Mercury mTab Neo launched @ Rs 15,999

Mercury mTab Neo tablet

The budget tablet market seems to be growing hotter day-by-day. Kobian Group, the maker ofMercury brand of computer components and peripherals, has added the successor to its popular tablet mTab in the Indian market.

Called mTab Neo, the tablet will come with 1 GHz dual core Cortex A9 processor and will run on Android Froyo (2.2) operating system.

Featuring a 7-inch (16:9) capacitive multi-touch screen with HD resolution, the tablet includes in-built 3G and SIM support for voice and video calling.

Other features include 2 megapixel camera with a 0.3 megapixel front facing camera and dual speakers.

Connectivity options include Bluetooth 3.0, in-built 3G (GSM/WCDMA) and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g. The tablet will come equipped with a mini-USB port and HDMI output. For memory, the tablet packs 4GB internal storage which can be expanded up to 32GB.

Mercury mTab Neo is priced at Rs 15,999.

Windows Phone “Tango” will support 120 languages, C++ development support coming soon

According to WPSauce (via WMPU), Microsoft revealed some interesting information during a Windows Phone developers camp in India today. According to Karthik Ragubathy, who had been attending this event, the on-stage speaker had confirmed to the attendees that the next release of Windows Phone, codenamed “Tango”, will support 120 languages:

Another revelation that came in when I asked about the local language support – one of the speakers said, and I quote: “Mango has support for 35 languages and Tango will have for 120 languages”.

According to previous reports, “Tango” is focused on bringing Windows Phone to additional markets, including developing countries such as China and India which had been traditionally neglected by Microsoft in the past. This news greatly complements this focus for Microsoft to bring Windows Phones to as many markets as possible. In addition, WMPU notes that iOS currently only supports 34 languagesand Android 55 languages, while Windows 7 supports 125 languages, meaning Microsoft is really bringing their expertise to bring additional language support to Windows Phone users.

Ragubathy also mentioned via Twitter that one of the Microsoft speakers confirmed that developers will be able to develop apps for the “next release” of Windows Phone using C++ native coding, although the speakers refused to confirm whether this “next release” refers to Tango, Apollo, or the next developer release of Visual Studio:

The evolution from laptops to ultrabooks

It was at Computex 2011 where Intel announced the Ultrabook - a new category of notebooks that would take on tablets and boost lagging sales. Intel trademarked the 'Ultrabook' name and came up with a reference design; minimum specifications that had to be met for a device to be called an Ultrabook.

A US$ 1,000 price, a minimum battery backup of 5 hours, Intel Core i series processor, flash-based SSD storage, less than 20mm thickness and a weight of less than 1.4kg were the main criteria. This way, Intel made sure that irrespective of the manufacturer, the performance of the Ultrabook would be constant. However, there are a few drawbacks - due to the slim design, only a few ports can be accomodated and an optical drive is out of the question.

Journey so far
Intel announced a $300 million fund for development of the Ultrabook platform (mainly to entice manufacturers to quickly adopt the specification). There are many things going for the Ultrabook - travel-friendly yet powerful, fast startup and instant resume from sleep, integrated anti-theft, identity protection and so on.

To gain the first mover advantage, manufacturers rushed out Ultrabooks that met Intel's minimum requirements, without experimenting too much. The problem is, Intel's specification also included a suggested price of US$ 1,000 or less, which few could meet. Acer was the first one to launch an Ultrabook - the Aspire S3.

They kept it close to the reference design with a 13.3-inch display, an Intel Core i3 processor, 4GB RAM and a regular 320GB hard drive. In this way, they managed to get the device priced at `50,000. Acer kept a separate flash memory partition for the operating system that allowed the S3 to offer the faster boot/shutdown and instant resume - as specified by Intel.

Next came Lenovo with the U300s - again with a 13.3-inch display. Lenovo opted to go with a 128GB SSD for storage and 2GB RAM - again, most likely to match the US$ 1,000 price. Towards the end of 2011, other manufacturers like HP, Asus and Toshiba announced Ultrabook products for the international market. Almost all of them stuck with the 13.3-inch display (except Asus, that announced an Ultrabook with an 11.6-inch display). For Intel, it was a successful year because barely within six months of announcement, five manufacturers were shipping Ultrabooks.

Upcoming launches
All major players were expected to launch their Ultrabooks during 2012 and it was evident that CES would showcase them. Over 20 new Ultrabooks were announced - each manufacturer tried to differentiate their product using design, customisation and embedded technologies. Dellshowcased the XPS 13 Ultrabook with a 6mm thick body, Intel core i5/i7 processors and 100GB of cloud storage.

Lenovo introduced the first enterprise-class Ultrabook, the Thinkpad T430u. This is the first to offer dedicated graphics and 1TB storage. HP's Envy Spectre stood out by using a 14-inch display in a 13.3-inch chassis, extensive use of glass and a claimed 9-hour battery life. Samsunglaunched two Ultrabooks - Series 5 and Series 9 (the first Ultrabooks with 13-inch, 14-inch and 15-inch displays). Acer's Aspire S5 has a battery pack which they claim will have a life cycle three times longer than the average laptop battery.

Concepts of tomorrow
Intel claims that over 75 new Ultrabook designs will be launched this year. Intel's 'Nikishi' concept Ultrabook, showcased at CES 2012, has a transparent glass trackpad that spans the width of the machine. It's intelligent enough to shut off when it detects that you are typing.

With the lid closed, a portion of the screen is still viewable from underneath the laptop - this part doubles up as a touchscreen that utilizes Windows 8's Metro UI to give you quick access to various useful apps. Another impressive design shown off at CES was Lenovo's Yoga Ultrabook with a 13.3-inch touchscreen and a keyboard that swivels 360 degrees to become a stand for the screen.

Intel is also working on integrating NFC and voice control in future designs. The functionality of the new designs depends heavily on Windows 8 and the Metro UI (tiled interface) - many of them should hit the market around the time when Windows 8 is ready for use.

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UK prisoners use Facebook to threaten people

Around 350
 "dangerous prisoners"
currently in British jails
 have been caught taunting
 people on Facebook.

LONDON: Around 350 "dangerous prisoners" currently in British jails have been caught taunting people on Facebook to which they logged in through smartphones smuggled inside prisons. 

The ministry of justice said all the prisoners' profiles were closed after a probe but there could be hundreds more who have used the site without the knowledge of officials. 

Two years ago, a 44-year-old jailed criminal named Colin Gunn was caught using Facebook to threaten his enemies from a high security prison cell, The Sun reported. 

"I will be home one day and I can't wait to look into certain people's eyes and see the fear of me being there. It's good to have an outlet to let you know how I am, some of you will be in for a good slagging and some have let me down badly and will be named and shamed," Gunn wrote in one post. 

The news has been criticised by social organisations. 

"Offenders using Facebook from prison makes a mockery of the idea that they are being punished," said Javed Khan of the Victim Support group. 

Jean Taylor, from Families Fighting for Justice, said: "These perpetrators should not be able to have access to mobile phones in prison. They are getting away with torturing their victims. The social networking sites should police this much more closely."

Google, Microsoft Say DMARC Spec Stops Phishing

New email authentication framework called DMARC, backed by major email and security tool providers, aims to make spoofed domains in messages a thing of the past.

By Thomas Claburn   InformationWeek
January 30, 2012 09:30 AM

Leading free email providers AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have banded together with financial, social media, and message security companies to make it easier to verify the authenticity of email messages.

Together, the companies on Monday announced the formation of DMARC.org, an organization that aspires to make email more trustworthy and phishing more difficult. DMARC.org will promote the DMARC specification, which describes how email senders should authenticate messages, how they should communicate their authentication practices, and how message recipients can discover and implement sender policies.

more details..

Twitter may censor tweets in individual countries

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter has refined its technology so it can censor messages on a country-by-country basis. 

The additional flexibility announced on Thursday is likely to raise fears that Twitter's commitment to free speech may be weakening as the short-messaging company expands into new countries in an attempt to broaden its audience and make more money. 

But Twitter sees the censorship tool as a way to ensure individual messages, or tweets, remain available to as many people as possible while it navigates a gauntlet of different laws around the world. Before, when Twitter erased a tweet it disappeared throughout the world. Now, a tweet containing content breaking a law in one country can be taken down there and still be seen elsewhere. 

Twitter will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed. That's similar to what Internet search leader Google Inc. has been doing for years when a law in a country where its service operates requires a search result to be removed. 

Like Google, Twitter also plans to the share the removal requests it receives from governments, companies and individuals at the chillingeffects.org website. The similarity to Google's policy isn't coincidental. Twitter's general counsel is Alexander Macgillivray, who helped Google draw up its censorship policies while he was working at that company. 

``One of our core values as a company is to defend and respect each user's voice,'' Twitter wrote in a blog post. ``We try to keep content up wherever and whenever we can, and we will be transparent with users when we can't. The tweets must continue to flow.'' 

Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, is tweaking its approach now that its nearly 6-year-old service has established itself as one of the world's most powerful megaphones. Daisy chains of tweets already have played instrumental roles in political protests throughout the world, including the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States and the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia and Syria. 

It's a role that Twitter has embraced, but the company came up with the new filtering technology in recognition that it will likely be forced to censor more tweets as it pursues an ambitious agenda. Among other things, Twitter wants to expand its audience from about 100 million active users now to more than 1 billion. 

Reaching that goal will require expanding into more countries, which will mean Twitter will be more likely to have to submit to laws that run counter to the free-expression protections guaranteed under the First Amendment in the US. 

Google express inability on censoring the web

Google Inc. the giant internet company, which is facing the legal battle in India over allowing to access the objectionable and obscene content on internet in India Thursday cleared its stand about censoring the web.

In an interview with an Indian Television Channel, Google's chief business officer Nikesh Arora said that it was not possible to censor the web nor to monitor all the contents uploaded daily on the web.

"We cannot censor the Web. We cannot censor the ability of people to express themselves around the world. You are asking not just censor the Web in India, you are asking to censor the entire world wide web. The Web has no borders."

He was speaking on the sideline of on the sideline of World Economic Forum.

Nikesh made it clear, whatever on the social networking site is the freedom of expression of the people and we cannot censor it.

"I'm hoping there will be a balanced debate around it and eventually the right thing would happen."

"The idea of censoring everything and pre-clearing everything is going to fundamentally, sort of, taint the growth of the Indian economy in India and vis-a-vis the world," he added.

The 21 social networking sites in India including Google and Facebook are facing the legal trial of allegedly hosting obscene and objectionable content in the lower court of Delhi.

In this regard, the companies have challenged summon in high court. The next hearing schedule is on 02 February.

India on the other hand had also cleared that it was not going to ban the website like China did.

"We don't want to get into the business of censoring any media-we can't do it, and we don't want to," said Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Milind Deora in a blog.

"No one is saying we're going to shut any of these companies down," he wrote.

"We have to ensure the law gives someone recourse," said Deora making it clear that the government was only trying to ensure Indians would seek to remove Web content deemed to run afoul of Indian laws governing defamation, obscenity or other types of objectionable material.

Nokia leads dual-SIM mobile phone market in India: Report

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia is making a comeback in the low-end segment in India after taking a beating from the local brands. The recent rupee depreciation compelled the Indian phone brands to hike the price of low-end models, thereby losing the market grip. Nokia not only made a comeback in the low-end segment but has also gained a remarkable lead in the dual-SIM phones segment. According to a media research, multi-SIM shipments accounted 54 per cent of the total handsets market during November 2011 in the country. Nokia is leading the race with 19 per cent market share, followed by Micromax (7.1 per cent) and Karbonn (6.9 per cent).

According to the report, Nokia also managed to cope with the foreign exchange fluctuation as it mainly sources components for the low end phones from local market. On the other hand, the Indian phone makers such as Maxx Mobile, Lava, Micromax and Karbon were forced to increase price as the components of their phones are sourced from China and other Asian nations.

Ajjay Agarwal, Chairman & Managing Director, Maxx Group acknowledged that the rupee depreciations in recent months had made adverse impact on their market share. He also pointed out that other Indian manufacturers had to increase price to keep their profit margins safe. According to reports, a number of Indian and Chinese mobile handset players have witnessed a significant dip in shipments.

Nokia has launched as many as seven phones including the Asha series in the dual-SIM category. It may be recalled that Nokia had lost a significant ground of late after local handset manufacturers such as Mircomax joined the fray. Nokia's market share had dipped from nearly 60 per cent to less than 30 per cent, mainly because it didn't have dual-SIM phones in the market. According to reports, Indian brands grabbed some 25 per cent share from Nokia. 

Apple's Cook responds to criticism over labor violations

Timothy "Tim" Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc.

Labor violations in Apple’s supply chain have been in the spotlight following several media reports calling the technology company’s practices into question and raising speculation that it ignores problems in pursuit of a better bottom line.

That accusation appears to have touched a nerve in Cupertino. Apple chief executive Tim Cook addressed the reports in a lengthy staff e-mail published by 9 to 5 Mac.

“Unfortunately some people are questioning Apple’s values today, and I’d like to address this with you directly,” Cook’s e-mail said. “We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values.”

Earlier this month, Apple released its annual audit of the human rights and labor conditions that it found in its partner facilities and revealed a list of its suppliersfor the first time in company history. The report said that 62 percent of the 229 facilities it inspected were not in compliance with the company’s maximum 60-hour work policy; 13 percent did not have adequate protections for juvenile workers; and 32 percent had problems with the management of hazardous waste.

Two stories this week in the New York Times have brought the poor conditions revealed in Apple’s own report of its manufacturers into sharp focus. They built on momentum set off by a “This American Life” program in January focused on Apple partner Foxconn’s labor practices through the lens of Mike Daisey’s one-man show,‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.’

The radio broadcast highlighted problems that Foxconn has with underage workers, 12-hour shifts that stretch even longer, and a lack of real representation from labor unions. One woman Daisey interviewed said that she was placed on a blacklist of “troublemakers” that the labor board provided to the company after she complained about the working conditions.

The New York Times story quotes one former Foxconn manager as saying, “Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost.” The worker, Li Mingqi, is suing Foxconn over his dismissal, the report said.

But the Times reports indicate that the problem extends far beyond Foxconn, to Apple itself. One quote, from a former Apple executive, was particularly damaging to the company. “We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” the executive told the New York Times. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

TRAI grants relief to business houses on 200 SMS limit

The business houses will longer have to worry about the limit of 200 SMS per day per SIM to inform the customers about their services as Telecom Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday decided to exempt machine to machine and person to machine messages from the limit of 200 SMS per day per SIM.

TRAI took this decision after business houses and other stake holders expressed their apprehensions that because of the limit of the 200 SMS per day per SIM imposed by TRAI on September 27 last year, they would not be able to “send machine to machine and person to machine SMSs which are sent by them to initiate process or application for their operational requirements.”

“TRAI has duly considered such representations and has excluded all machine to machine and person to machine messages from the limit of 200 SMS per day per SIM”, said A. Robert J. Ravi, Advisor, TRAI in a statement.

He said  that TRAI had sought clarifications from various companies regarding delivery of information through SMS related to services or maintenance provided by them to their customers and the decision is in line with these the clarifications received from their representations.

“Such services include providing details of driver or taxi on booking of Radio Taxi, tentative date of delivery of goods, tentative date of attending complaint, contact details of person attending the complaint etc”, 

Apple CEO's cash 'problem'

Apple CEO Tim Cook has a 
problem, a $98 billion problem.

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple CEO Tim Cook has a problem, a $98 billion problem. 

Just 18 months ago, Apple's $46 billion mountain of cash - while huge by most standards - attracted only muted complaints from investors, who did call for a dividend or share buyback, but were mostly happy with the meteoric rise in the stock price. 

But with the growing cash balance now a much bigger overhang on the stock, widely considered to be undervalued, investors are clamoring more vocally for Cook to put the money to work. 

No one could have foreseen just how quickly that warchest would grow. Indeed, some analysts estimated Apple's cash holdings would increase to $65 billion at the end of 201l. That it has swelled nearly 50 per cent above even those lofty projections is nothing short of awesome. 

Apple now has about $104 in cash per share. 

But to paraphrase rapper P Diddy, with more money comes more problems. Apple's runaway success presents Cook with his first real public test as chief executive officer - figuring out what to do with the money. 

Apple's cash balance is now a quarter of its $415 billion market capitalization and roughly equals California's 2012-2013 state budget. And even though $64 billion of Apple's cash is overseas - meaning it will have to pay a hefty tax to bring it into the United States - calls for a dividend onWall Street grew louder after the company said on Tuesday it was in "active discussions" internally on what to do with the money. 

Wall Street is strongly in favor of Apple returning the money to shareholders through buybacks or dividends, even if it is only a one-time deal. But the ultra-conservative company, which typically ignores Wall Street, gave no clues about that during its earnings call on Tuesday. 

"They are clearly trying to signal that they are not ignoring the issue," said Michael Holt, an analyst with Morningstar. "It doesn't mean that a decision is imminent." 

Others, however, are convinced a dividend will be paid this year. 

"With Apple stating that it is 'actively' pursuing its options with regards to its cash balance, we believe the commentary may be setting itself up for a cash dividend in FY12," Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White said, raising his target on the stock to $666. 

Katy Huberty, an analyst with Morgan Stanley, echoed White's view, saying: "Apple appears committed to making a decision on cash return in the near-term and we continue to believe a dividend makes the most sense." 

Some big technology companies have started paying a dividend to help allay investor concerns about slowing growth by returning part of their ample cash holdings. Cisco Systems Inc began paying a dividend last year, while Microsoft Corp started in 2003. 

Far too much money
Apple stock gained 25 per cent in 2011, adding about $77 billion to its market cap and it touched an all-time high of $454.45 on Wednesday. Some continue to bank on a share-price rise to as high as $700. 

The company's core business is throwing off massive amounts of cash every quarter - Apple recorded a $16 billion increase in cash sequentially - in part because of its reluctance to pay a dividend or buy back stock and its limited acquisition history. 

The company earned a mere 0.77 per cent on its cash and investments in fiscal 2011, mostly due to its preference for safe, but low-yielding US Treasury and agency debt. 

This is a tad higher than the 0.75 per cent it earned in fiscal 2010, but down from 1.43 per cent in fiscal 2009, 3.44 per cent in 2008 and 5.27 per cent in 2007. 

Fiscal prudence has long been part of Apple's mantra and the Cupertino, California-based company runs a tight ship with total revenue rising 66 per cent in fiscal 2011, but operating expenses rising only 37 per cent. 

For now, Apple's Chief Financial Officer, Peter Oppenheimer, has veered away from his usual script, which was to tell Wall Street that Apple has always had internal discussions on the best use of its cash, with capital preservation being key. 

He characterized these discussion as "active" on Tuesday. 

"We recognize that the cash is growing for all the right reasons," Oppenheimer said, but added he had nothing to announce. "In the meantime, we're not letting it burn a hole in our pockets." 

Oppenheimer also suggested that Apple might invest in its supply chain or make acquisitions. But Apple has typically preferred to acquire small companies, which has had little or no material impact on its results so far. 

Apple's major expense last year was paying the lion's share to acquire - along with Microsoft and a few other companies - the patent portfolio of bankrupt telecommunications company Nortelfor $4.5 billion. 

Apple said it spent $4.3 billion in fiscal 2011 to acquire "property, plant and equipment," $3.2 billion in "acquisition of intangible assets" and $244 million in "payments made in connection with business acquisitions," according to its annual regulatory filing. 

That is in sharp contrast to rivals such as Google Inc, which is acquiring Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in cash, and which completed 54 acquisitions during the first nine months of last year alone. The company's $44.6 billion warchest of cash and investments at the end of December was far lower than Apple's. 

Google has also resisted pressure to announce a dividend or buy back stock. 

Apple may do the same in the next few months, said Michael Walkley, an analyst with Canaccord Genuity. 

"We believe Apple is likely to announce a dividend during 2012, potentially next quarter when crossing $100 billion in cash and cash equivalents," Walkley said. "We view this as very bullish for investors, as we believe a new group of investors seeking dividends would invest in Apple and drive shares higher."

HP clears the path for open sourced WebOS

TECHNOLOGY VENDOR HP has released its roadmap for making WebOS open source and is promising that it will be available in September.

The firm has wrestled with the operating system for a little while now, and it was only in December last year that it came to a decision about its future.

"WebOS is the only platform designed from the ground up to be mobile, cloud-connected and scalable," said HP president and CEO Meg Whitman then.

"By contributing this innovation, HP unleashes the creativity of the open source community to advance a new generation of applications and devices."

Today the company provided a timeline for action and released the source code for version 2.0 of Enyo, the WebOS developer tool. This code, and WebOS itself, will be made available under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

"HP is bringing the innovation of the webOS platform to the open source community," said Bill Veghte, EVP and chief strategy officer at HP.

"This is a decisive step toward meeting our goal of accelerating the platform's development and ensuring that its benefits will be delivered to the entire ecosystem of web applications."

Poor WebOS has been living in limbo since ex-CEO Leo Apotheker announced plans to drop it and the firm's PC business, although he was always less sure about the latter.

Today we learn that starting with the Enyo release we will see a trickle of release landmarks between now and Autumn that will culminate in September with the release of Open WebOS 1.0. µ

Source: The Inquirer (http://s.tt/15oMh)

Google+ relaxes real name policy to allow pseudonyms

Google said the change in policy was a r
esponse to "community feedback"

Established pseudonyms can be used to register accounts on Google+ after the social network relaxed its name policy.

The move follows criticism from human rights groups which had said there were circumstances under which individuals could have become unsafe if they revealed their identities.

The search giant said it had already begun rolling out the amended policy.

However, it is said users must prove their nickname has already attracted an audience elsewhere.

The change of rules was confirmed on the account page of Google executive Bradley Horowitz.

He noted that 0.1% of all applicants filed name appeals, and 20% of this number wanted to use a pseudonym or other unconventional name.

Mr Horowitz said that users wanting to take advantage of the new policy might have to provide "references to an established identity offline in print media, news article, etc" or offer "proof of an established identity online with a meaningful following".

He said users might also need to provide "scanned official documentation, such as a drivers' licence" and that the review process would take a "few days".

Google told the BBC that it would destroy any documentation provided as part of an appeal once it had completed the verification process.

'Sidestep'

Users who do not fulfil the requirements are also given the option of displaying their nickname or maiden name alongside their legally recognised identity.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation had flagged up issues with Google's previous pseudonym ban last July, describing the policy as "shortsighted".

The San Francisco-based digital rights pressure group highlighted a US Supreme Court Justice ruling that said: "Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation - and their ideas from suppression - at the hand of an intolerant society."

Privacy International, a London-based campaign organisation, said it was still not satisfied with the change.

"This is a sidestep, not a step forward," said Gus Hosein, the group's executive director.

"We would like to see an identity policy that allows for multiple simultaneous identities relevant to each circle and each interaction. That's how the real world works.

"Only a company with engineers as bright as Google's could make this a reality, so until that happens we will remain disappointed."

Google has hinted that a further relaxation of its rules might be possible.

Mr Horowitz's posting notes: "We will be listening to feedback from the community and will continue to refine all aspects of how we handle names and identity over the coming weeks, months and beyond."

Aakash tab gets Indian War Comics

New Delhi: Indian Army Chief V K Singh today launched the digital version of Indian War Comics (IWC), which will be available for users of upcoming version of Aakash tablet PC to be supplied by Datawind. 

"This particular idea itself is not only laudable, but I think each one of us must realise that there is something which will make tremendous difference," Army Chief V K Singh said while releasing digital version of comics. 

Singh launched digital version of comics on Param Vir Chakra winner Bana Singh, Captain Vikram Batra and Mumbai 26/11 war hero Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan 'Ashok Chakra'. 

He added that the idea is to inspire children. 

"Those of you who have been lucky to read the Amar Chitra Katha and know what it did to you, to know your own history, I think these war comics are going to make a fantastic difference. Specially when they are loaded on to the Akash tablet," he said. 

These digital version of comics will be available free of cost on Aakash and Ubislate Tablets of Datawind. 

"We will put these comics on both Aakash and Ubislate tablets," Datawind CEO Sunit Singh Tuli said. 



The print version of these comics are available in the open market through Om Books and Westland. 

Promoter of IWC and a Merchant Navy officer Aditya Bakshi said he will launch hindi version of these comics in next four months and later a copy in mother-tongue of war heros will be launched. 

Mobile handset shipments in India at 166 mn in January-November 2011

NEW DELHI: Total mobile handset shipments in India touched nearly 166 million units during the first eleven months of the 2011 calendar year, with Finnish handset maker Nokia accounting for a 30.7 per cent slice of the market, according to a CyberMedia Research report. 

The overall shipments included 14.4 million feature phones and 1.07 million smartphones, according to the India Monthly Mobile Handsets Market Review for November, 2011, released today by CyberMedia Research. 

The report shows that Nokia led the Indian mobile handset market in terms of shipments between January and November, 2011, with a 30.7 per cent share, followed by Samsung with 14.9 per cent and Micromax with 5 per cent. 

Nokia remained the leader in both the feature and smartphone segments, accounting for 30.2 per cent and 38.4 per cent, respectively, of the market. 

According to the report, smartphone shipments during the period stood at approximately 10 million. Samsung and BlackBerry smartphone-makerResearch In Motion were the second and third largest players in the smartphone segment with a 27.5 per cent and 15.5 per cent market share, respectively. 

However, there was a change in the market share of these companies during November. 

As per data on shipments during the month of November, around 15.47 million phones were shipped, including 14.4 million feature phones and 1.07 million smartphones. 

Nokia retained its leadership position with a 28 per cent share, followed by Samsung at second position with 12 per cent and Micromax at third position with 4 per cent. 

"A new trend that is becoming visible is the launch of dual-SIM smartphones by vendors," Tarun Pathak, Analyst, Monthly Mobile Phones Market Review Programme, CyberMedia Research Telecoms Practice, said in a statement. 

Multi-SIM mobile handset shipments accounted for 54 per cent of the total India mobile handsets market during the month, he said. 

Total 3G phone shipments touched 15.5 million in the first eleven months of the 2011 calendar year, with close to 224 models launched by 26 vendors. In November, 2011, 3G phone shipments constituted 8.9 per cent of total mobile device shipments in the country, the report said. 

"With the increasing share of 3G phones in the market, the stage is set for customers to experience the benefits of 3G services. However, currently, the user experience on 3G networks has been constrained due to network quality issues faced by subscribers," Lead Analyst Naveen Mishra at CyberMedia Research Telecoms Practice said.

Take that, Apple. Dutch court cool with Samsung Tab design

At least in the Netherlands, Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1

 is safe--from a design standpoint--from Apple's lawyers.

(Credit: Samsung)

Apple suffered another legal setback after a Dutch court sided with Samsung Electronics, ruling that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 does not infringe upon the iPad's design. 

A court in The Hague, Netherlands, dismissed an appeal by Apple, its latest attempt to get Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 banned from the country, according to legal blog Foss Patents. A lower court in The Hague had initially dismissed a similar request by Apple in August.

The ruling comes a week before a similar decision is expected in a German court over a ban that was initially placed on the Galaxy Tab, said Florian Mueller, who runs Foss Patents. He said the decision could remove the ban, dealing Apple yet another legal defeat.

Apple and Samsung representatives weren't immediately available to comment to CNET.

This just the latest legal development in the ongoing battle between Apple and Androidmanufacturers. Apple has gone after a myriad of Android partners in part to halt the momentum of Google's mobile platform, but also to eventually extract a licensing fee. But the effort has been a costly one, with Apple rumored to have spent $100 million on its litigation against HTC alone.

So far, Apple hasn't come up with much of a concrete victory. Its only decisive win was a U.S. International Trade Commission ruling that found one out of 10 patents was infringed by HTC. But HTC has several months to create a technical workaround to the patent, rendering the victory fairly meaningless.

Google, meanwhile, is attempting to load up on patents with its planned acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Presumably, those patents would benefit all Android partners.

Apple and Android companies such as HTC and Samsung are attempting to get a firm ruling banning its products from a major country, which would force the two sides to start negotiating a cross-licensing agreement. But until such a decision arrives, both sides will continue to up the ante and file one lawsuit after another in courts around the world.