business

Infibeam Brings Bengali Literature Online By Creating Store for ABP

by Paul Joseph November 18, 2011 Featured

Infibeam powers the official online shopping store of ABP, bringing in a wide range of literary work especially in Bengali language, making it available all across the country. It is a very unique initiative, bringing a large set of unique selection of Bengali books online. Commenting on powering ABP shopping, Mr. Sachin Oswal, Co-Founder and COO, Infibeam.com said, Getting ABP online is a significant milestone for the e-commerce industry in India as it specifically caters to making that genre of literature available which is not easy to find and procure. Their conviction strengthens the prevalence & authority of the platform we have built”. Mr. Kaushik Banerjee. Vice President at ABP & ABP Digital commented saying “One of our focus areas and strength for the time to come is going to be on our E- commerce initiatives in order to get consumed in our digital bouquet. We are happy to partner with Infibeam to make a large set of unique selection of Bengali books just a click away for our valued customers” Mr. Sachin Vashishta Head, Business Development, Sales & ECom, ABP Digital, commented saying, “We chose Infibeam.com for it being the biggest player in e-Retailing; banking on their vast experience in online shopping for the past 4 years with the largest selection of books. They have provided a great platform and we look forward to growing this line of business.” Infibeam plans to add on more languages and range of books on the platform and make maximum authors, publications and genres of literature available on the site. Infibeam successfully runs Crossword (http://www.crossword.in/) and is a host to many other bookstores on its e-commerce platform. http://shopping.anandabazar.com/Books/ ###

Tagged as: bengali, business, infibeam-com, more-languages, platform, president, prevalence, sales

0 comments Read the full article →

Mobile Social Networking Platform of IIT-B

by Paul Joseph August 30, 2011 Featured

The Hindu : Business / Industry : Sibal launches two mobile applications The other application developed at IIT Bombay is an intelligent mobile social networking platform (MSNP) similar to Facebook or Orkut based completely on mobile phones. It enables the service providers to develop personalised applications and send messages to users in the network based on their preferences such as demographic profile or interests. Got curious with this and wanted to figure more of what is it that has been developed. Like Government / semi-Government sites, the site did not open. A bit of Googling took me here . Here is what it is: Looks to be a good product – a few pieces of which can be used by mobile operators to offer personlized ads etc. Otherwise, having to launch a new social network is probably not a great idea. Just pick the “recommender engine” and offer APIs to developers & partners to create personalized ads / services. Partners could include social networks too! ” Applications on the MSNP platform can be used by all subscribers of any service provider ” it says. How will it be personalized without call detail record information etc from each of the service provider is not clear to me.

Tagged as: analysis, business, facebook, indian, industry, ipad, network, older-posts, social-networking, technology

0 comments Read the full article →

Appnomy Bangalore

by Paul Joseph August 28, 2011 Featured

Thanks to Pluggdin guys, I had the opportunity to be there at the Appnomy event yesterday. Needless to say, they had done a great job in terms of organization. Good venue, good infra etc. [Aside: I did not know Oxford college had such a good auditorium]. Now to the event itself. The session by the founder of SourceBits was insightful and interesting. Someone from outside of the industry (he is a doctor) to have cracked this speaks of passion. They have a neat business model of creating apps themselves to showcase their capabilities thereby attracting clients and then charging them for apps created for them. This should probably be the way for several app developers in India to sustain. In my earlier life, I have suggested this to several app developers: To develop free bada apps for the apps store to showcase their capabilities and then I could help them connect with brands who wish to develop bada apps. I of course had the ulterior motive of getting a few bada apps done for free but frankly, that was not the only intent :) The problem with several companies is that if they focus on one (say creating own apps), they lose focus on services. But SourceBits has cracked it so neatly. Salutes to the team. Another interesting note from him was about spending 60% of total time on design (& the rest in engineering). The second session from SpiceLabs was actually insightful for people who develop apps as business (& not as a service). But a mix of poor presentation (the way it was presented, including wrong use of the microphone), poor presentation (the power point slides with all wrong color combinations & unreadable font sizes) & preachy nature made it a bit useless I should say. Kudos to Prashant for putting in all the effort to bring insights but I am afraid not everyone understood what he said. The next session was from the design head of Sourcebits (a gentleman from Poland). While the title “Traps of Design for Mobile Experiences” was so appealing, the presentation was well, not as much. I personally did not receive any new insight from the presentation – same old small screen, less user attention etc were being repeated with a heavy dose of praise for Apple (what else to expect!). Added to that, the speech was so monotonous. May be I am being too critical but then I was expecting a lot from this presentation. In fact, this was one reason why I attended the event in the first place. Then there was a panel discussion with the title as “One App Business Vs Business of Apps”. I do not think many entrepreneurs would have this dilemma. If we abstract it, it is only a question of “Product Vs Service” and this is a question that someone would have answered at the very beginning. Because of this, not much of discussion on the panel was on this and went around other topics about what will a VC fund, what is a VC interested in etc (Significant insights like – VCs do not want copied ideas but a original idea that solves a problem – came out of it ;-) ). Not too impressed. I left the event towards the end of it. I guess the product demos in the afternoon should have gone well. You may look at the companies that presented at the Appnomy site . Overall, it reinforced my opinion that one [at least who reads about the industry everyday] should attend events for meeting people and exchanging business cards and not for getting insights & enlightenment through the panel discussions & speeches.

Tagged as: analysis, apple, bangalore, business, design, india, ipad, older-posts, phone-industry, power

0 comments Read the full article →

Aircel’s Appstore PocketApps -Aircel subscribers can download free and paid applications using multiple channels such as GPRS, WAP and SMS.

by Paul Joseph June 23, 2011 Featured

Aircel commercially launched its mobile application store PocketApps for its post and prepaid subscribers across India in August last year. Aircel was the first operator to launch an application store in partnership with Infosys for its subscriber’s across all platforms and handsets. PocketApps was the fourth app store in the country. Application categories in PocketApps Currently, seven categories of applications are available at PocketApps. 1) Everyday Convenience, 2) Education and Career, 3) Finance, 4) Health and Living, 5) Games, 6) Music and Fun, 7) Social Networking Everyday Convenience apps offer services such as bill payments, ticket bookings, local searches and news etc. Education and Career apps are for students. They are meant to make learning fun and help people plan their career. Apps in this section include MobileMaths, which helps with mathematical calculations; and Shakespeare’s World, which helps improve vocabulary. Finance and Business apps aid users in taking charge of their portfolio, and apps such as Loan Calculator and Money Manager help them make investments. Health and Living apps perform the functions of gym instructors and fashion magazines, and help you keep a check on your weight, maintain a workout schedule, and get fashion news. In this section, you can try apps such as The Gymlog and vClinic Mobile Wellness. The Games section has games with great sound effects and graphics; and Music and Fun apps allow you to create ring tones and share them with friends, and let you take your music collection along. In this section there are apps such as Vringo and Foice. Socially connected apps allow you to stay in touch with your friends and do a lot on social networking sites such as Facebook. While surfing PocketApp to download apps, users are informed of the price and size of each app. This information is displayed against applications on the list page. Once you click on the application you wish to download, the size and price of the application can be seen just beside the download button on the detail page.

Tagged as: apple, appstore, appstores, business, calculator, download, friends, games, health, music, pocketapps, sms, social, user, youth

0 comments Read the full article →

Asian Mobile Advertising Network BuzzCity serves 10.5 Billion Adverts across its mobile advertising network.

by Paul Joseph June 7, 2011 Featured

BuzzCity has announced that it served 10.5 billion ads across the course of May – a record for the firm. The company claims such growth is down to the ‘demand’ for content from its line-up of properties (Djuzz, JAMsked and Now-Cook), helping its business fight its corner in a market that smartphones are making major inroads into. According to representatives for the company, BuzzCity largely attributes this increase to “greater consumer demand for mobile content and being able to meet that demand with its own white-label content services.” “Content syndication is a cornerstone of our business strategy and is having a significant impact on BuzzCity’s growth,” says Dr. KF Lai, BuzzCity CEO. “Demand is increasing for it, and testament to that is the diverse range of more than 1000 partners we have across the globe. White-label services like ours make sense, as many mobile strategies rely on quality and relevant content as an important element.” Although the rapid growth of the smartphones sector has been well-documented it still accounts for just a fifth of the 1.6 billion mobile devices sold last year, according to Gartner. Another driver in the demand for content is the emergence of localized ’white-box’ manufacturers coming out of Asia that provide lower-end phones with capabilities similar to those of smartphones. In its formal press release addressing the milestone, BuzzCity reminds us that it was only a few short days ago that Yahoo announced a partnership with MediaTek, a supplier of microchips for mobile phones, to integrate Yahoo’s web services, such as IM and email, into their microchip packages which go into standard mobile phones. “Mobile hotspots continue growing throughout the world as the adoption of 3G is coupled with cheaper data rates. However alongside that we are seeing the continued rise of affordable white-box phones which will provide access to the internet where there are no 3G networks and to a wider audience who cannot afford the prices of the smartphones. All in all this results in a greater demand for content that we are experiencing,” said Dr. Lai. As an aside, BuzzCity claims Djuzz – it’s mobile gaming portal, launched in 2010 – is on track to hit 100 million downloads in June, with 45 million games having been downloaded since January. Together with music listings site JAMsked, Djuzz currently boasts around 3 million unique monthly visitors. Via : Pocketgamer

Tagged as: adoption, business, buzzcity, emergence, internet, media, microchip, milestone, mobile, mobile advertising, smartphones, the-smartphones, yahoo

0 comments Read the full article →

Two Events & Thoughts on LBS

by Paul Joseph May 3, 2011 Featured

Update after a long break!! Tweets too have slowed down, will resume pace soon :) After long, I attended a couple of events last week. One was the Navteq developers event on LBS (where I was part of the panel) and the other was Cellstrat event on Mobile Web & Apps. The events were so-so and did not offer great insights. Some keynotes ended up as sales pitches and panelists (on the topic of mobile apps innovation) said they are not app-users when asked to list their favorite apps. :-| Anyways, here is what I spoke at the LBS panel. (Title was ‘Future of Location Based Services: 3G & Beyond’) I briefly touched upon 3 ideas on location based services & presented some strawman thoughts. Not really presented answers or identified the silver bullet for location services – Well, if only I can :) My first point Is there something that can be called purely a

Tagged as: business, customer, education, government, india, location, location-based, mobile, moment, opinion, people, silver, social-networking, tracking, user

0 comments Read the full article →

Sharp launches 3G phones in India

by Paul Joseph April 18, 2011 Featured

Sharp will unveil a whole new range of 3G enabled mobile phones for the Indian market. The wide range of various 3G phones available in the Indian market is indeed enticing. Besides, it will be interesting to see what new this company brings in the market. Sharp hopes to sell its GSM models priced above Rs. 10,000. If the handsets have all the essential features of a smartphone , the price bracket by SBSIL will be competition in the market. Keeping a mid level price range the company will achieve good amount of buyers. Sharp Business Systems (India) Limited, is amongst the top brands for Digital Multifunction Products, though it is only ten years since its launch in India. The company also has a nation-wide sales & service network covering even the remotest regions in India. Sharp is confident that India will be an extremely important market for its products. It is a measure of this strong belief in the Indian market that it has three subsidiaries in India. The renowned manufacturer company has launched a range of handsets like Sharp Alice meant for youth has a Compact Full-touch Design with FM (recording, schedule recording), Front Stereo-speaker, SNS shortcut (Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, Gmail, Yahoo India in favorite menu), Opera MINI browser pre-installed and is a fully loaded handset, Sharp Blink another dual SIM handset by SBSIL with Feminized appearance with 7 color LED illumination lamp, Instant access to the latest songs and news for free, CMOS camera , 2.4inch QVGA TFT display, Opera Mini etc. With the launch of 3G handsets, Sharp is hoping for some stupendous results in its already existing range of handsets in the Indian market.

Tagged as: amongst-the-top, business, design, digital, facebook, indian, market, mobile news, opera, orkut, price, sharp-business, some-stupendous, yahoo, yahoo-india

0 comments Read the full article →

LG to manufacture smartphones at Pune unit

by Paul Joseph April 12, 2011 Featured

LG Mobile phones is set to expand its smartphone market as it plans to start manufacturing them from its Pune unit. The unit, with its present production capacity of eight million handsets, mainly entry level and features phones, will ramp up production to 10 million units by 2011-end. We are looking to grow our share in smartphone market this year and will even launch 10 smartphone models. Manufacturing them in India will be critical in getting them to market faster and managing the costs,” said Vishal Chopra, Business Head, Mobile Communication, LG Electronics. LG Mobiles is targeting a turnover of Rs 3,000 crore in 2011 and sell about 450,000 smartphone units in India this year. It is betting big on its smartphone brand with the introduction of Optimus, with price ranging between Rs 9,000 and Rs 35,000. Next month, it is expected to launch a 3D smartphone. “The Optimus 3D phone will have two cameras that will allow users to create their own 3D content. The phone also does not require any special glasses to view the content,” he said. On Monday, the South Korea-based company announced the launch of the first Dual Core Processor smartphone, LG Optimus 2X in India, which is priced at Rs 30,000. Chopra is also in talks with Vodafone, Reliance and Bharti Airtel to offer cheap data plans with the LG range. LG Mobiles has earmarked Rs 250 crore to strengthen the infrastructure for retail development and marketing activities. “We realise that Android as a smartphone platform is catching on in India. But LG will launch its smartphones in 650 stores in metros and Tier 1 cities as this is where we believe our target market resides,” said Chopra. The company is not looking to widen its smartphone base beyond the metros, as of now. Meanwhile, LG also plans to ramp up a 20-member team that will look to develop software and mobile applications for its smartphones and feature phones. “While we have a global R&D team that works on innovation, we plan to focus on adding value on our smartphones. This team will work exclusively to create apps that are relevant to the Indian users,” he said.

Tagged as: bharti-airtel, business, features-phones, india, infrastructure, introduction, its-smartphones, mobile, mobile news, optimus, smartphones, year

0 comments Read the full article →

Tata Communications bets cloud strategy on SMEs

by Paul Joseph April 12, 2011 Featured

Amit Sinha Roy, VP of marketing strategy at Tata Communications, told journalists and analysts at NetEvents’ Asia Pacific conference in Langkawi, Malaysia, that the conglomerate giant was betting that enough small and medium-sized businesses in Asia would take up the company’s cloud offerings to make Tata’s investment in new datacentres profitable. He was speaking to an audience of press, analysts and industry vendors. “Yes I have made a big bet in terms of our investment in infrastructure to deliver cloud. The growth is in smaller enterprises as they do need serious server computing for burst mode requirements, as much as large enterprises with their own datacentres. SMEs want to reduce capex,” he said. Tata has just launched two datacentres, one in Hyderabad and one in Singapore. Interviewed on stage by Informa analyst Camille Mendler, he said the company built two, not too far from each other to bring lower latency, to bring data inc-country,, and to help provide local support. “We have a public cloud strategy for large enterprises but there is a sweet spot in terms of services for SMEs,” he said. “Singapore supports surrounding countries, including Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand and so on — and they can pay in any currency,” he said. Roy said that addressing SMEs was expensive but worthwhile. “The typical company is one with enough IT maturity to provision a server is our likely target audience,” he said. “Mid-sized companies might not have an IT department, and we can offer support and help.” In the Indian market, there are a lot of companies that do development work for other companies, there’s a lot of those,”he said. “IT development is their business.” “But will that work outside India?” asked Mendler. “There will be a different customer base in every region – it’s media and entertainment in some,” said Roy. “But telecom is a mass production model of digital goods but what you’re doing is at odds with that,” said Mendler. “Yes, but we have divisions to address different segments,” said Roy. Roy said that customers would experience no switching costs or penalties, so it would easy for customers to get out of Tata’s service. “Loyalty is earned by giving high quality service at an affordable cost – not being the cheapest with the latest technology in terms of performance reach and uptime – so it’s down to customer experience and service level,” he said. Tata will also offer white label services at wholesale prices for third parties to resell, Roy said. “Will it be profitable? We think so,” he said. By Manek Dubash, NetEvents APAC Press Summit Source

Tagged as: business, camille-mendler, communications, companies, conglomerate, emerging trends, india, indian, investment, malaysia, manek-dubash, other-companies, press, technology

0 comments Read the full article →

New LG Optimus 2x Smartphone launched India

by Paul Joseph April 6, 2011 Featured

Pioneers in innovation and technology, LG Mobiles today made a giant leap in mobile technology by introducing the world’s first Dual Core Processor smartphone, LG Optimus 2X in India. With the launch of Optimus 2X, LG further strengthens its portfolio with setting benchmarks in word class technology and moves ahead in its smart phone category as announced in the year 2010. Spearheading the latest in mobile technology, the LG Optimus 2X is the first phone to run on Nvidia’s new Tegra 2 chipset, which promises mobile experience beyond ordinary. LG Optimus 2X (LG-P990) is an exceptional smartphone since it delivers powerful performance with the dual-core processor, as well as enhanced user interface and multimedia experience. “ Smart phones have marked the beginning of a new era and undoubtedly 2011 will be the year of smart phones in India. India market is already witnessing a huge demand for these futuristic devices and this demand will tremendously grow in coming years. At LG, we are highly focused on innovation based on thorough consumer research, that helps us prioritize consumer choice as a key strategy for expanding our footprint in the mobile industry. Our endeavours in the Smart phone category is to bring the latest in technology offerings simultaneously with global introduction in order to give our consumers the best.” said Mr. Vishal Chopra, Business Head, Mobile Communication, LG Electronics India Pvt. Ltd. With the focus on the higher end smart phone series, LG plans to dedicate 40% of the launches to smartphones in the year 2011, further expecting to increase the category market share to 10–12%. Moreover, LG Mobiles has earmarked Rs. 250 crore for strengthening the infrastructure for retail development and marketing activities. LG OPTIMUS 2X Experience Jet-Speed Internet Browsing The LG OPTIMUS 2X with Dual Core Processor gives you a fast, High-definition, colorful world of games, music, news, sports, entertainment, internet browsing and much more, right on your mobile phone. So go ahead to explore new possibilities with Optimus 2X. LG Optimus 2X: Your own home theatre The LG Optimus 2X features an HDMI connection so you can easily play your images, videos and music content on your HD TV or projectors. All in stunning high-definition digital 1080p resolution. Seamless Multi tasking Forget the lagging experience from loading multiple applications that bugged you. The world’s first dual-core smartphone, LG OPTIMUS 2X, delivers a seamless multitasking experience, now switch between numerous applications and widgets at once. Admire the looks The responsive 4.0 inches TFT capacitive touchscreen provides a display of vibrant 16Million colors. Its screen includes useful sensors like Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate, Proximity sensor for auto turn-off, Gyro sensor and Touch-sensitive controls. Personalization of home screen in seven different ways with exciting variety of widgets and applications. Carry your world with you Included with a memory of 512 MB RAM, 8Gb internal storage & Expandable external storage of upto 32Gb, you can store unlimited music and data. True visual gaming LG Optimus 2X offers gaming experience like never before. The Dual Core processor provides the ultimate gaming experience of smooth graphic rendering accompanied with 7.1 channel surround sound. The dual-core processor of Nvidia Tegra2 enables users to enjoy high-end games in its original vivid graphics without lagging. Gyro sensor and Accelerometer sensor enables a more dynamic and exciting gaming experience such as racing and FPS games like never before. Unlimited Multimedia Opportunities The 8 MP camera with amazing capability features like autofocus, LED flash, Geo- tagging, face and smile detection, touch focus and image stabilization, create great masterpieces and capture priceless moments. The LG Optimus 2X includes various connectivity features like GPRS, EDGE, 3G HSDPA and Wi- Fi for faster web browsing experience. Groove to our favourite tones with Stereo FM with RDS radio, MP3 and MP4 Players. Running on the Android 2.2 OS upgradable to Android 2.3 gingerbread, the all new LG Optimus 2X gives you twice of everything – fun, entertainment and usage experience at hyper speed. It’s amazing technology, go ahead and explore it. LG Optimus Black Another new Android Smartphone from LG, featuring a dramatically brighter 4-inch NOVA display at slimmest 9.2 mm form factor. Another world first featuring 700 nits[1] of brightness, the LG Optimus Black is designed to be the brightest, clearest and most legible among mobile screen. The breakthrough NOVA display also enables the LG Optimus Black to achieve remarkable visibility, whether indoors or outdoors under strong sunlight. The LG Optimus Black runs on the Android 2.2 Froyo platform. Adopting the world’s first 2MP front wide-angle camera, the LG Optimus Black users will be able to utilize video telephony functions of higher quality for enhanced personal experience. LG Optimus 2X is available soon at all retail outlets and is priced at about Rs.30, 000/- and LG Optimus Black will be priced in the range of Rs. 27,000 /- Courtesy: LG India

Tagged as: business, electronics, images, infrastructure, latest, multimedia, speed-internet, world

0 comments Read the full article →