Seamlessness is the need of the hour. Whether it is completing one level of Candy Crush on your mobile and continuing from the next level on your desktop, our expectations are raised by such innovative methods which make us seek the same service across other platforms too. Now Viber is on this very path.

We all have heard of Viber, if not used at any time. Developed by Viber Media, it is a mobile application that allows you to make phone calls and send text messages to all other Viber users for free. Users can also make free HD-quality calls to other Viber users on iPhone, Android amongst others. All that you need is WiFi or 3G. Viber currently has more than 200 million users in over 193 countries.

While Whatsapp is at the top of the heap when it comes to IM mobile apps, Line messenger & Viber ar currently fighting neck to neck to gain the second spot!

To increase its reach, Viber has now announced the launch of Viber Desktop 4.0, bringing the latest updates from its major mobile update to the desktop. Chief among the updates is support for the revenue-generating Viber Sticker Market that significantly expands the number of stickers available to Viber users.

Viber Desktop is also now available on Linux for the first time, in addition to Windows and Mac.

Viber Sticker Market

As has been the case with competing apps like WhatsApp, MessageMe, and even Facebook Messenger, Viber plans to use stickers, large clipart-style emoticons and text, to generate revenue. The company will be creating its own paid content, as well as licensing content from other sources such as television shows, branded characters, etc. Not all of the content within the Sticker Market will be paid, but some of it will be available through in-app purchase. Viber first introduced stickers back in December of 2012, but has always maintained an entirely free, and ad-free, experience for its users.

Push-to-talk

Viber claims to be using special technology that minimizes the time spent waiting between voice messages. Rather than record, send, download, and play (taking around 45-60 seconds for an average 15 second voice message), Viber push-to-talk does the recording, sending and playing all at once to turn around voice messages in four to six seconds.

What's new?

Additional important updates in the new version include:

Drag and drop – send photos by dragging them to the app: This is what others have been using since ages and is seen as a comfort tool, though late

‘Seen’ status lets you know when your messages have been viewed: At par with BBM, this is what WhatsApp has still not been able to replicate. Real need of the hour.

Ability to receive video messages: Already in other apps

Ability to view photo and video descriptions: Already in other apps

Video call improvements: Might be merely bug fixes

With the free-to-call mobile apps and IMs market getting crowded as the 3G penetration increases, it is essential to make the best use of technology to retain your users and add more in due course. With Whatsapp, Line messenger and BBM coming to Android and iOS, the pressure is felt on other such apps to pull up their socks. What say?

Government of India has approved 20 Foreign Direct Investment proposals amounting to Rs. 915.83 crore have been approved based on the recommendations given by Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) in their meeting held on Oct 24th.

Among all the proposals tabled, 20 were approved, 2 were deferred, 2 proposals were rejected and 1 proposal was advised to access the automatic route.

Some of the major proposals that got approved were:

Singapore Airlines, who will bring FDI of USD 49 million or 303.18 crore rupees to set up a join venture company in India with a ratio of 49: 51 percent share holding. The newly formed joint venture will be engaged in domestic and international full service scheduled passenger airlines services in the civil aviation sector in India.

M/s Intas Pharmaceuticals Ltd., who will bring FDI of Rs. 225 crore to issue fresh equity shares to eligible non-resident investors in a IPO and by an offer for sale by an existing foreign investor M/s Mozart Limited to carry out the business of pharmaceutical sector.

Religare Enterprises Ltd., who will bring FDI of USD 29 million or Rs. 179.43 crore to issue warrants to carry out the business of Investment Advisory Services and Financial Consultancy and to make holding investments in the NBFC Sector.

2 proposals that got rejected were:

FDI Proposal of Big India Malls Pvt. Ltd was rejected – They wanted to repatriate FDI by selling current undeveloped plots for lack of funding from their Indian shareholders.

FDI proposal of Indostar Capital Finance Pvt. Ltd. was rejected – They had proposed to set up a subsidiary company and sponsor a debt fund under SEBI (AIF) Regulations.

Others:

FIPB also recommended the proposal by MY Mobile Payment Ltd. to access available automatic FDI route. My Mobile wanted to bring in FDI to tune of Rs. 58.91 crore to carry out the business of mobile payment services in India.

The largest proposal on table of Rs. 1400 crore was by Kerala based Federal Bank. They were recommended for the consideration of Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), as the investment involved was above Rs. 1200.00 crore.

See the entire recommendations of FIPB here.

When Samsung launched its Galaxy S4 series smart phone with octa-core processor early this year, Indian mobile manufacturers were stunned by this technological advanced unit. We were still playing around with single core and dual core processors, and octa-core had literally disrupted the market.

But not anymore; computer peripherals electronics company Intex has announced the launch of India's first octacore smartphone which is at-par with any global brand in terms of processing power and speed.

The smart phone is expected to be launched early next year with a price tag of approximately Rs 20,000. With an amazing speed of 1.7 GHz (Samsung Galaxy S4 is 1.6 GHz), this new smart phone from Intex will have 2 GB of RAM and would come in two versions: 16 GB and 32 GB.

Having a thickness of only 7 mm, it will feature 6 inch HD IPS display and would be powered by Android 4.2 Jelly bean OS. And another interesting part: It will have 13 mega pixel rear camera along with 5 mega pixel front camera and will support dual sim.

For this yet unnamed smart phone, Intex will use MediaTek's 'true' octa-core processors which gives immensely powerful performance as all the 8 cores of the processor works simultaneously, unlike Samsung's Exynos 5 octa-core processors, where only 4 sets of processors work at any given time. MediaTek's 'true' octacore processors features 8 ARM Cortex A7 cores with Mali 450 GPU.

Advantages of Octacore Processors:

These processors, as the name suggests, is equipped with 8 separate cores, which will run simultaneously, providing an amazing mobile experience for the user. Some of the major advantages of using octacore processors are:

Richer experience while playing Games: Games are one of the most important features which any smartphone user looks for while purchasing any handset. And with octacore, your game playing experience would be become incredible richer. The games would appear more realistic, faster and fun to play with.

Ultra high resolution: With octacore processors powering this new Intex smartphone, users can experience ultra high resolution, which was not that efficient with dual core phones.

Multi-tasking made easy: Any smartphone user will vouch the fact that opening too many apps and windows slow down the system and often it hangs in between. These issues would be a thing of past with octacore processors, as they power you with lot more processing power than ever imagined. Web browsing and chat applications will work like charm on octacore powered smartphones.

We are sure that this just the beginning. Unconfirmed reports have started arriving that even Micromax is considering launching an octacore powered smartphone next year.

This is certainly a big news for Indian mobile manufacturers, and it clearly projects one fact: Besides software and services, India is now transforming into an electronics manufacturing hub as well.

HCL Infosystems Ltd., India's first home grown PC manufacturing company, with an impressive 37 year history is shutting down.

It was formed in the year 1976, when a bunch of passionate entrepreneurs : Shiv Nadar, Ajai Choudhary, Arjun Malhotra and three others joined hands to launch India's first PC manufacturing company. In the 80s and early 90s, when there were no multinational brands in India, it was HCL's personal computers which ruled the market.

It's reach and penetration inside India can gauged from the fact that it has presence in 170 cities, 505 point of contacts covering over 4000 towns throughout India. It has presence in Africa, Middle East and South East Asia as well.

Over the years, its distribution network has grown to 93,000 outlets in 9000 towns all over India. At the time of writing this post, HCL Infosystems has manufacturing units in Chennai, Puducherry and Noida.

HCL Infosystems Managing Director Harsh Chitale said, "”We will be stopping manufacturing. My distribution today does lot of distribution of PCs of multiple brands… We will be in PC distribution and in after sales services but will not manufacture HCL branded products some time in the future,”

We have consulted industry veterans and have come up with three possible reasons HCL has decided to take this major step, which will change the landscape of Indian PC manufacturing for ever;

1) Competition from foreign brands & changing markets:

When the Indian economy opened up in late 90s and early 2000s, foreign brands such as HP, Dell and IBM brought in lots of competition which gradually destroyed HCL's market inside India. And now, with rupees at an all time low against dollar, manufacturing PC is lot more difficult compared to last decade.

As upto 90% of components inside a computer are imported, it was becoming very difficult for HCL to survive in this low-margin market. Moreover, consumers now prefer tablets and phablets more than humble laptops and desktops, which has again created a remarkable shift in overall PC manufacturing market; a change which HCL is not ready to adapt.

B) Scalability:

HCL computer's primary hunting ground have been only India, with few traces of sales in Africa and Middle East. This severely restricted scalability of HCL computers. Global brands such as HP and Dell invests millions of dollars into PC manufacturing because they know that their laptops and desktops will sell all over the world.

Whereas HCL couldn't invest and innovate as their market was shrinking and not expanding. In the PC business, innovation is the key as technologies are changing at a break neck speed. HCL missed out on this aspect, and had no other option left.

Without such scalability and innovation, HCL cannot match the prices of other global brands, and the only option left is to quit.

C) Future Plans:

Within HCL Infosystems there are more than 15,000 employees, out of which manufacturing comprises only 3% of workforce. And in terms of revenues, PC manufacturing constitutes a paltry 8% (Rs 1000 crore) of overall revenues within HCL.

Hence, their focus had shifted long ago to other aspects of business such as distribution and after-sales service. In fact, HCL Infosystems had already transferred its solutions, services and learning businesses to other HCL subsidiaries namely HCL Infotech, HCL Services and HCL Learning.

On this issues, Chitale said, "The restructuring would help us focus on growth engines like distribution and services which are seeing double digit growth, while helping fix the bleeding parts."

In the last quarter, HCL Infosystems posted net profits of Rs 1.48 crore, which was 41.7% less compared to last year. With total sales of such Rs 1593 crore in that quarter, which is again 32% less compared to last year, there was no opening in sight for HCL Infosystems.

No doubt the brand HCL has lots of sentiments attached, especially for loyal Indian customers. But, as they say, the only thing constant is change.

Will you miss HCL brand in future? What are your views on this latest development? Please share your feedback and comments right here!

The rise of smartphones is phenomenal. I don't think there has been any product that has created such a rampage in the over such short period of time. Mind you, I am not talking about mobile phones here. Just smartphones!

While mobile phones are pretty useful and probably one of the most important invention of our time, the smartphones just killed every competing product in the market to make space for itself. The concept of apps completely changed the way the phones are used and now how often we can hear this conversation going on-

K- "I want my phone to do this."

P- "There is an app for that."

The truth of the matter is that at the same price range, everyone wants a smartphone over a feature phone. Another interesting point of note is at the same price range, everyone wants a smartphone over anything else. It is the product to have.

Now enter the smartwatches.

They are more of a need for the companies for a new product than anything else. The market for smartphones is getting stable with each company finding a groove.

The once disruptive powers of Smartphones are fading and the companies have to come up with some other product to increase their market share/profit margins/revenue etc.

There are other products such as Google Glass in the market. However, the product is different from watch in two ways-

1. It does not require an extra action.
2. Glasses are increasing in use while watches are on a decline.

What this essentially means that Google glass if comes within a acceptable price range will have a great chance at succeeding even in India.

Smartwatches on the other hand suffer from a few issues which I believe will never let it become even a mild success in India even if it succeeds in US.

First issue is that it does not change the effort on a person's part. There is absolutely no difference in checking the mail by taking out a phone from pocket or looking at a watch.

In countries like US or countries of Europe the cold is unforgiving. Smartwatches would ease the act of taking out the phone and looking at it regularly. India on the other hand is a warm country where wearing a watch means a place for sweat to get collected.

Secondly, it doesn't add a feature that a smartphone cannot do. This is important. In India, one cannot sell two products doing the same job. Indians are price sensitive and would not simply buy something if their phone can do it anyways.

Third and most important one is the price – Smartwatches are around $200 in price.

If we assume that this is the price point that remains consistent for the coming years for good smartwatches, then it is clearly visible that for an average working Indian that is around one-third to one-fifth of his or her monthly salary.

In US the same product will be around below one-tenth at least. This is a very important factor if you include the fact that they will also become obsolete as fast as the smartphones do- every year.

In India, people generally do not buy a new phone every year (which already cost half of the monthly salary). Thus expecting us to cough up extra money for something that adds minimal functionality is foolishness.

So, in my opinion, even if the product succeeds in US, I do not see it having any impact on Indian market whatsoever. If people would have the extra money, they would simply buy a better phone.

What do you think?