getting only a small segment of the tablet market led by Apple's iPad, Amazon's Kindle and several others powered by the Google Android system.

The lower-cost version of Surface, with a starting price of $499, is now sold at Microsoft retail stores in the United States and Canada and online in the US, Australia, Britain Canada, China, France and Germany.

Last month, Microsoft said it would begin selling the tablet in third-party retail outlets.

My son will never become CEO of Wipro: Azim Premji

IT czar Azim Premji has said his son Rishad will never be the chief executive of his company Wipro, but will represent promoter ownership on the company's board.

Rishad, 35, joined Wipro in 2007 as business head for special projects in the banking and financial services vertical and rose to become chief strategy officer three years later.

Premji, who founded Wipro, said becoming CEO was not the career path for the eldest of his two sons.

"He (Rishad) is not going to be the chief executive officer, that's not the career plan for him but, he would be representing ownership obviously," Premji, chairman of Wipro, said in television interviews on sidelines of World Economic Forum here.

Azim Premji directly owns 3.7 per cent in the company, while entities related to him own over another 74 per cent. Rishad has a direct ownership of 0.03 per cent shares in Wipro.

Rishad has for long been speculated to be a natural choice for taking over the company's operations.

Prior to joining Wipro, Rishad, a management graduate from Harvard Business School, worked with Bain & Co, working across segments like consumer products, automobiles, telecom and insurance.

There have been speculations of him being appointed as the CEO of the now demerged entity of Wipro, which will include the non-IT business.

The non-IT businesses of Wipro, which includes lighting, furniture, consumer care products and infrastructure engineering services, was hived off last year to focus on the core information technology business. It contributes about 10 per cent of the company's revenues.

There have also been discussions around succession plans at Wipro after the retirement of Azim Premji, who is 67 now.

Asked about succession plans, Premji said, "We are always working with succession planning. It was right from the top to senior management level and that is the key responsibility of the board."

Hinting at a bigger role for CEO TK Kurien, Premji said Kurien "certainly" could become the managing director.

"We have TK Kurien now in charge. So, very obviously he has taken over from me the mantel of the chief executive officer's role ... He certainly stands a chance of becoming the managing director. Our restructuring is going to make some changes," he said.

Samsung pips Apple in semiconductor demand in 2012: Gartner

Samsung Electronics has overtaken Apple as the biggest consumer of semiconductors across the world for 2012, according to a report by research house Gartner. As per the report, the total available market (TAM) for semiconductors is valued at $297.6 billion, wherein the top two buyers account for $45.3 billion or 15% of total demand.

While the semiconductor market contracted by 3% in 2012, Samsung's demand for the product increased by 28.9%. Likewise, Apple bought 13.6% more semiconductors last year than the one before it. Apart from Samsung and Apple, Sony and Lenovo were only two semiconductor customers in Gartner's report of top 10 buyers who saw purchases increase in 2012 over the preceding year.

Gartner's report says HP, Dell, Toshiba, LG Electronics, Cisco and Nokia also figured among the top 10 consumers of semiconductors, but all of them witnessed a fall in demand for the product. Finnish manufacturer Nokia saw the steepest fall in semiconductor consumption as it spent $5 billion on it in 2012, as compared to $8.6 billion in the year before, a fall of 42.6%.

Yahoo! buys scrapbook website Snip.it

Yahoo! confirmed Tuesday that it bought Snip.it, a young San Francisco startup that lets people create scrapbooks with pictures, articles, videos and other content found online.
"The Snip.it team created an innovative technology that lets people share content in a social and fun way," Yahoo! vice president of product Mike Kerns said in a statement emailed to AFP.

"Reading and sharing content is a core daily habit for most of the world, and we can't wait to work with the Snip.it team to make that experience even more entertaining for our users."

A message posted at Snip.it told users it was "joining forces" with Yahoo! and that the service was no longer available. A link was provided to a hall of fame honoring top Snip.it contributors.

"For the past year and a half, we've worked tirelessly as a team to build the best social news platform on the Web," Snip.it said in the message.

"We are thrilled at the opportunity to bring Snip.it's vision to a larger scale at Yahoo!"

Snip.it launched in late 2011 as a place where people could share digital "scrapbooks" based on topics or themes of their choosing.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed but unconfirmed online reports estimated the figure to be in the vicinity of $15 million.

Google's most lucrative business, search on desktop PCs, slows down; still struggling with mobile

Although Google is scrambling to meet consumers as they flock to mobile devices, the question is whether it is moving fast enough.

When Google announced its fourth-quarter earnings on Tuesday, investors were watching closely for positive signals of Google's progress in the evolution to a mobile world.

They received a disappointing sign: The price that advertisers paid Google each time someone clicked on an ad, known as cost per click, decreased 6 per cent from the year-ago quarter, falling for the fifth consecutive quarter, year over year. It has been declining in large part because mobile ads cost advertisers less, and more people are using Google on their mobile devices and fewer on their desktop computer.

Still, there was some evidence that Google was making progress in solving the mobile challenge. The price for clicks on ads rose 2 per cent from last quarter.

Analysts had mixed reactions to Google's financial report. The company exceeded their expectations on profit, but disappointed on revenue. That was at least in part because analysts are still figuring out how to account for Motorola Mobility, the struggling cellphone maker that Google acquired last year.

Larry Page, Google's chief executive and co-founder, was optimistic in a statement.

"In today's multi-screen world we face tremendous opportunities as a technology company focused on user benefit," he said. "It's an incredibly exciting time to be at Google."

The company reported fourth-quarter revenue of $14.42 billion, an increase of 36 per cent over the year-ago quarter. Net revenue, which excludes payments to the company's advertising partners, was $11.34 billion, up from $8.13 billion.

Net income rose 13 per cent to $10.65 a share.

The fourth quarter is generally Google's brightest because it makes much of its money on retail ads that run during the holiday shopping season. Analysts had expected revenue of $10.47 a share, on revenue of $12.3 billion. Google warned last week that analysts' expectations were off target because Google sold Motorola's set-top box division during the quarter so it did not include it in the quarterly results. Still, even including that division of Motorola, Google's revenue would have missed expectations.
Shares of Google, which fell slightly during the day, were up 4 per cent in after-hours trading. "This is supposed to be Google's quarter to shine, the December quarter, and we're going to have it all mucked up by Motorola,"

said ColinBSE -3.41 % Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners.

This holiday season was the first that Google charged e-commerce companies to be included in its comparison shopping engine, and these so-called product listing ads contributed to its bottom line.

"Q4 retail is absolutely crucial for Google's earnings," said Sid Shah, director of business analytics at Adobe, which handles $2 billion in annual advertising spending. "Despite talk about retail having a weak season, Google's product listing ad program has taken off quite successfully."

Nonetheless, Google's mobile challenge overhung even its usual holiday shopping sparkle. Consumers are increasingly shopping on phones and tablets, yet Google and other companies have not yet figured out how best to profit from mobile users.

"You would expect Google to be a key player benefiting from mobile, but that hasn't played out in the last year," said Jordan Rohan, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus.

One problem is that advertisers pay about half as much for an ad on a mobile device, in part because they are not yet sure how effective mobile ads can be.

Another challenge for Google is that consumers increasingly use apps, like Yelp or Kayak, to search onmobile devices instead of using Google. Even when consumers use Google for mobile searches, they are often doing so on Apple devices like iPhones, for which Google has to pay Apple a fee.

This shift is happening as Google's biggest, most lucrative business - desktop search - is slowing. The share of clicks on Google results that happen on desktop computers has fallen to 73 per cent from 77 per cent in the last six months, while the share of clicks on tablets and smartphones has increased to 27 per cent from 23 per cent, according to data from Adobe.

Meanwhile, Google has a new competitor in search: Facebook, which last week introduced a new form of personalized social search on the site.

Google has also recently become a maker of mobile devices, both by acquiring Motorola and by producing the line of Nexus devices with manufacturer partners. In the fourth quarter, Google sold about 1.5 million Nexus phones and tablets, not including those sold by other retailers, according to estimates from JPMorgan.

In the fourth quarter, a weight was lifted from Google when the Federal Trade Commission closed its antitrust investigation of Google's search practices. But it remains under investigation in Europe, where the outcome is expected to be harsher.