Samsung Galaxy S4 launched in Bangalore
One of the most awaited smartphones this season, the Samsung Galaxy S4, was launched in Bangalore on Saturday amidst much hullabaloo.
Crowds thronged the store at UB City, even as the South Korean electronics major added celebrity punch to the event with Bollywood actors Genelia D’Souza and Vidyut Garwal endorsing it.
Around 50 eager beavers who had pre-booked the phone received their gadgets.
Manu Sharma, director, Samsung, said the new S4 had many new features for customers. “We are expecting a huge market here and we hope S4 will beat the (sales) records of the S3.”
The device comes with a dual camera (front and back), with additional features such as drama shot and dual shot. Other features include a quad core processor, a full HD AMOLED screen, air-gesture feature allowing users to, for example, change the music track they are listening to with a wave of their hand, and Samsung smart pause, enabling you to control the screen by where you look, allowing you, for instance, to pause a video.
The Indian version of Samsung Galaxy S4 will cost Rs. 41,500, has 16GB onboard memory with 2GB RAM, and 5-inch screen with 441 pixels per inch for stunning viewing quality.
Wipro’s new offering
IT major Wipro Ltd. announced the launch of Wipro Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), a hosted end-user computing solution that will enable IT organisations to deliver a significantly enhanced and productive end-user experience to any device, while reducing costs and improving security.
According to a Wipro press release, the solution is built on Cisco and NetApp FlexPod infrastructure, based on Cisco unified computing system (UCS) technology.
This is the first Wipro-hosted service launched from a portfolio of planned hosted XaaS solutions.
In a release, Pinaki Kar, president and CEO, Wipro Data Centre Services said, “Today’s ever-increasing business need to reduce IT asset costs, while increasing security and agility, is driving the demand for XaaS offerings. Enterprises are looking for tailored, cloud-based solutions such as Wipro-hosted VDI.”
Encouraging app ecosystem
Nokia India, in collaboration with AppCampus, Finland, and members of Harvard Business School Alumni Angels, India Chapter, announced ‘Appcelerate-India’, an initiative to boost mobile app development on Nokia Lumia and Windows platforms.
The two collaborators will invest excess of $500,000 to provide a combination of grants, seed funding, mentoring and incubation resources to discover disruptive applications and nurture talented Indian mobile start-ups, a release said.
Gerard Rego, director, developer experience, Nokia India, said: “This will open up countless opportunities to shape the app ecosystem, giving developers the chance to give new and innovative experiences to consumers.”
Pekka Sivonen, head of AppCampus, said this holds “significant and sustainable new opportunities” for mobile focussed entrepreneurs and their businesses.
Hardware market up by 2 per cent
Market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) said the hardware and peripherals market in India grew by 2 per cent in 2012, when compared to the previous year.
Total shipments stood at 3.2 million units. The market in India was primarily driven by laser multi-function printers, which marked a remarkable year-on-year growth of 35.3 per cent, according to a press release.
Mohit Raizada, senior market analyst at IDC said: “Despite end user promotions and heavy marketing campaigns by all the leading vendors, inkjet market was not able to sustain the interest levels with the end users, who prefer to spend their budgets on other consumer products such as smartphones and tablets. Peripheral products such as printers remain a secondary product for Indian consumers.”
