| by Gaurav Kheterpal on September 3, 2010
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Nokia is by far the biggest player in the Indian mobile market. The company opted for a “price sensitive” policy and gave equal importance to low-cost feature phones and high-end smartphones alike. And it’s little wonder that its strategy to woo the masses with the “low cost” factor worked like wonders in the world’s second most populated country.
Not many phone makers can dare to take on Nokia when it comes to the “price game”. However, a small Indian pay phone company called Micromax thinks otherwise. With as many as 37 models launched in just over a year and a half, Micromax is now India’s third-largest GSM mobile phone vendor with a market share of 6 percent after Nokia (62 percent) and Samsung (8 percent).
Micromax is here to stay and take the fight to Nokia. As one of its founders, Vikas Jain puts it – “We are not the poor cousins of Nokia. Instead we will force Nokia to launch newer products to compete with us.”
Game On!
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| by Jordan Richardson on September 3, 2010
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Ending what was a rough week for the incumbents, it looks like Bell Canada is stepping up to the plate against the recent CRTC ruling that would allow smaller internet providers room on the broadband networks of the Big Three.
Bell said that it would appeal the decision passed down by regulators on Monday. They’re taking the fight to cabinet just like they did when the CRTC made a similar decision in 2008. That time, the federal cabinet ruled in favour of Bell and the CRTC was sent off to “reconsider” the ruling.
“Cabinet accepted our appeal and asked the CRTC to look at this again,” said Mirko Bibic, Bell Canada’s executive vice-president of regulatory affairs. “I am astonished at how the CRTC can come back and give cabinet the very same decision that cabinet asked them to look at again. We are certainly going to be making our views well known.”
Cabinet will have 90 days to rule on the decision.
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| by Matt Klassen on September 3, 2010
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Samsung Galaxy Tab
In the technological world tablets are nothing more than consumption devices; bits of technology that no one needs but ones that soon no one will be able to live without. The purpose of such devices is clearly to improve people’s mobility and connectivity to the world at large, offering people accelerated access to their mobile existence without being tethered to the home or office. Or in simpler terms, tablet devices offer users the ability to consume information whenever and wherever they want.
For tablet manufacturers looking to unseat Apple’s incumbent iPad, the hope is that users can be lured towards alternative devices on the basis that their competing products offer enhanced consumption abilities; that is, offering users more access to multimedia data and more usability than the iPad. For Samsung, it means the Galaxy Tab.
If Samsung doesn’t already know, trying to compete with Apple’s marketing campaign is a veritable David vs. Goliath battle, with Goliath repeatedly stomping the diminutive David into the ground. That being said, Samsung is taking a different approach to marketing its tablet: Appeal to the average tech consumer’s logic and reason; a move that Samsung thinks is sure to spell success for the Galaxy Tab.
Oh poor Samsung, how little you understand the American psyche. [click to continue…]
| by Jeff Wiener on September 2, 2010
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While many recognized the shrewdness of Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) move earlier this year to acquire the struggling mobile upstart Palm, few it seemed, truly recognized the brilliance of HP’s timing and business sense. Combined with earlier acquisitions, the purchase of Palm instantly gave HP the resources and technology to compete in the cutthroat mobile market, with the added bonus that HP scooped up its own innovative and intuitive mobile operating system with Palm’s popular, albeit under-utilized, webOS.
At the time I had lamented that it would probably take years for HP to successfully revitalize and incorporate Palm’s resources like the webOS, which is why I was so surprised today when I heard that HP is set to release a beta version of webOS v2.0 to a select number of application developers.
But even though the beta version adds several new features to the once semi-popular mobile OS, the fact remains that Palm has never had success selling devices running on webOS, which begs the question, will HP fair much better?
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| by Jordan Richardson on September 2, 2010
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Naguib Sawiris, executive chairman of Orascom and majority investor in WIND Mobile, wasted little time in talking some good old-fashioned trash about Canada’s telecommunications industry and the players in it. Seemingly buoyed by recent news of WIND’s 100,000 subscriber milestone, Sawiris was interviewed by the Globe and Mail and left little to the imagination.
Sawiris is well-known for making risky investments in dangerous parts of the world, but his successes reveal a shrewd businessman that knows more than most about the ins and outs of global telecommunications. “We go where people don’t dare to go,” he told the Globe and Mail. “We’re crazy, adventurous.”
Part of where “people don’t dare to go,” presumably, is Canada’s “backwater” telecommunications industry. Sawiris’ investment in WIND Mobile is what brought the new company to the fray in this country and it looks like the investment is ticking along just nicely, even as it has a few oligopoly-sized icebergs to crack through.
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