Knowledge Update

​New York, July 12 (IANS) Smartphones are the most used gaming device for people globally -- and across 12 countries, 47 per cent of all smartphone players are now women, a Facebook study has revealed, adding that gaming on mobile devices is increasingly becoming popular among women. Facebook's data analysis and storytelling team Facebook IQ commissioned market research company TNS to survey people ages 18-plus spanning 12 countries representing North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle-East and Asia on their use of mobile as a gaming device. The survey found that on average, smartphones are the top gaming device for users -- at 71 per cent -- followed by computers at 64 per cent, tablets at 34 per cent and video game consoles at 26 per cent, adweek.com reported on Tuesday. The survey also analysed the habits of mobile game spenders -- users who play games on mobile and pay for games on at least a monthly basis -- and found that these spending players were 2.7 times more likely to stay in-game for a "sense of community and belonging" than mobile non-spenders. These spenders were also found to be 2.3 times more likely to stop playing games than non-spenders if community members stop playing. "On average across the 12 markets, 68 per cent of mobile game spenders said they discover games via social networking platforms. Other popular discovery sources were photo and video services at 57 per cent and chat apps at 54 per cent," the report said. Thirty-four per cent of mobile game spenders said they discover games by word of mouth.​

​New York, July 11 (IANS) Discounts tied to buying virtual goods have little impact on profitability and do not increase the number of customers making purchases, say economists from the University of Chicago. In an experiment that involved more than 14 million app players of mobile games by King Digital Entertainment -- maker of Candy Crush Saga -- the researchers designed a series of quantity discounts which were offered to different groups of customers for a three-month period. The team including researchers Steven Levitt, the William B. Ogden Professor of Economics, and John List, the Homer J. Livingston Professor of Economics and King conducted the field experiment together. In the most extreme intervention, players were offered a more than 60 per cent discount for intermediate-size purchases and a more than 70 per cent discount for large-size purchases. Analysis of players' responses to the discounts show that quantity discounts had virtually no effect on the share of players making a purchase. "Customers who made small and infrequent purchases tended to spend more when offered the largest quantity discounts, while customers who were already large buyers tended to spend less. The net result was no impact on revenues or profit," the study noted. Data suggests some consumers who would have made small purchases were discouraged from doing so when faced with large quantity discounts. The researchers said their findings challenge traditional theoretical thinking on quantity discounts, particularly that such practices increase company profitability. “This project was an example of using experimental methods to test a much more radical shift in strategy," Levitt noted. King's games for smartphones, tablets and other devices are free to users.

​New York, July 10 (IANS) Certain personality types are more likely to rebel rather than comply when seeing the colour red, suggests a study led by an Indian-origin researcher. The study was inspired by a problem faced by a Dutch child helpline that offered free counselling to children aged 8 to 18. The Dutch child helpline that ran the counselling service were frustrated because of the high percentage of prank calls they received who had no interest in genuine counselling. Researchers launched an experiment that showed three different colours on the chat screen while callers were on hold for a counsellor. They expected that red would reduce the number of prank chats. "To our surprise, the prank chatting was higher with the red colour background than the white or blue. Prank chatting occurred about 22 per cent of the time with the red background, compared to 15 per cent for the white or blue," said Ravi Mehta, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois. The researchers realised that the colour red can increase non-compliant behaviour in people with sensation seeking personality types. To test whether personality type influenced the response to red, the researchers conducted another study. In this experiment, college students completed an online questionnaire to assess their level of sensation seeking. They answered questions to evaluate their attitude toward compliant behaviour and the questions were presented on either a red or white screen. People high in sensation seeking who viewed the red background preferred statements that were resistant to compliant behaviour. This did not happen when they saw a white background. The findings suggest that the assumptions about the colour red may not apply to everyone and this could have implications for things like anti-smoking and safe sex campaigns. "Using red to promote these preventative health measures might not work for people who are high in sensation seeking, and it might even backfire," added Mehta. Red could help some people comply with health eating recommendations, but for high sensation seeking personality types, this may not be the colour of choice, suggested the study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.​

​Seoul, July 7 (IANS) Riding on the huge success of its Galaxy S smartphone series, South Korean giant Samsung on Thursday announced that its operating profit rose to its highest level in about two years. The company earned 8.1 trillion Korean won ($7 billion) in operating profit in April-June period. The consolidated sales likely rose 3 per cent to about 50 trillion won from 48.5 trillion won a year earlier. Improvement in smartphone sales as well as a weaker won against the dollar helped push up the profit, media reports said. According to The Australian, the profits lend further evidence that the worst of the company's recent struggles may be over, thanks to the sustained popularity of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. Samsung sold the most number of smartphones worldwide in the first quarter of the year and is expected to sell 320 million smartphones by the end of the year, a new report said recently. According to US-based market research company IC Insights, buoyed by the strong sales growth of Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, Samsung sold 81.5 million smartphones, followed by Apple with 51.6 million smartphones -- in the first quarter. Samsung Galaxy Note 5 device has also topped the 2016 American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) poll. According to the annual poll comprising 12,710 people, Samsung Galaxy Note 5 phablet has a rating of 86 out of 100, 9to5mac.com reported recently. The high-end smartphone market is expected to grow 19 per cent in 2016 from 15 per cent in the previous year as more and more customers are upgrading to premium devices from top brands like Samsung, Apple and OnePlus, another report said recently. While Samsung and Apple will continue to be strong players, new brands such as Gionee, Huawei, Vivo and Lenovo will make some commendable inroads, said the report released by the market research firm CyberMedia Research (CMR). Samsung and Apple increased their market share in 2015 (in the above Rs 20,000 price band) to 44 per cent and 27.3 per cent, respectively.​

Toronto, July 6 (IANS) It is time to say goodbye to tactile keys. Canadian mobile maker BlackBerry has parted ways with its most successful device of its times -- BlackBerry Classic. According to Ralph Pini, chief operating officer and general manager for devices at BlackBerry, the company will no longer manufacture BlackBerry Classic. "For many years, Classic (and its BBOS predecessors) has been in our portfolio. It has been an incredible workhorse device for customers, exceeding all expectations. But, the Classic has long surpassed the average lifespan for a smartphone in today's market," Pini wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. "We are ready for this change so we can give our customers something better -- entrenched in our legacy in security and pedigree in making the most productive smartphones," he added. The BlackBerry Classic was launched in late 2014 as a replacement of sorts to the BBOS-powered Q20, sporting the classic BlackBerry design with built-in QWERTY keyboard and a touchscreen. "We are committed to the success of both BlackBerry 10 and Android devices. To keep innovating and advancing our portfolio, we are updating our smartphone lineup with state of the art devices," Pini wrote. "For now, if the Classic is still your device of choice, please check with your carriers for device availability or purchase Classic unlocked online," he suggested. BlackBerry sold just 5 lakh phones globally in the first fiscal quarter this year -- down from six lakh in the previous quarter - reporting a $670 million loss which is its biggest loss in over two years. Although much of the loss was down to restructuring charges, sales also fell to $400 million, down 39 per cent on a year earlier. "We continue to actively support BlackBerry 10 with software updates and are on track to deliver version 10.3.3 next month with a second update to follow next year," Pini said. Last year, BlackBerry tried to revive its handset business by launching Priv smartphone running Google's Android operating system (OS). However, early sales figures have been disappointing. It is not just WhatsApp that decided to end support for BlackBerry OS 10 services by the end of 2016, Facebook too is leaving the BlackBerry platform after announcing recently to discontinue support of its application programming interfaces (APIs) for BlackBerry.​

​Bangalore, July 4 (IANS) Taking the burgeoning gaming market to a new height, Global PC, tablet and smartphone maker Lenovo on Monday launched a new gaming portfolio for the millennial gamers in India. The thin and portable Rs 99,990 Lenovo Y700 Windows 10 is packed with an in-built 1 TB + 128 GB SSD and runs on standard volt Intel Core i7 Skylake CPU with Turbo Boost abilities. "The new Y700 is testimony to Lenovo’s constant innovation and pursuit to create new categories that enhance the consumer experience. The sleek Lenovo Y700 offers the experience, performance and versatility that gamers look for,” said Bhaskar Choudhuri, Director, Marketing Lenovo India, in a statement. For gamers on the go, this machine has plenty of horsepower to swap between graphics-intensive game time and rich-media software like Photoshop and CorelDraw. The machine comes with latest 4GB NVIDIA graphics, powerful Dolby audio JBL speakers, a subwoofer and an optional 10-point multi-touch display or Intel’s RealSense Camera (on the 15-inch laptop) that further enhances the gaming and multimedia experience. The “Optimised Thermal Cooling” technology keeps the Y700 stay cool even in intense on-screen actions. Along with the Y700, customers will also get a free Lenovo Y Gaming Backpack that fits up to a 17.3-inch laptop, includes padded pockets, a protective hard shell compartment and a chest strap for extra carrying support. As a special launch offer, the some cool gaming accessories worth Rs 12999 are available to customers at the price of Rs 2499 that include Lenovo Y Gaming Surround Sound Headset, Lenovo Y Gaming Precision Mouse and Lenovo Y Gaming Mechanical Switch Keyboard. The gaming portfolio is available on Lenovo's thedostore.com.​

Panaji, June 27 (IANS) McDonald's will invest Rs 700-750 crore over the next few years to expand its chain in India, especially in emerging cities and towns, a senior company official said on Monday. The global fastfood chain's vegetarian menu, specifically designed for India, has also found takers in Singapore and the Middle East, Ranjith Paliat, Vice-President, business operations, McDonald's India (West and South), said. He said Indian food items like samosa or dosa on the McDonald menu would depend on customer feedback. "Our customers keep giving us feedback on the way forward," Paliat told IANS when asked if McTikki, an adaptation of the predominantly north Indian 'aloo-tikki', could possibly see competition in the form of McSamosa or McDosa in the future. India was the first market where McDonald's introduced a vegetarian menu soon after the Illinois-headquartered company set up operations in the country in 1996. "It was tried out in Singapore and it was tried out in the Middle East. The products taken there were aloo-tikki and McVeggie. So with growing vegetarianism, there is an interest in what we are serving and how can they take it," Paliat said.​

I stay in rural Maharashtra. We have reached a stage in life where we hardly shop but sometimes need specialty items like books, computer peripherals, herbal teas and the like. These items are not available in our rural town of Phaltan where we live and so we do online shopping. In the last year or so we have discovered the power of such shopping. In the recent past, we would go once a month to Pune (110 km away) to buy a few things. Now because of online shopping, such trips have drastically reduced - and for good reason. It takes about three hours to reach Pune, driving over pot-holed roads, which produces back pain. Besides, the traffic jams and pollution in or near Pune add to the discomfort. Also going to Pune for a few items was quite a chore and waste of energy and time. Now online shopping allows us the luxury of getting all sorts of items at home. Such online shopping is being discovered in all rural towns and areas around the country. However, for such e-commerce to take place, it is necessary to have a good internet connection, ability to sift through the various items offered and zeroing on selection of quality material. All this is possible by googling the items and comparing their prices and specifications. I find that the rural population is learning this search-and-pick at amazing speed - which is reflected in the increase of sales in rural areas via online shopping. They also order items seen on TV ads and those passed by word of mouth. With mobile penetration in rural India, this shopping is also facilitated by various smartphone apps so that desktop PCs are not required. Nevertheless, this online shopping is fuelling consumerism in rural areas and is the engine which is helping it to urbanize. It is happening because it produces a win-win situation. For example, one can get quality goods at substantial savings as they are usually much cheaper than what one would pay in a shop in Pune or other big cities. Besides, most of the time the goods are shipped free and cash-on-delivery basis. Also, the time and energy used in actual shopping and going to the big city are saved. This is the reason why e-commerce has spread so rapidly all over the world and rural India is only now getting the benefits of this revolution. The foray of the online companies in rural India is also fuelling the job market - it is providing employment to a large number of rural youth as delivery boys. Besides, it has given a shot in the arm to loss-making India Post since their large network of postmen is being used by e-commerce companies to penetrate rural areas. However, such shipments are energy intensive. For a small item the packing is almost three-to-four times its size. This is waste of material, and adds to the weight of shipment and to the transport energy cost. Secondly, quite a number of times, the item which is manufactured locally is shipped to big cities and then again to the final destination. For example, we ordered a packet of mango pickle (of a brand that is not available in Phaltan) which is manufactured about 45 km from our rural town. This packet was shipped to Bangalore from where it came to us. This is a real wastage of energy in transport but the shipping company may be finding it cheaper to do so for whatever reasons. Yet with all this travelling around we got this packet at nearly half the price of what we would have paid in a Pune shop. So, how do companies like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal and others who have big online presence in India still make money on such transactions? Data from their financials reveals that presently all of them are losing money - primarily because it is the start of e-commerce boom in India. However, they feel that there is a great future in online shopping and with time, their profits will increase. Thus only those companies with deep pockets will survive since they alone have the staying power to penetrate the rural markets. (Anil K. Rajvanshi is the Director of the Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) at Phaltan in Maharashtra. He can be reached at anilrajvanshi@gmail.com)​

New Delhi, June 29 (IANS) Just a few years ago, seeing an Indian youth with a Nokia or an office-goer with a BlackBerry device on the road was a common sight. In 2009, about 70 per cent of smartphones sold globally had operating systems offered by BlackBerry and Nokia and the two stalwarts were going strong. But even tech leaders can, at times, fail to gauge when a particular phenomenon can go extinct. The mobile operating systems offered by Google, Apple and Microsoft, which account for nearly 99 per cent of sales today, were in less than 25 per cent of mobile devices sold at that time, says a recent blog post by WhatsApp which has decided to end its support to BlackBerry phones and those powered by Nokia's Symbian OS by the end of this year. After acquiring Nokia for $7.2 billion in 2013, Microsoft soon realised it made a big mistake and is now selling off Nokia's phone-making business to Apple's supply-chain partner Foxconn. With the Nokia acquisition, Microsoft actually placed a bet on hardware which has never been its strength. On the other hand, Canadian mobile company Blackberry reported a $670 million loss in the first fiscal quarter this year -- its biggest loss in over two years. Is it time for Nokia and Blackberry to quit the smartphone business? "Blackberry can't catch up on the plethora of offerings iOS and Android players are providing with their vast ecosystem. The surge in vendors offering android devices at competitive prices dominate the smartphone market globally. Similarly, Windows-based smartphones are likely to decline sharply given the fact that Nokia is no longer a part of Microsoft," says Karthik J, Senior Market Analyst (Client Devices) from International Data Corporation (IDC). "The high-end Blackberry Priv (based on Google's Android OS) smartphone was a drastic approach the vendor took to revive by moving away from its homegrown OS to Android but failed to create ripples in the market," Karthik told IANS. According to experts, Blackberry was a little late in coming up with an Android-based smartphone. "Priv is launched at the premium end which accounts for a smaller pie of smartphone market and dominated by Samsung and Apple. Smartphone market is already highly populated with numerous vendors offering products across multiple price segment. Also, adding to this is the fact that smartphone market's growth is saturating in key markets like the US and China," Karthik told IANS. It is not just WhatsApp that decided to end support for BlackBerry OS 10 services by the end of this year. Facebook too is leaving the BlackBerry platform after announcing it will discontinue support of its application programming interfaces (APIs) for BlackBerry. "BlackBerry needs to focus on feature phone market and concentrate when it comes to India if it wants to beat Chinese and established players in the country. They always had top-of-the-line security and they can still cash on it in upcoming devices when data security is the buzzword," notes Vishal Tripathi, Research Director at global market consultancy firm Gartner. According to Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Analyst with CyberMedia Research (CMR), a market research firm, one of the key strengths for BlackBerry has been security and software. "They should become a technology company, licensing their solutions to original design manufacturers (ODMs) rather than attempting and reattempting to emerge in the smartphones," Kawoosa told IANS. "The recent developments indicate that the pioneer of the smartphone should now take up things differently and look up to strengthen its Android platform and in creating some great hardware too," notes Krishna Mukherjee, Analyst (Telecoms) at market research firm CyberMedia Research (CMR). When it comes to Nokia, with a proper revival approach, the Finnish company still holds a good chance to make a strong re-entry into the highly populated smartphone market in India. "Nokia continues to have a strong brand perception in India especially in lower tier cities and with its in-depth knowledge of the market, possibly it is still not too late for Nokia to make a comeback," Karthik told IANS. According to Kawoosa, Windows still is the default enterprise OS and mobility is an extended piece within enterprise communications. "So there is a connect. It is only that Microsoft has to develop the solid links. There have to be compelling reasons," he suggests. "The only way out for Nokia would be to go back to its roots and spin all its strategies from scratch. Again, Nokia's strength has been its technology orientation. It should focus on research and development and license its technology and patents to the mobile world," adds Kawoosa. All is not lost yet for Nokia and Blackberry, the two handset legacies of our times -- if they understand the changing needs of the Next-Gen smartphone users, and act.​

New York, June 27 (IANS) Ever struggled with a shampoo bottle in trying to get the last drop out or the last bit of a hand wash, dish wash or laundry detergent? Worry not as researchers, including one of Indian-origin, have found a way to create the perfect texture inside plastic bottles to let soap products flow out freely. The new technology involves lining a plastic bottle with microscopic "y-shaped" structures that cradle the droplets of soap aloft above tiny air pockets so that the soap never actually touches the inside of the bottle. "Manufacturers are really interested in this because they make billions of bottles that end up in the garbage with product still in them," said Bharat Bhushan, Professor from Ohio State University. The "y" structures are built up using spray-coating a small amount of solvent and ultra-fine silica nanoparticles onto the inside of bottles. Mixing the silica and solvent to the surface of the polypropylene -- the common plastics used to package foodstuffs and household goods -- softened it just enough, so that when the plastic re-hardened, the silica got embedded in the surface. The structures are only a few micrometers -- millionths of a meter-high -- and covered in even smaller branchlike projections. The main branches of the "y" overhang the plastic surface at an angle less than 90 degrees -- steep enough that water, oils and even surfactant can't physically sustain a droplet shape that would fall in between the branches and touch the plastic. Surfactants -- the organic molecules that make soap "soapy"-- have a very low surface tension and stick to plastic easily. "It was an extra challenge for us to make a surface that could repel surfactant as the plastic bottles end up with air pockets underneath that gives them a liquid repellency," explained Philip Brown, post-doctoral Student at Ohio State. But, "we embedded a hard material directly into the polymer surface, so we know it's durable," Brown added in a paper published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The researchers further hope to license the coating technique to manufacturers -- not just for shampoo bottles, but for other plastic products that have to stay clean, such as biomedical devices or catheters. ​