Phone, Tablet and Gizmo Thread #0x02

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 27 Feb 2013 07:38

Tizen is Sammy's leverage (and hedge) against Chacha's Android. From Rubin mian's rumblings, it looks like aal is naat well between Chacha and Sammy (and you heard it here first many moons ago!

).

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 27 Feb 2013 08:15

it could be a force-in-being. developed and kept there to prove kaveri-NG capability while importing cheaper 414-EPE

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 27 Feb 2013 08:24

The reason I am skeptical (Sammy might prove me wrong) is that the two successful mobile OSes has been done by 2 companies with the muscle to develop software and deploy online services. GB couldnt do it. HP couldnt do it. BB struggled with it. M$ has been a bit late. Every other phunwa maker saw the writing on the wall and ditched the BS they used to call software.

The question is, does Sammy have the muscle to develop top notch software and services.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 27 Feb 2013 08:34

Raja Bose wrote:Tizen is Sammy's leverage (and hedge) against Chacha's Android. From Rubin mian's rumblings, it looks like aal is naat well between Chacha and Sammy (and you heard it here first many moons ago! ).

When GOOG didn't openly support Sammy in the case against AAPL it was starting to become clear the relationship between Sammy and GOOG wasn't going well. Then MOTO had ads against Sammy. That was crazy.
Nothing would please me more than Sammy kicking GOOG in the seat of the pants to teach them a lesson that you don't mess with hardware guys.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 27 Feb 2013 08:38

Anyone follow the "you cant work from home" memo of the first lady of sillicon valley and the consequent heartburn? Apparently employees are OUTRAGED that they have to actually show up at work and not spend time sitting on their musharraf at home.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 27 Feb 2013 08:48

Anujan wrote:The reason I am skeptical (Sammy might prove me wrong) is that the two successful mobile OSes has been done by 2 companies with the muscle to develop software and deploy online services. GB couldnt do it. HP couldnt do it. BB struggled with it. M$ has been a bit late. Every other phunwa maker saw the writing on the wall and ditched the BS they used to call software.

The question is, does Sammy have the muscle to develop top notch software and services.

They have the muscle without a doubt - it all depends on how serious they are and from the looks of it (at least till date), Tizen is no Bada.

However, in general it is important to remember one thing which has been observed historically in the mobile industry. There is nobody who is dominant forever - user preferences change, technologies change, trends change and incumbents get blindsided. What people forget is that there were successful mobile OSs before iOS and Android, and there will be others after them. Every evolution step results in the incumbents getting unseated. WinMo got unseated by Symbian (which was the 1st to have a consortium based approach which didn't depend on a single platform vendor), Symbian got unseated by iOS and Android (touch+app centric UX) despite having a market share of 85% at one time, in the middle there was BB (push email on-to-go, something Motor Oil failed to see as the future even though it developed the original BB device),.....so on. Then you have slightly less successful ones which didn't dominate as decisively during their heydays as WinMo, Symbian, BB, iOS or Android such as Palm which did the whole PDA thing. So things change pretty fluidly. For all we know in 5 years time, Takla Co. could be #1 in mobile platforms then and we would all be thinking how can anybody ever beat them. Another important thing to remember is that technology is not the only parameter in the equation otherwise something like WebOS would be the #1 mobile OS instead of being discarded like a NLI jernail's pajama.

As I always says, the only thing constant is change and that's what makes it all interesting.

---

Marissa is getting lot of rotten veggies thrown her way for that memo.

She has a valid point re. f2f collaboration but the blanket way she is enforcing it is not the way to go. Instead she can restrict WFH to 1 day a week max or something - a lot of people will agree with that.

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 27 Feb 2013 10:31

Frankly, WFH is fine in places with extreme weather. I have lived in Buffalo and going to work every morning used to be tiresome in the winter. But in bay area, where practically every day is nice and sunny why is it such a pain to get off your musharraf and go to work 5 days a week? Mayer motorham is right on this one.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 27 Feb 2013 11:11

Taipei, Wednesday, February 27, 2013 13:59 (GMT+8)
LG Display sees 90% drop in iPad panel shipments in January 2013
Rebecca Kuo, Tainan; Alex Wolfgram, DIGITIMES [Tuesday 26 February 2013]

LG Display's panel shipments for the 9.7-inch iPad dropped to 600,000 units in January 2012, down from six million units in the previous month, according to industry sources.

The sources said the drop is largely due to the growing popularity of the iPad mini as well as to increasing demand for low-priced tablets. Additionally, January is traditionally a slow period for panel shipments, added the observers.

The 90% on-month drop was a major contributing factor to LG Display's overall performance in January, but the company is expected to see a rebound in its panel shipments for the 9.7-inch iPad during the second quarter due to an expected release of Apple's next-generation iPad in the third quarter, the sources noted.

LG is still currently shipping 3.5-4 million panels a month for the iPad mini, but that amount made up most of the company's five million panel shipments during January 2013, revealed the sources.

Meanwhile, research firm WitsView stated that in the first half of 2013, 35% of Apple's tablet shipments will be for the iPad while the remaining percentage is expected to be for the iPad mini.

The iPad

LG Display's 9.7-inch iPad panel shipments drop 90% on month in January 2013
Photo: Michael Lee, Digitimes, January 2013

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 27 Feb 2013 13:01

Anujan wrote:Anyone follow the "you cant work from home" memo of the first lady of sillicon valley and the consequent heartburn? Apparently employees are OUTRAGED that they have to actually show up at work and not spend time sitting on their musharraf at home.

I posted my take on it in the IT and Linux thread:
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 1#p1417041

Neela · Post by **Neela** » 27 Feb 2013 18:15

Noobie question...who pays for the 3G access on Kindles and other tablets?

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 27 Feb 2013 21:19

On Kindle readers, I believe it is included in the price, but on the Kindle Fire and other tablets, you pay a monthly fee of $10 to $25 per month.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 28 Feb 2013 00:00

BlackBerry's Blunder In India
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1228441 ... r-in-india

India is the second largest phone market in the world. As of October 2012, the country had ~910 million phones in circulation, second only to China. Compare this to the US subscriber base of ~330 million.In India, phone carriers don't subsidize their phones. While in the United States we are used to getting a cushy discount when we sign the everlasting 2-year contract, most people in India are on prepaid phone plans. Because of this, carriers don't bother to even offer to pay a portion of any device that you may purchase. The BlackBerry 10 line of phones isn't designed for the bargain-bin; they are made to compete in the highest tier of smartphones. This makes them expensive to design, produce, and update. It should come as no surprise then that BlackBerry released the Z10 for a whopping $800 in India, translating to 43,490 rupees.$800 is a lot of money. If any of us spoiled Americans walked into a phone store and were asked to pay $800 for a new device, chances are we would walk away and find a different provider. It's hard to imagine people in India, where the average person makes $1,410 a year, to shell out that kind of cash for an electronic device

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 28 Feb 2013 00:17

^^Well massaland carriers offer cushy discounts and then get $50-60 per month from you for 2 years. Who can afford to pay such amounts per month in India? Nothing is free. The "discount" offered in US is more like a monthly installment plan with interest in disguise where the carrier recovers entire handset cost and then some by screwing you over a 2 year period.

Abhijeet · Post by **Abhijeet** » 28 Feb 2013 02:13

I expect Apple sales to jump in India shortly. They have tied up with a couple of distributors to offer an installment plan for the iPhone (5, 4S and 4, I think) -- something like Rs. 17K down and Rs. 2500 per month for x months. Fullsize front page ads in the Times of India in Mumbai. Seems like a good deal, and a lot of people in India want the iPhone brand. The older iPhones are now in the Rs. 25K territory for outright purchase and I see a lot more of them here.

============

Does Talkatone not work on iOS? I use it to call US numbers from my Android phone and it works great over Wifi or 3G, and it's as convenient as dialing a local India number.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 28 Feb 2013 06:50

Jhujar wrote:BlackBerry's Blunder In India
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1228441 ... r-in-india

India is the second largest phone market in the world. As of October 2012, the country had ~910 million phones in circulation, second only to China. Compare this to the US subscriber base of ~330 million.In India, phone carriers don't subsidize their phones. While in the United States we are used to getting a cushy discount when we sign the everlasting 2-year contract, most people in India are on prepaid phone plans. Because of this, carriers don't bother to even offer to pay a portion of any device that you may purchase. The BlackBerry 10 line of phones isn't designed for the bargain-bin; they are made to compete in the highest tier of smartphones. This makes them expensive to design, produce, and update. It should come as no surprise then that BlackBerry released the Z10 for a whopping $800 in India, translating to 43,490 rupees.$800 is a lot of money. If any of us spoiled Americans walked into a phone store and were asked to pay $800 for a new device, chances are we would walk away and find a different provider. It's hard to imagine people in India, where the average person makes $1,410 a year, to shell out that kind of cash for an electronic device

That's a stupid article from seeking alpha. They should substitute 'spoiled Americans' with 'dumb Americans'....becoz in massa we gotta pay thru our nose for 2 yr lockdown contracts for a measly few hundred dollars discount and we have no choice, unlike in India.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 28 Feb 2013 07:03

Everything in the usa is about payment plans anyway. Except some desis who wants to pay cash down for any big purchase?
Its all about being in lifelong debt to enjoy the latest, biggest and baddest.
Works too because inflation is low, food and petrol is cheap and some form of old age medicare,social security is there.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 28 Feb 2013 07:55

The article is stupid. Massa land people end up paying more for phones though higher subscription rates and also compulsorily upgrading your plan (used to be the case you couldn't get a iphunwa on ATT without data plan). In aggregate ends up costing more than buying phone outright and going prepaid. But it is right in a way. BB should hit more pricepoints and they will.

Fruitco is big into expanding in emerging markets and China to keep their growth up.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 28 Feb 2013 07:59

Today the verge talks about the "third front" we talked about yesterday.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/27/40313 ... mobile-web

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 28 Feb 2013 08:22

Sammy makes the Samsung Wallet

It would be interesting to see if they launch this via Chacha's Play Store or Sammy's own App Store. Anyhow it looks just like the Fruit Co. Passbook app in terms of the UI.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 28 Feb 2013 09:14

Anujan wrote:Today the verge talks about the "third front" we talked about yesterday.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/27/40313 ... mobile-web

This is you... from the first post of last page:

Now lets all collectively diss firefox OS and why it sucks

But while I always believed that FirefoxOS had lot going for it, but turns out there is one more thing. Apparently Sony too would launch FirefoxOS phone...

Didn't really expect such support from major players like Sony LG Huawei ZTE Others(who don't matter).. basically everyone other than only company making money selling android phones and Googarola.

So two things:

1) Captain Obvious: They are not happy with sales/margins.
2) For the nth time, Elop was right

Yup he was right... what matters more than having android... is the marketing budget. Elop chose to take Microsofts free money.... and they make more profits than collective profits of LG Sony ZTE Huawei(all selling Android, now supporting FirefoxOS).

That is why Google is crapping their pants.... because with USD 10 Billion that Samsung spends of marketing... they can sell pretty much any OS. With all the Chaton, S-stuff, Wallet app etc they have pretty much every piece in place.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 28 Feb 2013 09:18

"The lets all diss firefox" was sarcasm saar. After I pointed out that it might sell more than windows phunwa and compete with it, dissing firefox was the first thing that came to mind

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 28 Feb 2013 09:19

anmol wrote: 2) For the nth time, Elop was right

About trusting M$ and releasing a phunwa that couldnt be upgraded? About sticking with a platform that is unpopular (so far) instead of competing with a platform that is popular? Do you realize that Sammy makes windows Phunwa too? Nokia is competing with Sammy, HTC, LG no matter what OS they put on? So now would you compete for a slice of a small pie or compete for a slice of the big pie with the same set of people? If you read Nokia's earnings carefully, their devices and services is still losing money. They are selling lesser total number of devices and they are selling lesser smartphones. The "profit" that you talk about is from Nokia Siemens network division that has nothing to do with advertising dollars from M$ (hint: People who buy products and services from Nokia Siemens Networks arent the ones who are the advertisement watching types)

And somehow advertising sells phones now? Not shiny hardware, services, distribution and good software? Quick: Guess how many Lumias were sold on sprint? Zero! Because Nokia does not have a deal with Sprint! How will users buy a phone if it is not being sold hain ji?

Samsung leads the market because they are a manufacturing behemoth. From panels to processors and flash. Not because they produce warm and fuzzy ads. Other companies, like ell-jee, even when they are handed a hit, cant make enough to sell. Long back, Intel was crapping its pants expecting Sammy to buy AMD. And that was not because Sammy can run better ads than Intel

Hint: AMD has its chips on all three big consoles due to be out. Imagine Sammy supplying parts for those consoles and coming out with a line of laptops that exclusively use AMD. They already control a significant margin of phones and tablets (almost all if you also count parts supplied to FruitCo). Intel would be cut out of making anything for consumer computing ever again. Would probably exist only in server market.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 28 Feb 2013 09:46

Down the line, Android will have similar concerns for Chacha like Symbian did for GB - any consortium based platform which has one sooper power top dog is going to face this problem regardless. Chacha knew that from before and purchased Motor Oil to hedge against it. OT but, all that PR about "buying it to protect Android from patents wars onlee" was BS anyways since most of Motor Oil's patents are standards based (so subject to FRAND licensing) and a big chunk of the rest are due for divestment

. And the govt sector patents which were a big money spinner for Motor Oil are part of the other spin-off Motor Oil Solutions hence, not relevant to Chacha (or accessible).

Anyhow GB's reasoning for not going with Android was likely the correct one despite popular objection due to the following:
1) GB made money from its L&C services which provided it much needed cash during the downtime (and still continues) - this also makes the cash flow +ve in GB's direction after it started paying Mickey the fee per handset. If it had gone with Android, it would pay Chacha the handset fee but could not monetize its L&C services and would be reduced to a pure handset maker like HTC which is not good for the long-term based on current industry trends. The reason was Chacha during negotiations had flatly refused to give it access to Chacha services if GB wanted to use its own mapping services which competed with Chacha (in fact way back Chacha used to be GB's customer for mapping data when it abruptly canceled the contract becoz it was going to build a rival service). Chacha had floated an offer where it would purchase NAVTEQ from GB for cash as part of the deal but that was rejected by GB. So only choice for GB would be to do a Takla with Android but it neither had the time, money or breathing room for that.

2) Sammy was too far ahead in Android and had much better B2B deals with Chacha while GB would have to join at the end of the queue. So it would be worse off than someone like Huawei or even Dell.

Whether GB is out of the woods is still an open question (I don't think they will be before 2014 at least as predicted here many moons ago) but going Android would probably have not even made them profitable like they were in Q4 2012.

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 28 Feb 2013 09:50

GB was not a good fit for Android. Their service offerrings clashed with Chacha's offerings. If it were purely a transaction of "OS for a Phone" they could have gone either way. The issue was that they had Navteq which competes with Chacha's maps. Both are valuable for both companies strategies and neither would give it up.

Given that Android was out of the question, it was a choice between Stick it out with their home grown Meego or go the M$ way. And M$ didnt do them a favor and neither was it some kind of a brilliant decision that somehow proved Elop was right. I personally think they could have made Meego work.

When people are dreaming of Tizen and UbuntuOS and Firefox OS and all that which are purely vaporware as of now, they had a working phone with Meego on it. They had a head start on BB. They had the services (maps, music etc) to back it. They could have persisted with it. With their carrier relationship (IIRC Nokia has the largest set of carrier relationships like direct carrier billing ityadi) they could have very well become the "third front".

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 28 Feb 2013 10:00

I wish manufacturers would make a phone or tablet where I could flash any OS I wanted to on it. Maybe that's what GB should do, come out and sell their stuff unlocked and state which device is compatible with a particular OS. It will never happen, but one can dream....

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 28 Feb 2013 10:05

Anujan wrote:GB was not a good fit for Android. Their service offerrings clashed with Chacha's offerings. If it were purely a transaction of "OS for a Phone" they could have gone either way. The issue was that they had Navteq which competes with Chacha's maps. Both are valuable for both companies strategies and neither would give it up.

Given that Android was out of the question, it was a choice between Stick it out with their home grown Meego or go the M$ way. And M$ didnt do them a favor and neither was it some kind of a brilliant decision that somehow proved Elop was right. I personally think they could have made Meego work.

When people are dreaming of Tizen and UbuntuOS and Firefox OS and all that which are purely vaporware as of now, they had a working phone with Meego on it. They had a head start on BB. They had the services (maps, music etc) to back it. They could have persisted with it. With their carrier relationship (IIRC Nokia has the largest set of carrier relationships like direct carrier billing ityadi) they could have very well become the "third front".

To put it in a nutshell, MeeGo was not ready to save GB's bacon. Again it was a case of good technology, bad wheeling dealing just like WebOS. MeeGo was and is the most user friendly mobile OS I have used till date - the N9 device is still the benchmark I hold mobile phone design to in terms of groundbreaking yet practical design (Fruit Co. never learned the latter and Sammy never learned the former). If GB had planned it properly they wouldn't have needed Mickey and his warez. As it happens, they didn't do it right (esp. on the carrier/telecom operator front which is what killed it) and Mickey was the only choice they had to get some breathing room and turn the ship around. Anyways Mickey doesn't do anybody favours, he is a hard nosed businessman. That's the only reason it has survived and grown so consistently for 3 decades while it peers died/faded away or had near death experiences like Fruit Co. Everything is a partnership of convenience, nobody does anything for free whether its Mickey, Chacha, Fruit Co., ChipZ, NetZ etc.

Mort Walker wrote: I wish manufacturers would make a phone or tablet where I could flash any OS I wanted to on it. Maybe that's what GB should do, come out and sell their stuff unlocked and state which device is compatible with a particular OS. It will never happen, but one can dream....

Actually prior to 2010 most of GB's sales revenue for handsets came from unlocked devices. They were also the first ones to take on US carriers to force them to sell unlocked phones with no carrier bloatware. That put it in the doghouse with the carriers who have elephantine memories like our gobermint babus and the latest "exclusive" ATT deals for Lumia 920 are punishment to atone for those transgressions of the past.

Telecom carriers in massa are a monopolist scourge which need to be reformed urgently. They are protectionist, engage in unfair trade practices and stifle innovation more than any furrin chipanda goods invasion that GOTUS loves to

about.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 28 Feb 2013 10:09

Anujan wrote:
anmol wrote: 2) For the nth time, Elop was right
About trusting M$ and releasing a phunwa that couldnt be upgraded? About sticking with a platform that is unpopular (so far) instead of competing with a platform that is popular? Do you realize that Sammy makes windows Phunwa too? Nokia is competing with Sammy, HTC, LG no matter what OS they put on? So now would you compete for a slice of a small pie or compete for a slice of the big pie with the same set of people?

And somehow advertising sells phones now? Not shiny hardware, services, distribution and good software? Quick: Guess how many Lumias were sold on sprint? Zero! Because Nokia does not have a deal with Sprint! How will users buy a phone if it is not being sold hain ji?

1) All Nokia phones no matter WP7 or WP8 have received updates, that is better than any Android OEM out there.
2) "Popularity" hardly matters, HTC have better phones and yet they sell way less than Samsung. ZTE Huawei Sony LG combined make less money selling "popular" phones than Nokia selling "unpopular" phones. Marketing dollars matter more.
3) Nokia in 1-2 years already sells more than 77% of all Windows Phones. That is better than competing with Samsung on their own turf without the help of Microsoft marketing dollars.
4) 77% of smaller pie is already making them more money than whatever %ge sales of much bigger android pie of LG Sony Huawei ZTE etc.
5) Yes advertising sell phones.
6) What does Nokia's deal with Sprint have to do with advertising ? Have HTC 8X's and One's availability on all networks.. helped it to sell more phones than Nokia and Samsung ? Also, I think two WPs are coming to Sprint.

Samsung leads the market because they are a manufacturing behemoth. From panels to processors and flash. Not because they produce warm and fuzzy ads. Other companies, like ell-jee, even when they are handed a hit, cant make enough to sell. Long back, Intel was crapping its pants expecting Sammy to buy AMD. And that was not because Sammy can run better ads than Intel

Hint: AMD has its chips on all three big consoles due to be out. Imagine Sammy supplying parts for those consoles and coming out with a line of laptops that exclusively use AMD. They already control a significant margin of phones and tablets (almost all if you also count parts supplied to FruitCo). Intel would be cut out of making anything for consumer computing ever again. Would probably exist only in server market.

Yes being manufacturing behemoth does help, to have good specs. But one still need advertising to sell products. Case in point: HTC phones with better design and better specs that sell way less than Samsung's phones. USD 10 billion means that aam admi know everything about Samsung's latest phones. And 100-200 million that HTC probably spends means few tech nerds know about HTC phones.

Speaking of LG, isn't that the case with EVERY Nexus manufacturer ? Reason is obviously that no OEM wants to share their profits, they would rather use Nexus to advertise their own capabilities and sell their own phones. BTW, is there any shortage of any of the Optimus phones ?

Lastly even in Intel and AMD case, advertising matters a LOT. In last generation where Athlons were competing with Pentium 4 and Athlon was technically superior, Intel's advertising muscle meant that they managed to sell lot more Pentium 4s than Athlons. Aam admi knew about Intel and Pentiums and asked for Intel. While tech nerds knew the value of Athlons, and asked for that but that didn't help AMD too much. In current generation with their Bulldozer - Piledriver etc AMD is in too much trouble. They simply can't compete in anything. Not in single thread performance, multitasking nor power consumption. While Intel is preparing for Haswell and Baytrail.. forget their current gen Ivy-bridges even their Sandy chips are beating latest piledrivers.

Socombine that with Intels marketing strength... aam admi don't want AMD and even tech nerds don't want AMD. So I have doubt Samsung can help. But hopefully their steamroller would do better.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 28 Feb 2013 10:30

Mort Walker wrote:I wish manufacturers would make a phone or tablet where I could flash any OS I wanted to on it. Maybe that's what GB should do, come out and sell their stuff unlocked and state which device is compatible with a particular OS. It will never happen, but one can dream....

No need to dream... Asus and iMate are pushing Microsoft towards this. iMate have already shown concept art with intel chips and Windows 8(not the locked RT).

Also why do any of those messy flashes, when one can simply run whatever OS in hy-perv or Virtualbox ?

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 28 Feb 2013 10:38

Windows8 (x86) = WinRT + Desktop.
Windows8(ARM) = WinRT (no desktop apps run time since there are no legacy Win7/XP style desktop apps for ARM). That is why only MS office runs in that "desktop" mode on SurfaceRT since it is a placeholder patch by Mickey.

WinRT is the cross platform run-time for Windows and is the run-time environment in which the metro style apps run in. It is not a separate OS. Whoever named the Surface RT as Surface RT should be administered a 1000 stribes.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 28 Feb 2013 10:45

is it really an RTOS?

Anujan · Post by **Anujan** » 28 Feb 2013 10:53

RTOS is different from Run Time.

Operating system Run Time provides a set of services that programs use while running (hence the "run time"). Like opening a file or writing to the screen.

RTOS is typically used to refer to a real-time OS. Where there are guarantees (hard real time/soft real time) about certain things finishing before a deadline. It requires pretty painful engineering and hardware support. Typically for exotic applications like Car brake control, industrial control ityadi. True RTOS'es (not OS'es that provide "real time" threads which are nothing but high priority processes which can enable interrupt masking) are rare in general purpose consumer applications.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 28 Feb 2013 11:31

Raja Bose wrote:Windows8 (x86) = WinRT + Desktop.
Windows8(ARM) = WinRT (no desktop apps run time since there are no legacy Win7/XP style desktop apps for ARM). That is why only MS office runs in that "desktop" mode on SurfaceRT since it is a placeholder patch by Mickey.

WinRT is the cross platform run-time for Windows and is the run-time environment in which the metro style apps run in. It is not a separate OS. Whoever named the Surface RT as Surface RT should be administered a 1000 stribes.

Its not Windows RT... iMate concept uses Windows 8 pro with intel chips

Abhijeet · Post by **Abhijeet** » 28 Feb 2013 12:46

I used to think the US subsidized phone model was stupid till I came to India. The lack of carrier subsidized phones here means that buying a half decent phone means paying a bomb for something that will be outdated in a year or so. I can't justify spending $900 on an iPhone when the next model will be out in a year anyway.

As a result, most people stick to feature phones or the lower end smartphones. Even if subsidized phones+data plan charges add up to more than if you had bought the phone outright, it's still a good deal for most people since it brings a much larger set of phones down to affordable price points.

rajkumar · Post by **rajkumar** » 28 Feb 2013 19:54

Abhijeet wrote:I used to think the US subsidized phone model was stupid till I came to India.

Its not subsidized...you are paying more by the time you multiply your monthly installment with the number of months for the minimum contract and it gets worse...my Nokia N8 is now not able to hold its charge and I have to keep it plugged in constantly but I can't change till June this year because I am on a 24 month deal!!

nachiket · Post by **nachiket** » 28 Feb 2013 20:09

Abhijeet wrote:I used to think the US subsidized phone model was stupid till I came to India. The lack of carrier subsidized phones here means that buying a half decent phone means paying a bomb for something that will be outdated in a year or so. I can't justify spending $900 on an iPhone when the next model will be out in a year anyway.

As a result, most people stick to feature phones or the lower end smartphones. Even if subsidized phones+data plan charges add up to more than if you had bought the phone outright, it's still a good deal for most people since it brings a much larger set of phones down to affordable price points.

Saar, like I said, few people in India can afford to pay massa-level monthly charges for mobile plans. So it would amount to the same thing. Even if iPhunwa was being sold at 10k, nobody would buy it if it meant paying Rs. 3000 per month for the next two years instead of their usual amount.

When I was using a dumb phone in India with a prepaid plan, Rs. 3000 would last me for almost a year. This was before 2008, but call tariffs haven't increased much since then. Only the data plan would be extra today.

Neela · Post by **Neela** » 28 Feb 2013 20:47

Mort Walker wrote:On Kindle readers, I believe it is included in the price, but on the Kindle Fire and other tablets, you pay a monthly fee of $10 to $25 per month.

Thanks Mort-ji.
I find it a little strange that you pay for 3G when you buy the device and not later. Your kindle reader will download books on the strongest 3G signal available in whichever part of the world you are in. So then does Amazon strike a deal with every network providers there is in the planet?

negi · Post by **negi** » 28 Feb 2013 23:41

Nachiket it depends on how much data you use; for my last 6 months after RTI my average postpaid bill has been between 1500-2000 INR (I had a 3GB monthly plan for 3G data). It is so ridiculous I had to switch to company owned company paid connection. In States I was paying about 90USD per month for AT&T's 8GB plan but then if you account for ratio of cost of service to one's income India is still expensive .

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 28 Feb 2013 23:42

Neela,

With Amazon you pay indirectly when you buy content on the Kindle readers - as they cannot connect to anything but Amazon content. Although 3G, content is limited on the readers since they are not a tablet.

Mort Walker · Post by **Mort Walker** » 28 Feb 2013 23:42

anmol wrote: No need to dream... Asus and iMate are pushing Microsoft towards this. iMate have already shown concept art with intel chips and Windows 8(not the locked RT).

Windows 8 is no dream - it is a nightmare!

Abhijeet · Post by **Abhijeet** » 01 Mar 2013 01:00

I think a lot of people will actually buy EMI-based phones if they are available -- high end phones are very much objects of desire and the days when Rs.3000 per month was a big expense are thankfully long past. I guess we'll find out from how well the iPhone does when sold in the EMI mode.

Negi, you can get 200MB 3G data for Rs.100 per month, which works well if you're connected to Wifi at home and work. A 1GB add on pack is another Rs.250. This is on Vodafone. So I don't think 3g rates are very high.