BSNL plans 50% rate cut in 3G

State-run BSNL is planning to stoke the angry 3G tariff wars in India by dropping its data rates by up to 50 percent. This will be included as part of its 8th phase of network expansion, according to the latest report. Chairman and Managing Director Anupam Shrivastav, thinks a 50 percent slash in 3G data as compared to current prices, is an achievable goal.

BSNL’s word should offer a break to Indian consumers who are clearly frustrated by the games telecom operators have been playing in order to make up for their falling voice and SMS revenues. In 2014, carriers were seen to
 by up to 100 percent. After conveniently raising the cost, certain service providers started.

BullionIndia.in introduces an App for the Android operating system

BullionIndia.in has introduced a free App for the Android operating system. BullionIndia.in is a unique online platform that allows investors to own small quantities of physical Gold and Silver at wholesale prices. Using this application, users can access the BullionIndia.in web terminal from either a Smartphone or a Tablet. Users can now buy and sell, request withdrawal, access their account history and even monitor their account balance with just a click of a button. All they need is an internet connection!

Benefits:

• The application is absolutely free of charge all you have to do is download it on your mobile phone/ tablet
• Place real time market orders
• Access to live prices 
• Single ID and password for your account on Mobile/Web and Tablet
  
  

BullionIndia.in is a unique online platform that allows investors to own small quantities of physical Gold and Silver at wholesale prices. With Bullion India the retail investors gets an opportunity to buy as low as 0.1 gm of Gold and 1 gm of Silver. This gold and silver is in electronic form and backed by equivalent quantities of physical bullion thus making it affordable and accessible to all. Investors have the option of taking physical deliveries of their holdings as per their convenience.

Via the e-commerce platform, BullionIndia.in has given customers in India the access to the Bullion Market. Moreover, it caters to every section of the society by allowing customers to buy smaller denomination of Gold and Silver & that too at wholesale prices. The gold brought in electronic form is backed by equivalent quantities of physical bullion and can be delivered to your doorstep in form of coins/bars in varied denominations.

All transactions at BullionIndia.in are monitored and verified by IDBI Trusteeship Services Limited. They coordinate the day-to-day reconciliation, deposit and withdrawal of gold and silver that are physically stored in the vaults.

Windermere' will officially be announced under the name Passport.

Berry has confirmed the recently-leaked handset codenamed 'Windermere' will officially be announced under the name Passport. It will debut at an event in London this September.

Following its quarterly earnings report, during which it announced a return to profit of sorts, BlackBerry CEO John Chen confirmed that the short and wide-set device currently doing the rounds is the real deal.

Naturally, as CrackBerry reports, the device will be named after its passport-like dimensions. According to the presentation, the Blackberry Passport will feature a 4.5-inch 1440 x 1440 display that's as square as an Instagram photo.

The Passport will be a wide 3.18-inches, which is even wider than the pocket-busting 3.12-inch Samsung Galaxy Note 3. An accompanying photo shows the handset will have BlackBerry's stoutest keyboard yet featuring only three rows of physical buttons. The Passport also appeared along two other handsets named the Z3 and Classic.

Internally, the Passport is said to be packing a quad-core Snapdragon MSM8974 processor backed by an Adreno 330 GPU and 3GB of RAM. The phone will also supposedly be powered by a 3,450mAh battery.

Aside from a new, albeit slightly odd smartphone, there was more good news for BlackBerry fans after seemingly years of gloom-laden financial reports.

BlackBerry surprised the bean counters on Wall Street by posting a small quarterly profit.

Waterloo managed to earn a net income $23 million (about £13.5m, AU24.5m) in the three months ending May 31, although after adjustments the loss was $60 million (about £35.2m, AU$63.9m).

The turnaround in fortunes, which resulted in a 10% share rise on Thursday, comes as BlackBerry continues to cut costs and moves away from the business of selling hardware to consumers and towards a services-centric operation.

Fifty-four percent of its $966 million ( about £566m, AU$1.02bn) revenue in the quarter came from such services, while only 39% came from the sales of 2.6 million BlackBerry phones, down steeply from 3.4 million this time last year.

All in all a pretty good day for BlackBerry. It's been a while since anyone said that on a day which has a 'y' in it.

FIRSTOUCH: World’s First Regional Smartphone makes Indian entry with Gujarati

·      Ex-IITians launch a Smartphone branded Firstouch as the “World’s First Regional Smartphone".

·      Patented swipe technology now Translates AND Transliterates messages from English to Gujarati and vice versa.

·      Has a 48-key virtual keyboard that's designed to easily type matra & characters.

·      The predictive typing technology ensures that as you type Gujarati words, it assists you in finishing the words along with the correct Matra and also gives you the next probable words.

·      Firstouch has tied up with AIRTEL to offer customers 512mb/month data free for three months &talktime worth Rs 25

·      All Firstouch consumers would also get one US number for life time and Rs. 100 international talk time, powered by Jaxtr’s Mobile App

 A Mumbai firm founded by three former IIT graduates is giving the Smartphone industry a desi makeover. Firstouch, their made-for-India device, has an indigenously designed OS [operating system] that caters to a population that is not comfortable with English as a language for communication. Two years of rigorous research and efforts have gone into creating an OS that would now cater to Indians who don’t count English as their first, second or third language of communication [only a tenth of our population count English as their first, second or third language].

Rakesh Deshmukh, Akash Dongre and Sudhir Bangarambandi, who have developed and patented the virtual keyboard and the predictive matra engine that goes along with it, are aiming to break the language barrier with the phone. The team has done many rounds of consumer studies& has been able to precisely locate the pain points the consumers have with the interfaces that are currently available in Smartphones. The Phone Interface on Firstouch thushas evolved after extensive research and observation as to how a common man in India uses his smartphone. It’s the simplest user interface available and has a zero learning curve.

The 48-key virtual keyboard in Firstouch devices is ergonomically designed to accommodate Indian alphabets & all its matras in one single screen. Unlike the linguistic key boards available in other brands, Firstouch users now need not toggle between various screens to type an alphabet along with its matra

Speaking on the launch, the elated Mr Rakesh Deshmukh, CEO & Co-Founder, Firstouch said “It’s an honor & pride for us and India as a country to introduce World’s first Regional Smartphone, made for the people of India, by the people of India in Gujarati language to begin with”

“Firstouch – World’s First Regional Smartphone has been designed keeping in mind the challenges faced by millions of Indian customers. With customized Indian language operating system, fastest typing Indic keyboard ever designed in history, embedded translation services and regional language app bazaar, it is the first Smartphone that offers an easy to use phone experience for first timer Smartphone user,”  added Mr. Deshmukh.

The predictive text and swipe technology on Firstouch is far more complex and advanced than anything the trio has done before. It's capable of translating messages written in a local language to English with a left swipe, and transliterating it by swiping right.

“No current Smartphone allows users to translate a message from English to an Indian language and vice versa. This is the only unique home grown breakthrough Language Swipe technology that will revolutionize the complete Smartphone industry and will herald a new era in the growth path of Smartphones not only in India but also Internationally. Firstouch is the first regional Smartphone which will bring millions of rural and semi urban customers, a perfect smartphone, made in their language.”

The company has also taken care of the ABC [Astrology, Bollywood & Cricket] in the devices before bringing them to the market. The devices come pre-bundled with an astrology application from Ganeshaspeaks.com. The Bollywood content is powered by an application from Hungama Mobiles. Cricket and various other games are available on Firstouch’s own App Bazaar through partners like Disney, EA [Electronic Arts], Nazara Games, Hungama and various others.

Firstouch’s own App Bazaar is integrated with the Telco’s payment gateways. Thus, consumer need not have a credit card to purchase any application or game from the App Bazaar.

Customers buying the Firstouch device with an Airtel  connection can enjoy additional benefits of 500 MB of free 2G data and a talktime worth Rs. 25/-per month for 3 months.The offer can be activated by sending the SMS <FT> to 51619 and will be applicable to both existing and new Airtel prepaid customers.

For consumers who have friends and relatives abroad, Firstouch phone is a must have. Every Firstouch phone comes with one US number for lifetime and a Rs. 100 free international talk time. This is powered by Jaxtr mobile application that is pre-bundled with Firstouch A10.

The first batch of Firstouch phones, model A10, will be for Gujarati users and will be available in stores in Saurashtra & Kutch from this week, priced at Rs 6,000.

Formed in 2008, MoFirst Solutions has developed Firstouch in every aspect of the product. Other products developed by MoFirst include mobile trading platform for Motilal Oswal Securities in 2012, m-commerce and m-ticketing solutions and more.