Smartphones Don't Make You Smart

In aChina, there were reports of people selling their kidney for Apple's iPhone smartphones and iPad tablets. Meanwhile, on the streets of Manila, some mobile subscribers are getting killed by murderous thieves who see the former's smartphone as money that will pay for their food or daily fix.

Incidents like these are either testament to how effective mobile vendors' approaches to marketing are or a symptom of how twisted our moral values have become.

Have we really gone so low? Or have we always been like this, only not as brazen as we are now?

Backup, Safety Phone

Its lineup of features and capabilities seems like a scammer's wish list. For example, it offers up to 10 hours of talk time powered only by an AA battery. And if the phone is not used, it will store the battery for up to 15 years. Yes, folks, the SpareOne mobile phone is more than a phone. It is a battery-storage device.

Put on display at the 2012 Computex exhibition in Taiwan by its maker, a subsidiary of TennRich International, the mobile phone weighs about 75 grams and comes with a 120 x 60mm body, about the size of an ordinary candy bar.

It does not have a screen. Neither does it come with a charging port or any connection ports. All it has are the bare minimum requirements for it to be called a mobile phone: a number keypad, dial and hang-up buttons, and volume control.

A small flashlight and an emergency-call button, which can dial on its own the local safety authorities, reveal its designed-for-emergencies nature.

It is not as flashy as any of the late-model smartphones in the market. But I guess every home in this country should have one or two units of this no-frills but potentially life-saving mobile phone.

Smartphone Duopoly

If the report issued by market research firm Cannacord Genuity has got its forecasts right, I am sure every government's anti-unfair competition agencies would be coming after today's two hottest mobile phone makers — Samsung and Apple.

Already the most popular and strongest vendors in the smartphone space, Samsung and Apple are forecast to account for 52.3 percent of the worldwide smartphone market by 2013, according to Cannacord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley.

Walkley believes that, combined, the two companies control 48.1 percent of the market as of end of the second quarter 2012.

More specifically, Walkley asserts that Samsung, in 2013, will control 31.3 percent of the market with 304.4 million in shipments, while Apple will ship 204.1 million units of the iPhone, or 21 percent of the market.

No wonder these two companies are saving their biggest and strongest legal punches for each other. After all, none of the other smartphone vendors matters as much as they do to each other.

I think, however, that the market is big enough to accommodate other vendors, such as Nokia and HTC. Also, I think China-based vendors ZTE and Huawei, with their capabilities to mass-produce low-cost but high-quality gadgets, can hold their own against Apple and Samsung.

That's all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.

source: mb.com.ph

Three UP students win IT competition in Madrid

Three students from the University of the Philippines (UP) won first place in “Indra Future Minds Competition,” an international Information Technology (IT) contest held in Madrid, Spain on April 26.

According to a report of Bloomsberg Businessweek on Tuesday, the UP team beat participants from:

• the Universidad Politcnica de Madrid's (UPM) School of Telecommunications in Spain, who came in second,
• the Sao Paulo Faculty of Technology in Brazil, and the UPM's School of Industrial Engineers who both shared the third place.

The UP team is composed of:

• Erwin Soleta, a Bachelor of Science in Electronics and Communications Engineering (BS ECE) student;
• Maria Katrina Volante, also a BS ECE student, and
• Benedict Ivan Andrade, a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering student.

UP’s Assistant Vice-President for Public Affairs Danilo Arao congratulated the winners.

“The recent achievement of our students in the Indra Future Minds Competition shows that UP can compete with the best and the brightest globally,” Arao told GMA News Online.

“This achievement, together with UP topping the recent licensure examinations for electrical engineers and teachers proves the students’ adherence to their values of honor and excellence in the service of the people,” he added.

The second edition of the “Indra Future Minds Competition” is launched by an IT multinational in Spain aiming to have students compete with the challenges that are faced in the current business world, such as globalization, multiculturalism or collaborative networking.

The UP team earned their victory by resolving the final Smart Cities case based on actual Indra projects for the Barcelona City government such as the design of a cloud computing solution, a simulator to optimize water management, and unmanned vehicles (UAVs) project, the report said.

Winners of the competition will join the IT multinational company in the subsidiary of the office of the students’ choice, upon completing their studies, the report added.

They will also be given monthly travel allowance for one year. - with Jon Lindley Agustin, VVP, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

Busy Microsoft

MANILA, Philippines — We are about done with the first week of Lent, a period that was supposed to be slow and conducive for reflection.

Instead, we had more of the usual — reports of killing and dying, of thieving and lying, and of hurting and maiming. Maybe it is part and parcel of our season of passion to suffer, to be tortured by these developments that highlight our seeming powerlessness, our apparent inability to make any difference at all in the overall course of things.

But don't give up. Do hold on. Lent goes on for about five weeks more.

Heavy Week

Microsoft had an interesting week. First, Cisco Systems made it known that it plans to appeal the European regulators' approval of Microsoft's purchase of Skype. Senior vice president Marthin De Beer's post on his company's blog says that while they do not oppose the merger per se, they wish the European Commission would require Microsoft to offer "standards-based interoperability."

Bottomline of Cisco Systems' opposition to the Microsoft-Skype deal has to do with the impending marriage between Skype and Microsoft's Lync unified communications system. A Skype-Lync tandem would combine the best that consumer and business telephony systems offer.

Should a closed platform emerge from the merger (which most observers think will happen), Cisco Systems' competing technologies might get left out in the rain, cold and lonely.

Meanwhile, rumor mills have been busy. According to some "news leaks," Microsoft is reportedly preparing its Tango update for the Windows Phone 7 smartphone operating system. Russian Web site WP7Forum.ru has it that the update will endow the Microsoft mobile OS with features including the ability to manage contacts right there on the SIM card.

But the most exciting bit would be the Tango's ability to run on 256MB Windows Phone, which would be like Windows 8 running on a Pentium III PC.

Sony's Vita Push

Sony launched its PlayStation Vita handheld gaming platform in the United States and European markets last week. The basic, WiFi version is priced at $250, while the 3G-equipped edition goes for $300 and a monthly data fee from AT&T.

Sony is pushing the Vita with a $50 million marketing campaign.

Unlike with its PlayStation Portable experience, however, Sony is likely to find it hard to sell the Vita. After all, for quite so long now, consumers have been used to playing games on mobile phones and other handheld gadgets that aside from doing games can also perform other tasks, such as make phone calls, take photos, shoot videos, connect to the Web, and play digital songs.

So, the million-dollar question now is why would any game-loving consumer buy the PlayStation Vita when it makes much more sense to buy an iPhone, or any Android or Windows Phone 7 smartphone instead?

The Vita comes with a 5-inch screen, front- and rear-facing cameras, and is powered by a quad-core processor, which is also found inside the market's currently fastest tablet computers.

Certainly, the Vita launch means so much for Sony. After too many quarters of not so pleasant developments, Japan's electronics giant could use some good news.

This corner hopes enough numbers of mobile gamers fall in love with the latest portable gaming console from Sony.

That's all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.

source: mb.com.ph