Apple to Announce iPhone 5 on October 4 [REPORT]

Apple‘s new CEO, Tim Cook, will hold a big media event Oct. 4 to announce the iPhone 5, All Things Digital reports citing sources familiar with the matter.

If true, the launch date of the next generation iPhone is consistent with the recent wave of rumors claiming it will be released in early October.

ATD‘s sources say that Cook will preside over the announcement — with the help of other key executives such as Phil Schiller, who participated in such events in the past — which would give this event even more significance. Cook must persuade the shareholders, the audience and Apple fans all over the world that he can sure-handedly take over the role of Apple CEO and company showman. And the expectations for that particular job are, simply put, enormous.

It is not known whether Steve Jobs, who resigned from the role of Apple CEO in August, will be present at the event.

The newest iPhone will reportedly be available in the few weeks following the announcements

Steve Jobs resigns from Apple, Cook becomes CEO

San Francisco: Silicon Valley legend Steve Jobs relinquished the reins at Apple Inc to right-hand man Tim Cook on Wednesday, after 14 years in command at a company he brought back from the brink and turned into the world's largest technology corporation.

Jobs, who fought and survived a rare form of pancreatic cancer and revolutionized the technology arena with the iPhone in 2007, is deemed the heart and soul of a company that started in a garage and is today neck-and-neck with Exxon Mobil in the race to become the largest US corporation.

Analysts do not expect Jobs' resignation -- which was more a question of when than if -- to derail Apple's fabled product-launch roadmap, including possibly a new iPhone in September a third iteration of the iPad tablet in 2012.

But the company's shares still dived as much as 7 percent in after-hours trade after the industry icon, who has been on medical leave for an undisclosed condition since Jan. 17, announced he will be replaced by COO and heir apparent Cook.

"I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come," he said in a brief letter announcing his resignation.

The 55-year-old CEO had briefly emerged from his medical leave in March to unveil the latest version of the iPad and later to attend a dinner hosted by President Barack Obama for technology leaders in Silicon Valley.

Jobs' often-gaunt appearance has sparked questions about his health and his ability to continue at Apple.

"I will say to investors: don't panic and remain calm, it's the right thing to do. Steve will be chairman and Cook is CEO," said BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis.

Again, Deep Bench

Jobs' resignation marks the end of an era at Apple.

A college dropout, a Buddhist and a son of adoptive parents, he started Apple Computer with friend Steve Wozniak in the Jobs family garage in Silicon Valley in the late 1970s.

The company soon introduced the Apple 1 computer. But it was the Apple II that became a huge success and gave Apple its position as a critical player in the then-nascent PC industry, culminating in a 1980 IPO that made Jobs a multimillionaire.

Despite the subsequent success of the Mac, Jobs' relationship with internal management soured, and in 1985 the board removed most of his powers and he left the company, selling all but one share of his Apple holdings.

Apple's fortunes waned after that. However, its purchase of NeXT -- the computer company Jobs founded after leaving Apple -- in 1997 brought him back into the fold. Later that year, he became interim CEO and in 2000, the company dropped "interim" from his title.

On Wednesday, Apple shares slid to USD 357.40 in extended trading after a brief halt. They had gained 0.7 percent to close at USD 376.18 on the Nasdaq.

Analysts again expressed confidence in the Apple bench, headed by longtime company No. 2 and supply-chain maven Cook.

"Investors are very comfortable with Tim Cook even though Jobs has been a driver of innovation and clearly an Apple success. Tim has shown Apple can still outperform extremely well when he's been acting as CEO," said Cross Research analyst Shannon Cross.

"I don't know if it's a health issue. I don't know if it is a shock. Most likely it was going to happen at some point. Why today versus another day? I don't know."

Bureau Report

Apple suppliers building cheaper, 8GB iPhone 4 - sources

TAIPEI/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Asian suppliers to Apple Inc have begun manufacturing a lower priced version of its hot-selling iPhone 4 with a smaller 8 gigabyte flash drive, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The flash drive for the 8GB iPhone 4 is being manufactured by a Korean company, one of the people said on Tuesday, declining to name the company. Apple currently sources its flash drives from Japan 's Toshiba and South Korea 's Samsung Electronics.

The sources declined to be identified because the information has not been made public.

Apple, which demands high levels of secrecy and security from suppliers and employees, declined to comment.

The existing iPhone 4 was first launched in June 2010 with 16 GB and 32 GB versions, with a white version added to the lineup in April. The 8 GB version expected to launch within weeks, one of the sources said.

In addition to launch of the smaller iPhone 4, Apple is targetting an end September launch for the next-generation iPhone 5, one source said, confirming earlier reports on Apple follower blogsites and industry websites.

The new iPhone , which some call the iPhone 4S because of its largely identical appearance to the existing iPhone 4, will have a bigger touch screen, better antenna and an 8-megapixel camera, one of the people said.

The iPhone 5's two manufacturers have been told to prepare production capacity for up to 45 million units altogether, the source said. The phone will be made by Hon Hai and Pegatron, the person added.

Hacker group claims WikiLeaks-style joint effort with media outlets on News of the World emails

The sourcing collaborations that WikiLeaks struck up with a cabal of prominent international news organizations last year seem to be something of a game-changing new media model. The controversial whistle-blowing group's partnerships with major press outlets ensured that its vast cache of classified military and diplomatic documents got wide play in the media.

Now, a like-minded online collective claims it has forged similar relationships in an effort to further expose wrongdoing at News Corp.'s embattled British publishing division News International, as it weathers a severe and fast-spreading scandal over widespread phone-hacking at Rupert Murdoch's tabloid properties.

And who better to potentially have dug up fresh dirt about the company's alleged phone-hacking practices than, well, a bunch of hackers?

LulzSec, a nebulous troupe of hacktivists who wreaked havoc on the website of News International's surviving tabloid, The Sun, several days ago, now claims to be in possession of 4GB worth of emails poached during its online fishing expedition on Tuesday.

An affiliated hacker group, Anonymous, which had earlier retaliated against companies that stopped doing business with WikiLeaks in the wake of its data dumps, likewise appears to have tapped an email server at News International.

An administrator of one of the accounts affiliated with Anonymous, @AnonymousIRC, tweeted Thursday: "We think, actually we may not release emails from The Sun, simply because it may compromise the court case." The message referred to the ongoing criminal probe of News Corp. and some of its current and former top executives, including Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, who was editor of the company's recently shuttered tab News of the World in 2002, when journalists there allegedly hijacked the voicemail of a murdered 13-year-old girl.

But LulzSec announced on its own Twitter account Thursday: "We're currently working with certain media outlets who have been granted exclusive access to some of the News of the World emails we have."

Which "certain media outlets" might LulzSec be in cahoots with?

The Guardian and the New York Times would seem obvious candidates. Both papers were in on the WikiLeaks revelations, and both have done more to advance the phone-hacking story than any other news organizations. The two broadsheets even had a bit of a collaboration of their own when Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger approached Times captain Bill Keller last year to help "stop the story from dying on its feet," as Rusbridger writes in the latest issue of Newsweek.

Alas, neither paper is in the loop this time around, both have confirmed.

Rusbridger was out of the office Friday, as was Keller (perhaps there's tete-a-tete in progress?), but the Guardian chief forwarded The Cutline's email to a spokeswoman for the newspaper, who said, "We're not one of the media outlets in question and we have not been approached." Keller, through a Times spokeswoman, replied: "We have had no contact" with LulzSec.

Nor did either editor entertain an inquiry as to whether their venerable publications would work with LulzSec—which would have obtained whatever information it sourced to the papers through the same morally and legally compromised practices favored by the bad actors at News of the World. But it certainly doesn't stretch credulity to assume that there are plenty of editors and reporters out there who would gladly run with whatever intelligence from the British tabloid wars LulzSec was willing to share.

For now, the logistics of the supposedly pending email dump remain a guessing game. Though yet another affiliated hacker group, Sabu, claims it is imminent and explosive: "We're releasing something we found in The Sun's mail server, shortly. Ouch. Ready for the media storm?"

Show us the smoking gun!

The New Nokia E6 Reviews

Nokia's E-series phones have done two things to BlackBerry: first, they've given the latter a run for its money and second, they've proved to it that business phones need not be ugly.

Nokia E71 had takers from not only the corporate areas but even the college-goers started loving it. Its successor E72 also enjoyed considerable success. And then came the E5 which is often touted as the “BlackBerry Killer”.

Nokia's latest offering, almost after a year of E5's launch, is the E6. The phone arrives in the time of iPhones and Android devices which are unmistakably loosening the Finnish giant's grip on the upper segment market. Nokia understands that Symbian is now a thing of “medieval ages” and it needs to offer a revamped OS and a revved-up interface and may be some extra goodies as well. The E6 doesn't disappoint. It is all spiced-up, the user interface is more appealing and there also some treats you would normally not find in a business phone. But the biggest surprise is the new, hotly-awaited Symbian Anna OS on which the phone runs.

Appearance, Build and Display

The handset is quite sleek, a trademark of the E-series. Ruggedly built, the phone is composed of stainless steel, matte plastic and Gorilla Glass, thereby confirming that it has been built to withstand a lot of wear and tear (and even a few nasty drops!). Measuring 115.5 x 59 x 10.5 mm and weighing about 133 gm, which is quiet okay for a phone like this, the handset can be comfortably held in the hand. The QWERTY keypad is sturdy, even though the keys are a bit softer as compared to the E71.

The 2.46-inch capacitive touch-screen takes up almost half the space, and yes, the phone does feel a bit cramped. Pegged at 640 x 480 pixels (almost twice of what E5 offered), the screen resolution is fairly good. And here's a wee bit of surprise, the phone boasts of a pixel density of 328 ppi, which is 2 ppi more than the iPhone's Retina display.

Camera and Other Media

The new Nokia E6 comes with an 8 MP fixed-focus camera with dual-LED flash. The quality of still images, to be honest, is average - decently detailed and moderately sharpened. Some images might appear under-contrasted. You can record up to 720p HD videos running at 25 fps (frames per second). But again, the video quality, too, is average.

The music application hasn't changed much in Symbian Anna. Supported audio formats include MP3, AAC, WMA, and WAVE. The video player on the device can support DivX, XviD, MP4, WMV, and most MKV videos. Under the garb of a YouTube app, all you get is a web shortcut, a disappointment, indeed. The phone has 350 MB of internal memory and an external card slot which can support memory cards up to 32 GB.

Interface and Applications

The phone offers a great deal of customization. It lets you add and rearrange widgets and shortcuts easily. There's also a small notification area but not as good as the ones found in Android devices. Pressing and holding the home key opens Task Manager which allows you to view the open tabs, switch between them, and close them. In spite of just 256 MB of RAM, E6 can easily handle about 12 apps simultaneously. The new Symbian Anna is a welcome addition by Nokia. But iOS or Android can easily dwarf it in terms of appearance and appeal. That apart, the new OS runs smoothly and promises that we can finally bid goodbye to the sluggish ancient version of Symbian.

There's a bettered, touch-optimised version of Ovi maps. The E6 gets locked with the satellites faster than Samsung Galaxy S2! The Lonely Planet city guide is a great addition. But the flash games are disappointing. The new 7.3 version of the browser is fast but does not stand a chance when compared to Androids. Word, Excel and Powerpoint files can be easily edited and there's Adobe Reader as well. The Ovi Store's UI looks overhauled. It doesn't crash anymore and offers a good number of apps. But again, this remains a petty achievement in front of Andriod and iOS.

Performance

Thought the new Symbian Anna aids tremendously in improving the phone's overall performance, Nokia could have definitely done something better than a 680MHz CPU and 256MB of RAM memory. Still, the overall performance of the phone doesn't disappoint, especially when you compare it with E71 and E5.

Call quality is extremely satisfying and so is the signal reception. Running on Symbian Anna, the phone comes with the fastest, most powerful web browser for a Nokia phone. It loads websites faster than the N8. The phone is fitted with 3.7V 1500 mAh battery which offers 14.8 hours of talktime, more than double of what BlackBerry offers. The E6 promises 28 days of standby time and three days music playback time.

The Last Word

The new E6 from Nokia promises to heal the Finnish company's injuries to an extent. It presents a robust built, an innovative touch-and-type UI and good multimedia offerings. As CNET says, “The E6 is most definitely an improvement over the E5, offering a touch-screen interface, improved Symbian^3 'Anna' OS and a more robust and aesthetically-pleasing design”. Overall, a capable business phone with plenty of apps to suit business users (and can also appeal to other users). Those who have used either (or more) of E71, E72 and E5 will love this one.

The phone is let down a bit by the lack of an auto-focus camera and a not-so-powerful processor but its reasonable price of Rs 17,500 more than makes up for all this. Its closest rival, the ageing BlackBerry Bold 9780, costs around Rs 22k.

The device may not be a next-generation smartphone but it certainly promises to be a wonderful purchase at Rs 17.5 k, provided you have nothing against the “old man called Symbian”.

Price in India: To acquire this, you need to spend Rs 17,500.

: Touch and keypad combo, the new Symbian Anna, sturdy and pleasing built, superb battery life, revamped Ovi store

: Camera doesn't have autofocus, not-so-powerful processor, can be easily dwarfed by Android devices on many aspects

MensXP Rating: 3.5/5

Key Specifications

GENERAL

2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900

3G Network HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100

SIZE

Dimensions 115.5 x 59 x 10.5 mm, 66 cc

Weight 133 g

DISPLAY

Type TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16M colors

Size 640 x 480 pixels, 2.46 inches

- Gorilla glass display

- QWERTY keyboard

- Multi-touch input method

- Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate

- Proximity sensor for auto turn-off

SOUND

Alert types Vibration, MP3, WAV ringtones

Loudspeaker Yes

3.5mm jack Yes

MEMORY

Phonebook Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall

Call records Detailed, max 30 days

Internal 8 GB storage, 256 MB RAM, 1 GB ROM

Card slot microSD, up to 32GB, buy memory

DATA

GPRS Class 33

EDGE Class 33

3G HSDPA 10.2Mbps, HSUPA 2.0Mbps

WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n

Bluetooth Yes, v3.0 with A2DP

Infrared port No

USB Yes, v2.0 microUSB, USB On-the-go support

CAMERA

Primary 8 MP, 3264x2448 pixels, fixed focus, dual-LED flash,check quality

Features Geo-tagging, face detection

Video Yes, 720p@25fps, check quality

Secondary Yes, VGA

FEATURES

OS Symbian Anna OS

CPU 680 MHz ARM 11 processor, 2D/3D Graphics HW Accelerator with OpenVG1.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0

Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Push Email, IM

Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML

Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS

Games Yes + downloadable

Colors Black, White, Silver

GPS Yes, with A-GPS support

Java Yes, MIDP 2.1

- Stainless steel panels

- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic

- Digital compass

- TV-out

- MP4/H.264/H.263/RV player

- MP3/WMA/WAV/RA/eAAC+ player

- QuickOffice document editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF)

- Organizer

- Flash Lite 4.0

- Voice command/dial/commands

- Predictive text input

BATTERY

Standard battery, Li-Ion 1500 mAh (BP-4L)

Stand-by Up to 681 h (2G) / Up to 744 h (3G)

Talk time Up to 14 h 48 min (2G) / Up to 7 h 30 min (3G)

Atlantis has landed, ending NASA's shuttle era

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The space shuttle Atlantis glided home through a clear moonlit sky on Thursday to complete a 13-day cargo run to the International Space Station and a 30-year odyssey for NASA's shuttle program.

Commander Chris Ferguson gently steered the 100-ton spaceship high overhead, then nose-dived toward the swamp-surrounded landing strip at the Kennedy Space Center, a few miles (km) from where Atlantis will go on display as a museum piece.

Double sonic booms shattered the predawn silence around the space center, the last time residents will hear the sound of a shuttle coming home.

Ferguson eased Atlantis onto the runway at 5:57 a.m. EDT (0957 GMT), ending a 5.2 million-mile (8.4 million-km) journey and closing a key chapter in human space flight history.

"Mission complete, Houston," Ferguson radioed to Mission Control.

Astronaut Barry Wilmore from Mission Control answered back, "We'll take this opportunity to congratulate you Atlantis, as well as the thousands of passionate individuals across this great space-faring nation who truly empowered this incredible spacecraft, which for three decades has inspired millions around the globe."

Atlantis' return from the 135th shuttle mission capped a 30-year program that made spaceflight appear routine, despite two fatal accidents that killed 14 astronauts and destroyed two of NASA's five spaceships.

The last accident investigation board recommended the shuttles be retired after construction was finished on the space station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations. That milestone was reached this year.

Details of a follow-on program are still pending, but the overall objective is to build new spaceships that can travel beyond the station's 250-mile (400-km) orbit and send astronauts to the moon, asteroids and other destinations in deep space.

Wipro Q1 net up 1.23% at Rs 1,334.9 crore; beats estimates

Mumbai: The country's third largest software exporter Wipro Wednesday reported a growth of 1.23 percent in consolidated net profit for the quarter ended March 31, 2011, to Rs 1,334.9 crore.

Last year, the company had posted a net profit of Rs 1,318.6 crore for the fourth quarter, as per international accounting standards.

Net income from sales during the reporting quarter stood at Rs 8,564 crore, as against Rs 7,236.4 crore in Q1 FY'11, up 18.34 percent.

"We are seeing early signs of positive momentum after the re-organisation. Clients continue to focus on optimising operations, creating new products and getting access to newer markets. We will continue to make investments that bring superior value to our clients as they try to win in this market," Wipro Chairman Azim Premji said in a statement.

IT services, which contributed 75 percent to the company's revenues in Q1, FY'12, stood at USD 1,408 million, a sequential increase of 0.5 percent and a year-on-year increase of 16.9 percent.

The company said it expects its revenues from the IT services business to be in the range of USD 1,436 million to USD 1,464 million for the second quarter ending September 30, 2011.

The IT services division hired 4,105 new people this quarter, taking its total headcount to 1,26,490 employees as of June 30, 2011. It added 49 new customers during the reporting quarter.

"Our investments in client mining are starting to show results, with four customers contributing more than USD 100 million of revenues. We have maintained our operating margins in the current quarter despite one month impact of salary revision," Wipro Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer Suresh Senapaty said.

On a standalone basis, the company has reported a net profit of Rs 1,219.3 crore for the quarter, a growth of 9.84 percent from Rs 1,110 crore in the same period last year.

The company's cash and cash equivalents stood at Rs 5,075.2 crore as of June 30, 2011.

Sales of IT products accounted for 12 percent of total company revenue in Q1 FY'12, at Rs 1,006 crore, a growth of 21 percent year-on-year.

Wipro's consumer care and lighting business recorded revenues of Rs 755 crore in Q1, FY'12, an increase of 18 percent y-o-y and accounting for 9 percent of Wipro's total revenues during the quarter.

PTI

Yahoo profits rise but sales dip as rivals dent market

Yahoo has reported a dip in its revenue for the second quarter due to weaker-than-expected advertising sales.

The company said it generated $1.08bn (£670m) in revenue in the three months to June, a 4.6% decline compared to the same period last year.

The data comes as Yahoo has been facing increasing competition from rivals Google and Facebook.

However, despite a drop in revenue, Yahoo said its profits rose by 11% from a year ago to $237m.

Carol Bartz, the chief executive of Yahoo said the second quarter was a "mix of good, encouraging and, at the same time, unsatisfactory" developments.

"The issue was we did not have enough sales people in front of the big clients," she said.

Hackers crack Vodafone’s network, can listen to all calls

The Hacker's Choice (THC), a group of computer security researchers, released surprising news about cellular carrier Vodafone UK. Using standard consumer hardware, THC was able to access Vodafone's internal network and customer equipment. This unprecedented hack was made possible by Vodafone's Sure Signal, a femtocell (think tiny cell tower) customers plug into their home internet connections for better cell reception.

THC began researching femtocells in 2009. The technology has become popular with cellphone companies like AT&T, which offers a 3G MicroCell, because the home access points mean better service for customers in areas with spotty coverage. THC purchased its femtocell from Vodafone UK and examined how the device communicated to Vodafone's core network. They discovered that because of a flaw in how Vodafone implemented its system, it gave full access to the network to the femtocell, a device the hackers had full control of. Vodafone also used the same 'newsys' administrator password across all devices.

Vodafone says only a limited number of registered phones are allowed to access each customer's femtocell. The hackers were able to uncap this and let any Vodafone customer phone automatically connect to their device. Once a phone connected, THC was able to eavesdrop on phone conversations, place calls as the customer, and even access their voicemail. With phone hacking in the news every day, we wonder what other security flaws are still waiting to be discovered.

Idea Cellular dips 4% on bourses on HC order

Mumbai: Shares of Idea Cellular dipped by 4 percent in early trade on the bourses after the Delhi High Court ruled that six telecom spectrum licences held by Spice Communications, a company acquired by the Aditya Birla group firm in 2008, would not be transferred without DoT permission.

Shares of the company opened on a weak note at Rs 77, then lost further ground and touched a low of Rs 75. The company was later trading at Rs 76.50, down 2.80 percent at 1057 hours on the BSE.

The court said the six licences of Spice Communications would not be transferred to Idea as the company did not comply with licence and merger guidelines at the time of acquisition in 2008. It directed Idea Cellular to handover the overlapping licences and spectrum to the Department of Telecom (DoT) till it received permission to utilise them.

The court also slapped a fine of Rs 1 crore on the company for not giving the correct information to the court.

A similar trend was witnessed on the National Stock Exchange, where the scrip fell to a low of Rs 75.90 after opening at Rs 78.25. It was later quoted at Rs 76.50, down 2.98 percent on the NSE.

Passing judgement on the merger application of Idea and Spice, the high court said Idea did not place on record the rejection letters written by the DoT on the proposed merger of licence or other relevant documents.

Idea Cellular, however, asserted that it has not suppressed any information from the Delhi High Court, where it had moved an application for the merger of Idea and Spice.

"Idea stands upright, has not suppressed anything at all, let alone willfully, and will appeal for what it believes is right," the company said, reacting to the Delhi High Court order.

PTI

3G hype doesn't meet ground reality

Siddharth Tak/Zee Research Group

Seven months into its much publicized launch in India, the 3G service in the country is yet to create any waves. Analysts say inadequate infrastructure, linear tariff models, and less than enthusiastic consumer experience threaten to derail the gen-next breakthrough in the Indian telecom story.

An independent 3G survey by Bangalore-based IT and Telecom consulting firm, Knowledgefaber suggested a modest uptake so far for the service.

Said Jayant Kholla, telecom practice leader at Knowldgefaber, “As per our estimates, as of mid-April there were three million to 3.5 million subscribers (voluntary 3G upgrades by users) as compared to 5 million to 6 million claimed by operators.”

This rather lowly figure assumes importance in the context of the estimated total number of 3G handsets in circulation in the country. “There are about 80mn to 100mn 3G enabled mobile handsets installed base in India.” 3G handsets have been available as early as 2005-06 in India.

Although there hasn't been much change in the average selling price of 3G handsets post the launch of 3G services, about 65 3G enabled handset models have been launched in two quarters starting October 2010, as compared to about 50 in the two quarters leading up to October 2010, said Kholla at Knowledgefaber.

The ground situation on infrastructure hosting 3G is also said to be sparse. As per Knowledgefaber estimates, there were just over 40,000 3G base transceiver station (BTS) installed by end of March 2011 as compared to 3,50,000 2G BTSs pan India (all operators combined).There are close to 300,000 mobile towers (passive infrastructure) for supporting the existing 2G active infrastructure. The operators can potentially use the available tenancy on these towers to deploy their 3G antennas.

Indian carriers (especially incumbent carriers) currently face multiple structural challenges such as inadequate infrastructure and limited available spectrum (5MHz) to offer 3G enabled data optimized services at launch.

Also, carriers’ “walled garden” approach to value added services and prevalent piracy and Indian consumers’ lack of willingness to pay for such services pose a huge challenge for immediate uptake of 3G services, the study argued. However, once the 3G device prices decrease and the tariffs stabilize in the first two years, Knowledgefaber believes that the 3G uptake will rise in 2013 and reach over 90 million by March 2014.

Shobhit Agarwal, managing director, Protiviti Consulting said, “Key would to be keeping pricing low and have good customer experience – as there is no single killer application. Operators will continue to bundle and have aggressive pricing to induce people to try more and more of data services.”

Top operators like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance and Tata Communications are offering various services including video based services, high definition gaming, high speed mobile internet browsing and app stores on their 3G networks.

Knowledgefaber cited poor end-user experience as the other reason for poor uptake. “Many consumers (early adopters) who have opted for 3G services offered by some of the leading carriers are facing issues with services and network coverage. A single block of 5MHz spectrum is insufficient to offer dedicated data & video services on 3G,”its study said.

“Video becoming more popular and as the base of customer using 3G expands, operators will have to keep innovating/optimizing as they have limited 3G spectrum – this would be an important factor to ensure good customer experience; if initial experience continues to be good, adoption will be accelerated which will help 3G realize its potential in India – a country with a significant unmet data demand,” Protiviti’s Agarwal added.

Soon! Robots that react to human facial expression

Washington: Scientists studying facial movements are aiming to create socially aware companion robots and graphical characters, which could recognise human facial expressions.

Our brain processes lots of tiny and subtle clues about faces whenever we interact with other people, and now scientists from Queen Mary, University of London and UCL (University College London) are investigating whether robots and computers can learn to do the same thing.

“We will be showing some of the latest research from the EU funded LIREC project, which aims to create socially aware companion robots and graphical characters,” said Professor Peter McOwan, from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary, University of London.

“Robots are going to increasingly form part of our daily lives – for instance robotic aids used in hospitals or much later down the road sophisticated machines that we will have working in our homes.

“Our research aims to develop software, based on biology, that will allow robots to interact with humans in the most natural way possible - understanding the things we take for granted like personal space or reacting to an overt emotion such as happiness,” he added.

Co researcher Professor Alan Johnston, from the UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences explained: “A picture of a face is just a frozen sample drawn from a highly dynamic sequence of movements.”

“Facial motion transfer onto other faces or average avatars provides an extremely important tool for studying dynamic face perception in humans as it allows experimenters to study facial motion in isolation from the form of the face,” he said.