Knowledge Update

​New York, Dec 19 (IANS) The global autonomous cars market is expected to reach 138,089 units by 2024, a study by US-based market research and consulting company Grand View Research said on Monday. The growing acceptance of semi-autonomous technologies, such as adaptive cruise control (ACC), automatic parking and forward collision avoidance is anticipated to pave the way for the adoption of driverless automobiles over the next seven years. "The self-driving technology exhibits a huge potential, owing to its capability to improve on-road safety, lower the energy consumption and reduce congestion," the findings showed. North America is anticipated to dominate the market with over 40 per cent of the volume share in 2017.he region is further anticipated to witness a considerable growth over the next seven years. Europe is a key region for the deployment of self-driving vehicles, owing to the high consumer preference for technologically advanced products and is estimated to hold more than 35 per cent of the volume share in 2017. "This is attributed to the presence of players such as Volvo, Volkswagen, PSA Peugeot Citroën, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in Germany and Britain," the report added. Asia Pacific is expected to witness a sluggish growth as compared to North America and Europe. However, it is anticipated to grow substantially in the later phase of the forecast period due to the growing adoption of technologically advanced cars in China. In addition, the Japanese government has specifically laid down a plan for the successful self-driving vehicle deployment and is expected to catapult the product demand over the forecast period. The Singaporean government has also proposed to build separate roads for driverless automobiles to accelerate the adoption. "An upsurge in the demand for increased comfort and convenience, particularly in countries with an aging population, is expected to propel the driverless vehicles demand over the forecast period," the study added.

New York, Dec 18 (IANS) Apple customers, who pre-ordered the tech giant's wireless earphones AirPods, have started receiving a pair of the product after the sales went live recently, a media report said. Customers received a word that their orders had been shipped and were scheduled to arrive as promised on December 21, a report on AppleInsider said. Apple announced its first branded wireless headphones with iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in September 2016 and the product went up for sale on December 13. AirPods are priced at Rs 15,400 in India. According to the report, AirPods were regarded as a highly anticipated item and the initial supply was quickly depleted, pushing back shipment estimates to four weeks mere hours after release. Alongside pre-order shipments, AirPods are rumoured to land in Apple retail stores, as well as mobile carrier outlets and authorised Apple resellers by as early as next week. AirPods are automatically on and always connected. They can sense when they are in ears and pause when taken out. They are driven by the custom-designed Apple W1 chip for efficient wireless connection and improved sound. The W1 chip manages battery life which lets the product deliver five hours of listening time on a single charge. Just 15 minutes of charging can give three hours of listening time. To check the battery, user can hold the AirPods next to an iPhone or ask Siri "How's the battery on my AirPods?"

​Toronto, Dec 16 (IANS) Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry and TCL Communication Technology Holdings Limited on Friday entered into a long-term licensing agreement that will provide acceleration to BlackBerry's transition into a security software and services company. Under the terms, BlackBerry will license its security software and service suite, as well as related brand assets, to TCL Communication who will design, manufacture, sell and provide customer support for BlackBerry-branded mobile devices. "This agreement with TCL Communication represents a key step in our strategy to focus on putting the 'smart in the phone' by providing state-of-the-art security and device software on a platform that mobile users prefer and are comfortable with," said Ralph Pini, Chief Operating Officer and General Manager, Mobility Solutions, BlackBerry, in a statement. TCL Communication will be the exclusive global manufacturer and distributor for all BlackBerry-branded smartphones with the exception of the following countries -- India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Indonesia. "At TCL Communication, we are committed to creating the best portfolio solutions, while ensuring the quality support to consumers and enterprise users who trust the integrity of the BlackBerry device and the brand's security leadership, coupled with the Android platform," added Nicolas Zibell, CEO, TCL Communication. The partnership with TCL Communication is BlackBerry's first global licensing agreement and expands on its existing relationship, which led to the introduction of the DTEK50 and DTEK60 handsets on Android. Additional information on the product roadmap and availability of devices will be available in coming months, the company said. After failing to revive its smartphone business despite several efforts, BlackBerry, earlier this year, announced it will cease internal hardware development and will focus on software and services.

New York, Dec 15 (IANS) Just by observing how users respond to online videos and other social media content, computers may be able to group them into marketing segments in real time, a new research has revealed. "Computers used information from social media accounts to automatically build marketing personae. Marketing research professionals typically create these personae to help editors and marketers better understand the behaviours of specific consumer groups," said James Jansen, Professor at Penn State University. But it is hard to make a decision looking at a bunch of complex numbers that most people do not understand. To understand these complex numbers, researchers took a bunch of market data and condensed it into a fictitious person. From 188,000 subscribers of a news website, the team developed algorithms to analyse data, such as demographic information, topics of interest and customer interactions. The researchers identified unique ways that groups of people were interacting with the information. "News site editors could use this information to better collect and target content to these audiences," said Jansen, adding "Journalists can use that information to reach readers with better titles, content and article framing." The researchers said that the method was transferable to other domains as well and could work at any consumer touch-point. The method is being scaled up to millions of users where researchers could use other types of social media data from sites like Facebook or Twitter. The study was presented at the second international workshop on online social networks technologies held in Agadir, Morocco, recently.

​New York, Dec 13 (IANS) Microsoft has succesfully targeted Mac users with its Surface commercials, as a report revealed that more people were switching from Macs to Surface recently. According to Microsoft, people were switching from Macs to Surface because of the disappointment of the new MacBook Pro among professionals combined with "the excitement for the innovation of Surface." The company termed November as their best month ever for consumer Surface sales, although it did not provide any sales numbers. "The best buy-exclusive Surface bundle sold out on the first day. The momentum was seen worldwide. In the Britain, we had the best single week for Surface ever and in Germany the Surface Pen became the best seller in PC accessories on Amazon for over 12 hours," the company said in a blog post on Monday.

​New York, Dec 10 (IANS) The availability of Apple's wireless headphones, called AirPods, is delayed as the company is experiencing problems in getting the audio from both the earpieces at the same time, a media report said on Saturday. According to Fortune, "technology problems with how the earpieces receive wireless signals via Bluetooth are causing delay." Apple launched AirPods along with the iPhone 7 in September this year as a replacement for conventional earphones that require a headphone jack. The company launched iPhone 7 without the headphone jack, however, consumers can still use wired earphones, but can be done by using a dongle to connect them via lighting port. "The original plan was to ship the AirPods in October, but Apple decided to delay the earphones that month without giving a reason," the report added.

Toronto, Dec 9 (IANS) Canadian mobile company BlackBerry on Friday launched a Cloud-enabled mobile security platform for "Enterprise of Things" that will address entire businesses from endpoint to endpoint. "Enterprise of Things" is defined as the network of intelligent connections and endpoints within the enterprise that enable products to move from sketch to scale. It is a collection of devices, computers, sensors, trackers, equipment and other things that communicate with each other to enable smart product development, distribution, marketing and sales. "Businesses must be able to confidentially and reliably transmit sensitive data between endpoints to keep people, information and goods safe," John Chen, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, BlackBerry, said in a statement. The platform completes the integration of the BlackBerry's prior acquisitions of key technologies such as Good Technology, WatchDox, AtHoc and Encription, the company said.

San Francisco, Dec 6 (IANS) While the overall wearables market grew 3.1 per cent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2016, Apple Watch share took a downturn owing to an ageing lineup and an unintuitive user interface, market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC) has said. Apple's decision to launch its second-generation watches in mid-September, towards the end of the quarter, did contribute to its year-over-year decline in the third quarter and the company stood fourth with 4.9 per cent share. According to IDC's 'Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker' report, total wearables shipments reached 23 million in the third quarter. "Where smartwatches were once expected to take the lead, basic wearables now reign supreme. Simplicity is a driving factor and this is well reflected in the top vendor list as four out of five offer a simple, dedicated fitness device," said Jitesh Ubrani, Senior Research Analyst, IDC Mobile Device Trackers. Basic wearables, primarily comprised of fitness bands, accounted for 85 per cent of the market and experienced double-digit growth. Fitbit, with a 23 per cent share, was once again the market leader in the third quarter as the vendor released a long-awaited refresh for the "Charge HR" wireless activity wristband with "Charge 2". Xiaomi stood second with 16.5 per cent market share. "The company across all business lines continues to struggle to gain any significant traction outside China," the report added. With a market share of 5.7 per cent, Garmin stood third as the company with one of the widest portfolios among all the vendors. "The company managed to expand its channel presence over the past year, focusing on numerous sports equipment chains and independent retailers," the report noted. Samsung, with 4.5 per cent market share, stood fifth and the company was able to sustain shipments of its Gear S2, particularly the cellular-enabled versions, through various wireless service providers, the findings showed. IDC expects the momentum for basic wearables to continue for the remainder of 2016. However, smart wearables capable of running third-party apps will likely continue to struggle in the near term.

​New York, Nov 29 (IANS) Soon after reports surfaced of the next Samsung Galaxy S8 flagship phone having a personal assistant, rumours are now doing rounds that the device will have different names for male and female voice assistants. The device is said to include "Bixby" as the female AI and "Kestra" as the male voice which can be easily accessible with a special button, US-based tech website Android Community reported on Tuesday. Reportedly, a trademark protection has been filed to ensure that no one will be able to use "Bixby" and "Kestra". The new Galaxy S line is expected to be introduced at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) next year. So far, it has been learnt that the Galaxy S8 will have two variants -- Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus -- which will have dual camera system, iris scanner, 5.5-inch 4K display, 8GB RAM, 2K screen or two screen sizes and touch force technology. Rumours about Samsung's own virtual assistant surfaced after the South Korean tech company acquired Viv -- a California-based startup in October. According to Tech Crunch, Viv is an artificial intelligence (AI) and assistant system co-founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham who created Siri, which was acquired by Apple in 2010. The Galaxy Note 7 debacle where several complaints of battery explosion were reported worldwide, forced Samsung to recall 2.5 million devices and finally shut down its production. Introduction of an AI assistant is seen as a move to recover from the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco and to give a competition to Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa and newly launched Google Assistant.

​New York, Nov 29 (IANS) The rising levels of Apple calendar spamming is frustrating the Cupertino-based tech giant's iPhone or iPad customers by "reminding" them of buying stuff they never asked for, the media reported on Tuesday. Apple's calendar app allows invites to be sent by unauthenticated users and pushed directly to a handset, a report in Forbes said. "You get a bubble alert on the calendar app, text in your inbox you have to read and depending how you have set up your device you might get a 'useful' notification that you have no choice but to read and clear," the report pointed out. The problem that Apple may face with this issue is that the success of this route to potential customers will become a popular route for spammers. According to the report, being able to mark invites as spam, to be able to blacklist addresses and to have some processing done on the server side to stop a flood of invites from a single source may help the customers deal with the issue. "If this can be implemented quickly, then calendar spam would be nothing more than a short-term annoyance," the report said. Until Apple finds a permanent solution to this problem, the tech giant's loyalists could push all spam requests into a separate calendar and then deleting that calendar eventually swiping out all the entries at once. Users may also change iCloud calendar settings from desktop to invite notifications from 'in-app' to 'email' and use email client to filter the spam.