The widely popular Chinese electronics manufacturer Xioami is making headway into the finance sector with the launch of a new product service. Termed as ‘Huoqi Bao’, the newly launched personal finance service will offer deposit rates higher than the traditional Chinese banks. The recently inaugurated financial unit by Xiaomi pits it against the big players in the online finance arena like Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu.
The China’s Apple has collaborated with a fund management company called E Fund Management that, as per Xiaomi, will expand into offering personal lending and security brokerage in the near future. The Huoqi Bao service will be accessible via an app bundled with Xiaomi’s operating system.
Xiaomi Co-Founder Hong Feng said in a statement –
We’re aiming to build a smart platform to help financial partners find high quality clients, while helping our users earn money and borrow money.
China’s two biggest internet companies, Tencent and Alibaba, have established themselves in such a short span of time. Xiaomi aims to follow the footprints of the firms and provide investors with higher growth rates and cash-on-demand service. As per Reuters report, the world’s third largest smartphone brand has recently “generated annualized returns on deposits of 4.5 percent.”
Alibaba’s financial arm Yu’E Bao was reported to have assets of worth 578 billion yuan ($93 billion) by end 2014. The E Fund Management is not exclusive to Xiaomi only and will also provide services to the Tencent’s Licaitong.
Asia’s largest e-commerce name Alibaba is keen on entering the Indian market. With all the buzz around the online space, a new pro-investment Prime Minister and the booming Mobile phone market in India, Alibaba has found a secret route to enter.
Sources claim that Chinese search and e-comm giant Alibaba will invest heavily in Micromax, acquiring upto 20 % stake in the Indian bred company. A deal that would cost the company over $ 1.2 Billion, would allow the chinese giant easy access into the market which is tough to get into for new companies.
Alibaba has also been in the news recently for investing in brands like Ouya, Meizu and Snapchat. Micromax is one of the largest mobile phone manufacturer in the domestic market. With its constant damage to Samsung’s position in India, and the new brand “YU” taking on the likes of Xiaomi and OnePlus in the local markets, Micromax makes for a good investment option.
Micromax’s new brand YU is apparently set to launch a new product in India on the 12th of May to provide a more premium outlook, taking on flagship killers. The company was also recently in the news for the sad breakup of OnePlus and Cyanogen .
The investment, however, focuses on Micromax devices and their wide spread reach. Alibaba plans to deploy services like Alipay, the company’s new payment platform. Ant Financial Services Group, which owns Alipay, is China’s largest payment service provider and is controlled by Alibaba’s executive chairman and founder Jack Ma.
Mobile payments have now been around for a while. A large number of users have by now grown accustomed to paying for their shopping through their phones. Apple and Samsung have also introduced new technologies that lets you use your phone as a credit/debit card. But the Chinese e-commerce company, Alibaba, has given a whole new look to mobile payment and has made spending your hard earned cash more fun.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma showcased their new facial recognition technology which lets users pay through their mobile devices. This new payment method is expected to be called “Smile to Pay”. This feature will let users pay for their purchases by just scanning their faces. It is something like the Apple Pay and Samsung Pay where users have to authenticate a payment by using their fingerprint instead here you get to do it with a selfie.
Mr. Jack Ma presented his innovation at the CeBit conference being held at Hanover, Germany. He gave a live demo in which he went to Alibaba’s website and clicked buy after which the facial recognition screen turned up. As soon as the software recognized Ma, the purchase was done. He said that this technology would replace passwords and this is the manner in which people will engage in online shopping in the future. Mr. Ma though did not give any more details about the technology. Smile To Pay is expected to be first released in China. We’ll learn more about it later, but you have to admit that it is a cool way to pay for your purchases.
Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, has been trying for a while to put its foot in the profitable smartphone business. The company created a record last year with the biggest IPO ever worth $25 Billion. Alibaba is now betting big on Chinese smartphone maker Meizu and has invested a sum of $590 Million in the company.
Through this merger, Alibaba would try to take its operating system Yun OS further in the market. The os is based on the Android platform and provides cloud-based features like e-mail, Web search, weather updates, and GPS navigation tools. It is also called Aliyun OS. Google had previously dissuaded Acer to ship devices based on Aliyun as it was incompatible with other Android devices, and Acer is a signatory of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA).
Meizu like Xiaomi, gets its design “inspirations” from Apple
Meizu has tried to emulate Xiaomi, which in turn “borrows” from Apple. This deal might also help Meizu to take on Xiaomi, which has replaced Samsung in China as the biggest smartphone brand. Meizu isn’t even in the top-5 of that points tally, and a push by Alibaba might work in its favor.
[quote text_size=”small” author=”Alibaba “]
Alibaba Group will provide Meizu with resources and support in the fields of e-commerce, mobile Internet, mobile operating system and data analysis with the aim of developing Meizu’s smartphone ecosystem.
[/quote]
Alibaba has, in the past, invested $280 million in a messaging app called Tango and $120 million in US game maker Kabam. But these investments are yet to bear fruit for the company. It makes sense for it to invest in an established brand rather than starting a brand from scratch.
Drone technology has taken the market by a blow. And why not, there are endless possibilities through which this technique can come to use. Now, e-commerce giant, Alibaba is set up to try drone technology for deliveries in China.
Alibaba is partnering with Shanghai YTO Express Logistics to deliver ginger tea packets to the customers who volunteered for the drone test. The remote-controlled drones will transfer packages to 450 Chinese customers today in Beijing. These drones will fly from the warehouse of Shanghai YTO Express Logistics to different destinations. A deliveryman will stand at the final spot waiting for the parcel and as soon as the drone delivers the packet, the deliveryman on the ground will hand it over to the end customer.
Alibaba’s flagship consumer-to-consumer platform Taobao said in a statement –
For consumers… such a cool consumption experience will give them more surprises
The company says they have notified Chinese Aviation Administration about the unmanned commercial flights as per the regulations issued in 2009.
The largest Internet retailer (sales) Amazon.com had started the drone delivery testing and is awaiting approval from US Federal Aviation Administration for the remote delivery testing in Washington State. The use of drones by the e-commerce websites would make deliveries faster than we could ever imagine.
Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei was barred from doing business with any American company a while ago. Because of the sanctions placed by the American government, it lost access to softwares like Android and Windows from its devices. The company was then granted a 90-day breathing window to fulfil all unfinished business with US companies. It was then reported that Huawei has secretly been working on its own Operating System (OS) for mobile devices in a bid to replace Android. According to the latest reports, the company has filed the name “Ark OS” with the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA). This application was filed on the 24th of May.
Ark OS
Reportedly, Huawei filed a claim at the DPMA for the design of certain elements of an interface. In the patent application, the company also shared screenshots of the menus inside the said interface. The images are starkly different from what the company has been doing with the current Android skin called EMUI. The applications showcased in the screenshots are allegedly Android-based. This insinuates that the purported Ark OS will support Android apps natively and will give an option to download them using a third party store.
The screenshots of the alleged Ark OS also repeatedly mention the name of the “Android Green Alliance”. This is a Chinese association formed up of companies like Tencent and Alibaba. It was formed a few years ago in an attempt to introduce quality and design standards of their apps in the Android OS. While it is not known what role will the Alliance play in the Ark OS; it may set up a standard for testing the quality of applications eligible to exist on the app store on the upcoming OS. Unfortunately, Huawei has not announced when its Android replacing OS might debut. But it is expected to make an appearance before the 90-day deadline for the company gets exhausted.
Google’s operating system Android has been really popular because of the millions of apps available on the platform. What also helps its case is the level of customisation Android devices offer. This includes the ability to sideload apps from third party sources. But, some of these sources have been known to spread spyware through bypassing the app permissions as they support older Android’s Application Programming Interface(API). Google in a bid to counter the problem, has announced that all the new apps submitted to the Play Store in the year 2019 will have to support the latest API level 28, that is Android 9 Pie.
What Does This Mean?
According to Google, over 150,000 applications have added support for runtime permissions in 2018. Shockingly, the feature was introduced back in 2016 with Android Marshmallow, which had the API level 23. This meant that these apps were capable of bypassing permissions altogether, creating a security risk. Google tackled this by mandating all new apps to support API level 26, which was in Android 8.0 Oreo. Updates to the existing apps also had to support the same API.
Google is updating these restrictions up a notch by mandating the app developers to update these apps to the latest API. Google Play Protect which was launched in 2017 is a security suite integrated into the Play Store. This service will be used to warn users of the apps not supporting the latest API. Here are the new timelines for the developers:
August 2019: New apps will be required to target API level 28 (Android 9 Pie).
November 2019: Updates to existing apps on the Play Store will be required to target API level 28(Android 9 Pie).
By 2020: The target API level will increase annually.
Android will also use the Google Play Protect to warn the users if the app they are about to sideload targets to an API level older than Android Oreo (API level 26). It has also gotten the major Chinese application markets to comply with the new API levels on their app stores. These are from companies like Huawei, OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi, Alibaba, and Baidu.
Google has said that 95% of the spyware target API level 22 (Android 5 Lollipop) or older, which creates a host of security issues. Notably, the Android platform gets monthly security patches, but some devices take a long time to be updated because of their respective OEMs. This leaves these devices vulnerable to new security threats. Therefore, this move is expected to make Android more secure.
OnePlus has started rolling out a new beta update to all the testers of the OnePlus 5T. The Oxygen OS Open Beta 3 arrives a couple of weeks after the previous update started seeding. The new update, however, will be noted for two noticeable changes. The first one is the removal of the controversial Clipboard app. The other one is the entry of gesture support.
The Clipboard app was introduced in the previous Beta build that started seeding on the 16th of January. It was reported on the OnePlus forums by a user named v1nc. The user found this out by accident when NetGuard blocked the Clipboard app from accessing the network. Clipboard app basically stores all the copy-pasted data on your phone. Further investigation revealed that the app was trying to ping a server that was an Alibaba owned property.
Although OnePlus came out and quashed these reports, it has now removed the app from the latest beta build.
The other notable change is the addition of iPhone X-like gestures for navigation. Users now have the option of disabling on-screen navigation buttons. Once disabled, users have to use gestures to navigate through the UI. The gestures are not exactly like the ones found on the iPhone X but, are somewhat similar.
Homebar On The iPhone X
Another change is in the incoming call screen. Users can now choose to slide up or down to answer or ignore an incoming call. Here is a list of all the new changes:
The introduction of gestures is an interesting move by OnePlus. With smartphones moving to an all-screen design, wasting that little space on navigation buttons seem counterproductive. Although traditionally, Android OS has had navigation buttons, a slow introduction of gestures can go a long way in helping consumers get acclimatised with the new way of navigation.
Nokia 3310 4G variant has been launched in China after weeks of speculations. HMD Global has listed the device on official Nokia website and has partnered with China Mobile. The global availability and price of the phone are likely to be announced at MWC 2018.
New Nokia 3310
The new 3310 4G will be available in two colour variants, Fresh Blue and Deep Black. The previous variant of the phone was launched in four colours, Warm Red and Yellow (both with a gloss finish), and Dark Blue and Grey (both with a matte finish). The other difference between the 2G version and the new one is the OS. The new one runs YunOS, which is a forked Android version built by China’s Alibaba. The older variant runs Nokia Series 30+ OS and its 3G variant runs Java-based Feature OS. The feature phone also comes preloaded with an MP3 player.
Specifications
The new Nokia 3310 has a 2.4 inch QVGA colour display with a 320 x 240 px resolution.
Compared to 16MB storage available on its original 2G version, the new 4G variant has 256MB of RAM and 512MB of onboard storage. The storage is expandable up to 64GB via a microSD card. These specifications seem archaic in today’s world where we might witness a smartphone with 10GB of RAM.
Original Nokia 3310
The original Nokia 3310 was launched in 2000 and over the years, has gained a cult status. Not just tech enthusiasts but, people all over the internet have made the Nokia 3310 famous, owing to its “indestructible” build quality.
One of the most popular mobile web browsers in India, UC Browser is under the scanner for reportedly sending data from Indian users out of the country. According to a report by Business Standard, “a government lab in Hyderabad is probing how UC Browser can send user details and location data to a remote server.”
This aforementioned lab is the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), an R&D organisation for the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, under the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. If found guilty, the Alibaba-owned app could be banned. Further, the report said that the government plans on sending notices to Reliance Jio’s smartphone brand, LYF, and others including Meizu and Videocon.
The same report adds that the UC Browser sends data including device’s IMEI number and location data to a server in China on connecting to a Wi-Fi network.
This report comes a week after the government had asked over 21 smartphone companies, the majority of them being Chinese manufacturers, to outline the procedures and processes adopted by them to ensure security and privacy of users’ data. To submit the detailed responses on security practices, August 28 has been set as the deadline on the basis of which the government would verify and audit the devices.
In May 2015, a Canadian technology research group reported that Alibaba Group Holding Ltd paid more than $1 billion for leaking sensitive user data and said that it is a privacy risk. Another report states that the UC Browser is the most popular mobile browser in India, accounting for nearly a 50 percent share of the market, ahead of Chrome, which is a little over 33 percent, and Opera, which is nearly at 10 percent. UC Browser once accounted for over 60 per cent of the market share in India, but, has lost out a little of its share to Google Chrome since then.
Reacting to the reports of leaking mobile data of its Indian users to China, the Alibaba-owned browser UCWeb made statement on Wednesday saying that the company would never breach the trust of its users. and it takes security and privacy issues very seriously.
Flipkart is reportedly closing in on taking over e-commerce rivals Snapdeal. A report claims that the Snapdeal board has accepted Flipkart’s offer in the region of $900-$950 million last week. The future of Snapdeal has been a topic of discussion for the longest time and looks like the speculations will finally end now as the deal reaches a completion.
Snapdeal has raised over $1.5 billion over the years including, from investors such Alibaba and Softbank. Snapdeal was valued at $6.5 billion as recently as 2015 and is now set to be taken over by Flipkart for under $1 billion. It has also been reported that other assets such as FreeCharge, which Snapdal acquired two years ago will be sold off to Axis Bank.
Flipkart’s new CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy, who took up the position in January of this year seems to be on the track of resurging the e-commerce giants. Under his leadership, Flipkart looks to be preparing to go head-on against global e-commerce leader Amazon. Flipkart also recently raised funding of $1.4 billion from eBay, Microsoft and Tencent at a valuation of $11.4 billion. All in the while acquiring eBay.in under its portfolio.
eBay recently sold its India business, eBay India Private Limited, to Flipkart.
With Snapdeal’s acquisition, Flipkart and Amazon will be the only players in the e-commerce space and this duopoly is a bad news for any other up-and-coming e-commerce player. Flipkart seems to be making up the ground it lost to Amazon in the recent past and this aggressive Snapdeal acquisition is just another step towards gaining back that power position.
Amazon’s heavy investments in their Indian businesses, as much as $5 billion, since it launched India operations in late-2012 indicate that Amazon is serious about turning this duopoly into a monopoly. The e-commerce war is in full swing and it’ll be interesting to see how this pans out in the coming years.
According to reports, Yahoo might be considering to put itself or its core businesses up for sale. This could include selling off Yahoo’s internet business, spinning off its shares in Alibaba, or doing both.
Yahoo has been deteriorating slowly through the years, and CEO Marissa Mayer had been given several years to work on it, in the hope to turn things around. Despite all of that, Yahoo’s biggest asset remains its stake in Alibaba. The company was planning to spin off its holdings in Alibaba for a while, however, the plan was never executed due to tax concerns.
If Yahoo does decide on selling off its internet business shares, it will end up remaining barely anything more than a holding company for its Alibaba shares. On the other hand if they decide to keep the internet business and let go of its Alibaba holdings; that will just leave Yahoo a weaker company than it is now. Despite such worrying reports emerging, Yahoo has not made any official announcement yet.
‘Make in India’ is an initiative that was started back in September 2014 by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. The principal objective of this initiative is to build manufacturing firms within India to generate more job opportunities and improve the skills of the people of India across different sectors like automobile, aviation, biotechnology, defence manufacturing, mining, oil and gas, ports, railways, textile and much more. As a part of the ‘Make in India’ campaign, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has launched the ‘Digital India Week’ today. He says the campaign is a part of a grander plan in the future and hopes to give better services with the use of IT.
Narendra Modi has been named as the chairman of the Digital India Week, where he also unveiled the official logo of the campaign that seeks to transform India into a digital powerhouse. For this campaign, Digital India will provide broadband connectivity to all panchayats, Wi-fi in all the schools and universities and public wi-fi hotspots in all important cities by 2019. It will be extended for giving services in areas like health, education, agriculture and banking. The vision is focused on three important areas:
Digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen
Governance and service on Demand
Digital empowerment of Citizens
The event saw tech powerhouses like Reliance Industries, Tata Group, Wipro, Bharti Group, etc. investing crores on the Digital India Programme.
Officials say a plan will also be announced for “billions of dollars” of investment, most likely in manufacturing—critical for a government that needs to create more jobs, at a faster rate.
India’s first cyber prime minister, Modi has used social media and particularly Twitter, where he has 13 million followers, to fashion himself as a leader in handling technology.
With a growing economy and declining handset prices, India is one of the fastest developing smartphone markets in the world, and Modi is looking to harness India’s potential for social development in fields like education and health.
For now, many companies are in support of the Make in India campaign. Companies from China like Alibaba and Xiaomi showed their full backing for the project. Alibaba Chairman said, “We are excited about India. We are excited about Make in India and Digital India.” Xiaomi President Lin Bin too showed his support and stated, “We have some big plans for India. We fully support Make in India.”
Many companies have started putting up production houses in India like Celkon, Foxconn, Mercedes-Benz, etc.
This initiative looks very promising. This can improve the economic well-being of Indian masses.
Let us see how the campaign shapes up in the future.
You can also follow Make in India YouTube campaign here.
‘Make in India’ is an initiative that was started back in September 2014 by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. The primary objective of this initiative is to create manufacturing firms within India to create more job opportunities and enhance the skills of the people of India across different sectors like automobile, aviation, biotechnology, defence manufacturing, mining, oil and gas, ports, railways, textile and much more. With this initiative, the Government of India hopes to bring in high-quality standards and minimise the impact on the environment.
The scope and potential, the breadth and length of infrastructure and related developments is very huge in India: PM @narendramodi
Many companies are in support of the Make in India campaign. Companies from China like Alibaba and Xiaomi showed their full backing for the project. Alibaba Chairman said, “We are excited about India. We are excited about Make in India and Digital India.” Xiaomi President Lin Bin too, showed his support and stated, “We have some big plans for India. We fully support Make in India.”
In response to the Make in India call, The United Kingdom announced in January, about its campaign to forge collaborations with Indian companies. Dubbed as the ‘Great Collaboration’, it will be the first partnership between UK’s BP Petroleum company and India’s Reliance Industries Limited for developing and producing energy. The UK and the Indian Prime Ministers have already appreciated the financial ties between the two countries.
Many companies have started putting up manufacturing houses in India. Celkon, one of the leading cellphone players, is right now in the planning process of setting up its manufacturing firm in Medchal, Telangana. IT Minister, KT Rama Rao, said the manufacturing business unit will be set up within a few days after June and will begin with four production lines, and will eventually increase its capacity to higher levels.
Celkon Plant in Medchal, Telangana
Similarly, Foxconn Technology, who is one of the world’s largest contract makers of electronic products, is trying to develop 10-12 facilities in India, including factories by 2020. The Taiwan-based tech giant said that the company is in talks to manufacture Apple iPhones in India. This could lower the price on the world’s No.3 smartphone market where the US firm trails Samsung Electronics and local players.
Mercedes-Benz will be doubling its annual capacity in India to 20,000 units, thanks to the Make in India project. India will also be the first market to receive the GLA entry SUV outside of Germany.
“India is one of the focus markets for Mercedes-Benz internationally, and with the addition of a new plant, we are getting future ready,” said company India MD & CEO Eberhard Kern. The plant was inaugurated by Maharastra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and Union environment minister Prakash Javadekar. With the addition of the GLA SUV to the assembly line, the company now makes six models locally which include C-, E-, S-Class sedans and the ML- and GL-Class SUVs. The CLA entry sedan will be added to the local assembly list later this year while the A- and B-Class models come in after that.
On a smaller scale, Amity scientists have developed a 100% safe, pure and indigenous herbal colours with absolutely no synthetic or harmful additives, in a bid to contribute towards Modi’s ‘Make in India’ initiative. “The herbal colours indigenously produced at Amity, when used extensively in all the industries, will herald a revolution in the country, which is reeling under the pressure of products loaded with synthetic components and chemicals,” said Harsha Kharkwal, faculty at Amity University.
In February 2015, Huawei opened a new research and development (R&D) campus in Bengaluru. It had invested $170 million to establish the research and development centre. In February 2015, Hitachi said it was committed to the initiative. It said that it would raise its employees in India from 10,000 to 13,000, and it would try to boost its revenues from India from ¥100 billion in 2013 to ¥210 billion. It said that an auto component plant will be set up in Chennai in 2016.
This initiative looks very promising. It is understandable that many more companies will join in, soon.This can create a lot of job opportunities here in India and improve the economic well-being of its masses.
Let us see how the campaign shapes up in the future.
You can also follow Make in India YouTube campaign here.
HERE maps, previously known as Ovi Maps or Nokia Maps, is an alternative of Google Maps and Apple Maps service. Nokia was in talks with buyers to sell out its maps unit, but seems like Facebook has inked a deal to power maps on its various platforms.
The social networking site is presently using Here maps on the mobile version of its website, and on other applications like Facebook Messenger and Instagram. The Facebook spokesperson confirmed the same through statement –
We are testing Nokia HERE maps across Facebook to give us more control and flexibility in delivering a consistent maps experience.
Nokia confirmed that it is seeking buyers to sell out its $2 billion Here map. The Finnish tech brand spent $8.1 billion to buy Chicago-based digital map maker, Navteq, in an effort to capitalize its market for mobile search, but the buy-out deemed unprofitable. Hence, in April, Nokia roped in the heavyweights of technology including Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba Group, etc. to sell its maps business. According to Techcrunch, one of those potential buyers has already sealed a deal with Nokia.
For now, Facebook has not given any details about its availability on iOS.
