India long way behind China, but will see faster smartphone growth: Xiaomi’s Hugo Barra

After the successful flash sales of their Mi 3 devices, Xiaomi today announced another smartphone in the Indian market, the Redmi 1S. The 4.7-inch smartphone, with a 1.6 GHz Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor and an 8 megapixel rear camera will cost only Rs 5999 and will also follow the Mi 3 flash sale model. Registration for the Redmi 1S smartphone will begin today at 6 on Flipkart and sales will open on 2 September.

Given that this is a smartphone which is priced for just Rs 5999 and is offering quality specs in its price range, it’s evident that Xiaomi’s latest device will also see good response from customers.  If you want to know whether to go for this over Moto E or Zenfone 4.

Xiaomi officially announced the launch at an event in Delhi where Xiaomi’s Global VP Hugo Barra and Xiaomi’s India head Manu Jain were present to interact with the press. Both Barra and Jain were there to help build the brand and talk about the phenomenal response that Mi 3 has got and also discuss the concerns that users have faced.

According to Barra, the company managed to sell over 90,000 Mi 3 smartphones is just over the one month since the launch, (Xiaomi’s sixth sale saw the phone get sold out in mere seconds once again). For a phone that was officially launched in July, this is a pretty big number and clearly Xiaomi as a brand has managed to gain some serious attention in the Indian market. And now Barra and co, intend to build on this.

Hugo Barra during the launch event. Tech2

In an interaction with Tech2, Barra said that despite criticism the flash sales are here to stay, at least for some time. Also don’t expect an offline Xiaomi store in India as the company firmly sees itself as an online one. “We’ve continued with this because we’re not aiming for volume right now. Our focus right now is on providing service and good customer experience. Even with the Mi 3, we’ve had users complain about issues such as those with the SIM tray. We could have gone ahead and sold say a 100,000 phones in one go. However we still have to educate our users about Mi3 and with these flash sales, its easier for us to reach people,” Barra said.

In fact after discovering the SIM tray issue, Xiaomi even put out a video on Facebook explaining to users about how to open the SIM tray. The company has also ensured that now micro-SIM adapters will be shipped with the Redmi 1S devices in the coming weeks, so that if you have a micro-SIM, you can use it on the Redmi 1S which has a Mini-SIM tray (aka the size regular SIM).

For now, e-commerce will continue to be a big focus for Xiaomi.

“We’re pretty stubborn in that sense that we are an e-commerce company. What we’re trying to do here, we plan to build our own website, have our own e-commerce store. We want to have a dedicated Mi store for that, because we think that’s the best way for users to experience our products. We will double down and triple down on e-commerce before we even open our minds to think about offline stuff,” said Barra. As far as retail distribution is concerned, he said that Xiaomi was in talks with other firms to help with this as well.

And it’s not just online sales, Xiaomi doesn’t plan to stick with traditional advertising in India either. This means no full page newspaper ads, or TVCs. Barra told us, “In China we do, one media buy a year. It’s a TV spot during the Chinese New Year.” So should we expect one during Diwali?

Redmi 1S is seen during the launch event. Tech2

“Certainly not in India and not this year. If we ever do anything here, it wouldn’t come out like that. Our media plan is to focus on social media and reinvest what you would spend in advertising into making the devices more accessible,” said the Xiaomi VP of global operations.

Xiaomi’s other big focus is customer service and after sales support in India. While initially they had announced exclusive service centres only in Delhi and Bangalore, new ones will also be coming up in Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Gurgaon.

According to Barra, the initial plan was to have three exclusive service centres by the end of summer but that’s already been doubled to six. The reason for this: “We saw how different the experience is if you want to walk into a Mi 3 exclusive store, which addresses the concerns of customers. Sure we have tied up with other service centres as well but we need to give our customers the unique Mi experience,” he said.

Redmi 1S will go on flash sale on 2 September. Tech2

On the difference between India and China, Barra said that in China “a lot of people are accessing the Internet on laptops as laptops are insanely popular” in the country. For India, he said, “Internet is still a mobile phenomena in India. People are discovering the Internet via mobile because they don’t have desktop computers or laptops. Everyone is experiencing the Internet through their own phones. So I think that that’s a leading indicator and I expect it (mobile penetration) to grow faster than in China. That’s how we’re thinking,” he said.

Barra added that, “India as a market has a lot of potential for smartphones, but it will probably take a couple of years for it to reach this potential. It’s like quarter of a size of China’s smartphone market or maybe even a fifth, so obviously there’s a long way to go.”

Where expectations with the India market are concerned, Barra refused to give any number but said that “given that kind of device that Redmi 1S is, and that it’s priced for 6k, we expect that it will be far more popular than Mi 3.” He also acknowledged that given the level of competition in India “everyone is a competitor, from local guys like Micromax to Samsung.”

We also asked Xiaomi about the issue that some customers faced on Flipkart when theyfound that their orders were cancelled by the online store. According to Manu Jain, the India Head for Xiaomi, one of the reasons for this could have been that the customer ordered the devices from a multiple number of devices with the same IP. “Flipkart does have its own methods and if it feels that a particular customer is just trying to buy the phone to resell it, then they would have cancelled it,” he said. He also said that Xiaomi had spoken to OLX, eBay, other websites where people who bought the Mi3 have been offering to sell the phone for a higher price and added that while in some cases the ads were taken down, legally there is nothing wrong with the ads.

Both Barra and Jain admitted that where the response was concerned, it has exceeded their expectations. And now it’s time to capitalise on the hype.

Gmail, other apps easily hacked with 92 percent accuracy, say researchers

Scientists have developed a novel method that allowed them to successfully hack into Gmail with up to 92 percent accuracy. A team of researchers, including an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering, have identified a weakness believed to exist in Android, Windows and iOS mobile operating systems that could be used to obtain personal information from unsuspecting users. They demonstrated the hack in an Android phone.

The researchers tested the method and found it was successful between 82 per cent and 92 percent of the time on six of the seven popular apps they tested. Among the apps they easily hacked were Gmail, CHASE Bank and H&R Block. Amazon, with a 48 percent success rate, was the only app they tested that was difficult to penetrate. The researchers believe their method will work on other operating systems because they share a key feature researchers exploited in the Android system.

The researchers believed there was a security risk with so many apps being created by so many developers. Once a user downloads a bunch of apps to their smartphone they are all running on the same shared infrastructure, or operating system.

“The assumption has always been that these apps can’t interfere with each other easily,” Zhiyun Qian, of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at UC Riverside said. “We show that assumption is not correct and one app can in fact significantly impact another and result in harmful consequences for the user,” said Qian.

The attack works by getting a user to download a seemingly benign, but actually malicious, app, such as one for background wallpaper on a phone. Once that app is installed, the researchers are able to exploit a newly discovered public side channel – the shared memory statistics of a process, which can be accessed without any privileges.

The researchers monitor changes in shared memory and are able to correlate changes to what they call an “activity transition event,” which includes such things as a user logging into Gmail or taking a picture of a check so it can be deposited online.

Augmented with a few other side channels, the authors show that it is possible to fairly accurately track in real time which activity a victim app is in.

There are two keys to the attack. One, the attack needs to take place at the exact moment the user is logging into the app or taking the picture. Two, the attack needs to be done in an inconspicuous way. The researchers did this by carefully calculating the attack timing.

Panasonic Eluga U first look: Decent specs, but may not woo users

Every time you see an ad for a Panasonic smartphone in India, you might mistakenly think that it’s some high-end luxury product, given the number of white, blonde and good-looking people that tend to dominate the ad. However despite the foreign touch to the ads, Panasonic is taking India very seriously when it comes to smartphones, according to the company’s executives during the launch of their new flagship in India, the Eluga U.

And what does Eluga mean? Well according to Panasonic, it stands for a rather complicated ‘Elegant User Interface Gateway.’ The price of the smartphone is Rs 18,990, much lower than the P51 (the first smartphone launched by Panasonic in India) which was launched for Rs 26,990 in 2013. 

The custom UI of the Eluga U

During the launch event Panasonic’s executives were keen to highlight that India as a smartphone market now matters to them. The company didn’t release any numbers on how its smartphones have done in India, but according to Panasonic’s India Managing Director, Manish Sharma, the country is now a separate region for the company, and it’s also the second headquarters for the company after Japan. India is the HQ for Panasonic’s global smartphone business, but manufacturing is not yet moving here.

So what’s new in Panasonic’s Eluga U? Sadly not much, which is a shame since it is a good looking device.

A 5-inch 720p display that trails the competition

The smartphone has a 5-inch HD IPS display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3, a 13 megapixel camera with flash, a 2 megapixel front camera, a Snapdragon 400 1.2GHz quad-core processor along with 2GB RAM. It comes with 16GB of internal storage with a microSD card for expansion up to 32GB. In terms of battery life, its a 2500 mAh Li-ion unit but you can’t remove the battery.

Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi Hotspot, Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS/ A-GPS. The smartphone is a dual-SIM one. It runs Android 4.4.2 KitKat out-of-the-box, although Panasonic has introduced its own UI called the FitHome UI. The Panasonic interface lets users access all installed apps on the homescreen itself. The apps are arranged in a little semi-circle grid and you can swipe down left and right to see all the apps. To be honest, some parts of the UI have a very Android Gingerbread feel, especially when it comes to the radio buttons or menu items in the homescreen editing menu.

Interestingly the phone lets users switch to the default KitKat UI if you don’t like the customised interface. Overall, it doesn’t look so drastically different from a stock Android smartphone, though. If you like your smartphone to look more like ‘pure’ Android device, then this isn’t a bad option, but the specs disappoint.

Nothing special

The problem is that there is nothing terribly exciting about this smartphone. Yes, its got a full-glass finish unibody and the back has a textured pattern to it, but the black and white look of the smartphone is nothing new. It doesn’t feel tacky, but there’s nothing exciting about it.

With competitors like Xiaomi Mi 3 entering the market and offering devices at the Rs 14,000 price point and a full HD screen in comparison to Panasonic Eluga U’s HD screen, users aren’t short of cheaper options with better specs. Plus if you want a more distinctive UI, Xiaomi’s MIUI is a different take on Android.

The 13-megapixel camera and a 2-megapixel shooter on the front are also pretty standard features now. Latest Chinese entrant Xiaomi has the same set-up, while the upcoming smartphone OnePlus One, which will hit India soon, also boasts a 13MP sensor on the back.

The list of competitors entering the market with new and exciting features is long and endless. Which is why Eluga U fails to shine. Maybe in 2013, Eluga U would have been an exciting smartphone at this price point but in 2014 when sub-$100 smartphones and Chinese brands raging strong, this is an average device that is not big on specs, and has the wrong price tag.

Intex Cloud FX first impressions: Can Mozilla’s Firefox OS flourish in an Android world?

Mozilla’s second Firefox-OS smartphone (after the Spice Fire One) is officially out in India, and this one is billed as India’s cheapest smartphone. The Intex Cloud FX is priced at Rs 1,990 and will be exclusively available on Snapdeal. Intex has also teamed up with Aircel to provide Aircel users who buy the phone 1GB Data free for two months.

As far as the smartphone is concerned, the specs aren’t something that would make any smartphone lover drool. A 2 megapixel camera, 128 MB RAM, a 3.5-inch screen, none of this sounds like a dream phone. And the truth is that it’s not trying to be a dream phone, at least for users who have already bought their first Android or Windows phone. Firefox and Intex are targetting an audience that is buying their first smartphone, often in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, and the budget for these users is similar to how much they would spend on a feature phone.

It should be remembered that according to the latest IDC numbers, out of the 63.21 million units of mobiles that were shipped in India in Q2 in 2014, 71 percent were still feature phones. Vendors shipped only a 18.42 million smartphones in India in Q2 2014. But the good news is that the smartphone market is growing at a faster rate (close to 84 percent) and this growth will continue. And this where Intex and Firefox are hoping to fit in. Keshav Bansal, Director Marketing at Intex told Tech2, “The expectations are very high. As far as short-term is concerned, we are looking at half a million smartphones of Cloud Fx.” He added that the USP of this smartphone is the product is user-friendly.

Intex Cloud FX is priced at Rs 1999.

“Price is the biggest attraction for this product. It’s not very complicated to use. So for someone upgrading from a feature phone to smartphone, Mozilla should be a phenomenal experience,” he said.

Given that both Mozilla and Intex are targetting an audience that is buying their first smartphone, we also asked whether it was restrictive to make this product available only on an online platform like Snapdeal. Bansal said they didn’t see it as restrictive. “Snapdeal’s core strength is the presence in the Tier-II and Tier-III market as compared to the other e-commerce guys. And this where we are hoping to grow, so I don’t see this being a limitation at all,” he said. Bansal added that Intex would user “a lot of marketing tool”, and would “aggressively promote this product.”

The Cloud FX is a basic smartphone; it’s got a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen with 480×320 pixels resolution. Intex has packed in a 1GHz Spreadtrum processor along with 128 MB of RAM with 256 MB total space. It has a 2 megapixel rear camera and comes with dual-SIM support. However, this is a 2G-only phone (which is a big drawback in our opinion) with support for Wi-Fi for further Internet connectivity. The Cloud FX takes in microSD cards, but support is limited up to 4GB only. It comes with a 1250mAh battery.

But for the price point at which this smartphone is starting, which is Rs 1999, it stands ahead of the competition. For starters, the 3.5-inch screen is bigger than most feature phones for under Rs 2000. Most feature phones in this range have a 1.8 screen with a keyboard. The screen size in this category goes up to 2.6-inches at the most in case of Micromax Bolt X287 and Lava KKT 27i which has a 2.8-inch screen. But neither of these are smartphones with an app ecosystem to speak of.

Intex Cloud FX has a little social hub as well.

The smartphone doesn’t look particularly great and would probably remind you of a smartphone from 3 or 4 years back, but the fact that Intex wants you to pay Rs 2000 for this, is actually great. With the device that we tried out, we noticed that it did take time to respond to touches, which is not surprising given that it has minimal RAM and only a single-core processor. And sure the 2 megapixel camera isn’t the most appealing, but then you’re paying pittance for the phone.

The most important feature of the phone that needs discussion is the Firefox OS. It should be noted that everything on the OS is web-based, and that apps are actually much smaller in size than they would be on Android. For instance, the Facebook app is around 400 KB on this. All apps are supposed on HTML-5 and yes the Mozilla Marketplace doesn’t quite have all the apps. For instance, the smartphone doesn’t have WhatsApp but something called ConnectA2 where users can put in their telephone number, nickname and message share with friends on WhatsApp. Apps are going to be an issue that Firefox needs to deal and quickly, especially if it wants to sell smartphones at the mid-range level as well.

For a basic smartphone, this one carries high expectations.

While we did see apps like Facebook, YouTube, even a version of Instagram and Twitter on the phone, the limited functionality of these apps,  is a definite barrier to the growth of the Firefox OS.

The other problem is that since everything is web-enabled, you need constant internet connectivity to use stuff on the smartphone. Given that this is  a 2G phone, constant internet can be a bit of a problem in a country like where 2G is a truly poor network to be on. For a first smartphone user, who is limited to 2G that is slow and doesn’t always work, a Firefox phone could end up being a big turn-off. The bad news for Firefox could be that lot of people who buy this device might not want a Firefox OS phone again simply because of the 2G issue. A Firefox device with 3G at a slightly higher price point would have been much more effective, but perhaps these are already in the works.

On the flip side, the Intex Cloud FX could also be the device that convinces first time smartphone buyers that smartphones are a great idea after all and mobile Internet connectivity is the way to go. The only problem is that after using Firefox OS for a few months, they might want to upgrade to a smartphone that offers more in terms of features, apps and performance.