The Micromax Canvas LapTab is basically an 10.1-inch Windows tablet with a keyboard dock, reports Haider Ali KhanMicromax has announced its first Windows 2-in-1 device, the Canvas Laptab, will now ship preloaded with Windows 10 - making the laptop-tablet hybrid the company's first Windows 10 device. The device has been priced at Rs. 14,999. Powered by an Intel Atom processor, the device is basically an 10.1-inch tablet with a keyboard dock. Unlike the other affordable 2-in-1 computers in the market, this one has a solid keyboard instead of one that is made of fabric. It has 10.1 inch IPS display, 2GB RAM, 1TB of cloud storage and operates on Windows 8.1 which can be upgraded to Windows 10 for free. The Canvas LapTab was one of the highest selling laptops on the online platform Amazon for over 8 weeks during its launch period and has received very good user feedback and reviews. It is one of the first commercially available devices in India with pre-loaded Windows 10. The company is now widening its distribution reach and making it available across channels, thereby expanding presence in the category. With the launch of the new version of the Canvas LapTab, Micromax aims at providing the latest technology with genuine pre-loaded Windows 10 OS continuing to democratize technology for the masses.
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Collaboration, coordination and connectivity are among the most important parameters of success in enterprise operations. The system of work and operations within business enterprises evolved as a network of connected fragments contributing to the whole process. Automated pipelining of operations throughout different segments of a process has made intensive communication a necessity at any workplace. Apart from its intrinsic requirement for success in process operations, exchange of information plays the crucial role to lubricate the frictions in corporate relationships both vertically and horizontally across echelons of an enterprise. Against the backdrop of a delicate requisite of communication and sharing information, technology emerged as the panacea to every shortcoming within enterprises that arises due to communication gaps or lack of coordination.Online collaboration, aided by Cloud Technology transformed communication within an enterprise by offering the functional platform for Collaboration, Coordination and Connectivity. Report by a UK based collaboration startup indicated that 75 per cent of businesses belief that online collaboration tools will be "important" or "somewhat important" to their business during the next 12 months. The edge over the lacunae of complexities offered by online collaboration applications have made these applications the most favorite tools used within enterprises. The reason of its efficacy is the array of features that these tools offer corresponding to contemporary needs of enterprise process dynamics. Mobility, instant sharing of documents, Emails and Sharing of Information are the best amenities provided by online collaborating applications.An insight report on Social Media around the World-2012 indicated that 7 out of 10 users use social connect, share content and stay informed. Collaborative platform materialized as such a critical utility for enterprises that without it, enterprises trend to become less productive than their counterparts loose an edge over the competitive market. As suggested on a report by McKinsey Global Institute, failing to implement social technology within enterprises makes high skilled employees and management 20 per cent to 25 per cent less productive. Hence, online collaboration can unlock the plethora of opportunities for an enterprise.Mobile working is among the most effective traits propelled by cloud based collaboration tools. As long as team members are connected to the internet, they can contribute by working remotely from anywhere. This allows the team to accomplish a task in an organized manner even if they are completed dispersed physically. Mobility within organizations has enabled coordination even beyond international boundaries and facilitated productivity. Moreover, cloud collaboration enabled members to work on a task while being away from the office on a business trip. Hence, using the technology, employees can do multi tasking increasing productivity by many folds.The telecom company O2, held a "leave your staff at home day" with an objective to have a closer look at benefits of remote working. The outcome of the study was surprising; shedding light on a number of intriguing facts and figures. Money saved by employees on commutation cost amounted to 9000 pounds. An extra 1000 hours was spent by employees on work, which was used normally on commuting and 36% of workers confessed that they were more productive than normal. Moreover, use of electricity was down by 12% and water usage reduced by 53%. Carbon emission too, was reduced by 12.2 tons. Mobile work force is on a rise globally. It is projected that by the end of 2015, there will be around 2.5 million mobile workforces amounting to 37.2 per cent of total workers worldwide.More than 50 per cent of organizations see knowledge sharing as the top purpose of using social collaboration tools. Employees spend hours searching for information both within the database of an enterprise as well as from open internet sources. Enterprise social collaboration contributes significantly to saving time of employees, which is otherwise utilized in searching for information. Facilitating unrestricted and real time communication, information can be shared among employees or any member of the team can seek for specific data in the network. On an average, an employee spends 9 hours searching information. This can be eradicated through intuitive use of enterprise social collaboration networks and the time can be utilized in a more productive manner.A report by Accenture indicated that 59 per cent of middle managers miss valuable information due to communication gaps or simply because they are not able to find it. Online collaboration helps to eradicate the chasm in communication throughout the hierarchy and actualize massive productivity by turning any process agile. Quick chat and Emails facilitated by these platforms provides the most effective avenue to inform and update.Online collaboration tools can offer a structured platform to employees to express their viewpoints and ideas. Collaborative work can attain magical solutions to the most pertinent issues within an organization. The power of group thinking can be utilized through these platforms, which can be the driving engine to create leaderships. New talents can be discovered via enterprise social networks who can be future leaders of the company. The fact that teamwork and unity can create wonders even in corporate verticals can be best realized through online collaborations.The author, Saif Ahmad, is founding CEO of Hallwaze Inc
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Motorola had announced the third generation Moto G in India back in July featuring a bold new design with an appealing form factor and sturdy performance and today the company has officially brought the new version of the Moto X to the country. Sadly the larger version called the Moto X Style was not announced but is expected to be announced by next month.The smartphone shares its design and looks with the new Moto G but feels much solid. The back panel can be removed and replaced with a variety of coloured back-panels which will be available online as well. It also has the new metal strip with the Motorola logo dimple which we have been seeing on all the previous versions of the smartphone. The Moto X Play features a nice and sharp looking 5.5-inch full HD display but surprisingly doesn’t look very large for the screen size it offers. It does however have a slight bulk thanks to the big 3,630mAh battery which Motorola claims can last about 2 days and with ‘Turbo Power’ charging it juices up real quick as well. On the inside there is an octa-core Snapdragon 615 processor, 2GB of RAM, 16 and 32GB storage with expansion slot supporting up to 128GB memory cards, and all new and improved 21MP camera at the back and a 5MP selfie camera on the front. Just like the Moto G 3rd gen, the Moto X Play will also be water proof and can withstand immersion of up to 3-feet or 1 meter of fresh water. On the software side you get stock Android 5.1 Lollipop experience with Motorola’s assist tools that have proven to make the experience a whole lot better.The Moto X Play will be available exclusively on Flipkart today from midnight starting at Rs. 18,499 for the 16GB version and Rs. 19,999 for the 32GB version. There are also some launch offers including a 100% cash back offers for 100 customers using Flipkart Ping, e-gift vouchers worth Rs. 1,000, free movie tickets worth Rs. 500 from BookMyShow and some travel offers from MakeMyTrip. Pictures: Kunal Khullar
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By Hita GuptaIn 2010, mobile payment platform Paytm entered the market with key offerings in the mobile recharge and DTH recharge space but over the course of last five year it has graduated to the ecommerce space with offering ranging from food, fashion to travel. In conversation with Digital Market Asia, Amit Lakhotia, Vice President of Business at Paytm discusses the business model of Paytm and the digital payment scenario in India.Commenting on the business model of Paytm, Mr Lakhotia said, "Commerce and payments happen together, globally. Even in India, it takes time to build trust in the minds of the consumers in the country. Consumer don't shop online only for discounts as it can only initiate action in the market but it cannot be used as a continuous strategy.""So, consumers seek value in convenience, trust, the variety of offering, etc. We have been able to service and achieve consumer confidence as they trust us and keep their money with us. This is what we strongly leverage," Mr Lakhotia added.Unlike other platforms in the mobile payment space, Paytm seeks to establish itself as a platform where the consumer comes and transacts. It does not rely on the services of a third party merchant for fulfillment of the services. Therefore, the consumer can experience the Paytm brand on the platform itself, according to Mr Lakhotia.Paytm covers almost 18,000 online destinations under its umbrella which include the likes of Jabong, Airtel, Idea, bookmyshow.com, makemytrip, Cleartrip, Yatra, IRCTC, eBay, and Groupon, among others, said Mr Lakhotia."A year and half ago all our revenue was coming from recharges, then it became recharges + payments, and today we are recharges + payments + marketplace. So, new categories are always added as stakeholders in the revenue pie," shared Mr Lakhotia.Digital payments In India"The banking regulator in India has been cognizant of the fact that cash in the system needs to reduce. The final agenda for regulators and digital payments platforms is the same - cash needs to reduce. Regulators are looking from the point of view that electronic payments should work to reduce the pressure on cash and we are looking at it from the consumer convenience point of view," said Mr Lakhotia outlining the scenario around digital payments in India."We push for the big ticket items through mobile payment but small ticket items will continue to be transacted through cash for long time," he added.However, the buzz around payment banks and 11 of 41 applicants securing in-principal approval for the same is expected to change the game for lower valued products too as consumers start to see payment banks as a preferred form of payment option.The Reserve Bank of India has granted in-principal approval to some of the industry barons such as Aditya Birla Group, Reliance Industries, Airtel, Vodafone, among others. Paytm also joined the league of payment banks along with famous industry majors.Paytm claims that it is trying to build an ecosystem and a product which helps the consumer understand why electronic payments are convenient against cash. "We are not facing any challenges from the regulatory front," clarified Mr Lakhotia."Once the tax-savvy initiatives are in play for three to five years, we can see more and more consumers adopting digital payments. On the merchant side too, there should be incentives to promote digital payments in India," he added reiterating the positive sentiment around digital payments in India.Competition"More players joining the digital payment ecosystem is an implication that the pipe is becoming bigger. Many players in the ecosystem are changing the market validation which was not there until now. So a lot of people have started believing in the space which is good from the consumer point of view and us as well on back of growth in the market," pointed Mr Lakhotia.Furthermore, Paytm is undeterred by competition from other digital payment options such as Airtel Money, m-pesa, MobiKwik, and Axis Ping Pay, among other. Mr Lakhotia explained, "About 95 per cent of the payments are happening through cash and only three-four per cent via digital wallets. So, our aim is not to fight within the same three-four per cent pie but bring the cash-dependent consumer on the digital platform so there is scope for a lot of players to grow. We are competing with cash, we are not competing against anything else."Many payments merchants are employing social media to gain market share in the India ecosystem but Paytm has decided to stay from the noise in the space. "Social media is important from the point of view of building user rating. But we are not looking only at social media because we seek to expand our business beyond the internet audience in India," he concluded.
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The next time you check into a hotel, you could be going places. Well, that is if you’re lucky enough to be at the New York Marriot Marquis or the London Marriot at Park Lane. If you do happen at these two properties in the next two weeks, you could request some VRoom Service --- not a vacuum cleaner or car rental, but a dash of Virtual Reality for when you’re bored. Mala BhargavaIt seems a bit odd that you’d go to another country, check into a hotel, and proceed to experience virtual reality when you can as well get real reality, but let’s remember that not everyone wants to just watch television or listen to music when getting back to their hotels after a day out. Not the millenials, anyway, and that’s who the hotel industry is going to have to please. Marriot has decided to take the lead with an experiment in giving its guests something different by way of in-room entertainment. They can order VRoom Service, upon which a little attaché case with instructions on the inner side of the lid and the VR equipment arrives. The headset is Samsung Gear headset – and indeed the experiment is in partnership with Samsung Electronics, US. Guests can keep the headset for 24 hours. When the guest is all outfitted with the VR gear, he or she can try out VR Postcards, travel experiences in which a user can get immersed in stories from real travelers. At the moment, the content is limited to just three of these postcards, taking the guest to China, the Andes Mountains and an ice cream shop in Ruanda. But if it turns out to be a hit, this can be developed as an interesting experience in hotel rooms. Mark Zuckerberg had his eye on similar experiences when he bought Oculus Rift, the VR company, and often talks of one day being able to share full-fledged experiences via virtual reality, the way one shares posts and photos and videos today. While VR in a hotel room may or may not work, there’s no doubt that the hotel guest of tomorrow is going to need different experiences than are available today and of course, they’re going to be heavily powered by technology.
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Making prognostications about which technologies will be popular in 20 years can be tricky. After all, who would have predicted the existence of the smartphone, a navigation system for cars, or a wearable fitness tracker back in 1995? Despite the possibility of sounding foolish, experts who presented at the IEEE Technology Time Machine conference last October took that risk to predict the interplay science, technology, society, and economics may have on several areas in 2035. Here’s a summary of what they had to say from thewhite paper recently published in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library.Future of Computer ProcessingSilicon’s reign will come to an end in the next decade as the maximum number of transistors that can be packed into a computer chip will be reached. Eventually a non-FET (field effect transistor) like graphene will need to be considered since it is 10 times faster than silicon, has very low resistance to electrons, and dissipates heat well. Another possibility is adiabatic computation, a physical process where there is no energy exchange, which is now only a theory. There will come a point where it is not feasible to build faster processors so the traditional ways will have to be abandoned. Instead, architectures and software will have to be tweaked to improve performance.Future of EnergyMajor changes to the infrastructure, especially electric, are on the horizon. Solar and wind generation will force electric utilities to transition away from traditional grid organizations to an integrated smarter grid. As the grid gets more complex and multi-directional, control systems will have to become more sophisticated, flexible, self-healing, and easily reconfigurable. These smart grids will know when the power is out and restore it automatically, suppress demand during peak loading times, and handle variable generation sources. The Internet of Things (IoT) will be a crucial component because it will be used to connect intelligent machines, data analytics, and customers.Future of FabricationThe fabrication landscape will undergo a revolution in how things are designed, who designs them, where they are manufactured, and how and where they are manufactured. Big companies will turn to smarter manufacturing processes and small- and medium-sized businesses will exploit their flexibility and their ability to adopt new fabrication tools to fill niche markets with lower capital investment.With the help of 3D printing and additive manufacturing, small teams will be able to produce low-cost parts. Digital manufacturing (a continuously monitored process) and agile manufacturing will support the growing interest in synchronising the manufacturing processes with the lean supply and distribution chain model. Drones and other autonomous delivery systems will likely handle the majority of deliveries by 2035. Recycling will grow in importance and recycling-by-design, which ensures that consumer products can be safely and economically recycled, will be a must. And instead of hiring experts to help them with challenging problems, companies will use crowdsourcing and cash prizes to find engineers and designers.Future of HealthcareContinuous health monitoring will expand and improve. Data will be sent by smartphones and analyzed by health professionals to provide individually customized advice on what to do to remain healthy. Expect health monitoring to be ubiquitous and incorporated in our lives to the point where we will hardly notice it. Several issues still have to be addressed including turning the data into useful information that is properly evaluated, resolving the legal ramifications of providing medical advice based on that information, and protecting users’ privacy. But by 2035, these concerns should be a thing of the past.Future of NetworksThe Internet will be considered a utility and taken for granted. People will expect that everyone is connected all the time, and networks will be both public and private, and more secure. The Internet of Things is part of that progression, because more and more things will be added to the network but people will expect that the IoT will be fast, safe, and inexpensive. To get there, bandwidth will need to be increased to provide everyone with high-quality streaming access. To get there, all new transmission technologies will need to work over shorter distances so the trick is to decrease what’s called the last mile to the last hundred yards (92 meters) or less. But as capacity increases, there will be a stratification of service tied to the willingness to pay. This will change the normal division between urban and rural environments, and the difference in available bandwidth speed.The author, Kathy Pretz, is IEEE Member
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Fitness bands and activity trackers are starting to grow in the market and the latest product comes from Jawbone in the form of their new UP series. Jawbone seems to be aiming at making the fitness bands more elegant with its new series which comprises of three models, the UP 3, UP 2 and UP Move. The Jawbone hardware works by synching with an app called UP powered by Smart Coach which is Jawbone’s intelligent coaching system. It takes the data it recorded by the band and converts it into personalised guidance so that one can you can improve your fitness in terms of diet, activity and sleep.All three models come with a different design and the strap mechanism to secure itself around the wrist. The UP Move uses a simple clamp like most of the fitness bands out there but it doesn’t look very trendy, rather a bit like a toy. The UP2 and UP3 are much better looking with a nice combo of rubber and plastic material with a textured finish. However the lock mechanism doesn’t look very satisfying and secure.The UP Move, UP2 and UP3, are available for pre-order exclusively at Amazon.in and comes in a large variety of colours as mentioned below: UP3 (Rs. 14,999 ):• UP3 Ruby Cross• UP3 Indigo Twist• UP3 Teal Cross• UP3 Sand Twist• UP3 Silver Cross• UP3 Black TwistUP2 (Rs. 9,999):• UP2 Violet Circle Classic Strap• UP2 Orchid Circle Lightweight Thin Straps• UP2 Turquoise Circle Lightweight Thin Straps• UP2 Oat Spectrum Lightweight Thin Straps• UP2 Gunmetal Hex Lightweight Thin Straps• UP2 Black Diamond Lightweight Thin Straps• UP2 Light Grey Hex Classic Strap• UP2 Black Diamond Classic StrapUP Move (Rs. 4,999) and includes the pod-style tracking device, a corresponding clip and a replaceable battery:• Black Burst, Onyx Clip, Onyx Standard Strap• Blue Burst, Fog Clip, Fog Standard Strap• Grape Rose, Purple Clip, Purple Slim Strap• Ruby Rose, Red Punch Clip, Red Punch Slim Strap• Slate Rose, Yellow Clip, Yellow Slim Strap
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The new generation of startups will build businesses faster because it has access to money and mentorship, Vishal Krishna reports India is going to be the third largest internet market in the world because of the high smartphone penetration by 2020. Founders of mobile-first and mobile-future companies like InMobi, Flipkart and PayTM believe that India is going to build large internet businesses that deliver a valuation of $500 billion in a decade. "We have reversed the brain drain from India," Sachin Bansal, founder of Flipkart, said on the sidelines of the GMIC India conference in Bangalore. If spectrum costs fall, then the services available on mobile will become cheaper, he added. Flipkart is already piloting its App-only strategy and is focused on building immersive experiences across all its categories before launching it to the public. Flipkart's subsidiary Myntra has already become an App and has seen that India is clearly moving mobile for shopping. It is only a matter of time before services like education, health, financial planning and transportation move completely to the app. With this, advertising will also move to the app. Today this segment is only Rs 2,000 crore in the Rs 500,000 crore global smartphone advertising market. Data from Gartner shows that there will be 500 million smartphones sold per year by 2018. "The app is where the magic happens. This is what most internet companies are investing in," said Vijay Shekar Sharma, founder of PayTM. He added that browser was dead and that most of them were taking to the app for services. "There is a need to build local language services to complete the mobile revolution in India," Sharma said. While PayTM and Flipkart build India's largest mobile commerce companies, Naveen Tewari of InMobi is building a global location based advertising business. He believes that the App debate is two three levels away. "One, we must improve user experience, second, internet businesses need to monetise services and finally how is the consumer moving to the App," Tewari of InMobi said, adding that India is going to be big after the US and China. "India is the third front because revenue numbers have proved that the USA and China have become mobile economies. India is on its way to becoming the largest internet economy," Tewari said. Today internet commerce companies in India have many front loaded costs. Most of the valuation is based on transactions made rather than the cash generated by the business. All three founders agree that it is still early days and that front loaded costs are necessary to build internet businesses. "We have to generate cash soon; but today the opportunity to invest is very high because only 100 million are on the Internet today and there is more to be added," says Vijay Shekar of PayTM. The founders say that startups, of this generation, will build businesses faster because they have access to money and mentorship. "The signs for India are positive and we need to keep improving the ecosystem," said Bansal. He said that telecom regulations need to change quickly and telcos must be allowed to pay less for spectrum and that a tax should be brought in to charge telcos over a longer time line. "Indian internet businesses will grow faster with fall in spectrum costs," he said. The bet on India being mobile is not euphoric anymore, it is a reality, and perhaps it will continue to be the largest-funded market in a few years, provided an economic downturn does not bring the party crashing. But the bet is certainly made on creating sustainable businesses.
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