RIM's Future vests on new Blackberry 10 platform

Blackberry maker RIM CEO Thorsten Heins gave a preview of the new Blackberry 10 OS with  smartphone(full touchscreen model without the traditional qwerty keyboard) and its features to its developers at a gathering on Tuesday in San Jose, California slated to release by first quarter of 2013.

An introductory video of  BB10 OS features is given below:
 

Early reviews of BlackBerry 10 have generally been positive -- but if RIM's future rests solely on the success of this OS, it has a lot of ground  to make up. Waterloo based RIM( the maker of  Blackberry) has lost a substancial portion of its market share worldwide with the customers tastes and preferences shifting  to Apple’s iOS and Android based platforms.

The company is now in dire need  to revamp its resources and financials so as to give an optimistic view to its customers and  investors in line with improving  its brand image. An atmosphere of pandemonium seems to be raging in Tech world over RIM’s future looking at its sales ,market share and financials.

According  to the lastest IDC report :

•        Shipments of Blackberry phones plummeted  41% over the year to 7.4 million  last quarter.

•         It’s Market Share has reduced to less than 5 % of the total smartphone devices worldover,lowest since 2009.

• Cash reserves are depleting  with only 2 billion $ in hand.

•   Its sales falled  43 % compared  to last year losing  512 million $ in a quarter itself.

•   RIM shares have lost 54% of their value in 2012 alone

On the silver lining ,it has added  2 million more subscribers this quarter making its total customer base to 80 million worldwide.BB10  OS too has received  opitimistic response from tech experts and markets.

RIM shares rose 37 cents, or 5.6 percent to $6.97 in midday trading on the Nasdaq on Wednesday. The stock, which had been hovering around nine-year lows, had already risen almost 5 percent on Tuesday.RIM's Toronto-listed shares were up 5.4 percent at C$6.85 at midday on Wednesday.

Some interesting features of  BB10 OS expected to impress the markets are :

Lock Screen -  On switching on the device ,a more intuitive and useful lock screen experience comes up.Turning the device on, you can now see the useful and fun lock screen experience .

·        your finger from the bottom up unlocks the display, and as you move your finger you can literally see through to the OS. The OS will open back to wherever you left off.

·        Quick access to the camera is available through the lock screen, and there's also a preview of message

·        One interesting feature when you swipe down from the top on the lock screen brings the Bedside Mode which will literally tickle with invtations like gd ngt ,gd morning etc. 

Horizontal Scrolling in App Drawer – A change from Applicaton shotcuts scrolled vertically .We can now jump panes and rapid scroll through 5 panes of app in 1 go.

Active Frames - When apps are open but minimized, they appear on a dedicated pane on the home screen, where up to the most recent eight running apps are displayed. These are now referred to as Active Frames. Not widgets. Not live tiles.. For example, with BBM, the Active Frame will update to show you your most recent incoming message. 

BlackBerry Hub - BlackBerry Hub is the new name for the unified inbox on BlackBerry 10, which is a fitting name given that it's so much more than an email inbox. BBM, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, Linked in all integrate . At the launch of the BlackBerry 10 ,developers will be able to tie into the Hub for delivering notifications, and soon after will be able to tie right into the native Hub.

Quick Settings / Menus - Swiping down from the top of the phone of the screen reveals a quick settings menu. 

·        As for menus, with no physical "menu button" on BlackBerry 10 phones, the menu button is represented throughout the operating system via a graphic with three little dots. Core app functionality will mainly be displayed at eye level, but additional features and options are accessible via this menu overflow button.

·        When tapped, the menu slides in and can we swiped away. It's a really clean implementation.

One-Handed UI touches - A great example of the one-handed friendliness of BlackBerry 10 can be found in the web browser. Instead of putting the url bar at the top of the display, where it's out of easy reach of your thumb, it's been moved to the bottom of the browser sense that everything of importance is accessible from your thumb.

• Blackberry App World -One of the features that most excited to everyone was an updated BlackBerry App World, which now features the ability to directly purchase Music, Movies and TV shows. Now ,every BB user can make content purchases beyond apps and games using the unique  Blackberry ID assigned using one payment account via paypal,credit card and even carrier billing.

• Blackberry Messenger Amplified 

Pictures, Lists and Events are brought to the display layer and take advantage of the active frame functionality found on the BlackBerry 10 homescreen. For example, if a new picture is posted to a BBM group, the newest picture will display on the Active Frame within the Picture's active frame on the Group's homepage.

BBID will now play a roll in Blackberry Messenger.Instead of setting up a BBM list separately (backed  from email address or SD card),it will now be managed by BBID .Once logged in with BBID ,your BBM contacts will all be there.

ECB's bond purchases & anticipated US Fed's QE3 to revive Global Economy

ECB( Europe’s Central Bank)  president Mario Draghi unveiled details of a new bond-buying program, known as Outright Monetary Transactions, or OMT’s early last week to reinvigorate and stimulate ailing Euro Zone. 

 It plans to bail out governments through OMT as against LTRO (long term refinancing operations, which it did earlier). While Germany was the sole country against this ECB decision, the others felt that this had to be done.

Also ,speculations are rife in markets around the world that Federal Reserve (USA’s Central Bank) will start third round of Quantitative Easing (QE3) with economic recovery weakening and latest employment figures disappointing the market expectations with only 96,000 jobs created last month against 1,24,000 last yr.

 

As per the Wikipedia definition , Quantitative easing (QE) is an unconventional monetary policy used by central banks to stimulate the national economy when conventional monetary policy has become ineffective.

Its called unconventional because  a central bank implements quantitative easing by buying financial assets from commercial banks and other private institutions with newly created money,  in order to inject a pre-determined quantity of money into the economy as against the more usual policy of buying or selling government bonds to keep market interest rates at a specified target value.

 

 So ,it is the last resort for Major Central Banks  of developed countries stymied by slow economic prospects. Their central banks have lowered their benchmark rates to close to zero (0.25 for Fed and 0.75 for ECB).Looking at its history ,QE1 and QE2 were unsuccessful in achieving its objective to its core ,but QE3 is unavoidable looking at current state of US economy ,biggest growth engine of World economy.

Another positive news came from China , the world's most voracious consumer of raw materials giving  green light for 60 infrastructure projects worth more than $150 billion as it looked to energise an economy troubled in its worst slowdown in three years, fuelling expectations that the world's fastest growing juggernaut  may get a lift from the fourth quarter.

 

Markets reacted drastically with huge positive gains in main stock market indices ,US Dow Jones ,Germany DAX ,Japan’s Nikkei showing gains of  range of 0.5-2 % on single trading day  and rise in prices of Commodities mainly Gold ,the yellow metal which is mainly used as inflation hedge.

 

Outcomes of these measures are expected to create the following conditions :

 

The first is that the Bond markets will get distorted in these two regions (US & Euro region)  because market forces will be influenced heavily under the discretion of  central banks. Bond prices will no longer reflect their true value. US treasuries will rise as yields will be driven down by the buyback. In the euro region, buying bonds will make them look good in the market – something that is probably not deserved. The credit default swap rates have already come down for Spain and Italy after this announcement. Both ways, interest rates will come down further and money will be available to banks.

 

Second, these funds will tend to move across the world. In the euro region, where there is a trust deficit, these funds might provide immediate liquidity , but major relief  will be given  to the governments of Spain and Italy to begin with. More likely, these funds will look for better returns overseas. US treasuries will not be attractive at these high prices (as there will be losses to be booked once prices come down when interest rates go up, though the Fed has implicitly promised that rates will not be raised till 2014).

 

Emerging markets will be the best bet and India can hope to receive some of these flows.  This is good news for us considering that the government has made some right decisions  on GAAR and retrospective taxation, which were the main hindrances to foreign investors. It garners well for our capital market too because more money will provide a boost, which in turn can encourage the government to push through its own disinvestment programme which is presently in limbo.

 

 

Third, the currencies will be in for some turmoil. The dollar had been strengthening (it was moving towards 1.20) against the euro as any news of trouble in the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain) tended to weaken the euro. A speculative news of QE3 made the dollar weaken (it moved towards 1.27) because, with such a large supply of dollars floating around, the currency becomes less attractive. But once the OMT kicks in, the euro will again weaken. Therefore, currencies are going to be volatile and these reverberations will be felt in India too as the rupee will be subjected to these wild swings over and above our own fundamentals which are no less volatile. This means more work for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which will have to monitor closely what happens in these markets.

 

 

 

Fourth, these two regions may actually start to do better in terms of GDP growth. The euro region forecast has been lifted upwards while the US can do better than the 2 percent growth that has been projected. This is good for the world economy as global trade, which has been hit quite hard by this slowdown, can hope to recover, and the rest can draw on this success. China can look forward for slightly better times again in case this scenario unfolds.

Fifth, the inflation will spike . Too much money floating around has a dual impact on inflationary conditions. The first is any recovery in the euro region or faster pace of growth in the US will mean demand from commodities – in particular oil and metals. This will lead to a commodity boom, with prices increasing. Investors in commodities could cheer with gold and crude already increasing.

 

Gold, in fact, will be a great buy considering that it is a substitute for the dollar and will swing along with the fortunes of the dollar, although  in the reverse direction. The other impact is the sheer volume of foreign currency flowing into the emerging markets. This has the potential to generate excess liquidity at a time when their economies are not exactly showing high growth – both India and China are slowing down.

Hence , more foreign funds and global recovery are good for all countries, though it will challenge policies of major countries Worldover.

 

Apple's Legal victory over Samsung : Nokia,Microsoft likely to gain

The US Jury’s  landmark decision on  Apple-Samsung  lawsuit  this Friday took a decisive turn by slapping Samsung  1.05 billion $ fine and providing whatever Apple wished in this latest set of patent infringement case . A billion dollar + payment  to Apple and the possibility of  injunction against the sales of  infringing Samsung Tablets and Smartphones.

 

This verdict is one of the  50 + lawsuits that these two tech giants are embroiled in 10 countries across the Globe.  Impact of this litigation will not adversely affect Samsung’s  burgeoning  Global  sales of smartphones  as it doesn’t apply outside US and doesn’t apply to new Samsung devices like Samsung Galaxy 3,Galaxy Note 10.1 etc and also ,1 billion $ fine is a meager  1.5 % of Samsung’s Electronics annual revenue. Though it has challenged the verdict by taking this case a step forward  to a court in Washington which specialises in patent appeals and  vowed to fight in US Supreme court ,if necessary.

 

The patent enfringement ensuing between these  tech giants is mainly on two fronts :- Software and  Design.

On software, Samsung infringe :

(i)                Apple’s bounce-back effect when a user tries to scroll beyond the end of a list or image.

(ii)               Apple’s pinching and zooming scroll feature.

(iii)            Apple’s tap-to-zoom feature.

 

On design,  Samsung infringed:

(i)                Apple’s iPhone’s face, screen and speaker slot.

(ii)              the ornamental design and shape of the iPhone’s face, rounded corners and bezel.

(iii)            the icon arrangement on the home screen.

 

The detailed  perspective of  these patent violations and it implication for both the companies and its consumers can be understood by the video below:

 

 

 

Immediate reaction to Apple’s legal victory over Samsung was felt in stock prices and market capitalization of its competitors in capital markets across the world. Samsung’s share plummeted by 7.7 % wiping out 12 billion $ market value of this South Korean giant with Google sitting down on the same side with shares closing 1.4 % down at 699.22 $.

 

 

On the bullish side ,Apple stocks surged  by 1.9 % closing at 675.68 $ adding 12 billion $ to its market cap standing at 633.38 billion $ (World’s most valuable company).The potential beneficiary to this historic court ruling was Microsoft ,Nokia and Blackberry who will be the alternatives to Android platform plagued now by legal suits.

 

Nokia (betting on its revamped Windows mobile platform )rose 7.7 per cent to close at 2.68 euros in Helsinki. The stock is down 29 per cent this year. Microsoft climbed less than 1 per cent to $US30.69 in NASDAQ(biggest stock exchange for technology stocks).

 

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion gained 1.9 per cent to $US7.07 in NASDAQ, the first rise after falling for 10 consecutive sessions .RIM might lose out on harnessing this opportunity now as their new range of touch-only smartphones will release only in Q1 2013.

 

On the longer term ,this  legal verdict will be definitely impact the future design and features of  the smartphones ecosystem as it affects the position of a company financial stability and its positioning towards its consumer as a brand and service.

 

Android platform might face a dearth of developers in near future as it is maligned with its present legal complications  and  developers might start a shift of choice and application development for Microsoft and Nokia’s strategic partnership for mobile platform to challenge Apple and Samsung market dominance.

Mobile manufacturers will need to take design and software development with  utmost importance without flouting international patent laws and might find it difficult to launch new products and service in response to ban imposed by courts favouring a more innovative company. Consumers will be affected by higher prices which is passed on by mobile manufacturers due to high R&D costs in  complying stringent norms and will be limited by diversity of phones and tablets that the market has to offer.

 

London 2012 Olympics - A Retrospective Look

London 2012, was a major international multi-sport event, celebrated in the tradition of the Olympic Games, as governed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), that took place in London, United Kingdom from 27 July to 12 August 2012.

The results of this Global sporting spectacle was in lines of the expectations of the experts and institutions all over the World with US emerging as the winner with total 104 medals ( 46 G,29S ,29B) ,China 2nd with 87 medals( 38G, 27S ,23S) and Great Britain achieved its highest tally of gold medals since 1908, finishing third in the medal table with 65 Medals(29G ,17S,19B).

The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games  used  a mixture of new venues, existing and historic facilities, and temporary facilities, some of them in well-known locations such as Hyde Park and other facilities were reused in their Olympic form,while others were  Horse Guards Parade.Some of the new facilities were reused in their Olympic form,while others were resized or relocated with the total cost of financing at 9.3 billion euros. A bird's eye view of the Olympic Park below.

The opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics was held on 27 July and called "Isles of Wonder". Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle was its artistic director, with the music directors being the electronic music duo Rick Smith and Karl Hyde of Underworld.

The Games were officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II, accompanied by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

 Months before Olympic flame lighting ceremony was done in a traditional Olympic style in Olympia,Greece on 10 May,2012.

The Olympic Cauldron was lit  at the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games by a  group of young athletes nominated by British Olympic champions.

In total  4,700 Olympic and Paralympic medals have been produced by the Royal Mint at Llantrisant.They were designed by David Watkins (Olympics) and Lin Cheung (Paralympics).Virtually all the gold, silver and copper was mined in Salt Lake County, Utah in the U.S. Each medal weighs 375–400 g (13.2–14.1 oz), has a diameter of 85 mm (3.34 in) and is 7 mm (0.27 in) thick, with the sport and discipline engraved on the rim. The value of the materials in the gold medal is about $644, the silver about $330, and the bronze about $4.71 on the current market price.

The grandest highlight of the games was Michael Phelps ,US swimmer becoming the most decorated Olympian of all time with 22 medals.

British Olympic athlete Mo Farah clinching his twin Gold feat of 5,000 metre and 10,000 metre title.

Athletics became the centrestage of attention and action with  South African double amputee runner  Oscar  Pistorious  events of 100m ,200m ,400m & 4 * 100 m titles ,stupendous performance by British atheletes ,records smashed  by Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt in all the events he had the competition with perfect lead and new Olympic records in the making.

Oscar Pistorius aka Blade Runner left behind a memory and inspiration to every athlete and spectator spellbound by his dedication and sporting spirit with which he dealt his atheletic events.

Usain Bolt became the first sprinter to retain all three sprinting gold medals at consecutive Olympics.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei entered female atheltes for the first time ,meaning every country has sent a female competitor to at least one Olympic Games.Sarah Attar ,the 1st Saudi field and track athelete in the Olympics.

Andy Murray ,the British tennis player winning Gold medal beating numero uno of tennis Roger Federer easily in the finals and becoming the  biggest reasons for host Britons to cheer about the London Olympics.

Hot favourites Russia winning the synchronised swimming gold mainitaning their total domination of this game in Olympic history.

India's Olympic campaign ending with 6 medals ,2 silver and 4 bronze medals doubling up the last Beijing medals tally .Amazing achievement by any scale for the Indians to proud of.

Era of Chinese domination in diving came to an end with world diving champion Qiu Bio beaten by American David Boudia.

Gabby Douglas becoming the first African-American to win Gold in women's all around Gymnastics event.

Perhaps ,on the downside there were some sad moments and happenings ,most talked about  among them being South Korean fencer Shin-a-Lam crying after losing a chance at the Gold.

This Olympics also symbolised a cohesion of World sporting fraternity with hardly any stray events of fights ,quarrels between sportspersons or any doping scandals throughout the event schedule.

Equestrian events dominated by European giants (Germans & Britons).

North Korea`s Kim Un Guk broke the world record in men`s 62 kg category weight-lifting on the way to win gold

Apart from the dazzling sporting events, there was the advent of interactive Google Doodle which ruled the hearts of every Olympic enthusiast whether it was basketball ,atheletics etc with Facebook wall posts and tweets galloping the internet space in no time .

Well every good thing/phenomenon needs to come to an end.So was it. The closing ceremony of the London 2012 Summer Olympics was held on 12 August 2012.

 The ceremony featured a flashback fiesta to British music with The Who along with other prominent Musicians and Celebrities finishing out the performance.

The ceremony also included a handover of the Olympic flag by Boris Johnson ,Mayor of London ,to Eduardo Paes ,Mayor of Rio de Janiero ,the host city of the 2016 Summer Olympics.

   Bye London ,the sucessful hosts of Olympics 2012.

So catch the next level of Global sporting exuberance in 2016 at Brazilian city of Rio de Janiero with the Olympic flag already reaching the  host city this week.