Combine satin red with the sleek, slim clean-cut lines of an ultrabook, and you have quite a looker on your hands — one that you would associate more with pleasure than with business. But the Fujitsu U772 Lifebook (how many books can the world handle?) is kitted out to be a business product. It has the kind of chipset, connectors and security features (such as biometrics) that will be welcomed at work. It has anti-theft protection and an optional port replicator, which allows docking and connection to a corporate network and peripherals. This thin, light 14-inch ultrabook runs on an Intel Ivy Bridge Core i4 processor, has 4GB of RAM and a 32GB solid state drive. The screen is comfortable and I was quickly able to customise the environment. It’s running on Windows 7 for now. It works fast enough, boots up quickly, and the battery lasts for about six hours of not-too-heavy use. Incidentally, you can use the laptop’s USB port to charge a device even when it’s asleep or off. While the look and feel of this ultrabook is premium, specially on the outside, it has one of the worst keyboards possible. The entire keyboard is deeply set in the chassis so that the keys — which are by no means soft and responsive anyway — have no play; no room to be pressed. The result is that the feedback that would normally go back through your fingers doesn’t, and you end up making mistakes, as the space bar also doesn’t press with the right amount of spring, making words run together. The surface of the keys is rough and the notches that denote the home keys for touch typists are confusingly placed. The keyboard is a real pity, considering that the ultrabook has a lot else going for it. But if you can’t type fast enough, no amount of hardware power, security features and looks can make up for it. There are more models in this series of ultrabooks and prices start from Rs 75,900. Enthusiasts, Go SmallSqueezed into a small, purse-fit black metallic body is a whole lot of capability you typically don’t see inSONY CYBERSHOT DSC RX100: A novice-friendly camera that is complex enough for enthusiastsa compact camera. The recently released Sony Cybershot DSC RX100 is being compared with the Canon S100 which is also at the top end of the point-and-shoot food chain, offering more than just casual photography. This one, as it turns out, is so capable that it’s being referred to as a DSLR in a compact body. The build of this camera is not to be glossed over. It has a solid, high-end finish and finesse, and doesn’t feel like the throwaround point-and-shoots you get these days. It has a 20-megapoxel 1-inch Exmor R sensor and F1.8-4.9 aperture in an extruding Carl Zeiss lens. It’s very fast and has great low-light performance — unlike many devices that promise this and don’t deliver. Focus is great. A beautifully built pop-up flash is instant and can be tilted to aim upwards and diffuse the light. The controls are nice with a function ring around the lens being particularly smooth and intuitive to use. It’s novice friendly and yet complex enough for enthusiasts. And yes, it does handle RAW files. Sony’s WhiteMagic technology is used on this, along with excellent image stabilisation. The colours are accurate and the pictures clear, and you get good depth of field. Obviously, it doesn’t match up to “real” DSLRs, but it certainly holds its own against entry-level ones. The RX100 is now available only from the main Sony Centres. Like everything else Sony, it is by noSONY XPERIA TIPO: Aimed at the youth, this Android phone is music-focused with preloaded apps for Bollywood songsmeans cheap at Rs 34,999. But here’s my disclosure. Not wanting to carry around a big camera, I went out and bought it after spending time with a review unit. The low light capabilities won me over completely. You can’t put the RX100 in your pocket — it’s a little too heavy for that. But in a small case hooked to your belt or slung carefully across to nestle on your hip, you won’t even feel it. Forever YoungExpected to be picked up by young people who may well be getting their first phone, the Sony Xperia tipo (also known as Tapioca) is priced at Rs 9,999 and comes in colours (red, white, blue and black) that are likely to appeal to the segment it’s meant for. Smartly, there’s a dual-sim (GSM-GSM) variant for Rs 10,449. Inter-estingly, it has also been introduced in the US, though it’s targeted at markets like India. This 3.2-inch phone is well designed and it’s light without feeling cheap. It’s hand-friendly, and allows your fingers curl to around it comfortably. Think one-handed texting. The back is a nice matte finish plastic like the HTC One X’s — that’s the way to do plastic. Buttons are minimalistic. Opening the back to get at the 1200 mAh battery isn’t difficult, but you do stop to wonder whether you might end up scratching the matte cover with your nails. The tipo is a standard Android phone, running ICS 4.0.4 on a single-core 800MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with the expected 512MB of RAM. There’s also the usual 4GB of internal storage and 50GB of cloud storage. The camera is a 3.2 megapixel one and well, don’t expect miracles from it. The screen, a TFT display with 480x320 pixel resolution, is okay. It is music-focused with preloaded apps for Bollywood songs. All in all, the tipo is a worthy contender to the Samsung Galaxy Y, (which has a marginally faster processor but less recent software) and other phones recently been launched in the Android budget category. (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 29-10-2012)
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It started as a trickle, but the traffic is ceasless now. Foreign hospitality players are queueing up to either announce expansion plans or launch brands in India. This week, Preferred Hotel Group’s top honchos were in town to talk about their growing pipeline of hotel partnerships in India. Before that, Wyndham Hotel’s Asia-Pacific head was here to open the Ramada spa and resort in Udaipur and announce the debut of the group’s Howard Johnson brand. In recent months, Dubai-based Jumeirah, Hyatt’s Andaz and Mandarin Oriental have all announced their intention to launch here. By 2016, when Starwood opens W and St Regis here, it would have eight of its nine brands in the country. India’s booming growth is no doubt drawing the foreign brands, but another crucial reason why they are checking in is because of the soaring outbound tourist volumes. Currently about 12 million Indian tourists travel abroad every year, and it is increasing by leaps and bounds annually. “Percentage wise, India is the fastest-growing source destination for the outbound. We are looking to source more business from here,” says Ananya Narayan, executive vice-president, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa, Preferred Hotel Group, which has 650 hotels across the world in its portfolio. The Chicago-based group is a global provider of sales, marketing and distribution services to independent hotels, and has tie-ups with 29 Indian hotels, including all the Leela properties. It is now looking to ramp up its presence and focus on “secondary cities”. According to an estimate by Lonely Planet, about 50 million Indian tourists are expected to travel overseas annually by 2020. For foreign hospitality players, building awareness for their brands here is necessary if they want more Indians to check into their properties overseas. Jumeirah has made no bones about the strategic significance of India as a source market, and why it is dropping its calling card here. Ditto Wyndham hotels, which has over 7,170 hotels worldwide and brands such as Days Inn, Super 8, Tryp and Hawthorne. It is currently building the Ramada and Howard Johnson brands (the latter in partnership with Ahmedabad-based Unique Global Group, which is building the hotels). “What attracted us to Unique Group was the element of wholesale or bulk business that they could bring in,” says Frank Trampert, managing director, Asia-Pacific, Wyndham Hotel Group. Unique Global has about 300,000 members in its holiday time-share business, Unique Super Stay Plans. “By building our own hotels, we are reverse integrating — we will already have 30 per cent assured occupancy through our timeshare members,” says Raj Kumar Rai, chairman and managing director, Unique Group. Wyndham’s calculation is that this partnership could result in some of the timeshare guests staying at its foreign properties too. “Securing wholesale business is problematic,” confesses Trampert, and this was one of the pull factors in the tie-up with Unique. Hoteliers entering India, however, do say that despite the pricing pressures due to a sudden supply glut and rupee devaluation against the dollar, the operating profits in India are higher. “The gross operating profit in the Asia-Pacific region has been on a decline and averages 30 per cent now. But in India, many cities still yield as high as 40 per cent GOP,” says Narayan.(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 29-10-2012)
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Samsung Electronics became the first handset maker to announce a smartphone using Microsoft's latest mobile software, making its surprise, hurried announcement just days before the highly anticipated launch of Nokia's version.The brief announcement on 29 August at a Berlin electronics show comes amid expectations that smartphone makers may turn increasingly to Windows devices after a US jury decided many of Samsung's Google Android-based phones infringed Apple Inc patents."It looks like a good phone, and seems like a pre-emptive announcement ahead of Nokia," said Sid Parakh, an analyst at investment firm McAdams Wright Ragen, of the Samsung phone."Microsoft or Windows never got their best teams, never got their best designs, just because Android was doing so well. With the change in the legal environment, there's a case to be made that Samsung will likely shift some of those resources to broaden out or diversify their own exposure."Nokia, the ailing Finnish mobile firm, once the world's leading producer of phones but now struggling to reverse losses, is due to unveil its new Lumia line of smartphones using Windows Phone 8 in New York on September 5.Samsung's new phone called ATIV S -- tacked onto the end of a long news conference in Berlin that focused on other products -- may elevate expectations for the Lumia. Samsung's ATIV S Windows phone sports a high-end 4.8-inch display, Corning "Gorilla" glass, and an 8-megapixel rear camera and 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera, Microsoft posted on its official blog on Wednesday."Expectations for a 40 megapixel or possibly 20 megapixel camera model are running high. If Nokia does not unveil a monster camera handset next week, many will be disappointed," said Tero Kuittinen, analyst at mobile analytics firm Alekstra.But "this leaves Nokia plenty of room to draw a clear contrast with its upcoming announcement."Samsung's Windows-based smartphone, introduced on 29 August, marks the first in a "big lineup of new hardware" from the South Korean company based on Microsoft's software, Microsoft executive Ben Rudolph said in a blog posting.Analysts say the introduction of Samsung's Windows phone may be designed to assuage concerns that Microsoft will favuor Nokia, whose Chief Executive Stephen Elop -- himself a former senior Microsoft executive -- has staked its future on the Windows platform."The fact Samsung was allowed to be the first to announce is Microsoft's backhanded way of letting other vendors know that Nokia is not getting special treatment," Current Analysis analyst Avi Greengart said.But Jack Gold, an independent mobile consultant who runs J Gold Associates, argued Samsung had signalled its commitment to Windows for a while, but Nokia will remain the primary driver of the new breed of Microsoft-powered devices."Samsung has crossed the start line first and set the bar for Nokia's launch," said Geoff Blaber, analyst at CCS Insight.(Reuters)
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Good news for all you shutterbugs this festive season! A compact camera from Fujifilm and a video camera from Canon are the new goodies on the block, catering to both amateurs and professionals. Fujifilm announced the latest addition to its X series compact camera family -- Fujifilm XF1 -- on 16 October. Priced at Rs 32,999, the XF1 is much cheaper than the others in the series and will be available in the market post November. The camera is armed with f/1.8 Fujinon lens (used in NASA products also) that can be turned on/off by twisting the zoom ring. Other X-Series members -- Fujifilm Xpro1 (priced at Rs 99,999) and XE1 (priced at Rs 69,999) -- are already available in the market. Canon has added a new model to its Cinema EOS line - the compact, lightweight EOS C100 digital video camera, equipped with automatic functions facilitating solo operations. Parveen Sahni, Imaging Communication Product (ICP) group head, Canon, said that the camera records 1920x1080 Full HD movies to SD cards at a bitrate of 24Mbps and can output uncompressed video directly to external recorders. It is targeted at professional videographers. Fujifilm is aiming for Rs 800-crore revenue from the Indian market in 2012-13. It posted Rs 500-crore sales last fiscal, contributing around one per cent of its total global sales. Kenichi Tanaka, MD, Fujifilm India, said the company plans to launch around 10 more lenses till 2013 and the 14mm Fujifilm lens will be in the market soon. “From April-March period, we are planning to sell between 2 and 2.5 lakh cameras in the country. Last year, we sold 1.8 lakh units here. With 7 per cent market share of our recent addition XF1, we are aiming for more growth in the compact camera market soon,” said Tanaka. “We plan to invest around Rs 10-15 crore on marketing during the Diwali period. We achieved around Rs 25-crore sales during the festive season last year and are expecting revenues of Rs 40 crore from these two months of festive season of this year,” says Rohit Pandit, executive VP, Fujifilm India. Four-year old Fujifilm India is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fujifilm Holdings Corporation, Tokyo and has 6 offices across 6 cities all over India.
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Ah, my favourite time of the year is back, when parents loosen purse strings and significant others look the other way as you ready yourself to plonk down some hard-earned cash to indulge your deepest gadgety desires! And just in time, our time-honored list of the picks for this festive season — unequivocal must-have gadgets of 2012, gadgets that have earned their spot at the front of the line, vying for your attention (and wallets!) —is back! Go ahead folks, splurge to your heart’s content!Smartphones: Flagship phones from the iOS and Android stables quite literally sell themselves, so it’s no surprise the Samsung Galaxy SIII, the HTC One X and the iPhone 4S make the cut as the must-have picks for the season. But for its unbeatable price-features-combo, the HTC One S earns my pick for the smartphone to pick up this season – it’s powerful, stylish, beautifully thin and blessed with great features that make you question why you’d pay more for the incremental upgrades in the flagship devices. Plus, it’s due an Android 4.1 Jelly Bean upgrade before the month runs out! Savvy buyers would also realize that with upgrades just around the corner, prices on the One X and the iPhones are set to dip, and you can snap up a great deal on one of these during the festive period!Cameras: I came away mighty impressed by the Sony RX100 in my recent review, and the more I think about it, this is the camera for which I’d put some serious money down. Premium build quality, bright f/1.8 maximum aperture, an innovative lens ring and full HD video – this is one for the photo enthusiast as well as the fashion conscious. But it’s the exceptional low-light performance and DSLR-level images in a compact form factor that really seal the deal for me, and alleviate some of the pain caused by its dSLR-challenging price. For those who have a hankering for interchangeable lens and portly dSLR bodies, you can’t go wrong with Nikon D3200 or the Canon 600D – both offer room for the photographer in you to grow, without breaking the bank.Laptops: Blame the marketing mavens in Intel for this category being overrun by ultrabooks in this year’s picks. Yet, two ultrabooks have risen above the clutter to earn my recommendation – the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon and the HP Envy Spectre XT (look out for my review for both in the weeks to come). Both represent the best of the category – premium design, ultra-thin and blazing fast! Be aware that the cloud of the Windows 8 launch looms large over the PC/notebook segment, so the months to come will be nothing short of exciting in terms of launches. It may be prudent to wait and watch for the new breed of Windows 8 hardware before you take the plunge.Tablets: It’s still iPad territory ‘round these parts, and with the rumors of an iPad mini growing louder, it remains the tablet to plonk your hard-earned money down for. That said, some genuinely credible competition from the Android stables has come this year, from the most surprising of quarters – budget Android tablets. Google’s foray into the tablet market with the brilliantly priced Nexus 7 makes this my go-to Android tablet to pick up - albeit from ebay unless you’re willing to wait for the official November launch. Since this a Google ‘Nexus’ device, it packs in the latest Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS – in fact, as you read this, the next version 4.1.2 is already out on the device. Not to forget the tablet’s other big draws - a top-of-the-range Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, a stylish build, and a price-tag of $199 that makes all other Android tablets look horribly overpriced and bloated! Just goes to prove the old saying – if you want the job done properly, you may as well do it yourself! The Micromax Funbook Pro and the BSNL-branded Penta T-Pad are great budget alternatives as well.Gaming Hardware: With major gaming consoles yet to see a long-overdue refresh, what’s a gamer to pick in terms of hardware? My vote goes to the Alienware X51 – a powerhouse of a gaming PC squeezed into a stylish console-sized case that feels more at home in your living room hooked up to your TV than hidden away in a study.But this form factor hasn’t come at the cost of performance? Not at all, with the X51, the specs remain reliably ludicrous – even inside its smaller shell, Alienware have managed to cram in up to an Intel Core i7 3.40GHz processor, supported by a colossal 8GB of RAM and up to a 1 GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 555 graphics card as well. Granted, it’s far pricier than an Xbox or a PS3, but the dizzying array of specs give it a huge performance advantage that will let you crank up the settings on your PC games to mind-boggling levels. And with PC games available for about a third of their console siblings, it can even out if you’re a heavy gamer!Game of the Year: It’s been a great year in terms of games, and it’s likely to get even better with some of the titles that are set to launch in the year-end. But for now, Sleeping Dogs, with its excellent storyline and top-notch realism and gameplay earns the top spot in games to play this season. You could think of it as a Hong Kong version of Grand Theft Auto – for me, it’s easily the most enjoyable game of this year…so far.Accessory: There are so many excellent accessories for your gadgets, but few that do the job as elegantly as the Olloclip, a small iPhone add-on that adds fish-eye, macro, or wide-angle capabilities to the iPhone camera. Take it for a spin, and you’ll realise what a difference it makes to your shots! technocool at kanwar dot nettwitter@2shar
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Taking printers a step ahead, HP launches new series of HP TopShot LaserJet Pro M275 (MFP) with a unique ability to capture high- quality images of 3D objects by HP TopShot Scanning feature. Priced at Rs 42,899, the device is available at the HP stores all over India and abroad. MFP eliminates the need of transferring the images captured by a digital camera to laptop to get the print out of the same. It directly captures the image of the object placed on the surface with the help of its high-quality optical lens and a high-resolution sensor in a unique elevated 8 MP camera. It is also ePrint enabled that gives customers the flexibility to give prints from any internet enabled device (smartphone, tablets, laptops); and other features like Scan to Email and Scan to cloud (Google Docs). Some of the appealing features of this printer are: Capture images of 3-D objects using the unique top-mounted 8MP camera that takes sharp and consistent high-resolution scans of documents and objects.One-step scanning of variety of materials and the lack of a cumbersome scanning lid means that scanning is now easier than ever before.Get outstanding print performance with vivid colour prints that will make an impression, and professional-quality black text for sharp, easy-to-read documents.Scan without the need for a PC directly to email addresses and network folders on a networked storage drive, or to a shared folder on a networked computer.Upload straight to the Cloud with a convenient web app. You can now easily scan important documents as well as images of 3-D objects directly to your Google Docs3 account online and access them on the go.Print from the web Simply tap the touchscreen to download and print business forms, financial news, stock quotes, and more from your “The HP TopShot scanning captures high-quality images of 3-D objects and auto-convert them to true to life 2D images that can be uploaded straight on the web. This will open new opportunities for jewellers, designers, retailers and other SME’s that need to capture high-resolution product images for use on their website.” Says Nitin Hiranandani, Director, Printing Systems, PPS, HP – India Headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif; HP is a leading IT company that came into existence in the year 1939 and operates in more than 170 countries around the world.
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Visit Delhi’s DLF Emporio at grazing hour, and there is scarcely any room to sit at Auma, the fine dining restaurant. It’s the same story at the coffee shop where you can see many a luxe shopper taking a quiet break after tough decisions such as whether to go for a Gucci or a Bottega Venetta. Did anyone say slowdown? And what was all that noise we heard about challenges of luxury marketing in India? Well, all the gripes — high tariff barriers, dearth of luxury retail infrastructure, forbidding FDI regulations, value-conscious mindsets, the country’s size and diversity — remain. What’s different today, however, is that luxury marketers appear to have made peace with the Indian reality and found innovative ways to circumvent these challenges. Many are reporting growth figures of 30 per cent per annum. Here’s how they have jumped over the obstacles: Tiding over FDI norms: Kanchan Lall, associate vice-president at Technova Consulting, which helps companies with their India entry strategies, says FDI norms continue to be the foremost challenge. Now, a further clarification that only companies that are brand owners themselves (this means global master franchises are not eligible) can get 100 per cent FDI, has made it even more difficult. But rather than sit it out, many big luxe brands have opted to come in through the two routes possible — joining hands with an Indian partner or appointing a master franchise. Says Lall: “If one model didn’t work, they switch to another. It is at the trial and error stage, and the brands are accepting that.” Sizing it up: When German luxury kitchen appliances maker Miele entered India three years ago, its biggest challenge, says India MD Dhan-anjay Chaturvedi, was the vastness of the country. How could it reach a potential customer hidden away in a place such as Kozhikode or Raipur? Miele decided to set up an experiential store (the single brand regulations don’t allow it to sell directly; it can only retail through dealers) in Delhi, where it invites potential customers. Here it lays out a relaxed fine-dining Miele experience — a curated menu crafted by master chefs, on Miele appliances, of course. This never fails to create an impulse to buy. Miele has also piggybacked on other luxury brands. As Chaturvedi points out, an Audi or Bang & Olufssen buyer is likely to be a Miele consumer too, so it hosts joint events with them. For instance, it hosted a soiree for the Harley Owners Group along with Remy Cointreau. Other brands have chosen to travel country-wide. Trunk sales held at five-star hotels in cities such as Hyderabad and Ludhiana have paid off for luxe labels such as Yves Saint Laurent, Chloe, Givenchy and Burberry. Dinaz Madhukar, vice-president, DLF EmporioA pricey bargain: Exorbitant rentals and 30 per cent-plus import duties have all made coveted A-list products costlier in India. Why then would the high net worth Indian who anyway travels overseas frequently buy here? Dinaz Madhukar, vice-president of DLF Emporio, says one way to entice shoppers to the luxury mall is to offer a superior service experience here — she points to the concierge service, personal shoppers, experiential zones, and so on at the mall. The missing elements at Emporio — a salon and a spa — will be added soon. The brands, on their part, have come up with India special collections that are only available here. Sanjay Kapoor of Genesis Luxury points out how Canali and Jimmy Choo have come up with exquisite India-inspired collections.Also, brands are drawing up select lists of invitees and offering them previews of their new lines. Recently, AmEx card holders got pre-event access to Vogue Fashion’s Night Out at the Emporio. Madhukar also describes how innovations such as the online gift and wedding registry Emporio has set up, keep the goods moving. Skilled staff: With trained staff who know the nuances of catering to the luxe set difficult to come by, marketers have had to work extra hard on this aspect. Miele has taken a leaf out of its Singapore operations and poached from the airline and hospitality sectors. Others have sent staff overseas for training. Manav Gangwani, director of marketing and communications at Infinite Luxury Brands, which has brought Roberto Cavalli to India, describes how they sent their staff on factory visits to Florence to see how each print was made, and attend training sessions at boutiques in Europe. Mindset challenge: ‘Have money, but why should I splurge’ has been the Indian mindset for certain luxury purchases. But that’s changing. Xavier Hay, CEO of Eurocopter India, says close to one-third of the helicopters sold have been to VIP customers, a segment growing at 12 per cent a year. Most Luxury Marketers, However, Feel That India is still at the first stage of luxury shopping — consuming visible luxury (apparel, watches, cars). It is when they graduate to the invisibles that real growth will come. Often, this can be done by influencing the influencers, says Chaturvedi, describing how Miele organises events with architects and real estate barons who are developing condominiums. Similarly, many high fashion brands have arrangements with socialites to host private preview parties.So, where there is a will there is a luxury way.chitra(dot)narayanan(at)abp(dot)inThis story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 24-09-2012)
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Victoria Beckham is rumoured to have a 100 birkins, worth close to $2 million. excess? there’s no such thing for the celebrities in tinsel town for whom five-figure bags are a must to look the part.Click here to view(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 24-09-2012)
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