Flipkart bets on MarQ to push large appliances this festival season

d of Flipkart’s flagship BigBillionDays sales, customers could start seeing advertisements of a new consumer durable brand in India. MarQ, Flipkart’s private label for large appliances, aspires to become India’s youngest consumer durables brand.

Launched ahead of last year’s Diwali festive sales, MarQ has grown to become one of the best performers in the large appliances categories on Flipkart’s platform. The company claims it is on target to grow sales through the label by over 100 per cent during this BigBillionDays, compared to the last.

While the private label was initially rolled out in a few categories such as refrigerators and televisions, the company has slowly been entering several other categories, including water purifiers and air conditioners, with products under the MarQ brand.

As India's smartphone market grows, sale of pre-owned phones on the rise

With more and more Indians aiming to own high-end smartphones, the pre-owned smartphone market is booming. On the online trading platform OLX, the average selling price (ASP) of a pre-owned smartphone has jumped from Rs 9,000 to Rs 11,000 in just one year, the company said on Saturday in a press release. Millions of users, across India, prefer to buy second-hand smartphones as desired features would be available at affordable prices.

Such second-hand phones are traded on several platforms such as OLX, Quickr and others. According to the OLX report, almost 14 million mobile phones and accessories listings in the financial year 2017-18, especially in tier II and III cities.

With high penetration and frequent updates, consumers are upgrading to new models within months and this is one reason people switch phones selling and buying second-hand phones from time to time.

70% smartphone users in India switched brands in Q2; Xiaomi biggest gainer

More than 70 per cent of smartphone users in India switched brands in the second quarter of this year, befitting Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi the most which sold nearly 37 per cent of the phones that were replaced, according a CyberMedia Research (CMR) report on Wednesday.

Xiaomi was followed by Vivo (17.8 per cent), Oppo (16.3), itel (6.7 per cent) and Huawei's Honor (4.5 per cent), according to the first edition of the CMR "India Smartphone Movement" report.

During the period, the fastest depleting brands in the category were Micromax (41.2 per cent), Intex (11.6 per cent), HTC (5.5 per cent), Karbonn (5.3 per cent) and Gionee (4.7 per cent), the findings showed.

"Customer stickiness is the paramount concern thathomegrownn brands need to address immediately," said Kanika Jain, Manager, New Initiatives, CMR.

Google employees lose nearly 250 Gbikes a week: Report

Technology giant Google loses between 100 and 250 of its colourful employee bicycles a week from its campus, the media reported.

Google maintains roughly 1,100 free, two-wheelers with yellow frames, red baskets and green and blue wheels, known as Gbikes, for its employees to get around its sprawling campus.

However, according to company estimates, its bikes consistently go missing from its campus-between 100 and 250 a week, typically costing $100 to $300.

The bikes have shown up at local schools, in neighbours' lawns, at the bottom of the town creek and on the roof of a sports pub.

"The disappearances often aren't the work of ordinary thieves, however. Many residents of Mountain View, a city of 80,000 that has effectively become Google's company town, see the employee perk as a community service," the Wall Street Journal reported on January 5.

A decade ago, Google started Silicon Valley's first corporate bike programme, which was adopted by at least 16 others across the US, including at Apple, Facebook, and Walmart, the report said.

The company recently equipped about a third of its 1,100 bikes with GPS trackers, which revealed that the two-wheelers take an average 12 trips and travel six miles a day.

It now also has a team of 30 Google contractors and five vans who are tasked with retrieving Gbikes. They carry waders and grappling hooks for pulling bikes out of a creek.
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India among its top 3 markets: Nokia phone maker HMD Global

HMD Global, which designs and sells Nokia brand of smartphones and feature phones, on Tuesday said India has become one of its top three global markets within 11 months of launch.

HMD Global is also pumping in significant investment into the Indian market as it looks to become one of the leading players in the country in the next 3-5 years.

"We started our journey very short 11 months ago... India is already among our top 3 markets... There is a potential in India to become our biggest country...because of the country size and also combination of our position as Nokia in the past," HMD Global CEO Florian Seiche told PTI.

He added that the company has introduced a line-up of 11 devices -- both feature and smartphones -- across various price points to cater to various consumer segments in the country.

The other two top markets for HMD are Russia and Indonesia.

HMD Global today launched Nokia 2, its most affordable smartphone that will be available from mid-November. While the exact price was not disclosed, Seiche said it is expected to retail at about 99 euros (nearly Rs 7,500).

The handset features a 5-inch display and 4,100 mAh battery that HMD claims will last for two days.

"USD 100-150 price point is one of the most popular segments and is 17 per cent of the global market volume. In India, this segment is even bigger at 30 per cent of the volume," he said.

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Gionee A1 smartphone: Delight for selfie-lovers

At a time when margins are razor-thin in the fast-growing domestic smartphone market, any new device faces the challenge of not only meeting consumer expectations but also offering that something extra to stay in the race for at least one quarter.

Keeping this in mind, China-based Gionee — known for delivering camera-driven smartphones in the past — has launched the selfie-focused, mid-segment A1 smartphone in India.

Priced at Rs 19,999, the main highlight is its 16MP selfie camera and 13MP rear camera.

Here is what works for the device.

Taking a cue from the flat design of its earlier devices, A1 features a metal body which feels sturdy in hand and has a polished look. The overall look is clean but uninspiring.

The 5.5-inch full-HD display worked well indoors, delivering sharp colour reproduction and contrast with good viewing angles.

The rounded-off edges allow it to sit comfortably in the hand and offers plenty of grip. Armed with 2GHz octa-core P10 Helios processor and 4GB RAM, A1 ran smoothly with whatever we threw at it — be it movies, games or browsing.

The 16MP front camera produced brighter pictures. It packs an LED flashlight to light up the images in case of low-light conditions. The images captured had rich colour tones with an appreciable amount of detailing. (READ MORE)

60 million 4G smartphones to be sold in India in 2019

LATEST BUSINESS NEWS - Nearly 200 million 4G-enabled feature phones will be sold in India in the next five years, triggering a slow-down for the domestic smartphone market, a new report claimed on Wednesday.

"We estimate close to 60 million units of 4G-capable feature phones could ship this year globally from almost a million units last year, with India potentially contributing to almost half of that this year," said the analysts from market research firm Counterpoint Research.

In terms of hardware revenues, it is a $6 billion opportunity cumulatively over the next five years in India.

"Key players to watch out in this segment are Micromax, Intel, Lava, Jio, Nokia and so forth," the report added.

Chipset brands such as Qualcomm with its latest Qualcomm 205 platform specially designed for 4G LTE Feature Phones is poised to drive growth starting with end of Q2 2017.

"More than 400 million feature phones were sold globally in 2016 and we saw smartphone market growth slow down to 3 per cent (year-on-year), portraying that the easy days of smartphone growth are over," the report stated.

The smartphone growth slowing down and the feature phone decline slowing down is the polarisation of market in terms of technology as well as user base.

"This is making a case for the rise of 4G capable feature phones with the core value proposition being VoLTE calls and move the users to the cost efficient 4G networks. We estimate more than half a billion 4G capable feature phones will be sold over the next five years, a 'big short-term opportunity' for players in the mobile industry," the analysts predicted. (READ MORE)

McDonald's asks users to update app after data leak scare

McDonald’s has asked users of its McDelivery service in India to update the app on their smartphones as a precaution, after a blog alleged that personal data of 2.2 million customers could have been leaked due to a vulnerability.

"We would like to inform our users that our website and app do not store any sensitive financial data of the users like credit card details, wallets passwords or bank account information,” said a McDonald’s India spokesperson.

Data security firm Fallible in a post on popular blogging platform Medium alleged that it had found the vulnerability in McDonald’s app, and despite receiving an acknowledgement from the company the issue was not fixed for over a month.

The post said information such as names, phone numbers, email ids, addresses, home coordinates and links to social handles of users of the McDelivery app were vulnerable to leak. Fallible traced the vulnerability to the presence of an “unprotected publicly accessible API endpoint” that could be used to access the user information.

“The lack of strong data protection and privacy laws or penalties in India, unlike the European Union, United States or Singapore has led to companies ignoring user data protection,” read the post by Fallible.

Fallible claims it contacted McDonald’s on February 7 regarding the vulnerability, and while it got an acknowledgement from a senior IT manager on February 13, the issue still was not fixed. The company followed the responsible disclosure policy, but upon seeing that the issue was not fixed decided to finally make the news public. (READ MORE)

Samsung launches Galaxy C9 Pro, bets on subsequent buyers to drive sales

The country's largest smartphone maker, Samsung India, is betting big on second- and third-time smartphone buyers to drive sales of its newly launched Galaxy C9 Pro.

"We do innovations keeping consumers in mind. We are confident that the launch of Galaxy C9 Pro will revolutionalise the market. It is actually targeting second- and third-time buyers who are looking for new upgrades. We are confident that it will drive our market share up", said Aditya Babbar, deputy general manager, mobile business, Samsung India, at the national launch of Galaxy C9 Pro here.

"India is the second largest smartphone market. Definitely, will be new buyers coming in and (existing) consumer upgrading. The upgrader is the biggest market and we are targeting it," he added.

Priced at Rs 36,900, the Samsung Galaxy C9 Pro will be available in two colours -- black and gold.

Interested buyers can pre-book the device through select stores and online channels from January 27 and avail the pre-booking offer of one-time screen replacement for a period of 12 months.

The smartphone will be on sale at all retail channels in the latter half of February 2017.(Read More)