Knowledge Update

​Tokyo, Jan 30 (IANS) Toyota Motors lost its title as the highest selling automaker in 2016 to German carmaker Volkswagen, a position the Japanese company had enjoyed since 2011, the media reported. According to figures published on Monday by the Toyota group, which includes its subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor and Hino Motors, the company sold a total of 10.175 million units in 2016, Efe news reported. Although the figure is 0.2 per cent higher than 2015, it is lower than Volkswagen's 10.3 million units (growth of around 3.8 per cent) sold in 2016 despite the German manufacturer's recent emissions scandal. The last time Toyota was world's No. 2 annual car seller was in 2011, when Japan's northeastern part was struck by an earthquake and a tsunami, severely affecting the firm's operations and cutting significantly its supply chains. Toyota was also trailing Volkswagen in the first half 2015. However, Volkswagen's emissions scandal in September severely affected its last quarter sales.

​Tokyo, Jan 28 (IANS) Japan-based Kyocera has introduced a new "rafre" washable smartphone that features resistance to hot water and a touchscreen that be can be used even when the user's hands are wet or when wearing gloves. The product will be available from March 2017 in Japan and will be offered in three colours -- pale pink, clear white and light blue. "The smartphone is a successor to the orignal DIGNO rafre, which launched in December 2015 as the world's first hand-soap-washable smartphone. In addition to resistance against foaming hand soap, the second-generation model possesses resistance to foaming body soap," the company said in a post on Friday. Furthermore, the new handset is equipped with a special cooking app which allows users to scroll through recipes, set timers and answer calls through hand gestures without having to touch the display. Equipped with phase detection auto-focus and auto HDR, the device sports 13MP rear camera, 2GB of RAM, 16GB internal memory, 3,000mAh battery and runs on Android 7.0 Nougat operating system.

​Beijing, Jan 27 (IANS) Xiaomi, touted as the 'Apple' of China, slipped to fourth spot in 2016 as the demand for its smartphones declined 22 per cent annually in the country, a report revealed on Friday. The key reason for the decline was Xiaomi's rivals racing ahead with key features, innovation, bigger marketing budgets and wider online and offline distribution channel during the year. Huawei, Oppo and Vivo emerged as clear winners with Oppo and Vivo registering significant growth, said the report from by market analytics firm Counterpoint Research. "The final quarter of the year was marked with series of flagship upgrades from key brands such as Apple, Oppo, Huawei, Xiaomi which catalysed the smartphone demand in China healthier than last year," said James Yan, Research Director, Counterpoint, in a statement. The demand for smartphones in China remained healthy during the fourth quarter of 2016 as smartphone shipments were up 12 per cent annually and nine per cent sequentially, driving the full-year growth. Only five brands registered healthy growth during the full year. Oppo, Huawei, Vivo, Meizu and Gionee drove the majority of the volume, capturing a combined 58 per cent of the total Chinese smartphone market. "Demand for rest of the brands declined, especially last year's star performers Xiaomi and Apple with lower-than-expected demand for their smartphones during the year," Yan added. Apple, with slowing traction for its flagship iPhone 6s during the year, saw its double-digit negative growth, being somewhat offset by relatively healthy demand for the newer flagship iPhone 7 series in fourth quarter of 2016, the findings showed. However, Apple still remains in a vulnerable position and there is higher expectation already with the next year flagship which is rumoured to be a substantial upgrade from both design and components perspective. In terms of features, the key focus remained on proliferation of smartphones with fingerprint sensors, 4G+/VoLTE ready, fast-charging, OLED displays, battery, adoption of dual rear cameras and higher megapixel front-camera for selfies, the report added.

​Lhasa, Jan 24 (IANS) The output of bottled natural drinking water from Tibet, known as "Asia's water tower", will surpass one million tonnes this year, a media report said on Tuesday. Qiu Chuan, deputy director of the Industry and IT Department, said Tibet had more than 40 bottled water production lines, with a combined capacity of 3.25 million tonnes a year, Xinhua news agency reported. In 2016, 600,000 tonnes of bottled water from Tibet were sold, up 41 per cent year on year, according to Qiu. Tibet is rich in water resources, with the total topping 400 billion cubic meters.

​Seoul, Jan 21 (IANS) After launching its modular device G5 this year, South Korean electronics conglomerate LG will launch its G6 smartphone with Google voice assistant service next month, media reported. According to Yonhap news agency, LG agreed with Google last year to feature the assistant and is in the final stage of stabilising the software before unveiling the model just ahead of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) scheduled to take place from February 27 to March 2 in Barcelona. iPhone already has its voice assistant Siri and Samsung is reportedly working on its own smart assistant for Galaxy S8 called Bixby. "Google Assistant will be very helpful for LG Electronics when all other tech firms are showcasing their voice assistant service. The difficult task for LG is whether the service will recognize the Korean language," a source was quoted as saying. An LG official said the company "cannot confirm the speculation at the moment" and Google also declined to comment on the matter at the moment, the report said. LG G6 will be equipped with "heat pipes" for better cooling as part of its efforts to strengthen product safety. This technology lowers the temperature of the processor by some 6-10 per cent by dispersing heat and helping prevent it from reaching the battery cell.

San Francisco, Jan 19 (IANS) Retailers remain in the early phases of digital transformation and are missing a $187 billion opportunity by not prioritising investments in employee productivity, global networking giant Cisco said on Thursday. Six per cent of retailers' investment priorities are focused on employee productivity use cases despite the fact these use cases deliver the greatest return on investment for retailers, the company estimated. "The shakeup caused by digital disruption is already underway with major retailers announcing the closure of hundreds of their brick and mortar stores in recent months in order to better compete in a landscape where physical and digital channels are increasingly converging," said Kathryn Howe, Director, US Commercial Digital Transformation, Retail and Hospitality Industries, Cisco, in a statement. In an effort to help retailers achieve digital transformation, Cisco has released "A Roadmap to Digital Value in the Retail Industry" which guides retailers through three phases -- enable digital capabilities, differentiate their brand through new digital capabilities and define new business models through digital disruption. Only 29 per cent of retailers' investment priorities are currently focused on the "differentiate" phase and only 22 per cent in the "define" phase, the second and third phases of the roadmap, respectively. The findings indicate that most retailers have not made enough progress when it comes to digital transformation and may be at risk of being out-performed by faster moving, more innovative retail ventures. Retailers are prioritising the majority of their digital technology investments in customer experience use cases (37 per cent) that aim to improve personal engagement with consumers. "Retailers need to make more progress in digitising their workforce and their core operations in order to execute on the innovative customer experiences they want to deliver, and to position themselves for success in the new retail landscape," added Howe.

​London, Jan 17 (IANS) The world's lightest mechanical watch revealed is a key step forward into the development of more widespread applications of graphene, officials at the University of Manchester said. Graphene, first isolated in 2004 by Nobel-winning scientists at the university, is just an atom thick, and is expected to revolutionise the automotive and aerospace industries. The watch was unveiled Monday in Geneva, Xinhua news agency reported. In a statement issued in Manchester, the university said the watch was a unique collaboration with watchmaking brand Richard Mille and racing team, McLaren F1 to create world's lightest mechanical chronograph by pairing leading graphene research with precision engineering. A spokesman at the university said: "The RM 50-03 watch is made using a unique composite incorporating graphene to manufacture a strong but lightweight new case to house the delicate watch mechanism." "The graphene composite known as Graph TPT weighs less than previous similar materials used in watchmaking." The strap of the watch has also been improved by the addition of graphene material. The rubber of the strap was also injected with graphene which has shown to improve its mechanical properties and its resistance to wear. Overall the ultralight watch weighs just 40 grams. Professor Robert Young from the University of Manchester said: "The striking watch has been precisely designed and inspired by the wishbone suspension structure of a McLaren-Honda Formula 1 car. Combining the design and materials the casing of the watch has withstood tremendous shock damage and survived unscathed in tests."

​New York, Jan 17 (IANS) Aiming to cater to the needs of professional users, Apple is predicted to offer up to 32GB of "potentially desktop-class" RAM in its high-end MacBook Pro models in 2017 and 16GB of RAM in its 12-inch MacBook. According to the report in AppleInsider, Apple's 2017 laptop line will focus on internal component updates, notably platform-wide adoption of Intel's Kaby Lake architecture. Essentially, the Intel Skylake CPUs used in Apple's MacBook Pro only support up to 16GB of LPDDR3 RAM. Apple is also predicted to start manufacturing of a 15-inch MacBook Pro with up to 32GB of RAM in the fourth quarter. Beyond the high-end 15-inch model, Apple is expected to start production of new 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros in the third quarter of 2017. Cupertino-based Apple in October introduced the thinnest and lightest MacBook Pro ever with Touch Bar. The MacBook Pro features sixth-generation quad-core and dual-core processors, up to 2.3 times the graphics performance over the previous generation, super-fast SSDs and up to four Thunderbolt 3 ports. The new 15-inch MacBook Pro, at just 15.5 mm thin, is 14 per cent thinner and has 20 per cent less volume than before, and weighing just 1.83 kg is nearly half a pound lighter. The 15-inch MacBook Pro, also features Touch Bar and Touch ID, a 2.6GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.5GHz, 16GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage. The 13-inch MacBook Pro features a 2.0GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.1GHz, 8GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage. The 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Touch Bar and Touch ID features a 2.9GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.3GHz, 8GB of memory and 256GB of flash storage.

​Tokyo, Jan 13 (IANS) Nintendo's new gaming console Switch is set to launch worldwide, the gaming giant announced on Friday. Although Switch's price will vary from country to country, it will cost $299 in the US and 29,960 yen (around $260) in Japan, the company said. The console, which will be available in the US, Canada, Japan and several European countries on March 3, seems to have disappointed Japanese investors due to its price, which is higher than that of Sony's Playstation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One, as Nintendo's shares fell 3.2 per cent one hour before the Tokyo Stock Exchange closed, Efe news reported. Nintendo revealed in October last year that the games machine would be a handheld device that doubles as a home console. Previously code-named NX, the Switch looks like a tablet computer with controllers that attach to its sides, the BBC reported.

​New York, Jan 11 (IANS) Apple's next generation bezel-less iPhone 8 is rumoured to sport a bold new design and would feature an OLED display full of holes, a media report said. "The patent filed by Apple for 'Electronic devices having displays with openings' describes a method by which various components can be mounted behind perforations in a device screen that are so small as to be imperceptible to the human eye. This arrangement would allow engineers to design a smartphone or tablet with a true edge-to-edge, or full-face display," appleinsider.com reported on Wednesday. The openings may be located in the active portion of the display. The display may be mounted in a housing associated with the electronic device. An electronic component may be mounted in alignment with the one or more openings in the display. The electronic component may be a structure that uses light such as a camera, a light sensor, a light-based proximity sensor, a status indicator light, a light-based touch sensor array, or a secondary display that has display pixels that may be viewed through the openings. Signals associated with the electronic component may pass through the openings. The signals may include acoustic signals, electromagnetic signals such as radio-frequency electromagnetic signals, and light. One or more openings in the display may form a window through which a user of the device may view an external object. Display pixels in the window region may be used in forming a heads-up display. The 2017 version of Apple's iPhone is also rumoured to come in red and will retain the same design as the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Alongside its usual 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch smartphone offerings, the company will also unveil a third model that will be priced at a higher side than iPhone 7 and will sport a 5.1-inch or 5.2-inch OLED display with invisible home button, all-glass housing, wireless charging, according to earlier reports. Samsung and LG, joined by Foxconn-owned Sharp by 2018, are said to be Apple's primary OLED suppliers.